Responsibilities of the Adopted Ones

Pastor Martin tells an extended story of a poverty-stricken, illiterate criminal whom a sovereign king pardons, washes, clothes, and adopts as his own son - the picture he returns to throughout the sermon to illustrate every duty of the adopted.

In addition to his poverty and his guilt, he is a man who has been deprived of all the privileges of an education. He is the essence of what we would call illiteracy and ignorance. Furthermore, his body is full of disease. And to add insult to all of that injury, he is an unclaimed orphan. Now that fellow is really in a bad mess. His sovereign becomes aware of him.

5:19 - 5:48 Read in full sermon

He contrasts the impersonal rules posted on a motel door with the rules in a father's loving home - same printed words, but utterly different framework for obedience.

I could not help but think of the rules that are posted on the back door of every motel in which I've been in. And the moment you shut the door after entering your motel room, there's a list of rules. When you're to check out, what you're to do and not to do, to keep the general framework of standards. But you see, those are a bunch of rules utterly detached from any affectionate bond between the person who's using the room and the person who owns the motel. They are house rules.

22:50 - 23:17 Read in full sermon

The point: Cultivate a generic love for all people - even enemies - reflecting the Father who sends sun and rain on the just and unjust.

Christ points to the Father's sun rising on evil and good, rain falling on just and unjust - this indiscriminate kindness reveals God's heart and pattern for our love.

But he doesn't do that. The very fact of indiscriminate rain and sunshine is a revelation of God's heart. That's what Jesus is saying. God's heart goes out to all his creatures regardless of how they treat him. Those who curse him, those who live to themselves, those who ignore his gospel, those who trample underfoot his grace, he still sends his rain and his sun upon them.

31:58 - 32:26 Read in full sermon

The point: Read the Gospels watching Christ in every relationship and situation as the perfect transcript of what it means to imitate the Father.

Suppose the king already had an established son in the household. The pardoned criminal could simply watch his elder brother at table to learn the family ways. So Christ shows us the Father's character.

He hath left us an example that we should follow His steps. He has perfectly revealed the Father. Let me illustrate it this way. Suppose when that man, that criminal, that impoverished, ignorant, sick man that we described, who has been brought into the royal household, adopted into the family, and he has a whole new lifestyle to learn. Here he has lived the life of a cringing man, ignorant, diseased, outcast, criminal. Now, all of a sudden, he's adopted into the family and he must begin to live the life of a royal son of the king. And there's so many things he's got to learn. All new ways fro...

36:08 - 37:03 Read in full sermon

The point: Let your life so witness that those who pity you for being a Christian come to see your God is not a tight-fisted tyrant but worthy of love and homage.

Pastor Martin imagines the pardoned son knowing that those outside the palace walls think the king is a tyrant. His broken heart and consuming passion is to so live that the king's true character is vindicated.

Though the king's rule is just and right and good, they've got all these twisted notions that he's a mean tyrant, that he's a self-centered despot. And this man who's known of his grace and known the reality of the love and the justice and the kindness of the king who is now his father, what will be his great passion when he moves amongst these men? with misconception and prejudice and ignorance about the nature of his father, will it not be so to walk, so to manifest all the characteristics of the king who is his father, that the prejudice and the ignorance and the misconception will be utter...

48:17 - 49:11 Read in full sermon

The point: Resist anything that robs you of the present enjoyment of your adoption - for as you revel in the privileges, you will rise to the responsibilities.

He cites the Roman civic principle that a Roman citizen tempted to dishonesty would say 'I am a Roman' as warrant enough to refuse - so the believer should answer every temptation with 'I am a child of God.'

principle, at least in common grace, that if a foreigner were to come to a Roman and attempt to seduce him to dishonesty or thievery, that it was common practice for the Roman thus enticed to turn and say, as his only response to his would-be seducer, I, sir, am a Roman. And that answered

55:29 - 55:58 Read in full sermon