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The River ChurchSermons

The Spirit

Adoption Changes Everything

Josh Yates · Sunday, 17 August 2025 · Romans 8:12-17 · 50:30 · 8,459 words

Romans S17 · 8:12-17 Lake Orion

Listen to this message

No condemnation awaits those in Christ; believers are freed to live by the Spirit instead of striving. The message urges listeners to let Christ’s love produce the fruit of the Spirit, reminding them that God’s adoption grants a new identity, purpose, and community. The speaker invites everyone to cry out to God as Abba Father, especially in hard times, and challenges them to examine their fruit, run to God’s arms, and trust His heart.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

abba 18 adopt 17 thomas 8 live 64 identity 10 career 6 fruit 13 spirit 42 change 25 apple 5 bear 11 cry 9

Topics

The Holy Spirit 13 Sin 9 Adoption & Sonship 9 Condemnation 6 Faith 3 Prayer 3 The Flesh 3 The Law 3 Freedom 2 Grace 2 Atonement & Sacrifice 1 Justification 1 Righteousness 1 Election & Predestination 1 The Wrath of God 1 Salvation 1 Mission & Evangelism 1

Scripture referenced 35

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 8 1:46 Romans 8:1 1:50 Romans 12 2:43 Romans 1 2:52 Romans 1 3:09 Romans 2 3:29 Romans 3 3:45 Romans 7 5:15 Romans 7:12 6:07 Romans 8 6:20 Romans 8 6:23 Romans 7 8:18 Galatians 5 12:42 Romans 8 13:44 Hebrews 11:6 14:06 Romans 8 15:23 Romans 8 16:59 Romans 8 17:03 Romans 8 17:05 Romans 8:12-17 17:17 Ephesians 2 18:22 Ephesians 2 18:31 Romans 6:23 20:08 Romans 6:13 21:31 Colossians 3:5-10 23:33 Colossians 3:5-10 23:42 Romans 6:12 25:28 Romans 6:16 29:04 2 Peter 3:9 37:30 1 John 4:8-10 37:40 Romans 5:8 38:06 Romans 8:15 39:53 Galatians 4:6 42:41 Romans 8 42:57 1 Corinthians 12:3 43:08

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 10 lines, 0:41. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey, everyone. My name is Phil, and thanks for checking out this message today.

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Thanks again for joining us, and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

Well, good morning again. Good to be back.

And we want to say thank you publicly to both Matt Montgomery and Noble Baird

for filling in the last couple of weeks as our family's been gone on vacation.

Seeing family, it was a great time to be able to be away and see family,

but it's always good to be back.

How many know that the first week you come back from vacation is like a daze?

That's kind of where I'm at.

I'm like, wow.

Do I even remember how to preach?

I mean, I do, but, you know, we, anyway, it was a good time to be away,

and it's a good time.

It's great to be back, too, and looking forward to what God has for us in the coming weeks,

and as we kick off a new fall year and all the things God has planned for us in the coming months,

we're just looking forward to it here at Lake Orion.

So glad we can be back together.

I guess when I come back, I'm like, I had the question in my mind,

and maybe you do, too.

Maybe you know exactly where we are, but my question was,

where exactly have we been in Romans?

And what have we been learning?

I mean, this is week 17 we've been in Romans now,

and it can kind of become a blur,

and I want to make sure that we understand where we've been,

because as we get to chapter 8 a couple of weeks ago,

if we look at Romans chapter 8, verse 1, it's a great verse.

I'm going to talk about it here in a minute.

No condemnation, but what does this chapter start off with?

There's a word there.

Does anybody remember?

And what do we have to know when we see the word therefore?

We have to know?

What it's there for, all right?

We can't understand what Paul's about to say

if we don't know what Paul has already said.

Too often in God's word, we pick out a verse and we go,

ooh, I like that.

And then we make it say whatever kind of we think it should mean,

rather than go, oh, wait a minute,

we have to look at some basic principles of what it means to actually,

let's not just say read scripture, but read words, period.

And if there's a connective word,

we can't understand what the writer's saying

if we don't know what he's already said.

Right?

So I did want to give a quick synopsis of where we've been in Romans

because he's about to,

the book kind of changes both here and in Romans 12.

The letter changes and it starts talking about some different things.

And so we have to know what Paul has said.

So Romans chapter one,

God is righteous to be angry at sin and he will punish it.

Basically all of Romans one.

All right?

The gospel is salvation and we're thankful for that.

But the reality is, is that God is right to be angry at sin.

And he must punish sin.

That was Romans chapter one.

Romans two is, now wait a minute,

lest you think that you can look at everybody else and go,

yeah, all those people that are sinners.

No, wait a minute.

We all used to at least be that, if not still struggle with that.

So don't you dare think about everybody else that are sinners as those people.

We're those people too.

And that was Romans chapter two.

And every single one of us need a savior.

We can't forget that.

How dare we ever get on a soapbox thinking that we have anything,

anything to stand on.

Other than the cross of Jesus Christ.

That's what Romans two is about.

Romans chapter three.

If we needed a reminder, no one is righteous.

No, not one.

We've all sinned.

We've all fallen short, but God has revealed his righteousness through faith in Jesus.

That's Romans three, Romans four and five.

We're justified by faith alone through grace alone.

And in Christ alone, I want to say it again.

Faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone.

That's the only way we're justified.

It's because of him and through him.

Adam brought death.

Christ brought life.

Romans six, grace covers sin, but should we sin more so that grace can abound more?

And we think we look at that question.

We go, that sounds like a weird question.

And yet how many of us have presumed upon the grace of God?

Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, right?

We can sometimes get that way in our lives.

I got to forgive me.

It's not that big a deal.

It's not as bad as my neighbor.

No, we don't keep sinning.

So then sometimes we sin.

Somehow grace can abound more.

We don't want to be slaves to sin anymore.

We don't have to be slaves to sin anymore because if we know Jesus, we're now slaves

to righteousness, not sin.

But here's the deal.

We have to choose one or the other.

Sometimes we're choosing one or the other every moment of the day.

Are we going to live for righteousness or are we going to live for our sinful nature?

We have to make those choices.

There is no neutrality.

There is no Switzerland in this guys.

We have to choose every day and even in every situation.

And then in Romans 7, the law is good because Paul's writing to a Jewish audience.

He's going to talk about the law.

He says the law is good, but it allowed sin to abound because it told us what sin was.

It didn't save us from sin.

It defined sin.

And we really, what's the first thing you want to do when you're told to do something?

The opposite, right?

Don't tell me what to do.

You're not the boss of me.

That's what we want to say.

And yet in reality, there are times in our lives that we look at God and say, you're not the boss of me because we choose to.

I'm, I do it too.

You know, I'm in that same boat.

Who can save us?

Only Jesus, only Jesus.

And so we're going to be in chapters 12 to 17, but I have to also talk about what we've talked about the last few weeks to make sure we're off the speed.

Because if we look at verse 12, there's another word there.

And that word is so then.

So now it's connecting back to the first, the first verses in that he just wrote in eight.

So we're going to go back to a little bit of, of, of chapter eight.

They're not on the screen, but I want to make sure that we understand Romans chapter eight.

Before we get to these verses, the first verse, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That should excite us.

My friends, if that doesn't get us excited as a follower of Christ, then I don't know what will, to be honest, or I would even question whether or not we truly understand what God has done, because here's the reality.

No matter what you've done, no matter where you've been, no matter where you're even headed, if you are in Christ Jesus, if you have accepted him as your Lord and

There is no longer any condemnation for you.

There is no damnation, no condemning of sin because we've been set free from the law of sin and death, but it's just the beginning because Jesus wants to live his life through us.

And in us, it's not about our striving.

It's about us letting Christ live in and through us.

It's allowing God to build on the foundation of the truth of the gospel that's in our lives so that Jesus life flows through us.

Since we're free from condemnation, it allows us to live for life.

Live our lives for Christ.

I don't know about you.

That's something I am always struggling with is I have to do better, be better, do more, read more, more, more, more, because I'm not enough.

That's true of all of us.

None of us are enough.

Jesus is enough.

And we got to get our focus off of ourselves when really that's what it is.

We're focused on what I'm doing rather than what God wants to do in me and through me.

Because God accomplished what we couldn't at the cross.

And we're now at peace with God.

We've been set free.

And so Jesus came in the likeness of the flesh so that sin.

Itself can be condemned in him.

Sin was condemned in Jesus, not in us.

And so and so that we could fulfill the righteous requirement of the law.

Paul just talked about all of the law in Romans 7.

He says, look, because of Jesus at the cross, we actually fulfill the law now because of what Jesus did.

Christ will fill the law for us.

And we fulfill the law because of the spirit that lives in us.

So it's kind of like saying that we obey all of the law because of the spirit, not because of me.

But because God has made us righteous.

And so we have freedom from the.

The flesh in our lives is what causes us to sin.

It does.

Paul said, you know, the things I know I should be doing, I don't do.

The things I know I shouldn't be doing.

These are the things I find myself doing.

What a wretched sinner am I?

And I am right there with Paul.

I find that.

I find that at work.

And yet in my heart, I'm like, man, why did I do that again?

Why did I have that attitude again?

When am I going to actually figure this out?

I think I said a few weeks ago, I am 40.

I'll be 347 this week.

I thought by this point I'd have my stuff together.

I don't have it together.

But I think there's people that are 80 and 90 say the same thing.

I thought I'd have my stuff together by this point.

I don't have it together.

Right?

Because it's not really about me.

It's not about you.

It's about the Holy Spirit living in us and through us.

But when it comes to the flesh, it comes, we talk about where do we live?

Where do we live the majority of our lives?

What's our heart set on?

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

But how do you know if you are in Christ?

It's a huge question.

How do you know if you are in Christ?

We know it based upon what we live for, what our minds are set upon, what gets us excited.

Because when we give our lives to Christ and we truly understand that God's spirit comes and dwells in us,

which is the seal of our salvation, we have to understand something.

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

There's liberty.

And my friends, there's going to be times in life where we're going to struggle with that liberty.

But if we've never experienced freedom, we've got to think about what we're living for.

We have to seek to be set free from our flesh, not by our effort, but by believing,

the truth that Christ has and will set you free.

And we're going to learn later in this letter how God transforms us by the renewing of our minds.

We love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We love God with everything we have.

That's how we know if we're in Christ.

We desire to love him.

Because that doesn't come from you.

That doesn't come from me.

I don't want the things of God apart from the spirit of God putting that desire in my life.

We love our neighbor.

We love our neighbors as ourselves.

We love others.

It gets super practical.

We can't live for God on our own.

We're going to want to live for the flesh.

That's our default.

But here's where it gets even more, I don't know if I want to say serious, but real,

is that, my friends, it doesn't matter if we're offering token prayers out of some sense of religiosity.

It doesn't matter if we go into the nursery and change a few diapers and feel really good

because there was an extra poopy one this week.

It doesn't matter if we're helping on security or leading worship on a stage or whatever that looks like.

If you're doing it, you're doing it for God.

If you're doing it because it makes you feel good more than it is to serve Jesus,

it's not done in the Holy Spirit.

It's not done for the right reasons.

It's done outside of what God wants for us.

If it's done out of a love for God and others, then we can know it's of the Spirit.

We don't serve for acceptance.

We serve from it.

There's a big difference.

We don't serve to be accepted.

We serve because we already are.

Because there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

Something I've said a lot over the years.

You may or may not have heard me say this.

I say it, but a great question to ask yourself to know whether or not you're in Christ.

Where's the fruit?

Some of you may be old enough to remember the old Wendy's campaign years ago.

Where's the beef?

Some of you might.

That just totally aged me because that was like the 80s.

All right.

But where's the fruit?

What is the fruit of your life?

Because there's a passage in Galatians chapter 5 that talks about fruit.

The fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.

What's more exemplified in your life?

You can know whether or not you're in Christ if there is fruit.

The Spirit in your life.

Because when you're in Christ, that fruit comes out of you.

You don't even have to work at it, really.

God bears it in you.

Again, a good tree bears good fruit.

A bad tree bears bad fruit.

An apple tree doesn't sit there and grunt and go,

Apples! Come on, apples! Come on, apples! Come on, apples!

It just bears the fruit that it was made to bear.

That's the same thing about the fruit of the Spirit.

When we think of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

When we think of those things, we can think,

Oh, I've got to do better.

I've got to do better at having love.

No.

What we need to do is run after God.

And then we're in Christ.

And God bears that fruit in your life.

He changes you.

And Paul talked about earlier in Romans chapter 8

that the person that lives according to the flesh, they can't please God.

In fact, this person is actually hostile toward God.

They worship idols rather than God himself.

They rebel against God's law.

And you can't please God because without faith, it's impossible to please God.

It's impossible to please the Lord without faith.

But for those of us that know Christ, we're not in the flesh.

We're in the Spirit.

And if the Spirit of God dwells in us, again, how do we know the Spirit of God dwells in us?

It's because of Christ.

It's giving your life to Him.

My friends, we do not come here on a Sunday morning to live some sort of higher way of Christian life.

I don't understand.

So often in my life, people will look at me and go,

Well, you're a pastor.

So, yeah, you're called to that.

You're supposed to be like holier than everybody else.

No.

No.

There's no, I mean, there is a portion of Scripture that says if you aspire to be a teacher,

you're going to be held to a higher account for how you, I mean,

I bear a responsibility of living a life that hopefully can be an example.

But I want to remind us all that hopefully that example also includes that when I mess up,

I ask for forgiveness too.

It's not about me being perfect.

It's about living for the Lord.

And that's true for every single one of us.

Every single one of us is called to live for Christ in whatever capacity it looks like.

There is no higher tier of living for Jesus.

It's living for God.

And that's what Paul's been saying in Romans 8.

Stop thinking about it's about a competition or any of this kind of stuff.

It's about living for him.

We're all called to the same Jesus.

We're all called to kneel at the same cross.

And we're all called to the same surrender.

Every single one of us.

It's the norm for the person that follows Jesus Christ.

And we see the doctrine of Christ being for us and Christ's work in us.

Because Christ is given for us means we're justified.

We're not condemned.

I mean, you get the fact that when you come to Christ,

when you ask him to save you,

to save you from your sin,

to forgive you of your sin,

your slate is wiped clean.

Your guilt is gone.

It is as if you had never, ever sinned before God.

We go from an enemy, a hostile person to our God,

and our eternity is forever changed.

This is an amazing theological reality.

This is the reality of God's word.

And it's mind-blowing.

Because Christ died for us, Christ lives in us.

And the only way we can truly live in these physical bodies

is because of Jesus and through Jesus.

Ultimately, Paul has seen,

has let us see that God brings us newness to our lives,

new freedom, a new mindset on God,

and a new indwelling of the Spirit.

We've seen that in Romans 8 so far.

Now we get to the passage we're actually talking about today.

Turn to Romans chapter 8.

Romans chapter 8.

I just wanted to establish that.

Also, when I'm going to read it,

I've gone a couple weeks,

and I love it when other people speak,

and both guys did a great job,

but I also feel a little gypped.

I got to at least preach a little bit of what I missed.

So Romans chapter 8, verses 12 to 17.

It'll be on the screen,

but I want to read it for us this morning.

It says this.

So then, brothers, we are debtors,

not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,

For all who are led by God,

by the Spirit of God, are sons of God.

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery

to fall back into fear,

but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons,

by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit

that we are children of God.

And if children, then heirs,

heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ,

provided we suffer with him

in order that we may also be glorified with him.

All right, so we've established all of this.

We have all this newness.

But now Paul says, wait a minute, we're debtors.

Now we have an obligation.

We have a newness of life,

but we do have an obligation in this as well.

We all used to be obligated to the flesh, right?

We've talked about that.

Paul talked about that.

I mentioned that this morning.

Ephesians chapter two,

Paul would tell the Ephesians

that every single one of us is dead

in our trespasses of sins.

And by nature, we were children of wrath.

That's Ephesians chapter two.

Let me ask you a question.

Can a dead person walk?

Can a dead person talk?

Can a dead person do anything on their own?

If you and I were dead in our trespasses of sins,

what does that mean we were?

It wasn't a trick question.

We're dead.

Also without hope.

What did we hear earlier in Romans?

That we serve a God who brings dead things to life

and calls things into existence,

things that previously were not.

That's what God has done for every one of us

who knows Christ.

And if you're sitting here this morning

and you don't know Jesus

and you're currently dead in trespasses of sins

and you need a savior,

I'm telling you this morning, you do.

God can change your life right where you sit.

He can change your eternal destiny

because he brings dead things.

To life.

And he did that for every single one

that comes to the cross

and asks for forgiveness

and asks him to save them.

The call is in the name of the Lord.

You will be saved.

And when we were in this position,

none of us had a choice to live

anything other than for the flesh.

We didn't have a choice

because it's all we knew.

Now, as Paul stated,

we've been made alive in Christ.

And when we're made alive in Christ,

it takes away our debt to the flesh

because it's all been paid.

The consequences, Paul says,

of living for the flesh,

well, it's death.

It's both spiritual and physical.

Romans 6, 23.

The wages or the payment of sin is death.

It's death.

It's a physical death

where every single person will die.

That physical reality is true

for every single one of us.

There isn't one of us

that's going to live forever.

Not physically.

Not physically.

Our bodies are wasting away.

The closer I get to 50,

more things hurt.

I'm thankful nothing's fallen off yet.

All right?

But the reality is,

as we age,

our bodies are deteriorating.

Death is going to come for all of us.

There is going to be that day.

Some sooner than others.

And there's a spiritual death too.

There's a reality that if we die apart from God

and we do not want to choose God,

God loves us enough to give us what we ask.

Which means we'll live without God for eternity

and that's the definition of hell.

Or we can choose Jesus

and he gives us what we ask.

He gives us freedom.

He gives us new life.

He gives us abundant life in him.

In order to not live by the flesh though,

there's something we have to do

and Paul talks about it here

that we have to renounce

He says we have to put it to death.

He says in verse 13,

but if by the spirit you put to death

the deeds of the body,

Remember, Paul's speaking to a Jewish audience here.

So he has the exodus.

That's why he has this image of slavery

in this passage.

He's saying, look,

don't go back to the ways you used to live.

It's interesting though,

why does Paul say this to the church?

Because he knows that some people

that read this letter

and that God knows that some

right here this morning today

that is in the church,

hearing this word,

you may not know Jesus.

Because some people in the Christian crowd

may not actually have the spirit of God living in them.

My friends, it's one of the things

that keeps me up sometimes

when I think about the church,

both our church and the church in general.

This has nothing to do with religiosity.

It has everything to do with following after Jesus Christ

and living for him.

My friends, we're not here today to look good.

We're not here today to sound good.

We're not here today to do religious things.

We're not here to have a self-help message

that's just going to make us feel better.

We're here to have an encounter with a real God

that radically changes our lives.

That's what we're here for.

At least I pray that's what we're here for.

That it's not just something we do on a Sunday

and then just to get to everything else.

But that we want to live for Christ every single day.

We are here for truth.

We're here because we're broken.

We're here because we're needy.

We're here to seek after God.

We're here to learn how to become more like Jesus.

We're here because we know that nothing else satisfies.

We're here because Jesus saves.

And he saved us.

Paul says to put to death the deeds of the flesh

or to mortify it, he says.

Colossians 3, 5-10.

It's going to be on the screen behind me,

but I'm going to turn over to it.

I want us to hear it this morning.

Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.

Got to get there. Here we go.

Colossians 3, 5-10. He says this.

He's writing to a different church here in Colossae.

And he says,

Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you,

sexual immorality, impurity, passion.

That passion is related to sexuality.

Evil desire and covetousness.

Covetousness, which is idolatry.

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

In those, you too once walked when you were living in them.

But now you must put them all away.

Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another.

Seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices

and put on the new self,

which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

These are the things we put off.

Anger, malice, slander, talking behind each other's backs.

Don't lie to each other.

We put aside the deeds of the world.

We live in a hyper-sexualized culture.

Sex is not a bad thing, but the way our culture lives it out,

it's like that has become a god.

And we can think, oh, that's new.

No, it's not.

Because that all happened in the Old Testament too.

They had an actual temple where to worship a god

was the act of worshiping that god.

It's been around for a long time.

It's just a different altar.

What altar are we bowing down at?

These are the things we put to death.

We don't play with them.

Just like we once were dead and were made alive,

these things have got to die.

We don't mess around with them.

We get away from them.

John Stott, Romans 6.12, he said just before this,

Paul did,

Let not sin reign therefore in your mortal body

to make you obey its passions.

Sometimes it's way too easy for us to let sin reign

because let's be honest with ourselves.

Sometimes we like that sin.

Sometimes we like to be angry because you know what?

People have hurt me.

People have wronged me.

And you know,

it's time for me to take my pound of flesh, right?

Or flip the guy off in the car next to you.

Whatever that looks like in Jesus name, right?

That's what we're going to say, right?

Got to kill it.

Got to kill it.

John Stott says this.

If temptation comes to us through what we see,

handle or visit,

then we must be ruthless in not looking,

not touching, not going.

And so in controlling the very approaches of sin,

positively we're to set our minds on the things

the spirit desires,

set our hearts on things.

Above and occupy our thoughts with what is noble,

right, pure and lovely in this way,

mortification, putting evil to death and aspiration,

hungering and thirsting for what is good.

Our counterparts, because here's the thing.

We can try to put this to death,

but if we don't aspire to what God wants for us,

the flesh will always be our default.

We got to replace it with what we're trying with what God wants and get rid of

what God doesn't.

But again,

this isn't about doing more and being more because as you fall,

more in love with Jesus,

he puts to death those things in you too.

It's this weird dichotomy,

right?

We do bear responsibility in this.

We still have a choice to make.

And yet it's God.

Who's the one who gives us the strength to overcome.

So how do we live according to the spirit,

which Paul then says later on in Colossians and 12 to 17,

I want to read that to you put on then as God's chosen ones,

holy and beloved,

compassionate hearts,

meekness and patience bearing with one another.

And if one has a complaint against another,

forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you.

So you must also forgive and above all these things put on love,

which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And then let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were

called in one body and be thankful.

there's,

I could do a whole nother sermon.

You want to be here another hour?

but we've got to be more grateful.

And I say that to me too.

I can focus on the negative.

And when I'm negative,

I don't have a hope of living for Jesus.

Be grateful for what you do have,

because every single one of us has something to be grateful for.

I get it.

There's a lot of struggle.

There's a lot of,

there's a lot of pain and hurt.

And we're going to get to that here a little bit in a little bit in this

But the reality is there's things we can be grateful for.

And we go to the Lord with that gratefulness.

It changes how we live.

It changes how we treat other people.

It does.

Because once we forgive each other,

once we put on love,

Then the peace of Christ comes.

You don't have peace.

How are you loving?

How are you grateful?

How are you humble?

How are you meek?

Then what happens?

We have to let,

in verse 16,

let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,

teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom,

singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts

to God.

And whatever you do in word or deed,

do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,

giving thanks to God,

the father through him.

He said something about thankfulness like four times in like two verses,

always giving thanks.

So when you put sin to death and seek to live for God,

I want to remind you and tell you something.

Things change.

They do.

There's actually freedom in putting sin to death.

Sometimes people come to me and say,

I'm to God.

And they're like,

God wants me to do all the new things that are going to be boring and change my life and do all.

we can have that attitude sometimes,

but we don't understand is when God begins to put to death,

those things in us changes heart.

I've been in ministry going on 30 years and I've been,

I've been in youth ministry for almost 20 years.

And then a senior pastor,

adult ministry for another fifth,

another 10,

but that would be the right math.

But so often we think God wants to just steal our joy.

And there's also times that we have to change the people we hang out with,

like really hang out with.

It doesn't mean that we shouldn't ever hang out with anybody that doesn't know the Lord.

We always want to do that.

We want to love everybody that's around us.

But the people that are closest to us,

I've seen people lose friendships over following Christ,

but God always,

always provides.

He always provides and he loves us so deeply.

And freedom comes when we let God live in and through us.

We're set free from bondage.

And so we've been set free.

And then we have a new identity.

Once we come to God,

we're sons.

And daughters of the King of Kings were sons and daughters of the King of Kings.

There's a question every single one of us asks though in life,

it's a big one.

And we ask,

who am I?

Who am I?

Really?

I really love how the commentator puts this.

He said it like this.

If you don't get your identity,

right,

you will not get your community,

right?

And you can never get your purpose,

right?

You see that progression.

If you don't get your identity right.

And who you are in Christ,

if you define yourself by anything else,

you're going to miss out on the right community.

You should be in.

And when you miss out on your community,

your purpose is going to be out of whack.

Follow me for a second.

If it's your job or your career,

your community,

if that's your identity,

your community is going to be those that you work with that may or not be good

for you and your family.

It's going to be those that are going to help you advance your career.

People you might like,

but you will be attempted to use people rather than care for them.

You will be more about yourself.

If your identity is found in your job or career,

your purpose is to get the next promotion,

to move up the ladder,

to never be satisfied.

If you start with a job or career as your identity,

if it's money,

it's follows the same path as your career,

but now it's about acquiring more.

And what that looks like,

your community are going to be those that are going to help you obtain more.

Your purpose is to be built.

You just to be,

to build your own kingdom.

If it's family,

you fill in the blank.

If your identity is anything other than Christ,

you'll miss the right community and you'll miss out on your purpose.

And your purpose will be out of whack.

But if it's God,

here's the thing.

The other things fall into line.

The things I mentioned are not necessarily bad,

bad things.

They're good things.

But hear me this morning.

When good things become God things,

we're in trouble.

When good things become God things,

we're in trouble.

We'll get our identity wrong,

our community wrong,

and our purpose wrong.

And so that's why Paul reminds us,

we are a child of the most high God.

And because of this,

we can have intimacy with him,

not with things you own or even the people around you,

though those are good things,

but with God himself,

you can know him.

And he didn't give us a spirit of slavery to go back into fear.

We don't have to be afraid.

we,

we've received the spirit of adoption into the family of God.

And the spirit testifies with your spirit,

the year's child.

People come to me often and say,

did that person know Jesus?

Do you know after they passed?

I've even had people come to me and say,

do I know God?

I'm going to tell you this morning that is so far above my pay grade.

I have no idea.

Let me remind you of this.

You don't know if I belong to God.

I hope you can look at my life and see that,

but you can't make that call.

What's Paul saying here?

Your spirit testifies with your spirit.

He testifies with the Holy spirit that you actually are his child.

The only person that can know you're his child is you through the revealing of

the Holy spirit.

Does that mean you're going to have never have questions?

No,

because we're humans and we question the heart of God and we crap.

Life happens and things are hard,

but I can tell you that I should look at my life.

I look at where I've been.

I know in me that I wouldn't be who I am.

If it wasn't for the spirit of God,

I'm so far from perfect,

but praise God.

I serve a risen,

savior and I know I'm his son and I bet there's other of us could spare some

testimony to those things too.

The God spirit testifies with our spirit,

but here's something that maybe it's only me that struggles with,

but I got to believe that a lot of us do.

when we know God has forgiven us and there's that reality,

but it can be harder to believe that God actually likes us because we all,

we know that we struggle.

Just like Paul,

the things I should be doing.

I'm not the things I'm doing.

I know I shouldn't be.

I'm just like,

I think I said a few weeks ago,

I said,

I'm an idiot.

My wife agreed.

That was great.

But it's true.

It's true.

But think about how we act toward our children when they're born.

What do we think the first time we see them?

If you have kids or have been around people that have kids,

what do they think?

They love them.

They're beautiful.

They're enraptured with them.

I don't care.

You know,

at least the majority of the time,

right?

That's the way it's supposed to be.

That's the way it is when it's,

when it's,

when it's correct.

Then what's the reality after that?

They keep the parents up all hours.

They demand food.

They make weird noises.

They demand time.

They poop and pee.

Not always in the diaper that happens.

That has to be changed.

Experienced all of that in our lives in the past.

Did any of that change the love of the parents for the child?

If that's how earthly parents feel about children that they love.

Yeah,

we mess up.

I don't know about you,

but I make messes a lot worse than what I just described of a baby.

But God likes us.

He doesn't just love us.

Can I tell you this morning?

God likes you.

He doesn't just love you.

He actually likes you just the way you are because he's a loving father.

He chose you.

And every single one of us can have an ability of having a deep relationship

with him because God's spirit dwells in us.

And we're heirs with Christ.

What's true of him is true of us.

And we inherit what he has.

Heaven is waiting for his children.

We live for a different kingdom.

So as we walk out of here,

we have to understand something that God's adoption of you changes everything.

God's adoption of you changes everything.

He chose to die for you.

He didn't have to.

He would have been just to let us live in and die in our sin.

That would have been fair.

It would have been just.

But God is love.

He defines love and he loves every person on the earth.

Second Peter 3:9 says,

"The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness,

but he's patient towards you,

not wishing that anybody would perish,

but all would come to repentance."

First John 4:8-10 it says,

"Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.

In this the love of God was made manifest or made known among us that God sent his

only son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love,

not that we have loved God,

but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation,

for our sins."

That's how we know God loves us.

He gave us his son.

And then Romans 5:8,

"But God shows his love for us in this,

that while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us."

He loves you.

And in order to give up his son for you,

I'm telling you this morning,

he likes you too.

God, and you can choose God today.

You can choose to follow him.

You can ask for forgiveness because God showed his love for you.

God showed us his heart.

Adoption changes everything.

I love that of this picture of adoption because adoption in Rome,

what Paul was talking about is just as it is today.

The adopted child, you're in the family.

There is no difference between blood children and the adopted child.

And we're adopted as sons and daughters if we know Jesus is Lord and Savior.

And this must shape our lives.

The reality is all of us come to God for different reasons.

We come to God, hopefully because we need forgiveness.

But other times we come to God because we need something from him, right?

We need something from him.

When in reality, if we would just understand how much he loves us and come to him because he loves us,

not because of what we need.

Sometimes it's because we're hopeless.

Our families abandoned us.

Circumstances seemed overwhelming.

We have to understand we can come to God with anything, with anything.

Hear that this morning.

You can go to God with anything.

But we come to him as a father and he loves us and he provides for us.

And I want us to focus on one final thing.

It's something I skipped over on purpose.

In Romans 8 verse 15, it says,

That word Abba is not just a band from the 70s.

That word Abba is a word of familiarity.

As we go to our father and he's dad, he's our daddy.

When you know him that intimately, you can go to him with anything.

Because when you know him as your Abba, you know you're at peace with God.

You can have peace when the storm is raging around you.

When you know God as your Abba, there's no more insecurity around God.

We're loved and protected children.

There is no fear, only acceptance.

There is no condemnation, only forgiveness.

You are no longer alone in any circumstances when you know him as your Abba.

But my friends, the longer we play religion,

the less opportunity you're going to have to know him as your Abba.

It isn't about doing more, being good.

It's about knowing God.

It's not about behavior modification.

I feel like that's what we think following God is,

about just changing what we do.

No, it's changing everything, really.

It's knowing him as an Abba, as a dad.

In the tough moments, in the darkest moments, in your despair, in your struggle,

when you've fallen down, when you don't know what's next,

when you have victory and you're rejoicing, when you're dancing,

in your desperation, in your weakness, you can cry out to Abba,

just like Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He said, Father, Abba, can we do this any other way?

Let this cup pass from me.

Even Jesus was afraid of what was to come.

He said, Dad, can we please do this any other way?

Because this is kind of freaking me out.

But then he remembered the heart of his father.

And he said, okay, Dad, not my will, but yours.

And he went to the cross and died for us and saved us from our sin.

All of this is, we can call out to God in our best days,

and we can cry out to God in our worst days.

And it's made possible because the Spirit of God that lives in every one of us.

Galatians 4, 6 says,

Because your sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit reminds us who he is.

That he's our Abba.

And the Spirit cries out for us because we forget.

In Romans 8, we find out that we can cry out to God as Abba.

And we can only cry out this way because of Jesus.

No one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.

That's 1 Corinthians 12, 3.

Remember, God's adoption of you changes everything.

And yet, there's so many times in life where pain is so intense.

I have friends out at Oakland Christian who have a niece that's in her early 20s.

She was engaged to be married.

She ended up with a very aggressive form of breast cancer

and probably will not live much longer at like 23.

For those of you that know the Emmons, Denny and Bonnie,

Denny was the pastor before I became the pastor back in the early 2010s.

Her brother, at 69 years old, brain aneurysm and died.

Totally out of the blue.

He wasn't sick before that.

The longer I live, there are things that break my heart.

For other people in my life, some of us here are bearing some of those same things.

Questions of life, questions of finances, questions of life.

What do I do next?

Questions of what is next for my life, whether it's having a child or not able to have a child,

or loved ones that are sick or worried about loved ones that live across the nation,

all kinds of different things in our lives.

What's next?

This is when we know we can go to God as our Abba.

This is when we know.

I so identify with Thomas and the Chosen.

I like the series.

Just so you know, when you watch the Chosen, it isn't necessarily completely giving you God's word.

They take some dramatic license.

Add some storylines in there that aren't in the Bible, and yet they're at least possible, you know?

Not every detail was given of Jesus' life, and there's just one storyline.

I'm not going to give you the details in case you haven't watched it.

If you've seen it, you're going to know exactly what I'm talking about.

But there's a scene in it where Lazarus, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.

And Thomas, Jesus' disciple, in the storyline, has been through something just absolutely horrendous.

And he sees Lazarus alive.

And Jesus didn't do anything for Thomas, at least in his mind.

And Thomas, it just doesn't seem fair.

It doesn't seem fair that Lazarus is alive.

Have you ever seen Jesus do something for somebody else and go,

God, why didn't you do that for me?

We've all been there.

And then Jesus goes to Thomas as he's just bawling.

And he says, I don't expect you to understand now.

I don't.

What the Father allows, what I allow to bring about my Father's will and the faith and the growth of his church,

it can be crushing for you.

And yes, even for me.

Thomas is just broken.

And he cries out to Jesus, it's too much.

It's too much.

I don't understand.

Have you ever been there?

It's just too much.

I don't understand, God, why?

Jesus replies and says, I know.

And that hurts my heart.

But please, please stay with me, Thomas.

And you will understand in time.

He kisses him on the head.

And he sheds tears with him.

See, when we get our identity wrong, if that's in our health, our wealth, our family, our career,

when that doesn't go well, we're shaken to the core.

And we don't have a community that was right because we were focusing on something else.

We don't have any foundation.

And then our purpose has been off.

But when we realize that God's adoption has also given you a different identity for a different

kingdom, a community of Jesus followers, and a purpose that is for this life and beyond,

everything changes.

And in this, we cry, Abba, Father, Dad, I may not understand, but I know you love me

and you like me because the adoption of God changes everything.

Have you been adopted this morning?

If so, run to the arms of your Abba.

If you don't know him as Savior, you can be saved today.

Call on the name of the Lord and you can be saved.

It doesn't mean that there's not going to be hard times in life.

There's times that are really hard.

But as we lean into God's love and into his plan, sometimes we can gain perspective.

But we can always trust the heart of our Abba.

God's adoption of us changes everything.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for your word.

I thank you.

I thank you for adopting us as sons and daughters.

And God, I just pray.

I pray this morning that as we're here, as we've heard your word, God, I pray that we're

encouraged in you, that, Lord, we'd be reminded that you love us and that you like us.

I'm so grateful for all that you are and all you've done and how you move.

And I pray that if there's anybody here that's struggling, Lord, that they would hear your

heart for them today, that, God, they would understand how much you love them.

And that while they may not understand where they are right now, I pray that they would

trust your heart and that they would desire you more.

God, if there's anybody here this morning that doesn't know you, I pray that they would

know you.

I pray, Lord, that they would understand that you gave your life for us so that we can know

you, so that we can be forgiven and be set free.

I pray that that person would call on the name of the Lord, call on your name, and maybe

ask questions this morning.

Come talk to me.

Text River Church to 97000, whatever that looks like.

God, talk to somebody at guest services.

Thank you for being our Abba.

Thank you for adopting us and choosing us the way you have.

In Jesus' name we pray.

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