A Light Shining in a Dark Place: The Glory of Adoption

In this sermon on John 1:12-13, Pastor Andy Davis preaches how adoption by God in Christ is beautifully mirrored by humans adopting other humans.

– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –  

Recently, scientists have discovered a vast subterranean lake in the Antarctic at the bottom of the earth called Lake Vostok. It’s near a Russian outpost called Vostok Station where, in 1983, was recorded the lowest temperature on the surface of the Earth,  -129°F. You may have thought this morning’s weather was difficult; that’s -129. But they discovered there, a subterranean lake below two and a half miles of ice. There is a lake down there, 500 feet deep, and they are calling it the coldest, darkest place on Earth. I can’t imagine what would motivate a human being to wanna go down and explore it, but there are some getting ready for such an expedition. To go to the bottom of a subterranean lake in the Antarctic is nothing I desire, but I thought about that expression, the coldest, darkest place on earth, probably physically it’s so. But I think that satan, through the power of temptation, the power of sin, is able to bring people psychologically, mentally, emotionally to places darker and colder than that one. And it is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to bring light and life into those dark pits, amen? And to see the gospel of Jesus Christ triumph in the darkest pit of all brings Him the greatest glory of all.  

As I was thinking about Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, thinking, of course, about abortion and why we focus this time of year is because of the Roe vs. Wade decision so many years ago which led to so many deaths in our country and still legal in our country. But I was thinking also because of the example of these three families and others that I know that have given themselves to adoption, thinking about the joy of adoption and the joy that it proclaims into dark pits and to despair, a joy of hope, a joy of happiness of Jesus Christ, of the Gospel. That’s what I wanna talk about today. I basically wanna take the physical adoption that has done… has been done in front of us as a witness to faith and to get us to think about our spiritual adoption, Jesus Christ, and then go back to the issue of physical adoption and show how it can shine a light in the dark place of abortion and so many others as well. 

Sin Causes Dark Places

Now, sin does cause dark places. We’ve already discussed one, and that is the issue of being an orphan in this world. What could be more powerless than a baby without parents? Without someone to look after him or her? I was watching recently in a Discovery Channel program about the glories of this earth, and what they talked about in a secular sense, I just quickly transform over into worship. But up near the Arctic Circle, there are these caribou that just spend their whole lives running, running and running, and running thousands of miles. And the pregnant females stop long enough to give birth and then they expect their newborns to get up and run, and they do. And immediately those new born calves are running and running with the herd, and they do so for their own protection, but not so with human babies. They come into the world completely needy and dependent, and so therefore the tragedy of being an orphan strips that helpless infant of all that it will need. And it’s more than just physical provision. It’s all that the soul needs. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ, it’s love and affection and training and wisdom and all of the things that parents are meant to give by God. 

In Kenya, near Nairobi, there’s a dark valley called the Mathare Valley, and there you can see in any given day, hundreds of children combing piles of stinking garbage looking for something to eat or something that has some value that they can sell, fighting to survive. We have no idea how many of them are orphans. There can be some questions asked and some statistics taken, but really worldwide statistics about how many orphans there are is unclear just because of situations just like that. UNICEF estimates as many as 210 million orphans worldwide. The United Nations puts a number somewhat lower, 143 million orphans. But you know, I heard one of the couples talking about seeing faces, you see the pictures and immediately realize these are individual human beings with needs. And so the number is overwhelming, whether it’s 210 million or 143 million, absolutely overwhelming. 

Then there are specific situations, there are perhaps as many as 15 million orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa because of AIDS. So both mother and father get the infection and die and it leaves the children as orphans. And then, really, whole communities get wiped out, and so aunts and uncles are gone and grandparents, all of them are gone, and what it leaves are young teenagers in charge of a family of four or five little children. And that is such a desperate situation that sometimes those teenagers commit suicide because they cannot face the responsibilities. Just absolutely tragic. Will break your heart, those circumstances. Then there are others that are orphaned by war in Sudan and Uganda and other places. In the US itself, there approximately 118,000 orphans in orphanages just waiting for adoption; 300,000 churches there are in the US, so that’d be one orphan for every three churches. It’s a dark place of being an orphan. 

Another dark place related to this is that of a crisis pregnancy. For a young woman, few things in life can be a shocking or scary as an unwanted pregnancy, and satan is especially active in that situation. In many cases, certainly creating the circumstances whereby the baby was conceived to begin with, then also working in the heart of both the father and the mother of that child to not want the child, to despise it, to turn away from responsibility. And for that woman, depression sets in, options all of them seem dark and foreboding. Questions come about the future. How could I possibly raise this child? How will I pay for everything? What about my future? All of my plans? Those kind of dark thoughts come with a crisis pregnancy, and that leads quickly in many cases, sadly to another dark place, and that is abortion. 

The wicked scourge of abortion continues in our own country. There are 46 million abortions performed worldwide, over one million of them in our own country. Ninety-five percent of abortions performed in our country are done for birth control reasons. Twenty percent of all pregnancies in the US end in abortion, one in five. And of the many things that I hate about abortion, it’s the despair and hopelessness that surrounds it, the anti-God state that surrounds it, that bothers me, I think, the worst. I used to be involved in a pro-life ministry up in Boston, as we would go down to abortion clinics and try to persuade women not to get abortions, and as they were walking in, I looked at their faces and they looked like they were going to vomit, all of them. They all looked sick, they look scared, they looked like they had been wrestling all night with a brutal decision, which I think they had been, but they looked also hopeless. They look despairing. And if you ever had the opportunity to talk to any of them, for all the rhetoric of pro-choice, they almost inevitably used the expression, “no choice.” They had no choice but to do this. It was an ethic of despair, and that’s a dark place. And then there’s the dark place of infertility of couples that want to have a child, but they’re unable for medical reasons to do so, and they struggle, then they yearn to hold the baby in their arms. And they’re broken-hearted as monthly cycle passes, one after the other, and their hopes are dashed, and their hopes are dashed, and their hopes are dashed, and they might get medical tests. And then if a medical problem is found and identified in one of them then there’s issues of guilt that can come up and other issues, and it puts tremendous stress on the marriage. It’s a dark place. 

But frankly, none of these dark places compares with the ultimate dark place there is in this world, and that is being outside of the family of God. To not be a member of the family of God, to not have Almighty God as your own father. The darkness and terror of a life of sin, knowing that you’re en route, in your heart, you know that you’re en route to Judgment Day and you cannot survive it, and that nothing waits for you beyond that, but the fear and the expectation of judgment and the wrath of God which comes most certainly on any whose sins are not forgiven through faith in Christ, that is the darkest place of all. And so the Scripture speaks of that darkness again and again. John 3:19 says, “This is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men love darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.” 1 John 2:11, “Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. He does not know where he is going, because darkness has blinded him.” 

Now, I say to you, by the grace of God, adoption is God’s gracious answer to each of these dark pits. Do not say it’s the only answer to every one of them, but I say it is a gracious answer that God brings. What is adoption? Well, adoption is literally to take by free choice in a formal, legal action a child born of other parents and make him or her your own child. Adoption brings joy to the orphan, of course, by giving them a home and a family where before there was total loneliness. By giving them provision when before there was want. By giving them love and acceptance, when before there was rejection. By giving them security when before there was danger and instability. Adoption brings relief to women in crisis pregnancies by teaching them that it is not true that there is no choice, but abortion. But actually, they are able to entrust the care of a child to a loving godly couple that will bring them up in the training in the nurture of the Lord. And it frees the woman from considering abortion, something which sears her conscience, which breaks that natural bond of affection between a mother and child and leaves her damaged for life, brings hope to that situation. Adoption, of course, brings joy to an infertile couple by giving them the hope that they can in fact hold their own child in their arms and raise their own son and their own daughter in the fear and the nurture of the Lord.  But above all, adoption brings joy to every outcast sinner headed for hell, through faith in Jesus Christ, we can be adopted into the family of God.

“Adoption brings joy to every outcast sinner headed for hell, through faith in Jesus Christ, we can be adopted into the family of God”

Jesus is the Light Shining in the Dark Place

Look in John 1:12-13. It says there, “But to all who received Christ, to those who believe in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.” Jesus is portrayed in John chapter 1 as “the light shining in the dark place.” Jesus is the light shining in the dark place. Look at verses 1-5, “In the beginning was the Word.” Very familiar verses. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning, through Him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.” This portrays very plainly, Jesus’s unique place in the universe. Jesus is God, He is the Word of God.  

And the opening words of John’s gospel clearly bring us back to the opening words of the Bible. Genesis chapter 1, when God said, “Let there be light.” He spoke in the darkness and said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” By the power of God. So also here, John is saying that Jesus’s life speaks into the darkness of human history, a light that cannot be extinguished. It is the light of the glory of God, and Jesus’s life captures that light. But more relevant to the question of adoption is Jesus’s utterly unique position in relation to the Father. Look at verse 14. In the New American Standard, it says “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus is the only begotten son of the eternal Father. He’s in a position utterly unique in relation to the Father. Whereas all of us can be adopted through faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, and He is the light of the world. 

Now look again at verses four and five, and let’s focus on that for a moment. It says, speaking of Jesus, “In him was life, and that life was the light of man.” Verse 5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.” The analogy of Jesus and light is used again and again in Scripture and His entry into the world as of a light shining in a dark place, again and again. I love Isaiah 9:2, which says, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned,” and that light is Jesus. Jesus said in John 8:2, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” And so, therefore, the only true pure, perfect light there is in this world for every dark pit, for the orphan, for the woman in a crisis pregnancy, for the one facing abortion, for the dark pit of abortion itself, for infertility, and for the ultimate dark pit of being outside of the family of God, Jesus is the only light there is. He is the light, to the glory of God. 

Now, this light must be revealed, spiritually revealed, to individuals or we cannot see it. We cannot see it unless it’s revealed. Verse 5 says, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it,” is one translation. The darkness has not understood it. Later in this passage, John will tell us, that Jesus was in the world, verse 10, and though the world was made through Him, the world didn’t know Him. It didn’t recognize Him. It didn’t understand who He was. Even more pointedly, the Jews didn’t know who He was, though they should have. But verse 11, it says, “He came to that which was His own,” the Jews, “but His own did not receive Him,” they didn’t accept Him as far as who He was. Now, other Scriptures reveal why this is. Second Corinthians 4:4 says, “The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Satan does a blinding work on our heart, so we can’t see Jesus, we can’t see the light. But God has the power to remove that blindness. He has the power to give us sight for our souls to see Jesus properly. 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” 

God can say, “Let there be light” in your dark heart, you can speak that light, and there is light, it’s the light of Christ, and it cannot be extinguished. The light is eternally victorious. It’s so easy to be depressed when you come to the issue of abortion. I say that is an ungodly state of mind. It’s not mere triumphalism for me to tell you, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot extinguish it.” Verse 5 teaches it. When Jesus is light and satan is darkness meet, guess who wins? Jesus’s light wins every time. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot hold it back or overcome it, this is the most gracious light. 

A Most Gracious Light: Adoption in Christ’s Name

Now here I wanna focus on the issue of adoption because I believe it’s taught in verses 12 and 13. Now I know that the word “adoption” is not mentioned here, but that’s what it is. That’s what it is. “To all who received Him,” namely Jesus, “to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband’s will, but born of God.” Anyone who can see in Jesus who He truly is, who can receive Him as He really is, the eternally begotten Son of God, who sees in Him deity, they are children of God. God has done a work in their hearts, a work of adoption within their hearts, He has created a light in there, and on that basis, He adopts us. It says we have the right or the power to become children of God. I love this Greek word it’s eksousia, translated right, authority, power, the privilege of becoming a child of God. It’s used in other places. In John 5:27, it says Jesus has the right, same Greek word, to judge because he is the Son of Man, so he’s the one that’s gonna sit on that great white throne and He’s gonna judge all human beings, He has that right, that eksousia, He has the authority to do it. 

Pilate spoke of his own authority. He said, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Don’t you realize I have the authority to crucify you, and the authority to set you free?” and the will power to do neither one? That was Pontius Pilate, but he’s speaking of his authority. He had the right. We are given the right to become children of God. That’s what John 1:12 speaks of. But then it clarifies very plainly, and that’s why I think it’s talking about adoption. It says in the ESV verse 13, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.  

Now when it says, “not of blood” there, it means it’s not a genetic relationship here. Jesus in verse 14 is the monogenes, the only begotten. It’s related to the word for genetic. He’s the only true in that sense, son of God, the only begotten one. The rest of us are born not of blood, but by God, adopted into his family, so I think this is speaking of adoption. Has this happened to you? Has this happened to you? Forget for a moment that this is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Forget for a moment the issue of physical adoption and whether God wants you to do that. I just wanna ask you, are you ready for judgment day? There is no other way. You can be ready for judgment day, and then to be an adopted child of the living God. You can’t be ready. You can’t face judgment.  

You’re gonna have to give an account on Day of Judgment for every careless word you’ve spoken. And if you’re not an adopted member of the family of God, you will be lost forever. Have you been adopted? Verse 12 tells you how to do it. Believe in His name, believe in Jesus. Believe that He is the only begotten Son of God, that the word became flesh and made his dwelling. That he is God, that He died on the cross, because he was willing to, not because he was under compulsion, but because he was willing to. He laid down his life for our sins. Shed His blood for you. Has this happened to you? Have you been adopted into the family of God? Nothing else is more important than that. Now, concerning adoption, the Bible, the New Testament in specific, has much to say. Ephesians tells us that we were predestined for it before the foundation of the world. Isn’t that incredible? It says in Ephesians 1:3, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.”  

We were predestined before the creation of the world to be adopted into his own family. Oh, how sweet a truth is that? How much stability does that give you in your Christian life? That God set his love on you before the foundation of the world. He actually links predestination with adoption twice. He does the same thing in Romans 8:29, he says, “For those God foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.” How do we get to be a family member with Jesus? It is by the sovereign work of God and salvation, of working that light in our heart so that we can come to believe that Jesus is the son of God, and then he adopts us, and we become like our brother Jesus. How sweet is that? Before the foundation of the world! And then we are given a love that only a father can give, and we are given a name in his family that happens in adoption, fatherly love given to the child, and a name in the family. 1 John 3:1 says, “Behold, what manner of love the Father has given us that we should be called the sons of God.”  

“God set his love on you before the foundation of the world.”

What a name that is. That we should be called the sons of God. Ever heard that song, “Man of sorrows, what a name, for the Son of God who came.” Well, son of God, what a name for sinners like us, that we should be called sons of the living God. How incredible is that? And what kind of love, what manner of love the Father has given to us that we should be called that? It’s an incredible love that’s given to us and we are given a permanent place in the family. John 8:35, Jesus said, “A slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.” Oh, what a sweet truth that is. Foster families, however much they do a good service in the life of a child, they are impermanent, and there’s much change in those relationships. When it comes to adoption, that’s a permanent relationship. You are taken into that family and that becomes your family. Those parents, that becomes your father, your mother. The existing children, those are your brothers and sisters, legally so.  

Russell Moore, who’s a good friend of mine, he preached here this summer, he adopted two boys from Russia and was flying back with them, and a woman came and asked, “Are they brothers?” He said, “Yes, they are.” She’s like, “Well I know, I know, they are brothers now, but are they brothers?” “Yes, they really are. They really are brothers.” You know what I mean? she said to him. “Yes, I know what you mean. If you’re asking if they’re genetically related, no, but they are brothers, really brothers.” Do you believe that’s true of you, that you’re really, really in the family of God? Or is it just kind of a foster relationship, where you’re kind of on trial.

I mentioned before, like Anne of Green Gables, where you kind of have to earn your way into the family and then you end up messing up, dying your hair green and smashing your slate over some boy’s head and all this kind of thing, and you’re really behaving badly and it’s not looking too good for being adopted right now. So many Christians live like they’re on trial, on probation. If we’re adopted in the family of God, it is a permanent place in the family, John 8:35, forever, that we will be there. And it’s not based on our performance, a permanent place in the family. And we are given a gift, the indwelling Holy Spirit, called in many places, the spirit of adoption or the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of sonship. 

In Galatians 4, it says, “When the time had fully come, God sent His son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that they might receive the full rights of adoption.” Isn’t that sweet? Because you are sons, not you might be sons or will be, but because you are sons through faith in Christ, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out, “Abba! Father!”, so you are no longer a slave, but a son. That means you have a permanent place in the family, and now the Spirit is inside, you’re testifying to it. It is the greatest evidence an individual person can have that they are a member of the family of God, the indwelling Holy Spirit. And the Spirit is within your heart, if you’re a child of God, crying out, “Daddy!” That’s what “Abba” means. It’s the same thing that Jesus cried in the Garden of Gethsemane. You remember, when great drops of blood were coming off of his face and he’s praying about drinking the cup of God’s wrath on the cross for us, for the sins of the world, and he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.” Doesn’t that sound so child-like? “Daddy, you can do anything. You can do anything. If it’s possible, let this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will.” That same Spirit is in us now, the spirit of Jesus crying out, “Abba, Father!” to Almighty God. The one before whom the angels hide their face, that spirit is crying, “Abba, Father!” within us. It’s the spirit of Jesus, and it’s called in Ephesians 1, “the deposit guaranteeing the full inheritance.” You get the indwelling Spirit crying out, “Abba, Father!” and that means you’re gonna get the full inheritance someday. Kinda like a rich person who leaves a monthly stipend for his children until they come to the age of their maturity, they’re able to come into their full inheritance. But they live on the monthly checks until then, and so we live on the moment-by-moment experience of the indwelling Spirit. But that’s not the full inheritance. The full inheritance is yet to come. When we see God face-to-face and God Himself will dwell with us. And we will see His face, and we will be with Him forever. But until then, we get the deposit, the indwelling Spirit, and the Spirit is at work in us, and because we’re now members of the family, adopted in the family, we get to share the joys and the sorrows of that family membership. We get to be involved in the family work. I do not call it the family business to lower it, but it’s the family work and the family work is the kingdom that’s going around the world. We get to be involved in that and we get to share the family likeness, which is holiness, and the Holy Spirit works all of that in us. Romans chapter 8, it says, “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” 

The Spirit is not passive in us, he leads us to holiness, to put sin to death, to share the nature of our brother Jesus, that we might be conformed to his likeness, he leads us to war. As we already talked about in Colossians 3, to modify the deeds of the flesh, the Spirit leads us in that direction. “For you do not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you receive the Spirit of adoption and by Him, we cry out, ‘Abba Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirits 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.”  

If you’re a son of the living God, you must share in the sufferings of Jesus, and the sufferings have to do with personal battle against sin, the suffering of holiness, and then the suffering of advancing the kingdom of Jesus Christ in this world, meeting opposition. The suffering of temptation and the suffering of persecution, if we share those, then you come into the full inheritance. That’s part of being a child of God. Now, of course, we’re not like Jesus in many ways, He never sinned. When He met every temptation, He overcame it by the power of the holiness within Him. We struggle with the body of flesh, don’t we? We struggle with sin, but I just said to you that we are permanently members of the family, isn’t that wonderful? So what happens when we yield to sin, what happens when we’re tempted and we give in? Well, then He treats us like a father would a sinning child, Hebrews 12. He’ll discipline us. They talk about being taken out to the divine woodshed. I don’t know if actually any of us have any woodsheds, but you know what I mean. And when you adopt a child into your family, you have the right to train them, not to abuse them. We’re not saying that, but to train them as the Bible teaches, to bring them up in the training in the nurture of the Lord. It’s a privilege. 

And if we don’t receive that treatment from the father, he’s not truly our father. But He is our Father, and so, therefore, He will discipline us. It says in Hebrews 12, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Therefore, endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline, then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.” So what does the father do? He’ll discipline you. Yeah, you might get sick, you might have some financial trial, you might have some other adverse circumstance, some hardship that comes your way, and the Spirit speaks and says, “Oh, by the way, that’s linked to this sin, you might wanna stop doing that.” And that’s called a spanking, it’s called discipline, it’s something that Heavenly Father is doing to teach you to be holy so that we may share in His holiness. It’s the way he treats us, but he’s not gonna evict you from the family. That’s not the way he treats his sons and daughters. 

The consummation, though, of our adoption is yet to come. The best part’s yet to come, friends. Romans 8:23 speaks about that. “We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly as we await eagerly our adoption as sons, the resurrection of our bodies.” Isn’t that amazing how Paul links adoption to resurrection? The full display of our standing in the family of God, waits for the final resurrection of the body, when our bodies are conformed to Jesus’s glorious body, he’s the firstborn from the dead. We will be conformed to Him in every way, and the universe will be transformed and it’ll be a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. And we will live there forever and ever in resurrection bodies as sons and daughters of the living God. And therefore, it says in Revelation 21:7, “He who overcomes will inherit all these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.” 

Application: Shining the Light Now

So what application can we take from this meditation on adoption? First of all, if you’re a child of God, just give thanks for these things, give thanks that he has given you the right to become a child of God, He gave you that right through faith in Christ. Give thanks that Ephesians and Romans 8 teaches that it happened before the foundation of the world, that God set his choosing love on you and predestined you to be adopted. Give thanks for it. Thank him for the fact that when you believed, he put his adoptive love in you and his spirit within you, crying out, “Abba Father!” Give thanks for that, that the Spirit then leads you in a path of holiness, and that if at any moment you step off, he will discipline you and train you, but he will never forsake you. He will never leave you. He will guide you through this sinful world, and in the end, He will give you your full adoption, your full inheritance, you’re an heir of the living God and he will give you a portion and inheritance in the new heaven and the new earth, and he will give you a resurrection body. All those things ought to make you happy, those things ought to bring you great joy, you ought to spend eternity thanking God for it, and you will. So just start there, thank God for all these things. 

But when it comes to physical adoption, I would urge you to consider the richness of our Christian heritage. Early on during the Roman Empire, when Roman fathers were throwing out babies because they had the legal right to do so, and they would just expose them and leave them to the elements or to wild animals or birds. It was Christians that went around along the banks of the Tiber, around the bridges and pick up those babies and raised them up as their own. And Christians came from that. Those little babies were raised up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, that’s our heritage. William Carey opposed the throwing of infants into the Ganges River to worship Hindu gods. He stood against it. Over a century later, Amy Carmichael did the same thing for young Indian girls that were trapped in prostitution and ran away. She adopted them and took care of them. George Müller, 10,000 orphans, cared for them. He looked after the orphans and widows, and so also, we can do the same. 

I think we have to do more in the issue of abortion, not just on the legislative side, but bringing light into the dark place of desperation. You have a bulletin insert there for Pregnancy Support Services. There are other crisis pregnancy centers around that need our work. They need our finances. They need our support. You can give counsel to a young woman who says, “I have no choice,” and you can say, “There are choices, the choice of life,” and you can speak the word of adoption at that particular moment. We can support the families, these three and others that have set themselves apart to adopt, support them financially, help them financially, if there are needs.  

Paul and Miranda are leaving and you have five days to fill those boxes down there with specific things, find out. It’s gonna take some research to find out what they want. Don’t bring a big yellow and red and blue plastic toy. I don’t think that’s what they’re looking for right now, but there are a list of things they are. You’ve got five days and let’s find out what they’re asking to bring to the orphanages. You can directly look after orphans and widows in their distress. Find out what they need and fill those boxes sometime this week, so that’s something that you can do. Concerning actually adopting, that you would yourself adopt a child? We’re reading in our family devotion this morning, the story about Elijah, and he was out there in the desert and he was drinking water by the brook, and then suddenly the brook dried up, and God spoke to Elijah and he said, “Go to Zarephath. There’s a widow there that I have commanded to take care of you.” That’s a fascinating statement. “I commanded her to take care of you,” so he goes. The thing is, the widow didn’t seem to know about it. She really wasn’t aware of it, and he said, “Bring me some water,” so she goes to get a little water and “If you wouldn’t mind making a little cake for me because I’m kind of hungry.” She’s like, “Are you kidding me? All we have left is a little flour and a little oil, and I’m gonna make that cake for my son and I. We’re each gonna eat half of it and then we’re gonna die. That’s our plan for the future.” 

“Concerning actually adopting, that you would yourself adopt a child?”

All right, but think again, what God had said, “Go to the widow at Zarepheth, for I have commanded her to take care of you.” Then Elijah said, “Please go and make me a cake, for thus says the Lord,” and he spoke a promise to her. She believed the promise and then obeyed the command God said he’d given for her life. Now that’s kind of strange, isn’t it, how God acts in our lives? Could it be that God has commanded some of you to take care of some orphans more directly than you ever have before? You just didn’t know it yet?  

I love what Brad Estes said, “Maybe it’s a green light until God puts up the red light.” The same thing goes with the cross-cultural missions and other things. Sometimes we’re waiting for the fleece and God’s saying, what more do you need than the command from Scripture? So maybe God is commanding you in the same way to look after orphan and orphan, and then you step out and you suddenly find that that jar of flour and oil never runs out, that he keeps replenishing it day by day and you see God work in ways you can’t even imagine.  

I promised also myself, I would never preach on abortion without finishing with the word of grace to those who have sinned in this issue in the past. It is such a desperate feeling, and that I would think includes all of us, depending on what you’re talking about. Do you ever feel like you haven’t done enough in pro-life? You haven’t done anything, maybe, never spoken up a courageous word, never got involved in any way, then come to the cross for forgiveness. And remember what it says in Colossians 2:11, “He forgave us all our sins.” And if you’re a woman who has made that choice to get an abortion, we don’t suddenly say, “Because of the magnitude of your pain and your sadness, it’s not sin.” It is, but sin is dealt with fully at the cross. There’s full forgiveness at the cross. Come to Jesus and find that forgiveness there. Close with me in prayer.