In his sermon titled 'The Spirit of Adoption,' Scott Brown explores Romans 8:14-17, emphasizing the profound blessings of being led by the Spirit and adopted as children of God. Brown outlines four key blessings: being led by the Spirit, receiving the spirit of adoption, the Spirit bearing witness, and being heirs of God. He connects these blessings to practical Christian living, urging believers to focus on spiritual nourishment through the Word of God, prayer, and communal worship, while warning against the distractions of modern technology. Brown also discusses the importance of setting one's mind on heavenly things, avoiding sin, and fully embracing the Christian identity as God's adopted children. He concludes by encouraging the congregation to seek deeper spiritual engagement and to live in the joy and confidence of their adoption and inheritance in Christ.

Let's turn to Romans 8 and find verse 14. Romans 8 verse 14. I'll be reading 14 through 17. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. For as Many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.

For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Lord, we pray that you would take these words and enter into the deepest parts of our hearts and to teach us in the ways in which we should go, to instruct our minds and lift our souls and help us to know your will and Lord to just so give thanks and soak in this wonderful adoption as sons amen Please be seated.

As we've seen many, many times, the Apostle Paul is full of encouragement and these verses are no less such. There's tremendous doctrine in these verses. You have the fatherhood of God, you have what it means to be a son, you have the doctrine of the Holy Spirit all rolled up in these three verses. These are very, you know, heavy hitter truths that we need to really understand. And of course the immediate focus of all of these verses is what it means to be led by the Spirit, the most important thing in the walk of the Christian.

And what the Apostle's been saying is that if you are a Christian, then you are being led by the Spirit. But at the same time, he's also saying, even so, extel still more. And you find the same kind of pattern in the Bible. You have this reality, and then you have an encouragement to go deeper into that reality. And I'm here to just encourage us to do that here this morning.

And so here the apostle is explaining what it means to be a son, to what it means to be adopted. And there are four blessings, you have them in there in your outline. You can see them there. And I'd like to pass by them here. First of all, you are led by the Spirit of God.

That is verse 12. And we live not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And we introduced this whole idea last Sunday. And of course, last Sunday we were talking about the things we pursue in the Spirit. What does it mean to pursue the things of the Spirit?

But at the same time, the Apostle Paul is encouraging us to put to death certain things. And I quoted numerous times John Owen's mortification of sin, do you mortify, do you make it your daily work, be always at it while you live, be killing sin or it will be killing you. And so, but last week our focus wasn't that, it was what it means to be led by the Spirit. And what it means to be led by the Spirit is to seek the things of the Lord, particularly in his word. And what so struck me going through that whole section is just how good God is, What a good shepherd he is.

He desires the believer to be filled with such good things, and we were defining what those were, and I camped at length on Philippians 4.8. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely whatever things are of good report if there is any virtue and if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. And I brought those verses really in the context that we live in and I was making the point that we really, we live in a time of, I just called it the cyber attacks of the soul. You have the forces of the technology that are upon us now are so distracting, they're so defining, and it's critical that we understand that this is a matter of spiritual warfare and the algorithms are actually set to progressively corrupt your mind and people are actually paying to find you and they want to find you and they want to corrupt you. This is the kind of world that we live in but God at the same time he he tells his children to focus on completely different things.

Whatever is true, whatever is lovely, all those beautiful things. And I was so struck by this enriching God. He so desires to fill our minds with good things and to turn away from everything that is not. I woke up this morning just reading the Bible according to my regular pattern in Psalm 103, which tells me to bless the Lord. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is in within me bless his holy name.

And he goes on, bless the Lord, oh my soul, forget not all of his benefits, who forgives all your sins, who heals all your diseases, but then he says, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. This is your God. He wants to renew you like the renewal of an eagle, and he wants to fill your mouth with good things and I couldn't get this out of my mind Lord there's none like you and I actually ran out of time to say all these things in my last sermon here but you know the Lord is so good he he tells you to set your mind on the things that are above not on the things that are on the earth he He tells you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. He tells you in 1 Peter chapter one verse five, to give yourself to virtue. Give yourself to virtue.

He says, for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control, to self-control, perseverance, and to perseverance, godliness. But he's really just sort of parroting what the Lord Jesus said when he said, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind.'" All your mind, Set your mind on heavenly things. In 1 Peter 1, Trent preached on this several months ago, verse 13, he says, gird up the loins of your mind. You know, get your mind together, be sober. Rest your hope fully on the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ as obedient children not conforming yourselves to the former lusts in Romans 12 9 we'll get there someday he says cling to what is good in Jude 20 he says build yourselves up in the most holy faith praying in the Holy Spirit Keeping yourselves in the love of God Solomon says above all else guard your heart In Psalm 64 we're told that when we do this, we shall be satisfied with the goodness of His house in His holy temple.

God so desires to satisfy your mouth with good things. And that's why he says to us in Romans 14, for the kingdom of heaven is not in eating and drinking, but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. All these things have to do with walking in the Spirit, to being led by the Spirit, not being led by the course of this world, not being led by the people around you, not being led by your internet connection, not being led by whatever, but being led into the fountain of living water. He is a fountain of life. All his ways are pleasant ways.

All his paths are peace. David says, you've been a shelter to me. This is what God wants to do. This is what it means to be led by the Spirit. It means to be led from the things of God, the holy things of God.

I was reading a book I was reading a book two weeks ago by George Swinick and he says this, God is all good things, God is every good thing. He is self-sufficient, alone-sufficient, and all-sufficient. There is nothing wanting in Him. And then He says, Are you ambitious? He's the crown of glory and a royal diadem.

Are you covetous? He is unsearchable riches. Are you voluptuous? He is a river of pleasures and fullness of joy. Are you hungry?

He's a feast of wine on the lees. Are you weary? He is rest, a shadow from the heat. Are you weak? He's the Lord Jehovah, the everlasting strength.

Do you have doubts? He's marvelous in counsel. Are you in darkness? He's the Son of righteousness. I'll stop there.

He goes on and on. But all of this to say that God is the greatest medicine you can ever have. He's the greatest healer of your mind. He's the only one who can set you right when you're discouraged or angry or in sin. He's the only one.

And that's what it means to be led by the Spirit of God. And, you know, in covering these things as a local church, I just think we should ask ourselves, is this the kind of people we want to be? I think you want to be these kind of people. And let's even more, excel still more, in all those things, setting aside everything that hinders and being led by the Spirit of God engaging your whole being you know David he said I'm like a green olive tree in the house of God, I trust in the mercy of God forever. That's Isaiah 52 verse eight.

And then he says, but here's the man who did not make God his strength. So the apostle is teaching us how to be led by the Spirit. We seek the things of the Spirit. And he's talking about this whole matter of how do you know if you're a child of God, how do you know you are adopted? And there are answers here in these verses here.

But the first blessing, the first blessing of adoption is that you're led by the Spirit. And so the Lord is so good. But the second blessing is you have the spirit of adoption that's in verse 15. You have the spirit of adoption This is an evidence of your sonship. Verse 15, for you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out Abba Father.

Now this is the first time in Romans where we find the word son or sons. Now he's not speaking of boys, he's speaking of boys and girls, men and women. This is code for people. And you know, you have those who are adopted in the church in Rome, you know, as we have here. And they have become sons, they were born again, and they were adopted.

You know, I was reflecting on some of the baptisms lately in our church. Actually, it goes way back, but many of the adoption testimonies say that they were converted, particularly children, they were converted during the preaching, some passage of scripture, or some Bible study that they were having with somebody in this church, or some conversation that happened here, right there in this room. So many were saved and I was reading, I was reading in Psalm 87, the line, this one was born here. You know, some of you were born here, You were born again, you entered into adoption right here. This is one of the beautiful things about the Church of Jesus Christ.

He has such patience with us, and then at some point, if we're not believers, the Lord puts his hand on our head and we realize that we want to follow him. We want to walk with him and we don't want to walk in the ways of the world anymore. But I was so struck this one was born here. Maybe you never know when someone will be born here. So back to this matter of sonship and adoption.

J.I. Packer makes a remarkable statement about this verse. He says, you sum up the whole New Testament teaching in a single phrase if you speak of it as a revelation of the fatherhood of the holy Creator he says you can sum up the whole Admonition of the old and the New Testament to this be adopted by God and So what is adoption well in natural birth, you do not choose. In adoption, There's a parent who chooses. And in the new birth, it really implies that you come in as a baby.

In adoption, you are fully grown. But someone wants you. But you're not very pretty. You've ruined, you've wrecked different parts of your life. You've ignored God and you may have sinned grievously, but someone wanted you and he wanted you.

And so he called you and he reached out to you. He took pains. He paid a price for you as is true in adoptions. So there you have these two images of the doctrine of salvation. You have the new birth and you have adoption.

And in the in the first birth when you were born to your mother, you became a creature of God. In your second birth, you become a child of God. You become a son of God, and you are adopted. But what this means is that you adoption means that you now have a family you have been brought into a new family and And you're not a you're no longer a stranger. When you go into a restaurant, you are a stranger.

You feel like a stranger, because you are a stranger. This is not your home. But when you go into the the family of God, you're not a stranger. I don't feel like a stranger here. People know me.

This is my family. And so you're in adoption, you're you are actually brought into a family and you now have brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and you have uncles and grandmothers and maybe great grandmothers you know in the church because you become part of a generationally diverse family and it's such it's such a blessing But he says here that you did not receive the spirit of bondage to fear. And I take this that in adoption, you're no longer fearing condemnation. Jesus said it was for, Paul said it was for freedom that you were set free and if the Son makes you free you are freed indeed. And before you are adopted you are a slave to sin.

Before you are adopted, you are under the condemnation of sin. And of course, remember this chapter begins with, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation, not for what is in the past, not for what's in the present, not for what's in the future. No, not ever, not for all eternity, even when you face God in the final judgment. There is no condemnation.

But you're freed from that. You're no longer like Adam in the garden who was afraid. Why was he afraid? Because he was naked, he was exposed. He had shame and he needed his shame to be covered so God sacrificed an animal and made clothing for him and clothed him with with a tunic with a robe of righteousness.

This is what it means and that's why in 2nd Timothy 1 7 Timothy says for God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and sound mind.'" So we don't live in fear of condemnation anymore in the church of Jesus Christ. It doesn't mean that we don't turn from our sins and repent and grieve over our sins. It doesn't mean that, but it means that we don't suffer condemnation for our sins. And so there is a, when you're adopted and you have a father, then you have confidence before your father and you cry out to him, Abba, father. Father.

This is a, Abba is a word that carries with it affection and closeness and trust and confidence and warmth. And it's to say, I have a father. When you're born again, here's what you say, Oh Father, you speak to your Father because you know your Father will take care of you. You know your Father is slow to anger. You know your Father will teach you in the way in which you should go.

You have a father. Maybe you never had a father. Maybe your father, you know, abandoned you. This happens in the world. Some of you had fathers and mothers who abandoned you.

I know that's true. But, you know, like the psalmist said, even if my father and mother forsake me, Lord, you will not forsake me. You'll always take care of me. And so, when you're adopted, you're no longer a child of the devil you're no longer one of the sons of disobedience you're a son of God and by the way this word Abba father two words Abba and Father, it's the same thing you find in the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, Abba.

It's the same word that Jesus used when he prayed to his father in Gethsemane in Mark 14. And what the Christian does is this, He knows he has a father in heaven. He knows he has everlasting protection. He knows he has adequate provision. He knows he has a father who will take care of him.

Now, there are times when Christians kind of lose touch with this. There's a reason. We'll get to that later. But you know, The Christian faith is not very sophisticated. It's very simple.

You have a person who has a father and he cries out to God as a father. You know, it's so important that we understand this. You know, here's sort of an illustration of this. In about a month, we're gonna have a kids singing camp in this church. And we're gonna gather all these kids together and we're gonna teach them how to sing and we're gonna teach them nine songs.

And we're gonna do it for three days and then on Sunday night on September 15th we're gonna come here and sing together it's gonna be really neat so why why are we doing this well the songs that you sing they carry you through your life Songs get you through seasons of life. And they teach you how to rejoice. They direct your mind. And I'm just reflecting upon, we're doing this because when the children in this church are 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 and 70 and 95, that these songs will come back to strengthen them. They'll come back and rescue them.

These songs will come back and see them through because that's what songs do. You know, I'm, you know, there are times, there are things that I encounter today that I'm carried along by songs that I learned when I was 15. So what we so we're so we were going to try to teach these kids nine songs all the verses of nine songs. You know, it was several months ago, maybe over a year ago, one of the one of the young fathers came up to me after the service. Said, Mr.

Brown, I wish we sang some of these songs more often because I, my kids, we sing so many songs, he didn't say it the way I just said it, we sing so many songs, he said it very nicely, we sing so many songs but they don't learn the verses. Can we sing songs more often? But I've been thinking about that ever since. Hey, that's one reason why we're having a singing camp, because we're going to sing these songs over again. So we're going to sing these songs at singing camp, and then throughout, over the next year, we're going to keep singing these songs a bunch of times.

Why? Because songs keep you through the seasons of your life. The songs help you to cry out Abba, Father in every situation that you're in. And to saturate your mind with the songs is so important. And this is one of the blessings of adoption is that you cry out Abba Father.

I'm going to give you seven facts about adoption. Are you ready? I'm gonna go fast. Many of these are taken from Fisher's Catechisms. Such a fantastic theological workbook.

First, in adoption, the spirit dwells. The Holy Spirit takes up residence and takes possession of a person. And that's our passage here, Romans 8, 15. Second, in adoption you are translated into the family of God. Third, in adoption you are received into the number of the sons of God.

You are received into a definite number of the saints. God numbers all of his people. He knows how many Christians there are in the world, and when you get adopted, you get added to the list. Oh Lord, let me be in that number when the saints come marching in. Fourth, when you are adopted, it is irrevocable.

Once adopted, you're always adopted. Nothing can reverse it. Fifth, if you're adopted, it's an act of free grace. It flowed from the favor of God. Galatians 3 26, you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus' children.

Galatians 4, God sent forth his son to redeem them who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons. Sixth, in adoption your name is changed. Revelation 3 12, I will write upon him a new name. In adoption you're no longer called by your former name. Your former name was stranger, foreigner, forsaken, child of the devil.

But now you are, your name is, You are fellow citizens with the saints in the household of God. Seventh, in adoption your name never changes. Your name never changes. You are a son because you've been adopted. And how do you know?

How do you know if you're adopted? Because in the simplicity of your heart, you cry out Abba Father. You know, many years ago, there was a very broken family that came here, a pastor friend of mine in another state, sent this family here, hoping they could get some help here. And they were very broken. They left the church, the parents ended up in prison.

I think they had six children. And the children were all put up for adoption. And last week, last Sunday, I went to the baptism of one of my grandsons. And as we were all standing around there, a young lady walks up to me and she says, do you know who I am? And I said, no, I don't know who you are.

And she gave me, she says, I am, and she gave me her name. And I was shocked. She says, she told me she was 20 years old and That she was one of the children that was put out for adoption. She was so happy that she had been adopted. And she said, She said, Mr.

Brown, your church helped our family so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. But her whole life had changed because she had not just been adopted once by these parents, but then she became a son of God and she was adopted a second time after her first adoption. But this is such a blessing of sonship. So the second blessing of sonship is that you have the spirit of adoption, that's verse 15.

The third blessing is you have the Spirit bearing witness. Verse 16, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. This is a little bit difficult to describe. Let me just say that this is not the same thing as getting excited. It's an intuitive knowledge, but how does the spirit bear witness?

Now, I would say that it may produce a feeling but it doesn't always because our feelings go up and down. Do not base your faith on your feelings because your feelings are always going to go up and down. You base your faith on your feelings you're gonna wonder you know maybe every other day whether you're even a Christian. But the Spirit assures us in different ways and 1st John tells us what this looks like but The spirit bears witness by the fact that we want to put sin to death. If you want to put sin to death, it's proof that you're a son of God.

You know, you have the spirit bearing witness. When your spirit within you is crying out, it's God, God makes something happen in your spirit and you want to cry out to God. You want to. This is the Spirit bearing witness. The Spirit does many things to bear witness that you're the Son of God.

The Bible says that one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is that he convicts. Another ministry of the Holy Spirit is that he guides. Another ministry of the Spirit is that he comforts. We could camp on each one of those, but this is what the Bible says about what the Spirit does. He does all those things.

The Spirit is not some ethereal force. Spirit is a person. It is the person of the Holy Spirit working inside of you, and there's a person living inside of you that is crying out, Abba Father. The Spirit leads us infallibly through the Word. You know, David said this in Psalm 73.

He says, Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold me by my right hand. You will guide me with your counsel." In another place he says, God says, I will guide you with my eye. God leads his children by His Spirit and His Word is the Word of the Spirit. Jesus said, my words are Spirit and they are life.

If you want to be led by the Spirit, then be led by the Word of God. And It's such a blessing to have a spirit that cries out, Abba Father, do you have it? Do you have that? And the fourth blessing of sonship is that you are heirs. This is in verse 17.

You are heirs and there are four categories of inheritance here. And I'm gonna develop these later in more detail. Just going to briefly skim over them and I want to get to application. But the first blessing here, this first blessing of inheritance is that we are heirs of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God.

And this means that you, You inherit what your Father in heaven has for you, God the Father. God the Father has secured an inheritance in heaven, preserved for you. It is an inheritance of God. You think of the things that God has created You think of the wisdom and the beauty of God. You should just think that your inheritance has got to be like that The Bible actually says it's greater than any earthly blessing, Revelation 22.

And then not just heirs of God, but heirs of Christ, and joint heirs with Christ. That means that we inherit whatever Christ inherits. We are not distanced from Jesus Christ. He is our savior and we inherit what he inherits. We are the church of the first born.

Jesus Christ is the first born and we are as his sons firstborn. And we share in the inheritance of the son. There's much to say about the inheritance of the son. But then also, we are heirs of his suffering in verse 17. And one of the proofs of your coming inheritance is your present suffering.

Don't misunderstand your suffering. Your suffering is an evidence, it's a proof of your inheritance. So don't ever get discouraged too much about your suffering because it's telling you, it's telling you that you have an inheritance. And how a person holds up in suffering is often proof of his faith. And then we are heirs in glorification, that we may be glorified also together.

Well, we're gonna camp on this matter of inheritance later on, But I wanna just pause to try to work through some applications of all these things. We've seen the goodness of God in our adoption. We've seen how God is so good that he only leads his children into the treasures for their souls. And he, you know, He desires his children to open their mouths and eat of the finest of wheat. So we've covered that this morning already.

But If there's someone here who believes that they've not, they're not adopted, that they are not a son of God, their hearts are hard or have been hard, and they have resisted the voice of the Holy Spirit. Do you see how good God is? Do you see how he would have you feast your mind on every good thing? Do you see how he wants to satisfy you with the goodness of his house? Do you see that he wants to bring you into the river of his pleasures like David said?

You know, I Just want you to pause and ask yourself is that the kingdom that you want I hope you do I want you to want that kingdom But for the believer for the believer who knows he needs to set his mind on the things of the Spirit, but yet feels passive, feels like they're not exactly where they should be or want to be. They're not as fruitful. Their zeal isn't what they think it should be. I just want to talk about that for a little while. I was having lunch with a young man in our church.

And I've had a couple of conversations like this in the last month or so. And we're just acknowledging, our church is in kind of, it's been in a very smooth place for a long time, like for several years. And it's a good thing. It's a good thing to just rhythmically just continue to saturate the church and the word of God and it's such a blessing to do that. But a couple of people have said, but are we hungry for the word of God?

Like particular, are the young people desperately hungry for God? Are they seeking God with all of their heart? It's one thing to have a lot of peace, but it's also, if it's corresponded with not a lot of passion, what's, you know, is there anything that should be done about that. There's calm but there's no urgency. And there's a, while there's no disturbance, there's sort of a spirit of being on autopilot.

And I've had actually a few men come to me and say, I wonder if our young people are like this. They don't seem hot and hungry for God. They don't seem hot and hungry for the word of God. And what I'm gonna say Now, first of all, I don't believe that what I'm gonna say applies to everyone here. It might not apply to anybody here.

And what I say is not for the purpose of condemnation, But it's rather for conviction. There's a difference. Like you cannot guilt people into faithfulness. It just doesn't work. So forget that.

That doesn't work and I'm not trying to do that. But here's some propositions that I want us to consider. If you feel like your zeal isn't what it should be, if that, Or maybe if you don't feel it is true about you, maybe this would help. But when people, when people enter into times of passivity and they're not in hot pursuit of God and they're not really being challenged by the word of God or in their personal times, when they feel dead, it's almost always because they've neglected various simple, standard matters of discipleship. They're neglecting the means of grace.

They're neglecting the matters of sanctification. Almost always it's like that. You know, I mean, here's sort of an outside illustration. If you find a guy who's discouraged, a lot of times you'll find he's been looking at pornography. Because he has been feeding his mind on what is harmful, not what is helpful to him.

And usually, usually, usually it's the neglect of the Word of God. And you have people who, I'm going to call them the five-minute wonders. They think that they're going to be so filled up with the knowledge of God by opening their Bibles for five minutes in the morning. This isn't going to happen. Not when you open it for five minutes and then spend four hours surfing the internet and another fifty minutes just scrolling mindlessly.

It's not going to happen. You won't be a fruitful Christian. It happens by neglecting the word of God. It also happens by neglecting the worship of God and the ordinances. You know, you feel listless and you've been listless about attending the worship of God and the equipping of the saints.

And you're okay, I'm just saying you might be okay, well if I go to church a couple, three times a month, I'll be just fine, but there's no passion, There's no urgency, there's no prioritization of the worship of God. Like there are five things that would cause you to miss the worship of God. And you wonder why you're listless if you are. Other things become a bigger deal than the gathering of the saints in the worship of God. The neglect of prayer, the neglect of meditating on the word of God, the neglect of the interactions in the fellowship of the saints, to neglecting coming into the church to be a blessing to your brethren, to speak the truth in love, to encourage one another, to pray for one another.

We should be praying for each other when we're talking with one another. Sometimes people feel listless and unspiritual because they're nourishing grievances. But maybe it's that they've been impoverishing themselves by feasting their minds on things that are impoverishing rather than feeding and nourishing and maybe It's it's an impover Impoverishing of your soul because you've actually been feasting your eyes on forbidden fruit. And your internet traffic will tell you whether you are impoverishing your soul or feeding your soul. Here's just a rule of life.

It happens in the physical world. If, let's just say you are in really good shape, you're in the gym, you know, four times a week, but if you stop for three or four weeks, it's gonna be hard to get it back. Because we go into physical atrophy in a very similar way that we go into spiritual atrophy. By not exercising our minds on the things that are above. And like the writer of Hebrews said some of you should be teachers by now because you but you've not been exercising your senses to things that are God of godliness and A lot and so I've seen this, you know, You have a person who knows they're not well, let's just say physically.

They know they're not well, they know they're not healthy, but they don't take action. And then at some point, they're gonna have to get something amputated. They're gonna end up in the hospital. They wait, they don't course correct, and begin to fill their minds with the knowledge of God again. And they're these five minute wonders who are no wonder at all.

But they keep doing the things that do not profit. And their minds are deafened by videos and tweets and podcasts and endless gobbling up the mind and the bandwidth of your life through things like that. Like are you one of those people who thinks it's better for you to watch a movie or go to a concert or listen to a podcast or scroll through Twitter and Facebook than to read Isaiah or Jeremiah? Or do you think it's more profitable to scroll through your phone than it is to open up 1st John? Well, you know what, maybe you don't think that way, but you're living that way, which means you might be thinking that way.

We have lots of people, you know, in Christian churches, they know everything about politics, but they don't know that much about their Bible, because they're always reading about their politics. And they don't know anything about church polity. And it's all they talk about because it's the only thing they think about because it's the only thing they're surfing for. Is it better for you to stay in bed or come to men's Bible study and study the Word of God? Is it better for you?

I mean, is it really, like, do you think it's actually better for your soul if you stay in bed than to come and study the word with other men. You know, always listening to people you do not know and things like that. What it does is it it immobilizes the believer. You know it's the Fellowship of the Saints and the preaching of the Word and personal Bible study that is designed to mobilize the church into action but there are some people who are un-mobilizable. I mean are you mobilizable even by the preaching in this church that takes place?

I mean I do think most of you are. I really do. I'm very thankful for this church but I want I you know I'm throwing out a broad net here. Would you rather read a novel or would you rather read a Bible? Some people read more novels than they do Bibles.

You know, it was probably like 45 years ago, Deborah and I were in the Long Beach Sports Arena and we were listening to Keith Green and he was not just singing. I mean, he was preaching hard to this worldly Southern California crowd. I bet there were 25, 000 people there, I don't know, it was huge. And he says, Jesus rose from the grave but you can't even get out of bed. That's what he said.

But he said it in a very condemning way. Well, you know, whatever a man sows so shall he reap Here's a reality of life You will always be limited by what you sow Your life will be limited by what you sow if you plant corn you have just limited what you're going to reap. You plant wheat, you've just limited what you're going to reap. Okay? Whatever you reap, you will sow.

If you sow in the Spirit, you'll reap the things in the Spirit. If you sow in the flesh, you'll reap the things in the flesh. If you sow irrelevancy, you're gonna reap irrelevancy, okay? That's how you're, you can't beat the system. It's how God wired all of us.

But you know, sowing in the flesh is a little bit like salt on cars. You know salt is like a death sentence to a car. Ah but it's a slow death. After a few years, you know, the frame rots, but it takes a while. And that's what happens often.

And that's how believers often, they become so listless and unmotivated, and they have very little zeal for the church, very little zeal for the ordinances of God and things like that. But it's just, They have sewed in salt and it's corrosive. You know, I was converted at this remarkable moment in American history called the Jesus Movement, okay? And there were thousands of people saved. It was really remarkable.

But years later, probably 40 years later, somebody asked Chuck Smith, who was one of the preachers of that time, He said, do you think we'll ever see another Jesus movement? And it was reported that Chuck said, I'm not sure we're desperate enough. I'm not sure we need God enough. I'm not sure we want God enough. We're so dulled by all this stuff around us.

We're so prosperous and we have so much opportunity that we are distracted. The call of God is to consecrate yourself, to surrender yourself, to yield your bodies as instruments of righteousness, to present your bodies, to possess your bodies in sanctification and honor, 1 Thessalonians 4, 4, and to be a sacrifice. Well, there you have it. I don't know where this landed on anybody here. It landed on me.

It landed on me. I read this poem by Horatius Bonner. Begin the day with God, he is the rising sun, he is the radiance of thy dawn. Sing a new song in the morning and be led by the Spirit. So in these verses we've found the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and what it means to be a son and how the Spirit cries out Abba Father.

And you have in these verses the whole doctrine of sonship and the Holy Spirit all rolled up in one place. And to have a, to be a Christian is to be led by the Spirit, but at the same time, Christians often get lazy. Maybe for some it's time to get back on it. J.C. Ryle, read the Bible daily.

Make it part of your everyday business to read and meditate on some portion of God's word. Gather your manna fresh every morning. Give your Bible the best, not the worst, part of your time. But whatever plan you pursue, Let it be a rule of your life to visit the throne of grace and the Bible every day. For you've not received a spirit of bondage to fear again, but you've received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out Abba Father.

Would you pray with me? Lord, I pray that you would, You would work deep within our hearts the goodness of all of your counsels, the beauty of all your ways, the pleasantness that is your kingdom. I pray, Lord, that you would make it so plain to us that the things that we need the most come from heaven and that you would alter any pattern that has diverted us from your word and from the things that actually work together for our good. I pray, Lord, that as a congregation that you would galvanize us to whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good report, and to meditate on all these things. Amen.