Who You Say I Am | Who Am I? (March 3rd, 2019) - Mike Armstrong

Good morning and uh and welcome uh to all of you, especially our guests who are here for the baptism today, or just uh kind of you know searching for a church and looking for a place to call home.

Uh again, this is our four-year anniversary, and uh we're a church that has been founded on Jesus Christ alone.

Like it's not me, it's not man, it's not any of us, it's it's on his name.

And uh that's what our church is committed to, and that's uh who we are committed to uh lifting up and exalting and glorifying in.

And so I'm just again grateful uh to have you all here.

And if you would uh if you've got a copy of God's word, you can turn it now uh to Ephesians chapter one uh with me.

Now, if um if someone were to ask you the question, uh, who are you?

Uh how would you answer that?

Okay, besides giving your name, right?

And oh I live at you know such and such an address, whatever, uh, what would you tell that person?

In other words, like what what what's your identity?

Or or or or what is your identity tied to?

Okay, these are massively, massively important questions uh for us to ask.

Because let's let's think about it this way.

Most people in the world, in general, they they don't know who they are.

Right?

And so they are they are searching and they are looking and they are going after uh a bunch a bunch of things, trying to figure out who on earth am I?

Or or listen, or they've already hitched themselves and their identity to something that they don't realize is actually extremely shaky.

Right?

And then that shaky thing is informing uh who they are.

It's telling them who they are as a person.

Now I think just generally speaking, this search for who am I and and and asking ourselves that question, whether we're actively doing that or it's a more of a function of our heart, kind of deep down, uh, this is something that I think starts kind of around the age of junior high, right?

Somewhere around, you know, 11, 12, 13, somewhere in that range.

And so our you know, our students, they're they're currently asking this question, who am I?

You know, what is my place in this world?

Right?

And so they are they are looking for it and oftentimes find it in all kinds of things that the world might say they are, or or however their heart and their flesh, you know, whatever that goes after, that thing now informs my identity.

Now, you and I, we were all uh in that position at some point.

Some of us, it was a long time ago, uh, some of us maybe a little bit more recently, but but maybe you found this as a Christian that the things that you attached your identity in when you were in junior high or high school, or maybe it was college for you, as you begin to grow in Jesus Christ, you realize that those identities are it's a broken cistern, right?

It's a leaky sieve.

It does not hold water.

And then for so many of us as Christians, as we grow and as we're discipled and as we understand the scriptures and all of these things, we start to realize, wow, that's that's a problem.

And now I've got to grow and and start to learn and figure out what my identity uh really is.

We want to hope in something that's real.

Well, these are the things that we're gonna be talking uh about today, and we're gonna be going uh through uh this new uh series in Ephesians chapter one.

Now I want to give you kind of a couple of examples of the types of things that people uh try and find their identity in.

All right, and maybe some of these will ring true for you.

But some people they're looking for their identity in athletics, right?

In sports.

We've talked about this thing before.

And so again, maybe it was when you were young, maybe it's still like I'm a you know, I'm a swimmer, right?

I'm I'm a hockey player, I play baseball, I work out, right?

That's my thing.

And you've thrown yourself so deeply into this that it now informs who you are.

Maybe for you, your identity is tied so closely to how you look, right?

Your your your body type, your style of clothing.

And if you're not wearing the right thing or or whatever, you you just feel like it like you lose all confidence.

Okay, for other people, it's in the kind of music they listen to that forms their identity.

Some of some of us are maybe not me, but some of us are maybe a musician, right?

And you and you love you know playing guitar or you love playing drums or it's something like that, and and you like bands, the kind of style of music they play.

And so you you know, you you you kind of talk like them, walk like them, dress like them, listen to all their music, it's kind of become your identity.

People know you as the as the music guy or the guitar player.

Okay, for some of us, it's more like academics, right?

You're real, you're real brilliant when it comes to school and to learning and to understanding and and and maybe teaching and all of that.

And so that is kind of who you are.

For you, it's for so many of us, it's our profession, isn't it?

Like I'm a firefighter, I'm a pastor.

This is who I am.

It's not who we are, it's what we do.

For others of us, it's our political views.

Right?

I'm uh I'm uh you know left-leaning liberal, it's who I am, and I and I have and I, you know, I spelt my views, and this is how people see me and know me.

And for others of us, maybe it's the you know, I'm uh I'm on the right side of all of that.

I'm a conservative.

Okay.

For others, it's the size of their bank account, right?

I got lots of money, I'm I'm wealthy, I've I've I've I've made it, it's the stuff I've accumulated, the the things that I own.

I'm the guy who's known as having all the toys, right?

I've I'm the guy who has, you know, all that stuff, and that's who I am.

For a lot of us, we see ourselves as either our successes, our success, or our failures.

Right?

I'm a self-made man.

I've I've put all that, I I've I have built this.

This is who I am.

Some of us see ourselves as our failures.

I've not been able to accomplish blank.

Right?

And so we we wear that and we we think of ourselves that way.

For so many people in this world, we are our sexuality.

Right?

That is a massively huge one right now.

And you can't even talk to anybody about that, you can't have a conversation about that because, and because it's so deeply tied to who they are that if you have any conversation about that, it's just met with anger and it's met with such frustration, you can't even dialogue about it.

For some of us, we are the relationship that we're in.

I am my marriage, I am my girlfriend or my boyfriend, or we are the lack of relationship.

Right?

I am my divorce, I am my singleness.

Okay, others of us see ourselves as victims.

That's my identity, my identity now.

I am the thing that that person did to me.

That's me, and I carry that around with me.

And everything, every single way that I approach life now is seen through that grid.

That's what our identity does to us.

Right?

I'm I'm a victim.

You can't seem to move on to it, uh on from it, and can't find healing because you think that's who you are.

A lot of us think that we are who people say we are.

Right?

Some of you see yourselves as you've been told, you're hilarious.

Right?

You're funny.

And so now you're like, yeah, I've gotta, you know, I gotta keep this going.

That's how people accept me.

And so I've always got to be the funny man.

I've got to be that that funny person with the quick and and the and the witty humor.

I'm funny.

People say that maybe you're unlovable, and so that's how you see yourself.

Maybe it was something that your your father said to you, or is what your father didn't say to you, and so you carry this sense of I'm I'm just unlovable, that's who I am.

For maybe, maybe for you, it's your disease.

You're terminally ill, and that now that's how I see myself.

It's I it's my disability.

Right?

Do you see how there's just so many different examples, so many different things that that we look to whether we want to or not?

Sometimes it's intentionally, sometimes it's not, that that informs who I am now, and I operate completely out of that.

Okay, so again, the question is who are you?

Who would you say that you are?

Well, again, today we're gonna be working through or starting uh a brand new series in Ephesians chapter one.

We're gonna be working through uh just the first 14 verses of that.

And you might be thinking, well, why?

Why?

Well, because when when you and I, when we become Christ followers, God gives us a brand new identity.

Right?

He tells us who we are.

And as our creator, think about this, he's the only one that has the right to inform us as to who you and I really are.

Right?

That's that's true.

Right?

He's the only one that you and I should be looking to to tell us these things.

What we're gonna see here is that the identity that that God gives us through his son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit is an identity that is truly bulletproof.

Right?

It's an identity that that's strong, it it holds up through life's ups and downs, right?

Through the circumstances of life.

They go all over the place.

Life is this crazy roller coaster.

Some days it's amazing, right?

Some days it's downright, just brutal, and and there's a lot of kind of in-between on the other days.

It's the only identity that actually makes us secure deep in our hearts.

Listen, some of you need to hear that today.

Some of you are living out of these identities that are so warped and twisted and weak, and you're so insecure because of it.

Ultimately, the G uh the identity that that Christ gives us is it's really the only one that glorifies God.

Right?

And as men and women, as individuals who are created for the glory of God, uh, we have to get this right.

Right?

We really do.

So the deeper that you and I learn to kind of understand, first of all, and then absorb the identity that Christ gives us, the more stable and the more secure you and I become.

Well, first of all, internally, right?

We're filled with peace, right?

Peace that surpasses understanding.

A lot of those anxious thoughts that we've talked about before, that begins to kind of disappear a little bit as we kind of see ourselves rightly, our our our emotions that spiral all over the place, our our thinking that can be so wrong sometimes, all of those things get grounded in the truth.

Because again, we are functioning properly as Christ intended us to function.

We we we grow in such confidence as we absorb the identity that God has given us.

Not self-confidence.

I don't see where the Bible says that's a thing, but that's the that's the thing that the world would tell you to go after.

It's God confidence.

That's what we're going for as Christ followers.

But listen, we don't just become secure internally, we actually become more effective and useful externally as well, as our identity takes root, meaning that that when we become secure and we're not so self-focused anymore and we have confidence in who the Lord is and who he says I am, now we can actually get to work.

Right?

Now we can actually be effective.

Now we can actually carry out the mission that God has given us.

We can we can make disciples, we can actually love other people well instead of being so so darn self-centered and and so self-focused as we often are.

Our our love for others can be true, our our worship to God can be can be intense.

Right?

It can be it can be external, it can be powerful, it can be right.

Again, these are the things that we're gonna be talking about here today, and then over the next bunch of weeks.

But before we jump into the text here, let me pray.

So join me as we pray.

God, we come before you and and Lord, I believe this is so foundational to us what we're gonna be talking about today.

Lord, who we are is who you say we are.

And Lord, so many of us uh don't have the first clue.

We really don't.

Some of us have been coming to church for years and we still don't know who you say we are.

We have not accepted that, we have not believed that, we're not clinging to that and holding to that, Lord.

We're still chasing after idols and these other things that that create this warped and broken identity that that just lets us down over and over and over again and creates such such pain and ruins our relationships and ruins our effectiveness, ruins our internal peace and the joy that you would have for us, Lord.

I pray, I pray that you would do a deep heart work.

God, I pray that you would transform us here.

I pray that we would hold firm to the truth of the gospel, Lord.

The gospel is uh shows us so much, Lord.

It shows us who you are, it shows us your character and your nature, it shows us what you have done for us, and then it tells us who we are.

And so, God, as we work our way through this, Lord, transform us, change us, make us like Jesus.

Help us to learn these things, Lord.

We know our hearts are so hard.

We know that we're stubborn, we know that we're slow to learn, Lord.

Teach, change, transform all to the glory of God, we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, here's the first thing here.

If you're uh if you're taking notes, it's this In Christ, I am faithful.

In Christ, I am faithful.

Now, the way that this is gonna work here is that today we've got uh seven points.

Okay, seven points that we're gonna go through.

Now, I know you're thinking, wow, we're not gonna get out here until next Sunday.

Okay, but I promise we're gonna try and move pretty quickly through this here.

All right, we got seven points, and so today is really gonna be it's this is like an intro message to the rest of the series, all right?

So it's gonna be like a like a flyby or uh or a flyover, an overview of sorts.

And then the following weeks, the sermons are gonna pull apart each one of these seven points.

So if the first point today is I, in Christ I am faithful, that's the whole sermon next week.

And we're gonna do a deeper dive into this text and pull this apart.

We're probably gonna look at some other verses, some other texts from around the scriptures as well to help us build a bulletproof identity, the one that Christ has given us.

So this series is gonna have a little bit of a different feel than let's say our Mark one that we just went through.

We just went verse by verse through the entire book and all of that.

This one's a little bit more topical, but listen, I think this is so crucial.

This is a series that has been um so just just just boiling and bubbling in the surface of my heart for a really long time.

When I was a youth pastor, I realized, whoa, like these kids, they need to hear this.

Right?

They are looking for who they are and all kinds of nonsense out there, and they need to hear it.

And again, like I was kind of referring to uh earlier, uh, adults need to hear it uh just as much because we need to do uh undo all the damage that's been done from linking ourselves to all these really lame identities that we all hold to, amen?

Right?

So we need this.

I mean, I think this is so, so, so huge uh for us.

All right, now what's so great about Ephesians chapter one here, and particularly in these first 14 verses, is that they tell us again and again exactly who we are.

Right?

It does.

It tells us just that.

Okay, so as we go through this here, I mean just look at this in your Bible, how many times it uses the words, the those phrases in Christ or in him.

Right?

Do you see that?

In my own Bible here, actually, with a pen, I just kind of drew a square around those phrases all the different times uh that it does that.

Okay, these are the things it tells us, it informs us who we are.

This tells us what our identity is.

Alright, so let's take a look at this first one here.

In Christ I am faithful.

Verse 1.

Now read along with me here.

Again, this is a bit of an overview.

Says this Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, okay, so he's the author, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus.

Okay, so he's writing to the church in Ephesus there, the believers that are there.

Okay, and he says this, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Okay, so you see it right there.

And then he says, Grace to you and peace from our God and Father, our God or from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, one of the things that Christians begin to realize, honest Christians, begin to realize as you put your faith in Christ, and as you start to, you know, kind of learn what this life in Jesus is all about, and as you seek to and strive to follow him and obey him, you begin to realize just how awful you are at it.

Right?

Have you noticed this for yourself?

You realize a man, like I'm, like I don't do a very good job of this, right?

The commands that God gives me, the way that He says I should live, I I fail at this every single day.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I've been in a lot of like a different accountability relationships, and I've been, you know, a part of a lot of small groups, and you know, in in small groups before, when you get to that time of prayer where it's like, hey, you know, how do you need prayer uh in your life this week?

Have you noticed that like time and time again, week after week, it's like, you know, I need, you know, I need prayer to just like be in the Bible more.

Right?

It's like it's like the most basic thing ever, like read a book.

Right?

And but every week, we're like, yeah, you know what?

Like I didn't read my Bible very much this week.

You know, and I this week again, like, man, I wish I had a desire to read the Bible.

It's not there.

And and when it comes to prayer, it's the same thing.

Like, my prayer life wasn't that good.

And isn't it amazing how I'm not trying to make us feel like super awful here, it's just a it's just a fact that we need to accept.

We're not really great at like even the most basic things.

Right?

In prayer, like we we forget, we lose sight of how much of a privilege it is to bring our cares, our little old worries and all of that, to the sovereign creator of the world.

And that he would listen to us and that he actually says, bring your sorrows to me, bring your challenges to me.

And we're like, nah, I don't really have time for that.

You know, there's that there's that show on TV that's just calling my name, like right?

It's so simple, yet we struggle to do these things.

We really do.

And in Christians who genuinely want to get better at this, I think that's that's us here.

We can we can kind of feel this growing sense of of insecurity about just how about just how unfaithful we seem to be on any given day.

Right?

And and we don't feel very secure in the relationship with God.

And we can kind of feel like, Lord, I I just don't stack up.

And that's sort of gnawing at the back of your mind constantly.

And some days when you do read the Bible and you do pray, you're like, I'm awesome.

Look what I've done.

And then that you have many days where you don't, and you're like, I'm the worst.

And it's like this awful seesaw battle of practically speaking, where we carry this sense of defeatedness with us.

But the verse here, look at it again, it says, it tells us that we are faithful in Christ Jesus.

We are faithful.

Now, some of you might be like, oh, listen, Pastor, he's he's saying that to the church in Ephesus.

He's not saying that to us directly.

You think the church of Ephesus was some kind of super church of like super Christians who only got it right all the time?

No, they were regular people like you and I.

And here Christ tells them, he tells us by extension, you are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Which is to say, on one hand, that he makes us faithful, right?

His Holy Spirit at work in us, we talked about this a lot.

His Holy Spirit at work in us is the one who gives you and I the desire to obey him and the desire to follow him.

He gives us that ability to be more consistent as we grow as followers of Jesus.

Right?

He makes us faithful in that sense.

Okay, but even beyond that, or the other side of the coin to all of that, okay, is that if you're a Christ follower, you're faithful right now.

Right this second.

Well, hang on a sec, Pastor.

Like you you didn't see my week.

Like I have a long string of failures behind me.

I was a dumpster fire of a Christ follower this morning on the way to church.

Right?

That's what you're thinking.

It says here, though, you are you are faithful.

Right?

From an identity standpoint, it's who you are.

Why?

Well, because you've received Christ as Savior.

Think about your own testimony.

In the day, the moment that you did that.

We just heard Sky's story, which was so amazing.

Think about it for yourself.

In the moment that you gave your life to Jesus, God looks at you.

He he treats you now, he relates to you as though you actually achieved everything that Jesus accomplished in his life and through his death.

That's how God looks at you.

His perfect record of faithfulness, okay, in obeying his father perfectly and completely.

Remember, Jesus was sinless.

Right?

He never once erred in that.

He obeyed the law perfectly.

His perfect record of faithfulness was transferred to you, to your account, so to speak.

It's the doctrine of imputation.

The moment that you get saved, in an instant, what happens there is Christ's perfect record gets transferred to you, and all of your sin and all of the mess and all of the brokenness, that gets transferred to him, and it was it was punished in Jesus Christ on the cross forever.

Right?

His faithfulness is now your identity.

And it's how he sees you.

And when you start to embrace that as your identity, it begins to fill you with like, oh, that's pretty awesome.

Right?

Joy.

And this deep inward security now that this is how my God sees me.

He sees me as.

Faithful?

How amazing to think about it that way.

And when you see that he sees you that way, and that's your identity, it now motivates you and myself to want to live practically faithfully in the day-to-day.

So listen, as we go through these points here today, and over the course of this series, start to understand that, yeah, like I may not be, you know, consistently behaving and functioning as a faithful Christian ought to every single moment.

Listen, we're not.

We're still plagued by sinfulness.

But because Christ has saved me and He saved you and He's transferred to you His perfect record of faithfulness, that's how God sees me now.

That's how the Lord treats me and relates to me.

That's how He thinks of you right now in this very moment.

And listen, every moment afterwards, in Christ, I am faithful.

That's my identity.

Here's a second one.

In Christ I am blessed.

In Christ I'm blessed.

Now, question when was the uh when was the last time?

This is for you to think about here, you don't have to shout it out, but when was the last time that you uh complained or whined about something?

Uh like today, maybe some of us are feeling that, right?

Like absolutely.

Okay, but look at verse three here.

Okay, look at this.

It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has, here it is, blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Okay, that's just another key component to our identity here.

We are, we're blessed, right?

In crist, it says we already have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Now, spiritual there, it's referring not as much to the kinds of blessings that God gives you, whether they be, you know, immaterial blessings, like Lord, I need, I need wisdom, I need, uh, you know, I need peace right now in this moment, or or whether it be the material blessings, it's you know, Lord, I need, I need, I literally need money to pay my bills right now.

It it's not, it's definitely those things are implied here in the text, but but it's actually referring more to the source of those blessings.

The spiritual blessings have come from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, right?

Spiritual, Holy Spirit, and they've been given to us.

I think unfortunately, though, you know, so many of us are what I'll just kind of refer to as uh bus stop Christians.

Right?

Where we're we're just you know, picture yourselves, you know, standing at the curb, right, and you're you know, kind of waiting impatiently and you're checking your watch and you're starting to kind of huff and you're starting to get kind of you know heated inside a little bit, just kind of waiting for the bus of God's blessing, right, to show up already.

Right?

That's how I think how we kind of act and behave and think as believers.

Right, but this tells us here that we are blessed.

We're blessed.

Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, has done this for those who are in him.

Again, blessed is is who we are, which it's what we are right now.

Now, I was I was reading through um John some John MacArthur here this uh this week, and and it was so encouraging.

He was saying that you know so many Christians ask God for things that he's already given us.

Have you noticed that you sometimes do this?

Lord, show me your love.

Lord, please.

Lord, show it to me as though God is like, no.

Right?

Kind of like stingy, and and he's holding that that back, that that blessing from us.

And if you would just, if you would just be a little bit more emotional about it, if you would put your all into it, if you would, you know, just behave and perform for me, then maybe I'll give you, you know, some of that love that you wish that I would show.

Draw it down Romans 5, verse 5.

Romans 5:5

Yeah, I love this.

God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

You see that?

God's love has been poured into our hearts.

We we've got that already.

We ask for things like this, these things that God has already given us, already, already shown us.

Why?

Because we, again, we don't have the first clue who we are.

Right?

We don't get it.

Our identity is so tied to something else that we forget the things that God has already shown us and made so abundantly clear.

Well, how has he made that abundantly clear?

The cross.

He's given us his son, his only son.

And you're where we're so many, so much of the time, we're like, man, I wish God would just throw me a bone here.

I wish you show us some, you know, some love.

Man, I got I got a raw deal here.

But listen, when our identity is built upon who Jesus says we are, we realize that we are so ridiculously blessed.

It's not even funny.

And that dissatisfaction that so many of us seem to struggle with in the simplest things, I I I put myself in that boat absolutely for sure.

Right?

You know, not every single thing goes 100% my way in life.

So I complain and I gripe and I moan.

It's so sad when I think about that.

This is my life so much of the time.

But as we begin to absorb this identity, all that stuff, it starts to kind of change.

Our perspective changes on these things.

That dissatisfaction begins to melt.

Meaning that it is good and right and and necessary for you and I to just think through the multitude of ways that that God has blessed us.

Do you think through this?

Do you do you meditate on that?

Do you do you do you give him thanks for all those things?

Or when he pours out in your life, are you like, it's about time, time to move on to the next request?

And I guess I'll just wait here until God decides to show up with that with that one.

We have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

God does not hold back.

That's not our God.

We are so blessed.

Here's the third thing.

In Christ I'm chosen.

Okay, I'm chosen.

Verse 4.

Here's what it says.

It says, even as he chose us in him, there it is.

Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

You know, just skip down to verse 11 here for a second, because this carries on some of the same thought.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been, there's that word, predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

Now listen, a lot of Christians, it seems, are you know very uncomfortable with that word predestined.

Right?

We get so rattled to the core about that.

And we don't, some some Christians, people who claim to be Christian, they don't like it.

They try to explain it away, and you know, they're, well, what about free will?

Hold on a second, don't I don't I have some say in my salvation here?

And and I I can choose some things.

I don't, I certainly don't feel like a puppet, and what God God chooses me?

I'm I'm predestined?

What is that all about?

Maybe some of us like to think of ourselves as, I don't know, in total control of all of these things, of you know, whether we choose the Lord or or not.

I think that might be true for some.

Now listen, we're gonna unpack these things uh in deeper ways in a few weeks.

So many of you want me to just go after that so hard right now, but you just gotta be patient.

We're gonna get into it, all right?

Okay, but the fact that uh he chose us in him, it actually brings a great strength and great security to our identity, does it not?

I think it really does.

Right?

Because as we read the scriptures and we read verses like this and and and so many others, we realize that we're chosen, and then it's not because of our own internal merit.

Right?

Not because of our good behavior, it's it's not because of our moral performance, it's not because of our loveliness that God chooses us, it's not because of any of those things.

Right?

When speaking to Israel, God said to Moses, uh, or through Moses in Deuteronomy 7, verse 7, I love this.

Deuteronomy 7:7

He says, It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, it says, for you are the fewest of all people.

And then here it is.

But it is because the Lord loves you.

He loves us.

That's why he chose us.

It's not dependent on us in any way, it depends on his love.

He loves us greatly.

I mean, the the New Testament talks about this as well.

Ephesians 2, uh, verse 4 says, Because of the great love with which he loved us.

Right?

It's not because you and I are particularly serviceable and really great people and better than others that God chose us.

No.

Our being chosen isn't dependent on us in any way whatsoever.

It depends on the Lord, it depends on God's desire to choose, which makes all that, I think, anxious toil that sometimes we carry around with us, that we're trying to impress God, and it takes it all right out of the equation.

We understand that in Christ we're chosen, we're predestined before the foundation of the world.

When we realize that, we begin to realize well, hang on a second.

This God actually wants me.

That's powerful.

Right?

And as we absorb that, our identity grows stronger.

Because I know, I know, I'm loved.

I'm loved, it's because of him.

I'm chosen by God.

I find security in knowing that it doesn't rest in my seesaw, inconsistent action and behavior, but in his unchangeable, loving narrat uh nature and character.

And we're gonna keep moving here.

Fourth thing.

Verse 7.

Here's what it says it says, In him we have, there it is, redemption, right?

Redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.

Now we love redemption stories, don't we?

We love books about it, we love playing video games about it, we love movies about redemption, you know, where, you know, kind of the, you know, the pathetic, hapless guy, you know, finally gets the girl in the end.

And, you know, we just, oh, we just love that.

Because in that you somehow he finds some some measure of of redemption.

Okay, well, the gospel, of course, is the greatest redemption story of all time.

Because it's how God rescued sinners, right?

Sinners like us from his wrath and and and from the dread of hell.

It says there in the verse, it's about the forgiveness of our trespasses, right?

Our sin.

As broken as our experiences are and might be in this life, you know, so many of us, you know, wrestling with addictions and have that in our past, and maybe even currently, it's sexuality raging out of control.

It's you know, affected by divorce and all of that.

Listen, despite all of it, God has redeemed you if you are in Christ Jesus.

He saved you through his blood, it says, according to the riches of his grace, which he just lavished on you.

Your identity is that you were once lost, but now you were found, redeemed.

Now listen, there's also this, we gotta, I think we have to understand this.

There's this there's this now and not yet kind of reality to all of this.

All right, the redemption that this verse is speaking of here is our justification, right?

Justification.

So you've been redeemed by Christ, and that you've been justified.

You have been, you have been made right, you have been declared good, declared righteous in God's sight.

Right?

And this happened again the moment that you put your faith in the saving work of Jesus.

All right, so positionally, so to speak, positionally speaking, you're saved, right?

You are redeemed.

It is it is something that has happened to you.

It is who you are right now.

It's it's I like thinking of it as our it's our current status.

Right?

Write that as your Facebook status.

I am redeemed.

Not in a relationship, not it's complicated, no, I'm redeemed.

Someone talked to Zuckerberg about that.

The not yet aspect, we need to understand this as well, is that on a on a functional, kind of operational level, you and I are still very, very much messed up individuals.

Right?

We we we we still got sin nipping our heels, we're still we're still broken, we still need God's grace to transform us, right?

So we've been redeemed by God's justifying work, right?

That has happened to you.

That is that is who you are.

And on another level, uh, we are still being and will continue to be redeemed through Christ's sanctifying work in you and I.

Okay, this will happen up until the moment you pass away, or up until the moment that Christ returns and brings us home.

Right?

That's the ongoing process now of being made more holy.

This happens day by day as you and I abide in Jesus Christ.

That's our sanctification.

It's so crucial for us to understand this.

And the now in the not yet, because I think so many of us live and operate almost entirely, it seems, in the not yet reality of our redemption.

Right?

Both feet in like in that camp only.

Right?

That's that's where I'm living, that's what I understand.

I know that I'm a work in progress.

Right?

I know that I am still being redeemed, right?

That's a process that's still happening.

Now, listen, that's all true.

It is true.

You need to you need to understand that, you need to hold fast to that.

But listen, it's wrong if we live only in that truth to the exclusion of the other truth.

Right?

We're gonna get messed up with that.

Listen, we are currently redeemed in terms of our status, right?

From a status standpoint, currently redeemed, and are being redeemed from a functional day-to-day standpoint.

When we fail to hold both of these truths in view, in front of us, and understand this, listen, our identity begins to suffer.

It suffers.

We tend to see ourselves only as broken disasters, and and we take out the metaphorical whip and we we whip ourselves.

We're so hard on ourselves about our brokenness sometimes, and and all of that, and we and we question our salvation, and and we're not sure of all of these things because we don't we don't understand what the Bible actually says.

Our redemption is a current reality that informs you and I who we are today.

In Christ, I am redeemed.

We have redemption.

That's what the verse says.

Alright, fifth thing.

Fifth thing.

In Christ I am enlightened.

In Christ I am enlightened.

Verse 9.

Okay, verse 9 says this making known to us the mystery of his will.

Okay, he's made known to us.

I just kind of chose the word enlightened.

He's making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

I mean, just think about this.

Think about how many people are out there searching for the meaning of life.

So many people go through that, like, you know, college road trip, or they get a bunch of friends and they jump pile in the back of some gritty van and they just go off to try and find themselves.

On a lot of levels, that kind of seems fun to me, actually, to go do that.

But but it's because we're searching, like, who am I?

And you know, walking through the Tetons or, you know, going through the Grand Canyon.

Now I'm finally gonna find who I really am.

For others, it's it's the midlife crisis.

Because you've built your identity on your career, and now that career is over.

And and so who are you?

I mean, we hear about this from celebrities, we hear about this from professional athletes.

They retire at like age 31, and now like who they are is I don't know who I am anymore.

And they completely fall apart because of it.

People everywhere searching for the meaning of life, for something real, spending their entire lives caught in the pursuit of financial success, or physically wearing themselves out in a gym, trying to forge an identity in their six pack.

But in Christ, we're enlightened, right?

We're informed as to what life is really all about.

Right?

Pretty incredible, right?

We we know it says the mystery of his will, something that was once hidden, now is made known.

Right?

We know what life is all about.

Now, now, boiled down here, his will, if you want to simplify, what's his will for all of mankind?

Well, it's to trust Jesus Christ as Savior, to know him, to obey him and follow him and worship him forever.

You want to boil it down, that's what it is.

The Westminster shorter catechism puts it like this it's to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

That's the chief end of man.

That is his will.

Okay, so we don't have to, in fact, we should we we shouldn't pursue anything less because you and I, as Christians, we've been enlightened through the scriptures, through the Holy Spirit, and know actually what life is all about.

Because I know what it's all about, I'm gonna go after that.

I'm not gonna busy myself and and get myself all twisted out of shape going after something that that I know will not bring me any kind of strength to my identity.

Living for Christ is your purpose.

That is God's will for you.

How how amazing that you and I have the benefit of knowing this.

We are like in the small, small percentile of people walking this planet right now who know what's up.

Right?

We are.

That's an incredible reality.

And so many of us are like, nah, whatever.

I'm still gonna go look for it in other things.

How sad is that, right?

How sad.

We're informed of these things.

In Christ, I'm a I'm enlightened.

It's it's who we are as his children.

He's given us the inside scoop.

So, hey, as you're thinking about you know your purpose in life, and you know, maybe for you, it's you know, you're in high school or something, and you're trying to think like, what am I gonna, what am I gonna commit my life to?

What is my purpose gonna be about?

What are you know, I'm thinking about you know, where to go to college, and you know, what would what should my career be?

And who should who should I date?

Who you know, who should I marry?

Where are we gonna live?

How many kids should we have?

How much money should I put away for retirement?

You know, these are typically the elements of God's will that we so desperately focus on, right?

This is what we go after, this is what we're consumed by.

That's what we want to know.

Instead of all of our focus being on those things, those are really per very important things.

Don't get me wrong on this.

They're crucial, but they're peripheral things.

Do we understand that?

Instead of being instead of focusing on all of that, commit yourself to glorifying God and enjoying him forever, and just trust the Lord to take care of the rest.

Right?

That's too simplistic.

No, it's not.

Trust the Lord to take care of who you're gonna marry.

Trust the Lord to iron out where exactly you're gonna work and live on this planet.

He'll he'll iron it out.

Matthew 6, 33 tells us, urges us, it says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

All those other things that you stress and worry about, don't focus on those.

Focus on knowing the Lord, enjoying him, obeying him, he'll iron out the rest.

In Christ, you're enlightened.

I mean, you know what life's all about.

Rejoice that you don't need to wonder about this.

You don't need to go through a phase in college, you don't need to get the rest.

Corvette at age 59 to try and figure out who you are.

God knows who you are, He tells you who you are.

He lets us in on all of it.

You know it.

And as we again we absorb this, it just makes us secure.

Alright, in Christ I am hopeful.

I am hopeful.

Two more here.

Verse 12.

It says this so that we who were first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

Now, the fallout from trying to find your identity in things other than Jesus is that we eventually become hopeless.

Have you sensed that in your own life?

We definitely see that uh in the world.

I mean, you hear people say, I chased after money, I chased after women, you know, sexual relationships, all of those things, but I found that it was ultimately unfulfilling, right?

I I found that it is it's it's hollow, right?

That emptiness, the hollowness, the unfulfillment that humans experience as as we double down on false identities, all that, it just sucks the life out of us.

It sucks the hope from our souls because.

Well, but because we as Christians hope in Jesus, meaning that we place all of our faith in him.

We don't hope in our ability to save ourselves.

We don't hope in earthly things.

All of our eggs are in the Jesus makes me right in God's eyes basket.

Because our hope is in him, we're deeply hopeful people.

We're hopeful.

We're hope-filled, strong, secure, and our matchless Savior and who he says we are.

When you think about your life right now, are you hopeful?

Are you hopeful?

If not, it might mean that you have your eyes on your circumstances more than you have them on your savior.

Because the reality is if we're Christians, we should be hopeful no matter what.

Many of us carry this hopelessness around with us, kind of like a bad cold, that we can't seem to shake.

Because we haven't put on our new identity in Christ.

Jesus has saved you.

Life's trials.

They can't destroy you.

Not in any eternal way.

Why?

Because your eternity is secured, right?

It's assured, it's it's certain.

What hope this floods our souls with as our identities begin to take root deep within us.

In Christ, we are hopeful.

Last one.

In Christ I am sealed.

In Christ, you're sealed.

Verse 13, look what it says.

It says, In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed.

You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guaranteed of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

That in him we are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

It means several things.

It means that the Holy Spirit guarantees that we're going to acquire our inheritance, our eternal life at some point in the future.

Right?

Like how an engagement ring is the promise that a wedding's coming.

Right?

That's what the Holy Spirit guarantees for us.

We're sealed.

Now that word seal there carries the same meaning as when a king would place his seal on a royal decree.

His command, it would often be written down and placed in an envelope and sealed with wax, right?

The imprint of his own signet, of his own ring there.

So identified the document as from the king himself.

Okay, so you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit.

That we're sealed with him means that we belong to him.

We're his.

That we're sealed means that our salvation is secured.

We shouldn't doubt God's ability to save to the uttermost, to save us from sin, to deliver on his promises.

No, it's secure.

That we're sealed means that we serve and obey God now in the authority of the king's command.

Right?

You are sealed.

Now we go and carry out the mission, not as ones who are super fearful, and am I sure what I'm doing here?

No, though the king himself says, go do this.

You go in my authority.

Go make disciples.

That we're sealed by the Holy Spirit means that our our salvation is authentic.

It's real.

It's not forgery, it's not a fake.

Listen, all this again, it just breeds confidence into our souls, right?

Of who God is, of who we are, of what he's called us to as the church.

It's a massive boost of joy and courage and boldness and satisfaction and peace that we are gods forever.

We're sealed.

So listen, hey, as we kind of wrap this up here, are you beginning to see here why it's so important for you and I, every single person, to do the deep work of learning to better put on or or apply our identity as Christ gives it to us.

Do you see how important it is?

We've gotta, I've used the word absorb a number of times because I think it just it helps.

Our hearts are so hard, we're so thick skullled, we've got pride, we've got all of that.

We have fun in our false worldly identities.

We we've got to absorb Christ's identity so that we would grow.

It's so important that we would do this.

We've got to think carefully, we've got to think deeply through all of this.

Learning who we are in Him, reminding ourselves of that when we are prone to forget and we're prone to wander, studying the scriptures, right?

Being in it like He's telling me on every single page here who I am.

He tells me I'm holding back on this, right?

Praying, seeking the Lord on this.

Lord, would you would you help this sink down deep?

Would you build strong roots in what my identity actually is?

So we actually live according to who we really are, who you say we are.

Because if we don't, all these other things that people try to find their identity in, so many of us are as well, will eventually leave us with this sickening realization that, man, we're broken.

Right?

And these things don't cut it.

These worldly identities, these false identities, they're just simply they're not strong enough to inform who I am.

They fall apart, they break down.

Think about it.

If sports is your identity, and you're currently your student, and you're you're building that, and you you you dress like an athlete, and and and you you watch sports constantly and and you talk like an athlete, and and and that's what you spend all of your time doing, and all your money goes towards that, and and all of those things.

What happens if you blow out your knee?

What happens when you get old?

I'm telling you right now, you're gonna have a crisis of faith, an identity crisis.

Because you realize I'm not an athlete anymore.

Who am I?

Right?

If having a huge bank account is your identity.

And it makes you feel secure and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, you can lose it all.

I've been real smart about this, though.

It's not gonna happen.

You sure?

There are one or two stories out there in the world since it began of people losing everything they have.

It's not good enough, it's not strong enough to be your identity.

If your looks are your identity, understand that you can go bald.

Glad you can laugh at that.

You can you can pack on weight.

You can run out of money that you would spend purchasing clothing that makes you feel good.

All of this stuff can be taken away.

These things are not worthy of informing who you are.

Only Christ is.

Do you understand that?

And he tells us straight up here's who you are.

Let's hold tight to these things.

Let's just let let's press into these things over the next couple of weeks, bunch of weeks, actually.

Let's seek the Lord for his help now.