Adoption process

When you read about the law in the Bible, you’re reading about the ultimate form of religion.

“The only religion God ever gave, He gave to the nation Israel through Moses, and every other religion is manmade and it’s a step down,” says Jordan.

“I read in the newspaper recently about how in Great Britain they’re going to take all pork products out of the subway systems’ restaurants because the Muslims have become such a force there and they are highly offended by the presence of pork.

“You know where they got that from? Moses. They hate Moses and they hate Israel and you say, ‘Wait a minute, if you hate Judaism and you hate the Jew, why are you doing what you got from their program?!’ That’s where Mohammed got that; he didn’t dream that up.

“Religion is just all this stuff. You can see the humor in the connections and the blindness of people doing that kind of thing. Religion is that way.

“Paul’s saying, when you move out of just being under the law and that thing about ‘tutors and governors,’ well, that’s what people use the law and religion for: ‘Tell me what God wants me to do and I’ll do it. Tell me what I shouldn’t do and I won’t.’

“Now, how good does that work? It doesn’t work at all. Galatians 3:10 says, ‘For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.’

*****

“I get asked this question at least twice a month: ‘Don’t you think you ought to keep the Ten Commandments?’

“Well, sure you should. The question is, ‘How you doing with that?’ Somebody counted them one time and said there are 613 specific commandments in the Mosaic Law.  You thought there were just ten.

“James says, ‘If you offend in one point you’re guilty of all.’ You see, the problem with the law is the law demands absolute perfection. If you lived the rest of your life perfect and never made another mistake, you couldn’t take care of your past because your past is already screwed up.

“The law’s not going to be an answer for you, because the law’s going to do what it’s designed to do. Paul says, ‘By the law is the knowledge of sin.’

“You can look around the room and say, ‘I’m better than that person,’ but keep looking and you’ll find somebody better than you. That’s why in II Corinthians 10, Paul says, ‘For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.’

“You compare yourself to the glory of God and you know, ‘Cut off my legs and call me shorty! I don’t make it.' That’s what the law does.

“The danger of mixing law and grace . . . you know that verse in Romans 11:6 where Paul says, ‘And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.’

*****

“When you mix law and grace, you destroy both of them. When you mix grace with the law, you weaken the law and the law is no longer that absolute, complete, inflexible standard of righteousness. 

"You wind up making it a rule; a bunch of precepts and rules to follow to give you some ethical guidance in life and you weaken the law when you mix grace with it.

“When you mix law with grace, you harden grace. Grace is the absolute free gift God gives you; you don’t deserve it but you need it and He gives it to you because He bought it and paid for it and lavishes it upon you. Like Paul says in Romans 5: 20, ‘But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.’

“People say, ‘No, don’t say that because people will just go out and live in sin!’ You say, ‘We can’t have that, so let’s put a little more law in there,’ and you know what you do? You make grace hard; you harden it. Instead of it being this lavish thing that’s inexhaustibly expended upon people . . .

“Think about God’s inexhaustible grace offered to an exhausted world. But then you say, ‘Wait a minute; you can have it IF . . .’ and you start making little caveats: ‘If you don’t do this and you don’t do that. Or if you do this but you don’t do that.’

*****

“One of the things to understand is the different operating systems God’s put you under and they are diametrically different, designed to be different.

“Paul says what happens to us is there comes a point in time when God deals with children where He says, ‘I’m going to move you from law to adulthood. Take you out from under the 'tutors and governors' of the law and treat you like an adult.’

“When he moves you to being treated like an adult, that’s what He calls grace. That movement from law to grace, in the passage (Gal. 4:4), is called adoption. Galatians 4:6 says, ‘And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.’

“The adoption of sons is to be placed into the position before God of being able to cry, ‘Abba, Father!’, talking to your father in a personal, intimate way.

“A child can know what his daddy’s doing because his dad tells him. A child can go out and work with his dad in the field or the business, because his dad teaches him and he’s watching over him making him do it. But when he becomes an adult, and here’s when a dad understands something about his child being ready to be an adult . . .

“By the way, the responsibility of a dad to his child is not just to tell them him what to do, thinking that when they get older, ‘They’ll do what I told them to do,’ but it’s to train them.

“It’s to understand that child so well that you understand who they are, how they think and how they function and to give them a sense of their identity in Christ so that that identity is what lives in them.

“Knowing your child that well you come to the place where you know when they come to that transition. It’s the father’s responsibility to say when they reach that and have that Galatians 5:4 conversation.

*****

Jeremiah 9:24 says, ‘But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.’

“You know what He’s saying? ‘If you want to really have something to glory in, glory in the fact that you know me; you understand me--who I am and what I delight in.’

“By that verse write down Psalm 40. It’s a psalm about the Lord Jesus Christ, quoted in Hebrews 10. In Hebrews 10, Jesus Christ is quoted talking to His Father, ‘I’ve come to do thy will, O God.’

“In Psalm 40, He says, ‘I delight to do thy will, O God.’ When Jesus said ‘I come to do thy will,’ He didn’t just say, ‘I know what you want me to do and I’m gonna go do it.’

“He said, ‘Father, I understand what you’re doing and I’m on board 100 percent. What your joy is is the joy of my heart and I delight in what you delight in and I think about it the way you think about it.’

“One of the greatest things that illustrates a son . . . the adult son does voluntarily that which he formerly did out of fear and compulsion because now he understands what delights the father.

"But he isn’t doing it just because it delights the father; he’s doing it because it delights his heart too, and it’s that internal motivation that comes because his heart and thinking matches the thinking of the father, and the mind of Christ literally becomes your thinking, and what delights Him delights you. That’s being an adult in the family. That’s what adoption is about.”