The Spirit of Adoption

Please do take your seats. We are going to turn now in our Bibles back to that chapter that Kate was reading from earlier. We are going to pick up where she left off from verse 18 of Romans chapter 8.

So Romans chapter 8 from verse 18 and we are going to read through to verse 30 together. That is page 944 of the Blue Church Bibles if you are using one of those.

Romans chapter 8 reading from verse 18. Paul continues,

And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. This is God's words. Do keep that passage open in front of you if you can.

Let us just briefly pray for God's help with these verses. Lord, speak to us now by your Spirit. Help us to listen that we might become more like Jesus.

In whose name we pray. Amen. Well, I wonder when the last time you can remember really, really wanting something.

Right? You saw something. You loved it. You were desperate to get it. And maybe that meant you could have saved up your money so you could go and buy it. And then when you get it, you know, if you really love it, don't you?

What do you do with something you care about? You look after it, don't you? You treasure it. Maybe, boys and girls, you've done something like that with a new bike. Maybe with a pet that you love and you look after.

It may be a phone or a games console or something like that. You get it. You love it. You look after it. You protect it because it is precious to you. We all have things in our lives that we choose to love and want to look after.

We have just read in the Bible, or Kate read for us a little earlier, about the spirit of adoption. That the spirit is God.

We've been thinking about him for the last four weeks. We believe in one God, but three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the spirit adopts us, makes us God's children so that we might be loved by him.

To believe in Jesus means that God has looked at you and chosen you because he loves you. He has chosen you to be his because he wants to look after you and care for you and do what is best for you because you are so very, very precious to him.

There is something, boys and girls, very, very special about adoption. God didn't just end up with us, his people. He chose us because he loves us.

This morning, I just want to very briefly mention four things, four amazing things that we have when we have been adopted by the Holy Spirit as children of God.

Four things. And the first one we've already thought about. Being adopted by the Spirit means we have a father to speak to. Kate read for us earlier there up in verse 15 that Christians have received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

We all have someone, hopefully lots of people, that we can speak to. Maybe there is someone that you are quick to cry out to when you need help. Someone to speak to when we've got something to share, maybe good news or bad news.

Because of the Spirit, God himself is all of those things to us. Someone who is always ready to hear us. Someone who, as we were thinking about, we should always be confident to go to.

When we just want to speak. When we need help. When we're sad. When we're happy. When we're confused. When we're scared. God is always there.

Because we are adopted through the Spirit, we always have a father who we can speak to. And who really does hear us. Second thing that we have because we are adopted by the Spirit is an inheritance to look forward to.

An inheritance is maybe a bit of a big word. But really, do any of you guys have older brothers or sisters? I mean, I know a few of you do. Boys and girls, if you have older brothers and sisters, have you ever had anything kind of passed down to you from your older siblings?

Has that happened? Yeah, that happens, doesn't it? Now, sometimes those things aren't the most exciting, are they? Like, maybe your sibling socks aren't what you hoped for Christmas. But, sometimes those things can be really good.

And you don't have to be a younger sibling, do you? To have things passed on to you. We have neighbors a few doors up from us. They have two boys that are a little older than Rory and Finn.

And they had a bouncy castle. Right? That's a pretty exciting thing to have, isn't it? But because their boys were a bit older, they'd outgrown it. And so, one day this week, they came and said, Would you like it?

What do you think the answer was? Right, I think our electricity bill will have skyrocketed this week because there's a big fan in Backgarden 24-7 blowing this bouncy castle up.

It is great. It is a very exciting thing to have passed on to our boys. We read in the Bible earlier that, verse 17, the Spirit Himself who makes us children of God, if we are children of God, then we are heirs.

Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. To be an heir, right, that means we are one day going to be given, handed on, the most amazing thing.

Right? Even better than a bouncy castle. What is coming for those of us who believe in Jesus is not kind of old things passed on that have worn out.

What is going to be passed on is a whole world. Right? A whole creation where everything is brand new.

Because we have been saved by Jesus, we get to look forward to the day when all of creation will be renewed, made perfect and never ruined.

Boys and girls, everything you love in your life right now, everything you look forward to using, everyone you look forward to spending time with, there will be something much, much better than that in the new creation.

Some of it will be there, but made perfect. Some of it won't be there, but that's only because something much, much better will be there instead. Because of the spirit, we get to look forward to the most amazing thing one day being handed down to us.

A whole new creation. Third thing then we have because of the spirit, a helper to lean into. We all need help, don't we?

Because there are some things we can't quite manage on our own. But with help Not working But with help Right, with help My voice can do What on its own It's far too weak to do Can't it?

Right, well with this little thing With the help I need My voice can't only get All the way back to the top of the room there Right, it can get To people's houses That are miles away That's amazing, isn't it?

But we are all weak in some way But the amazing thing is Is that in our weakness The spirit is there To help us Now we've just been thinking about The amazing thing That inheritance That is one day Going to be passed on to us But an inheritance Is something we have to Wait for We read a little bit about there Didn't we in verse 25 We wait for it With patience But while we are waiting For a day when When everything's going to be amazing And very exciting While we're waiting Well not Not every day Is amazing and exciting Is it?

Not every day Is one where you get Passed on a bouncy castle Right, there is something Very exciting to look forward to But in the meantime There will always be Difficult days to get through That's what the Bible Says to expect It doesn't mean we're doing Anything wrong If that's what we're facing There will always be days When we are weak When we feel like We can't manage the day When we're worried When we're scared When we're sad When we're sore And suffering We should expect those days But we should also know That on those days When we trust in Jesus The Holy Spirit is there To help us Something else We read in that passage Just a verse on From that one Verse 26 The Spirit helps us In our weaknesses And he helps us By praying with us And praying for us But there's nothing worse

Is there Than when we're When we're struggling With something When we're suffering There's nothing worse In those moments Than being alone Than feeling like There is no one there To help you But with the Spirit We are We are never alone Sometimes we forget He's there And so might feel alone But we never are He is always with us And he is always there To help us In our weakness Now on a Sunday When I'm preaching Right I always have This kind of little box With me That helps my voice Do something In my weakness That I cannot do But I do need to make sure I actually depend on it Don't I Because if I leave it Switched off Well it's not going to be That much help to me Is it Now the Spirit Will be of most help To us In our weakness When we We know our weakness And so Lean on him Lean on him To give us the help That we need Now the good news For Christians Right is that If we believe in Jesus We can't actually

Right you can't switch off You can't switch off The Holy Spirit So maybe that isn't The best analogy But we can lean into him He's always there But we really can lean on to him Not try and do on our own What we don't have The strength to do He's always there Helping us But the more we lean into him The more we will know His help Three things we've covered so far Then we have a father To speak to We have an inheritance To look forward to We have a helper To lean into And then finally Fourthly We have a hope To hold On to I have something Quite unexciting here But I'm hoping One of you can tell me What it is What is this Does anyone know What this is Right yes poppy It's a hat What's special About this hat It has a little bit Yeah That's an impossible Question for you to answer Because this What makes this hat special Right is that It's my holiday hat Okay How did you not know that Right

This is my holiday hat That might sound a bit strange But that's because I'm a bit strange Right Two great things About this hat One When I wear it I can pretend to have more hair Than I actually do That's always a win But secondly Right As soon as I put this hat on I know I'm on holiday Right That's when I wear it That's why I'm not putting it on Right now Because otherwise I'd be straight out the door And off to Tenerife When I see this hat though Even just hanging there On the coat hooks At home When it comes out And goes into a bag Right I look at it And I'm filled with hope Because I know A holiday is coming You guys have holidays Coming up Don't you They're coming up Pretty soon You've still got a week left Don't you That's right That's yeah But How confident are you That they are coming Well you can be very confident Can't you Because unless time stops Right Next weekend You guys are on holiday That it is a hope Isn't it That you Can hold

On to That's a Wonderful thing to have Isn't it We've thought about The inheritance that is coming We've thought About the waiting That we have To do until then But the way this passage ends Is saying While we wait We can be absolutely certain That that inheritance is coming And so whatever the waiting Might be like However sad or difficult it might be We can wait full of hope Nothing can stop that day coming As part of that wonderful We read there didn't we Verse 28 That for those who love God All things work together for good Because God chose us from the very beginning He sets his heart on us To adopt us To make us heirs So he is going to bring us Into that inheritance And there is nothing

That will stop him And Everything he is doing Now He is doing For our goods Through his spirit Sometimes those words Might confuse us A little bit When we look at our day Maybe you've had a really Hard week And we look at it and we wonder Well how can that be For my goods Well it It always is Even if we don't always Understand it I wonder Do any of you like getting injections?

Someone comes along with any deal Sticks it in your arm Is that a good day? No it's not a great day is it? We have We have two little boys Sometimes you have to take them I'll be honest I've never actually taken them I couldn't bear it Sometimes Mary has to take them To go to the doctor The nurse And get injections Now When we take one year old Finn We I'm taking all the credit here When Mary takes one year old Finn What does he think is going on?

Right He's just getting Stabbed Isn't he? And is filled with pain And doesn't understand that at all Why? Why mum Are you handing me over To this person Just to hurt me?

It makes no sense In his world But we As his parents As those who really love him And care about him Know that Putting him through That little bit of pain Is actually the very best thing For him isn't it?

That's how we Look after him How we care for him As best as we can We are all God's children And as children We won't all Understand We won't always Understand Everything that our father Puts us through But we can hold on To the sure And certain hope That he is Doing it all For our good Because he has chosen us He has made us His own He has promised us An inheritance And he is with us While we wait For it There is a day Coming because of that When everything Will be new And perfect And nothing Will ever be able To ruin it And while we wait For that day He is doing Everything for our good And he is always Helping us In our weakness There's four things We have Because of the Holy Spirit Because we have been Adopted as children Of God through him

We have a father To speak to We have an inheritance To look forward to We have a helper To lean into And a hope To hold on to We've thought a little bit About the Holy Spirit Over the last four weeks There is so much more That could be said But hopefully What we have seen As a church family Hopefully what you guys Have seen today Is just how good How wonderful it is To know that When we believe in Jesus We have this spirit With us Each and every moment Of each and every day Let's give thanks for that As we pray together Father we thank you For the Holy Spirit That because of him We can come to you As our father Because of him We are heirs To the most amazing Inheritance Because of him We have help In our weakness Because of him We have a sure And certain hope We can hold on to Help us all To hold on to that hope

As we put our trust In Jesus In whose name we pray Amen Amen Well boys and girls Before we sing Our last song We have something here For you We love you As a church family And we want to show Something of that By giving you Just a little something Your wonderful Sunday school teachers Val in particular Has put this together But it is my privilege To pass these on to you On behalf of the church family To say thank you For being part of our family And also in the hope That you guys Will read these books And know more about Jesus And come to love him More and more Each and every day So I'll go through them I'll go kind of From the preschool Through the P4s to 6s We can negotiate Whether you're going to come to me Or I'm going to come to you I'm old I don't want to pull a muscle But if you really don't want To come to the front I'm willing to move for you So let's start then With the preschool Amara Amara

Oh Amara You're right there Amara This is for you Take it Great Samuel Hall I should really know If the halls are on holiday The halls are on holiday They're still on holiday That's good to know Luke McCaskill Luke Come on It's your very own Bible Look at that one Nice There you go Luke Wonderful Chiti Is she here No We'll save that one In reserve Ezra Tracy Do you want to take this For Ezra Would that be alright I'll maybe just pass it to you Into the service You're quite far away Great Mercy Mercy here We're going to have a library By the end of this Mercy We'll save that one as well Caleb Hall We know the answer to that one Hannah Cowan Don't think the Cowans are here either They're not already there Right

We do have children I promise If you're here visiting You're thinking Oh they're just making up They're like Rory Smith You're here I know You've been in preschool For two weeks And we've managed to get a book out of it We've timed that well Haven't we Great Great And Luke Traynor Luke Here you go Luke That's for you You're very welcome Alright Moving on to the P1 to 3's Riley Riley Tonner That's for you Thank you Thanks for coming I appreciated that Nova We'll give that to Tracy At the end as well Cirilla Thank you Esther Zika Zika's at the end I'm definitely not coming up there Are you wanting to come down

You make your way down I'll do the next couple Thank you very much For coming down Zina Yeah Good plan Andre Andre There you go Look at that That's a weighty tone Daniel Daniel here Monica Is Monica around Can't see Monica Nope There's Matthew as well Poppy trainer There's definitely a poppy trainer here There you go poppy You're very welcome Wait Where did I put Zika There's Zika There you go Zika There you are You're very welcome Thank you very much For coming down That's I'd be very out of breath If I went all the way up there Orla Orla Campbell There you go Orla You're welcome And Caleb trainer The trainers will keep on coming For some time yet There you go Right and then

Finally P4 to 6 Joshua Campbell Joshua Campbell Here you go There you are Joshua You're very welcome Jacob Gunn The Gunn's here I don't think I've seen the Gunn's No We'll save that one Johnny MacDonald Where's Johnny?

Oh Johnny There you go You're welcome And then Zina Last but not least Where's Zina? There you go Zina Wonderful Well thank you Val For putting all that together Thank you boys and girls Again Just for being part of our church family Why don't I pray Just one more time For them Let's pray Father we do Rejoice That we Are a family of God That we all come as your children But we do thank you Particularly for The children Who are part of our church family Thank you so much For getting to share this service Together with them I pray that you just bless them That you would help us To continue to love And care for them In Jesus name we pray Amen And we're going to sing Our final song together We're going to sing Christ our hope In life and death So please do stand Once more As we sing to God's praise Together