Sermons

Grow Part 3 - Sons, Not Slaves

June 4, 2017 Speaker: Reid Strahan Series: The Spirit Filled Church

Topic: Sanctification Passage: Romans 8:12–17

In a Spirit filled church we relate to God as sons, not as slaves. We are growing up, in the love and security of being sons of the Father, NOT as slaves, not as unloved kids, not as rejected, unwanted people, not as outsiders or strangers...we grow up as SONS of God. God COULD have saved you and helped you without going to far as to take you in as his child. But he adopted you, he made you his own sons and daughters. God is no longer some distant or impersonal force or dreaded judge, or slave driver, he is Father to you.

None of us here have ever been slaves. Some of us may have had some pretty nasty bosses, but none of us have been slaves! None of us here have ever known the fear of being under another person who had complete mastery over our lives, the fear of being under someone who could harm us, punish us, or give us impossibly hard tasks to do, which ruined our health and wore us down emotionally to the point that our life was shear drudgery.

The children of Israel, of course, DID experience that! The slave drivers of Egypt gave them a quota of bricks they had to produce each day. When they asked for relief, the slave drivers said, “Instead of less work we will give you more! Instead of supplying straw for the bricks you must go get your own straw wherever you can find it. “The slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, ‘Complete the work required of you each day, just as when you had straw’”. The people simply physically couldn’t bear this amount of work so they came up short. As a result, “The Israelite foremen were beaten and were asked, ‘Why didn’t you meet your quota of bricks yesterday or today!!”. The life of a slave was a life of harsh demands, fearful obedience, of trying to meet impossible quotas, of harsh punishment for failure, a life of being driven by authority without mercy or love.

Strangely enough, the very same attitudes that the Israelites would have developed toward their slave drivers, CAN develop in the heart of people toward God. Even a Christian can feel the weight of the commands, the demands of the law, the required quota of spiritual activities, and feel that God is something like Pharaoh and his slave drivers, making impossible demands, driving you, without any real intimacy and knowledge of you as a real person. Paul assures us that we did not receive that spirit from God!

He tells us God sent his Spirit into our life to take that all away and replace it with the personal intimacy and love of a father/son relationship. Verse 15, “You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, BUT YOU RECEIVED THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP (or adoption as sons). When God makes us his, he makes us his children, NOT his slaves.   He doesn’t rule us through slavery, but as a father!

There is a good sense in which we gladly view ourselves and servants or slaves of God. Romans 6 speaks of the freedom we have because we are NO LONGER slaves to sin which leads to death. Instead we have presented ourselves as slaves to God, which leads to glorious freedom and holiness and eternal life. In that sense to be slave to God is a good thing.

But there is another sense of being a slave that is NOT a part of our relationship with God. Romans 8:15 says God gave you His Spirit because he does not want you “to live in fear again”. Certainly there is great reverence and awe for our Father but sons of the Father do not live in a fear-based relationship with God. We obey God out of love, loyalty, devotion and desire to please, not out of fear. There is always reverence but never fearful terror of our father!

INSTEAD of fear, God gave us the Spirit of Sonship. Other translations say Spirit of adoption, or spirit of adoption to sonship, or a Spirit of adoption as sons.   Luther translated it, “we have been given the Spirit of a child, or the Spirit of childship”.  

But it is clear this is not JUST an attitude, it is the Holy Spirit HIMSELF who sets us free from attitudes and feelings of slavery and fear, to relate to God as his children. Galatians 4:6 says, “God sent the Spirit of his Son, into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out “Abba Father””.   This is based on God’s Word, but it is not just a doctrine, or something we know, it is based on the REAL working of the Holy Spirit within our hearts!

When you repent of your sins and trust in Christ you become a child of God.   And it is the work of the Holy Spirit to make you know, AND FEEL like a son, to make you know that you are loved and cared for as a son; that you have the standing, the place of a son! The father accepts you as his own. You belong to him.

John Brown in his commentary on Romans, said, “The Spirit leads you to regard God with delightful feelings of love and confidence with which a child regards his father”.

John Wesley’s father wrote to him, “The inward witness, son, the inward witness, that is the strongest proof of Christianity”. He was referring to Romans 8:16 which says, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children”.   In my mind, I can ponder thoughts such as ‘Is God really there?’. But in my spirit I cannot escape a sense that God is my Father, that I am his and he is mine, that I am his son. This sense of being a son, is a precious thing you know deep inside.

We had time with family and some dear friends this weekend. But when it was all over, I observed this father/son relationship in action: Silas went home with Josh, Cedric, Christian and Peter went home with Luke. The sons go home with the father, they sleep in his house, he feeds them and watches over them, and they know they belong to him. When Luke says, Cedric and Christian, get in the car, it’s time to go home, they know that’s their dad rounding them up. They might play with lots of other kids, but they also know that they have the unique privilege of having their father as their father. Those boys might not be able to verbalize that but they intuitively understand that connection with Luke.

If you are a son of God, you understand that connection too, by the working of the Spirit within you. When the Spirit of God says, its time to give that up or put that away, or its time to forgive that person, you respond, or you are led by that voice because you understand the connection you have to God. You understand that’s your father calling you. You grow up, you mature, you become holy, in the love and security of that father/son consciousness!  

God does not only legally declare you to be a son, but by the work of the Spirit, he make you a son of God in the way you feel, think, and live. IE it affects you!!!These verses show us THREE ways your adoption as sons is confirmed. Or three things that happen to you when you receive the Spirit of Sonship.

As a son of God, you are led by the Spirit, to put to death, remaining sins.

Verse 11 tells us God used the Holy Spirit to raise Christ from the dead. And he uses the same Spirit now to enable you to live as a child of God, to live as a son!

Verse 12 says, “Therefore, we have an obligation, but it is NOT to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. FOR those who are led by the Spirit of God, are the sons of God”.  

As a son, you have no obligation to obey the sinful nature! You are not bound to it an any way. You are utterly free. We have an obligation, not to sin, but to the Father!

Sons of God put to death the misdeeds of the body. If you are dealing with sinful attitudes and lust and jealousy and malice, and complaining, if you are killing things like that in your life….you are doing that BECAUSE you are a child of God! It is the Spirit of God who is leading you to do that! This is something that is going on in every true child of God. Of course there is not perfection, but sin IS being dealt with! That’s what happens in sons of God!

The Spirit leads us to repudiate sin, we develop an aversion to sin, a hatred of sin and evil BECAUSE we are sons of God. Our attitude toward sin is not to excuse it, to explain it, not to coddle it, not to compromise with it,….. but to kill it. Because you are sons of God, because his Spirit is in you, leading you, YOU don’t have to allow that sin to continue for years! You put it to death by walking in the Spirit’s leading.

Being led by the Spirit is the hallmark of the children of God. To be led by the Spirit means to have the direction of your life determined by the Spirit of God. If you hear his voice, if your life is being guided by the Spirit, if you see the influence and moving of the Spirit on your heart, then you are a child of God. This is the difference between the children of God and all other people. The Spirit of God is at work in the sons of God, and the sins of the flesh are not determining the direction of your life.

You have child-like affections for God. You are attracted to God, there is desire to be with him.

God puts within you the emotional bond that sons and fathers have! Verse 15 “And by (the Spirit), we cry, “Abba Father”.   Abba was a word used to express personal warm affections towards your father. It is a child's word! A word children called their fathers! One commentary I read said, “Abba is a very endearing term that reflects deep relational intimacy without any kind of formalism and legalism”. The closest translation in English would be “dear father, or papa, or daddy”.

The Holy Spirit puts within your heart this cry for God, this deep longing, this attachment to your Heavenly Father. You may be conscious of it during worship. You may feel it when you are out for a walk by yourself, or when you wake up in the night. You may feel it after a message on Sunday morning, or during the Lord's supper. Anytime day or night, you have this longing for God. I am sure you know what I am talking about. This cry comes from the Holy Spirit.

David Guzik said, “We don’t whisper ‘Daddy’, as if we were hesitant to speak so affectionately. Instead we cry it out!” Nothing creates closeness to God, like this cry in your heart. Instead of indifference to God, or feeling detached from God, or feeling rejected by God, or feeling unwanted by God, we KNOW from deep inside us we are sons and daughters of God and we call out to him.

It is the Holy Spirit who creates this kind of child-like love in your heart for your heavenly father. It does not depend upon you having had a great home life when you were growing up. The Holy Spirit gives you this delight in God as your father, no matter what your past has been.

One of the ways you know you are a child of God, is when you are in distress, when you are in trouble or pain, you instinctively cry out “Father”. The night before Jesus was crucified, he went to the Garden of Gethsemane. He was in great inner agony. He told his disciples, “My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death”. He told them to stay where they were, and he went a little farther so he could be by himself, and he cried out, “Abba, Father”. If you are a child of God, this is what you instinctively do in your darkest hours, when your soul is overwhelmed, when you feel hurt and lonely and empty. You cry out, “Father, dear Father, help!”.  

Unbelievers do not have this sense of intimacy with God as father. They are more likely to blame God, or be cynical in times of crisis - “How could God do this to me?”.   Believers experience grief, defeat, loss, great pain at times, but we instinctively cry out “Father!”.

You are given the “inward witness of the Spirit" 

Verse 16 “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children”. The Holy Spirit testifies, or confirms deep down inside you, that you are in this father/son relationship. He makes you conscious that you are part of the family of God. And he does that inside of you, in your spirit. You can know something in your mind and it can never touch your heart. What you know in your spirit you know in the surest and safest way. You know that you know that you know.

Some true believers struggle from time to time, wondering if they really are a child of God. But I think this comes more at the mental level and focusing on temporal feelings or circumstances. All true children of God, when they quiet all the noise, and listen, will hear the Holy Spirit testifying that they are a child of God.                                          

What is going on when someone does not have this cry in their hearts for God? Some are interested in other things and other activities but don’t seem to hunger for God. There does not seem to be this father/son attachment and intimacy.

*It could be that they are not truly born of God.

*It could be a resistance to the work of the Holy Spirit. While on the one hand this Spirit of sonship is exclusively created in you by God, we are exhorted in scripture to listen to his voice, to not harden our hearts, to be filled with the Spirit, to not quench the Spirit. We are to set our minds on the things of the Spirit. Jesus said, Whoever has ears, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. We have an obligation to listen, to agree with the Spirit, to say amen, to receive these things, to say, “Let it be done to me according to your word”.

*It could be due to listening to a lot of other voices, living superficially and not listening to the cry of God’s Spirit within them.

Listen to your “basic hearts desire” - not the mood of the moment, not to what you feel like doing, but deep in your heart, what do you really desire to be and to do and to say. If the Spirit of God dwells in you, your basic hearts desire is to please God as your father. CS Lewis said, “The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”

This Spirit of Sonship is one of the richest blessings the Holy Spirit brings to you. Partake of it fully. Don't quench this Spirit crying Abba Father. Let him lead you into this personal intimacy and enjoyment of your heavenly Father.

Respond to the Holy Spirits promptings to call out to God “Abba Father”. Talk to God as a child talking to his father.

This “Abba-Father relationship” is now your core identity. More than being man or woman, more than being a businessman or teacher, more that being a mom or dad, This is the most important thing about you.   That you are a son or a daughter of God! And it is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And this is how we live and grow in a Bible-based, Spirit-filled church.

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