Rejection, Adoption, and the Father's Blessing

¹⁰Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.

¹⁴But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me; the Lord has forgotten me!” ¹⁵“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you! ¹⁶Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are ever before Me.

³⁷Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never drive away.

¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him.

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. ⁴For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence. In love ⁵He predestined us for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, ⁶to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the Beloved One.

¹Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. ²Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. ³And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as Christ is pure.

⁷Now the angel of the LORD found Hagar by a spring of water in the desert—the spring along the road to Shur. ⁸“Hagar, servant of Sarai,” he said, “where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I am running away from my mistress Sarai,” she replied. ⁹So the angel of the LORD told her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.” ¹⁰Then the angel added, “I will greatly multiply your offspring so that they will be too numerous to count.” ¹¹The angel of the LORD proceeded: “Behold, you have conceived and will bear a son. And you shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard your cry of affliction. ¹²He will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” ¹³So Hagar gave this name to the LORD who had spoken to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “Here I have seen the One who sees me!”

¹⁴Early in the morning, Abraham got up, took bread and a skin of water, put them on Hagar’s shoulders, and sent her away with the boy. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba. ¹⁵When the water in the skin was gone, she left the boy under one of the bushes. ¹⁶Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she said, “I cannot bear to watch the boy die!” And as she sat nearby, she lifted up her voice and wept. ¹⁷Then God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, “What is wrong, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he lies. ¹⁸Get up, lift up the boy, and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” ¹⁹Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. ²⁰And God was with the boy, and he grew up and settled in the wilderness and became a great archer.

¹⁷The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears; He delivers them from all their troubles. ¹⁸The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.

⁵A father of the fatherless and a defender of widows is God in His holy habitation. ⁶God settles the lonely in families; He leads the prisoners out to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land.

¹³For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, and I know this very well. ¹⁵My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. ¹⁶Your eyes saw my unformed body; all my days were written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be. ¹⁷How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God, how vast is their sum! ¹⁸If I were to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand; and when I awake, I am still with You.

¹But now, this is what the LORD says—He who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine! ²When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you go through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched; the flames will not set you ablaze. ³For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your place. ⁴Because you are precious and honored in My sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you and nations in place of your life.

³He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. ⁴Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. ⁵But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. ⁶We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.

⁴Do not be afraid, for you will not be put to shame; do not be intimidated, for you will not be humiliated. For you will forget the shame of your youth and will remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. ⁵For your husband is your Maker—the LORD of Hosts is His name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; He is called the God of all the earth. ⁶For the LORD has called you back, like a wife deserted and wounded in spirit, like the rejected wife of one’s youth,” says your God. ⁷“For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will bring you back. ⁸In a surge of anger I hid My face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD your Redeemer. ⁹“For to Me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth. So I have sworn that I will not be angry with you or rebuke you. ¹⁰Though the mountains may be removed and the hills may be shaken, My loving devotion will not depart from you, and My covenant of peace will not be broken,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

¹⁶As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on Him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!”

¹⁷Finally he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have plenty of food, but here I am, starving to death! ¹⁸I will get up and go back to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’ ²⁰So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still in the distance, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. ²¹The son declared, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²²But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let us feast and celebrate. ²⁴For this son of mine was dead and is alive again! He was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate.

¹¹He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. ¹²But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— ¹³children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.

¹Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.

³¹What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³²He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is there to condemn us? For Christ Jesus, who died, and more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God—and He is interceding for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

¹⁷Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s trespasses against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God. ²¹God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

⁴But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵to redeem those under the law, that we might receive our adoption as sons. ⁶And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” ⁷So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, you are also an heir through God.

¹¹Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles in the flesh and called uncircumcised by the so-called circumcision (that done in the body by human hands)— ¹²remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. ¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has torn down the dividing wall of hostility ¹⁵by abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and decrees. He did this to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace ¹⁶and reconciling both of them to God in one body through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility. ¹⁷He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. ¹⁹Therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household, ²⁰built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. ²¹In Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. ²²And in Him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God in His Spirit.

⁴As you come to Him, the living stone, rejected by men but chosen and precious in God’s sight, ⁵you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶For it stands in Scripture: “See, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen and precious cornerstone; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.” ⁷To you who believe, then, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” ⁸and, “A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word—and to this they were appointed. ⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. ¹⁰Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

¹⁵“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you! ¹⁶Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are ever before Me.

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. ¹⁰Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.