Orphan Sunday 2019

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Sermon Notes

Exodus to Romans

  1. Over the past few weeks, we have had a very cursory conversation about the book of Exodus, specifically focusing on the idea of a community of people learning to live into the freedom that God had won for them. And, we have learned that God’s vision for freedom involved three priorities:

    1. They were free when they were claimed by God as His own people.

    2. They were free when they were commissioned by God and partnered with Him in His work in the world.

    3. They were free when they were free when they lived covered by His presence.

  2. In other words, God has a very different understanding of freedom than the rest of us.

    1. In our world, freedom is liberty, the capacity to be our own people, to pursue our own priorities in our own strength and authority. In this version of freedom, the self is the very center of the universe.

    2. But, the Bible simply calls this another form of slavery. In fact, it’s how this whole mess started:

      1. Genesis 3, “You will be like God.”

      2. Judges 17, “There was no king…”

    3. God’s version of freedom is God-centered.

      1. It is based on the presupposition that He knows what’s best for each of us…

      2. …and that our level of freedom is directly proportional to our proximity to and obedience of Him.

  3. All that to say, what we saw in Exodus is still true of God’s people today.

    1. It was embodied by Jesus

    2. It was prioritized by the early Church

    3. It is all over the New Testament. Listen to Paul in Romans 8:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 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 8:14-17)

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

  1. Adoption

    1. As an image to help understand the Gospel.

      1. We often miss the power of this because we have traditionally had an interesting view of adoption in the West (as a lesser option)

      2. But, this wasn’t the case in the Roman Empire. Adoption was…

        1. Chosen

        2. Costly

        3. Transformative

        4. Immutable

      3. If one of our priorities as a church is “Claimed,” knowing who God is and who we are in relationship with Him, then Romans 8 is massively important.

        1. Here, Paul gives us the language of adoption to describe who God is…

          1. He is a Father who chooses to extend Himself to others.

          2. He is a Father who pays a high price to do so.

          3. He is a Father whose love transforms the object of that love.

          4. He is a Father who doesn’t change His mind.

          5. All of this to say, who is God? He is an adopter.

        2. …and who we are in relationship

          1. We are chosen.

          2. We are purchased at a high price.

          3. We are being transformed by His love for us.

          4. We will never be otherwise.

          5. Who are we? We are adopted children of God.

    2. As an outworking of the Gospel.

      1. That said, we can’t stop there.

        1. For centuries, we have followed the lead of Paul and the early church by using the language of adoption to understand the Gospel.

        2. But if we do so, we must also follow their lead in allowing the truth of the Gospel to lead us into the practice of adoption.

        3. If this is what God has done for us, this is what we must do for others.

      2. Who God is leads to who we are, and who we are leads to what we do, which is what God does. We follow the example of our King in incarnating our Father.

        1. God is adopter

        2. We are adopted

        3. We are adopters

    3. This is clear throughout the Bible:

      1. Israel: This is what God intended from the beginning for His people. Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked a lot about the people of Israel being freed from slavery in Egypt and freed to God and His work in the world. Throughout the rest of the Torah, the Law, God spells out for His people what it means to be freed into His work in the world, and when He does, listen to what He says:

He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. (Deuteronomy 10:18)

At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. (Deuteronomy 14:28-29)

        1. In the first verse, God shows us who He is, what He values.

        2. In the second, He shows us that if we are His people, we value what He values.

        3. In fact, what’s so interesting about these two verses is how they pair together.

          1. It’s not that God “supernaturally feeds and clothes the vulnerable.

          2. He does it through His people.

        4. To be the people of God is to love what God loves, and God loves orphans.

      1. In Psalm 68:5, God is called the “Father to the fatherless, and then the very next verse says, “He places the lonely in families.”

      2. God works through people. He adopted His orphaned people out of Egypt (a system that literally threw kids away) and then told them to go care for orphans. He fathers the fatherless through His people. He makes orphans daughters and sons and makes daughters and sons mothers and fathers.

      3. Josiah (Jeremiah 22:16)

      4. Sodom and Gomorrah (Ezekiel 16:49)

      5. And, of course, this was central to the ministry of Jesus (Luke 4, Matthew 25)

      6. Early Church

In the growing Christian movement, the Church fathers consistently and conspicuously called upon followers of Christ to be faithful to Scripture’s demand that we care for the orphan. Virtually every early writing on Christian conduct stressed the importance of caring for children without parents. Eusebius, the Apostolic Constitutions, Lactantius, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr…the list goes on and on, but every one of them called on the early church to care for orphans. One writer goes so far as to say that the orphan had only three possibilities in life: death, slavery, or Christian adoption. -David Nowell, Dirty Faith: Bringing the Love of Christ to the Least of These

For it is disgraceful when…the impious Galileans [the name given by Julian to Christians] support our poor in addition to their own… -Julian, Letter to Arsacius

  1. All of this to say, from Exodus until now, adoption is central to what it means to be God’s people.

    1. The reality of the world today

      1. There is a great need today for the Church to reclaim this mission.

        1. 150 million orphans worldwide

          1. Over 2 billion Christians

          2. Outnumber orphans 20-to-1

        2. 400,000 foster kids in the US.

          1. About a third of which are currently adoptable

          2. 20,000 will age out of the foster care this year without being adopted.

          3. There are almost 400,000 churches in the US.

        3. In Southern California, almost 40,000 kids in foster care.

          1. Nearly 35,000 in LA County

          2. 1,500 adoptable from LA County right now

          3. 2,000 churches in LA County

          4. Probably at least as many in OC

    2. A call to the church: when we put those things together, the call on God’s people and the need in the world, what we get is a need for God’s people to reclaim their heritage of adoption.

      1. Caring for orphans provides vulnerable children with an adoptive family in which they can come to understand the adoptive love of God.

      2. Caring for orphans opens us to understand the Gospel.

        1. This is what God has done for us. Caring for the fatherless, then, helps us understand what God has done for us, understand the Gospel (Elijah story).

        2. Because of adoption, the Gospel lives in our house. It sits at our dinner table. It eats all the food in our cupboards. Every time I see my kids, if I’m listening, I hear my Father tell me, “And that’s how I love you.”

      3. Caring for orphans changes the world.

        1. Caring for the fatherless is restoration lived large. It is quite literally changing the world. When we love the orphan, we are participating with our God who is rolling back the curse of fatherlessness.

        2. Generational redemption

        3. Do you realize that all of your lives were changed by an adoptive father? No, in this case, I’m not talking about God. I’m talking about Joseph.

        4. Through caring for the orphan, we can experience the Kingdom come, God’s will on earth as in heaven.

          1. When we expand our definition of family beyond biological and embrace God’s definition, then our families and communities will more fully reflect the culture of heaven.

          2. Our dinner tables will more closely resemble the wedding feast of the Lamb.

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