Fulfilled: The Chosen King: Assumed or Ascribed? with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

I uh I want to welcome you in wherever you are watching from.

If you're online with us, I'm so glad you joined us wherever you joined us from.

Uh, if you are in the San Antonio area on your couch, I'm glad you're online and come to one of our venues.

It will be a better experience for those around the country.

My homeboy Jared, who watches from South Carolina every single week.

I want to welcome everyone who's watching online.

I want to welcome those.

Uh, we are a multi-site movement.

I want to welcome those who are here in person in Helotus as well as at Petrenco.

I think it's no accident that you're here.

If you're a believer for one year or for 50 years, I think the Lord has something for you today.

And if you are not a believer, you're not convinced by the claims of Christianity, you belong here, you belong in this movement.

Uh, we have a culture where you can come and wrestle with life's biggest questions.

Um, but I also want to tell you there is a sense of urgency.

And the biggest question that you have to answer is what comes after this life?

And you are not promised tomorrow, and you've lived long enough to know that.

And so it's worth really paying attention and seeking the Lord and seeing if uh he might have something for you today.

Now, I want to start with some very good news.

Uh, this is this is, I believe, our 18th week in the book of Luke.

Is that crazy?

Eighteen weeks.

Uh, we we are far past breaking the record of the longest series I've ever done, so we're 18 weeks in.

Uh, at the beginning of this, we ordered every single scripture notebook for the Gospel of Luke in existence.

We own all of them, and uh, we only got about half as many as we needed, and uh, we didn't know if we would ever get the rest.

Uh, but 500 more of these showed up this week.

So we are restocked.

Um, if you don't have one of these, I want you to have it.

Um, at either venue, you can go to the connect area after service, ask for a book of Luke.

Uh, it's very cool.

Not only does it have the scripture, uh, but it has a page on every page where you can take notes.

And this is how you start taking your faith seriously.

Uh, you may say, Pastor, I don't know how to take notes.

Way ahead of you.

I've got a sticker in here that my staff painstakingly put on all 500 of these, and it says, How to take notes.

So we got a cheat sheet for you here.

Um, so grab one of these, get in the word, start taking it seriously.

Now, uh, we have gotten to the point in Luke's gospel, uh, which is everyone's favorite part of the Bible.

When we run into one of these, we just are overjoyed.

Thank you, God, that I get to spend time.

We've made it to the genealogy.

A huge list of names no one can pronounce.

Can I tell you the secret to pronouncing these names?

I'm gonna.

This is like a magician showing you how the rabbit comes out of the hat.

Here's how you get these names right.

You say them with so much confidence no one questions you.

I don't know how to pronounce them either.

I just say them with confidence, right?

These are old school names.

We got a lot of pregnant folks at uh metachurch.

These names are all open, right?

You can grab one of these names, uh Joda, that's interesting.

Zarubbabel, that one's available.

Um, we're going through the genealogy, and I know you, Christian, I know when you're reading the Bible, and I hope you're reading the Bible, you get to the genealogy and you're like, skip, you know, like I don't even know what to do with this.

I'm sure it's important at some level.

Uh, we are going to take three weeks on the genealogy of Luke.

And the only reason we're doing three weeks is because I got talked out of doing 10 weeks on the genealogy of Luke.

Uh there, these are not the weeks to skip, like, oh, we're going through the names.

Like, God has a word in this genealogy for you, and there is a lot to learn.

And we're gonna start today.

Now, Luke is not the only author who has a genealogy of Jesus.

Matthew also has a genealogy, and there is a lot of controversy over the fact that the genealogies, were you to put them side by side, are actually quite different.

So, this is one of the things uh that very sneaky atheists will use to try and disprove the veracity of the New Testament.

And all they're doing is misunderstanding an ancient Near East context.

And so we are Westerners, our ideas are logic based, which means there's a and not a, and both cannot be true.

Eastern thinking is more narrative-based.

They will not see two different genealogies and ask which one's wrong.

They will see two different genealogies and ask, what was the author's purpose?

And that's actually a good question because Matthew and Luke are different men who wrote at different times to different audiences with very different purposes.

Matthew's gospel has a purpose, and you need to know this.

You can learn from it, certainly, but it is not written to you.

It was written to Jewish people, and that's very evident from Matthew's writing.

Matthew's gospel can be thought of this way: it is trying to grab an ancient Israelite by the shoulders and shake them awake that Jesus is the Messiah.

And so Matthew's genealogy is specifically tracing the royal Davidic line.

Matthew has two purposes.

Purpose number one is to show the royal line that goes back to King David.

So Jesus is a fulfillment of the Davidic prophecy.

His second purpose is to link Jesus back to Abraham, to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecy to Abraham.

It has two purposes, it accomplishes those purposes.

That is not Luke's goal.

Luke is written to a universal audience, both Jew and Gentile, which means non-Jewish alike.

Also, I agree with many scholars who believe that Luke had the opportunity to interview Mary, the mother of Jesus.

So he is not guessing on his genealogy.

He is not tracing a royal line, he is tracing the legal line.

Now, there's a lot of conversation around that.

None of it matters to my sermon today, and if you want to know more about that, maybe we can dig into it at another time.

But there are different genealogies for different purposes.

And in an ancient Near East context, it's both true.

It's both and, okay?

Now, Luke also places his genealogy in a different place.

Matthew opens up Matthew chapter 1, verse 1.

Matthew 1:1

This is the genealogy of Jesus.

We don't get to Luke's until 18 weeks into the gospel.

And there's a reason for that.

And I want to put a pin in that, because that's going to be our major question today.

Why did Luke put his genealogy where he put it?

And I think the answer has a lot, a lot, a lot to teach us.

Um, I want to hinge all of this really just on one verse today.

We're gonna be looking at Luke chapter 3, verse 23.

Luke 3:23

It says this as he began his ministry, Jesus was about 30 years old and was thought to be the son of Joseph.

You could also translate that he was assumed to be the son of Joseph.

Now, this is very odd because if you have your Bible in front of you and you just scan down the rest of the genealogy, 77 other people are introduced by saying the son of, the son of, the son of, over and over and over again, the son of.

Let's just look at the next verse, verse 24.

You're gonna get to see a pop quiz if I can pronounce these names or not.

The son of Methat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jennai, the son of Joseph.

See that confidence?

I don't know how to pronounce those.

I'm just going for it, right?

The son of, the son of, the son of, 77 times the only exception is Jesus.

It doesn't say he's the son of, it says he's thought to be.

He is assumed to be.

Now we know the story.

We know that Joseph is Jesus' legal adopted father.

And Joseph had a very significant role to play because as a descendant of King David, by adopting Jesus, he fulfilled the prophecy that Jesus would also be in the lineage of King David.

And of course, the lineage in the ancient world came through your legal father, whether you were adopted or not.

So that adoption really matters.

But we also know, because we're 18 weeks into this, that Jesus was conceived miraculously.

His conception was a one-of-one miracle.

It never happened before this, it will never happen again.

That a virgin womb was open to conceive, which means that Joseph has no DNA.

He was not involved at all in the conception of Jesus.

And it says he was assumed to be.

So listen, we know that.

They assumed that he was the child of Joseph.

It was a scandalous conception because they had not secured their full marriage rights yet.

He was birthed out of wedlock.

They assumed that he would be a carpenter.

They assumed he would be impoverished because his parents were impoverished and their parents were impoverished and their parents' parents were impoverished.

They assumed that his destiny was making middle-of-the-line furniture for the rest of his life until he died as a nobody from nowhere.

Because of these assumptions, there are people who grew up for 30 years with Jesus, grew up in the same village as God and human flesh, and had assumed away the power of the Holy Spirit inside of him, had assumed away the purposes of God on him, had assumed away the destiny in front of him.

Now, this is helpful because in our current culture, most people are building their lives off of assumptions.

And so I have some very specific questions for you today, and I want you to take these questions seriously.

My first question is: what have others assumed about you?

They look at where you come from, they look at how you present yourself, they look at how you dress, the car that you drive, the clothes that you wear, they look at how your family operates their life, they look at your family of origin, they assume things about you because of the sins of your father or the sins of your mother, they look at your worst mistakes, they look at the failures, they look at the divorce, they look at the time you serve, they look at the debt you are in, and they build assumptions about you.

Let me turn it.

What have you assumed about others?

It's this stupid, dangerous game that we play where we take external realities and we classify people and we categorize people, we pre-judge people, that is prejudice.

We are prejudice against people.

Now, those are good questions.

What do people assume about you?

It's a good question.

That could build narratives about your life.

What do you assume about others?

It reveals to us that we are just as guilty.

Perhaps the most incisive question, the most dangerous question.

What do you assume about yourself?

You see, the false narratives that run and ruin your life do not just exist outside of you.

They are most dangerous when those external false narratives become internal false narratives.

And so you have pain in your past, and you've made real mistakes in your past.

And you've inherited some of the sins of your father and some of the sins of your mother, and you've had marriages that haven't worked out, and you've had businesses that haven't worked out, and you've picked up addictions along the way, and you have tried to get sober, but sobriety has been quite a challenge for you.

And so these false narratives start developing in your mind.

And those are the assumptions you have about yourself.

Like I'll never be worthy of love, I'll never get married again.

I have nothing to offer my children, I'll never be successful.

I don't even know why I'm starting this business.

Everything I do is a failure.

I always fail.

No one will ever be proud of me.

I'm not educated enough.

I'm gonna end up just like my dad, I'm gonna end up just like my mom.

Narratives, narratives, narratives.

What do you assume about yourself?

You may have never thought of it this way, but most people are building their lives off of assumptions.

What happened to the people who lived 30 years right next to God in human flesh?

They assumed away his power and purpose and destiny, and you do the same.

You were created on purpose and with purpose.

The power of the Spirit of the living God is within you.

You are a child of the God of the universe, you are covered by the blood of the last and final chosen king, and yet you live with false narratives running and ruining your life and assuming away the power of the Holy Spirit inside of you, and the purposes of God that are on you, and the destiny that is in front of you, if you would just fully surrender and follow Jesus.

Jesus was thought to be.

Now we have to make sense of this, and to make sense of this, we have to jump ahead a little bit.

And I don't like getting ahead because we're going in order and we're going through all of Luke and it's gonna take us 25 years to get through it.

And I love that, right?

But I gotta get ahead a little bit because the introduction to Jesus' ministry starts with two acts.

The baptism of Jesus that we looked at last Sunday.

If you missed it, you can find it on YouTube.

Then we are moving in a few weeks to the temptation of Jesus.

These are the two things that prepared Jesus to start his ministry.

And we have to understand the narrative that is happening in Luke chapter 3 and Luke chapter 4 if we are going to understand the genealogy that Luke inserts in the middle.

Luke 3 · chapter mention Luke 4 · chapter mention

So last week, I told you guys that the baptism of Jesus was the fulfillment of a foreshadowing from Moses and the Israelites and their exodus from Egypt.

Do you remember that?

I actually told you, I looked at the camera, it was pre-recorded.

I looked at the camera and I said, if you come back next week, I will make this so clear for you.

And so I gotta deliver on that promise.

So if you missed it, Jesus gets into the baptismal waters, and when he gets in the water, the heavens are broken open.

The same way that Moses walked into the water, and the water was broken open.

The gospel writers are making a direct connection.

Jesus is here as the new and better Moses.

Jesus is here as the new and perfect Israel.

Now what happens next?

After he is baptized, we have the temptation.

I want you to look at how Luke chapter 4 opens.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

It says this, then, then, do not forget that word, then Jesus left the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by the devil.

He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry.

Now I want to remind you something if you don't know the story of the Exodus.

What happens after Moses leads the people through the water?

They go into the what?

Okay, this is this is call and response, all right?

I I know.

Last week you were at the Lutheran church, they wouldn't let you do this.

You can do whatever you want here, okay?

After they went through the water, they were led into the wilderness.

Yes.

And in the wilderness, they stayed for how long?

40 years.

Now, this is the hard one.

This is the high level.

What was their first temptation?

Hunger.

They were hungry.

They grumbled against God.

He brought us out of Egypt to die.

We don't have any food.

At least we have food in Egypt.

God is so patient with us, He provides manna, miraculous bread from heaven.

Please don't miss us.

They go through the water into the wilderness for 40 years and are tempted by hunger.

Jesus comes out of the water, he goes into the wilderness for 40 days and is tempted by hunger.

Jesus is the new and better Moses.

Jesus will be tempted, the Israelites failed, Jesus will not.

Spoiler alert, Jesus will not fail his temptations.

So we have this.

Now I told you one word to remember.

I said, do not forget this word.

What was that word?

Then.

Now you look at this in the grammar, and it means immediately.

Immediately.

Now, uh, this is why, if you don't have it, it's fine.

I'll show you.

This is why it helps to have a gospel of Luke in front of you.

Because this is the actual story, two Acts.

Jesus is baptized, the Spirit descends like a dove on him, the heavens are open, the Father speaks, and then immediately he gets out of the water and walks into the wilderness.

There is no chronological space in this story.

It happens immediately.

And if you are looking at the word, what you will notice is in between these acts, where there is no space, Luke throws 77 hard to pronounce names of a bunch of dead guys.

This is the weirdest placement for a genealogy.

Do you know where Matthew puts his?

Chapter 1, verse 1.

It's like, yo, this is the main character.

Let me tell you about him before I start my story.

That makes a lot of sense.

There are so many places Luke could have put this.

He could have put it in chapter 1, verse 1.

He could have put it after the birth announcement when he introduces Joseph.

That would have made sense.

He could have put it after the birth.

That would have made sense.

He could have put it after the circumcision on the eighth day.

He could have put it after the prophetic cries of Simeon and Anna.

All of those would have made sense.

Instead, he interrupts his own story that has no room for interruption.

Okay, you look confused.

Let me give you an example.

Let's say I was gonna tell you about my day yesterday, and I have two things that happened.

I went to the gym, and then immediately I went to the store.

And so I'm telling you this story, and I'm like, oh boy, I was repping it out.

Everyone was staring, I have so much weight on the bar.

And then I get to the part where I leave the gym and I go, yeah.

So I said, you know, I'll see you later.

And then, you know what's interesting?

My dad, his name's Calvin Tyner, his dad's name is George William Tyner, but his dad's name is George Washington Tyner.

This is really gonna blow your mind.

And then I did that for 77 generations.

And when I got to the end of my family line, then I went, so anyway, then I got to HEB.

You'd be like, what just happened?

Like Clayton's losing his mind.

What was that?

That's literally what Luke does in this story.

He's like following a chronological story.

He throws 77 generations in, and it's like, anyway, immediately after that, Jesus goes into the wilderness.

Like, this is you don't need a degree to learn something from scripture.

All you have to do is slow down and ask good questions.

That's all you have to do.

Like, if you slowed down enough, I literally say on here, how to take notes?

What questions do I have?

The Holy Spirit will illuminate truth through the questions he places on your heart.

It's just a question.

It's like, why in the world would he put the genealogy there?

It just doesn't make sense.

You slow down and you start paying attention.

You know what's a weird way to start a genealogy?

To say, this is Jesus, who everyone assumed was the son of Joseph.

What's happening here?

Why does this matter?

The placement of the genealogy is very intentional.

It is Luke's gospel.

He is the author, he can put it wherever he wants.

He puts it here.

And he puts it here for a reason.

And I want to show you that reason.

Because if we slow down in the text, what we will find is between Act 1 and Act Two, baptism and temptation, there is a tension.

And Luke does not hide this tension.

It's there for anyone willing to meditate on the word.

I want to show it to you.

There's two verses about the baptism of Jesus in Luke chapter 3.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

It starts in verse 21.

It says, When all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized.

And as he was praying, heaven opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in a physical appearance like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven.

I am well pleased.

I told you last week, this is a dynamic statement of identity.

A dynamic statement of identity.

This is the Father, I'm going to teach you a new word, maybe, ascribing identity to his son.

When something is ascribed, that means it's given to you by a third party.

God the Father ascribes the Son's identity in this moment.

And so how he does it is very specific.

He says, You are my son.

I want you to say it, but just like I said it, you are my son.

Identity.

That's act one.

Then immediately, Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days.

He fasts and prays for 40 days, and Luke leaves the sin.

And at the end, he was hungry.

Now, when I fast for 40 minutes, I'm hungry.

Your boy can't eat.

This kind of goes without saying, but it doesn't.

Jesus was assumed to be of Joseph.

Why?

Because he's human.

100% human.

Flesh and blood.

He eats, he sleeps, he even gets hungry.

And yet Jesus was more 100% human and 100% God.

Now he's going to be tempted, and in a few weeks we're getting to the temptations, and so I'm not gonna go deep into them.

What I want you to see is the mechanism of deception.

That the devil uses.

Now you need to know this.

We're all capable of deception, and you may know people who you believe are deceptive.

That's part of their character.

They are often deceiving, often manipulating.

That is the key characteristic of the devil.

He is the deceiver.

He is the accuser.

If he has a superpower, it is the power of deception.

Open your eyes and look around.

The devil has deceived the entire world.

I hate to give the devil credit, but if he's the goat at anything, it is deception.

So this is not an amateur.

He knows what he's doing.

And I want you to pay attention to how he tries to trip up Jesus.

Luke chapter 4, verse 3, the devil said to him, if you are the son of God, tell the stone to become bread.

Luke 4:3

Verse 9.

So he took him up to Jerusalem, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and he said to him, If you are the son of God, throw yourself down from here.

If, if, if to try and get Jesus to fall.

And the root of any believer's identity is your relationship with your heavenly Father.

If you are really God's son, uh, because honestly, Jesus, that's not really what I'm hearing.

I mean, you're not new, bro.

You've been on earth for 30 years.

If you're really God's son, I mean, what I'm hearing is you're definitely Joseph's son, and there's kind of some controversy around how you were conceived, and you know, you are a carpenter now.

It's not like you are sitting on a throne somewhere.

Satan points directly to 30 years of misidentification.

That is his strategy.

It's his strategy for Jesus, and you need to know this.

It is his strategy for you.

This is not new.

Here's the tension, act one, act two.

Act one, you are my son.

Baptism versus act two.

Are you the son?

This is exclamation versus accusation.

The accuser, the tempter, the deceiver.

Are you really the son?

This is not new.

This is how he has sought to deceive the world from the very beginning of time.

If the devil wants you, and spoiler alert, the devil wants you.

How he will come at you is at the level of identity.

He will seek to drive a wedge between you and the power, purpose, and destiny that your heavenly father has ascribed to you.

And he's been doing it since the garden.

Let me show you quickly.

All the way back in Genesis chapter 3, living in a completely perfect world.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made, and he said to the woman, Did God really say, Can you actually trust your father?

Is God being forthright with you?

Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, You must not eat or touch it, or you will die.

No.

You will certainly not die.

The serpent said to the woman, In fact, God is holding out on you.

God has good things for you, and he won't let you have them.

God knows that when you eat, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.

God sees your potential and it intimidates him.

God is trying to stop you from having a good time.

God is trying to ruin your life.

God is putting too harsh of restriction on you.

Your father is holding back.

Listen, we live in a broken world full of pain, full of frustration, full of brokenness, full of temptation.

And we get into it all the time.

Adam and Eve were living in literal perfection.

The apostle Paul says, We see God like we're looking through a dimly lit window.

Adam and Eve saw God face to face.

They walked hand in hand.

They knew their father, they were his children, he created them by hand.

And even in perfection, the devil drove a wedge between God and his children.

And they fell, and the world fell.

Every time you fall, fall into sin, fall into patterns, fall back into the addiction, fall into lust, fall into greed, fall into debt.

Every time you fall, please don't miss this.

It is an issue of identity.

Every time you fall, it is an issue of identity.

And believers, your identity is not rooted in what you do, it's not rooted in what you have, it is rooted in your heavenly father.

And these assumptions that others have made about you, that you have made about yourself, they take your purpose and they distract you and derail you and sideline you.

They assume away your power and your purpose and your destiny.

And God looks and he sees your actual potential and he sees what you could be and the unimaginable life you could live if you would fully surrender to Jesus and fully follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit in your life.

And we are distracted by an enemy who is already defeated.

Satan has already lost.

He lost when Jesus spread his arms.

He lost when Jesus exited the grave.

He will lose at the end of time.

He cannot defeat you, but he can distract you and he can derail you.

And he can cause you to take your eyes off of Jesus and off of your heavenly father and to settle for finding your identity in the broken things of this world.

To build your life off assumptions of a broken culture.

Let me give this to you in a way that you can write in your notes and put in your pocket and change your life.

We forget who we are, so we forget how to act.

There are times where you have to look at your children and say, hey, it's not a big lesson.

You don't go into philosophy, you don't go into theology, you look at them and say, Hey, we don't act like that.

You are my son, you are my daughter, and we do not do that.

You must have forgotten who you are.

You don't wear our last name on your life and behave like that, think like that, treat people like that.

That's true for us, and I am a limited, finite, broken earthly father.

If you don't know whose you are, you do not know who you are.

Let me tell you something.

We are adoptive parents, and what is true in the spiritual, eternal is true in the here and now.

We should be adopting.

We are called to do that as Christians.

Not every Christian is called to it, but we are all called to support that.

When you adopt, you need to know something.

Your kid cannot act right until they are convinced that you are actually their mom and dad, and you are not going to send them to another home.

And they will think that is going to happen.

They've been in a lot of homes, they've been in a lot of spots, they've been given up before, they will not know how to act, they will not get on with their purpose until they become convinced that they have a mom and dad.

That is true in a microcosm of adoption, and it is true in the eternal supernatural plane.

If you do not know your father, you do not know how to act.

Christian men, you do not know how to act.

If you are living out the sins of your earthly fathers and forefathers, you don't know how to act.

And this is rampant in the church.

We have Christian men bought by the blood of Christ, and we don't know how to treat a woman, we don't know how to get a bag, we don't know how to keep a job, we don't know how to build wealth, we don't know how to treat others, we don't know how to respect ourselves, we don't know how not to abuse substances, we don't know how to act because you do not know who you are.

Christian women, you don't know how to act unless you know who you are.

You think that you are a daughter of Eve.

So you let men steal your body, you let other women step on your confidence.

You can't live without anxiety.

You measure yourself not by the standards of your heavenly father, who says that you are beautifully and wonderfully made, but by the fake, phony, plastic standards of Instagram models who don't know you and don't care about you.

You don't know how to act because you don't know who you are.

Middle schoolers, high schoolers, you're not exempt from this.

You're living like high school, and middle school is gonna last forever, and it's not.

You're gonna leave in six months later, they will not know who you are.

You might be the man right now as a junior, you will be nobody in 18 months.

They won't care about you, they won't know about you.

You can set all the records and all the sports.

You might get your jersey hung up.

You know what?

No one will care.

You don't know how to act, you're living for today, you're giving sway to peer pressure.

You think that your ministry comes when you are an adult?

David was 13 years old when he killed Goliath, he was seven years old when he was anointed king.

He started living for the Lord right now because he knew who he belonged to.

You can make a difference right now.

Your parents aren't Christians, you can be the one who brings them to salvation.

I'm telling you, this is how it works when we know who we are.

We don't know who we are, so we don't know how to act.

And this is rampant.

We're in an identity crisis.

We don't know how to arrange our marriages.

Good marriages fight.

Did you know that?

I'm in a good marriage.

Good marriages fight with words.

But bad marriages fight too.

Good marriages fight together to grow towards God.

Bad marriages fight each other.

You're fighting your spouse because you're insecure in your relationship.

You're insecure because you don't know your identity.

We don't know how to parent.

I hear the same things you do.

I have three kids.

They're all like close to grown.

They want all the things that all their friends have.

And I hear it.

Everybody has, and everybody does, and everybody else's parents let them, and they're right.

I used to say that stuff to my parents, and I was lying.

Nobody else got that.

I just wanted to.

My kids aren't lying.

They're right.

Everyone else's parents do just hand them a completely unfiltered phone with every evil thing and demons inside of it and just let them have at it.

I'm talking about you guys in this room right now, right here in Helotus.

You do that.

And then my parents come tell me everybody else's parent.

Everybody else at Medihouth has Instagram.

And bro, my parent, my kids, they are in so much trouble.

You know why?

Because I don't care.

When this life is over, I'm not gonna stand in front of Stacy's parents or Brandon's parents.

I'm gonna stand in front of King Jesus, and he's gonna say, I put these kids in your hands.

What did you do with them?

Some of you parents are bullied by your kids.

Your kids run your house.

They tell you how it works, and you wonder why there's chaos.

You have idiots running your house.

They don't know, they don't know how to make a payment.

They don't have enough, they don't have enough knowledge, enough experience.

They don't have any wisdom.

They're 12 and they run you.

We should be embarrassed by that.

You know who doesn't do that?

Our Heavenly Father.

Bro, I can get on my knees like God, everybody else has this, and everybody else does this.

And he's like, bro, I don't care.

Grow up, surrender, submit, humble yourself.

You know why my kids' lives are so hard?

Because I know who I am.

I know who my father is, I know who I report to.

Your sexual decisions, they're just totally filtered by the culture.

That's all you're thinking about.

Everybody else does, and everybody's saying, and everyone thinks, and everyone believes.

Bro, I don't care.

You don't know who you are, and you're trying to find it through sexual conquest, and it's just leaving you emptier.

You give no money to the kingdom of God.

You are in debt up to your eyeballs because the culture has convinced you that you need things to impress people who do not care about you.

Learn who you are, find your confidence in your heavenly father, and what you have will be more than enough.

You will become wise, and not only will you become generous, you will build actual wealth.

You don't have any wealth because you have too much debt.

I want you to give to the kingdom and to grow wealth.

That's what God wants for you.

This is, y'all let me take a week off.

This is what happens.

I come back, you get two weeks of energy.

We have a question, and our question is why is this genealogy so oddly placed?

And you're probably already seeing it.

But in between the tension of you are my son and are you the son, Luke takes up his authority as the writer of this gospel and he puts pin to parchment and he says, This as he began his ministry, Jesus was about 30 years old, and he was thought to be.

I'm going to redeem your assumptions today.

He was assumed to be the son of Joseph.

You were assumed to be an addict.

You were assumed to be a cheater.

You were assumed to be a liar.

You were assumed to be ignorant and not have the education and not have the parenting and not come from the right hometown.

It was assumed about you.

And look at what Luke says.

It was.

You know what that is?

Where's my English teachers?

That is past tense.

You can leave today and leave your assumptions in the past.

They don't run your life anymore.

They don't build your future anymore.

They don't steal your power anymore.

They don't steal your purpose anymore.

They don't change your destiny anymore.

He was assumed to be.

And then he goes through 77 names.

He doesn't end with David.

He doesn't end with Abraham.

That's where Matthew ends.

He just goes to Abraham and he's done.

That's his purpose.

He keeps going.

He puts pen to paper and he puts the world and history and the devil himself on alert.

That Jesus is not just a carpenter.

Jesus is not just a nobody from nowhere.

He's not just an impoverished Jew living under the Roman Empire.

That he is the beloved, that he is the son, that he is the coronated, inaugurated, last and final chosen king.

I'm gonna get to the end.

Here's what he says: he was the son of Enos, who was the son of Seth, who was the son of Adam.

He doesn't stop at Adam because he's more than a man.

He is the son of God.

Here's what he's showing us.

In between the tension of who you are ascribed to you by God and who the world tries to make you assumed by the world.

In between that is truth.

And that truth is that you have been bought by the blood of Christ to be adopted as a son and daughter.

You know why this matters?

On October 26th, we're gonna baptize, I believe, more people than we've ever baptized before, because you are tired of living in an identity crisis.

You are tired of it, you are tired of the assumptions.

It is no accident that God ascribed Jesus' identity when he came up out of the water.

That's what baptism is.

It is a supernatural statement of identity.

This is why I tell you if you go to Helotus primarily, you need to get baptized in Helotus.

We are taking supernatural ground, we are in a supernatural battle, your life actually matters, and people walking out their true identity will change the world.

You can be play a part in changing the world, but not if the world determines your identity.

Believers, I have a question for you.

And you should seriously contend with this question this week.

Are you living by what the world has assumed or what your father has ascribed?

What determines your identity?

Is it the false narratives running through your mind?

Is it the false assumptions of those around you?

Is it the voices of insecurity?

Is it the worst mistakes from your past?

Is it the people you have hurt previously?

Is it the addiction that you are struggling to get sober from?

What determines it?

What the world has assumed or what your father in heaven who knows you has ascribed?

Do you know it says, Greater is he that is in you than he, the lying devil, damned to hell that is in the world?

Do you know it says that you are God's masterpiece, his magnum opus, the height of creation created in Christ Jesus for good works?

Do you know that it says that you are an ambassador of God on the earth, given assignment, authority, and jurisdiction right here, ascribed to you, is what God believes about you.

Will you read it and believe it, or will you allow the false narratives to run and ruin your life forever?

It doesn't take much.

30 of us out of a thousand could start really living out our identity, and we will put a hole in the world.

You know what?

Give me twelve.

Jesus left 12 men who knew who they were and knew who their father was, and they changed the world.

I'll be one of them.

Give me 11.

It doesn't take much.

Now imagine we have a thousand and we're just getting started.

We're not even eight years seven yet.

Imagine.

Imagine.

I want to go quickly.

I'm out of time.

First John 3.

John is gonna say to the church what Luke said about Jesus.

This is amazing.

He writes this see what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God's children.

Now, I'm going to encourage you to live with the kind of awareness that John has.

He has known this for decades and decades when he writes this.

He walked with Jesus for three years.

He was the only disciple to stand at the cross and watch Jesus be crucified.

He was the disciple that Jesus handed the management of his own mother.

That's John.

And watch John.

He says, What great love the Father has for us that we should be called God's children.

And it's like all these years later, he still can't believe it.

He goes, and we are.

Dude, do you live with that kind of awe and wonder at the fact that you are a child of God?

If not, bro, you're not living in your identity.

If you know who your father is, you will wake up every day and go, What great love the Father has lavished upon us.

We are his children.

Listen to this.

The reason the world does not know us is because it did not know him.

What's he saying?

Same thing Luke said.

The reason the world looks at you and says, That's Clayton, who we assume to be.

That's who we assumed.

They don't know you because they don't know your father.

And it's okay.

They will get to know your father as they get to know you.

This is how the gospel spreads.

Now, quickly, for those who are not yet believers, you need to know you can also become a child of God, and it does not require any work.

The work was all done by Jesus Himself.

Here's how Paul explains it to the Galatians.

He says this in Galatians chapter 4.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

When the time came to completion, God sent his son born of a woman.

It mattered that he was all flesh and all God, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

You need to know this.

If you don't have a relationship with Jesus, you don't have a relationship with the Father.

He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through faith in him.

And when Jesus spread his arms and shed his blood, he was covering all of the sins that separate us from our heavenly father.

The metaphor Paul uses is that you were a spiritual orphan, estranged from your heavenly father.

And Jesus spread his arms and paid the price of your adoption.

And all he asks is for your faith.

As we close across our venues, would you pray with me right where you're at?

Just bow your head and close your eyes.

For those who already know Jesus, you have a question that you need to spend the next 168 hours contending with.

Is your identity assumed by the world or is it ascribed by your Heavenly Father?

For those who are here and you do not have a relationship with God, time might be running out.

You are not promised tomorrow.

You have a decision in front of you.

Are you going to live trying to find hope in the hopeless things of our culture, or will you find hope in the God who loves you and created you and gave his life for you?

All he asks is for your faith, becoming convinced and convicted that Jesus is who he claims to be and has done what he claims to have done.

And for those who believe, you will never perish.

You'll be given everlasting life.

If that's you, with everyone's eyes closed across our venues, I want to ask you right now, for a moment of courage, to just simply raise your hand.

Raising your hand is a symbolic gesture that says, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

The Spirit is moving.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I can tell you with confidence out of scripture that God sees and accepts your faith, that all of your sins have been forgiven and you've been given eternal life, a gift that no one and nothing can ever take away from you.

And what I want to do now is very simply help you acknowledge the decision you've made today.

And so I'm gonna ask those across our venues who raised a hand to pray this out loud with me.

And I'm gonna ask all the believers at our venues to pray out loud as well.

Let's pray like this Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.