May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:14-17)

In Christ, dear friends: This day of the Holy Trinity happens to fall on the day our land celebrates fatherhood. And our reading from Romans speaks of fathers, sons and children. It would be wrong for us to focus in on earthly fatherhood as if it is our greatest blessing. Instead we will focus on the heavenly Father and the greatest of blessings-that of being his child and having him as our heavenly Father. There alone will we find strength for earthly fatherhood and there alone will we see the one who is to be thanked for all fatherhood. We will use the title of the hymn that we just sung: CHILDREN OF THE HEAVENLY FATHER. May the Lord bless us as we listen and take to heart what he tells us in these verses of Romans.

God uses many metaphors to help us understand him, his love for us, and our blessed status. The Good Shepherd and the sheep, the Master and his servants, the Vine and it's branches, the Light for those who are in darkness-all these pictures help us to take to heart how great our Lord is and how much we depend on him and receive from him. Today we have another picture to help us grasp how deep and wide and high is the love of God. That picture is that of God being our Father and we his children.

It is wonderful how the Apostle Paul tells us that those who are led be the spirit are children of God. Notice the verb. We are children. He did not say we might become...we will be...we have the potential to be. He says we are, right now. We are sons because the Father has given us his Spirit, the spirit that is called the spirit of sonship or the spirit of adoption. The term reminds us that we are not natural born children of God. The Lord of mercy has found us, like a child abandoned and left for dead, cleaned us , welcomed us into his family, taken us as his own. All this through the atoning work of Jesus, his true Son. In the Old testament there is a graphic picture of this adoption. Look to Ezekiel 16. There God says, Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. [You were flesh born or flesh, unbelievers, outside my family] On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. [Satan, in whose family you were born, does not care about his offspring and leaves them to suffer the consequence of their sin.] "'Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!" I made you grow like a plant of the field.

At times we might doubt this blessed status. We may not always sense it, realize it, and appreciate it. But against our doubts God places his double-testimony. The Spirit of God testifies with our spirit that we are God's children (v.16). The testimony of the Spirit is his Word, the very words of God, the God who is the Truth and cannot lie. His testimony is that there is righteousness that makes us fit for heaven through Christ. God says, You are my children. And this clear testimony speaks to our hearts to convince and comfort us and cause us to agree, Yes, I am God's child! In this way, as Paul says, the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God.

I would very much like to set these words in front of us so that it lingers in our hearts like the taste of fine food. If we ponder the fact that we are children of the heavenly Father, then some aspects of this truth are especially worth tasting and enjoying. The truth that we are children of the heavenly Father ought to also remind us that we are completely dependent on our Lord. It ought to move us to prayer for everything depends on the Father's blessing-everything, great and small. Father-child brings to mind also how dear we are to our Lord and Savior. It ought to make us bold and confident when approaching him in prayer. It ought to make us joyful and satisfied when we see God's answer to our prayers for he who loved us enough to give his Son over to death to adopt us into his family will certainly not do anything at any time to hurt us or cause us harm.

Then too, when I think of father-son I think of how the child must be ever learning. I know that it is common in adolescent years to think that one is smarter than ones parents. I also know that it is part of being children of the heavenly Father that we at times forget how immature we are right now. John said, What we will be has not yet been made know (1 John 3:2), and the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians, Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known (1 Corinthians 13). Children of the heavenly Father must be ever learning.