IDENTITY: Finding
the Real You, Part 1 Sun.,
Sept. 15, 2013
“Who Do You Think You Are?”
The nations shall see your
righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new
name that the mouth of the Lord will give. Isaiah 62:2 (ESV)
“He who has an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of
the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a
new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.”’ Revelation 2:17 (NKJV)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. II Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)
John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, very first lines:
“Our wisdom, is so far
as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two
part: the knowledge of God, and of ourselves.
But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to
determine which of the two precedes, and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey
himself without forthwith turning his thoughts toward God in whom he lives and
moves…and indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be
displeased with ourselves.”
Who do you think you
are?
The answer to that
question is IDENTITY-SHAPING
LIFE-ALTERING
ETERNITY-AFFECTING
Please
note, I did not ask, “Who are you?”
I
asked, “Who do you think you are?”
Our
world is taken with pop psychology’s answer to this question:
SELF-ESTEEM
SELF-IMAGE
SELF-AWARENESS
SELF-DETERMINATION
IF
YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, THEN YOU WON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.
IF
YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, YOU WILL KNOW WHAT TO DO.
How
do you answer the question:
“I
am _______________.”
Rich
Poor
Young Old
Smart Stupid
Loved Unloved
Single Married
Married Divorced
Desirable Undesirable
Successful Failure
Hope Hopeless
This
starts when you’re little.
CHILDHOOD: From the earliest age.
First-born? Baby of the family? Middle child?
What
were you like? Funny kid? Chubby kid? Athletic kid? Quiet kid?
Nicknames?
TEEN YEARS. Jr. Hi and High school. Teen years.
Jr.
hi. Met with all new challenges. New schools.
New relationships. Everyone
trying to tell you who you are. Your
body starts changing. If you’re a boy
your voice changes. Or maybe everyone
else’s body is changing and yours isn’t.
Clothes become important. Hair. Hair products. Time in the bathroom. Growth
spurts or lack thereof. Am I staying up
with my peers? Are they leaving me
behind?
COLLEGE. Chance to completely reinvent yourself. New freedoms.
You move out of the house, maybe away.
Fresh start. How do I want people
to perceive me? What kind of person do I
want to be? Will I go to church
or not go to church? Will I drink or not
drink. Will I sleep around or not sleep
around? Will I go where friends are? What kind of friends do I even want?
Bigger:
what kind of degree will I get? What do
I want to be? Life choices start being
made. What kind of job do I want? Will I make enough money? Will I be in a relationship? Or will I be single forever?
CAREER: You get the job and it consumes your
identity. Follow a career path.
MARRIAGE: Suddenly your identity becomes very
conflicted. You thought they were going
to marry you to help you become who you wanted.
But they were thinking the same thing.
Suddenly two selfish people with separate identities come together
expecting something that the other cannot provide. They collide into misery. We call this marriage.
The
Bible says, “Two become one.” Two
what? Two IDENTITIES. Whereas you once asked “What is my
identity?” Now you ask “What is our
identity?”
Young
woman must go from career-minded, self-sufficient, self-determination to being
a WIFE. Must learn to allow her husband
to lead their home.
Man
must learn how to be a HUSBAND.
CHILDREN: a new center around which the family
orbits. Soaks up all the identity around
it. It determines where you go, what you
eat, what you spend, when you sleep, if you sleep, how you plan vacations, how
the house is organized, what car you buy.
EMPTY NEST: Kids get older and don’t need you like they
used to. They start moving out. When the empty nest hits you, there’s another
identity crisis. Sometimes the kids held
the marriage together. The marriage can
crash into divorce when the idol moves out.
WIDOWED: Alone.
Spouse is deceased. Kids grown up
and gone. Grandchildren only call
occasionally. WHO AM I?
THREE QUESTIONS:
1.
Who
do you think you are?
2.
Who
does God say that you are?
3.
Who
does Satan say that you are.
Who do you think you
are?
The answer to that
question is IDENTITY-SHAPING
LIFE-ALTERING
ETERNITY-AFFECTING
For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Proverbs 23:7 (NKJV)
Invictus by William
Ernest Henley
Out
of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Who does God say you are?
26 Then God said, “Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and
over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them.
And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue
it, and have dominion… Genesis
1:26-27 (ESV)
1.
You are a REVELATION
Receivers
You
don’t have to figure out who you are.
God already knows it. He made you
and He SPEAKS. You are to seek it and
receive it.
No
need for SPECULATION; instead we get REVELATION.
2.
You
are the IMAGE BEARER.
Made
to mirror. Not a matter of how you look,
but how He looks on you.
Not
a matter of what you do, or how you look, but of what you carry. You carry the image of God.
3.
You
are OVER and UNDER.
4 What is man that You take
thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him? 5 Yet You have made him a
little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty! 6 You make him to rule over
the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, Psalm 8:4-6
(NASB)
This cuts directly against the current
evolutionary understanding of man.
We are not just the product of CHANCE AND
NECESSITY. Light hitting some primordial
ooze.
We are not just lucky animals with thumbs.
You have a God-given place in creation: over and under.
4.
You were BIRTHED
for BLESSING.
Doctrine of ORIGINAL SIN.
Reality of ORIGINAL BLESSING.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places, Ephesians 1:3 (ESV)
Who does Satan say you are?
Now the serpent was more cunning than any
beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to
the woman, “Has God indeed said, … Genesis 3:1 (NKJV)
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