adopted. by God.

The lesson
series I am beginning on December 2nd takes a look at adoption. The title of the series is simply adopted. by God. This is a significant study to me because as you may know we arrived home from China in July with our newly adopted daughter Zoe. We adopted Zoe into our now family of seven. We have been blessed by God thus far with four biological children of our own and Zoe is our fifth (and last if I haven't mentioned that yet). So why in the world would we need a fifth child and even more so why would we adopt when we are obviously capable of producing our own children? In short, because that is the Biblical story. By adopting Zoe into our family, we give the people we know and meet a tangible picture of what God has done for us. The Bible is very clear that when we accept Jesus as our savior, God adopts us into his family. God then becomes our Father and Jesus our brother. But what does that mean?

Our adoption into God's family gives us the full rights of sons. Galatians 4 verses 4 and 5 say, "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons." When we adopted Zoe, she went from being a fatherless child to a child that not only has a father, but she now also has the same rights as our other four children. When Paul speaks of adoption, he uses the word huiosthesia. The word huios means "a son" and the word thesis means "a placing." Put together, the word exactly means "to place as a son." Better stated, it is the place given to one to whom it does not belong. Zoe did not belong to me. She had no right to be called my child. But once I adopted her, she was granted the full rights that being my child affords her even though she did nothing to deserve it. When God adopts us into his family, we too are granted the same rights as his natural born child Jesus. We now have the right to the Father's name, the Father's love, the Father's relationship, the Father's access, the Father's provision, the Father's family, and the Father's estate. We became the same child to Him as Jesus. All the rights that Jesus has are also now ours even though we did absolutely nothing to deserve it! What amazing grace!

America must have morals

It never ceases to amaze me that the liberal left thinks that the Christian right shouldn't have a voice in politics. Sometimes I wonder if they think the Christian right shouldn't have a public voice at all. The long-known liberal media bias has finally been exposed and that has made way for "new media" such as talk radio and the blogosphere to be the outlet for the Christian right. The old-school media tried to shut down the blogs by calling them "unprofessional" and "unreliable" but those claims have been proven false. Recently, legislation has been proposed to give "equal time" on the radio waves since it is largely dominated by conservative talk shows. This is just another ploy to silence the Christian right by taking air-time away.

I say all this to get to one point. Without the Christian right and the morals that come with it, this country would not exist as it does today. If you are on the left, you are probably thinking that I'm right. But you think it would be better off today if the Christians were gone. However, you are sadly mistaken. If the Christian right decided today to remove itself from our society in all facets of life, America would look like Europe. And have you looked at Europe lately? Frech riots are burning over 100 cars every day. European unemployment rates are pushing 10 percent with some regions exceeding 30 percent. More people are emigrating from Germany than are immigrating to it. Europe's reproductive rates are alarmingly low and it threatens to dismantle the whole economy. It is literally a mess over there and that is the model the liberal left would like America to emulate.

But I will tell you this: Without Christian morality as the backbone of our country, America will begin to spiral downhill in all facets of society. Our morality, economy, education ... you name it. Without Christians in the public arena forming the backbone of our culture, America will lose its title as the great "city on a hill."

Our founding fathers knew that America needed Christian morals in order to thrive.

In his “Farewell Address,” George Washington reminded the nation:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness. . . . The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.

John Adams reminds us:

[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams also stated just two weeks before signing teh Declaration of Independence:

I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

Fisher Ames, framer of the First Amendment, said:

Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.

Benjamin Franklin said:

[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Franklin also stated in his appeal to open every session of Congress with prayer:

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that "except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, said:

The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.

And finally, my favorite quote, from Robert Winthrop, former speaker of the House of Representatives:

Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.

Our founders were very concerned that our great nation would one day remove God, and specifically Christianity, from all of public life. They feared that if that day ever came, there would be no more liberty, no more peace, no more prosperity, and no more freedom. I hope that day never comes as we Christians fight to preserve our freedoms. It really is a shame that those people who profess to be proponents of tolerance, are so intolerant to Christianity.

Commitment to finish the job in Iraq

Before I get started, have you seen this picture?



I want to speak for a moment about the war in Iraq. There is a consensus this November that the elections are a referendum on Iraq. People will vote Democrat because they think Iraq was a mistake and that will show President Bush that he was wrong. First of all, voting for a Democrat in a House or Senate or even Gubernatorial race won't change anything in Iraq. The President has sole Constitutional authority to do as he sees fit concerning the war in Iraq. Even if we had a super majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate, all they could do is defund the war effort. They can't force a troop withdrawal by voting for it. That's the President's decision.

But that's not what I want to focus on here. I would like to focus on the word "commitment." Do we Americans even know what the word "commitment" means anymore? Contracts are a form of commitment. When is the last time you saw a professional athlete refuse to show up for practice at the beginning of the year because he wants a better contract? Regardless of the fact that the athlete is still under contract with the team, he feels that he deserves better and thus he shouldn't have to honor the current terms. Or what about coaches who get fired in the middle of their contract? Most times the team has to pay the salary of the coach for all future years even though he is no longer the coach in order to fulfill his contract. But currently the New York Knicks are in court to try to get out of paying Larry Brown the rest of his contract because they wanted to fire him.

Then look at society. The best example is marriage. Marriages are failing at a rate of 50% or better because of the lack of commitment by one or both of the partners. All of us who are married signed a marriage contract to be committed to our spouse for better or worse until death. So why do 50% of marriages break the commitment. Was marriage harder than they thought it would be? Maybe. Did they not find true love in the marriage? Maybe. Did they just get tired of the other person? Maybe. Did it involve too much personal sacrifice? Maybe.

Can you see where I am going with this. Regardless of why we as a country went into Iraq, we have made a commitment to the innocent civilians of Iraq to protect them until they can protect themselves. Even if I were to agree with the Democrats (which I don't) that the war was a mistake, that we didn't find WMDs, and that there is no link to Al Queda, it doesn't matter at this point. We are there now. There are now floods of terrorists coming into Iraq to get a shot at the great USA to see if they can break our will. If we leave Iraq now, the terrorist may follow us home and they may not. But they will definitely stay in Iraq and the innocent citizens of that country will become the biggest casualties of this war and only we will be to blame.

We now have an obligation to those people to finish what we started. It's what America does. It's what we stand for. We have a moral obligation to fulfill the commitment that we made to the Iraqi people to protect them until they can protect themselves. We now must show the world that we do what we say. We believe as Americans that our commitment is our bond. Don't we? So if you want to vote for a Democrat this year, come up with a better reason than because the war was a mistake. Vote for them because they're going to raise taxes or support more abortions. At least those are issues that they can change when they get to DC.