Remember, if you can, the glory days of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Yes, there’s a fog there, isn’t there? But in 1979, led by Willie Stargell and fueled by Sister Sledge’s disco hit, the Pirates were “fam-a-lee”, and they slipped past the Orioles to claim what remains to this day their latest championship. It was the sense of family that pervaded the clubhouse that contributed to their victory. Bonds of support and love and shared purpose and encouragement were necessary ingredients, as they are to any family. We should find those same things going on in the family of God because we have been adopted by God in Christ.
To understand this week’s message more fully, we have to go back to our last message, because it begins the theme of God’s unfolding plan. We spoke, if you remember, of the fact that God loved us and planned before the beginning of the world to choose us to be holy before Him. Today’s text continues that theme; read it with me (Ephesians 1:5,6).
Note as we look at the outline today that it all begins and ends with God—and it is for His glory and our benefit.
1. God’s Plan
His plan is described as “unchanging”—this is not some Johnny-come-lately idea that God had; it’s not Plan B or Plan K or anything else. It is the plan God had in mind from the very beginning; it has never changed and never will. Though it is all to His praise and glory, it’s also a thrilling thing to recognize that our names and our lives were designed as part of the plan of God from eternity past.
2. Our Adoption
Imagine the stark terror of a five-year-old little boy, fleeing from unseen enemies that have taken the life of his father and that threaten his own. At the very dawn of his understanding, the tragic news comes to his caretakers, and they quickly grab up the boy and begin to flee. One day, all is well in the little boy’s world; the next day, tragedy comes, and terror is written in the eyes of his nurse. This little boy was the son of Jonathan, grandson of King Saul, with the given name of Mephibosheth. And yet even more tragedy was to follow, for in the process of flight, the little boy was dropped and likely trampled, with the result that his legs were useless for walking for the rest of his life. In the span of a few short minutes, his lot had gone from the carefree life of a happy little boy to the horrifying prospect of being a crippled orphan.
We don’t know anything, really, of Mephibosheth’s adult life; he’s pretty much forgotten, until David asks a question that is recorded in II Samuel 9. David is now king, and one day he is remembering his best friend, Jonathan; he is recalling how, as the Bible says, their very souls were knit together, their friendship through thick and thin stronger than iron. And David remembers a promise that he’d made to Jonathan, to show kindness to the family of Jonathan; it’s time to make good on the promise.
Only Mephibosheth isn’t in on the promise; wasn’t likely very aware of the depth of friendship between his late father and King David. Undoubtedly, he’d been told of his grandfather’s attempts to take David’s life, of David’s vindication before God; undoubtedly, he knew that David was a warrior known for shedding the blood of his enemies. And when he is brought before David, he comes trembling in fear that David will now wreak final retribution upon the line of Saul, once and for all doing away with the lineage of the one who was his enemy. Now listen as I read the rest of II Samuel 9 (:7 and following).
And the question is, “why do we have this event recorded in Scripture”? This is the last we hear of the story; Mephibosheth doesn’t pay David back in any way that Scripture records. The story ends with Mephibosheth taking his place at David’s table, making his residence in the king’s palace in Jerusalem; we’re left to speculate as to any further details. Why is this event recorded in Scripture? I believe it’s because God moved in David’s heart to act in this way as a lived parable of the grace of God in His dealing with us. David effectively adopted Mephibosheth as one of his own sons. God adopts us for the sake of Christ as His children. In imperfect, human terms, David did for Mephibosheth what God does perfectly for us.
David freely chose to adopt Mephibosheth; he was under no obligation except to his own character. God is not obligated to me in any way, shape, or form; His only obligation is to His own character and nature; God must and will be true to Who He is. But it was out of His love for us—consistent with His character and nature—that He loved us and set in motion in eternity past the plan by which He would adopt us through Christ. Some translations of Scripture move the words around from verse four so that verse five is prefaced by the words, “In love”; in other words, God’s adoption of us as sons is said to have been prompted by His love. Whether or not those two words belong in this position in the text, the fact is that they are certainly implied: it’s because God chose to love us that He chose to adopt us as His children.
And let me remind you that, contrary to the popular and warped understanding of our salvation that tends to make it a private transaction between God and me, this adoption is into God’s family—and we should understand that fully, because we are not only related to God as Father, but we are just as truly related to one another as brothers and sisters in God’s family. We are adopted into the church, the body and family of Christ, not so that we can pursue the doing of our own thing with God, but so that we can live in community with others who are likewise adopted into the family of God.
3. God’s Pleasure
Some of us are thrill-seekers, or experience-gatherers. I’m one of the latter, and I make no bones about it. I love to do new things, to see new sights, to experience new pleasures. And I don’t apologize for it! God has wired us this way, to enjoy life, to enjoy the things of this world. I’m reading a book right now that is making this very point, that sometimes as Christians, in our haste to get to Heaven (not remembering that Heaven isn’t our final destination, but the new earth is), we almost look with disdain at the world God has created for our enjoyment. True confession: while I usually attend most every possible session of EFCA National Conference, I blew off last Thursday’s, for no better reason than to drive in the mountains and enjoy the splendor of God’s creation—and God and the Rockies did not disappoint!
They say that postmoderns, this generation of young people that we see today, are particularly geared to seeking experiences (though I suspect young people have always been, at least to some degree, in the same boat). Sure, there are some experiences we’re better off without, but the basic impulse to seek pleasure seems to be wired into us. We’re created in God’s image, and so I ask, does this desire come from Him? I mean, is God a thrill-seeker? Does God love pleasure? Well…He created the universe in six days, and in words that give away His own sense of satisfaction with what He had made, He is recorded as saying, at the end of each day, “that’s good!” All through the Bible, there are places which indicate God’s pleasure with various things, and today’s passage is no exception: Ephesians 1:5 says that God has done something that gave Him great pleasure to do; whatever this thing is that God did, He got a real kick out of it. He took great pleasure in adopting us into His very own family!
4. Our Praise
Here’s, as we said before, the appropriate response on our part: “so we praise God”. This emerges as a pretty consistent theme in this text, that all of the praise should go to God. At National Conference last week, one speaker delineated the difference between “dog theology” and “cat theology”. The dog says, “because you do everything for me, you must be God”; the cat says, “because you do everything for me, I must be God.” Too many people today are practitioners of “cat theology”; we’re told that the prevailing worldview among professing Christian teenagers today, for instance, is that God’s purpose is to aid my own living, to smooth things out for me, to help me get through life; i.e., “it’s all about me, it’s all about me”.
No, it’s all about God, His glory, His praise, and we continually need that reorientation in this narcissistic society in which we live, which continually seems to be telling us that the point of everything is our comfort, our well-being, our luxury, our tastes.
5. God’s Grace
The NASB says, “to the praise of the glory of His grace”; this is a word that the translators of the New Living decided to leave out; because of the fact that the word “grace” is used in a variety of ways, they chose to use “kindness” instead, but at this point, I’d rather deal with the minimal difficulty of having to define and explain “grace”. Grace involves God’s favor extended toward us apart from any merit of our own. Grace is what God shows to us irrespective of the fact that we don’t deserve it. Grace is the expression of the love that motivated God in the first place.
In the late 19th century, in the worst slum of London, social worker Henry Moorehouse was walking home when he encountered a little girl coming out of a store with a pitcher of milk in her hands. Suddenly, the little girl slipped and fell, and the pitcher fell to the ground and broke into pieces, the milk spilling out all over the ground. As the milk filled the gutter, the little girl began to cry. Moorehouse stopped and, helping her to her feet, urged her not to cry—but she kept repeating, “my momma will whip me, my momma will whip me”. There was no mending of the pitcher; it was broken for good, so as the little girl continued to cry, Moorehouse picked her up and carried her down the street to the crockery shop, where he purchased for her a new pitcher. Still carrying the little girl, he took her back to the store to have the new pitcher filled with milk. Next, he asked where she lived, and when she responded, he carried the little girl, new pitcher of milk in hand, right to her doorstep, where he set her down. As she stepped inside, he asked her, “now, do you think your momma will whip you?” “Oh, no sir”, she replied, “because this is a lot better pitcher than the one we had.”
You and I are broken pitchers—and a broken pitcher isn’t worth much, unless maybe you’re an archaeologist exploring ruins. A broken pitcher can’t fulfill the purpose for which it was crafted—and we cannot possibly fulfill our purpose as broken pitchers. So we try to be pitcher-patchers—we read Dr. Phil’s books, or we have medical procedures performed to enhance our self-image, or we take yoga to relax, or we listen to motivational tapes, or we join a church, or we do any of a number of other things, all designed to improve ourselves. But the truth is that we can’t patch our own pitchers; they’ll still be broken; they’ll still leak; they’ll still be incapable of accomplishing their purposes. Christ comes, though, and instead of patching up our old pitcher as best He can, gives us a new pitcher—new life with a new nature. And when He does, it’s not because we are deserving of his help, any more than the little stranger girl was deserving of the help of Henry Moorehouse. Moorehouse didn’t help the little girl because he expected anything in return; he did so because of grace. And God gives us a new pitcher—new life—not because of anything we’ve done, but because of grace.
6. Our Security
7. God’s Son
We’ll look at these final two together, because they are bound up together: our security is bound up in the fact that we belong to God’s Son, Jesus. I belong to Jesus. I wonder if that truth really sinks into our minds and hearts as it ought to. We think of our relationship with Jesus in many ways:
• We worship Jesus.
• We love Jesus.
• We obey Jesus.
• We are saved by Jesus.
• We emulate Jesus.
But I wonder if we really down deep remember and act upon the truth that we belong to Jesus, if the truth of the Scripture that says, “you are not your own; you have been bought with a price, the blood of Christ” really sinks in deep-down. We’ll talk more next week about the “buying back” truth, what we call “redemption”. But the point here is that God’s own Son, God Himself come in the flesh, bought me, and thus I belong to Jesus. That entails security; I’m His possession, and He will keep me. That entails my submission to His desires for my life.
We are rich beyond imagination as followers of Jesus—but prior to any decision we’ve made to be followers of Jesus, we have this promise from the Word of God, that God, in order to satisfy Himself, for His very own pleasure, before the beginning of time and according to His eternal plan, chose to adopt me as part of His forever family.
