Can We Talk? Identity + Design

Good morning guys.

How's everybody doing this morning?

Good, I'm so glad to be with you today and we're just thankful for this year as we've been going through.

Derek mentioned this Can we talk?

So can we talk this morning?

And we're looking at some things that really have to do with some essential cultural issues.

Tyler did such a great job leading this, beginning with the idea of truth and love, and then last couple of weeks on sexuality, and this morning is Derek's day.

I want to talk about identity.

Would you pray with me?

And let's ask God to be just helping us as we go through this today.

So, father, we're thankful for your word, and what a privilege it is, lord, to hear and to know that you are speaking to us.

Lord, it's not just a common word, lord, this is your word, the word of God, and so we ask you, lord, just as you tell us that the word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword able to discern the thoughts and attitudes or intentions of the heart.

And so, lord, just do that today, holy Spirit, speak to our hearts and change our lives, and we give this time to you in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, I want to kind of begin.

We've been as talking about this subject and now we're into the idea of this issue called identity in our culture.

A number of years ago it's been about 30 years or so, maybe more now so when I was back in seminary, had a time when I was in one of the classes there and the person that I had kind of connected with a little bit said a couple of rows over me was his name was Daniel, and there was a time where we were nearing the end of the semester, right before Christmas break, and I had missed a couple of classes, and so when I came back, right before Christmas break started, I asked Daniel, I said I missed these two classes.

Do you have number or notes that I could borrow?

And he said, well, sure, he pulled them out and gave them to me.

He said, if you don't mind, if you'll give them back to me when break is over.

I said, sure, do that.

So Christmas break came and went and I got back and walked into the class in January and we kind of saw Daniel walking in and he had someone helping him find his seat.

He looked like he was kind of disoriented.

I pulled my notes out and I said hey, daniel, here's your notes.

And he said Do I know you?

And I thought he was kidding.

I kind of joked around with him a little bit till the cell.

I realized that he wasn't kidding at all.

He said they tell me that I had a bicycle accident over the holidays and I was hit by a car and hit my head.

And he said I lost my memory.

I don't know my name.

They tell me my name is Daniel and they tell me I attend seminary here and I don't know who I am.

So I thought maybe, we thought maybe coming back here we kind of jog my memory and so they don't know if I'll ever recover it or not.

And, as you can imagine, I was just kind of like I've never seen this before.

This is shocking and I don't know whatever happened to Daniel.

He didn't come back after that semester and hopefully Lord healed him.

But I thought what a picture of it is for, of it for us today when we talk about identity.

Not knowing who we are really determines not knowing what we should do in life, and identity is important.

I want to talk to you a little bit about it and use one of the examples that I find in Judges 19.

If you want to turn there.

We're going to look at a few verses.

And you know, judges is an interesting book because the way it's laid out is it starts with some things that eventually lead to ultimately, by the end of the book, you can see the nation declining and cyclically, over and over again, god sends judges who were not like judges we think of them as legal representatives, they're military people, they're leaders in the nation to try to call God's people back to where they should be.

And so you see them sin and fall, and the judge brings it back over about 300 years.

And so we find that this particular case, in this period of time Israel has, is a nation that forgot who it was, and a tragedy thing to see a nation.

That can happen to any nation, not just Israel.

And so this, this series of lessons in the book of Judges is is, I believe, put there by God to show us what can happen.

It's not exclusive to any particular nation.

When we forget God, we are in a world of trouble, and so I want us to see this.

Judges 19.

And I want to give a little bit of warning as we go through this and kind of summarize some of this.

You know, judges includes most, probably most of the, some of the most graphic, violent and disturbing images in all the Bible and this is one of them.

This this describes a sex crime that occurred in national Israel and how the people kind of treated it and where they were.

It kind of tells us the situation of their spiritual and moral decline.

So chapter 19, just to kind of get this the background forward, we have this Levite who is has acquired a concubine and they're traveling through the area there and they end up for the end of the day the day is about to go to turn into evening they stop in this town called Gibbia and right there most of the towns, it was a familiar place.

It was like home, home for this man it wasn't a foreign place.

The Levite and the concubine and his attendants were there with him and when you went into these cities or these small towns, most of the places there, they had these town squares right as you went into the to the city gate, and that was the case here.

They sit down right there and what would normally have happened is, if you came out and you were looking to lodge in a place, there would be people come out from the, from the neighbors neighborhood, and invite you to stay in their home because you were traveling.

Well, in this particular case, the Levite and his little crew there is concubine and other people.

No one came out to show any hospitality whatsoever and so something was kind of odd about that.

Nobody showed him hospitality, except this one old man.

He walks out to the town square and he said you need to stay with me.

He said you don't stay in the town square at night Kind of a hint that something is dark and dangerous about doing so.

And so he brings them into his home and and offers them food and feeds his and feeds his horses and so on.

And they're there in this old man's house.

And now we come to chapter 19.

And this section actually goes from chapter 17 through 21.

But let's look at what it says and read it, from verses 22 through 30.

And I'm using the message version because I think it just really pictures a little better what was happening here.

So read with me.

Since they were relaxed and enjoying themselves when the men of the city, a gang of local hellraisers, all surrounded the house and started pounding on the door, they yelled for the owner of the house, the old man.

Bring out the man who came to your house.

We want to have sex with him.

He went out and told them no, brothers, don't be obscene.

This man is my guest.

Don't commit this outrage.

Look, my virgin daughter and his concubine are here.

I'll bring them out for you, abuse them if you must, but don't do anything so senselessly vile to this man.

But the men wouldn't listen to him.

Finally, the Levite pushed his concubine out the door to them.

They raped her repeatedly all night long.

Just before dawn they let her go.

The woman came back and fell at the door of the house where her master was sleeping.

When the sun rose, there she was.

It was morning.

Her master got up and opened the door to continue his journey.

There she was, this concubine crumpled in the heap at the door, her hands on the threshold Get up.

He said, let's get going.

There was no answer.

He lifted her onto his donkey and set out for home.

When he got home, he took a knife and dismembered this concubine, cut her into 12 pieces.

He sent her, piece by piece, throughout the country of Israel and he ordered the men he sent out say to every man in Israel has such a thing as this ever happened from the time the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until now.

Think about it, talk it over, do something.

And we read a passage like that and you say what in the world is this all about?

And how does this relate to identity?

Well, we find that the author is really showing us what happens when individuals forget who God is and they look at us and they lose themselves in the process.

Identity is important and memory is a gift.

As the Israelites came into that land, they had remembered God had rescued them at the Red Sea, and they had a history of God doing great things.

But as time went by and they began to live their own lives and they began to let God kind of slip by the wayside, they forgot who he was and what he required of them.

And so I'm saying this is a great analogy for us to say we could find ourselves easily in this kind of situation where right and wrong doesn't matter, the morals no longer are cared about too much and the whole nation ends up being compromised because we've compromised.

You know, we see this a lot in our own nation right now, and it may be a warning sign to us to consider these particular things Compromise and lukewarmness, attitudes that eventually have consequences.

And, as I say, the story goes all the way through chapter 21 and four times in these verses it has a particular word that I want us to see, and it's these words.

The book actually ends with these sobering words there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

They lost their identity.

And see when we're talking about identity, to have a name is to be somebody, but there's no one who has a name in this story.

All the names are erased, and that's by design.

The author wants us to see that these people have no significance within their community and since names are used by others, that's how we identify each other, right?

Don't you like to hear your name?

When somebody greets you, it identifies us.

But this Levite in this story has no name.

To the men of Gibby, he's nothing more than a sex object, and to the concubine it's even really worse because she's kind of the one who's.

I think this is an indication that she died in the process of this.

She's reduced to human flesh, she's almost like, and then even the Levite cuts her up like a piece of meat and he acts like he's not really very caring at all.

But ultimately, when he sends out this message the 12 pieces of this woman he's hoping to get a response, and even the response of the nation is flawed.

You can go back and read that.

But since the whole identity thing is based on who we are, individuals, that can spread to a community and little by little, it's like when something is on low and the heat on your stove it doesn't seem like it's cooking, but eventually, by and by, things burn up, and that can happen in any nation.

Someone said this is the ironic picture of a united Israel self-destructing as one man.

There was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

Let's talk about, then, identity this morning.

Define it for us, because you really I think what you might think is a simple question is really pretty complex, as I've discovered in my study this week.

It has a lot of facets, a lot of fingers to it.

Identity can mean a lot of things and since a picture is worth a thousand words, I thought I'd give you a picture this morning to kind of give you an idea what sometimes we think about here.

So you see this identity picture here, and me is in the center and it was around.

It are different facets of this person.

They're a B student, they're tall, they're female, they like rock music, they visit grandparents in Florida All these different things that define who we are, and same with you, things like your physical and psychological characteristics, your name, your history, your experiences, your relationships, your commitments, your actions, even the boundaries that you have in place in life, your values, your memories, and so on and so on.

All these things put together tell you some thing about your identity.

So we even identify others by when we come up to them.

It's by the way we ask questions, right?

So where are you from?

Where do you work?

And all these things we think identify us and make us who we are.

We're gonna find out this morning.

That's not always the case, because those things can all go away in a moment.

You can lose your job, you can lose your health, you can lose your friendships, you can lose your relationships.

And then who are you?

If we define ourselves by those kinds of things, then guess what?

We have an identity crisis and we wonder who we are.

Then so what are we talking about?

Well, essentially, when we talk about identity, it's what makes me me and what makes you you.

So we have this idea here.

The most important question is this question about identity who am I?

This is the most important question you will ever ask, and we talk about this in our foundations class.

The most important question you will ever ask is who am I?

As everything in life flows out of this, I don't think we give enough attention to this subject of identity, but it's very important and it's something that's true.

Whether you are person of faith or not, this applies to everybody.

But there's a problem, and we see it.

Most of our society, most of our people that we kind of watch on TV or just even experience, seems to have lost the ability, haven't they, to discern what is good, and that's because of relativism.

It's like what is good for me may not be good for you, that's fine with you, but it might not be good for me.

And so we have this relativistic culture that has lost the ability to discern and to discover what's right.

How we interpret, who gets to decide is not always easy, and so we see things that get distorted from our perspective.

And so this truth about identity, if we have it in the wrong way, is we come up with this, that we measure ourselves by ourselves.

We measure ourselves by ourselves.

Surely there's a more better and objective standard to measure ourselves than by ourselves.

Well, there is, and we're gonna talk about it today to get an accurate perception of who we are.

Well, without going too far on this point, I'll just say that one of the things we have to come to is every person must come to a real, genuine encounter with the living God, because the God, that is the one that's made us, is the one who gets to make the call about who we are.

He's the one that made us, he tells us who we are, and if you want a Bible study that helps with that, you may put a little reference down Read through Isaiah six and you'll see a person who really found out who they were in the light of seeing who God was, and it literally changed his life.

So with that in mind, let's move on to three ideas that we wanna talk about in regard to identity.

We've looked at this framework as we've gone through.

It's what culture says about identity, what God says about an identity, and then how do we talk about identity in a culture like ours?

So first, what the culture is saying about identity, this word that's not even in the Bible.

Did you know that the word identity is not even the Bible?

Yet the concept is there.

Theologically, and in discussions that have gone back since the time of Plato, people have been wondering, talking about identity and what it really entails and means.

But it's only within the last 50 years that our culture has coined new meaning to this phrase identity, a cultural identity that thankfully, we've got a lot of good resource to help us here in this area.

What is the culture talking about?

One of the people?

I think that's been helpful in this.

I've just read there's a theologian by the name of Carl Truman and he poses a scenario that helps us understand what has happened in our culture.

And here's what he says.

He says essentially that 50 or 100 years ago, if a man walked into his doctor's office and said, doctor, I have a problem, I think I'm really a woman, the doctor would have said you do have a problem, you have a problem in your mind and we need to conform your mind to your body.

Today, if a man walked into a doctor's office and said, doctor, I have a problem, I think I'm a woman, the doctor would most likely say yes, you do have a problem.

You have a body problem.

We need to conform your body to match your mind.

So see how that works.

It dramatically shows the shift that's happened in our culture and the way we think, what's been fed to us and it's truly a lie.

Now here's a way we can look at it.

Just to give you a brief definition what culture says about identity.

You'll put that up there.

What I feel or what I desire for myself on the inside must be expressed if I'm really to achieve individuality and identity, and I hope you can see from that it's about I, what I feel, what I desire, what must be expressed If I'm to really achieve individuality.

So you see, it's all focused about me.

It's very self-oriented, it's self-focused and so it's very different than what we've traditionally seen or what we traditionally thought about.

Brian Rosner, in a podcast he called why Is Our Culture so Obsessed with Identity, says it's not just that you look inside to find yourself.

The highest goal in life becomes your personal happiness.

All moral judgments are simply expressions of feeling, your personal preference.

The key to the good life is really to exclude all external authority and pursue your own dreams.

The quest for self-expression is to be celebrated, certain aspects of a personal identity become paramount, things like your gender, your ethnicity, your sexuality.

But it's not just those things.

It's the story that people tap into about finding meaning in life and what drives their lives.

The great irony in our day, of course, is it's never been more important to know who you are, but, on the other hand, it's actually never been more difficult.

And so our culture is so confused, our culture is so off the map, and so the problem, the problem with this way of thinking is, as I said, it's so self-centered.

And listen, if you define your reality by yourself instead of ultimate reality, what's outside of yourselves and of course I'm talking about God you will have an identity crisis.

You absolutely will.

So so when we're talking about what's going on in the culture, when people think about identity, listen, they're not thinking logically.

You see, here people say well, you know, that's just crazy, our culture is crazy, it's gone mad.

All these little ideas, it's like we can pick up on something is just crazy, something's not right, and but they're not thinking logically.

And we see that in Even in human, by a lot biology, and even in human nature.

They're not thinking logically most of the time we see this in reveal to us in what's called general Revelation.

It's the thing, the truth about God that we can know from God's creation.

But in this case, what cultures say, and all this stuff about who we are is manufactured from within.

You are who you decide yourself to be.

You are your own creation and If your body or if your relationships or your social commitments are all these things that we saw in this little diagram, any of those things we looked at, that they don't fit this inward desire, this inward image or vision you have of yourself, they don't fit.

Guess what do you do?

You change everything on the outside to make it fit your perception of who you are.

Someone said according to this, this lie, I said, is a lie.

They said gender is not some internal truth, some irrefutable fact of our existence, but rather a performance that we produce through stylized repetition.

This is the way the culture thinks it's, by by my stylized repetition and and we're gonna see how that potentially happens.

But gender, as I said, is communicated like this.

Gender is not something who, who you are but something you do, and so you know.

It makes me think of this Gal I worked with a few years ago I was in a little group of folks that sat around in a small room at computers and you know we, of course, over a year you get to know people because people will say comments, make comments, and Even if you're not always engaged in them, you still hear them.

And so this, this, this girl I worked with, she was a gal who had had had a gender change Rainette became Riley and so during our time working together in that same general vicinity, I said I'll just hear, over, overhear things, and it was sort of like everybody knew but they did respect her and which they should have.

But one day I was walking out of the office behind her and I don't think she knew I was behind her.

We walked out the suite door and the she was going to the restroom and I was behind her and Riley, he went into the women's bathroom and I thought, hmm, this is who she really thinks she is in her soul.

But her attempt to discern and decide her own identity had caused her to go through all sorts of things, painful things, to become who she is, just to validate who she was.

And I thought how sad, you know I and I want to say this just a little thing to anyone who's struggling with these things, and I'm so sorry.

It's just if you're suffering from gender dysphoria, confusion, heart goes out to you.

It's just like anything that we would say that Someone who struggles with pornography it's.

It's.

It's not something God would choose, but there's compassion there, there's forgiveness there, and you know God loves you, just like he does all of us.

So I'll just put that in there, just just an encouragement for anyone who might be struggling today with that.

But here's the thing social media also foments the lies.

I mean, you look at everything that's out there right now, even the stores that try to communicate this ideology.

This agenda intended to make sure that Identity is left undefined.

So it places a premium on what?

On choice, so you can choose to be a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, son, a daughter, and so what you get is this evil, demonic attack on, honestly, the family, as it at is known, the traditional family.

You know, when you, when you destroy the family, you destroy a culture, and so it's such an important thing that we that we don't ignore this or let this think think this is just Not a big deal.

It's a big deal.

It's a big deal.

I didn't have this in here, but I you know.

I just want to say something of.

This is what we would call the woke Ideology, and I don't.

When you hear that term, this is what flows out of it, things like this you know, we've had great awakenings in our nation's history.

This is not that.

This is just the opposite of that.

This is a demonic agenda and ideology, yeah, literally a religion that is opposed to everything the Christian culture stands for.

You understand that we're in a war, and it's probably the greatest war that that our nation has ever fought, in a, in a spiritual sense.

So I want you to hear this this is a, this is a critical thing, and and then we have to think about how God wants us to respond, and we're gonna talk about that a little bit.

But what does God say about identity?

I want to just kind of go back to God's original intent and Let me give you two words that you can kind of keep in your mind.

Number one is what's the purpose, what's his intent?

To connect and to reflect, to connect and to reflect.

So let me give you these five fundamental truths.

We must fight To hold on to, desperately, this pressure that's coming against us from the culture.

Number one is God created each of us In his image and likeness.

God created each of us in his image and likeness.

Image likeness there's no, there's no.

And in between those in the Hebrew is just image likeness.

Then God said let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

And this is God talking in his creation of man, and he's almost saying that there's man and Is is a unity.

Man is a is a soul and a Spirit and a body, and in the way that the Bible talks about is.

You are a person, and sometimes we break those things apart, but basically he's saying I made you, you and you are who I made you.

Being made in God's image means that we're necessarily Connected to him by design, which means you have a capacity for relationship with the living God.

That's fascinating, that's amazing that you and I could connect with the person of God and if you're here, that you today, you don't know him.

You have that opportunity to know God in a personal way.

It was Augustine who revealed why this is true.

He said because you, he's talking to God, because you've made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.

You heart restless this morning.

You know, we come, all of us, without knowing God.

Our hearts are empty.

They're, they're, they're designed to be filled with something.

It's not ourself, it's to be filled with a person that made us who's God.

He goes on in his work called the soliloquies, which are a Are I guess you would call them prayers, or or maybe imaginary Conversations between I don't think they're imaginary, they're probably Purely true prayers, but they're between God and himself.

And Augustine imagines God asking him what he wants to know.

What do you want to know, augustine?

And Augustine replies he wants to know only two things who he, augustine, is and who God is.

And God responds nothing else.

Nothing else, augustine, augustine, replies, is because everything else is relative to these two things.

So there's no more important thing for you to know than who you are and who God is, because those are closely intertwined.

God and myself are the only two realities that you can never yeah, you can't escape those.

You can't escape you and you cannot escape God, because God is everywhere, not for a single moment in time or eternity or anywhere else, and and really that's why it's essential to know both of those things.

So one can't be known without the other second thing that I want to show you this morning.

Second truth is the image of God in us is reflective.

It's reflective, you say, what does that mean?

Well, romans one Tells us why and how we can know what to reflect, and Tyler spent a bit of time In Romans one.

I want to just look at one verse, romans one, verse 20.

It says there, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived Ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

We talked about general revelation, which means that clearly perceived means everybody can see it for themselves.

It's not hidden from them.

Look at the creation.

You can see that there's a God that exists and that that God has certain attributes, like power, and is in certain features.

About his nature we can all know simply by looking at creation.

So here's the thing I want you to understand is that image is not identity.

Image is not identity.

Rather, our identity is meant to reflect what we see in God.

You get that Our image is meant to reflect, or identity is meant to reflect what we see in God.

So we think about these things.

Likeness in what Character John 4 says God is spirit, and those who want to worship Him must worship in spirit.

That's His nature, and God reveals His nature.

He tells us other things about Himself, in His character.

For example, we know that we can look at the creation and say well, god is a good God, this is beautiful.

When I look at something beauty out there, god is good, god is faithful, god is kind because of the way my life goes, and so on and so on.

We can learn these things from God through creation and by.

I guess maybe a good analogy would be if you looked in the mirror this morning before you got ready or while you're getting ready, to make sure everything was okay.

A mirror what's the design for the mirror?

It's to reflect, right.

So what happens if the mirror is broken or distorted?

It also reflects, doesn't it?

But it's reflecting in a distorted, messed up way, and so your identity is rooted in what you reflect.

So, essentially, what happens?

You either reflect God or something in the created order.

You can choose that.

Look at God and you'll hopefully reflect His nature and His characteristics.

But if you look at yourself, you're a flawed human being, fallen human being.

And guess who you might just reflect by looking inwardly.

So, essentially, what that becomes for us is when we look at ourselves or we look at other things outside of ourselves that are not God, it becomes idolatrous.

What is an idolatrous?

It's a substitute for the real thing, substitute for God, who fulfills us and made us.

So when we create ourselves in our own image, as the culture is trying to do to us and is doing, we're not just making an intellectual decision, we're making a heart decision.

It comes out of the heart.

Our affections come out of the heart.

So if our affections are for all these things we saw in this chart, or things that the culture tries to get us to make us happy, we will have created the biggest identity crisis we could have ever imagined.

So, but when you choose to reflect God's image, what happens?

It results in worship, it results in honor, it results in completion, it results in satisfaction.

But if we choose to reflect our own distorted image, it results in perversion and corruption and consumption and possession, all these things that are the things we don't want to see.

So, as Richard Lentz says, at what you revere, you resemble or said.

In other words, you become what you worship.

Well, let's look at a third truth, and that is, each of us is an image bearer, but with a difference.

So God created a man in his own image, in the image of God.

He created him male and female.

He created him and we have a distinction, a difference.

All human beings, then, are our image bearers, everybody, but there are two, and only two ways to be an image bearer A man or a woman.

Just two.

That's the way God made it.

In some mysterious way, god intends to make himself known in one of those two ways, through these distinctions.

So I guess Paul even calls it, when you were talking about this as an analogy for the church, that it is a mystery.

It is a mystery.

So God wants to show us something through the genders.

But the genders are male or female, and you know that all of us think differently on certain things.

We have different abilities because we're male or a female.

So Jesus said it like this From the beginning, god made them male and female, and when he talked about it, he was introducing the most extensive discussion about marriage in the whole Gospels.

So let's go on.

Number four.

Number four truth.

The image of God in us calls us to function according to our design.

Genesis 1.28 says, and God blessed them, and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

And just that little phrase.

Have dominion, which means that God has given us the power of the capacity to manage creation, and so it is our responsibility to not just sit back and do nothing when we see things that are not in place, the things that are distorted, things that are not right.

What I'm trying to say is we, as the church, have the capacity and the ability and the power and the blessing by God to go out and make change happen, and we're going to come to that.

But it calls us to function according to our design.

Number five, and this is the culmination of the ideas here A person's identity can only be understood in light of ultimate reality.

See, god is the ultimate reality, and God is most clearly seen in the person of Jesus Christ.

Christ, then, is the ultimate reality, and we can become reflectors of God through Christ, because, remember, our identity was not lost in creation, but it was distorted, and through Christ we can have a recovery of everything that was lost in terms of our identity, because the Bible talks about through the Holy Spirit.

He is changing the believer who believes in Christ, and he's conforming him to the image of Christ.

We will one day look just like him and will be just like him, our ultimate identity.

The Bible, in Colossians 1.15, says he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, and then, in Acts 17.28, tells us how we're to respond, in that in him we live and move and have our being.

So let's go back to this little diagram that I put up there, and just I want to kind of give you a little perspective.

This is like if you widen the circle out here a little bit, this is what we see, but there's a God out there that you may not see, and he is the pressure that we have to go to.

That's outside this circle, that determines who we really are, and unless you're looking at him, you're going to miss it.

You're going to miss it.

So do we understand because he is the ultimate reality that he's the only one that can tell us who we really are?

Do we understand that the Christian is one who's supposed to crucify self as a means to take on our real identity.

This is what Paul gets at.

I've been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh.

I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me, as Klein Snodgrass once said in its comment his notes.

He said Christ is not an accessory to your identity, as if you were choosing an option for a car.

He takes over identity so that everything else becomes an accessory, which is precisely what Jesus is Lord means.

So that's why we're reminded in Colossians 310 that we are to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

So even today, coming into today, we're reminding ourselves.

You all participated, I participated in worship.

We're reminding ourselves through our worship who God is, not who we are, and so we sing to him.

Did anybody sing to themselves this morning?

If you did, I want to talk to you after.

It was fun to watch you engaged in worship and I think God was pleased.

Yeah Well, let's get to the last thing.

How can we talk about it?

And I'll try to get through this as quick as possible here.

How can we communicate with those with whom we disagree?

That's the problem, isn't it?

And I just kind of the Lord, I think brought me back to the scripture this week, and it's from 1st Timothy 1, verse five.

But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience and from a sincere faith.

So all this is about love and I think it's really significant to me that so many in the LGBTQ plus in that whole community is.

They seem to think in general that most Christians are.

They hate them, that we don't love them and sadly, in certain cases, I think that's probably at times been an accurate description to sadly say.

I ran across this little thing this week and it kind of gives a hint of that.

It's from the Anti-Defamation League and here's what it said Christian identity is a religious ideology popular in extreme right-wing circles.

Adherents believe that whites of European descent can be traced back to the lost tribes of Israel.

Many considered Jews to be the satanic offspring of Eve and the serpent, while non-whites are mud peoples created before Adam and Eve in virulent racist and anti-Semitic beliefs.

It's virulent, and anti-racist and Semitic beliefs are usually accompanied by extreme anti-government sentiments.

Despite its small size, christian identity influences virtually all white supremacists and extreme anti-government movements.

It has also informed criminal behavior, ranging from hate crimes to acts of terrorism.

Now, I would laugh if that wasn't really what people are saying and the perspective they had.

And I'm thinking where in the world, who did they look at and who did they talk to to get this and put it on their website?

And you know, whatever reason is there.

I really wondered about this, and here's the thing.

Our message is really simple, folks.

It really is.

It's God loves you as you are, but only in Christ can he transform you into who you are made to be.

God loves you as you are, but only in Christ can he transform you into who he made you to be.

And so our task is to communicate the need for a new identity, and it's not us, it's our identity in Christ.

So if you wanna make an impact, you have no better tools than to go back to the very first things we talked about truth and love.

Truth and love, which 1 Corinthians says love never fails.

So that's a great promise, isn't it?

The problem is that we failed to love, and so I was thinking about how we can talk about identity and I know we're over this a little bit.

If you'll hang on just a moment with me, a little acronym that I came up with that spells out love L-O-V-E.

Four little points how can we talk to people?

Number one is listen to their story.

Listen to their story.

Well, I'll have a story.

My story is not your story.

Your story is not my story, but it significantly covers our perceptions about who we are, and there's a good principle I think that we all need to remember in this is that seek.

It goes like this seek first to understand, then be understood.

Seek first to understand and then be understood.

If you start by your own agenda in a discussion, it's not as good as if you say, tell me about your spiritual journey or tell me your story and be really interested in them, and I think all too often we get those backwards.

Number two number one is listen to their story.

Number two is ask God to open their heart, and this is a prayer.

Don't start with your own thinking.

Start with God's power and ask Him.

And one of the best examples of that comes from Acts 16, where Paul is talking to people down by the river and he says he meets up with this lady named Lydia, a cellar of purple, and in Acts 16, 14, it says she was a worshiper of God and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

So I can imagine before Paul went out that day he prayed to God and said God, will you open somebody's heart to the gospel?

That's a good prayer to pray.

Ask God to open their heart.

Number three seek to value them as a person made in God's image.

So it's so easy, I think, to value the image of God in some people and not in other people.

So we have this little, we have our barriers, right, but I think we actually need to slow down and take time to ask people good and relevant questions about themselves.

And then what do we do?

Listen.

And then we ask God, would you do something in their heart?

Because I cannot break through their crazy thinking.

Really, you have these real strong arguments that we hear, but God can go to the heart.

Good things.

Here's Paul's testimony, though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor and an insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly and unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of who I am the foremost.

So we think of people that way, because, guess what?

We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And number four, the last one expose, that's the E, l-o-v-e.

Expose the lies and express the gospel.

And I'll just say I need to certain that we are living in perilous times.

We've talked about it here this morning.

The things that we say.

People are fearful, people are anxious, people are wondering what in the world is going on and we are in danger of losing the very freedoms that many of our forefathers died to protect and gain for us, things like the Bill of Rights and other things that people have fought hard and died for to gain.

That.

The question is for us what is the tipping point?

Just like the ancient Israelite nation, what is the tipping point?

When will we actually say something or do something to challenge the lies that we face, instead of sitting calmly and comfortably week after week and being satisfied with that?

One day, all these things will come to hit, to come home.

They will come home.

You know, the ancient Israelite situation ended with civil war.

I'm not saying that's what's gonna happen to our nation, but I can tell you, if we don't stand up and be who God made us to be, then we will see things that we'd rather not see and we'll lose the freedoms that we have.

The gospel was always be there, but we can be put underground and have less opportunities to share the gospel than ever.

So we have to create spaces for dialogue and with people we disagree.

Here's a last thing I'll give you here, and it's just a, I would say, a provocative challenge that you can give to someone in a conversation to sort of expose the lies, express.

The gospel Is this decide if you wanna be the person God created you to be or someone else.

Decide if you wanna be the person God created you to be or someone else.

And just to close, you know, the Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 10, verse five just don't forget this for the weapons of our warfare, not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

This is what we can do, folks, you know.

Last thing back to the judges what we started with and these words.

In those days, there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

Everyone, well almost everyone, did what was right in their own eyes.

There were a few, and they were called the heroes of the faith.

Some of them are mentioned in Hebrews Othniel, gideon, samson, shamgar, deborah, jeff the Ehud.

These were all flawed individuals who answered God's call to deliver the Israelites in sometimes a really dramatic fashion, and what I'm telling you this morning is that you can be that person too.

You can be a hero in a time when we're in a crisis.

So I would ask, and let's ask God to tell us and show us, through His Spirit, what we must do, because we need to do it, and do it now.

Let's pray and you can stand.

So, father, we're so thankful for your Word this morning and reminding us that we are people who have been made in your image, to reflect your image, and our identity is only found in you.

Lord, I pray that, as we hear these words, that we will rise up as God's people, that we will actually step out and stand out and be heroes in our culture.

The things that we need to do, be involved, and things that we need to be involved in, not be afraid to say things that need to be said, to be courageous enough to stand up and be counted.

Lord, I pray also for those who are struggling with these issues that we talked about today.

That you would minister to them, lord, that you would show them how much you desperately love them and then show them the way that they can find their true identity in Christ Jesus.

So we pray these things in His precious name, amen.