Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, we are about to start the first of our ten part series on freedom in Christ, and this week we are looking at the very introductory topic of who am I? Who are you?
[00:00:14] Who are you? I've stood in many a football stadium and the fans shout to the opposing fans, who are you? Identity is quite a key part of our life. In fact, when Satan tempted Jesus, what did he question? It was his identity. If you are the son of God, if you are the Son of God, then turn these stones into bread. If you are the Son of God, then throw yourself down and angels will come. And our identity is under so much attack. Our identity is so intrinsic and so important to the purposes of God. That's why on this very first week we are looking at this topic of who am I? Do we have anybody in the house called Ethan Davis?
[00:00:57] Anybody?
[00:00:59] It's not a word of knowledge. It's okay.
[00:01:03] If at the end of the service I was to give you this envelope, what would you do with it?
[00:01:10] Would you open it?
[00:01:12] Why wouldn't you open it?
[00:01:15] Because it's for Ethan Davis. It's not for you.
[00:01:21] And the identity and understanding of who we are is so important because God wants to say things to us, but he needs us to know that it's us he's sending those truths and those messages to. If we look at the next page, the letter that it says there, dear child and friend, do we have any children of God? Do we have any friends of God? In the house this morning says, you have been justified, you are united with Christ, you've been bought with the most costly price, and so on. But if you and I do not know that we are the child of God, a son of God, a daughter of God, the bride of Christ, then we treat the truth of what God's word says a little bit like the Ethan Davis letter. We think it belongs to somebody, but it's not for me. And over the years I found a lot of what I would call exceptionalism in the church, where people rejoice at the message, they rejoice at the truth, but in some way they think it can't be for them. And they have all sorts of disqualifiers in their life that give them justification. Why they say that letter is not for them. This letter is for you. If you are in Christ Jesus, and if you're not in Christ Jesus, you can be in Christ Jesus. And this letter can be for you. Because God gives us an identity in him.
[00:02:56] We can struggle to understand that we're a friend of God. But it does not change the truth that we are.
[00:03:05] There was a time in our history of humanity where there would have been absolutely no confusion over who I am.
[00:03:15] Genesis one, verse 26, says that God made mankind in his image.
[00:03:24] That doesn't mean that we necessarily physically look like him. It means that within the depths of our life, that we have the physical that we see. On the exterior. It's like a tent. The tent is not the person. The tent is just housing who's inside and who's inside. Our spirit is made by the Lord in the image of God. It has the capacity of relationship with him. It has that ability to communicate, to be a place of communion. It's a place where we meet with God all that he is, connecting with, all that we are. And there was a time when God made Adam and Eve. And he said that, I am making you in my image. What a privilege that is, my beautiful know. People are saying, who does he look like? Do you look like his dad? You look like his mum. Does he look like his granddad? He's got no hair, all those sort of things. Who does he look like? And there's an image bearing that you see passed down through genetics. In fact, geneticists, they have concluded that all of humanity shares one common male ancestor and one common female ancestor. The Bible introduces those ancestors as Adam and Eve. They were made in the image of God, created physically and spiritually alive. The connection to God provided acceptance, significance and security when we come to Christ. When Adam and Eve were created, these were things that were part of their natural paradigm, of their story. They knew that they were accepted by God in perfect communion with him. They knew that there was a significance. They were given responsibilities and opportunities. They were given an entrusted things, and that they were secure. There was no fear. No one worried about whether they were going to be liked or disliked. No one feared wars. No one feared the things that this world, this ugly world, has often managed to cause us to have fear about. None of those things existed, just the beauty of these things to be accepted, to be significant and to be secure.
[00:05:53] But Adam and Eve disobeyed one instruction that the Lord gave them.
[00:05:58] In Genesis two, verse 17, God said, you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.
[00:06:09] They ate of it.
[00:06:12] And we don't read that they physically died at that moment. Oh, yes.
[00:06:17] That there was a consequence in the physical that we see. If we read the Old Testament and we read those early chapters of Genesis, and we look at the age that people lived to, we see that a sin came into the world, that people's lifespan got shorter, and to today we are three score years and ten. That there is this sense of there is a very limited window that we have on this earth. But that's not what God was saying. If you eat of it, you will die. He was saying that that spirit that's within us because of the introduction of sin and corruption, it dies.
[00:06:57] And they ate from that fruit and they became spiritually dead.
[00:07:03] Instead of acceptance now there was rejection.
[00:07:08] Instead of significance, there was now guilt. And instead of security, they were now filled with fear.
[00:07:18] Ephesians two, verse one. Going forward thousands of years to the New Testament, the writer says this, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. You know that you're not physically dead. If you're reading that, you're not physically dead, but there is a death that's taking place on the inside because of the introduction of sin.
[00:07:42] Adam and Eve died on the inside, and each of their descendants would also have death within them because they had lost their connection with God.
[00:07:55] Now, if you put your mobile phone on Something called aeroplane mode, what that means is that your phone is no longer able to be connected to either a mobile phone network or a wifi or a bluetooth. It's able to receive no signal to impact the function of that phone.
[00:08:18] It means that your phone can still do stuff. You could still use it as a calculator, you could still read anything that's already been previously downloaded upon that phone. You might have a game that's downloaded that you might be able to still use.
[00:08:32] You can still do some things with it. It's not completely obsolete, but it's not able to do what it was designed to do, and that was to receive phone calls to connect to World Wide Web.
[00:08:48] It's actually quicker to say worldwide, it's less syllables to say World Wide Web and is www.
[00:08:54] I thought abbreviations were supposed to make things shorter. WWW is six syllables, World Wide Web is three.
[00:09:01] Anyway, just a little free one for you there.
[00:09:05] But the phone is not able to fulfill its purpose. And there are people walking around today with no connection with God and they can still do stuff, they can still live, they still function, they still have jobs, they still got creativity, but they're missing out on so much more because their spirit is dead. They've lost that communion with the Lord. And the heart cry of God is, I long to restore that. I long to bring that alive.
[00:09:37] And when they do, as we read in John's gospel, John 1010. Jesus said, I've come that you might have life in all its fullness. I've come to take your life off airplane mode. I've come to revive that spirit which has died within you. I've come to bring you a new restoration of the identity that I had formed in mankind.
[00:10:00] I've come to restore and resurrect that which is dead.
[00:10:06] Ephesians two, verse four and five says, but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ.
[00:10:19] We were dead, we were sinners, we were rejected, we were guilty, we were fearful. But to those who come to Jesus, for those who are in Christ Jesus, we are made alive. We are saints, we are accepted, we are significant, we are secure in him. We are in Christ.
[00:10:44] Christ is in us.
[00:10:46] This is who we are.
[00:10:49] Two Corinthians 517 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old is gone, and the new is here.
[00:11:05] And we are faced with daily choices regarding our identity.
[00:11:10] Which of these envelopes do you open?
[00:11:17] Because how you understand your life will determine which one you go for.
[00:11:23] And there are those that you're mindful that you don't get everything right.
[00:11:28] In fact, if you think that you are a follower of Jesus because you get everything right, the Bible says, there is no one without sin, not once. If we think we're without sin, we're deluding ourselves.
[00:11:41] I am a sinner that's saved by grace, but I am not a sinner. I am a saint in Christ Jesus.
[00:11:52] And if you continue to live your life, I am a worm. I am but a know. Woe is me.
[00:12:00] Now. When we come into the presence of God, we feel undone by the majesty and the might and the wonder of his splendor and his presence. That's amazing and beautiful. But the presence of God, when we come to that place where God is working on our hearts in deep repentance, and those times, they're powerful, painful times in our life, but they're always so that he will get us to the other side of receiving his mercy. So he lifts us up to new levels in him.
[00:12:27] He's not coming to say, you rotten sinners. He's coming to say, I have got more for you. And if you can allow me to work in your life to deal with that sin, and I will lift you up to a place of newness, of life.
[00:12:41] See, if we understand who I am is that I'm a saint.
[00:12:46] Who I am is someone whose spirit has been resurrected by the transformative power of the cross, the death and resurrection.
[00:12:55] Then I believe, as we look at these next ten subjects together and freedom in Christ, if we can make sure that we know we're not going to go for that top left one, we're going to go for that bottom right one, we're going to understand that the scripture is talking to us, we're not going to pass it around. We're going to say, this is for me.
[00:13:20] See, the enemy will do everything he can to get you to think that that's yours. Dear Sinner, he's a specialist at that Bible. Describes one of his names as the accuser.
[00:13:39] Have you ever heard his whispers accusing you?
[00:13:42] The difficulty is the things he accuses us of are often right.
[00:13:52] They've happened. We've messed up.
[00:13:56] And he's so subtle and he never turns up with red horns and a pitchfork and a red cape and going, right, mark, let me just tell you the ground rules now. I'm the accuser. I'm going to accuse you.
[00:14:11] Doesn't happen that way. It's usually drops a thought into our spirit that just makes me think, oh, I'm rubbish.
[00:14:23] How could God love me?
[00:14:26] Messed up.
[00:14:27] Anybody know what I'm talking about?
[00:14:31] And he accuses subtly and we begin to disqualify ourselves. But God says, we are his saints in Christ Jesus.
[00:14:44] That's who you are. And the next time the enemy comes and he whispers in your ear, the Bible says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. In these weeks ahead, we're going to tear up that top right hand letter. We're going to say, I'm not going to read that. It is not for me. I am a saint in Christ Jesus.
[00:15:16] So we are saints that don't get everything right. We make mistakes and we keep short accounts with the Lord. But we have been made new. And as we open this envelope, through this series, I pray that we will encounter God's truth and be set free in every area of our lives. Let's pray together.
[00:15:49] We invite you, Holy Spirit, to help us over every area that the enemy has sought to disqualify us over.
[00:16:01] And we thank you that this actually is not about us. It's about your work in us.
[00:16:09] And we ask that you will give us clear thinking within our lives to. To know who we are in Christ Jesus. Amen.
