Overcoming The Orphan Spirit Part 2
Auto Transcript from the sermon Overcoming the Orphan Spirit Part 2.
This week we'll experience second fall, maybe third fall, and then we'll get second winter again.
So we've got a lot of people who are out, a lot of people who are struggling with mental health, illnesses, all those different things.
And so just want you to continue to pray for those in the congregation during this season.
As we get into the fall, as the days get shorter, as those types of things happen, people who wrestle with mental health and anxiety and things like this, this becomes a heightened time for them.
Family time, in this corner of Christianity, we have adopted our own little customs and traditions and stuff like that, but it doesn't change the fact that psychologically, emotionally, when this time of year rolls around, if you don't have family, if you don't have the closeness of that family, this is a hard time.
And so a lot of people are out this week traveling, ill, that kind of stuff.
So please just remember them in your prayers this week.
So this is part two of the orphan spirit.
I'm going to try to tackle six pages of notes for the first time in my life in 51 minutes.
So, you know, God says, "'Push yourself, be better than you were yesterday.
'" I'm not gonna say that I was better than I am yesterday, but we're gonna at least attempt through it.
So a lot of our scripture references today, I'm gonna highlight.
So if you wanna go back and look at them yourself, study those, study the root words, the Greeks, the Hebrew, all that kind of stuff.
If you wanna get dive down deeper into that, you're gonna have to take the references, go back to YouTube, go back to Facebook, whatever, and go back and reread those scriptures for yourself.
Why the orphan spirit series?
Again, I prefer fun stuff.
I prefer where like when you leave, everybody's like, oh man, you know, Chris made a really good point.
That's something that's really cool.
We'll do that this week.
This is more of a gut-wrenching, soul-searching series to ask yourself individually, do you see God as a father?
Do you allow God to be a father in your life?
I would venture to believe the majority of the men, especially in this room, that I know that have struggled with things over the years, you have struggled with them because of your fathers, because of the examples that they've set.
And a lot of times we talk about pornography or financial or lust, but sometimes it could just be a hardened heart.
Sometimes it can be the lack of ability to submit to authority.
There's a lot of different ways that the orphan spirit comes out.
It's not always just the sins that we like to categorize higher.
Sometimes the sins of being apathetic to your family, that's a sin, that's a pretty dangerous sin if you're a father, and you're looking at your children, being apathetic to them, it's a long-term sin that has a lot of negative implications that are there.
Daughters who are in this room whose fathers were abusive, who were barely present at best, I'm sorry, I cannot take away the sting or the hurt that your father caused you.
I was never intended to, nor was your husband, nor was anybody else on this earth.
It was God who was intended to be your father, to take away the hurt that your earthly father caused.
I know sometimes it's hard.
Sometimes it's hard to hear as a spouse that it was the husband, the husband needs to take that responsibility.
No, the husband nor the wife are supposed to take that responsibility.
God is supposed to do that for you, but you have to allow him.
You're spouses, you're supposed to be spouses.
Your spouse isn't supposed to be your daddy.
Just like your wife ain't supposed to be your daddy.
It's a whole nother topic for a whole nother time, but we're not gonna go down that rabbit hole today.
Last week I gave you guys some homework.
If you did not see the message, I suggest that you go back to that.
I'm gonna hit highlights of all of the passages from the tour and from the prophets that we looked at last week.
In these verses, and part of the reason why I asked you to do the homework is because I wanted you to read the Bible.
Craig Grishel, Joel Osteen, all the, there's all kinds of people out there.
You want a method to leadership, you want a method to do this, they are out there.
They can give them to you.
Some of them are rooted in the scriptures themselves.
I don't wanna give you a method.
I wanna give you what the word of God says, because a method in and of itself is temporal.
A temporal message does nothing to transform your heart.
The spirit and the power of God does.
Right, Ty-Ty?
See, we're tracking, we got it together.
So what does God instruct us in the Torah and the prophets about him as a father?
It says that we are not to oppress or mistreat the orphans.
That means that he will not mistreat or oppress the orphans.
Last week, we established that an orphan is somebody who's fatherless.
I went a step further with it because I believe it's implied in the scripture.
Just because you have a father, if your father is just present, if your father's not doing what they're supposed to do, that is also an orphan.
You're an orphan.
My dad showed up every single day.
Awesome.
But was he engaged in your life or was he just there?
Was he present?
Those are things you have to ask yourself.
And you're only gonna get out of your relationship with God the father what you put into it.
No different than the healing you're gonna get with your earthly father.
Every person at every point in time has an issue with their earthly father.
Some of them are great and deep.
Some of them are not as great and deep.
So every person in this room can learn something more about God as the perfect father.
He hears the cries of the orphan.
He protects them.
He teaches them.
He guides them.
He guards them and he provides for them.
We see this then extended not just as a father, but through the life of Jesus as the perfect son.
In Jesus's time, not only was an orphan somebody who was fatherless, it was somebody who didn't have a teacher.
Somebody who didn't have a guide.
Somebody who didn't have a guardian.
Some of us who've been in our corner of Christianity, we know a great deal of amount of people who do not allow people to be their teachers, to be their guides, to be their guardians, to be their protectors.
They are.
And that is a rebellious spirit.
That is an orphan spirit.
Now I also need to preface this because of where we've come from.
Because I've heard through the grapevine this week some questions.
Yes.
Yes, it is possible for people to abuse that on the other side.
Well, the reason why I don't have a teacher, the reason why I don't have a guide, the reason why I don't have a protector is because what we ended up with those shiny happy people.
Yes.
Yes.
It can be cultish.
It can go too far to the other side as well.
This is why it's crucial for me to show you what the Bible says.
Not my opinion on the matter, but what the Bible says.
Because if the word of God is true and every man is a liar, then the word of God will show you if a man is a liar.
One, because they're rebellious, or two, because they're trying to start a cult.
And most of them go hand in hand with each other.
God instructs us, all of these instructions for the orphans because this is what he does for them and for us, even when we don't know that we are orphans.
But we have to allow God to do it.
See, that's one of the most interesting things that we don't talk about as much in the Roots base of Christianity.
We talk about the Torah, we talk about the prophets, we talk about the commandments and how we're instructed to do those things.
But every day we're given a choice.
Just like we're given a choice with how we accept God in that relationship.
We're given a choice on how we are gonna let God interact in our life and to what degree.
So what is the spirit of an orphan?
Those who do not and will not receive protection, provision, teaching and instruction, guidance and guardianship.
It's a spirit of independent self-reliance and in most cases it's the poverty mindset.
But this doesn't always manifest itself the way that we think.
Because when we talk about a poverty mindset, we talk about some of these things, a lot of the people who are operating as out of the orphan spirit, they're very wealthy.
If you think about it, like when you say what's a poverty mindset, it's not just financial.
Because a lot of your very rich and very influential people, they lack a teacher, they lack protection, they lack provision, they lack instruction, they lack guidance, they're self-reliant and yet they're poor.
You see this with a lot of star athletes who are dest, they just need all of this attention all the time, it's a poverty mindset.
They're not secure in who they are, what their identity is, who their father is.
They need other people to make them secure, to make them feel good, to make them feel like they have value, that's an orphan spirit.
Many who hold the power to guide lack submission and humility for guidance.
When we look at people like Steve Jobs, we look like people like, throwing out another mind, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, all the people that everybody thinks are the antichrists and all of the things that are out there, they're all narcissists to a certain degree.
They're self-reliant, they're independent and they have an orphan spirit.
Yet they're some of the most successful and world-changing people we've ever experienced in our life, that's why it doesn't mean the person who walks through the door is like, woe is me, woe is me, is the only one with the orphan spirit.
No, there's some ministry leaders right now who are type A narcissists and they are lacking the Holy Spirit, they're in the orphan spirit, woe is me.
I need you to come so that I can feel important.
I need you to come and listen to me so that I can feel like I'm relying on my own ability.
When God tells us we are to die to our own self, to be resurrected and live daily through the power of Jesus.
As humans, we perpetuate what we are.
This causes generational cycles where our children exploit us and we exploit one another.
By our exploitation, God's judgment continues to compound in every generational cycle.
As we continue to exploit what we are and who we are, generational cycles continue.
This is why it's so important to understand God's sonship and God's family as a father.
Because throughout the generations, if let's say I had a great father, okay, awesome.
And so, but there was one thing I didn't like of my dad, so I make an adjustment with my children.
And so then my children say, oh, well, I didn't like this from my father and they make an adjustment.
Well, I've got five.
So they all make their own little tweaks and their adjustment.
And every cycle of every generation goes on and on and on in brokenness and it compounds itself in that brokenness.
Most people aren't attempting to live in the brokenness.
Most people don't even realize just how far down the generational's curse cycle they are.
And this is why it says, God must come to judge us so that we don't continue to compound the generational cycle.
Now what is God's judgment?
Repentance.
That's what he's looking for.
He'll execute his judgment for you to turn around.
We'll get to that towards the end of the sermon today if I make it there.
This is why Jesus came and walked as the perfect son.
I get it, the lame of God, all the other prophetic scenarios, him quoting all the Torah and the prophets and the symbolism and everything.
But I wanna look at Jesus the son.
And I don't wanna look at it to try to talk about whether he was divine or not.
I wanna look at it to understand the attributes of him.
Jesus had to walk as the perfect son because he had Yahweh as the perfect father.
The Gospel of John outlines many different times where Jesus uses the term my father.
John 5, 19 through 20, Jesus said to them, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, "'the son can do nothing of his own accord, "'but only what he sees the father doing.
'" Wouldn't that be great?
Wouldn't it be great if like when I brush my teeth in the morning, my sons would actually then brush their teeth on their own without telling me that they did or they forgot?
If the son did what the father did, on the most basic of level, we have issues.
Or when the dad says, hey, by the way, son, you can't wear the same sweaty gym shorts and gym shirt for the last five days, and they're like, oh, I didn't, it's clean, it doesn't smell, and you're like, I smelled you three blocks away.
The son does what the father does, but that's not what we see here, is it?
Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.
"'For whatever the father does, "'that the son does likewise.
"'For the father loves the son and shows him "'all that he himself is doing, "'and the greater works than these will he show him "'so that you may marvel.
'" God is showing through the son who he is, what he is, why he is, so that he can do greater things through the son.
What?
Okay, so if God's the father and he wants you to be his son, according to what he told Jesus, we're only to do what God tells us to do so that he can do greater things in us than he's revealed to us?
What?
The most perfect of being is gonna do greater things through Stephen Whitley or through Chris Frankie?
What?
Are you serious?
He wants to do greater things through you, Brittany, than he's done on his own?
Yes.
Where does this come into play?
Do I want my son to be like me?
I want my son to be better than me.
Do I want my son to be the best baseball player I ever was?
I hope not, I didn't make it past high school ball.
I want my son to be better than me.
Why do I want my son to be better than me?
Because my heavenly father wanted his son to be better.
Okay, so then how am I as a father gonna make my son better than me?
I better model things that are better than what's inside me, right?
Because I'm not perfection.
Now God is perfection, so when God models perfection, he's showing him this, this is the baseline, son, of all that's coming.
Because see, in the Gospel of John, he had now poured the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of God came and fell on the flesh of the tabernacle of one body, one temple of flesh and bone.
Jesus, at that point in time, doesn't say that he had any knowledge that it was coming, that he would outpour his Spirit on all the temples of flesh and bone that would receive him.
So greater things were coming even to the perfect son.
The son does what the father does, and the father shows the son what he's doing.
How do you overcome that then, when you're in an environment when your son, your father is the reason why you as a son have a problem?
You beat your wife because your father showed you that it was acceptable to pick up his hand to his wife.
How do you overcome that?
How do you overcome when your father introduces you to pornography, or your father introduces you to thievery, or your father introduces you to gluttony, or your father introduces you to skipping around on your wife, how do you overcome that?
How do you overcome that as a wife who had a father who did that, who said this is what is acceptable for you to be as a woman?
How do you overcome that?
Modern times it's therapy, lots and lots of therapy.
Therapy, anything you do, should lead you back to God the father and his word.
If you don't know the word of God, then God cannot live in you, because at some point in time you're gonna wrestle with whether you're God, he's God, she's God, they're God, a God, and the word of God.
The word of God is true and every man is a liar.
So if the father said it, we should do it.
If we think we're gonna project onto somebody, I can write a book tomorrow, you can say, Chris, you did a great job, I love it, I implemented it, it worked, sooner or later I will fail you, sooner or later everybody in this room will fail you, wake up, church hurting is a necessity for you to be healed.
The orphan spirit says, I've been hurt, I don't wanna be here anymore, woe is me.
The father says, I saw you, I can heal you, come.
Most people don't want to, age old shame in the garden.
The son's life was the testimony of the father sending him.
Jesus didn't do anything of his own will.
Jesus didn't do anything of his own will, he did what the father told him and showed him.
John 5, 36, but the testimony I have is greater than that of John, for the works that the father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing bear witness about me that the father has sent me.
I don't care what degree you have, I don't care what position you have, if the works you do do not show me the God of the Bible, then the God of the Bible's not your God, plain and simple, you're not a part of that family.
Because if it was good enough for Jesus and it was a calling on Jesus, then it better be good enough for us.
Because ultimately, how do you know that you are Jesus's?
How do you are, how are you a part of the king's kingdom?
Well you do what the king says.
Well I'm more worried about what time we light candles on the Sabbath.
No, get your heart right, get your mind right.
Then light some stinking candles.
This matters more than this.
And out of these flows this, and it says this is deceitful and it's wicked.
And for any of you in here who've been abused by a family member, by anybody, you know the anger and the rage that comes from here to have vengeance.
You know the anger and the rage that can come from you to clear your family name.
But it says vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
If you have children in this room, you will straight go mama bear and cut somebody if they come after your kids.
You might be the most passive, the most docile, the most loving person, but they come after your kids, you'll straight cut them.
The same kids that earlier that morning you were trying to buy more wooden spoons on Amazon because you broke them while spanking and paddling their butt, you will straight cut them.
If somebody comes after my wife or my children, you best believe there ain't no forces of hell that are gonna stop me from raining down on you.
So wait a second, if we feel that way in the flesh towards each other, how much more does the perfect God who's spoken to creation, not only did he speak into creation, Jacob, but when it came to man, he didn't just say, hey, Adam, raise up.
Ooh, this is good.
Adam, come forth.
No, he sculpted him in his image and breathed into him.
So the beauty of the creation that you see around when you see the sunsets, there was a double rainbow this week, when the things you see, God saw fit for man and woman to be created in a different way that had more of an intimacy.
So if you as a mom or a dad are about to straight go south side on somebody when they come after your kids, can you imagine how the God of all creation feels when somebody does it to you?
He is the perfect father, plain and simple.
Nobody else in this room ever will be.
But we can strive to not fall into agreement and to fall out of agreement with the fact that we're orphans.
John 6, 27, do not labor for food that perishes, but for the food that endures in eternal life, which the son of man will give you.
For on him, God the father has set his seal.
The father gives the authority of life and teaching to the son.
John 5, 26, for as the father has life in himself, so is he granted the son also to have life in himself.
It was because the father saw fit to grant it.
If your father caused you death and not life, God wants to give you life.
Why?
Because he is life.
He is life.
John 6, 45, it was written in the prophets, and they will all be taught by God.
Everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me.
The fulfillment of the Torah and the prophets in another one of the passages there is that they will be taught by God.
God didn't want them to have an earthly king.
He wanted to be their God.
He wanted them to be co-heirs with him, and through sending the perfect son and delegating the authority to the son and the son using that, we come through the father through the son.
It's important for us to understand that.
Moms and dads in this room, grandmas and grandpas, if your teaching and your testimony doesn't align with the nature of God, the instructions of the word of God, and it isn't in the spirit of God, you're failing your children.
You can spank your kids and be abusive.
You can spank your kids and not be abusive.
The nature of God, how you do things is important.
When you read the Proverbs and you look at those things, it's funny, if we're considered God's children, that means that he's saying he's not gonna spare the rod on me.
But he doesn't do it for my harm.
He does it for his glory and for me to repent.
If you use the rod on your child and you do so because you're angry or you're vindictive or whatever, you're abusive.
If you do it because you love your child and you're in check with your emotions and it's done in the right way, in the right pretense, in the right context, you're doing it because you love your child.
Same way with God.
This is why I said it's very possible to be too far to one side and too far to the other side.
What would Daddy God in the sky be if he was just up there like, you do whatever you want, children.
I'll see you at the pearly gates.
Some of that happened.
He came in the evening, in the afternoon, evening time, in the garden with Adam and dwelt with them every day.
It's just interesting.
Most dads go to work and they come home in the late afternoon or the early evening, but God came in the late afternoon to the early evening to the garden to talk to Adam and Eve, to dwell with them, haba, being more biblically correct.
He came in the afternoon, in the evening, in the garden to dwell with them, to talk with them.
But it's in that space at that time that he realized that Adam had found and known his shame.
And even then he came to talk to them.
What would have happened if he would have walked in and he would have been this abusive guy and he'd be like, get out of my garden.
You had one thing.
We do that to rabbits and chipmunks in our yard.
It's like, I'm getting a 22 out.
There's a squirrel in my tomatoes.
Like, he had every reason to come out swinging with fire and brimstone injustice.
He said, Adam, where are you?
Adam, where are you?
And guys, don't tell me you know better because from the dawn of time, the very first man, when your dad came to talk to you, the very first thing you said was, wasn't me, the woman you gave me.
Wasn't me, wasn't me.
We have compounded a generational cycle of, not my fault.
I promised you the majority of the problems in your life, in your homes is your fault and women don't take that too far either.
It is your fault because you're the representation in your home, in this life, in the atmosphere of God, Jesus in the flesh.
And if you don't do that properly, you damage the women that God used to bless this world.
And we've seen that since the garden.
Can you imagine what Eve would have done if Adam would have been like, I know she ate it, but I wasn't doing my job, Lord.
Please forgive me.
She'd probably be like, oh, Adam, wherefore art thou, Adam?
Instead, Cain and Abel flood earth.
Things got real bad, real quick.
John 6, 57, the son lived because of the father.
As the living father sent me, I live because of the father.
So whoever feeds on me, he will also live because of me.
John 10, 15, the father and the son know each other.
Just as the father knows me, I know the father and I lay down my life for the sheep.
John 10, 30, the father and the son are one.
Don't call me and tell me that you know God the father and then try to tell me that somehow Yeshua is some sort of long, they're one.
You don't get to change that because you don't get to write scripture.
Only God does.
They're one in nature, in essence, in all.
I and the father are one.
Jesus was the perfect son to the perfect father.
How do we become sons and daughters after him?
First off, you need to honestly ask yourself some questions.
The first one is, am I living, acting, and walking in the way that Jesus did?
Don't tell me about the Torah and the prophets.
Are you loving your neighbor as yourself?
Are you loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind?
Let's just start right there.
Then branch it off into the 613 and the other 1,000.
Are you loving your neighbor as yourself?
Are you loving God with all your heart?
If you love God with all your heart, soul, and your mind, how do you know to do that?
Have you started obeying God's word before you even know?
Ironically, Jesus, in order to be a follower, he said, you wanna be a follower of me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lord, I wanna be a follower of you.
I said, okay, all right.
Well, I don't have a place to sleep tonight.
This is a CJF version.
I don't have a place to sleep tonight.
I don't own a home.
I didn't rent an Airbnb.
All these other people, all these other birds, they have nests, they have places to go, but I don't have one here, because my home isn't here.
He goes, sure, no problem, Lord.
I wanna follow you.
And he goes, but, yeah, my dad died.
I'm the oldest son.
CJF paraphrase.
I'm the oldest son.
I need to go bury my dad first.
Yeshua said, you said you wanted to follow me.
All I asked you to do was obey.
Show me obedience.
Don't ask me to tell you where we're going, how we're going.
Don't ask me to tell you the Hebrew, the Greek.
Don't ask me to tell you the paleo.
Don't ask me to tell you the Heblish.
Don't ask me to tell you any of that.
All I asked you to do is just obey.
Obey.
And he goes, I'll obey when I take care of my earthly problems first.
No, he told you to obey.
The rest takes care of itself.
Not when you get right.
When you get right ain't gonna happen.
It's a lifelong process of fixing the generational cycles of who you are.
You ain't arriving anywhere.
Google Maps keeps changing.
There's a new route available.
It will for the rest of your life.
You're supposed to be growing closer and closer to the Lord every single day.
That's why he shows himself as a father, not as a destination.
You learn something from your father every day of your life and even when your dad is dead, you learn something from him.
Sometimes it's what to do and sometimes it's what not to do.
We must be self-reflective and knowledgeable of the word because Jesus promised he would come to us in John 14, 18.
And after you're knowledgeable, you have to be applicable and after you're applicable, you need to be innovative.
You need to obey and learn.
As you learn, it should cause you to move.
Sometimes it doesn't.
I still put the ladder up on places I know that's not secure even though I've had friends who've gotten injured falling on ladders.
That's the point.
When you know and you don't apply, there's a problem.
A lot of you in this room know the Bible.
You know the Bible really, really well.
Some of you probably know it better than I do.
But what you do with what you know matters.
And then what you do to help somebody else matters.
God will protect, provide, teach, instruct, guide, and guard the hearts of all orphans to him.
God's plan was not for us to be an orphan spirit but to be sons and daughters in the image of Jesus.
How does that happen?
We are adopted to become sons.
Roman 9, 26 said, and in the very place where it was said to them, you are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God.
The heart of Jesus to be the Father's son is to be our heart, Galatians 4, 5 through 6.
To redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of the Son into our hearts, crying out, but Father.
The Spirit of the Son is the Spirit of Jesus.
Paul also writes this, man, Paul loves the Spirit of Jesus, man.
Paul is just fire.
Paul's writing to Galatians.
Paul's writing to a Galatians.
They're not Jews.
He's saying, because God can send the Spirit of the Son into you, into your heart, you'll cry out, but Father.
So you can actually be adopted in as Galatians, as Romans, into the Hebrew God?
What?
Say what?
I can be adopted without bloodline, without anything?
Yes.
Jesus was the example that we were to follow in Hebrews chapter two, 10 through 12.
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, is bringing many sons to glory.
Should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering, for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.
That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation.
I will sing your praise.
The orphan spirit is one that will not receive and does not protect, provide, teach, instruct, guide, guard the hearts towards God.
You're independent, you're self-reliant, in poverty.
You haven't accepted God's plan for your life.
You can say, I'm not in poverty.
I'm not self-reliant.
I promise you, each one of you in this room has at least one area of your life that you are self-reliant, you have not turned over to God.
You still think God doesn't see it.
You still think God can't heal it.
You still think God can't mentor you through it.
And in that one area, at least you have the orphan spirit.
Why do we need to be adopted?
I mean, we could let Thomas and Michelle teach an entire class on this for us, but I already have two more pages of notes in about 15 minutes to get through it.
See, how many of you have ever studied Rome?
If you study ancient Rome, which was the captor in the land of Israel, what is Israel, Roman adoption would be something that could happen at any age.
So, I don't know who the oldest person in here is, but let's say the oldest person, I could adopt you in Roman adoption.
It just wasn't like at the age of 18, you age out, and now you're an adult, so you could do whatever you want.
No, the oldest person in this room, who could be 20, 30, 50 years my senior, I could adopt you into my family.
What happened in a Roman adoption?
Canceled all previous debts.
That's right, that's right, they wrote a blank check on your credit cards.
Your balance is zero.
Zero, Jess, you know those boots you bought?
Zero.
Zero.
You just got them for free, they canceled your debts.
Zero.
All previous relationships.
Ah, man, I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, I was trying to, I got in a bad relationship.
I ended up in a gang, I ended up with some friends I shouldn't.
I was the epitome growing up in my high school age of white privilege.
My parents did very well, we lived in a very white neighborhood that had all kinds of money, Procter and Gamble, it was just growing and growing and growing and growing and growing.
We didn't have anything that we needed for, and somehow I still ended up with people who were doing drugs and who were doing crimes.
This is why I said the orphan spirit doesn't know any race, creed, financial status.
It's not bound by Oklahoma, Texas borders and the Red River.
Like, the orphan spirit is an equal opportunity spirit.
It wants to take you down.
It wants to cycle you in the generational curses.
It doesn't matter who you are.
It doesn't matter where you came from.
They'll cancel the relationships and they'll define the new son wholly on the terms of the new relationship to the new father who he becomes an heir of.
So anybody who wants to bring back Roman, he's got like some big 401k, come see me because I ain't got no 401k.
I need to become an heir real quick.
I mean, that's a joke, but I'm also being serious.
You can utterly change the trajectory of who you are, where you're going by being adopted into a Roman family and it didn't matter your age, it didn't matter any of those things.
You could take on whoever your dad was.
So if you grew up in the slums and you grew up without anything and your parents beat you and they kicked you out and you're known by like, oh, that's that person.
I went to public school, forgive me.
I can still be saved.
But there was those people, there was that girl, there was that guy.
They immediately are no longer that girl, that guy in Roman adoption.
They take on the identity of whoever it is that adopted them.
That means that tomorrow I could be a Bezos like that and all my sin and shame are gone and you guys get to see somebody who works for me every other day on prime delivery.
So now that we've talked about this and beat this dead horse in a modern culture, Romans 8, 15.
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father.
We saw this when Paul was writing to the Romans.
We see when Paul was writing to the Galatians.
We see that him use this terminology.
You didn't have to fall back into fear of where you're gonna sleep tonight.
You didn't have to fall back into fear of am I gonna get beat tonight.
You didn't have to fall back into fear of whether I'm gonna eat tonight.
You didn't have to fall back into fear of whether or not this was gonna happen or that was gonna happen.
Because by the time you were adopted and you accepted the adoption of God the Father, you no longer were that person.
You are now the image, the heir to God the Father.
Not your earthly father, not your earthly stepfather, not whoever it was.
You have been adopted into the kingdom principles of Yahweh Elohim.
That's who you are.
So why in the world would you cry out and say, I'm scared, Daddy, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
He's saying, I already took care of that.
My dad beat me, my mom did that.
I took care of that because that's gone.
You're mine, you are not the beat child.
You are not the molested child.
You are not the child who was kicked out of your home.
You're not the child who never heard the dad and their mom say I love you.
You're no longer that person.
Your identity now comes in Yahweh Elohim, who he is, what he says he is, that's it, game over, adopted, new family, cheat code, you win.
Why?
Because he won.
What did we do to deserve this?
Absolutely nothing.
For those in this room whose parents said, hey, guess what?
I'll give you perfection and love when you do this.
He's not an abusive daddy God.
Men, why is it so hard for you to understand that he loves you and all he wants you to do is crawl up into his arms and let him hold you?
Oh, I'm big, I'm bad, I'm tough.
You ain't nothing without God.
You wanna be big, bad, and tough?
Love on your children, love on your wife.
Show them the same things that he gave you through adoption.
Get up every morning and provide for them and know that when you do, you stand up and say, it wasn't anything I did, I did it because I saw my father do it and because my father did it, I should do it.
You need to be adopted into the heavenly father of God.
Otherwise, you're in your own kingdom.
You're in your own family.
And last time I checked, there's only one name on the list.
You walk in, you be like, hey man, party for 10 with Bezos.
I just see Yeshua.
Party for 10 with Warren Buffet.
I don't have a Warren, but I have a Yeshua.
Party for 10 with the Bidens.
You'd think that maybe the Clintons, they wouldn't even be alive if it was Clintons, but they're scrolling.
All I see is Yeshua.
Oh, I'm upholding the Frankie family name.
That's awesome.
The only name on this list is Yeshua.
Lord, look what I did for you.
I don't care, your name's not on the list.
Only my son is Yeshua.
Are you with that party or are you with your party?
I cast out demons.
I healed.
I healed.
Good for you.
There's only one name on the list.
It's Yeshua.
Are you with that party or with your own party?
Ephesians one through five, by his eternal purpose, he chose to make us his by adoption.
He chose us.
Just like Jesus chose to give his life.
Just like we have to choose to be adopted into the family.
There are a lot of people who know the Bible really well in this room who have not chosen to make the lifestyle change to be adopted into his family.
It's not the same.
Knowing the Bible and knowing the Father are not the same.
I'm sorry.
Part of them are together.
You need to know the Bible in order to know the Father, but there are a lot of people who know the Bible who don't know the Father.
Ephraim and I were in a youth camp for many, many years.
There's hundreds of youths that came through through the years.
A lot of those people know the Bible.
They know the Bible.
They have no relationship with God.
It is possible to know the Bible and not know God.
How do you know the attributes of the Father if you don't know the Bible?
My experience is most of the time that Father you know is a projection of what you've experienced in your life.
That's just my experience.
It's not the gospel, it's my experience.
In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, to the Romans, to the Galatians, he tells you don't go back to being a slave.
Be a child of God.
And in that, we take on the identity of God the Father.
1 John 3,1 says John lauds the type of love we have received as his children, as God's children.
Paul to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6, 14 through 18.
That covenantal relationship brings the blessing of fatherhood.
You know, a lot of times when I'll meet with men and women and they'll just say, oh man, I just, I just really want, I wanna be career minded.
Awesome.
My wife worked executive level for renting apartment communities for many, many years.
If we ever needed to, she'd go back to work too.
Oh, wait, a woman can work?
Yeah, yep, they can.
Sometimes better than men.
That is gospel.
I've seen it.
I've seen women outwork me.
But at the end of the day, the most important thing a wife can do and the most important thing a husband can do is your children.
It's not mutually exclusive.
You can work a profession and be a good parent.
You can be a stay at home parent and you can suck.
Both options are on the table.
The most important thing you do is not a nurse.
It's not a contractor.
Not a pastor, not a welder.
Whatever profession you do, the most important thing that you can do is to be a child of God, plain and simple.
All that Jesus communicated, revealed about his relationship with the Father, he affirms, it is for those who believe in him.
My Father is your Father, John chapter 20, 17.
The principle of inheritance, Romans 8, 14 through 17, it tells us that the children are the heirs.
We are the heirs to the inheritance of God.
If the kingdom of God, if the salvation of God, if those are all God, then we are heirs to those when we become gods.
And we become gods.
And I just wanna preface that before somebody clips that out and put that on.
Talking about we're possession of God.
And because I didn't write it out, I don't have the grammar where the possession of God, it's not that we're becoming gods, okay?
Now that we've cleared that up, still it'll end up on Instagram reel or something.
But that's the worst one that's out there.
Awesome.
Just remember Jesus isn't creepy.
Galatians 4 through 7, so you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Paul continues to the Galatians, to the Romans, to tell them, you need to be adopted.
Once you're adopted, you have an inheritance.
Walk in the inheritance.
It's not fear, it's in the blessings of the kingdom of God.
The one who conquers will have his heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son, Revelation 21, 7.
We are the heritage of God.
If we choose to be adopted into his family.
The principle of inheritance, the father offers his riches to the son.
Now here's the beautiful thing about this.
My dad was worth a lot of money, he ended up losing all that money.
He maybe has money, I don't know at this point in time.
But whatever he has, he will give to me.
At the same point in time, I know some fathers who have been pretty wicked, and they've given an inheritance, and then they've tried to pull it back from other people.
Can I let you in on a secret?
Genesis 1, through the end of the book of Revelation, God never takes back what he gives.
If your inheritance is to have the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to walk in the kingdom of God, he isn't gonna pull that away from you.
If your inheritance is to serve in the kingdom with the King of Jesus, he's not gonna say, oh, Indian giver, false, I took it back.
You want a gift receipt on that salvation?
You want a gift receipt on that spiritual hug?
You want a gift receipt, you know, maybe we can take this back later?
God doesn't do that.
This is the flawedness of us.
We're the ones who do this.
Hey, by the way, like, I'm gonna buy you dinner tonight.
Yeah, I can't buy you dinner tonight.
His inheritance, what he says he's gonna do, he does.
Because throughout the pages of Scripture, he keeps his covenants, he keeps his promises.
That's how we know he's God the Father.
That's how we know we can trust in him.
If he didn't, he'd be like every other earthly father we've ever experienced in our life, and how could you ever trust him?
I'd be taking the little eight ball that you find at Bed Bath and Beyond, and I'd be like, which God should we, doesn't look like today's your day either.
No, the God of covenants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Israel, the King of Israel, always keeps his word, that's how you know you can go to him, the other gods don't.
Where's Buddha?
Dude sat too long at a Chinese buffet.
And disappeared, Yahweh didn't disappear, he always shows up.
The principle of inheritance is the father offers his riches to the son.
It's an assumption here in the text that the son will use the inheritance according to the father's character, vision, and desire.
You're to be a reflection and a light of the character and the intentions of your father.
If your father's character and intentions are impure, if they're impure, then that's what you're gonna get.
Father the potter, the assumption behind the father-son relationship is that there will be a formation of the son.
This is Isaiah 64, eight.
If we expect the relationship to be something else, then we missed the point.
If you don't expect to be formed by your father, to be transformed by your father, then you're not really the son and he's not the father.
He's not the leader, you are.
You should be being transformed by the father.
Deuteronomy 32, six says to rebel against God is to forget he is the maker and he is the father.
To be in rebellion, man, the roots base of Christianity, we love rebellion.
Everybody lied to us, everybody's out to get us.
I don't need a teacher, Jesus is my rabbi.
Then follow what he did.
Sat in submission to his father.
He only did what his father told him to.
He came to be a teacher, he had a yoke, his yoke was easy.
Oh wait, we might need a teacher.
Oh wait, we might need to go to church.
Let's call it congregation though because it's a little bit more holy then.
We might need to go and gather.
No, he only did what the father said he would do.
If you're doing something else than what the word of God says, you are in rebellion to God.
When we rebel, we reject the assumption behind the entire father-son relationship.
No one disciples anybody in their own image.
I want you to think about that.
No one disciples anybody in their own image because who your image is, is a makeup of somebody else's image.
And for some, it's a melting pot.
It's multiple men, it's multiple women, it's multiple leaders.
You do not disciple anybody in your own image.
You disciple them in the image of the influences you've allowed to influence you.
Let that sink in for a second.
Those influences are either positive or they're negative.
This is why Jesus said, throw your stuff down.
First, you wanna be discipled by me?
Obey.
First thing you gotta do is obey.
You don't need to know me, you don't need to know everything, you don't need to know, you don't see all these, obey.
First thing you do is obey.
Second thing, you put me above everything else.
Not that hard.
But I can't find space in my calendar to make it to men's group.
I can't find it in my calendar, pray.
I can't find it.
Okay.
I don't know what to tell you.
Then you don't wanna be discipled by Jesus.
You don't wanna be discipled in an environment with other people.
You have an orphan spirit because nobody can teach you.
You can't find time, you can't be guided.
You can't make it happen.
Oh.
I cannot come to our women's breakfast because I completely forgot.
There's a new heartland on.
Then heartland's your God.
How is that any different than him saying, hey Father, I'll follow you.
Jesus, I'll follow you.
Let me go bury my dead.
He had a way better excuse.
His pops is dead.
He's gotta go bury his pops.
It's like, I slept in this morning.
I did not wanna be there.
Oh, it's cold outside.
Oh, it's raining.
You would not believe the excuses I've heard over 17 years on why people didn't come to fellowship.
We're talking anything.
Now you offer pizza, people show up.
But you offer Jesus, nah, 50-50.
I want you to think about that for a second.
If there's little Caesars, all you pagan Greeks, if there's little Caesars, y'all show up.
But if Jesus is there, nah, I couldn't get there.
Man.
I know it's funny in a certain sense, but it's not funny in the other sense.
If he's your God, if he's your Father, why is that more important?
Why are all the other things more important?
7-Eleven isn't gonna get you to heaven.
Starbucks is not gonna get you to heaven.
An extra three snoozes is not gonna get you to heaven.
You not taking care of your wife, you're gonna get to heaven quick.
Just saying.
Romans 5, one through five, hope is in the glory of God.
Worship team, you can start coming.
See, I'm real close.
I'm on normal time.
Wait, there's two more pages.
Hope is in the glory of God, Romans chapter five, verses one through five.
Our lives are rightly understood that God is preserving truth and life is in him.
Our life should be in him.
He's preserving the truth and the life should be in him.
And through him, Romans five, two through five, through him we have also obtained access by faith into grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame.
Guys, listen up.
Some of you have walked through some pretty tough stuff with me.
Some of y'all, I've been all up in your business for a long period of time.
Some of you, it's been a short period of time.
Suffering produces endurance.
True or false?
True, if you've walked through it.
It does.
Suffering will produce endurance.
Endurance produces character.
Yes, it does, if you can stick it out.
Character produces hope.
I have hope.
It's a real interesting week for me, a first for me.
I still have hope.
What was me?
Oh, I'm so sad.
No, I have hope.
I have hope that God works all things for his glory.
Even when I don't work for his glory or somebody else doesn't work for his glory or I didn't win the $10,000 prize I got emailed and filled out a form for it, I still got hope for his glory.
And hope doesn't put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, Romans 5, two through five.
Hope for God's glory is absolute and secure in the death of Jesus.
It's through him, not through your works, not through the law, it's through him.
Hope of God's glory and receiving his glory and emanating his glory through us.
The hope for God's glory wanes where our love grows cold.
And it shines hot.
And it shines bright where love is hot.
See, his sons were delegated the authority of the Father.
And when we look at the adoption parables in Romans, we're given the delegated authority of Yahweh.
Jesus models this.
He didn't have his own authority, he didn't do his own things.
So if we are to walk in adoption and walk in sonship, then we're to walk in the authority of the Father.
Guys, a lot of times you've professed Jesus as your salvation and you're a trust fund baby.
That's right, I said it, you're a trust fund baby.
You didn't work for it, you didn't do anything for it, but when you walk in that restaurant, you better, I'm a Switzer.
You know who I am?
I play for the Saints.
Oh, that didn't happen this week.
Breaking the speed limit by 40 miles an hour, but do you know who I am?
I play for the Saints.
I'm a part of the Saints family, you shouldn't arrest me.
Praise God, they actually arrested his butt.
Do you know who I am?
I go to HFF.
Okay.
Do you know who I am?
I'm a child of God.
This is important for us to understand this element because before the creation of the world, God delegated his authority and his power and his influence to another entity.
Hasatan, Lucifer, the devil, whatever you wanna call.
But he made a real bad mistake.
He took the delegated authority of the Lord and he said, you can't really do anything with this.
You already gave it to me, so it's mine.
So I don't need to use this to make my dad's name famous.
I don't need to do what my dad's told me to do.
I don't need to do this.
I can do it for myself.
I can do this and look, I can get these people to follow me because he gave me the authority.
So now if I take this authority from myself, I can make the authority my own.
And he took something that wasn't his and he's squandering it.
He's squandering it to the point where God sent his real son to say, time's over.
Where else in scripture do we see this?
We see this in the parable of the prodigal son.
I want you to think of the parable of the prodigal son through the lens of Jesus, not just through the concept of, oh, I ran away from God.
He'll love me when I come back.
Think about it through adoption and sonship.
When the firstborn took his inheritance, which it says when we're adopted into the family, we get the inheritance.
So we're adopted into God's family.
Today, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 15 minutes ago, whenever it was, we automatically become heirs according to the promise.
Galatians also tells us that in regards to Abraham, which is another confirmation.
We're told that we can, we're heirs.
So we have this inheritance now.
And then we go to God immediately and we say, hey God, I understand that you're God.
I don't wanna be here anymore.
Thank you for your inheritance.
Thank you for giving me peace.
Thank you for giving me patience.
Thank you for giving me a family and an inheritance and a kingdom and things that I don't deserve.
I want my portion today.
I want my portion today.
A lot of people in this world are taking their portion today.
They're saying, God, I want my inheritance.
God, I wanna do what I want with it.
I'm gonna squander it.
I'm gonna squander it on prostitutes and money and gluttony and Olive Garden and all the free biscuits I can eat at Red Lobster.
Cheddar biscuits are amazing.
I wanna squander it there.
And every one of us as a father would say like, it's gonna be pretty hard to welcome that kid back.
It's gonna be pretty hard to love that child who took it and abused me and ran away with it.
I would have a hard time.
I would love it if Eli did it to me.
I would love to see him come running back, but I would struggle with it.
But on some cloud, somewhere, and all around, like literally every place, God's standing like this.
Just hoping to catch a glimpse of every single child that woke up and realized that the only way that you can continue to walk in the family of God is if you come home.
But see, that's the hardest thing to do.
Because by coming home, we have to realize that we have to face the person that we've wronged, and we have to admit that maybe we did something wrong, and maybe we have to humble up and be in humility and submission.
And it's hard for us to do that sometimes because we're fearful.
Oh wait, isn't that the slavery mentality that it said you're not to have the slavery mentality?
Well, I'm fearful that if I didn't do what I was supposed to do, the Egyptians are gonna whip me.
If I don't do what the Romans said we're gonna do, they're gonna crucify me, they're gonna put me on a stake.
No, your dad, your brother, went to the stake for you, the most gruesome death so that you could be adopted back into the sonship of the family of God.
And some of you, even in this room right now, you're like, well, I come to church, I come to church.
Great, awesome, I know who Jesus is.
Even the demons do, fantastic, kudos to you.
But some of y'all still standing in the next city over, and Jesus is still sitting, and God is still sitting, and he's like, where are you?
Well, I can't come home.
Because you gave me the gift of prophecy, and I never used it.
You gave me blessings abundantly, and I squandered it.
You tried to teach me, you gave me a beautiful wife and beautiful kids, and I didn't do what you asked me to do with it.
Some of y'all gotta get right.
Because you're sitting at a red roof inn in the next town over, and God is sitting there saying, when is he coming home?
And in the story of the prodigal son, finally when he gets to the end of himself and he's gotta come back.
And he's just kinda coming down the drive like, man, I don't know what my dad's gonna do, I don't know what my dad's gonna do, I don't know what my dad's gonna do.
I got no other options, I've literally done everything.
I don't know what to do.
And dad's sitting on the porch, and he's like, what?
What?
And he takes off running, and he's like, what?
What?
What?
Yes!
Yes!
Oh!
Yes!
Yes!
Get the best ring, get the best robe, kill the best filet mignon, we're not talking about the small one, we're talking about the big one.
We're talking about the cattleman's, like if you eat this you will have a heart attack, kill it, cut it, filet it, let's do this, party is on, there's a ring, there's the robe, I've been waiting for you, but dad, you can't love me, dad, you can't, there's no way.
I slept with people I shouldn't have slept with, spent money on stuff I shouldn't have, I took half your fortune, literally lit it on fire in a bonfire, you don't know the things I did.
And he's like, I don't care, yes, you're home!
That's what dad did, that's what God the Father did, it was the brother who got butt hurt.
Some of you in this room are more interested than being the other brother, it's like, I've not done anything wrong, I've not squandered anything, and all you need to be is you need to be the older brother, running back, doesn't matter what you've done.
The shame you feel, the condemnation you feel, that's the slavery fear that this world, that the adversary wants to put inside you.
Some of you have been suffering for a really long time, you won't allow God the Father to mold you.
But today, as we have our response song, you need to understand, God does not want your suffering, God does not want your pain, God doesn't want your death.
He sent his son so his son would willingly do that for you so that you could have life.
Next week we'll look at how we're to respond to God's fatherhood, and how we respond in our prodigal series of relationships with the Lord.
But some of you in this room are still wrestling, and you're apart from God, you're tied up in your own shame, you refuse to allow God to bless you.
And if that's you, I want you to understand it's time for you to fall out of agreement with that spirit.
It's time to fall out of agreement with the spirit that projects onto God the inadequacies of human beings, because God is not inadequate, never has been, and he never will be.
You're not an orphan, so stop walking in an orphan spirit.
God wants to adopt you into his family, pay your debts, remove your shame, fill you with the Holy Spirit, give you a ring and a robe, but you have to actually return.
It's not a one year period, there's not a three year period, there's not a five year period, he literally just wants you to return.
And so today as we respond, if you haven't come back home, if you've been wrestling with that, whether it's at the altar or it's at your chair, it's time for you to come home to God.
It's time for you to allow him to fill the void that your earthly father didn't.
And it's time for you to start understanding that your inheritance isn't what you've experienced here.
It isn't what you've experienced in this life.
It's so much greater, it's so much better, it's so much sweeter, but you have to first come back.
