Before I get started, let me make a couple observations if I can. Ryan's been giving books away, and I don't have any books to give away, but I do want to put something on your radar screen. Ryan has just written a book. And that book is titled Green Pastures, A Primer on the Ordinary Means of Grace. It's soon gonna be published by Reformed Baptist Academic Press. And so put that on your list of things that you might want to get and read. I wish I had a free one to give away, but it should be coming out soon, right? Within a few weeks. And I told him I'm gonna hopefully get a copy of it, read it. Then I do some reviews for some different journals and I'm going to make sure I get a review of it. I'm sure it's going to be excellent. Second observation, Steve beat me to it to reflect on Lloyd Sprinkle. Lloyd went to be with the Lord on Thursday about 2.40 in the afternoon and Pastor Andy Rice texted me and wrote a blog post about it yesterday. I just want to acknowledge that I was just thinking about that. Steve Sermon brought it to mind and I was thinking about the fact that here we are, we're in Chapter 12 of this confession. And some of you know that we started 12 years ago saying we were going to go through the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. And so what we've done every year over the last 12 years is we've gone consecutively through the confession and we've taken a chapter. So guess what? God willing, next year it'll be Chapter 13 of Sanctification. But I was thinking about that, and if you go back to chapter six, which is of the fall of man, of sin, and of the punishment thereof, Lloyd was one of our speakers. And he spoke on the doctrine of total depravity. And six chapters later, six years later, he's gone on to be with the Lord. and it is knowing and experiencing being absent from the body and being present with the Lord. When we made this decision to take a chapter of the confession each year 12 years ago, I'm 54 now. You do the math. I'm going to let Van do it. I'll only be about 48. at that time. But I remember 12 years ago when we started doing this, I thought, wow, there's 32 chapters in the confession. If the Lord is so kind, I'll be 74 when we finish. I'm only 20 chapters away. from the end of that. And it's a reminder of how quickly time passes. We have a brief time here. And what are we doing with our lives? You know, the old adage says, only one life till soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. Where are you going to be six chapters from now? And how are you going to be serving the Lord? Will you make it to the next chapter? There's no guarantee we'll make it to the next chapter, is there? But we have this opportunity today to consider this chapter on adoption. Lloyd, my church was planted in 2010. And just a memory of Lloyd Sprinkle, he gave us 50 copies of the Trinity Hymnal, Baptist edition, when our church was planted. And those hymnals are still being used in our church. And he gave it to us, like this congregation has. And of course, what's at the back of the Trinity Hymnal? The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. And so anyways, I'm thankful to the Lord today. remembering Lloyd's ministry and joining with Steve and asking us to be in prayer for Jackie, his wife, and for the brethren at Providence for Andy Rice pastoring there. Well, we have a custom in our church and that is we read the scriptures before the message and we do that as we stand. And for this message, there are three proof texts that we're gonna be looking at, and they come from Ephesians chapter four and verse 30, Hebrews chapter one and verse 14, and Hebrews chapter six and verse 12. And so I wanna invite you as you're able, let's stand together in honor of the reading and hearing of God's word. I'm going to begin by reading from, again, Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 30, wherein the Apostle Paul writes, And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. And then from the book of Hebrews 1 and verse 14, wherein we read, are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? And then if you'll turn over as well to Hebrews chapter six, there's one verse listed as the proof text, which is Hebrews chapter six and verse 12. And I'm also gonna read verse 11. Hebrews six, verse 11, and then verse 12. And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end, that ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." May God bless today the reading and the hearing of His Word in this place, and would you join with me in prayer? Let us pray. Gracious and loving God, we do give you thanks for your word. We give you thanks for the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ, and for the written word that you have given by the prophets and the sages and the apostles to your people. and you brought to their remembrance all the things spoken by Christ, and we thank you for these words today. Help us as we meditate upon these things. Give us the illumination of the Holy Spirit, for without the Spirit's help we will not understand these things. Help this preacher to speak clearly and help us to hear your word collectively. We ask this in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen. And you may be seated. So this year, as our conference theme, we're looking at this chapter 12. And I am going to try to address with you three things. First of all, I wanna offer a couple of observations about the place of this chapter within the confession as a whole, the place of this particular chapter, chapter 12, within the confession. Secondly, I wanna offer some observations on the proof texts that are cited, and the language that is used in the very last portion, which is going to be my focus, which is my assigned focus, the very last part, which reads, but sealed to the day of redemption and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation. And then thirdly, I want to, after reflecting on the proof text for this and the language that's used here, I want to break down what I think are two parts of this statement. The first part being, but sealed to the day of redemption. And the second part being, and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation. So I want to do those three things. Preliminary comments. proof texts and language of the confession here, and thoroughly try to break down these two parts of it. So first of all, let me address a couple of preliminary matters related to how this chapter fits in with the rest of the confession. And one of the things we might ask from the beginning is, how does this chapter compare with the same chapter in what we could call the parent confessions? of our Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. Our confession is a daughter confession of some earlier confessions, namely the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, the Confession of the Puritans and Presbyterians, and the Savoy Declaration of 1658, of which John Owen was the primary author, and those were the Congregationalists. So the framers of our confession used those two documents. This is one of those places where if you look at our Chapter 12 on adoption and the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Savoy Declaration, they are nearly verbatim. There is only one difference. In the very first line, our particular Baptist forebears inserted one little phrase, the sake of. If you look at that opening line, all those that are justified, God vouchsafed in and for, and they added, the sake of His only Son, Jesus Christ. Otherwise, it's exactly the same as the Westminster Confession of Faith and Savoy Declaration. Another observation, just preliminarily, about the place of this chapter, the character of it within the Confession, relates to, as several people have noted, how brief it is. This chapter consists of a single paragraph. It is the only chapter in the 32 chapters in the entire 1689 Confession to be articulated in a single paragraph. Several of the chapters have only two paragraphs, including Chapter 27 of the Communion of the Saints and Chapter 28 of Baptism and of the Lord's Supper. But only one chapter has only one paragraph, and that is Chapter 12 of Adoption. Why is that? And I thought possibly it could be for a couple of reasons. First, perhaps it's because generally it's indicative of the fact that this doctrine, adoption, has sometimes been perhaps neglected its rightful place in the systematic expositions of biblical theology. Just think about how many books there are on the doctrine of justification or sanctification. And how many are there about adoption? Not nearly as many. Secondly, more specifically, perhaps this is indicative of the fact that the biblical term that is rendered in most English translations as adoption, coming from a Greek word that has as its root the word son, and then sort of an ending that comes from the verb tithemi, which means to put or to place, so that this word that we render as adoption literally means to put or to place into sonship. Perhaps because, I think as Ryan pointed out earlier, this term actually appears only five times in the Bible. And all of those references, explicit references to the term adoption, appear in the Pauline corpus, the letters of Paul. Romans 8.15, Romans 8.23, Romans 9.4, Galatians 4.5, Ephesians 1.5. And so someone might say, If this is really an important doctrine, the doctrine of adoption, shouldn't this term appear in the Old Testament and shouldn't it be peppered throughout other places in the canon and shouldn't it be in the gospels, shouldn't it be in the general epistles and revelation and so forth? Could this possibly be just a Pauline motif that doesn't warrant an entire chapter being given to it? And then thirdly, I thought, well, perhaps there's so relatively little said about it in comparison to other doctrines, because it's indicative of the difficulties in grasping and articulating what this doctrine means. Now, I'm a little bit disabused of that, because the previous speakers have done so well. They have done a great job of how to grasp it and articulate it. But it is difficult. and particularly as we think about what adoption means with respect to what the theologians call the ordo salutis, or the order of salvation. And perhaps the best outline of the order of salvation within the New Testament is in Romans 8, 29, and 30. We call it the golden chain of redemption. Those whom God foreknew, he predestined. Those that he predestined, he called. Those whom he called, he justified. And those whom he justified, he glorified. Well, guess what? That's typically thought of as the framework or the outline for the order of salvation. But adoption is not mentioned in there. And so, where does adoption fit into the Ordo Salutis? When, at least logically speaking, Does the believer experience this spiritual adoption? And there is some clue within the confession itself as to how our teachers, the framers of this confession, would have answered that question in the way that they ordered the chapters. And so if you look at it, chapter 10 is on effectual calling or efficient calling. Regeneration. Then chapter 11 is on justification. So, think about that. that regeneration, effectual calling, precedes justification by faith. And then after that comes adoption, chapter 12, and then after that, chapter 13 of sanctification. So I think the framers were trying to tell us that the best way to understand the order of salvation is to think that adoption takes place after one is called, And after one is justified, but it's also a logical precursor, at least, to one's sanctification. Before one is justified by faith, he must be effectually called or regenerated. Before one experiences spiritual adoption, he must be justified by faith. Consider John 1, verse 12 again, a verse several people have pointed to. where John writes, but as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on his name. They were justified by faith. Then they received the power, or the exousia, to become the sons of God. Then adoption. And then before one begins progressively to be sanctified, again, at least logically speaking, he must have experienced spiritual adoption. And this viewpoint is also reflected in the Baptist catechism. And several people, as Steve made reference to this, we have the confession of faith, and praise God, it's being rediscovered, it's exciting. There was the young restless reformed people who discovered Calvinism. And now there are people discovering confessional, Reformed Baptists, and we love the 1689 and so forth. But there's something we can add to the confession, as Steve pointed out, and that is the catechism, the Baptist catechism. The Confession was adopted in 1689, the Catechism in 1693, and our Presbyterian brothers and sisters are somewhat ahead of us in this because they talk about the Westminster Standards, the Westminster Confession of Faith alongside of the larger Catechism and the shorter Catechism. But we could talk about the Baptist Standards. so that we have the confession of faith and we have the Baptist catechism. And in the Baptist catechism, question 35 says, what benefits do they who are effectually called partake of in this life? And it answers, they that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them. And you see how they're teaching from the confession. The catechism is teaching from the confession. One must be called, justified, adopted, and then sanctification. And then if you're familiar with the catechism after that, the next questions, question 36 that follows after is, what is justification? Beautiful description of justification. Then question 37. is what is adoption? And the answer is adoption is an act of God's free grace whereby we are received into the number and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God, what Van preached on earlier today. And then question 38 is what is sanctification? So there are some reasons why this chapter is so brief, but there are also reasons put forward within our standards as to why this doctrine is important. And there are some reasons that are here in our standards to teach us about how we're to understand these biblical texts about adoption and the place adoption holds within the order of salvation, at least logically speaking. And today, we get to remedy the fact that this doctrine has not been talked about enough by giving it its day in the sun. And so it's wonderful that we get to talk about the doctrine of adoption. I wanna turn and talk a little bit about the proof texts. So there are three proof texts that are given, I've read them. The first one, again, Ephesians 4.30, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed under the day of redemption. The second, Hebrews 1.14, are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? And the third, Hebrews 6.12, that ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." Now, when you read those proof texts, and then you turn to chapter 12, and you look at that last line that's my focus, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation, what are these lines? This is just a pastiche or a mash-up of the biblical text. Believers who have experienced adoption have been sealed under the day of redemption. Ephesians 4.30. They inherit the promises. Hebrews 6.12. And they shall be heirs of salvation. Hebrews 1.14. Notice, again, just some observations about the language here. Notice that the confession in this section, and Steve pointed this out in his message as well, the confession is simply using the words of the Bible. I have sometimes heard people, even people who are confessional reformed, not just Calvinistic, but confessional reformed, they seem like when we come to the confession sometimes they wanna make excuses for it, they wanna explain. Now wait a second here, we don't think this is infallible, and it's a subordinate standard, and they're absolutely right. They're absolutely right. You can't read chapter one of our confession and think that we hold the confession above scripture. But you've got to be careful about that. Because if you read through the confession carefully, you find that much of it are just these pastiches and mashups of biblical words, biblical phrasings. And what Steve also said, it ties us in with historic Orthodox Christianity by linking us in with classical theism. God is without body, parts, and passions. The Lord Jesus Christ is very God and very man. It's Chalcedonian Christology. It's linking us in with historic Orthodox faith, and it's using scriptural language. So be careful about downplaying its authority when a lot of it is just quotations from the Bible. Notice as well, some of you won't be surprised, but I might mention something like this. Notice also that the confession uses rich biblical terms in English that are drawn from what we could call the Tyndale King James Version tradition. This ought to give us pause before abandoning the use of English translations drawn from this traditional translation stream. And again, you don't have to be, say you're wedded to one particular version, the King James version, but it's, I called it the Tyndale going back to 1525, 1534. And then that language is incorporated in all the other English Bibles, whether that's the great Bible, the Bishop's Bible, the Geneva Bible, it's in the King James also. It's only the last 150 years that many modern Bibles have started to go away. And there's a, there's a, there are repercussions to that. If you're using a modern Bible that doesn't follow the modern text and that follows a modern translation philosophy, a dynamic equivalent translation philosophy, and you read this confession, you're going to miss out on a lot of the organic phraseology that's here that reinforces maybe what you hear in preaching and teaching from the pulpit or from the teaching lectern. So let's be cautious about that. Okay, those are the preliminary observations about the place of this chapter within the larger confession, some observations about the proof text and the language, and now let's go to the mainstay, the meat. Let's look at, well, what is this part that we're looking at? What exactly is it saying? And again, I have the task of looking at the final statement here. Those who have experienced spiritual adoption are sealed to the day of redemption and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation. And I just want to meditate on what I think are two points that are being made. First, the confession here teaches that those who have experienced spiritual adoption have been sealed to the day of redemption. This phrase, drawn again from Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 30, presents, I think, adoption as a spiritual reality, a present reality for the believer. His status has been irrevocably changed. He is sealed to the day of redemption. He has been given power, to use the language of John 1.12, to become a son of God by faith and he has experienced spiritual adoption. This is a present reality, but the language here also tells us that it is straining toward a future fulfillment, as Steve rightly pointed out to us. Because it's straining toward a fulfillment for us that is yet on the horizon, The believer who has been justified by faith and who has been adopted is sealed unto the day of redemption. Look for a second at the context here in Ephesians chapter 4. Look at Ephesians 4. And in Ephesians 4, this entire chapter has many exhortations to the readers, it's addressed to believers, and it has exhortations to them about their life in Christ. So it begins in verse 1 with an exhortation where Paul says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. So, walk worthy of the call which you have been given. And so, he proceeds from there to give other exhortations. Look at verse 17, where he says, This I say therefore and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their minds. So he's saying now that you are in Christ, a change of mind and a change of behavior is warranted. And then there are specific exhortations as he begins to describe how now you are a different person. Now you have a new status. Now you have a new identity in Christ. And so, look at verses 22-24, "...that ye put off concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Put off the old man and put on the new man. You have a new identity now in Christ. I won't soon forget when Brian Wheeler, by the way, preached at our teach conference a couple of years. And he said, when you're a Christian, you look around, there's this old man in your house. And you say, get out of here. And you take him out the front door, and you turn around, he's sitting on your couch. Get out of here. And you take him to the front door, and you throw him out, and you turn around, he's climbing through the window. You're continually getting the old man out and putting on the new man. And this is because you have a new identity. And then he proceeds to talk about what this might include for one. He's very specific. He's not general in these exhortations. So for example, in verse 25, he says, wherefore put away lying. Don't be a liar. Speak every man truth with his neighbor. Verse 26. Be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath or your anger. Then he says, verse 28, let him that stole, steal no more. And so they're very specific things. Now your status has been changed, your identity is different, you have experienced a change, and this requires activities that are in keeping with the new man. within your life. And he goes on to talk about other things in verse 29. He says, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. Have you ever run into people who are newly converted, I mean truly converted, and they tell you things like, you know, I used to really swear. I used to have a foul mouth. And one of the signs of the depravity of our culture is, you know, walk into a public place, a store, or go into Walmart, and you'll hear some of the most coarse things said. But I've met more than one person who said, when I came to know the Lord, all of a sudden, my language began to change. Let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth. And it's not just, within this chapter, it's not just what we could call the negative, mortification, taking away the bad things, but it's also the positive. It's also vivification, bringing to life things that are good. So in verse 32, and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. So it's not just taking out the bad things, but it's cultivating the things that are right and good. And then the proof text is verse 30. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed under the day of redemption. Why are these things happening? Why are you putting out the old man, putting on the new man? Because something has changed about your status and identity. You have been sealed to the day of redemption. And this links us in with other teachings within Ephesians itself that link this idea of sealing and also redemption with adoption. So if you look back at Ephesians 1, verse 7, it says, In whom, where the reference is back to Christ, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. and then look as well in verse 13 and 14 of Ephesians 1, in whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth and the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after ye believed, justification by faith, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, adoption, which is the earnest, the arabon, or the down payment of our inheritance until redemption of the purchased possession under the praise of His glory. And so In the confession, when it says the believer is sealed to the day of redemption, it's addressing what happens in adoption, and that is a changed status, a changed identity, that is a present reality. Thomas Watson, one of the Puritans, and when people ask me, you know, I want to say I want to start reading the Puritans, who should I read? I always say start with Thomas Watson. Spurgeon called him a racy writer. He just writes in a way that is very engaging and memorable. But in his work on the Beatitudes, his exposition of the Beatitudes, he has a section where he talks about adoption. And he contrasts human adoption versus spiritual adoption through God the Father. And he says, man, when he adopts, settles but earthly privileges upon his heir, but God settles heavenly privileges, justification, glorification. Men but entail their land upon the persons they adopt, God does more. He not only entails his land upon his children, but he entails himself upon them. I will be their God, Hebrews 8.10. Not only heaven is their portion, but God is their portion. Then he says, God's filiating or making of children is by infusion of grace. When God makes any his children, he stamps his image upon them. This is more than any man living can do. He may adopt another, but he cannot alter his disposition. If he be of a morose, rugged nature, he cannot alter it. But God, in making of children, fits them for sonship. He prepares and sanctifies them for this privilege. He changes their disposition. He files off the ruggedness of their nature. He makes them not only sons, but saints. They are of another spirit. They become meek and humble. They are partakers of the divine nature, 2 Peter 1.4. So believers are people who are sealed to the day of redemption. There's a present change straining toward a future fulfillment within them. This is why Paul in Romans 8.15 can talk about believers having received the spirit of adoption. And he can say, in Romans 8.23, likewise, that believers are groaning within themselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies. And that's why I say that this present reality is only provisional and straining towards fulfillment. We have it now. We are the adopted sons of God. But we're also groaning within ourselves, waiting for the redemption of our body. We are sealed to the day of redemption. The verb for to seal here is a Greek word that is used in Matthew 27, 66 in reference to Pilate's command that the sepulcher where Christ's lifeless body was placed after the crucifixion would be made sure or secure by sealing the stone But more ordinarily, this word is used figuratively in reference to the affixing of a mark of identification. Yes, it's also used to talk about the sealing of official letters and decrees, but it's also used, again, figuratively to talk about someone being marked out in their identification. The person has, when he's sealed, he has a changed status. And Paul says that that seal is the Holy Spirit within us. groaning for the redemption of our bodies. Let's look at the second part of this statement, where the confession teaches that those who have experienced spiritual adoption inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation. Again, it's a mashup of two passages from Hebrews, Hebrews 6.12 and Hebrews 1.14. Believers are like heirs who have received promises of great riches that are held in store for them even though they have not yet fully received them. Have you ever had this fantasy that you had this wealthy uncle out there somewhere and one day you were going to get a phone call? You didn't know Uncle Jack, but you know he had stock in Microsoft and you are going to inherit it. Well, the Bible actually tells us that the believer is one who discovers that through no merit of his own, that he is inheriting untold riches. Van told us earlier, you know, a man can divide his finite resources among his heirs, but God is infinite, eternal. And His blessings can be given infinitely to those who are His. And so we are those who inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation. The Westminster Confession of Faith adds one verse as a proof text that, for some reason, the Second London Baptist Confession framers did not include, and it's 1 Peter 1, verse 4, which describes an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you. Now, with this last part, these very last words of this chapter on spiritual adoption, I'm struck again by what we could call the eschatological horizon that is represented here. Our adoption is already, and Steve used these very words in his message, it's already, but not yet. We have a new status, we have a new identity, and we don't even know how rich and how meaningful it's going to be quite yet. But we have it now, but it's yet fully to be revealed to us. Ryan pointed out in his message, he gave some reflections on the ancient, the first century understanding of the language of adoption. And I think it can be a little bit deceptive if you're picking up the Bible and reading it, you come across the references to adoption, because you might think of it in terms of modern conceptions of adoption, as Ryan rightly pointed out. When Paul talked about adoption, of course, he was talking about it over against the Greco-Roman cultural backgrounds for understanding what adoption was. First, adoption did not generally mean, as it does today, taking into your family a young child who was orphaned or abandoned in order to provide a home and or to enrich and expand one's own family. Adoption, as Paul would have understood it in his times, was a pragmatic decision made by those with wealth and status as a matter of stewardship. It was about preserving what one had accumulated in this life by making legal provision for a responsible heir. Adoption meant designating a worthy and capable man. Women were not adopted. Someone who was already fairly well situated in life, someone who had another family, And one would adopt such a person in order to have that person take on the responsibilities of inheriting his wealth and power. It was practiced among the upper crust. Those who had wealth and means were the ones who would adopt. The most famous examples include the ruler of Rome, Julius Caesar, who adopted his nephew, Octavian. And when Julius Caesar was assassinated, it's March 44 BC, it was his adopted nephew, Octavian, who fought against his rivals and became the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. And Caesar Augustus, in turn, when left without a male heir, would adopt his stepson, Tiberius, to succeed him as emperor. Adoption was something that was done by upper crust people, people with wealth and power, who pragmatically were seeking a good heir. Now here's the odd thing when you think about it. All these passages that we've gone over where there are references to adoption and sonship. The Apostle Paul, the other apostles, and the preachers of the gospel said that to become a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ means that you become by spiritual adoption the sons of God. It's nonsensical if you lived in the first century world. This is open to Jews, Gentiles, men, women, slave, free. Just think about women. Don't you love these modern people that run around and say, Christianity is patriarchal. It's misogynistic. They don't understand it. They don't understand it. The Apostle Paul was preaching to women and saying, you can be adopted and become a son of God. Think about 1 Peter 3.7. And this is the feminist will seize on 1 Peter 3, 7. Peter describes women as the weaker vessel. I preached this passage before. I said, in my house, it's the everyday stuff. We use this plastic. But the china we got for our wedding, when we have special friends come over, that goes up in the top of the cabinet and only comes down for special occasions because it's the weaker vessel. It's the more valuable vessel, that which must be handled carefully. But at the end of that, in 1 Peter 3, 7, Peter says, tells husbands, treat your wives as the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life. He was saying that women believers, these Christian wives, had the status of adopted sons of God. And that's why they should be treated with special care by Christian husbands. Or think about the passage that was referred to earlier, I think by Steve, 2 Corinthians 6.18, which says that we have God as our father and he has made those who are his sons and daughters. That would have been nonsensical to think that adoption will be applied to women. Joel Beeky in the book Heirs with Christ, the Puritans on Adoption, which was given out earlier, wrote the following. He said, God's child is like a poor peasant who has been taken out of the mire and raised to the position of prince of the realm. The adopted prince lives in the palace, has free access to the king, and enjoys the king's favor, love, and protection. The prince tells the king that he cannot comprehend the greatness of the king's love. It is unspeakably great to him. The king responds, you have not begun to see the extent of it. Your inheritance is coming to you. Sealed to the day of redemption, present reality, which is wonderful. We will inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation already yet to come. Some have also pointed out, and I think Ryan also made reference to this, that in Roman society, adoptions sometimes involved two stages. Sam Waldron talks about this in his modern exposition of the 1689. He says, first, there would be a private ceremony before witnesses. And then secondly, there would be a public ceremony in which the adopted son is declared to be the son by the paterfamilias, the head of the household. Waldron sees this as fitting the already but not yet nature of Paul's description of adoption. He says, adoption is a change in one's legal status from that of a slave to that of a son of God, which takes place by faith at the moment of union with Christ, but will be publicly revealed at the resurrection. Already, not yet. This also fits with 1 John 3, 2, which says, Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Already, not yet. To say that one should understand the first century practice of adoption, to best grasp Paul's meaning does not, however, mean that we cannot also learn from contemporary experiences of adoption. In fact, you know, where does the practice come in of adoption? It's probably really, our contemporary practice is an overflow of the influence of Christianity in society. Go to non-Western societies, they don't practice it in the same way that happens in cultures that have been influenced by Christianity. And so as I prepare for this message, I thought about some of the things that our family has experienced in adoption. When my youngest son was added to our family, even as Van shared some of his experiences earlier. And I wanna share just a couple things with you, and I share this with my son's permission. I ask his permission to share these, and he gave me permission to do so. First, with regard to a change in status. My youngest son was added to our family in 2008. He was born in China. And in 2008, we went to China, worked with a Christian adoption agency in Kentucky. And he was two years old, and he was added to our family. In the good providence of God, he had lived for the first two years of his life in an orphanage with many kind Chinese caregivers. And also in the good providence of God, there happened to be some Assemblies of God missionaries who were sort of also working covertly with an NGO, a non-governmental organization with that particular orphanage. And despite those good providences, growing up in an orphanage wasn't the same as growing up in a household in a family with parents. And so he had been allowed to do a lot of things without a lot of direct, immediate supervision by parents. And so the day came when the director of the orphanage brought him to our hotel in Kunming. And if you've been through adoption, you know there's the gacha day, when you actually get your child that you've been praying for for a long time before you adopt. And we noticed a lot of things about him from the very beginning. that were different and things that we had to work on with him. And one of the things that we noticed about him was, like a lot of two-year-olds, you know, he was full on doing everything and there was a park next to our hotel and we went out in this beautiful Green Lake Park and he would just run down the sidewalks and he would spill and fall, and I mean fall hard. But one of the things that struck us, we have four other children, older children, is we were struck by the fact that when he fell and fell hard, he wouldn't cry out in pain. He would just jump right back up without a whimper and keep going on. He was like that for the first couple of days that we had him. Until he realized we were constantly watching over him. I remember after he'd been with us about two days, the first time he fell down hard, and instead of popping right back up, he looked around to see where we were and started crying. He realized his status had changed, and there were people there who were watching and who were caring. Another thing is that when we got him home, He would sometimes wander off in our house, sometimes with a marker in his hands to scrawl on a wall. And he was very small. And there were a couple times we couldn't find him. And we live out in the country and have a couple acres. And one time we couldn't find him. We were running around the house, Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, where are you? Where are you? Not a word, not a peep. We're thinking he's gone out of the house. Where's he gone? And then we found him behind a couch somewhere, scribbling on the wall, or whatever. And so we said, we got to address this. And so we began to teach him that when we called his name, he needed to answer. And so we practiced. We'd be sitting around the dinner table, or we'd be driving somewhere. We would practice. We would say, Joseph, when we call your name, you need to say, here I am. And so again, we'd sit around the dinner table, we'd say, Joseph. He's sitting right across from us. He'd say, here I am, here I am. So that eventually, if we lost sight of him, we could just say, Joseph. And we'd hear a little voice upstairs, here I am, here I am. And we were teaching him about a change in his status. We didn't want to lose him. We also didn't want him to mark up our walls. We wanted him to know that we always wanted to know where he was, what he was doing, and we still do. He's our son. A chained status, sealed under the day of redemption. Second, to illustrate the second part of it regarding our future fulfillment. The time we adopted our son in China, I'm not sure what's done now, but everyone in those days, when you adopted, you would have to go at the end of your trip, wherever you'd been in the country, to Guangzhou, because the U.S. consulate is there. And you would go at the end of your trip there, you would complete all the paperwork, you would sign and seal all the official documents to make sure that your child was legally your child, and also so that your child could become a citizen of our country. We even had to go into a room and take an oath administered by a government official in Guangzhou. And they told us, if you do all this, the minute you touch down in the US, all that paperwork will be official. And the moment we touched down in Minneapolis on our way to Richmond to go home, our son became legally our son and became a citizen of this country. So we might draw an analogy to say that in this life, when one confesses faith in Christ, he is sealed to the day of redemption. The paperwork is done. And when he sets foot in the heavenly country, his true home, he will enjoy all the benefits of his sonship. Amen? Amen. Let's join together in prayer. Gracious and loving God, we give you thanks that you're a God who saves, you're a God who calls, you're a God who justifies by faith, a God who adopts. You take those of us who were not a people and make us to be part of the people of God, make us to be Hephzibah and Beulah. Oh God, you are the one who also sanctifies us and one day you will glorify us when we are absent from this body and present and in that last day when Christ comes in glory and we are raised and our bodies are changed and we are acquitted before your tribunal because of the righteousness of Christ. Oh God, we thank you for these great and precious promises. We are the heirs of this everlasting salvation, and we do praise you and thank you. Oh God, we ask that you would use all the teachings that we have heard today on this doctrine, and it would be spiritually edifying for us individually as believers, for our families, and for our churches, and for the kingdom. We ask this in Christ's name and for His sake. Amen.