The Gospel: You Can Be Real

I'd encourage you to turn in your Bible first to the book of Zechariah, chapter 3.

Zechariah 3 · chapter mention

We'll have two scripture readings this morning.

The first is found in Zechariah chapter 3, verses 1 through 5.

Zechariah 3:1–5

You can find that if you don't have a Bible with you on page 794.

And so I encourage you to turn to page 794 in that Bible located right there in front of you.

And each week it's our joy to give away Bibles.

So if you don't own a Bible, I want to encourage you to take that Bible that you're holding right now and take it home after the service.

Don't put it back in the pew.

Take it home with you.

Write your name in it and keep it as your own.

We want you to have it.

Zechariah chapter 3, verses 1 through 5.

Zechariah 3:1–5

Then he showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan.

The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you.

Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?

Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments.

And the angel said to those who were standing before him, Remove the filthy garments from him.

And to him he said, Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.

And I said, Let them put a clean turban on his head.

So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments, and the angel of the Lord was standing by.

Ephesians chapter two, you can find that on page 976.

Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10.

Ephesians 2:1–10

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

It's early Saturday morning, and you hear a knock on the door.

A well-dressed man is standing there as you look out the window, looking eager and earnest.

You look behind him and you see a beautiful limousine.

You open the door and he quickly introduces himself and he and he asks if he can come in.

You're a little bewildered, but he seems safe enough, and you don't want him to stand outside in the cold, so you step aside and invite him in.

Once inside, he sets his briefcase down and unlocks it.

Your curiosity is picked as he opens his briefcase while explaining why he's there.

I am the personal lawyer of Bill Gates, he begins.

As you know, Mr.

Gates is the richest man in the world and he's in the process of giving away his fortune.

He has been looking for a suitable heir to inherit his fortune when he passes.

More than that, he would like to adopt you into his family so that all of the weight and prestige of his name will now be yours.

You have personal direct access anytime you want as his child.

He will supply your every need.

He is committed to be there for you.

His desire is to grow closer to you and for you to realize that you are going to be the object of his interest and affection starting now and moving forward.

And this commitment is binding and cannot be broken.

Okay, you can stop imagining that's not going to happen.

Bill Gates' lawyer isn't going to come to your door.

He's not giving away his money.

I don't care what the emails have said.

But what if he did?

What if you did have that knock on that door?

How would that change your life?

How would it affect your future?

How would it impact your perception of yourself?

Would you still worry about the things that you worry about now?

Would you care as much what the neighbors thought of you?

If you knew that you were the adopted child of the single richest man in the world, how would that change your life?

This morning I want to consider something more deep and rich and full than anything that could happen if we were adopted by the richest man in the world.

I want us to consider our identity in Christ.

What difference does the gospel make in your life?

What difference does the gospel make in how you think about yourself?

And how you think about others and how you relate to one another?

How does the gospel make a difference in how you move forward in this life?

What difference does the gospel make?

In Matthew chapter 16, we read the account of Jesus asking the disciples who others thought he was.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

It says, Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

And they said, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

Jesus asked them what people said about him, what people thought about him, who people perceived him to be.

Who do people say that he is?

John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets?

But then Jesus asked them, But who do you say that I am?

And Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

It didn't matter what others thought about Jesus, it didn't matter what others' perceptions of him were, it didn't matter if they got it right or they got it wrong.

His identity as the Son of God, the Messiah, didn't rest on the opinions of others, it rested on the reality of who he is.

So let me ask you a question.

Who are you?

Where does your identity lie?

What defines you?

How do you define yourself?

What labels do you wear?

We've been in a series on the gospel these last uh four sermons, and I'd encourage you what I'm sharing today is built on the foundation of those other three sermons.

I encourage you to uh to go back and listen to them, but by way of reminder, what is the gospel?

The gospel begins with bad news.

The Bible says that you're a sinner, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And the Bible says, because you're a sinner, you cannot save yourself.

There's no way for you to change your circumstances on your own.

But the Bible says, because of his great love, God the Father sent his son to die on the cross and rise from the dead, so that all who place their faith in him will find full and free pardon by his grace alone.

Before you even considered God, he had long ago and his eternal counsels chosen you.

While you were rebellious and hostile towards him, he was working in your life through the Holy Spirit and his hand of providence was guiding you towards him.

And in this instant, in an instant, God reached down and made you alive.

At that same instant, you saw the offer of forgiveness and freely chose to accept the free gift that was being offered.

This was no mere decision.

It was a decisive work of God and a decisive response on your part.

At that moment of conversion, you were justified, the Bible says.

And his righteousness, the righteousness of his perfect life, was credited to your account, so that you were both forgiven and declared righteous, clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

The Bible says that at that same moment you were adopted into his family.

You became a child of God, and he became your heavenly father.

Positionally, you were set apart.

Initial sanctification.

You have been called out of this world, and the Bible says now you are in Christ.

In fact, if you were to go through just that passage in Ephesians and see how many times he says you are in Christ, those two words encapsulate all of what God has done in your life.

You have become a part of his body, the church.

You were called into his kingdom and into his family.

The Bible says at that same moment you were indwelt with his Holy Spirit, that you became the dwelling place of God.

In the Old Testament, the manifest presence of God was in the Holy of Holies in the temple.

Now the Bible says that you are the temple of God.

That same moment you began a process of transformation.

God began a good work in you to begin to make you like Jesus.

It is his work from beginning to end by his grace, and we're going to talk about how God forms Christ in you and the role that you have in that.

We'll talk about that next week.

One day each one of us will be glorified.

Not only will we go to be with him when we die, but when Christ returns, both those who have died and those who are still alive will receive glorified, transformed bodies.

They have an eternal physical body like Jesus' resurrected body, and we will be with him.

All of these things are true of a real child of God.

If you've placed your faith in Christ alone for salvation, this is what the Bible says about you.

This is who you are.

This is what God has done.

Unfortunately, I think that many of us don't live out of the reality of who we are.

We've bought the lies of the enemy, or we've believed the lies of this world, or maybe we've even told ourselves lies and deceived ourselves.

So I want to begin by looking at our problem, and then secondly, to look at what God says about you.

So who does the world say that I am?

Who does the world say that I am?

The labels we wear.

You know, I'm not a big fan of name tags.

I I I don't know, maybe some of you really like wearing hi, hello, my name is.

I I'm not a big fan of name tags.

And um it's it's helpful in a meeting because I forget everyone's name.

Um I'm really terrible at remembering people's names.

I I've sat in meetings of people that I've known five and ten years and have sat there to think, okay, wait, I know this person's name.

I I talk to them five days a week.

Um I I forget people's names.

But I still don't like name tags, and there's a reason why.

Um I forget to take them off.

I I I don't know about you.

I I I've gone to a I've gone to conference.

In fact, I'm going to a pastor's conference this week, and they'll give you a name tag that you wear around.

And the problem is, is I forget to take the name tag off.

And so if I'm in a conference or if I'm in a place, I will wear that name tag for the rest of the day.

I will go to the grocery store, I will go to the mall, I'll try to, I'll I'll freak out because the waitress knows my name.

I'm like, how does she know my name?

It's just crazy.

I've never met her before.

I'll go home and finally I'm standing in front of the mirror and I realize I have been wearing this name tag for seven hours.

And so I don't like name tags because I forget to take them off.

Well, what are some of the name tags that we wear?

What are some of the things that we let define us?

What are some of the things that maybe we define ourselves by?

Sometimes we define ourselves by our careers.

Sometimes we define ourselves by our possessions, or by our looks, or by our relationships, or by our choices.

Sometimes we define ourselves by our circumstances or by our status or by our success or by our sins and mistakes, or by our mental health, or our problems, or our skills and abilities, or by our accomplishments, or by our shame.

We wear these labels, we we place them upon ourselves, we allow others to write them for us, or maybe we even write them ourselves.

You're a loser, you'll never amount to anything.

You're such a faithful Christian, it's such a shame that your marriage fell apart.

Who gives us these labels?

The world labels us.

We wear labels such as patriot or liberal or conservative or consumer or unemployed.

Sometimes we get labels from our families.

The loser, the failure, the goody two shoes, the scapegoat, the black sheep.

The list could go on and on.

We can get labels from our friends sometimes jokingly, oh, you're so OCD, or you're a mess, or you're a genius.

Sometimes our enemies give us labels.

You're disgusting, you're a pain, you're incompetent, you're unwanted.

And sometimes we put labels on ourselves.

Well, what are the dangers of labels?

Let me give you five dangers.

They all start with the letter D.

Five dangers of wearing labels.

One, they define us.

A self-assessment, our identity.

We begin to look at ourselves based on the labels that we wear.

They define us.

Secondly, we can be driven by them.

We can be driven by them to live up to them.

We can be driven by them to run from them.

We can be driven by them to have image management, to try to control what other people think about us or how they see us.

Third, we can be defined by them.

We can become the victim of genetics or circumstances or bad parenting or bad environment or economic disadvantage or poor education or dysfunctional families or my choices or abuse.

We can be defeated by them and become the victim.

Fourth, we can be destroyed by them.

Self-destruction, even suicide.

If you look behind it, what is it that drives people to despair and to be destroyed by them?

Oftentimes it's the lies of the labels that they wear and they believe.

Or we can be deified by them.

We begin to believe them and think we're better than we are, better than everyone else.

We look down on others and we think that they're there to serve, that others are there to serve me.

In fact, I was reading an article about that uh that famous Canadian Justin Bieber.

Some of you may have seen something in the paper the last few weeks.

But I was reading an article, and one of the one of the things that caught my eye as I was preparing the sermon was it mentioned to him that one of his problems is that everyone around him worships him to the point where he believes that he can do all these things and nothing bad will happen.

And in this article said that somebody needs to tell him that he's not God.

I think it's going to be a judge.

But he is deified by them.

See, and this is what happens with labels.

We can be defined by them, we can be driven by them, we can be defeated by them, we can be destroyed by them, or we can be deified by them.

And how we view ourselves affects our relationship with God.

We believe what others say rather than what God says.

How we view ourselves affects our relationships with others.

We don't often think about the labels we wear.

And oftentimes we have multiple labels at the same time.

We think of ourselves and perhaps as a mixture of all the labels that we accept, sometimes looking at the positive ones and sometimes the negative ones.

Sometimes we go from one label to another, or it's the sum total of them that we accept.

But these are the lies of the enemy, these are the lies of the world, these are the lies that we believe ourselves.

But what's the truth?

Who does God say that I am?

Who does God say that you are?

How should we view ourselves?

How does the gospel inform our identity?

And so, secondly, I want us to look at what does my father say about me?

What does my father, who does my father say that I am?

If you have your Bibles, look at the passage in Ephesians chapter 2 again.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

And I want us to just walk through this passage for a few minutes and look at what the Bible says about who we are.

In Ephesians chapter 2, beginning in verses 1, verses 1 to 3, it says, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Let's stop right there for a minute and look at what Paul says about who we were.

We were dead in our trespasses and sins.

We were spiritually dead.

It says, In this spiritual deadness, in this insensitivity to all anything of God, we followed the world, we followed the enemy, we followed and carried out the passions of our own flesh, the desires of our body and mind.

And as a result, we were, like the rest, children of wrath.

The Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and left to ourselves, we are helpless and hopeless.

That was the condition of each one of us.

There's no exceptions.

All of us are in that category apart from Christ.

Separated from God in our sins, spiritually dead, by nature, children of wrath.

There are no exceptions to that.

That is the reality of who we are in ourselves.

But look in the Bible, look at verse 4, and notice the next two words.

Words.

But God.

But God.

Those two words change everything.

Those two words change everything.

But God.

It doesn't matter who you were.

It doesn't matter what you've done.

It doesn't matter where you've been.

You could have grown up in the church and never gone off the straight and narrow, but the fact is that you were a sinner in need of rescue.

Maybe you came to Christ late in life and you were the scars of your self-inflicted wounds as well as the wounds of others.

But your story is the same.

But God.

God saved you by his grace through faith.

Each one of us came through the door the same way.

Listen to the next two verses of what it says in verses four and five.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved.

But God, God who is rich in mercy, God who is great in love, loved us when we were dead in our sins.

God is the one who made us alive together with Christ.

That we have been united with Christ in his death, in his resurrection, and in his exaltation.

Positionally, we are in Christ.

And the Bible says we're seated in the heavenly places.

Look at what it says in verses 6 and 7.

It says, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

This is an amazing declaration that's hard for us to get our minds around.

Paul here tells us that we have been united with Christ in his death and in his resurrection, but more than that, that we are positionally seated with Christ.

And that we are going to be for all of eternity, this is what he says in verse 7, for all of eternity, that not only are you God's prized possession purchased with the blood of his son, but that he is going to put you on display as a dazzling example of his mercy and kindness.

Yeah, if you ever go into someone's room that has trophies or you see a trophy case, and sometimes there'll be a trophy that is so meaningful, it is behind glass.

And so that when you walk in, you notice and you see this display of this glory that this person wants.

Well, the Bible says that God is going to make you a showcase of his grace for all of eternity.

I love the imagery in Zechariah chapter 3 that we read earlier.

Zechariah 3 · chapter mention

Joshua represented the people of Israel as their high priest.

They had just been rescued out of Babylon and established in their homeland.

But Satan, the great accuser, is standing there to bring a charge against God's people.

He was like a Joshua was like a burning stick representing the people, like a burning stick that had been pulled out of the fire of judgment.

His clothes were filthy and he was defiled.

And in a beautiful type of what God does to every believer in Christ Jesus, God removed his filthy robes and dressed him in pure festal robes of celebration.

Last week we talked, two weeks ago, we talked about shame, and I shared with you the shame in my life, and you considered the shame of yours.

But this is what makes the difference.

This is who you are.

This is what the Bible says, the label you wear.

You are a child of God.

The Bible says that you are loved by God, you are the object of his affection.

You have been placed into the family of God.

And God has no favorite children.

Do you get that?

God has no favorites.

And God has no stepchildren.

Each one of us is equally a beloved child of God.

This is who the Bible says you are.

I love that partial list that's in that blue folder there, if you've noticed it, and I just want to draw your attention to the last two pages of it.

And this is just a partial list.

It would probably fill all sides, both sides of this sheet of paper, of just some of the things the Bible says about who you are.

About what God has done, about what he thinks about you.

That you have been placed into his family.

You are his child.

And he loves you as much as he loves the person sitting next to you and across the aisle from you.

He loves you as much as Billy Graham.

He loves you as much as the saint that you look up to and model your life after.

You are his child.

And we're in Christ.

This is who we are.

This is our identity.

Not the labels that the world gives us, not the labels that our family gives us, not the labels that our friends give us, not the labels that our enemies give us, not the labels that we have given ourselves.

The Bible says, you are in Christ.

This is who you are.

You are his child.

He loves you.

You are the object of his affection.

He will never turn away from you.

He will never reject you.

He loves you.

You are his own.

And this is how we should see ourselves in the same way that our Father sees us.

That we are his children, we're the objects of his affection.

If we could embrace this reality that God is our loving heavenly Father, and we are his children, this would change everything.

We would never live the same again.

We would never interact the same again.

No longer would we live in fear of others.

It wouldn't matter what they think because we know what our Father thinks of us.

No longer would we live with the shame of our past and our struggles.

No longer would we allow ourselves to wear the labels that are a lie.

The only label that defines us is the one that God has placed on us, and He has called us His own.

You will never get a knock on your door.

Bill Gates will never adopt you into his family.

But you have something infinitely more important that has happened to you, and this is true.

This is the reality of who you are.

You are the blood-bought child of God.

You have been adopted into his family.

You are the object of his affection.

He rejoices and sings over you.

He has begun a good work in you, and he will bring it to completion.

Let's pray as we sing our last song.

Father God.

We confess that so often we believe lies.

Lies we've told ourselves, lies the world has told us, lies the enemy has whispered in our ear.

We have not thought deeply enough of the truth of your word.

But, Father, we need your Holy Spirit to impress these truths on our hearts and our minds.

We can't talk ourselves into it.

We can't whip ourselves into a state of emotion and believe it.

But your Holy Spirit can stir our hearts and our minds and impress the true weight of your word upon us so that it becomes the conviction in the deepest recesses of our hearts of what you have said about who we are.

And so, Holy Spirit, do that in our lives because of the death and resurrection and ascension of Christ.

Because of the love of our Father.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.