While we were singing these grand hymns, the
thought came to me, and I remember jotting
in the flyleaf of my Bible many, many
things that have come to me over the
years, but how wonderful it is to know
that you are God's child this morning.
Think about that very simple fact we may
take for granted, but it's marvelous to know
that He has in His sovereign grace sought
us out and made us His own.
And here in the flyleaf of my Bible,
I jotted down, I don't know who wrote
this, but it's a wonderful thought.
Why was I made to hear His voice
and enter while there's room, while thousands make
a wrecked choice and rather starve than come?
It was the same love that spread the
feast that sweetly forced us in, else we
had still refused to taste and perished in
our sin.
Grand to know that He has won us
by His grace.
Great to be saved this morning.
I hope you're rejoicing in that fact.
You may not always feel up, but it
doesn't make any difference what we feel like,
it's what we are according to His word.
I think I want to read to you
a portion of Romans 8.
We're going to press on just a step
or two further this morning in our consideration
of this grand chapter.
Certainly wish we could have taken it more
slowly and maybe considered each word or each
phrase or given it more consideration, but we
haven't had the time, so we've been sort
of broadly approaching these truths.
But if we'll pick up the story of
the eighth chapter at the 14th verse.
For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God.
For you have not received the spirit of
bondage again to fear, but you have received
the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba,
Father.
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit
that we are the children of God, and
if children, then heirs, heirs of God and
joint heirs with Christ.
If so be that we suffer with Him,
that we may be also glorified together.
For I reckon that the sufferings of this
present time are not worthy to be compared
with the glory which shall be revealed in
us.
For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God.
For the creation was made subject to vanity,
not willingly, but by reason of him who
has subjected the same in hope.
Because the creation itself also shall be delivered
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious
liberty of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groans
and travails in pain together until now, and
not only they, but ourselves also, which have
the first fruits of the Spirit, even we
ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption,
that is, the redemption of our body.
For we are saved by hope, but hope
that is seen is not hope.
For what a man sees, why does he
yet hope for?
But if we hope for that which we
see not, then do we with patience wait
for it.
Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmity, for
we know not what we should pray for
as we ought, but the Spirit himself maketh
intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered.
He that searcheth the heart knoweth what is
the mind of the Spirit, because he makes
intercession for the saints according to the will
of God.
Now, I hate to stop there, but I
must.
You get the feel that you're pulled into
continued reading when you read these grand and
glorious statements found in God's word.
I guess at our last meeting we had
brought ourselves up to the end of that
verse 13, and you will notice the phrase
that is used there, ye shall live.
That's the last phrase of the verse concluding
our previous study, and what a thrilling phrase
it is.
You shall live.
Now, he's talking about a different kind of
life, and special kind of life, all through
here than mere physical existence.
We know that.
Talking about the fullness of life itself, and
how full it does become when we have
the experience of the new birth, and are
brought into the family of God.
Life itself is a mystery, we know that,
and we don't have the answer to all
the questions either concerning its origin, and certainly
its purpose, or even its destiny.
The philosophers of all time have juggled with
those ponderous questions.
It doesn't make any difference what school of
philosophy you come from, or have been influenced
by.
These same questions have perplexed every philosopher of
all time.
Those questions are fairly simple.
One is whimp.
From where did we come?
Origin.
That's always been the intriguing mystery that has
bothered mankind.
From where did we come?
Obviously, there are those who think we've had
a low origin, others who are quite convinced,
as we are, that we came from the
creative fingers of God, and we reflect his
image and likeness.
And then there is always the question of
why.
What is life about, anyhow?
What is it all about?
Have you got all the answers to the
why of life?
I recall in a university class, we had
a professor who was noted for being a
harsh and hard man.
He was an open, avowed agnostic.
In his classes, he sometimes even ridiculed Christianity.
But, he was noted for several things.
Students would say in warning to those who
followed them, look out for this fellow.
You never know what kind of an examination
he would give.
He may come up with one with a
hundred questions, or he may come up with
one with two questions.
I'd far rather, as a student, from a
student point of view, take the guy that
gives me a hundred questions.
He's got a better percentage, maybe.
I didn't make it.
Well, anyway, this fellow, with us all through
that term, we had pondered all the problems
of philosophy.
This was the class in philosophy.
And I'd heard some strange things, found myself
rankled and stirred up by what I heard.
And then came examination time, and I remember
his walking into the class saying, put away
all books and notes and references and whatever.
Prepare yourself for this examination, which will take
two and a half hours.
It is a timing on it, two and
a half hour examination.
He went to the blackboard and he said,
here's the question.
And he wrote, W-H-Y.
And then said, get going.
Why?
Why what?
Well, why anything?
Why everything?
Why what we've been studying about?
In other words, he was demanding practically an
essay, a thesis on the whole question of
the purpose of life.
Well, he was within bounds as a philosopher,
because that has intrigued men.
Whence?
Why?
And then the other question is, whither?
Where do we go?
When this mysterious thing, equally mysterious with life
itself that we call death, when in one
moment a human personality seems to be full
and functioning, and in the next split second
is silent, is gone, is unresponsive to any
pleadings of love, or any urgings to respond.
We call that thing death.
Is that the end of this thing called
life?
Is there anything else beyond this?
What, if anything, and where has that personality
gone?
And so, man has stood forever perplexed and
puzzled by the whole question of death.
And then, inserted in all of these three
questions about our origin, and our destiny, and
our purpose of existence, is another that the
Greeks used to call, by a simple word,
which was, whence evil?
In the midst of it all, how do
you explain the presence of evil?
Sin, this strange, this inexplicable disease that afflicts
mankind, and makes him behave oft times like
an animal, and dely his divine origin.
What's the cause of it?
Where does it all begin?
Now, I submit to you that the answers
to every one of those questions are adequately
found in this book, and nowhere else.
In the word of God, in the revelation
of God, and when we accept God's revelation,
we will find that the answers to all
of these questions are here.
Maybe they're not always satisfying answers to us.
We may feel we haven't yet found the
complete answer to each phase of these questions,
but they're here nonetheless.
So, when Paul says, you shall live here,
then I want to note some more things
about the kind of life that he's been
talking about.
Really, up to this point in the book
of Romans, we may say that we have
seen life at its worst, man steeped in
the blackest of sin.
But, the great thesis of this letter, this
whole letter, is that God has provided in
his scheme of redemption a way to justify
and make an unrighteous person righteous.
To bring him out of his rebellion, out
of his darkness, out of his slavery to
sin, into liberty, and freedom, and fellowship, and
relationship with God.
That's the whole thrust of the early chapters
of this book, as it revolves around the
revelation concerning justification by faith.
But, there's still a practical aspect of things.
How does a person who is now a
justified person, who does have a right relationship
with God, whose guilt and condemnation has been
adequately satisfied by the work on Calvary which
our Lord performed, how does that person live
his life from that point until death shall
terminate it?
Whether it be short or long, how does
he live it?
By what rules?
What standards?
Is it a constant struggle?
Is it a battle?
Is it adherence to a host of artificial
religious rules?
No.
The great revelation that we discover in this
letter is that it is a life which
is the product of a law.
It is the law of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus which has set us
free from another kind of law that dominated
us from the moment of our birth, the
law of sin and death.
And so, you recall in our first study,
we tried to show you how that the
law of the spirit of life in Christ,
Christ's very own life in us, is the
dynamic of our new life.
However, and Paul is very careful about this,
and he's a practical man.
He's not just, he's not simply a dreamer,
not talking about, you know, some ethereal existence.
He's talking about life in the raw, life
that's real, and how we touch it.
He says we're confronted with a real danger.
The danger is that we will fail to
allow the free operation of the law of
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus to
work in our lives, and we may revert
to an old law.
You may have said to yourself once in
a while when you've heard these dismal stories
about the fall of some Christian leader, or
if not a leader, some exemplary Christian friend
in your circle of your fellowship.
You say here's a man or a woman
who walked with God for 30, 40 years,
were even soul winners, were exemplary, and how
could they have committed such a sin?
How could they stoop to do what we've
heard they've done?
How is it possible, we ask?
Well, I'm not sure I have the answer,
but it seems to me that what has
been happening in that person's life and experience
has been this.
For those 25 or 30 years when he's
walked with God, he has been successful in
caging the lions, the rapacious beasts of his
fallen nature.
He's learned some biblical secrets of how to
curb, how to control the appetite of the
flesh.
Meanwhile, he's allowed the new life to develop,
and he's fed it on a spiritual diet.
But in the process of feeding the new
life, he's had to starve the old, and
maybe this may be the answer.
It may well be that he has forgotten
that those beasts are still alive.
Those appetites, desires, those wants, those thrusts are
still there, but they've been starved for such
a long time, and in a moment, unguarded
moment, when the door of the cage is
left open, the beasts have left out, and
they've overtaken and overcome this person.
And we've discovered that the old appetites of
the flesh, the old desires of the flesh,
are even worse in their fierce ability to
conquer us than ever before.
I don't know whether that's the answer or
not, but I know that we need to,
the word of God exhorts us to eternal
vigilance in this matter.
And so Paul goes on to say here,
that we are confronted with a real danger,
and we have to face that danger.
And so his warning concerning carnality and its
consequences, and then he also shows the blessings
and fruits of the Holy Spirit when he's
allowed to dominate and control our lives.
Now there are one or two other things
that need to be noted here that I
think are very, very important.
He goes on to talk about our relationship
to God as sons or children of God.
For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God.
And then in verse 16, the Spirit himself
beareth witness with our spirit that we are
the children of God.
Now there you have two different terms, sons
of God and children of God.
They are not the same term, they're different
words that are used here.
In the Greek language, the language of the
original New Testament, the word that he uses
up here in verse 14, they are the
sons of God, really is the word technon.
Technon, which means children.
It is a word denoting a birth relationship.
We are children of God by virtue of
birth, a birth experience.
And that's why John 1 12 and 13
says, but as many as received him, to
them gave he the power to become the
children of God.
Not the sons of God, but the children
of God, even to those that believe on
his name.
Because that verse is indicating that we need
the birth relationship.
And so he says here, as many as
are led by the Spirit of God, they
are the children of God.
Evidence that they are children of God is
that they are led by, and they live
in obedience to, the Spirit of God, the
Holy Spirit of God.
Now when he uses the term in verse
16, the Spirit himself beareth witness with our
spirit that we are the sons of God.
Or, I've got this in reverse, so forgive
me for this, that we are sons of
God.
In verse 16, that's the Greek word chios,
and that is a word that indicates maturity.
The other word indicates relationship, a birth relationship.
This word indicates maturity.
The Spirit bears witness with our spirits that
we are God's sons, and we are the
ones who are the objects of his work
in bringing us into maturity in Christ, and
that's the work of the Holy Spirit to
do that very thing.
I suppose every child, I don't know, maybe
it's just queer kids like me, have had
this feeling sometime or other in your life
that you may not have been the born
child of your family, but that you were
adopted.
Did you ever have that feeling?
That maybe, maybe they're hiding something from you,
and they haven't told you that you were
not born into the family you thought was
yours, but you were adopted, and of course
you were adopted I thought I was adopted
out of the king's family.
I was really basically a prince.
See, instead of being just plain old me,
I was a prince, and my folks, my
parents were hiding that exciting truth from me,
and so one day I went to my
mother, and I said to my mother, am
I really your kid?
Was I born of you, or am I
born of somebody else?
You know what she said to me?
I'll belt you in the mouth if you
ever say that again.
That was the best answer I could have
received.
That settled it once and for all.
I knew then that I belonged in that
family.
I was not an adopted child.
I was a born child.
Now, Paul's going to talk about this question
of adoption in just a moment, if you'll
bear with me, because he says, you see,
verse 15, we have not received the spirit
of bondage again to fear, but this is
what we have received.
We have received the spirit of adoption, whereby
we cry, Abba, Father.
Now, I think we better slip on down
to the, at this point, down to about
verse 22.
We know that the whole creation groans and
travails in pain together until now.
Yeah, there's something wrong in the creation.
Those who study it carefully say that all
the notes, the songs of the birds, and
the sighing of the wind, and the sounds
of the waves, and all the other sounds
produced by nature are all in the minor
key.
I can't verify that because I don't know
major from minor even, but I've heard that
they're in the minor key, as if the
creation is sighing and groaning.
It's troubled.
It's in pain.
It's waiting for something.
You see, when man sinned, he dragged with
him his environment, his physical environment, and the
creation was a sharer in the curse that
followed Adam's disobedience and his fall.
And we are living in a cursed creation,
as beautiful as it is, as lovely as
it can be, and it is often breathtakingly
beautiful.
What will it be like when all of
the restrictions and the curse that rests upon
it is removed?
We have never seen a creation free from
the curse of sin.
We're accustomed to weeds and poisonous things in
nature.
We are accustomed to all the prohibitions that
endanger our very lives.
So, I must tell you that if you
want to live in a paradise, the place
to go is New Zealand.
Did you know in New Zealand they have
no snakes?
They have no spiders.
They have no, not any kind of an
animal or insect that endangers human life inhabits
the islands of New Zealand.
That's paradise, isn't it?
Besides, that is beautiful.
So, if you're looking for that, and you're
a little tired of Florida's mosquitoes once in
a while, and worse yet, the one thing
that I hate about Florida are these, they
dignify them, they give them a name.
They're plain old roaches, but they call them
palmetto bugs.
What a lovely name for a rotten roach,
and they are the bane of my existence
when I am down here in Florida.
I just hate them.
Well, if you get tired of all that,
you might think about moving to New Zealand.
At any rate, the whole creation is groaning,
and it's acting like a woman who, it's
the same word, travelis, a woman who is
going through birth pangs, waiting for the birth
of her child.
So, the creation is suffering so, and not
only they, but we too have some share
in all of this.
We who have the first fruits of the
spirit, we've grown within ourselves, and what are
we waiting for?
What together are we waiting for?
Creation, physical creation, and the new creation.
What are we waiting for?
We're waiting for the adoption.
Notice, the adoption, that is the redemption of
our body.
Are you aware of the fact that the
scriptures here teach us that our departed loved
ones are not yet embodied?
This bothers some Christians when they realize that
our departed loved ones who have preceded us
in the glory land are disembodied spirits.
They don't have a body yet, because each
one does not receive his body individually immediately
after his death.
We are, all of us, going to receive
our resurrection bodies at the same time, and
the same moment.
See, and that's called the adoption here.
Has nothing to do with relationship, it has
to do with our maturity and our final
perfection, and the creation is waiting for that
moment when the sons of God will be
manifested.
How are they going to be manifested?
They'll be seen by virtue of the fact
that they are wearing new bodies.
We know a little bit about those bodies.
They will be fashioned like unto his glorious
body, but we are waiting for that moment.
All the saints in heaven are waiting now
for that moment that is on the calendar
of God, when God says, now is the
moment when all of my redeemed children will
receive their new body, their resurrection body.
And in the meanwhile, between now and then,
at least on this earthly pilgrimage in that
period, we have received the Holy Spirit of
Adoption, and here he's called Spirit of Adoption,
because in some very marvelous way the Holy
Spirit is associated with these bodies of ours.
Not only while we're alive, but when they
are raised from the dead.
It apparently is the work of the Spirit
of God to energize, to gather and energize
the dust of our bodies, and raise them
from their graves, and present them to our
Lord Jesus.
And in the meantime, he is called the
Spirit of Adoption, whereby, by him, we are
allowed to speak to God as our Father.
And so we cry, Abba, Father.
We have a right to address God as
our Heavenly Father, because he's granted to us
the Holy Spirit, whose name now is the
Spirit of Adoption.
So back there in verse 15, we haven't
received the Spirit of Bondage again to fear,
but we have received the Spirit of Adoption,
whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
And the Spirit himself bears witness with our
spirit that we are indeed the children of
God.
Now, if we're children, then we're also heirs.
Heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ.
If so be that we suffer with him,
that we may be also glorified together.
If children, then heirs.
I've never inherited anything in my whole life,
never.
I have, my relatives are too poor.
But you know, my folks were born, my
father was born in Sweden.
And when I was a little boy, he
told us some fairy stories.
Told me all about Santa Claus, I believe
all he said.
And then he told us, he said, you
know, we have, you have a very rich
uncle who lives in Sweden.
His name is Sven.
And he said, my father said, he is
so rich, I don't know how rich he
is.
And of course, in a boy's mind, every
day, my uncle Sven got richer, until eventually
he owned half of Sweden, in my mind.
And my father said, when he dies, he's
going to leave all his money to us.
Oh boy, did I start to dream.
I want to tell you that I dreamed
of what I would do with that money.
In my time, I want you to know,
I owned, I think it was 18 houses.
I owned seven boats, a couple of airplanes,
and I had cars coming out of my
ears.
I owned, you know, I was talking like
this once, and some lady in the audience
thought I really was that rich.
I'm saying this was my imagination, see.
And I got intrigued, and I decided I'm
going to build a house of my own.
I wanted to build a house like I
wanted a house.
And it was a very special house.
In my bedroom, I had a closet, and
that closet was filled with pennies.
And every time you opened the door, pennies
came out and knocked you down, and you
had to swim through pennies.
And it was delightful.
If I were a kid dreaming today, I'd
make it quarters.
But nonetheless, there were pennies in those days.
I never, I never figured out who put
the pennies back, but I know that if
I opened that door a dozen times a
day, the pennies would all flow out.
But when you're as rich as I was,
you could have as many servants as possible.
So I never worried about that factor.
Then I, oh my bathroom, you should have
seen that bathroom.
I built a chocolate bathtub and filled it
with soda water.
Then I got in and drank the water
and ate the tub.
And it was marvelous.
Was I ever rich?
Gee, was I rich.
Then one day I learned something terrible that
brought me down to earth with a thump.
There was no Uncle Sven.
There was no inheritance.
There were no riches.
I was not an heir.
Oh, what a bad day that was for
me.
Nearly as bad as when I discovered there
was no Santa Claus.
See, but when I got saved, I learned
something else.
That I had been born as an heir
of the Lord Jesus, and I do have
an inheritance, and so do you.
It is incorruptible.
It is undefiled.
It's kept in the first Federal Reserve Bank
of Heaven, whose resources are guaranteed.
You don't have to worry.
It doesn't diminish.
And furthermore, all its depositors, those who have
the right to what that inheritance, they are
also reserved.
They're kept by the power of God until
the time when they can begin to draw
down on their inheritance.
Glorious to know that.
And that's not a dream.
That's a fact, based on a fact.
And that begins to lend some dignity to
life when you realize that we are heirs
of God.
Joint heirs.
I don't understand all that.
Joint heirs with Christ.
What does that mean?
A joint heir with Him.
Well, all that's His, we have a share
in.
This vast universe, all of that, that's there.
Staggers you.
So, now, some of you may be suffering
in the meantime.
You may be going through times of great
difficulty.
So, I want to say a word, says
the Apostle to you.
I reckon, verse 18, that the sufferings of
this present time are not even worthy to
be compared with the glory that shall be
revealed in us.
He is calling for us to lift our
eyes from the now to the then.
He's asking us to think not so much
of this moment of distress, but those moments
of glory when we will reflect truly the
glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He says it's like a scale.
If I take our sufferings and put those
weights in one side of the scale, and
over here is the glory, these weights of
glory that God has destined for us, and
us for it, He says there wouldn't be
even the slightest flicker of the dial, because
no matter how heavy are these sufferings, they
are not anywhere near.
You can't even compare them with the glory
that shall be revealed in us.
That's difficult to absorb, I know.
And I'm certain that when the darkness comes
and the trials beset us, and the path
of God seems to lead us down into
the shadows, it's a long time since we've
seen sunlight, maybe during that time we begin
to say, I can't accept this.
You must accept it.
It's true.
I reckon that the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared with
the glory that shall be revealed in us.
And that's why he raises the whole question
of the creation that is subject now to
hope that has been under the bondage of
sin, and it's going to be delivered when
we are totally delivered, when the final installment
of our salvation is granted to us, and
that final installment involves a new resurrection body.
It is dubbed here, called here, labeled here,
the adoption, not a, the adoption.
And when it occurs, and the sons of
God are manifested, then the curse will be
lifted from creation, and we will have the
delightful joy of enjoying a creation totally delivered
from the curse.
In this day and age in which we
are living, we are constantly amazed at how
much we're discovering about our universe.
The invention of powerful telescopes, space machines, new
scientific theories are all expanding our universe, until
you begin to realize that we are but
an infinitesimal speck of dirt in this universe,
the vastness of it.
If God should take a deep breath and
just blow it toward earth, planet earth, and
it would disappear like this, it would have
absolutely no effect, apparently, upon the operation of
this vast universe of ours.
And yet, on this speck of dirt, God
has been pleased to erect the stage on
which the whole drama of human redemption is
played out, and we're involved in it.
What's it going to be like when we
can enjoy the vastness of a delivered creation?
I don't know what your thoughts about heaven
are.
It's easy for us to let them get
limited to some simple, simple things.
Some people think that heaven is going to
be nothing but one grand, glorious, forgive me,
brother, concert.
Well, I'm not a concert person.
I can eat more peanuts in a concert,
and sometimes sleep better in some concerts that
I've gone to than you can imagine.
And especially, especially, do I have trouble accepting
harp concerts.
Maybe it's because in our town there's a
funeral parlor, and every time we had a
funeral, there was a lady playing a harp
down there.
Whenever I hear the harp, I think of,
I smell the flowers and think of the
funeral, and I say, do I have to
listen to this for 20 quadrillion years in
heaven, Lord?
Could I please go to sleep part of
the time?
If that's all we're going to do when
we get to heaven is just have musical
concerts.
My petition is already registered in glory.
I want a vacation as soon as I
get there, and a pair of wings if
I have to have wings.
I want to move out into the vast
universe.
I think God made this universe for man,
redeemed man to enjoy it.
Not alone the glories of the earth, this
little thing that we've been on, but maybe
we will be able to inspect, and enjoy,
and stand in constant awe of what's going
to happen as we absorb the vastness of
the creation delivered from the curse of sin.
It will have the glorious liberty of the
children of God, and we will in turn
have a glorious liberty that we can hardly
conceive of.
Well, I think Paul has kind of swept
us a bit away from the mundane, the
ordinary, the commonplace of life, and parted the
curtain just a bit so we can look
down the vista of eternity yet to come,
and give us a glimpse of the glory
that we're headed for.
What a difference that makes in life when
you catch that glimpse.
I was in the city of Lagos in
Africa some years ago.
I had been up in central Africa, up
in the Ubangi-Shari district.
Along the river, the Ubangi river, lived a
special group of people, and they were noted,
the women folk, were noted for something very
special.
They were the women who, in circuses in
America, were called the Ubangi savages.
They were the women with the big disc
lips.
You know, you've seen pictures of them, or
maybe have seen them.
And I saw ladies up there with lips
that I could hardly believe.
They had a bottom lip.
One lady, I have a picture of her,
she had a bottom lip that had a
disc in it 12 to 15 inches in
diameter, and a bottom lip inserted there.
And the upper lip was about seven or
eight inches in diameter.
And I asked about how, why they did
this.
They said, well, a long time ago, the
Arab slave traders came up into our country
here, and they captured our people, and they
dragged them down to the coast, and they
sold them to slaves, and shipped them out
to parts of the world.
So that they wouldn't take our women, our
little girls.
As soon as a little girl was born,
the mother would pierce the little girl's upper
lip and lower lip, much as ears are
pierced for earrings, and she would insert a
little twig, tiny twig in that hole, and
then let it heal.
And when it had healed, she'd pull it
out, and then insert a little thicker one
in both lips, and keep that process up,
increasing the size of the twig till it
got to be a piece of wood, as
big as I've just suggested, 12, 15 inches
in diameter, stretching the lips.
So they disfigured their women, so that the
slave traders would be discouraged from taking them.
They wouldn't bring a high price in the
slave market.
And they still, by tradition, carry on this
process.
And many of those women are so disfigured
as even up to now.
Well, then I went on down to Lagos,
and I was preaching in the Church of
England church there on the coast, right where
you could see the ocean.
And the vicar of the church began to
tell me some stories.
And he said, right out there, and I
looked through the window, there's a tree that
had been cut down, and all that was
left was the stump.
And it made a sort of a block
on which a number of people could stand.
He said, right on that slave block is
where thousands upon thousands of people were auctioned
off as human slaves.
And many of them were sent to your
country.
I didn't feel too happy about that when
he spoke about slaves in our country.
And while he talked, in a way, he
lost me, because I remembered a fine story.
One of those, I guess it was a
missionary that told me this, they said that
when the Arabs went up there and they
took a large number of captives and dragged
them down, they would oftentimes tie their legs
together with ropes, or their hands, or their
necks in a long train.
And they would scuffle and shuffle along, realizing
that they were headed for maybe a terrible
fate.
But they said in this one instance, there
was one tall, black, ebony giant.
He was well over six feet tall, barrel
-chested, slim-waisted, magnificent physical specimen.
He was sweaty, and when the sun struck
that wet body, it made his skin glisten
like velvet.
And he caught the eye of everybody, and
particularly those slave traders.
And they thought, oh, this man, he'll bring
a high price.
And they dragged him down to Lagos.
They put him on the slave block and
auctioned him.
And while they were doing it, somebody said,
who is that man?
He is a magnificent specimen.
And the Arab trader said, oh, he, he's
the son of a king.
And he never lets himself forget it, not
for a moment.
Well, I want you to know something.
I'm a son of the king of kings.
And I don't want anybody ever to forget
that.
And I don't want to forget it.
And so are you.
If you're born into his family, and you're
his child, you're a son and daughter of
the king.
Don't ever forget it.
Live like it.
You're his.
Father, we thank thee for thy word, and
for what it tells us about the future
that thou hast planned, and the glory that
shall yet be revealed to us and in
us, and that we'll share in.
Lord, help us to remember, as we walk
this pilgrim way, that we need not slink
through life as though we were slaves.
We've been delivered.
We've been redeemed.
We're free.
And more than that, we're sons and daughters
of the king.
Help us to live that way.
For Jesus' sake, and in his name.
Amen.