Made In His Image - Children of God (John 8:39-47; 1:11-23)

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

Hey, we are in the third week of a three-week series and it's

made in the made in his image. We are made in the image of God,

all of us, right? So first week we talked about

men who are made in the image of God and what that is what we are

called to look like and how that's supposed to work.

And then last week I had the rare opportunity to traverse the

waters of biblical womanhood. Thank you for your patience and

your kindness on that one. This week we get to talk about

being children of God, being children of God.

Now I've thought for a while about how to kind of get us

warmed up on this topic. And, and here's how I've chosen

to do this. There are a set of phrases, and

you could probably think of 1000 of them if you took the time,

but it's the two people phrases. It's the two people phrases.

So here's what I mean by that. There's two kinds of people in

this world. There are the pessimists and

there are the optimists. So glasses half full, drink up,

friends, glasses half empty. You have to slow down, right?

And I don't know, there are the savers and the spenders.

So what we learned through Financial Peace University, if

you've been through that, is weirdly enough, in a lot of

couples, usually there's one of each, right?

And so the savers, man, what they do is they tend to hold on

to money a little bit more tightly and they always feel

like they don't have enough, even though there's plenty

there, but they don't want to spend it.

And then we've got the spenders who it's always burning a hole

in their pocket. And so they're more than happy

to just like we, here we go. I had it had past tense.

It's gone. I think I need more again.

Gosh, what's another one? There are two kinds of people.

There are the early birds, and then there are the kings and the

Queens of the snooze button. I know which one I am.

Yeah, I actually, I I made a confession.

And it's true. I don't know.

This morning, I hit the snooze button for a grand total of 42

minutes. I'm not joking.

That happened today. Now, you might say, well, that's

fine if you like. You know, that's who you were

and you planned for it. Oh, no, I did not plan to stay

in bed an extra 42 minutes, but my tired brain was like, you

can't leave. And I was like, yes, you're

right, I can't. And so there we are anyway.

Well, here's the thing about the, the, the two people kind of

kind of phrases. You could absolutely look at

those things and you could look at me and you could say, you

know what, that's not really fair.

That's not fair because saying that there's only two kind of

people for any given topic, that is far too narrow.

That is not nuanced enough because there is a lot of Gray

space in between the extremes that you named to which case, if

that's your argument, I would say well done, touché.

In fact, it is true that there is a lot of Gray space between

these things and maybe maybe I was too narrow in giving you

that illustration. However, here's what I can tell

you. There is for sure at least one.

There are two kinds of people. That is always true.

It never fails. Here it is.

There are two kinds of people. There are children of God and

there are children of the devil. How's that strike you?

There are just two. There are only two families.

There's only two kinds of humanity.

That's it. There is not more than that,

friends. Now again, perhaps you're

arguing with me in your head already, but we'll get to that

in a second. If you're not arguing with me,

then what I would guess is you might be doing some level of

self-assessment. If you're not actively arguing

with me, you're thinking, OK, well I've checked this box or

I've done this, or I think this, or I believe that.

So like that probably puts me in this camp or this camp, this

family or this family. Now, if you are arguing with me

in your head and you're ready to walk out, bear with me for a

moment and here's why. When we hear truth that we don't

like Capital T truth, let's just ask where it came from because I

will tell you the statement that I just made that may have

offended you or bothered you. It's not my statement.

It's not mine. Because here's the thing, I

don't get to decide Capital T truth.

I don't get to decide truth at all.

It is what it is, a terribly overused phrase.

But anyway, I don't get to decide that.

That is so far above my pay grade.

Now, if you don't like the truth that I have given you that there

are two families and only two families, If you don't like

that, you can come talk to me. I'm happy to have that

conversation with you. However, I won't be able to tell

you more than the truth that is in God's Word.

I can't tell you necessarily why that is.

I can just tell you what God says.

So if you have a real problem with that, I'm going to

encourage you take that problem up to the Father, to the Son, to

the Holy Spirit. Take it up with them because it

is God's truth that there are only two families.

Now, all this is to say that whoever our Father is, we share

His DNA and if we share His DNA, we share his fate.

That matters. That matters.

And so while it may not initially seem super obvious

which DNA is flowing through us at any given moment, there are

ways to assess this. There are ways to figure out

what's going on inside here, right?

There are ways to figure that out.

And so we are going to use the Bible and it's capital T truth

to figure that out today. I hope you're ready for that

now. Last week, I I may have went a

little overboard with five points.

And if you were here, you're like, yeah, it was 36 minutes,

bro. I mean, it was.

Sorry. I'm trying to make up for that.

Kind of with only two points today.

You guys aren't that excited about it.

I am. You know, if you smile more,

I'll probably talk faster. Never mind.

Anyway, here's what we're going to be looking at today, friends.

Here's how we're going to figure out this children of God problem

or issue. First and foremost, we are going

to hear from Jesus and this is his quote.

You are of your father, the devil.

Seems harsh, but there it is. And then on the other side of

that, we're going to go backwards a little bit into John

John 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1 and we're going to see what it means to be a child of

God and how simple that is. Because the Bible tells us that

it's just about receiving and believing and that's what it is.

So anyway, why don't we read John chapter 8?

John 8 · chapter mention

I'll let you do that from this point.

Take off my glasses. We're going to read John chapter

839 through 47 and then we're going to go backwards into John

chapter one for a moment. But we read this in Jesus name

because it is in fact his word. They answered him.

Oh, by the way, sorry, we're in the middle of a conversation

right now, right in here. Jesus has been talking to people

who at least at one time had believed.

And if you go back to verse 31, it says so.

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him past tense.

Something has gone terribly wrong in this conversation.

And I'll, I'll be honest with you like that scares me.

It really does. Because here's the thing, if if

I care about my church and I care about my community and I

care about people coming and meeting Jesus, man, you know

what, I don't want a bunch of people to look at me and go,

well done with you and they move on with their life.

But Jesus doesn't seem to have that problem here.

He doesn't seem to be living in that tension.

And I find that interesting. Jesus, your church growth, your

church growth idea isn't working.

They're leaving, but he seems OK with that.

Anyway, that's where we are. We're in this conversation.

So verse 39, they answered him, Abraham is our father.

Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would be

doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a

man who has told you the truth that I have heard from God.

This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your

father did. They said to him, We are not

born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God.

Jesus said to them, If if God were your Father, you would love

me, for I have came from God and am here.

I came not of my own accord, but He sent me.

Why do you not understand what I say?

It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

You are of your Father the devil, and your will is to do

your father's desires. He was a murderer from the

beginning and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is

no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of

his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

But because I tell you the truth, you don't believe me.

Which one of you convicts me of sin?

If I tell the truth? Why do you not believe me?

Whoever is of God hears the words of God.

The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.

And then if we flip back to chapter 1 briefly, here's what

it says starting in verse 11. He being Jesus, came to his own,

and his own people didn't receive him.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he

gave the right to become children of God who were not

born, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the

flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Here in this reading of God's Word, may it be blessed and

spoken forever and ever. So if you are paying attention,

what you may have noticed is that Jesus gives several

indicators of how this whole, are you a child of God or are

you a child of or a child of the devil?

He gives several kind of tests for that indicators.

And so I'm not going to go through all of them because we

would be here for kind of a long time and you would miss lunch

and you'd be angry at me. So we're not going to do that.

Instead, I'm going to give you 4 four that Jesus names, and

they're right up here. 4 indicators #1 Jesus lays out the

first Test of our adoption. Here's what it is, the first

Test of our adoption as children of God.

Do you love Jesus? Sweet.

Good. I can stop the sermon.

We're done. Let's go to lunch.

Not quite, no. Do you love Jesus?

That's the first Test. And here's the thing.

I think if I was to ask you. All right, so how are you going

to prove to me, an outsider that you love your spouse or you love

your child or your friend or whatever?

How would you prove it to me? And I don't know, you might say,

well, I support them financially.

Oh, you've got one. Buy them chocolate.

Buy them chocolate. That's how I feel loved,

actually. So if you love your pastor, you

can do that sometime. It's fine.

Just don't even worry about I will feel loved.

You might buy them chocolate. You might support them

financially. I've got one in college, one on

the way. I feel that and I support them

financially because I do love them.

You might be supporting them emotionally in some way.

You might just prove you love them by how much time you spend

with them. Think even when you're not

around them, you're thinking about them.

You are thinking about their overall good and their welfare

and what's benefiting them. Even when they're not around,

they're on your brain. That's the way to prove that you

love somebody. You go out of your way to help

them. Even when it's not convenient

for you and it kind of messes up your day, you'll still do it

anyway. Your affection for them, it goes

beyond their performance for you.

So in other words, they may have had a terrible day, they may

have even made you a little upset or a little bit crossed,

and you still love them anyway. Maybe the the best indicator of

proof of love is when you love them through sacrifice.

You have to sacrifice your time. You have to give up something

you wanted to do in order for their benefit, in order for

their well-being. You sacrifice something for them

that is an indication of love. It's proof of love.

So Jesus, and I have to say this, and I want to say this

very clearly, so I'm going to slow down, loving Jesus is not

primarily A moral obligation. It is not primarily a religious

obligation. It is not primarily an

intellectual act, nor is it primarily A doctrinal act.

That is not what it means to love Jesus.

You can fill your head with whatever, whatever knowledge and

information you want to. That doesn't mean you love

Jesus. I, I would venture a guess that

Satan himself knows this word better than I do.

Doesn't love him, doesn't love him, right.

And so here's the thing. Loving Jesus is an

intentionality with your time. I'll just ask you, is Jesus,

does he fit into your schedule? I mean, you're here today.

That's a good start. Does he fit in your schedule?

Does Jesus fit into your bank account?

Does he fit into your, your mind and your emotions and where,

where you're going with your life?

Does he fit into your decision making?

Because man, I, I love my wife, I love my kids.

I don't make decisions without considering them because I love

them. I won't, I can't, right?

This is maybe what it looks like to love Jesus in some way, and

there are other ways to prove it, not that you have it to

prove it to me or anybody else. You don't, but he knows your

heart. So something to think about.

Second thing, second kind of litmus test to weigh our

adoption as children of God. He says you cannot bear to hear

my word. This is Jesus's accusation.

They cannot bear to hear his word.

Now, the Bible is, I think, both terribly wonderful and awfully

frightening. And here's why I think that,

because inside the pages of Scripture, inside God's Word is

absolute truth. And I think maybe part of the

problem that we feel with absolute truth is a we probably

don't believe it in all because our modern society will tell you

that there's no such thing as absolute truth.

Your truth is your own. You get to determine that Bible

would say very differently. And that's the thing.

Absolute, real uppercase T truth.

It does agree. It does disagree with us and it

does disagree with culture. And I'm not saying it disagrees

in every single way. But here's the thing.

What do we do when truth disagrees with us?

How do we handle that? How does that work for you?

I, I would be curious 'cause I know how that works for me and I

know how that has worked for me in the past.

And it was painful, man, when Capital T Truth disagreed with

me. It hurts so bad.

Some of you are hurting right now because Capital T Truth

tells you you're doing it wrong and you don't like it.

It hurts. And so you just outright reject

it and say, I don't need that in my life.

I don't need to be told I'm doing it wrong.

Not by man or by God or about anybody else.

I'm doing the best I can. I don't want to hear it.

OK, OK, I understand that. I do.

Here's the thing. Capital T Truth will hit you

right between the eyes, and it'll hurt the most when you've

built your identity on anything other than God.

It will tear you down. You have two options when you

build your identity on anything other than God.

You have two options. When truth hits you in the face,

you can outright reject it and move on with your life.

Or you can let it break you a little bit, Let it examine you.

And that's the thing about bearing God's Word.

We think we read the Bible. No, the Bible reads us.

There's a difference. The Bible reads us.

What do you do with that? Can you bear God's word #3 The

third test of our adoption is children of God is does your

desire line up with God's will and desire or does it line up

with Satan's? That sounds crazy.

I'm not joking. If I told you and I wouldn't,

but if I was like, man, you and Satan have a lot in common,

crazy. If I said that to you, you'd be

like, hey, this man's crazy, B, I'm not coming back here and I'm

going to tell everybody about him because he's lost his mind.

That's what you do. But here's the thing, we think

when we and, and these religious people who Jesus is talking to,

they are the religious elite. They follow all the laws.

They dress the right way, they act the right way.

They talk to the right people. They say all the right words.

They do all of it. And Jesus says you're doing the

will of your father, the devil. What?

Let's figure out what Satan's will is.

What are his desires? Go back to the beginning.

Satan's desire from the very beginning was to be equal or

greater than God. Pride.

His pride said, I know God created me in all this, but I

think I could do it better. I think I can do it better than

him. After his fall, what does he do?

He looks at the people, the man, the man and the woman made in

God's image and he says, you know what?

This didn't work out for me, but it might work out for you.

Why don't you give it a shot? Why don't you try to be God?

Didn't work out for them either. So then Satan has since spent

the rest of his time for thousands and thousands of years

convincing all of us that we should be our own God, that we

should create our own truth, that life is about us and what

we want and how we want it done. That's what life is supposed to

be about. And that's that's prideful and

it's selfish and it's downright mean because it's all about me.

What have you done for me lately?

I get to create my truth. Don't you dare tell me how to

live my life. God, I've got a better way.

This is who Satan is. His will and his desire is to

dominate is to dominate. Here's how you know.

Do you have to have it your way? Do you have a terribly difficult

time apologizing when you know you're wrong?

How do you know? Because will of Satan says I

don't apologize. My desire is not to be humble.

My desire is to Lord it over you.

Are you trying to Lord your life and your decisions over God?

Are you letting Him do His work? That's what it is.

So who's your father? Whose DNA do you have flowing

through your veins? Who are you emulating with your

decisions? I would hope that one way or

another that you would be able to look at all this and you'd be

able to say, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

What the rest of the world does, that's their business.

But As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Is that your humble attitude or still trying to do it your own

way? Let's take the last one real

quick. Children and the devil do not

stand on the truth. We talked a lot about truth this

morning, so I'm not going to beat this one up too bad, but I

do want to leave it at this. Here's a capital T truth that we

all need to hear, that we all need to take into our heads,

into our hearts on our own. We are painfully lost sinners.

On our own, sin is just absolutely stuck and multiplying

inside of our DNA. On our own, we cannot hope to

overcome sin. This is not a willpower problem.

And on our own, we are lost to hell because on our own we are

in such a dreadful position, such a lowliest state, that God,

through his Son Jesus Christ, had to come and die and shed his

blood for us. And he did.

But he did. And that's the point.

He saw our lowly estate. He saw us just rummaging through

the muck in the mire. And he said, you know what?

I'm taking that, I'm taking that.

I, I see their guilt, I see their shame, I see their

rebellion. I will act as though all of that

was mine so that they can be clean.

I will take all of that on my own shoulders so that they can

be righteous. That's what Jesus Christ has

done. He was willing to look at the

sin and the shame and he saw our DNA and he said, I'm going to

switch places with you. I will take the DNA of the devil

and I'll pay the price for that so that you can have my DNA so

that God can not just look at the outside of you, but look

deep inside of your heart and find you clean and find you

lovely, find You Beautiful, find you somebody he wants to spend

eternity with. That's what Jesus did and he's

done it for you. Who's your father, Lizzie?

Now you got to keep going those four tests and there's more

because Jesus says like 7 or 8 things.

Take some time. Take some time with that.

It's OK. It's OK beyond that, when you

come out of that self examination and hopefully

repentance, which is a daily act, when you come out of that,

I hope you come into God's word. I hope you come into his gospel

because all everything I just said is just self improvement.

If you don't have the gospel, it's just me trying to get

better for getting better sake and it won't work.

I can't save myself. It won't work.

The gospel is where all this comes and fulfills itself.

And here's what the gospel says. But to all who did receive him,

who believed in his name, he gave the right to become

children of God. Let me walk you through this

briefly, and let me start with two people who are much smarter

than I am, who summed this up very nicely.

Tim Keller said the gospel is not primarily something you do,

but it is something you receive. It's not something you do, it's

something you receive. And then Saint Augustine said

Christ is received by the humble, for the proud do not

receive him. They can't because the prideful,

arrogant people, they're just mimicking Satan.

But it is the humble that can receive him.

You see, what God's word and what these faithful men are

trying to tell us is that through our known needs we can

come before the throne of grace and we show up there with

nothing. We don't bring any gifts or

prizes to God and say, Hey Lord, I'm here and look what I brought

you. No, we come before the throne of

grace absolutely empty handed. We come without payment because

the gospel says that it is the will of Christ and that He for

the joy set before him, He endured the cross.

He endured the cross for the joy set before him.

What an amazing thing that Jesus goes to be tortured with joy in

his heart, knowing that it was going to save you and that it

was going to save me. That's the gospel.

That is beautiful. That is beautiful.

And so in all these ways we get to receive without payment.

Think of it like a small child. Small child.

I love them, they're cute, but they can't do much of anything

that matters. They have to receive everything.

They have to receive it. They have to receive love and

care and affection. They have to receive food and

clothing and shelter. They don't do any of that on

their own. And so for us children of God,

the gospel is the same thing. We just get to receive it.

It's not something you work for. It's not something that you have

to build up your strength to receive.

You just receive it like a child.

There's a way to say this. I kind of like it.

I didn't say it in the first service, but imagine a child,

small, barely walking. And what they do is they look up

and they just, they just reach, they reach for a finger, they

reach for a hand, and then they get to walk and they hold on

tight because they can't really walk that well on their own, but

they hold on so tight. They hold on so tight to the one

who protects them, to the one who loves them, to the one who

would do any for them, anything for them, they hold on tight.

What are you holding on tight to?

Are you holding on tight to God or is it something else?

Because everything else will let you down.

I know because I've lived it. Everything else will let you

down. So what are you holding on to?

Last thing, this whole receiving business, it sounds very poetic

and it sounds very nice and it's cute and all that kind of stuff.

I get it. But how then do I receive?

How am I supposed to receive? Am I just supposed to go, all

right, Lord, come on, you're going to do something here.

Are you just going to say some words to me?

Like what does it look like? It says so right there.

To receive, you just have to believe.

You just have to believe. Now, I am well aware that

throughout our lives we have been either subtly or overtly

taught that if it's too good to be true, it isn't.

We've been taught that, and that's pretty wise.

Because here's the thing, If you've been getting emails or

texts from a, from a Prince of an African nation saying he

wants to transfer his wealth to you, that's not real.

That's not real. Please don't send them bank

information or your Social Security number or anything like

that. Please don't do that.

That's not real. It is too good to be true and

it's not true. However, the gospel sounds too

good to be true because it's so simple.

It's so simple. Romans 10/13 says everyone who

calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

That is my favorite Bible verse because it's so simple and I am

a simple person call believe, O What we're saying here with this

belief is to the degree that I am dependent on God, to the

degree that I see my need as need, to the degree that I'm not

saving myself and I know I can't save myself.

And I believe in Jesus Christ and his death and his

resurrection to cleanse me of my sins and raise me back to life

To the degree that I'm leaning and depending on that, that is

to the degree that I am a child of God.

And as I am a child of God, I am free.

I am free from all this garbage. I am free from Satan.

It doesn't mean I never sin, but I am free from His grasp and I

will never go back. You don't have to either.

It is as simple as believing. It's not more complex than that.

Please don't let anybody tell you it's more than that, because

the Bible is painfully clear. If you believe in the Lord Jesus

Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, you will be saved.

That's it, that's it. So OK children of God, as I

address you, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ quite simply, very

much like a child, simple belief and watch how he changes your

DNA. Watch how he changes your

desires. Watch how he changes your

priorities, watch how he changes how your willingness to forgive

people increases and you have peace and all comes through very

simple belief. It is not complicated friends.

So therefore believe like his child and you will receive an

inheritance as his child. Thanks for listening to ERC

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