I want to begin with a question. As you have noted, for those who've been here a few times, I ask lots of questions. My other job is teaching. I'm a professor at a college. And so I ask lots of questions as a way to try and help people learn. And so I want to begin with a question today. And the question is, who are you? It's a serious question. Who are you? There's lots of different ways that we can answer that question. In fact, it's become very vogue or popular to ask ourselves this question and even change who it is that we are all the time now. This is constantly, everyone's talking about this. Most people at work, they put it on the bottom of their email, these pronouns they want to be called by. We're focusing on who, what our identity is constantly, and it seems to be all about us. We have certainly, as a society, done a good job of teaching around the time that I was young, in the 80s and 90s, this self-esteem doctrine that has pervaded everything we do, and we've learned very well that it's all about me. It's all about us. and forget everybody else and who am I and what am I doing and so on and so forth. And so we have collected these identities, if you will, of who we are. And today I want to talk about our spiritual identity. But before we get there, let me just give a definition of what it means to have an identity. I looked that up and says it's the collective aspects of a set of characteristics by which a thing is definitely recognizable or known. Probably doesn't help us out very much, but we get from it this idea that who we are, our identity, is several things put together, right? None of us are a particular one thing and one thing only. For example, I am a husband, and I'm a father. I have a role within my family, and that's part of my identity. We might identify as where we work at. I struggle with this every, well not every day, many days, many weeks that I have students who come to me struggling to identify as what they want to be when they quote unquote grow up, even though in college they're already grown but don't think they are. Many of us identify, in fact that's, it's very interesting if you go to different cultures and different places, they won't talk about where they work. And in fact, in different levels of our society, we don't talk about where we work either. But for a lot of us, that's a part of who we are. It's how we identify ourselves as our job or our former career, something like that. We might identify ourselves politically as Republicans or Democrats or independents or so on and so forth. We will identify ourselves and rightfully so when done appropriately by sex, male or female. We will identify ourselves based on our physical characteristics, short, tall, wide, skinny, so on and so forth. We will identify ourselves based on our level of education or the number of degrees and types of degrees that we may have. We will identify ourselves based on our character, nice, loving, mean, envious, and so on and so forth. And so we do carry lots of different ways that we identify ourselves, and so it begs the question, who are we? How are we identifying ourselves both internally and to the world? As I've mentioned over the last few nights that we've gathered, we have a very serious challenge in our current society, in our current culture, Because our culture tells people that they have no purpose, no value, that there is no right or wrong, and there is no meaning to life. And that makes it very hard to identify who we are. If we don't think there's a reason, then why care? If there isn't a purpose, then why take on an identity and to do it well? If there isn't a right or a wrong, then who cares whether I act like a father or not, you see? And so we have destroyed the basis of our culture where we identify some of these things are very good things. Nothing I've said here is really wrong, but we have taken all of that away from people. And as such, we have a generation of people who are looking for an identity for who they really are because we've taken away the base, basic levels of identity. I don't know if you've ever heard of an author, a Christian author named Francis Schaeffer. He's not real popular among Baptists, but I encourage you to take a look at some of what he's done. I found a quote of his. He says, if there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is the absolute. He wrote that, I think he passed away in the 70s, so he wrote this a while ago. Let me read it again. If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is the absolute. And let me explain what I think he's trying to say and how it applies today. If we as a society, generally speaking, say there is no way to value whether we're a good husband or a good mother. If we can't say there's a right or wrong way to act, if we can't say there's any baseline, then the truth becomes whatever society says it is. That's not healthy. That's being tossed to and fro by the wind of every doctrine, as the scripture says. And we give our children no basis for which to base their life off of. This is a horrible disservice, and as a result, let me give you some statistics here. The number of youth who say they are hopeless, 44%. Almost half of all of our youth say there is no hope. This one I honestly find a little hard to believe, but I didn't dig very deeply. It said that last year in high school, 9% attempted suicide. 36% of youth are depressed. 20% have been diagnosed with a mental health illness. and 32% say they experience anxiety. That's tragic. And that has exponentially, which means really big, increased in the last couple of decades. It is phenomenal the way that our society has declined because we have refused to call truth, truth. We have refused to call beauty, beauty. We have refused to have any application of what God tells us either through the scripture or what nature itself tells us is right and good and ought to be. We have thrown all that away and we have cast generations out just trying to find anything to hold on to. They don't know who they are. They have no idea where they're trying to go. They have no spiritual identity because we have not carried forward the banner of the Spirit of God. This isn't just impacting youth, it's impacting adults as well. And because there is no ought to, because there is no good, we go and we search for identity in all the wrong places. People find their identity in themselves. Well, that may sound contradictory, doesn't it? But listen, our selves are based on something outside of us. If I only base right or wrong in what I think, I'm not a very good measure, am I? There has to be a standard that's outside of me, but our society bases themselves and what they do is right or wrong on themselves. It doesn't work that way. I don't get to make up how long an inch is. I have a standard to go by. And so our society has begun to just measure themselves by themselves. Our society has searched for identity and meaning in pornography, both in the viewing of it and the performing of it. It's rampant. Our society has begun searching for identity and meaning in drugs, and alcohol, and gambling, Our society has begun searching for identity and meaning in sex. And by this, I mean what we think of as the binary sex, male and female, in case there's any confusion. And we decided we can just switch that whenever we want to. Our society has begun searching for identity and meaning. Now, this one hasn't really begun. I should say continues to search for identity and meaning in wealth. We think that we can amass a large amount of wealth, and somehow that gives us an identity. Or how about fame? Or how about status? Or how about a new one to many of you here, victimhood? Oh, we, if y'all don't know what I'm talking about, go visit some people who are under 25. Everybody's a victim of something. And we wear that as part of our identity. It's a very serious problem. We identify and find our purpose in our race. I kind of thought we were over that. And if you look at a lot of things that went on, we kind of were. But it's growing again. Now, again, colleges, where I spend most of my time, are hotbeds for all kinds of lack of ability to identify the purpose in oneself and truth. Now we're having racially divided graduation ceremonies. I'll quit there. Something else that we do to identify and look for our purpose in our lives is we have savior complexes. I'll give you a few examples. We have a lot of people who think they're saving the world by serving in a form of government. We have a lot of people who think they're saving everybody by taking children from parents. And don't get me wrong, sometimes that's very necessary, but sometimes it's not. We have a lot of people who think they're saving the world because they're environmentally conscious. We have a lot of people who think they're saving the world by refusing to eat animals. And so on and so forth. Now, let me get at the heart of this for just a minute. We have a lot of people in our society who are searching for an identity and finding a purpose in their career. And you say, well, that sounds like a good thing. It can be. We have a lot of people who find their identity in their family. Can that be bad? Absolutely. Taken too far, that is wrong. We have people who find their identity in a church. Heresy coming from the pulpit, not a bit. Anything you put above God is an idol. Your membership and involvement in a church, if to an extreme, is absolutely sinful. Bet you don't hear that from the pulpit many times, do you? But it's true. We must be careful what we identify with, what we identify as, and we must make sure that we are not as stumbling blocks for ourselves or for those who are around us because even the good things we can get too wrapped up in and lose sight of what we should be. Our spiritual identity is in Christ. Our spiritual identity begins and ends in Christ. And let me just explain for just a minute, while I said I fill multiple roles, and I do, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a pastor, I'm a professor, I could go on and on and on with all the different identities that I do where, but underneath all of that has to be, I am a Christian, I am a follower of Christ, and that is how I identify. And just to make sure I'm clear, it's not all of these things. It's not husband, pastor, father, and so on, and a little bit of Christ. Christ is the identity, and everything else I do rests on top of that. And we get this backwards all the time. We see it in all of our churches. Just want to add a little bit of Jesus, enough to identify, but not so much where I'm comfortable. This is a real problem. The world itself wants nothing to do with us, which is why so many times we pull back from our Christian identity and push forward the other things that are more acceptable. Our jobs, our status, our wealth. You see where I'm going with this? We have a real challenge here. The world doesn't want to hear from us about our Christian identity. Maybe you've seen this on TV. Zechariah's message in Zechariah 7-11 is coming true. Your ancestors refused to listen to this message. They stubbornly turned away and put their fingers in their ears to keep from hearing. Y'all seeing kids do this, right? I'm not listening. That's what our culture is doing to us. Like, literally. Watch a few news articles about this, right? And people scream because they can't handle the truth. You go and say abortion's wrong and they scream and yell and stick their fingers in their ears and stamp and act like children because that's how they respond. This is the world we live in today. It's as true then as it is now. It is a challenge to us. Don't think it didn't happen to the early church. Acts 5, I'm sorry, Acts 7 it says, but they cried with a loud voice, stopped up their ears and rushed together at him and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. That's the Apostle Paul preaching the gospel. And the people of that time weren't going to have any of it. And so we can expect that people will not listen to the message that we have to say, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't say it and it doesn't mean we shouldn't live it out. Ultimately, I think we have one of two identities, base identities, at the deepest level of who we are. You are either an enemy of God or a child of God. Let me be clear, there is no in between. This is what the world wants you to think that you can be good enough. You are an enemy or you are his friend and there is no shadow in between. Colossians 1 and 22 says, and you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body the flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless above reproach before him. I'm sorry, I jumped ahead. That's the identity of Christ. Let me go back to the enemy part. James 4.4. You adulterous people, you do not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God. I say it again, if you want to be friends with the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Matthew 12, 30, whoever is not with me is against me and whoever does not gather with me scatters. It is very clear what the scripture tells us. We are born into sin. We are born enemies of God. All of us. If you don't believe me, many of you have been around little children. How early is it that they learn to lie? Okay, a lot of you laughed. Really early, right? How many of you have had infants who cry and cry and cry, and the moment you walk in, they just start cooing at you and smiling? See, they just lied to you. They were acting like they were hungry, but they weren't. They just wanted you to be there. We naturally come into this world, sinners, the curse has been passed from Adam to every generation since and every child who's ever been born is instantly born into sin and is guilty and separated from God and is in fact an enemy of God. And then as we grow up, we make it worse because we choose to continue to sin and be separated from God. So we get it naturally and we do it by choice and we can't help ourselves. It's a horrible situation. So we are born enemies, we grow up to be enemies, and we stay enemies with God throughout our entire life. We do nothing that is actually good, nothing worthy of anything. And in fact, we go about our lives sinning enemies of God. I wish more people would realize this. I wish those who are lost and undone, who are actually enemies of God, would hear what I'm saying today, hear what the scripture says, not just that you're just kind of passive or an in-between, or as we hear the term sometimes, agnostic. Well, there could be a God, there couldn't be, I don't really know. Agnostic or not, if you don't know God, you're his enemy. The enemy of the one who made you in the world. That's not a good place to be. enemy. The other aspect of this is if you're not an enemy of God, then your identity is in God because you have experienced His grace and now belong to Him. The verse I jumped to earlier, Colossians says, you were once alienated and hostile in mind, surpassed the enemy, and now have been reconciled with Him. Our identity in Christ is that of a new creature, a new creation. Someone who has become alive. Our identity in Christ should be something that not only we recognize, but that others recognize in us. You don't have to talk to me very long to find out that I'm a father and a husband, do you? No, because it's important to who I am. How long does someone have to talk to you before they know that you identify as one of God's children? It's an interesting question, isn't it? Now, I'm not saying that's necessarily the way that we stick out a hand and say, hey, I'm a child of God, but maybe it is. I don't know. I don't know about your situation. I don't know about how you live and who you are around. But we must carry that identity of Christ forward and let the world know who we belong to and who we are. We are no longer slaves to sin. if you've been saved, but reconciled to God. We have a relationship with Him and have become His children. My identity is that of a child of God. I have moved from an enemy to His child. And I didn't get there because of anything that I've done. I got there because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. because of his death on the cross, because of his conquering of death, because he is risen again, and because of the faith that I have in him. End. That is my identity. I am a joint heir for heaven. Hopefully with most of you. Hopefully with all of you. A joint heir in heaven. Think about some of these verses. Now, I want this to be encouraging. I've given us kind of a hard path to go, haven't I? I've talked about how horrible the world is, and it is. I've talked about how your identity is either an enemy of God or a friend of God, one of his children. But listen to me, brothers and sisters who claim to have an identity with God, who know that you've been saved, your father owns a cattle on a thousand hills. You're as rich as you could possibly ever be. You're wealthy beyond your wildest imagination. You are blessed beyond what you could ever do on your own. You are the child of a king. And how do we live? How do we live? We live like we don't care, like we don't know. We live worried about what someone's going to think about us. We don't live the victorious life, but He is victory. And we are His. We have a relationship with Him. We can call out to Him in a moment. In fact, we don't even know what to say. He knows what we need. I don't have to face a particular direction at a certain time of day and bow to Him. He's there in a moment. He lives inside of me. The Spirit of God He sent, the three-part of the God, the Holy Spirit dwells inside of me, as we've talked about this week, is the guarantor of what is to come, and I have access to Him at any moment, any time. Thanks be to God, I live in a period of time when the Holy Spirit was sent to earth. Can you imagine living without Him? How often do we act like He's not here? We can approach Him with confidence with what we need. Why? Because He was tempted in all ways like us. Do you ever feel alone? Should you? No, not in the least. Do you ever feel like God doesn't understand? Trust me, He understands better than I understand myself. We can ask for guidance. We can ask for wisdom. The Bible tells us to ask for wisdom. You have a hard decision to make? Ask. Do you need wisdom on how to live your life? Ask. Why, for those of us who know God and the free pardon of sin, do we insist on identifying and living like everybody else in this world? Why don't we seek after Him? Why don't we fully find our identity in Him? Why don't we say to God what we actually need? Just be honest. I'm going to go on a tangent just for a minute, because maybe most of you haven't heard this story. Jeremy has. Years ago, when God called me to preach, I was very unhappy about this idea, to say the least. It affected my entire life in a very negative way. I was very upset. And then one day I literally went in my closet, which is not a typical practice for me, but I went in my closet and I got on my hands and knees and I started praying. And you know what I decided to do? I decided to be honest with God. And I told him exactly what I thought about preaching. Unfiltered. I'm still here. You know why? Because before the thought formed out of my head to go to my mouth to tell God, He already knew what I thought. He is a discerner of our hearts. He knows what we're thinking. You're not hiding anything from God. If you're angry at Him, tell Him. Seriously. If you're disappointed, tell Him. If there's something you think you need, tell Him. You're not hiding anything from Him. I can hide it from my wife and my parents and from my children. I can hide it from the church. I can hide everything from anybody except for Him. So why would we not be open? I think sometimes that's what He wants. That was a marked point in my life. I remember that day well. Now, I wasn't obedient right after, but it sure helped me get there. So brothers and sisters, we are the children of God. We are heirs. We are friends with him. We can approach him with anything that we need. We can ask for wisdom and guidance. We can tell him the truth because he already knows the truth and he lives inside of us. We can rest in him. We can rest in him. We can get our nourishment from him. we can be watered from Him, and we can trust Him when we have to do the hard things in life. Brothers and sisters, He is everything. He is our identity, and everything else we carry forward the banner of Christ. So universally, we have at our core one of two identities. We are either an enemy of God, actively fighting against him. There is no middle ground or we are his friend. We are his child. He is our Abba, our daddy. I don't know which it is for you, but I can tell you in a world that is seeking for identity, I know which one you should be. And it's not an enemy. God has called us unto himself. God desires us to come. And when he convicts you of your sin and you truly repent and put your faith in him, you can, when he gives you that peace, become his child, his heir and no longer an enemy. And then he will set you on a path to live your life for him with whatever it is that you do. Whether you preach, whether you teach, whether you do nursing, whether you're retired, whether you help raise your children and your grandchildren, whatever it is that God calls you to do, you will and should carry that identity first and foremost, a child of God. Do you know who you are? Do you know who you are? If you're not sure that you're a child, then you need to be honest with God, just like I was. I had to go to him to get an answer. And I was honest. It took me a minute, but I got my answer. Do you know who you are? For those of us who say, yes, I know that I'm a child of God, let me ask you the hard question. Do you act like it? Is that the identity that you share with the world? Is that the first thing that comes before your title? It comes before your wealth. It comes before your job. It comes before your friends. Does being a child of God come before your church? Because it should. Who do you think the world identifies you with? We judge. We're supposed to. That's a whole different sermon. We're supposed to look at people's fruits. What does the world see when they see you? Are you truly identified as a child of God? And if not, what would you change? What would you stop doing? I'm talking to the saved. What would you start doing? What is God telling you right now? that you need to stop doing? What is he telling you that you need to start doing to let the world see who you truly are a child of God? And let me ask the same question for those who are here, those who are listening. If God is telling you you're his enemy, what are you supposed to do? So you're commanded to be obedient too. Because one day at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. And so if God has told you and revealed to you that you are in fact, his enemy, there's something you need to do. You need to confess and you need to seek him. And so I've given two opportunities. For those who need to respond and say, listen, my identity is that of an enemy. And sometimes we just have to admit that first. Does that make sense? Y'all have heard those stories, right? I don't want to belabor the point, but how many of you have heard people give testimonies where they fought against it and fought against it and fought against it, and when they finally stood up to go down front, that's when God saved them. Because that's what it took for them to finally admit, I'm your enemy. Others have sought it and sought it and sought it in tears. That took a long time. But whatever you do, you have to respond to him. I can't do it for you. And so there's two camps. You either identify as his enemy or identify as a child of God. And either way, there's likely things we should do. I want us to have a time that we can think about that. that we can reflect on what God is asking of us and demanding and deserving and a time that we can be obedient and submissive. And real quick, I preached about this at my church a couple weeks ago. Obedience is something we do whether we want to or not. Submission is something that comes from the heart.