From His Heart

Speaker 1

What happens when God becomes your father? Let's find out today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Speaker 2

When we talk about becoming a child of God, lots of people have a wrong understanding of that. They believe that everyone is a child of God. That's not true. Everyone is a creation of God, not a child of God, but a child of wrath.

Question: How can you know if God the Father is your Father?

Speaker 1

This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve. And thank you for joining us today for a message that we believe will focus our attention on what it means to be a great father. As Father's Day is this Sunday, and there's no perfect human father, we know that. But there is no more perfect of an example of the traits that fathers should have than those that we'll learn about today.

Hey, fathers, listen up. The Holy Spirit is the key to everything in the Christian life and particularly to fatherhood. And he gives us assurance that we belong to the Lord Jesus Christ each second of our lives. He never leaves us. He never fails us. He is always trustworthy. But how can you know that to be true? I mean, really know for sure that God the Father is God your father, and that you truly belong to Him?

Thank you for being with us today for a lesson that is critical to your peace in this life and assurance in the life to come. Turn now in your copy of God's Word to the book of Romans, chapter 8. And here's Pastor Jeff to begin the lesson entitled "When God Becomes Your Father."

Speaker 2

You know, it's one thing to be able to say God is father, but it's quite another thing to be able to say God is my father. He is my Savior. The Lord is my Savior, my Lord, my King, my Redeemer. It is personal. And when we talk about becoming a child of God, lots of people have a wrong understanding of that. They believe that everyone is a child of God. That's not true. Everyone is a creation of God. God is the creator of all things. Nothing came into being that the Lord didn't create.

But the Bible makes it clear when we're born into this world, Ephesians, chapter two. When you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which we formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, according to the Spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. And among them we all too formerly walked and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest separated from God. Not a child of God, a child of wrath. Jesus said to the Jews as he was arguing with them in John chapter eight, the religious leaders. And he said, you are of your father, the devil. They're not children of God. They were children of the devil. And everyone is born into this world a child of wrath, a child of the devil. You have to be born again in order to be a child of God. And that happens in a moment in time.

See, becoming a Christian is a lot like getting married. There has to come a point in time where you say, I do, I do. To the Lord, where you receive him by grace, through faith. Well, Paul wrote Romans 8, the Mount Everest of chapters in the New Testament. And the emphasis of Romans 8 is on the Holy Spirit and what the Spirit does and what we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, as evidenced through by his Holy Spirit.

See, Jesus said to the disciples, it is to your advantage that I go away. Because if I don't go away, the helper won't come. And the helper, who is he? He's just like me. He's another just like me. And he's gonna come and he's gonna be with you, just like I'm with you. But even better. Cause he'll be in you. In you. And he was speaking of the Holy Spirit of God. And so the Holy Spirit is the key to everything in the Christian life. And he gives us blessed assurance that we belong to the Lord Jesus.

Now maybe you're here and you have a hope so. Maybe so. Guess so. Salvation. What is that? Somebody asks you, hey, do you know for certain if you were to die, you'd go to heaven? I hope so. Maybe so. Guess so. I think so. Yeah. But do you have a know so salvation? I was in a laundromat when I was in college one time. And I was talking to this guy Bart, and I was talking to him about the Lord. I said, Bart, do you know for certain if you were to die tonight that you'd go to heaven? And he said, no, I don't. And you don't either. No one can know that. That's not something you can know until you die and you find out.

I said, well, this is what the Bible says. First John, chapter one, verses 12 and 13. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I've written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know K n o w know that you have eternal life. God wants you to know it as you're sitting there today. God wants you to know that you are his. And if you're not his, God wants you to know that you're not so that you can receive Christ and become his wonderful child.

Well, Romans, chapter 8. As Fanny Crosby wrote her hymn Blessed Assurance, no doubt she had Romans 8, 14, 17 in her mind. Let's hear what the Lord has to say in that passage. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God. These are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father, the Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God. And if children, heirs. Also heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Question. How can you know if God the Father is God your father? If God the Father is God your father, if he is really your father and you're really his child? Well, there are three blessed assurances in the passage that we just read. Blessed assurance number one. A true child of God has the internal witness of the Spirit. The internal witness of the Spirit. Look at verse 16 again. The Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God the Spirit himself.

Now, Romans 8, emphasis heavy, heavy emphasis on the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is referred to 27 times in the book of Romans 17 of the 27 in chapter 8. And the Holy Spirit is the most unknown for many Christians of the Trinity. You know, we have God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, God in three persons, Blessed Trinity. And we know about God the Father. Most people know about God the Father, and we know about God the Son, but God the Spirit, that's kind of mysterious to us. We really don't know.

And there are a lot of things that get attributed to the Holy Spirit of God the third person in the Trinity, God the Son, that make him seem weird. I mean, you go to churches and they'll talk about, well, you know, the Spirit is coming upon us in such a great way. And what does that mean? Well, to them, that means that you see people running around the church. Well, why are you running around the church? Because of the Holy Spirit. See people rolling around on the ground, why are you doing that? Oh, the Holy Spirit? See people laughing uncontrollably, why are you doing that? Oh, the Holy Spirit. See people shaking and convulsing? What are you doing? The Holy Spirit?

Nowhere in scripture do you ever see that happening when Jesus would meet with the crowds? They didn't do that. Who is the Holy Spirit? He's another just like Jesus. So he's going to conduct his ministry in the same way Jesus conducted his ministry. And if you want to get technical, how did Jesus conduct his ministry? In the power of the Holy Spirit. In the power of the Holy Spirit. So we need to understand how the Holy Spirit works.

Now. I love this. You may have heard this said when it comes to salvation. God the Father thought it. He came up with the plan of salvation. God the Son bought it when he died on the cross and rose again from the dead. And God the Holy Spirit wrought it. He's the one who works it out. Jesus ascended to heaven. The Holy Spirit came ten days later on the day of Pentecost. And he convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. He came to live inside the hearts of believers. And he's the one that enables us to live the Christian life. He brought the justification where the Lord wraps his gavel, says not guilty. Just as if you've never sinned, you're justified before God. He brings about sanctification. He works in us so that we can become more and more like Christ. And one day he's going to bring about glorification, where we say goodbye to this body of sin. We get a brand new body from the Lord, a body that is not tainted anymore by sin. It's all the work of the Holy Spirit.

So a true child of God has the internal witness of the Spirit. Now you mark it down. The telltale mark of a believer is the indwelling spirit. See what makes the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian? You say, well, a Christian goes to church. Yeah, lots of non-Christians go to church. Somebody has well said, in the average Baptist church, roughly half the crowd has never been born again. Half. That's a lot. And so you say, well, a Christian goes to church. Well, non-Christians go to church too. And Sundays churches are filled all over the nation, all over the world with people who don't really know the Lord.

You say, well, a Christian does good works. Yeah, non-Christians do good works too. They give money and they go and help out here and serve in the soup kitchens and help clean up yards and what have you. The disaster relief, they do that. You say, well, a Christian's been baptized. Yeah, a lot of non-Christians have been baptized too. We call them wet sinners. They've never been born again, but they've gotten baptized. You know, you want an example of that? Acts Chapter eight. Simon the Magician. He supposedly believed and was baptized, but obviously he wasn't a true believer. And the Scripture bears that out.

What makes the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian? The presence of the Holy Spirit of God. That's what makes the difference. So Romans chapter 8, verse 9 says, this talks about being according to the flesh versus according to the Spirit. And the Scripture makes it clear you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. He is none of his. That's what makes the difference, is the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Now, you need to see the flesh and the Spirit in terms of where everyone is, because everyone in the world is in two camps. You're either in the flesh or you are in Christ. In the flesh, you are in Christ. Now in the flesh. The Bible makes it clear. Those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. Those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God. It is not even able to do so. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Where do you start out in life? You start out in the flesh. You start out in Adam. You're born in Adam, and you receive from your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather Adam, a dead spirit. Dead toward God. You're dead toward God, and in Adam, all die first. Corinthians 15. You have to be born again so that you can be in Christ. And in Christ, all are made alive. And the leader of team in Christ is the Holy Spirit. And the leader of team in Adam is the flesh. And so get that right, because everyone in this room, everyone in the sound of my voice, you're either in Adam and you're on the highway to hell, or you're in Christ and you're on the highway to heaven.

And what makes the difference? You receive Christ as Savior and Lord, and he transfers you, delivers you from the domain of darkness and transfers you into the kingdom of his beloved Son. He gives you his Holy Spirit. Boom. The light comes on. The Spirit makes you alive inside. And when the Lord comes in, the light comes in. When light comes in, the life comes in. And all of a sudden, things have changed. You're a new creation in Christ.

So the telltale mark of a believer is the indwelling Spirit. And the indwelling Holy Spirit testifies with evidence that we are in Christ. The Spirit, verse 16 bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God. He testifies. That's what that bears witness means. Testifies, testifies jointly with us that we belong to Christ. That word also means to corroborate by evidence that we belong to Jesus Christ.

You say, well, what's the evidence? How does he corroborate with evidence? What is the testimony that the Spirit gives us that we belong to Christ? Well, here's how this works. The moment that you receive Christ, you go from I was in Adam, now I'm in Christ. I was delivered from the domain of darkness, delivered into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Go from darkness to light, from death to life. All those are phrases that are used in the New Testament. And so I am life now in the Lord. Dead man brought to life. 2 Corinthians 5:17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come.

And when the Lord comes in by his Spirit, things change. And here's the biggest witness that you and I receive as Christians. All of the sudden, our attitude towards sin, totally different. Totally different. You see sin differently once you become a child of God. So I became a Christian when I was 17 years old, senior in high school, January 1980. Prayed to receive Christ. I went from being in Adam to being in Jesus. I didn't understand all of what that meant. All I knew is that I needed Jesus. I knew that I was convicted about my sin because the Holy Spirit convicts of sin. And I saw that I was a sinner. He convicts of righteousness that Jesus is righteous and he can fix up judgment, that sinners who stand before a righteous Lord are going to be condemned. There is judgment. And so I saw all that and I responded to Jesus. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, save me. And he did.

So here I am. I'm a brand new believer. I've only been a Christian for a few weeks and I have an opportunity to participate in my favorite sin. And so I'm thinking, this is awesome. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, there is conviction from the Holy Spirit. Don't do that. What? What do you mean don't do that? This is what I live for. This is what I do. Don't do that. You can't do that anymore. You are mine and you are not allowed to do that anymore. There was conviction. I said to myself, whoa, something has changed inside of me. This is not like going to church. This is a transformation that has taken place in my heart. And I was getting the conviction of the Holy Spirit that I had never experienced before.

And the Holy Spirit was bearing witness that, Jeff, you're now a child of God and you have been bought with a price. That's what it says in First Corinthians, chapter 6 and verses 19 and 20. Or do you not know that your body is a temple, literally the holy of holies of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body.

Hey, do you have the witness of the Spirit that tells you you belong to him, that tells you that you are his, that you belong to God, that you're a child of God? You know, if you can sin and it doesn't bother you to sin, that's a huge indicator that you've never been saved. You know, when the Lord saves you, he doesn't fix it so you can't sin anymore. He fixes it so you can't sin and enjoy it anymore. And if you are living a life of sin and all of a sudden you say, man, this is so wonderful, and there's no conviction from the Holy Spirit, it's just proof positive that you've never been saved. There's no witness inside your heart that you belong to him.

But if, as a Christian, you say, I've given my heart and life to Christ, but I'm struggling with sin, I'm stumbling, I'm failing, I'm falling, and there's conviction from the Lord that what you're doing is wrong, that's a good sign. You see, a pig never feels dirty, right? If you could talk to a pig, he's rolling around there in the mud, and you say, hey pig, what do you think about the mud? You feeling dirty? He said, feeling dirty? What are you talking about, man? This is my nature. I love to roll around in the mud.

A Christian has a new nature. He's become a partaker of the divine nature. And if he falls in the mud, she falls in the mud, you fall, feel the dirt. That is the witness of the Holy Spirit. So that's the first blessed assurance. A true child of God has the internal witness of the Spirit.

Secondly, a true child of God has the ongoing leadership of the Spirit. Verse 14. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. Now, some people read that and they say, hmm, well, I don't know, because I don't know if I'm really being led by the Spirit of God. There's a lot of inconsistencies in my life, and I want to be led by the Spirit. But a lot of times I take my own way and I go my. I do what I want to do and I put self on the throne and I say no to God's way from my life. And so maybe I'm not a son of God because maybe I'm not led.

Well, remember this. Two teams. Two teams. The in Adam team is led by the flesh. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. The flesh is the broad road that leads to destruction. If you're in the flesh, you're in Adam. In Adam, all die. You're on the highway to hell. And that's where everyone starts. But you receive Christ. You understand that Jesus died for you. You receive Christ, and now you are placed in Christ. And the leader of the in Christ team is the Holy Spirit. He's your leader. All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

So are you on the team? Because the team leader is the Holy Spirit. That does not mean that you do everything the Holy Spirit wants you to do. Otherwise, you're off the team. He doesn't kick you off the team. He is leading the team. And so we have that assurance that, wait a minute, I'm on the team. And the Lord is the leader. The Lord's spirit is the leader. Now the Lord, you mark it down, he is faithful to lead us. Faithful to lead his children.

Speaker 1

What an encouraging Father's Day lesson today with empowering truth to allow us to live a life of peace and purpose under his fatherhood guidance. You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve and part one of the message called "When God Becomes Your Father." It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that almost everyone has some issue with their father. It could be something extremely tiny or dreadfully terrible. But God, who lives in our heart through the Holy Spirit, is a perfect Father, always there, faithful and true, and always giving us correct advice, support, and love.

That is really what the eighth chapter of the book of Romans is about, about the love of God and how we can enjoy him as our perfect father for now and eternity. Today's lesson is entitled "When God Becomes Your Father," part one, and it's one of six in Pastor Jeff's series "More Than Conquerors," a study of Romans chapter 8. This chapter is known as the greatest chapter in the Bible and the greatest book of the Bible. So a study of it reveals powerful, insightful, and necessary truths for us to grasp and import into our hearts.

This series is available in the From His Heart resource center at fromhisheart.org. Just request the series "More Than Conquerors," and you can get it on a USB flash drive, digital downloads, CDs, or DVDs. You can also call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) and ask for the series "More Than Conquerors." When you go to our website, you can also go to the Listen link online and listen again to this broadcast or download a free MP3 of today's program along with the message notes from Pastor Jeff.

The lesson today is called "When God Becomes Your Father." From His Heart is in our 21st year of broadcasting the good news on radio, television, and online. God is multiplying our outreach to make an eternal difference in the hearts and homes across the world. Thank you for all you can do to help us financially this month. We have some special gifts for you this month when you make that gift. Call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) or go to fromhisheart.org.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for joining us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, trusting that today's broadcast was a blessing to you and that you'll be right back here for the close of this message, "When God Becomes Your Father," next time. Won't you be sure to join us then when Pastor Jeff will open up God's word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart here on From His Heart?

Speaker 3

There is treasure is true there is blessing there is hope that you always dream love he can heal every scars of real truth real love Real.

Speaker 2

From.

Speaker 3

His Heart.

Speaker 1

From His Heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more@fromisheart.org.