WE BELONG!
Call to Worship - 1 John 3v1 GNB
See how much the Father has loved us! His love is so great that we are called God's children---and so, in fact, we are. This is why the world does not know us: it has not known God.
Reading: Ephesians 2v14-22
Read again: v19-20
People need people!
In nature we can see that many animals live in highly organised social groups. Some species live mostly solitary lives, territorial.
Humans are normally social people, we need company, support, encouragement, help, and lots more. We all need relationships.
People who have a good social life tend to be healthier and more successful than those who are loners.
But the pain of long-term loneliness can become overwhelming. Not having any human contact for days or weeks on end can be a great destroyer.
No wonder some people turn to drink, drugs, or other activities to escape the despair of loneliness and hopelessness.
But what about the housebound widow/widower, those with major mobility limitations. How must they suffer without a close family, without friends, or other visitors?
ILLUS Recent, a lady seemingly healthy in her 50’s died alone in her flat. She was there for 2 years before her body was discovered!!!
Ahhh – what an indictment on society – alone, forgotten, isolated; no one missed her or even wondered about not seeing her around.
We all need to belong.
Well, the good news is that you do belong – to the wonderful family of God.
There’s a song, I first heard it in a Baptist church not long after I gave my life to the Lord:
I love this family of God, So closely knitted into one,
They've taken me into their hearts, And I'm so glad to be a part of this great family.
Are you part of the family of God? Are you glad you’re in the family of God?
Being a part of the family of God is the greatest blessing bestowed upon believers and one that should drive us to our knees in humble adoration. We can never do anything to deserve it, for it is His gift of love, mercy, and grace to us. Yes, we are called to become sons and daughters of the Living God (Romans 9:25-26)
We can only respond in faith to His blessed invitation!
In this fellowship there’s a close loving family bond, yet we’re also an integral part of the worldwide church, reaching out with the love of God and the Gospel, the Good News, to those around us. They will perhaps only will get a glimpse of Jesus through us.
Oh, what a special family we belong to!
Children of God
For you are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ; and all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3v26-8 NLT)
The moment we professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, maybe during childhood, or later in life, we became members of God’s family sons and daughters of the Loving Living God.
The old life is replaced by a new spiritual life, just like putting on a whole new wardrobe of clothes. The old has gone the new has come.
We have our natural human family, but now we are born again into the family of God.
Whoever we are, whatever our background or past life history, whatever our differences, we are all one in Christ Jesus.
In John Ch 1 we can read about Jesus coming to his own people but they wouldn’t receive him, they didn’t want to listen, they didn’t recognise him as the promised Messiah. They wanted him to leave them alone.
But in v12 Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, he gave the right to become children of God …… born of God.
Various scriptures refer to God’s people as His flock, His treasured possession, even a peculiar people! (KJV Deut 14v2)
The Living Bible puts it in more modern terms:
You have been set apart as holy to the LORD your God, and He has chosen you out of all the nations of the earth to be His own special treasure.
Israel, God’s special treasure; but now Jew and Gentile are one in Christ. His church – you, me – are also His treasured possession.
And what cost that makes this all possible – the cross of Calvary.
Children of Light
All this places a great responsibility on us: to live as Children of God and not as children of the world. But we’re not left alone to struggle unaided; we are new creations:
2Cor 5v17 – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone the new has come! All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ….
The old life has gone, we are now new creations, children of God. The past is gone, we live in the present, the newness of the Holy spirit in our hearts.
We sang it earlier:
We're accepted, forgiven, the Living God is our Heavenly Father. We receive His love and mercy. We're confident we can approach our Father and our Saviour with confidence and joy. What a blessing! What great reassurance!
Paul, encouraging the Ephesians to live as new creations, told them (and us) to live as children of the light Eph 5v8:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1Peter2v9)
We are God’s special people, children of light, whose purpose is to show that light to those around us, to be seen as different, to be recognised as having something special that others don’t yet possess.
God’s light can shine in us and out of us and it’s not of our own making but the Holy Spirit illuminating our innermost beings, marking us out as God’s children.
Oh, that people will see that light in your fellowship and want to find out more!
Heirs of the Kingdom
Even better news – not lonely because, we’ve been adopted into God’s family through our faith in the Lord Jesus and we now have an inheritance; the Kingdom inheritance.
Paul told the Colossians that God the Father has qualified them to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.
If you need a challenge and a massive encouragement, the read slowly and thoughtfully the whole chapter of Romans 8, especially
verses15-17 NLT:
So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him Abba Father. Now His spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are God’s children we are heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.
But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.
V26 The Holy spirit helps us in our suffering …
Our Eternal Family
We’ve just seen that we have an inheritance in God’s Kingdom. It’s not just here on earth spiritually but also in Heaven. God’s Kingdom is an eternal kingdom.
Titus 3v7 tells us that being justified by God’s grace, we can become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
What a promise what a hope!
And it’s all ours as children of our loving living God, through the sacrifice of Jesus and the faith we have in Him and in all of God’s word for us.
What it will be like in heaven I can’t begin to imagine, but there will be a uniting, possibly a reuniting, with our Lord Jesus Christ on the throne of His eternal kingdom.
And you know what: 2 Peter 1v 10-11 reassures you: be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Dan 7v13-14 Daniel’s night-time vision of Jesus being given eternal dominion over an everlasting kingdom.
Unlike ordinary family relationships; the family of God is not broken by death, because we have eternal life through the cross and the resurrection. We have been born again into God’s own family, a family which cannot be broken, a family that lives on into eternity.
What a promise; what a blessing; what a wonderful living hope!
There’s so much more we could encourage ourselves with from the scriptures as children of God, but that’s for another time.
We belong to that wonderful, blessed family of God, let’s rejoice and be encouraged and let us live in the light of such massive blessings and our heavenly calling.
So to summarise:
We belong to the Family of God.
We’re children of God; children of light; heirs of God’s kingdom. Part of His family, which is not just earthy but eternal.
We’ll conclude by returning to our call to worship: from the GNB
1Jn 3:1 See how much the Father has loved us! His love is so great that we are called God's chil-dren---and so, in fact, we are. This is why the world does not know us: it has not known God.
1Jn 3:2 My dear friends, we are now God's children, but it is not yet clear what we shall become. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is. Amen!
