Adoption - From Wrath to Resurrection - Sermons - Lake Slabach - 10.18.26

Lake Slabach (0:01)

Amen. Can we give it up for our worship team this morning?

I don't know about you, but I'm so thankful to be led by those men and women each week to the throne of grace. If we have not had the chance to meet, my name is Lake, and I serve here at Storyline as Director of Family Discipleship. So yeah, whoo, there we go. I get to serve alongside of our kids' team, our students' team, and then my wife Ellie and I also get to serve as we lead our Premarital Counseling Program and oversee some of our weddings and stuff like that. I told some of the guys this week at Men's Bible Study, any Men's Bible Study guys in here? Let's go. I told them I'm from Davey County, North Carolina. So not originally from Colorado. If you're like, did I miss something? Should I know Davey County, North Carolina? Nope, you're right where you're supposed to be. Davey County is a small place, about 30 minutes outside of Winston-Salem. There's not a ton to do there. But one of the things we would do from time to time on maybe a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday afternoon, we would go down to the trestle. Anybody know what a trestle is? If you're thinking of fox and the hound, you're on the right track. There's a place where the railroad track goes over the Yadkin River. You got to say it, Yadkin. You can't, it's not Yadkin, it's Yadkin. And we would go down there. My uncle Tommy, he owns some dirt bikes. We'd go and get on dirt bikes. We'd get snacks from the gas station. There's not a lot to do at the trestle, but you can eat your gas station snacks. You can swim a little bit, throw rocks, that kind of thing. And so we would do this from time to time on Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoons. When I was 18, I was home from college with a few buddies and thought, you know what I haven't done in a while? I haven't been down to the trestle. And so we didn't want to bother my uncle Tommy, so we just hopped in my buddy's jeep. We drove down there, parked. You know, we had our snacks. We swam, threw rocks, the whole thing. And then we got back to the jeep and found it blocked in by a tractor. And then we looked up at the house next to the trestle, and we saw a police officer in the driveway. This is the moment where 18-year-old Lake realized the trestle is not public property.

So I called my mom, who told me to call my uncle, and come to find out the land that the trestle is on. It belongs to my uncle's father-in-law's brother. So it's like some third uncle, twice removed kind of thing. After a brief conversation with a really nice police officer, and a phone call from my uncle Tommy, explaining to his uncle-in-law thing, that I was who I was, we were set free. So we talk about adoption this morning in the Gospel storyline. My fear is this. I think too often we live as if God views us like some distant third nephew, instead of as a child.

We operate like we're put up with, instead of like God actually likes, loves, and adopts us into his family. Talking about adoption, JI. Packer says this in his book, Knowing God, Adoption is the highest privilege of the Gospel. The traitor is forgiven, brought in for supper, and given the family name. To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater. This morning, we're gonna talk about what it means to be adopted into the family of God, and how that's accomplished for us at the cross. But before we do that, I wanna ask and answer our catechism question for the morning. The catechism question this week is, do I actually belong to God? And our answer is yes. God has made me his child, and welcomed me into his family. In order to illustrate this, we're gonna start in Galatians chapter four. So if you've got your Bibles, feel free to turn to Galatians four. We're gonna start there, and then we're gonna attempt to do what Pastor JT has done so well the past few weeks, and put the diamond of the gospel up in front of the black backdrop of our sin. And this week, we're gonna turn it ever so slightly off of reconciliation, and on to adoption. So we're gonna start in Galatians four, and then we're actually gonna go to the Old Testament for a story that I think's gonna help illustrate and get this into our bones this morning.