Responsibilies / Obligations

Introduction and Personal Reflections on Ministry

0:00 Before we turn to the reading and the opening up of the Word of God, I want to express my sincere thanks for the privilege of being among you in these days. In a very real sense, this conference has been my re-baptism into conference ministry. As most of you know, during the lengthy trial with my wife's battle with cancer, I made a commitment that my biblical duty and my great privilege was to nourish and cherish her as being my own body. And when word went out that that was my commitment to my explicit biblical duty,

0:44 invitations to conferences of this nature immediately ceased, and I felt it was a kind of backhanded compliment that meant, I even knew that when I said I was committed to nurture my wife until God would either heal her or take her home, that my word was my bond. And this re-baptism into this type of ministry, two weeks ago I had a weekend of a church conference ministry that I felt was my re-baptism into that nature of ministry. They could not have been more delightful, more encouraging, more affirming,

1:25 that God yet has something for me to do in this dimension of ministry. And I would covet your prayers for wisdom, as now the invitations are beginning to come in at such a rate that I have to exercise discretion as to which ones should be accepted and which ones refused, because my fundamental identity is still that of a shepherd of God's people there in Montville. My fundamental delight is still that of a shepherd of God's people there in Montville. My fundamental delight is still that of a shepherd of God's people there in Montville.

1:58 This is an unreal world for a preacher. People pay all kinds of money and drive all kinds of distances and sit there on the edge of their seats, and you could get a very distorted view of who you are as a preacher. I've got people I've got to work to keep them awake Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. That's the real world.

2:17 That's the real world. And I like the challenge of that real world, and it keeps me in the realm of a more sober, more conscious assessment of who I am as a man and as a servant of Christ. But thank you for making my return to this kind of ministry such a delight, the warm embrace of your love, both as it has exuded from your hearts and your countenances, and for many of you, with your arms as well. It has been nothing but a sheer delight.

2:49 And I told one of the deacons, I like this morning preaching. I can get up real early in the morning, have my time alone with God, then have a couple of hours to pray in and underline the headings of my sermon, come and birth it with God's help, and then the rest of the day I can enjoy myself, enjoy fellowships rather than being holed up in my room as I have been in years past. And this particular person said, well, we felt it would be good to sort of ease you back into this conference by having you in the morning. I said, ease me back nothing.

3:24 If I get a future invitation, I'll set my own terms. And I said, I'll come on the condition that I'm one of the morning preachers. And so we had a good laugh over it. But if they do invite me, they'll know I was not kidding.

The Privilege of Adoption and its Obligations

3:41 So thank you for making it such a delightful week. And now we turn again this morning to the passage that I read in the first two mornings of the messages that I was privileged to bring to you. 1 John 3, and this morning just verses 1 through 3. Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God, and we are.

4:18 For this cause the world does not know us, because it knew him not. Beloved, now we are children of God. And it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is.

4:45 And every one that has this hope set on him purifies himself, even as he is pure. In the introduction to the first message on Tuesday morning, having read this passage, I said that it was my prayer and would be the conscious aim of my labor in preaching that as a result of our contemplation of this wonderful provision of redemptive grace called adoption, that we would find our hearts resonating with that of the Apostle John,

5:27 caught up in something at least approximating a sanctified spirit of holy ecstasy in the contemplation of the kind and quality of love which moved the Father so to work on our behalf that we would have the status of sons and daughters of the living God. I trust we've at least moved something. Somewhat in that direction in our time together. And we come now this morning having contemplated what I trust

6:07 are the main lines of the biblical teaching concerning, and you'll notice I don't use the phrase often, doctrine of adoption. I speak of this privilege of redemptive grace. When you speak of a doctrine of justification or the doctrine of sanctification, it just has an immediate tendency to detach it from the more experiential concept. And so I have been designating our subject this marvelous redemptive privilege that God has given to us.

6:43 And I trust that God will help us in the ongoing reflection with respect to this marvelous privilege that we will appreciate it more and more. We come now in our final study of this wonderful reality of adoption to consider what I have entitled the responsibilities and the obligations of adoption. We cleared the field by making necessary distinctions. We gave this necessary pastoral entreaty that we not allow this truth to swallow up other truths that define the nature of our relationship with God.

7:25 The relationship to God is the people of God. We then looked at three of the legal dimensions of our privilege as the adopted ones and then four aspects of the experiential privileges of adoption. But now this morning we come to consider the responsibilities and obligation of the adopted ones. And as we stand on the threshold of taking up the responsibility, we must remind ourselves of two very fundamental principles of the Christian life.

Principle 1: The Structure of Ethical Demands (Indicatives and Imperatives)

8:04 And my introduction is going to take me probably a good ten, possibly fifteen minutes because if we can grasp these two principles, the first that relates to the structure of the ethical demands of being a Christian, and the second to the pattern of the moral principles of being a Christian, of the motivational impulses that ought to move us as a Christian. If we can get hold of these two things, I believe we will have grasped something that will help us in the ongoing experience of the Christian life, not only with reference to our privileges as God's adopted ones,

8:48 but with respect to all of our privileges as the children of God and the obligations of adoption. The obligations and duties that issue out of and are the necessary consequence of those privileges. So as we take up the responsibilities and obligations of adoption, I want us to consider first of all the structure of the ethical demands as they unfold throughout the Scriptures, but particularly in the New Testament. And it is the structure, and many of you have heard of it before, of the relationship between the indicatives of grace and the imperatives of grace.

9:33 Now an indicative statement is simply a statement of what is. God in grace gives us those statements of what is true of us because we have been brought within the orbit of His redemptive grace. And God constantly sets before us the things that are true of us simply because by grace we have been brought into union with Jesus Christ. But then based upon those indicatives, God gives us imperatives,

10:11 that is, commands with respect to what we are to do and what we are to be. And the pattern of Holy Scripture is this. That the indicatives of grace underscore, I'm sorry, are the underpinning of the imperatives of grace. The indicatives, what is true of us because of what we are in Christ, what we already possess in Christ, those indicatives undergird the imperatives

10:49 what we are to do and what we are to become in obedience to Christ. The pattern is never do to become. But the pattern is you have become, therefore do. And in order to rivet this to our minds, I want to use what may seem to be a rather bizarre illustration.

11:15 When I look out my large study window in my study, I have a menagerie of different kinds of animals. A groundhog, rabbits, squirrels, little creatures with the brown stripe down their back called chipmunks, and occasionally some other creatures like big grown-up deer in my backyard, sometimes accompanied by several fawn. Well, I want you to imagine that one day I go out in my backyard and I'm able to catch one of the little chipmunks.

11:56 And I was given a temporary, unusual gift of tongues. I could speak immediately perfect chipmunkese. You're laughing. Now I take the little chipmunk and speaking to him in perfect chipmunkese, I say now, little chippy, I have a very clear directive for you.

12:22 Are you looking straight into my eyes? And he responds to me in even more articulate chipmunkese, which I can now even understand. Yes, I'm ready to receive your command. And so I give him this command.

12:39 I say now, chippy, here is my command, very simple. I want you to sprout wings, begin to fly, so that you will become a bird. And he looks up at me and says, sir, I have no power to sprout wings and therefore no power to fly, therefore I can never be a bird. You are telling me that I must sprout wings, fly in order to become a bird.

13:13 On the other hand, if I had some magical power while holding little chippy, to lay my hands upon him and perform a miracle in which before my eyes he sprouted wings and had feathers and all the characteristics of a bird and I were to say to him, little chippy, you now have wings and spread them and fly because you are a bird. As he flew off, he would look back and in perfect chipmunkese would say, this is wonderful. Now do you see the difference

13:56 between the two directives? In one, I'm coming with imperatives that it is impossible for him to obey. I've switched things around. I've said, if you do, you will become.

14:14 In the second instance, I say, you have become, therefore do. And God does not come to us as chipmunks with no wings and no feathers and no capacity to fly and say to us, if you will do what birds will do, you will become a bird. No. God comes to us and says, by the miracle of my grace, I have changed you from chipmunk into bird, therefore spread your wings and fly.

14:50 The indicatives of the miracle of grace precede and undergird the imperatives of grace. This is what you have become in Christ. Understand it. Embrace it by present living faith and in the light of it, this is what you are to do in obedience to Christ.

15:20 Therefore, the only way for me responsibly to handle the doctrine of adoption was to start out with all the glorious indicatives. Here are our privileges in Christ as adopted sons and daughters, both the legal and the experiential privileges. However, God never wants us to just sit back and bask in the wonder of our privileges. Based upon those privileges, there are imperatives, imperatives that must be taken seriously, imperatives which because of what we are in Christ,

16:04 we have the power to fulfill. God gives those imperatives assuming that the grace imparted and defined and described in the indicatives will enable us to obey them. So I want to just nail down afresh in your minds this matter of the structure of the ethical demands, particularly in the New Testament, though not exclusively. But now I want to say a word about the pattern of motivational impulse.

Principle 2: The Pattern of Motivational Impulse (Gratitude to the King/Father)

16:39 And I didn't know a better term to describe what I want to address. The pattern of motivational impulse. If we are to do what we ought to do, there must be a motivation to do it. And what is the pattern of motivational impulse in the New Testament?

16:59 Well, here again, I want you to think with me as I've made up a rather impossible and grotesque illustration. But if it helps to nail down these principles, then it will be worth tolerating the rather grotesque illustration. Imagine you live in the days when there were real kings who ruled over real kingdoms, who had real subjects who felt accountability to the sovereign. And here is a man who has utterly rebelled against the sovereign.

17:33 His father became an insurrectionist. His father became a terrorist. His father joined a band of people determined to overthrow the rule of the king. And this son, shared in the perspective, in the desires and disposition of his father.

17:55 He has no affection for the king. He has been led to believe that the king exists just to feed himself and to promote his own ends. He has a view that this king is mean. He is unreasonable.

18:09 He is really a tyrant. He is not in reality. But because his associations have been with these insurrectionists and all that he hears about the king has been absorbed from them in this totally distorted view of the king, he has joined them in an effort to overthrow the rule and the government of this king. And in the course of living out his days he has become disease ridden.

18:37 He has so abandoned himself to this disposition and attitude of antipathy to the king that any of the loyal subjects look upon him with disdain. But then one day the king hears about him in his horrible condition. Disease ridden. Poverty stricken.

19:02 And the king takes compassion upon him. And he sends out one of his royal ambassadors with a message to this man saying this, If you will lay down your arms and come into my court, I will fully pardon you. Furthermore, I will have my best physicians go to work seeking to restore you to good health. I will have the royal table open to you.

19:34 And furthermore, I will adopt you as one of my sons and take you into a position in which you will be equal before the law of the land with my natural son who is heir to the throne. And you will even share with him in his dominion when he comes into his rightful place as king. And furthermore, I pledge to give you not only my home, eventually my throne, but my heart and my affection. And you will have free access

20:18 to me at any time you desire it. Well, he's overwhelmed at first. He can't believe that anything like this would come forth. This tyrannical king, this king who only exists to promote himself, all that I've thought about this king is obviously wrong.

20:38 But he believes the message that all of his previous thoughts about the king and his rule and his government was dead wrong. And overwhelmed with the wonder of the announcement that came from this royal ambassador, he comes trembling and fearful into the presence of the king and he hears from the looks of the king himself that it's all true. He lays down his arms. He's taken into the king's care.

21:06 He's officially adopted into the king's family. He sits at the king's table. Now my question is this. In the light of his new status and experience, does he have any obligations to the king's rule and government?

21:27 Does he have any obligations to the king's rule and government? And already I hope you're saying, of course he does. Yes, he does. And he has that obligation in two directions.

21:43 Number one, he has the obligations of obedience to the royal authority of his king. Even though he is now his father, but also head of the household. Having laid down his arms, though he has come in to the father's favor and adopted as a son, he is still a subject of the kingdom and therefore of the king's law. The very law that was in place when he was out in the midst of the insurrectionists, the very law that condemned him to death

22:25 as one who was guilty of treason in his efforts to overthrow the king's rule, the king's law for the land has not changed one whit. And now that he has come into the king's favor, enjoys the king's forgiveness, and has had lavished upon him all of these perks that flowed out of the king's heart, he still has an obligation of obedience to the royal authority of his king, even though the king is now his father, the head of the household, to whom he has free access to his heart,

23:09 to his counsel, and to his affection. And then secondly, he has another motivation to obedience. It's the obligation constrained by thankful appreciation for all of the undeserved privileges he has received. He has an obligation constrained by the thankful appreciation for the undeserved privileges that he has received.

23:44 What some pejoratively call a debtor's motive, and I don't like it when it is pejoratively described that way. For my Bible says, I beseech you therefore by the mercies of God that you present yourselves a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Well, I hope you see the point of my parable. When we begin to contemplate this matter, what are the obligations that I have as a son or daughter

24:27 adopted into the family of God? Not only do we have obligations that grow out of the indicative and imperative structure of Scripture, but we have obligations that grow out of the fact that the one who is our father has not ceased to be the king. The royal law of God and the law of liberty, as James calls it, is still in effect in all of its authority and its stringency and its extensiveness. And as sons and daughters, we don't take up this cavalier attitude.

25:10 Well, no longer do I relate to God with his authority as king. I'm the king's kid. And I can live a nice, jaunty, cavalier life, just indulging in every single liberty to the hilt, taking nothing seriously. No, no, my friends.

25:28 If we have truly grasped the wonder of our adoptive state, we are adopted by the God who has not relinquished all of his dignity and all of his authority and all of his glory as the king, simply because he's made you the king's kid. And furthermore, if we have some appreciation of all that has flowed out of the heart of love that was the king's love to us, and all of the lavishment of grace and kindness, surely, surely any appreciation of it leads us to say,

26:12 here, Lord, I give myself away. It is all that I can do. Therefore, when we hear the word obligation and duty, we don't have a knee-jerk reaction and say, oh, boy, here we go, law, law, law again. Frankly, I get sick and tired of that thing coming out of people who say they are saved and say they love the Reformed faith.

26:42 They measure every single message by whether or not it is stuffed full of nothing but encouragement, stuff full of nothing but the indicatives of grace. Give me carloads of the indicatives of grace. Tell me Sunday after Sunday what I have in Christ, what I am in Christ. In other words, preach Ephesians 1 to 3 to me, but don't preach Ephesians 4 to 6.

27:08 And that shows there's something fundamentally wrong in the heart. They've either never been converted or they are somewhere grieving the Spirit. They have an ethical conscience. They have an ethical controversy with God because the disposition of a true child is this.

27:27 It's the king of the universe that could have sent out his royal soldiers to track me down and cut my head off. But the king sent out his ambassadors with a message of mercy that broke me down and showed me what a horrible view I had of the king, of his rule, of his government, of the disposition of his heart. I believed lies about the king. And now that I've known the king for who he really is, I love the king.

28:02 I love his ways. I love his laws. And when I contemplate all that he has lavished upon me, there is this thankful appreciation that wells up within me and instinctively says, how can I honor and please so gracious a king? Have I carried your judgment with little Chippy and that rebel?

Obligation 1: Cultivating a Passion to Please the Father

28:31 I hope I have. Now then, that being so, in the time that remains, let me at least tease out in seminal form what are our obligations as the children of God? Well, I'm indebted to some seed thoughts sown many years ago by Dr. Packer, in which he reduced the fundamental obligations of the adopted into three categories.

29:00 Obligation number one, pleasing the Father. Obligation number two, imitating the Father. And obligation number three, glorifying the Father. Very simple.

29:14 Pleasing, imitating, glorifying the Father. But though it's simple, if we faced every day and took time in our devotions, 30 seconds even, to say, oh God, this day helped me to please you as my Father. This day helped me to imitate you as my Father. This day helped me to glorify you as my Father.

29:44 What a profound difference it would make in the nitty-gritty of the unfolding of all the incidents that comprise our activities in any given day. First of all then, the obligation and responsibility of adoption begins with cultivating a passion to please our gracious Heavenly Father in all things. It begins with an obligation to please our gracious Heavenly Father in all things. Turn with me quickly to Matthew chapter 6.

30:26 Here in the Sermon on the Mount in which the concept of God as Father, as I believe I mentioned the other day, is a dominant theme, our Lord is here in the first 18 verses showing how we are to regard our acts of devotion or piety, beginning with almsgiving, moving on to praying, and concluding with fasting. And in each one of these incidents in which our Lord identifies these various aspects of what we would call acts of piety, He is showing the duty of His children against

31:10 the contrasting background of the perspective of the hypocrites. And obviously the hypocrites were the Pharisees of His day. And notice the motivational complex that moves the hypocrites. Verse 2b, When therefore you do alms, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, in order that they may have glory of men.

31:43 Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward. In other words, they knew that they were in a climate where if someone had the semblance or appearance of being religiously generous, it would please those who saw them, and the reward would be the praise, the adulation of those who, seeing them, commended them. So their motivation rose no higher than pleasing men as a means of pleasing themselves. You see that in the text.

32:20 That they may be seen, and they have received their reward. Seen as doing that which pleases men, then receiving the reward that terminated upon themselves. And then if we read down in verse 5b, we see a similar pattern. We'll start with the beginning of the verse.

32:40 When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners, of the streets, in order that they may be seen of men. Verily I say to you, they have received their reward. What's their motivation for praying? Just like with the giving of their alms, to please men, be seen doing something that brought pleasure, and the outflow and the tangible expression of that pleasure was the praise from men that came back upon their own heads.

33:15 And the similar way with fasting. Verse 16. When you fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen of men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward.

33:34 Now in stark contrast to that complex of motivation that is the driving force in the hypocrite. He does what he does, because he is motivated as he is motivated. Our Lord says, this is to be your motivation. And what is it?

33:53 Go back again to verse 3. But when you do alms, let not your left hand know what your right hand does, that your alms may be in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, shall recompense you. Why are you doing your alms to be seen of your Father? You do them in the circumstances in which no one knows about them but the Father, who sees all and knows all.

34:32 And therefore you do it to bring pleasure to your Father. And this is not a mean, unchristian motive to receive the commendation of your Father. He shall reward you. Your motivation is to please the Father and to receive as the expression of the Father's pleasure His reward.

35:00 And that's the same terminology used with regard to prayer and with regard to fasting. In the interest of time, I will not read the subsequent two texts. So then, what is the motivation in all of these religious duties? It's to be the Father's approval manifested in the Father's reward of grace.

35:25 And this emphasis is not just found in our Lord's teaching, but it's found in the epistles. Paul could say in 2 Corinthians 5, 9, Wherefore we make it our aim. Literally, we are ambitious. We are ambitious to be well pleasing unto Him.

35:48 Doing what I do because I have confidence that it will elicit my Father's smile. In so doing this, eliciting the Father's smile, I may raise the frown of thousands. It's irrelevant, the apostle says. This is our aim.

36:07 For this thing, we are ambitious to be well pleasing to our Father. And when Paul instructed young believers, for he had a very limited time to lay out a theology of the Christian life to the Thessalonians, what did he do? 1 Thessalonians and chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 1.

36:29 Finally then, brethren, we beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that as you received of us how you ought to walk and to please God, even as you do walk, that you abound more and more. When the apostles set before them the canons of behavior consistent with new covenant believers, he set before them a theology of motivation. And that motivation was to please God, to please the God who had a controversy with them and could have damned them, but who brought His messengers,

37:11 who pronounced gospel privilege and gospel delights and set the table of gospel provision. And these had embraced it. And he says, now you have a solemn obligation how you ought that particle of imperative, how it was necessary for you to walk. He preached bare, clear, authoritative duty.

37:39 But it was duty resting upon gospel indicatives and it was duty suffused with gospel motives. But you will notice that when he says we gave you instruction as to how you ought to walk, he doesn't feel it necessary to put in the parenthesis and of course, I did so within the context of the indicatives of grace and of the...

38:07 My friends, you don't need to give the whole every time you give one of the parts. And you have no right to expect your pastors to do that. Again, I get sick and tired of people that are going to judge every sermon by whether or not it oozes with gospel indicatives. Over the course of weeks or months, no one should have any question that any imperative that we expound and lay close to the conscience of our people has its tap roots in gospel indicatives.

38:41 And it's suffused with gospel motives. But you sitting in a pew don't you judge any and every sermon by whether or not it oozes with gospel indicatives because you don't find that in your Bible. I should hear a few amens from the preachers and from you as well. But at the end of the day, you and I as the sons and daughters of God should come to every sermon with this disposition.

39:12 Oh, my heavenly Father, I want to please you in all things. What a wonderful thing it would be, Lord, if today you give me some light in some area as to how I may please you more. Because I love you. Because you've come to me in grace and in mercy.

39:29 And you've given me your spirit. You've united me to Christ. I am a recipient of all the blessings defined in the gospel indicatives. Now, Lord, give me some imperatives because I want to know how to please you.

39:44 Remember the incident that's been often told of one of the old Scottish preachers walked by the home of, I think it was the preacher walked by the home of one of his parishioners. I think that's the way the story went. And the light was on in the wee hours of the morning. And when he later saw this individual, he said, what in the world were you doing up that late or that early?

40:06 He said, I was looking to find out whether I love my Lord. And whether you love your Lord yes, because he said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I was searching out the commandments to see if I really love him. That's what we're talking about.

40:25 The obligation and duty of sonship is the obligation and duty of seeking to please our Heavenly Father in all things. Many other texts, we don't have time to go over them. Let me, by way of application say, I'm talking about the duty and the obligations of those who are sons and daughters, who have come to know God as their Heavenly Father. Therefore, the imperatives, the definition of their duty, is a matter of the love

41:10 and mercy of the God who saved them, defining how they may please Him. And so we do not regard the imperatives as detached from our God and our Father. In other words, the imperatives are not like the rules on the back of that door in the motel in which I was two weeks ago. Impersonal, detached, I don't know the proprietor, I don't know the owner, here are the rules.

41:36 While you're here, keep them. No. These are the opening up of our Father's heart to us who has gathered around us and gathered around Him this host of His children. They say, Oh, Father, we want to please You today.

41:52 And the motivation of desire to please Him is not self-interpreting. It needs precepts to guide and to direct that motivation. And the dynamics of grace that are operative by the indwelling Holy Spirit and our union with Christ need definite, clear direction. If they are to find expression in a way that is pleasing to our God.

42:20 And here our Lord Jesus, as in everything, is the great pattern. Turn to John 8, verses 28 and 29. We look to our blessed Lord as the great example of one who as the servant of Jehovah in all things pleased His Father. John 8, 28 and 29.

42:44 Jesus therefore said, When you've lifted up the Son of Man, then shall you know that I am He, and I do nothing of myself. But as the Father taught me, I speak these things. And He that sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I do always the things that are pleasing to Him.

Obligation 2: Living with a Conscious Attempt to Imitate the Father

43:12 Our blessed Lord lived under the constraints of the motive of pleasing His heavenly Father. I hasten on now to the second strand of the obligation and duty of the adopted, not only to live to please the Father, but secondly, to live with a conscious attempt to imitate the Father. Living with a conscious attempt to imitate the Father. Again, we go back to the Sermon on the Mount, this time to Matthew chapter 5.

43:51 Matthew chapter 5, verses 43 to 48. You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His Son to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

44:23 For if you love them that love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do not even the Gentiles the same? You therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

44:45 Now the essence of the opening command in this paragraph is that we are to love all men regardless of their disposition and actions toward us. That's the essence of the command. The reason for the command that you may reflect in attitude and action the character of your Father. Our Lord is saying do this that you may become.

45:10 No, do this that it may manifestly be evident that you are sons bearing the family likeness of a father who does more than show kindness to those who are kind to him. What does your Father do? He makes his son not just the son he makes it's his son he governs its actions and he makes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. He makes his son to rise on the just and then in the next two verses our Lord then further drives home the issue and if you are unwilling to do this you put yourself in the category

45:55 of the heathen of the Gentiles of the publicans. You don't want that do you? I've declared you to be sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father subjects of my kingdom of grace. I've delineated the character traits and the beatitudes.

46:12 I have demonstrated what your relationship is to be to the world as salt and as light. I have set before you how your life is to be regulated by the application of the law even to your thoughts and motives. I have demonstrated that in all of your religious exercises you're to have a single eye to the Father's approval the Father's pleasure and the Father's reward. Now I tell you listen to me I tell you you are to love even your enemies and you are to be perfect.

46:47 You are to set the perfection of God as the bar of the standard particularly in the context by which you relate in love even to the unlovely. Jesus said you're to be like your Father you're to imitate your Father you're to imitate Him in love and in the actings of love. The apostle Paul picks up that same theme now incorporating into it the accomplished work of our Lord Jesus Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 1 be therefore imitators of God how?

47:30 As beloved children you are children of God bear the family likeness let anyone who knows you at all say hey that guy looks like his father he looks like his father be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love now look at the standard even as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell. That's why the apostle John can say he that says he abides in Him ought himself so to walk even as he walked Christ is the perfect

48:15 image of God therefore if we want to be like God we are set upon being like Christ go back to that man who was the criminal the son of the terrorist himself having imbibed these wicked views of the king and of his character and his government uneducated ignorant and now he's been adopted he's been brought into the family but you see he has known very little of the etiquette of the court and so what does the king the father say he said my son was born in the court from the time he was in his diapers he's learned courtly ways and courtly manners you are freely

48:59 forgiven you are an heir with him of the throne but now look at him carefully watch him in every relationship and learn the etiquette of the king's house God comes to you and me and said my son is born in the court totally detached from Adam's race he knows all the etiquette of the court he perfectly reflects obedience to me in all things look at my son pattern your life after him and in so doing you will bear the image of the father see the first sin was a desire to be like God

49:43 in an illicit way in so doing Adam and Eve became like the devil in their pursuit of becoming like God in an illicit way they became like the devil and the marvel of redemptive grace is that we now have the capacity and motive and power in union with Christ as reborn children and adopted children to be made like God in a legitimate way and what a privilege what an honor has been set upon us that we should more

Obligation 3: A Solemn Obligation to Glorify the Father

50:27 and more bear the family likeness so and if I seem to be sticking clicked in my notes I'm doing all kinds of redaction and shrinking on my feet forgive me the preacher in me would love to take off but the clock won't let me alright we will then seek to please the father imitate the father but thirdly as his adopted children we have a solemn obligation to glorify the father again we take our starting point in the sermon on the mount Matthew chapter five after delineating the character traits of the sons

51:12 and daughters of God true subjects of the kingdom of grace our Lord then says in that capacity and with those character you are not you ought to be you are this is an indicative you are the salt of the earth but if the salt has lost its savor wherewith shall it be salted it is henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men you are the light of the world a city set on a hill cannot be hid neither do men light a lamp and put it under the bushel but on the stand and it shines even so even so let your light

51:56 shine before men in the presence of men before the face of men in order that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven suppose you were privileged to have a godly gracious loving fair father the kind of father that was described this morning and yet all the kids on the block for some reason had imbibed totally totally distorted views of your dad and they spoke ill of him reflecting that they thought ill of him and everything in you short of going

52:41 and taking them on and letting them have it you say I want them to think as they ought about my father my gracious father my fair father my loving father my compassionate father my principled father you can't con him you can't bend him on principle with wines or as a little girl with your eyes and being cutesy he's too principled and I want all the kids on the block to think well of my father what would you do you would seek so to conduct yourself reflecting your father's character that hopefully eventually you'd wear them down they would come to know him for who he really is

53:25 Jesus says of people whom he has already said are going to be reproached and persecuted and slandered all manner of evil against you falsely wear them down by a consistent reflection of what your father is like so that eventually they may glorify your father who is in heaven and show them that you are the Lord of all and not for the sake of your affection and filth and evil yet if they were to be

54:09 subjected to destruction or to trouble and destruction God has given all you murmurings, and questionings, in order that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you are seen as lights, as luminaries in the world, holding forth the word of life. The apostle says what I

54:49 long to know is going on back there at Philippi, where under God's blessing I was privileged to birth a church, is that there are people who take the ethical demands of the word of God so seriously that right down to the matter of what they do when they are crossed, and when unreasonable demands are made upon them in the home, or in the world, and in the workplace, they do everything as cheerful, happy, ebullient, outgoing, sons of God, do all things without murmuring and questionings, grousing, complaining, nothing's right,

55:29 nothing's good, nothing's up to snuff. You may become blameless and harmless children of God without blemish, children of God. See the emphasis? Children of God. You carry the name child of God,

55:46 and as child of God, the passion must be to glorify God by a consistent Christian life that touches even how you react to the unreasonable demands. In whatever sphere those demands are laid upon you, sons of God without rebuke, shining as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. I was sharing with someone, it's no option of sharing this week, I don't know at what table, what meal, what day, it's all a blur. One of the things that amazed my wife and me in all of the six years of our many,

56:27 many visits to many different doctors' offices and hospitals is the cumulative effect of simply being a cheerful, outgoing, interested person. It has blown my mind to have doctors say to me, oh, Mr. Martin, our staff was so thrilled when they looked at the list and saw you were coming in today. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you. I said, thrilled? Why are they

56:54 thrilled to have me come in? Because you're always so cheerful and they love to see you,

57:03 shining as lights. Now, I didn't in the car say, oh boy, I'm going to go in and make an impression for Jesus, so I'm going to go in there. No. You meet God in the morning, have a fresh sense of the wonder of what it is to be his child and realize that God has ordered all of the mutation of cells that have resulted in this.

57:25 Wretched, horrible disease that is going to take my wife to her grave, but he's done it all with gospel ends in view, with his own glory in view. Lord, help me to live that men may glorify you.

57:41 And God takes just cheerfulness, takes your servant's heart. The nurses are busy sticking up people with their infusions of that horrible chemo. And you see that the glasses are all done, the plastic glasses. You see the little kiosk where you can get milk and coffee and the rest. So you run upstairs and

58:03 you get some and bring them down, unasked, and their eyes fall out of their heads.

58:10 So when you speak about your Savior, and when my precious wife would speak about going home, her face radiant, they couldn't figure her out. The first time she said to Joanne, one of the chemo nurses, she said, well, Joanne, I'll be going home soon. And Joanne said, well, I thought you lived right here in Cedar Grove.

58:33 She hadn't heard anybody talk about dying in such a confident, cheerful way. And the opportunities I've had are marvelous. But you see, the foundation was laid in simply being a Christian who's seeking to reflect something of how good our Heavenly Father treats us. Underscoring what our brother said in the, in the previous hour, a chronically sour Christian is an oxymoron. If we're his children,

59:11 we should have a passion not only to please him and to imitate the Father, but to glorify the Father. And you want the real kicker? Turn to 1 Corinthians 10.31. It was mentioned the other day,

59:25 and I want to mention it in this context as I draw the message to a close. Whether therefore you eat or drink, the most elementary activities by which we sustain physical life, when, as our brother said, we are most like the dog that goes to his dish in your kitchen and slops his water all over the floor and munches on his food. Well, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all consciously, deliberately to the glory of God.

60:07 And in the context, of course, it's touching upon the self-denial that may be necessary with respect to whether or not you indulge this liberty or that liberty. And you're thinking of the conscience of your weaker brethren. You are thinking of the effect of the indulgence of this liberty upon your own spiritual vigor and upon your own ability to run well to the end, prepared like Paul to strike blows.

60:38 That's wrong or right in the Adventist marriage, the so-called what Шц . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Conclusion: Fly, You Are God's Birds with Wings

61:08 the Father, to glorify the Father. You and I are God's birds with wings. Now fly. In the golden age of Rome, it is said that if a Roman citizen were tempted to dishonesty, that that citizen would look his tempter in the eye with pride and indignation and dismiss him with the words, I am a Roman. You got the application? I am a child of God. In every situation,

61:53 I am a child of the King. I have been endowed with the dynamics of grace. God is not saying to a chipmunk, sprout wings, fly and you'll be a bird. He's given us wings and feathers and says, fly because I've made you a bird of my grace. Let's pray. Our Father, we do confess with shame

62:30 that so often our own pleasure, our own interests have clouded what is so reasonable when we sit as we have this morning and think on these issues, that we should live to please you, that we should live to imitate you, and that we should live. To glorify you, write these things upon our hearts and give us a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit, a fresh baptism of gospel motivations. Oh, Father, help us. Left to ourselves, we'll walk

63:09 away and be no different. But by your grace and power, we will be transformed. Grant us that grace and power, we pray. In Jesus' name.

63:20 Amen.