The only marriage you need (Psalm 45)

I want to begin by telling you of a wonderful love-story.  It concerns John Newton, the writer of the hymn Amazing Grace, and his childhood sweetheart, Mary (Polly) Catlett. 

John and Polly’s mothers had been best-friends, and they had often delighted at the thought of the John and Polly eventually getting married.  However, John’s mother died when he was only seven, and the families grew apart.

John first set his eyes on Polly when he was seventeen and she was fourteen.  Apparently she was not a spectacular beauty, but John fell head over heels in love.  She was shy but very kind.  He was tongue-twisted when he was around her, and restless when he was away from her.

John was supposed to stay with the Catletts for three days, but his passion for Polly kept him longer, and so he missed the boat he was supposed to crew on (much to the annoyance of his father).

The next few years of John’s life were very dark.  He worked on the slave-trade, and his heart grew very hard to the God his mother had taught him to love.  His blasphemies and cursing shocked even hardened sailors.  He did things that he later felt would be inappropriate to even mention in his autobiography.  But he never stopped loving Polly.  Indeed, he felt that he would have taken his life were it not for his hope that he might marry her one day.

It was in the middle of a storm that John became a true Christian.  He feared he was going to die and surprised himself by calling out to the God he said he didn’t believe in.  His life was forever changed.

He visited Polly again, and convinced her to marry him.  He eventually became a most effective and caring Church of England pastor.  He is remembered for his hymns, and also the many letters that he wrote.  Near the end of his life he exclaimed that he had learned two things: ‘I am a great sinner and I serve a great Saviour.’

John and Polly enjoyed a wonderfully happy marriage.  He never lost his passion for her.  However, it was not a marriage devoid of pain.  Polly struggled with ill-health and died seventeen years before John.  They were unable to have children, although they adopted two nieces who had been separately orphaned.  

John had one strange worry about his marriage: he worried that he had made an idol out of Polly!  How might someone make an idol out of a spouse?  Perhaps he feared that he could never be content without her.  Maybe he left that God alone was not enough for him and that he needed Polly to complete his life.

How might we make an idol of marriage?  Well, if we say ‘you complete me’ to anyone other than God, we are making an idol of them.  If the church patronises those who are single, as if their goal in life is to meet a life partner, we are teaching people to idolise marriage.  If you expect that your husband or wife can fully understand you, even though you don’t fully understand yourself, then you are expecting them to be as God to you.  When we constantly demand that people make us feel secure and at peace, we are placing an unbearable burden on them.

The truth is that there is only one marriage that we need and only one marriage that can make us whole.  It is the marriage that is spoken of in this psalm, and it is a marriage that is open to all of us.  Understanding this marriage may help you feel more content in your singleness or give you strength if your marriage feels like a battle-ground.

A title of grace

The title of this psalm tells us that it was written by the sons of Korah.  You might remember the story of Korah.  He led a rebellion again Moses and Aaron, in the book of Numbers.  The ground literally swallowed those rebels up.  However, God is full of amazing grace.  Korah’s sons were sparred, and God had a plan for Korah’s descendants.  After several generations the great Samuel was born to the line of Korah.  Later the Korahites were made doorkeepers and custodians of the tabernacle (1 Chronicles 9:19-21).  However, perhaps the most amazing privilege given to the descendants of Korah is that David made them leaders in music and praise at the tabernacle, and they were inspired to write a number of the Psalms.  Our merciful God takes a wicked rebel like Korah and blesses his descendants wonderfully.

The title also tells us that this is a love song.  It’s really a hymn celebrating a royal wedding.  It is impossible to be sure which king from David’s line is being celebrated, and it does not matter.  Ultimately this is a song about King Jesus!    

We have the most amazing groom (1-9)

We can see that this psalm reaches beyond any earthly king.  After all to what king could we say, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever’ (see Hebrews 1:8-9)?  This is a wonderful praise song to God the Son!

So what is King Jesus like?  He is the most excellent of all men and his lips sing words full of grace.  But he is also full of splendour and majesty.  We know that in heaven he is seated on a throne.  He will return in victory and we will celebrate his justice.  One day all those who have made themselves his enemies will fall beneath his feet.  He loves righteousness and hates wickedness.  While he is mighty, he is also humble. 

The English Standard Version translated verse two saying, ‘you are the most handsome of the sons of men.’  That is interesting given that Isaiah had prophesied that the Saviour would have no beauty or majesty to attract us to him (Isaiah 53).  I think that the outer-beauty of the original king this Psalm was composed for looks forward to the unparalleled inner-beauty of King Jesus!

Our amazing groom delights over us (10-16)

In the second half of the psalm the bride is led to her groom.  If Jesus is the king, then his people are his bride (Ephesians 5:25-27).  While the bride may be used as a reference to the whole of God’s people, the church, don’t forget that this church is made us of individuals.  He sings over you!  This psalm says that Jesus sees you as honourable and beautiful.  He leads you with joy and gladness.

If Jesus had no outer beauty to attract us to him, we had no inner beauty to attract him to us.  He set his love on us when we were still rebels against his grace and were covered head to toe in the stench of sin.  Yet for reasons that go beyond understanding he loved us and gave his life for us (Galatians 2:20).  Tim Keller writes, ‘he doesn’t love us because we are lovely but in order to make us so, by grace.’

The moment Christ came into your life he removed the stain of all your guilt and presented you to his Father as white as snow.  His Spirit is now at work changing you.  Many of you are very good at telling me how awful you are—I don’t disagree with you, our hearts are more inclined to evil than we imagine—but don’t forget to see what God is doing in you.  His grace is changing you, and that delights Jesus. 

I know that everything that we do for God is compromised by what John Newton called Mr. Self.  We never do anything for entirely pure motives.  Even our repentance is polluted with mixed motives.  But Jesus takes the weeds that we offer to God, breathes his breath of grace over them and they are presented in heaven as the most beautiful roses. 

We are not what we ought to be.  We are not what we want to be.  We are not what we will be, when we see Christ face to face.  But by the grace of God we are not what we used to be (adapted from Newton).  Our heavenly groom, King Jesus, rejoices in who he is making us and what we are becoming in Him.

Conclusion

Marriage can become an idol.  It becomes an idol when we are more concerned about meeting an earthly groom (or bride) than enjoying our heavenly groom.  It becomes an idol when we expect an earthly spouse to minister to us in a way that only our heavenly spouse can.  Only one spouse can make us complete, his name is Jesus.  When we feel complete in him we will stop idolizing other relationships and demanding more than people can ever deliver.

George Matheson learned the hard way that Jesus was more to him than any spouse can be.  He was engaged to be married, but he was told that he was going blind.  When his fiancé realised that he was losing his sight she broke off the engagement.  He was devastated.  Yet during that time of severe emotional loss he leaned upon his heavenly bride and wrote one of the most moving hymns of the nineteenth-century:

O Love that will not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in Thee;

I give Thee back the life I owe,

That in Thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.

Can I be sure that I am a Christian?

There are some sermons that get more feedback than others.  That is often because they touch a pressing need or concern.  My hope is that this will be one of those talks.  I want you to be able to sing with confidence, ‘I am my beloved and he is mine’ (Song of Songs 2:16).  I know how terrifying it can feel to be unsure of your relationship with Jesus.  I know that some of you doubt the reality of your faith.  My desire is that you would be set free from such worries.

Why do many genuine Christians lack assurance?

Maybe you grew up in a home that excelled in criticism.  Your parents might have been impossible to please and no one ever delighted in you.  Perhaps you have been let down by friends.  You are painfully aware of your failings and flaws.  You can’t see how God could accept people who are not perfect.  In short, grace seems too good to be true!

Many people struggle with a sense of assurance because they grew up in a Christian home and can’t remember a time when they came to faith.  They might have prayed, ‘the sinner’s prayer’ but don’t know if it was real thing.  They envy those who can point to a dramatic conversion.  They might have professed to be a Christian at such a young age that their teenage rebellions happened after they were supposed to be a Christian rather than before.  They fear that they may only have accepted the gospel because it was what they grew up with.

For some the problem lies in issues like temperament or mental health.  Some struggle with such levels of clinical anxiety that they can’t access the truth that God desires to be gracious to them.  One of the roles of medication and counselling is to bring such people to a place where they are able to hear the gracious promises of God.

There are three grounds upon which we are to base our assurance.  The first is the promises of God, the second is the fruit of God’s presence within us and the third is the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.  But do not think that these three grounds of assurance are of equal power.  Instead think of one of those tricycles with a large front wheel and two small back wheels.  The large front wheel, that drives the whole thing, is the promises of God.

The promises of God

One of the Puritans said that the promises of God were like golden coins in a large bag that God pours at the feet of the needy and then says, ‘take whatever you will’.  The same Puritan also said that they are like the stars in the night sky.  When you first go out into the dark you notice only a few of the stars.  However, the longer you gaze upwards and your eyes focus, the more stars you see.  Until you see that the whole night is littered with too many stars to count.  The Bible contains a multitude of promises to comfort the anxious.

The great thing about God’s promises is that they are rooted in God’s character.  As a result it gives him great honour when his children claim them for themselves.  Holding fast to God’s promises has the advantage of taking our eyes off ourselves and placing them on Jesus.  Look at your own life and you will see things that cause you to doubt.  Look at Christ and you will see things that comfort you.  Robert Murray McCheyne said that we should take ten looks at Christ for every one look at self.

‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved’ (Acts 16:31).  There are only two options here.  You either believe or you don’t.  You either looking to him for his forgiveness or trying to claim your own righteousness.  You either want to become like Jesus or want to live as you please.  Remember that the only reason you desire God is that his Spirit has caused you to want him (Romans 8:7).

The Welsh preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, said that more people came to him worried about ‘that one sin’ in their past than about anything else.  He would direct them to the promise of first John.  ‘If we confess our sins he is faithful and just, and will cleanse of all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9).  Where is the small print in that promise?  There is none.  This promise is greater than your sin.

John Bunyan, the author of the Pilgrim’s Progress, took great comfort from Jesus’ promise, ‘that all that the Father gives to me will come to me, and I will in no way drive them away’ (John 6:37).  God delights to show mercy (Micah 7:18).  Could you ever imagine the father of the prodigal driving away his returning son?

In the Pilgrim’s Progress, which is an allegory of the Christian life, Christian finds himself locked in Doubting Castle.  Giant Despair beat him and threatened to kill him the next day.  Then he remembers that he had ‘the key of promise’ in his pocket.  He took that key and escaped.  May God grant us the strength to hold God to his promises and so lead us to freedom!

Assurance from a transformed life

Jesus said that we would be able to recognise his people by their fruits (Matthew 7:16).  What does this fruit look like?  How much fruit do you have to see before you can be sure that you are a Christian?

This fruit is about showing things that don’t come naturally.  Even those who hate God love their family and friends (Matthew 5:47), but only those who have the Spirit are willing to humble themselves and cry, ‘nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling’.  God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.  The Christian no longer needs to pretend that they have it together.  They are happy to admit that they are a failed wreck.  They are not trying to deceive you with their supposed goodness but acknowledge their sin.

Everyone wants to do good when people are watching.  But God makes us want to do good to please him.  Not that we are ever free from mixed motives.  We simply desire to desire Jesus more.  We want to want him.  Joel Beeke says that ‘even the yearning to know God better is already, at least implicitly, an act of faith.’

Do you want to know Jesus?  Do you grieve at the fact that you so often fail to be like him?  Are you willing to accept that only the cross of Jesus could make you right with God?  Even traces of these fruit demonstrate the work of the Holy Spirit in you!  Remember that the natural mind resists God’s gospel and his call (Romans 8:7 and 1 Corinthians 12:3). 

Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that whenever anyone came to him worried about their salvation, he would always say, ‘you are a believer, for you would not be worried if you were not.’  ‘If ever a man wants to believe this truth it is always a work of the Holy Spirit.’

But what about our struggles with sin?  There is not a man in this room that doesn’t struggle with lust (for that matter many of you women also struggle in the same way).  Your troubling sin may be overeating, gossip, discontentment, jealousy or obsession over your image.  Sometimes your battles against you sin seem to overwhelm you.  You feel helpless.  It feels like you experience more defeat than victory.  How can you be sure you are in Christ when your life is in such a mess? 

Well, what do your non-Christian friends think about a sin like lust?  They laugh it off!  Christians struggle with sin.  Yes, they struggle!  That struggle against sin says that they are no longer dead in sin.  They are never content with sin.  When they fall God lifts them up.  As much as they enjoy sin, they also hate it.  The non-Christian may grieve the consequences of their sin, but they never grieve the fact that their sin saddens the heart of God.

The witness of the Holy Spirt

The third means of assurance is the witness of the Holy Spirit.  Paul writes that ‘the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God’ (Romans 8:17).  I am cautious about depending on this evidence because we are easily deceived by our feelings.  The Holy Spirit is not witnessing to us if we do not love the gospel and desire to be made holy.  If we do love the gospel and desire to be made like Jesus, then we are Christians even if we can’t feel the Holy Spirit witnessing to that fact.  God has graciously given us his Spirit so that when we get to thinking that God is our judge waiting to condemn us, we see that he is our Father delighting in us.  He wants us to know that reassurance.  But often we are too troubled to hear the Spirit’s whisper.

Joel Beeke tells of how the Holy Spirit gave assurance to him through driving home the truth of the gospel.  His grandfather had long suffered from doubts about assurance.  The one day their new minister visited.  What the new minister didn’t realise was that young Joel struggled with assurance just like his granddad.  The minister looked at the granddad and assured him, ‘for you, too, my friend there is a way of escape in Jesus Christ.’  I don’t know how those words affected grandad, but Joel started to rejoice in this truth.  The Holy Spirit enabled his to see that this was true for him.

Conclusion

God wants you to know that you are his child.  What sort of parent would adopt a child and not tell them that their adoption is secure?  Imagine a parent hiding the adoption papers and letting the poor child wonder if they are going to be taken from home.  God is not a bad parent.  He wants his children to be secure in his love.

But make sure that you base your security on the right things.  I know that none of you are foolish enough to think that you are a Christian simply because you were baptised and go to church.  I hope none of you think you are a Christian simply because you prayed ‘the sinner’s prayer’ many years ago.  I assume you realise that you are not a Christian if you won’t accept what Jesus teaches or don’t take seriously his call to a holy life.

The key to assurance is in who you put your confidence in.  The non-Christian places their confidence in themselves.  The Christian puts their confidence in God.  This is seen as they hold on to the promises of God and seek the testimony of the Holy Spirit.  This is also seen in how we look for fruit of God’s work in our lives.  You see we recognise the fruit because we have no confidence in ourselves.  We know that by nature we run from God rather than run towards him.  We know that by nature we will try to justify ourselves rather than acknowledge our guilt.  As one hymn-writer declares, ‘if I love thee, thou must have loved me first.’  Indeed, even if I long to love the God of the gospel that is evidence of his Spirit at work in me.      

What you get when you get Christ

I was reading a book entitled ‘Pardon and Assurance’ by a nineteenth-century Ulster Presbyterian minister called William Patton.  Patton spent a number of chapters detailing the awfulness of sin and its consequences.  That was not easy reading.  Our holy God cannot tolerate our wickedness.  We are helpless to work our way into his good books.  We deserve to be eternally separated from him and punished for our ongoing rebellion against his loving rule.

It is against this dark backdrop of human evil that the beauty of the gospel shines.  The good news of Jesus only speaks to those who see themselves as morally bankrupt, hell-deserving, helpless rebels.  We go to him when the Holy Spirit shows us our deepest need.  We go to him and sing, ‘nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.’  When we are brought to him he delights to bless us.  Patton outlined twelve wonderful things that we get when we get Christ.  I don’t normally preach twelve point sermons, but I want to mention each of them and add a few thoughts.

1.      You get a full pardon of all your sins

The apostle Paul declared in a sermon, ‘Let it be known that through this man [Jesus] forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you and by him everyone who believes is free for everything from which you could not be freed by the Law of Moses’ (Acts 13:37-38).  Even if your trust in Christ is feeble, God says your sins are forgiven, no matter how awful you may feel about what you have done, and even if your struggle to feel it.  Pardon is yours through the person of Jesus, and God wants you to honour his Son by being glad that you are forgiven.  ‘To God be the glory, great things he has done, so loved he the world that he gave us his Son … the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.’

2.     You are brought into God’s favour

God has blessed us in his beloved Son (Ephesians 1:6).  He not only forgives us, he accepts us.  ‘Though you were angry with me, your anger has been turned away, that you might comfort me.  Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid’ (Isaiah 12:1-2).  When you come to Jesus, his Father embraces you and brings you home.  You are now the apple of his eye, and a beloved one over whom he sings (Zeph. 3:17).

3.     You are a child of the Heavenly Father

Patton writes, ‘It is a good thing to get pardon, and still better to get God’s favour; but it is better still to become a child of God.’  ‘If you really trust Christ, even feebly, you are a child of God and God loves you, as he loves Christ.  And He is delighted to guide you and to protect you, and to provide for you, and to be everything that a loving father is to a child.’  Stop trying to make God love you!  He loves you.  You don’t need to try to win his love.  It flows out of him to all who are in Christ.  Honour that love by accepting and delighting in it.  When doubts about his love assail you, grasp his promises of love to all who believe.

4.     You are married to Christ

There is a poor girl who has nothing.  But a man who has everything loves her and she loves him.  The day she marries him she becomes rich.  You belong to Jesus (Romans 7:4).  He delights to care for you.  He will supply all your needs.  He will never leave you nor forsake you. 

5-6. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you and enable you to live a holy life and you get a new nature
‘I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh’ (Ezekiel 36:27).  The Holy Spirit dwells within the weakest believer.  A friend of mine used to say that the thing that held her back from becoming a Christian was that she felt that she wouldn’t have the strength to live the Christian life.  But the strength to follow Jesus comes through his gift of his indwelling Spirit.  We lean on him to cause us to will and to act according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:13).

7.  You get repentance and godly sorrow for sin
Jesus gives us repentance (Acts 5:31).  Before we may have felt ashamed when we were caught doing what we knew to be wrong.  We may have felt helpless when we gave in and did what we had resolved not to do.  But God was not at the centre of our thoughts.  We did not know what David meant when he prayed, ‘against you only have I sinned’ (Psalm 51).  But now our sorrow is saturated in love.  We grieve the fact that our rebellion is an act of treachery against one who has been infinitely kind to us.  We still sin (1 John 1:8), but we can no longer enjoy it the way we used to.  In fact our godly sorrow turns to joy as we realise that God is using it to turn us back to himself (2 Corinthians 7:10).

8.  You get power to love Christ
‘We love him because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19).  The key to loving Jesus is to see something of how much he loves you.  Don’t focus on your lack of love for him, focus on his infinite love for you.  Think of what he has done for you.  ‘This is love, not that we first loved God, but that he first loved us and gave his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins’ (1 John 4:10).  ‘I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20). 

9.  You get power to pray in the name of Jesus
As a child of God you have a unique right to approach the Father in heaven and ask him for anything in the name of his Son, your older brother, Jesus Christ.  You came to the Father with confidence because he has dealt with your sins and accepted you as righteous.  You can come to God with as much confidence as if you had lived a perfectly righteous life.  You came to God with the confidence that Jesus himself approaches the Father.  Because you love him, you pray according to His will.  You say to the Father, ‘I know that you can do all things.  All power and glory are yours.  But I know that you are good to me and know what is best.  Take my prayers and answer them in a way that reflects your goodness and kindness.’

10.  You get the power to do good works and to please God
Isn’t it wonderful that we can please God?  The first way to please God is to say yes to Jesus and accept Him as your rescuer and leader.  Now you are a beloved child and he takes great joy in what you do.  I know that everything we do is stained by mixed motives.  We still struggle with a sinful nature that quickly draws attention away from God to self.  I know that we never do anything with an entirely pure motive.  We are incapable of doing anything with an absolutely pure heart.  Yet Jesus’ blood cleansing the sin from our most feeble attempts to please our Heavenly Father, and now the Father can rejoice in all that we do for him.

11.  You get the precious promises of the Bible
‘For all the promises of God find their Yes in him’ (2 Corinthians 1:20).  There are all these cheques signed with the name of Jesus.  We can cash them at any time and we can keep on cashing them.  There is a promise for every need.  When we feel insecure we hold Christ to his promise to be with us to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20).  When we think that we have strayed too far to be welcomes home we remember that Jesus promised, ‘I will never drive away anyone who comes to me’ (John 6:37).  

12.  We get everlasting life
‘Truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life’ (John 5:24).  ‘Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ (John 17:3).

Eternal life now: knowing Jesus, having meaning and purpose, experiencing love and security, and enjoying hope and peace.  Eternal life to come: when God will wipe away the tears from your eyes and accept you into the fullness of his loving presence forever.

The eighteenth-century evangelist, John Wesley, apparently said on his death-bed, ‘best of all, God is with us.’  He had also said at times, ‘the best is yet to come.’  Those are the great hopes of eternal life now and to come.

Conclusion

This morning God says, ‘look at all I have done for you.’  This morning we have only touched on the blessings there are for us in Christ.  We have highlighted some of the best, but there are many more.  He is good to every creature that he has given breath.  He is good especially good to humankind, who he invites to know his Fatherly love.  He is infinitely good to those who have being brought to him in faith, and he will be good to you for ever.  If you haven’t experienced Jesus, don’t miss out on all that he offers you.  If you believe him, even though your faith is weak, gladden your heart as you ponder his kind blessings.   

The Beauty of Adoption

Russ Moore writes of the occasion when he and his wife adopted two boys from an orphanage in Russia.

“When Maria and I first walked into the orphanage, where we were led to the boys the Russian courts had picked out for us to adopt, we almost vomited in reaction to the stench and squalor of the place.  The boys were in cribs in the dark lying in their own waste.  Leaving them at the end of the day was painful, but leaving them the final day before going home to wait for the paperwork to go through was the hardest thing either of us had ever done.  Walking out of the room, to prepare for the plane ride home, Maria and I could hear Maxim calling out for us and falling down and convulsing in tears.

“When Maria and I, at long last, received the call that the legal process was over, and we returned to Russia to pick up our new sons, we found that their transition from orphanage to family was more difficult than we had supposed.  We dressed the boys in outfits our parents had brought for them.  My mother-in-law gathered some wild flowers growing between cracks in the pavement outside the orphanage.  We nodded our thanks to the orphanage personnel, and walked out into the sunlight, to the terror of the two boys.  They had never seen the sun.  They had never felt the wind.  They had never heard the sound of a car door shutting, or the sensation of being carried along at one hundred miles-an-hour down a Russian road.

“I noticed that they were shaking, and reaching back to the orphanage in the distance.  I whispered to Sergei, ‘… that place is a pit.  If only you knew what is waiting for you:  home with mummy and a daddy who love you, grandparents and great-grandparents and cousins and playmates, and McDonalds’ Happy Meals.  But all they knew was the orphanage they had come from, and it was squalid.  They had no other reference point.

“We knew the boys had acclimatised to our home—that they trusted us—when they stopped hiding food in their high chairs.  They knew there would be another meal coming.  They wouldn’t have to fight over scraps.  This was the new norm …

But I still remember those little hands reaching for the orphanage, and I see myself there.”

Adoption is a beautiful thing.  At its best it originates in the in the heart of people who simply want to pour out love.  It transforms the lives of the broken and vulnerable.  It is a reality that is offered to each of us.  For God is an adopting God.  This idea of adoption gives us the deepest insight into the nature of God’s love.

Don’t just think of the orphanage but think of the prison

The Bible presents a very bleak picture of what our lives were before God rescued us.  We were lost but Jesus found us.  We were slaves to sin and Christ has set us free.  We were without hope in the world and now we have a future.  We were condemned but our Saviour took our punishment upon his shoulders.  We were morally bankrupt and our debt has been paid.  We were in the dark and the Son of God has brought us into the sunshine.  We were blinded by the devil but now we can see the beauty of the gospel.  We were children of wrath but now we are the beloved of our heavenly Father. 

Don’t just think of Jesus coming to rescue us from the orphanage.  Think of him coming out into the wilderness, bursting into the courtroom, barging into the prison, paying our debt and placing his light giving-hands over our cloudy eyes.  Think of God sending his Son from his home in heaven to experience the rejection, mocking, torture and agony of the cross in order that we could become a part of his Father’s family.

Don’t just think of the lovely child but of the hostile rebel

When our friend Jenny Miller was talking about adopting her daughter, Nisha, she spoke of how there was an immediate bond between them.  She said that it seemed as if Nisha had chosen them as much as they had chosen Nisha.  They loved Nisha because she is so lovely and she responded with delight to their love.

However, the book of Romans tells us that when Christ came for us, we were hostile towards him (Romans 8:7).  John’s gospel tells us that when Jesus entered the world people refused to come into the light because their deeds were evil (John 3:19).  We did not seek him, we did not deserve him and we did not want him (Romans 3:11-18).  But God would not leave us be. 

‘I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me.  To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, “Here I am, here I am”’ (65:1).  Love initially travelled only one way.  Then the Holy Spirit broke our resistance.  God gave us a new heart with new affections.  We love him because he first loved us (1 John (1 John 4:19).  His kindness melted our hatred (Romans 2:4).  The great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, once said, ‘we moved not towards the Lord, but the Lord towards us … The offended God himself, in infinite compassion broke the silence and came forth to bless his enemies.’ 

Don’t just think of being free from guilt but think of being loved by the Father

God could have simply cancelled our debt and freed us from the prison of our guilt.  That would have been abundant mercy and marvellous grace.  He could have said, ‘I have done all this for you, now go on your way.’  But he wanted more.  The father didn’t want the prodigal to return as a hired man.  He wanted to have a son.  ‘God sent his Son … so that we might receive adoption as sons’ (Galatians 4:4-5).  J. I. Packer writes, ‘In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship—he establishes us as his children and heirs.  Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship.  To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater’.

Galatians tells us that in Christ there is neither male nor female because we are one in Christ (3:28).  So why does the Bible keep saying son rather than son or daughter?  In the ancient world the son was the privileged one.  It doesn’t matter if you are a woman or a man for all the privileges of a son are yours.  Indeed, you are an heir with Christ (Galatians 4:7).   

This fact that we are an heir with Christ reveals a wonderful truth about our adoption.  In the ancient world the inheritance always passed to a male child.  If there was no son then a son was adapted so that inheritance could be passed on.  But take note of the fact that the Father did not need to adopt us, for he already has a Son.  He did not need to adopt anyone.  He did not need to adopt rebels like us.  He was not lonely.  His life was not empty.  This adoption speaks volumes about his gracious heart.

Conclusion

‘Unless you’re assured that God loves you, it’s pretty hard to do anything in the Christian life’ (John Miller).  Think of the security that comes when we realise that God is our adopting Father.  ‘For if while we were his enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life’ (Romans 5:10).  In other words, having gone to the effort of adopting us, he is determined that he will never let us go.  As J. I. Packer writes, ‘for only bad fathers throw their children out of the family, even under provocation; and God is not a bad father, but a good one’ (Packer).  Your security with him is rooted in his loving commitment to you.  In him, you have nothing to fear.  In him, you are secure.  ‘For I am convinced that neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).