Pastor Tim Patoka Holy Trinity Sunday: May 27, 2018 Adopted Heirs Of The Triune God’s Family Romans 8:14-17 1) We are freed from sin’s slavery by the Holy Spirit. 2) We have the Father’s ear in all our prayers. 3) We share in the Son’s suffering and glory. God is 1 being. God is 3 distinct persons. That is what the word Trinity means, that God is 3 in 1. For centuries people have tried to explain this biblical teaching where God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit are 3 distinct persons yet all God at the same time. And to put it simply, it is beyond our understanding. According to our minds, when you add 1 plus 1 plus 1 it should equal 3. But according to how God describes himself in the Bible, the math is 1 plus 1 plus 1 which equals 1, not 3. Problems will come up whenever we try to fit God’s triune math within our human understanding. We can end up with partialism, that God has 3 parts called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet this is incorrect because then we saying that Jesus, the Father, nor the Holy Spirit are not fully God. They are only part of God. The other extreme is polytheism, where you have 3 separate gods who are called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are also a number of other pitfalls within those 2 extremes. But rather than make the Triune God fit within our human framework and so fall into doctrinal error, it is better to simply believe what Scripture says. After our sermon, we’ll get our chance to breakdown what Scriptures tells us about the Triune God is when we confess our faith according to the Athanasian Creed. Thankfully God does not call us to understand the inner workings of the Trinity. He calls us to believe what his Word says. And although today is Trinity Sunday, this morning we’re tackling an easier topic than what is the nature of the Trinity. Instead we’re going to look at what the Apostle Paul writes for us in Romans chapter 8 where we see how we become adopted heirs of the Triune God’s heavenly family and blessed by each person of the Trinity. There’s the Holy Spirit who frees us from our slavery to sin. The Father who will always listen to our prayers. And the Son who assures us of a future inheritance after our present sufferings. 1) We are freed from sin’s slavery by the Holy Spirit. Before we were adopted as heirs into God’s heavenly family, we were born in slavery to sin. This is the case for all people. No one is born into the Triune God’s family. Everyone is born in fear of God’s justice and as helpless slaves to the desires and actions that God finds no pleasure in. And when you look at the religions outside of Christianity, you see how that slavery to sin shows itself by how they answer this 1 question – how do you get right with the divine? They all answer in the same way – do this or that and hopefully you’ll be in the clear! And so people without Christ live out their lives enslaved in fear of God. It is in view of the universal depravity of mankind that Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, “The Spirit you received does 1
Pastor Tim Patoka Holy Trinity Sunday: May 27, 2018 not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship” (Romans 8:15a). This is where the Holy Spirit, the 3rd person of the Triune God, steps in. For it is when we received him that we stopped fearing God and were adopted into his family so that we may have the full rights of his sons and daughters. If you were reading this verse in a study Bible, you would find a footnote that further explains the gospel comfort from this divine adoption. This is what the footnote says, “the Greek word for [adoption to sonship] is a term referring to the full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture.” Just how it is today when a family adopts a child, the process is legally binding and final. The child that once was not part of the family now is in every sense of the word. The Apostle Paul is not being sexist here and saying that only guys will be adopted. This is true for all people, both guys and girls. When we received the Holy Spirit in faith, whether it was in the waters of our Baptism or through the hearing of God’s Word, we were adopted by the Triune God. Whereas before we were not in his family, now we are and will receive all that comes from being in his family. How can such a wonderful adoption take place in the first place? For that we need to look at God the Son, Jesus Christ. He did what every religion outside of Christianity commands those who are sin’s slavery – to do this and that so that they might be in the clear. Jesus did every this and that as God demands. He was in the eternal clear. But then Jesus did something no one expected. He took the sins of those who fail to do what God demands and gave them what he has done. He sacrificed himself on the cross and gave the reward of a perfect life to all who have been adopted into the Triune God’s family. That is what it means for you to be an adopted child of God. You and I have been freed from sin’s slavery and no longer live under fear of God’s justice. We are saved! This is what the Holy Spirit testifies with our spirit, that we believe in what has been done by Jesus through the faith we received when the Holy Spirit entered our hearts. And now we get to live as children of the Triune God’s family. 2) We have the Father’s ear in all our prayers. That brings us to the next person of the Trinity, God the Father. If we are his children, then he is our Father. God the Father is one we credit with making and preserving this world. Contrary to what science may teach, it did not take billions of years for this world to evolve to where it is today. God created all that there was and is in 6 days alone. He is so powerful and wise that he doesn’t need billions of years to get it right. He did it on the first go. To this day he continues to use his divine power to keep the seasons in order, planetary orbits in place, and everything else chugging away. It is no understatement to say that our God is indeed an awesome God. And it this all-powerful God that, by means of the Holy Spirit, we cry out in prayer and call, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15b).
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Pastor Tim Patoka Holy Trinity Sunday: May 27, 2018 It’s tempting to think that God is too far above us to hear us and our prayers. He is way up there in heaven and has been since the beginning of time. And us? Our lives are way down here and like blips on a line. There is a definite power differential between us and God the Father. And yet, we don’t have to doubt if our prayers are heard or not. They are heard! Each and every word we direct God’s way! In our verses from Romans, Paul writes the word Abba which is the Aramaic word for Father that an Aramaic-speaking child would use when talking to their father. And when a child knows their father loves them, they are confident that they will be heard. In a much greater way, God, our heavenly Father, loves us and will likewise hear us in all that we say in prayer. You don’t have to worry if God is too busy to listen to you. He is allpowerful and is more than capable to preserve this world while listening to the prayers of all his adopted children. 3) We share in the Son’s suffering and glory. And in addition to God the Father’s assurance that he will hear us, we also have the shared status we have with God the Son. Paul tells us in our verses from Romans, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Romans 8:16-17). Because we have received the Holy Spirit and his gift of faith, we are God’s adopted children. And because we are God’s adopted children, we are also his heirs and co-heirs with his Son, Jesus Christ. I don’t know about you, but I find that really comforting. Not only is God’s Son my Savior, he is my brother and we are in the same family. He is my co-heir which assures me that I will receive the same inheritance that he has already received – the joys of eternal life in heaven. But before we get to that blessed inheritance of heaven, we must share in the same sufferings that Jesus suffered. We already talked about what Jesus did so that we may be adopted into the Triune God’s family by receiving the Holy Spirit. Jesus did not have it easy to be that Savior we need. He suffered at the hands of sinful people who rejected him, shamed him, and killed him. To be a follower of Christ means that we too will suffer our own share of sufferings. It can be ridicule from higher education which teaches that evolution is the way this world came to be and you have to be ignorant or stupid to say anything else. It can be coworkers or peer groups who pressure us to go along with the flow and do or say the things we know God doesn’t approve of. It can even be ourselves when we say no to our sinful desires, those pesky remains of that slavery to sin in which we were born. There’s no other way to say it. To be an adopted heir of the Triune God’s family means that we will suffer for it. But I ask you, who is it that we share our heavenly inheritance with? It’s Jesus, the Son of God. And what did he receive at the end of his sufferings? The glorious inheritance that we have been talking about – heaven and its eternal life. Let Jesus’ model of suffering and glorious 3
Pastor Tim Patoka Holy Trinity Sunday: May 27, 2018 inheritance be the strength to endure your sufferings. You are not alone as you undergo your sufferings. You have here your church home, fellow adopted brothers and sisters in Christ, who call the same God their Father and testify with the Holy Spirit the truth that Paul shows us – that we are co-heirs with Christ. Be comforted in knowing that your sufferings are only temporary. One day you and I will pass away, our sufferings will cease, and we will receive the inheritance that comes from calling Christ our Savior. And it is there that not only will we see all the other heirs of the Triune God’s family. But we will also see and share in the glory that is of the Triune God himself. While you and I may never compute God’s math how 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 or understand how the Triune God is 3 distinct persons yet 1 God, there is something we can understand. How he makes us his adopted heirs. It starts with the Holy Spirit who frees us from our slavery to sin by entering our hearts with his gift of faith. Those who have faith that Christ did what we can never do have been adopted into God’s family. Because we are in God’s family, we can cry out to God the Father in prayer and say “Abba, Father.” To have the confidence that God will hear us every time we come to him in prayer. And, as Paul tells us, because we are God’s children, we are his heirs and co-heirs with his Son, Jesus Christ. We expect to suffer as our Savior did. But we can also be sure of the inheritance we will receive when our sufferings are over, when we enter life eternal in heaven itself. May God lead us to treasure our adopted status in his family and look forward to the inheritance we have as his heirs. Amen.
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