Identity in the Lord our God

LftLD

Contents: Our God in creation Lost in sin, separated from God Our new identity in Christ Jesus  We bear the image of the man of dust, that’s our natural condition our natural conditions as humans born into this world into a world into a body which is subject to the power of sin because of Adam’s sin.  Yet, if we’re born again into the Kingdom of God, we bear the image of the heavenly Man who is Jesus. God wants to put His image into my life, into your life so that we bear that image in our lives, so that we are knowing ‘Christ in you’, the hope of glory.  #church #faith #identity #jesus #jesuschrist #Messiah #salvation  https://lightforthelastdays.co.uk/articles/deception-in-the-church/identity-in-the-lord-our-god/

Transcript

00:00Okay, let's have a look at this subject

00:05three parts basically based on these three readings we're going to give

00:09First one is that we are created in the image of God

00:13humans as God made us

00:16Genesis chapter 1

00:18Verse 1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

00:21Then verse 26 then God said let us make man in our image according to our likeness

00:27Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air

00:30Over the cattle over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth

00:35So God created man in his image in the image of God. He created him male and female

00:39He created them then God blessed them and God said be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it

00:46Have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth

00:54Created in the image of God

00:56second question

00:58humans lost

01:00humans as spoiled after Genesis 3

01:04Readings actually from Ephesians chapter 2 and

01:07You he made alive who were dead in

01:10Trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world

01:14According to the prince of the power of the air the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience

01:19Among whom we also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh

01:25Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath just as others

01:33Third-reading humans as Christ restored us to Corinthians chapter 5

01:40Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation old things have passed away behold all things have become new

01:45Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ has given us the ministry of reconciliation

01:53That is that God was in Christ

01:54Reconciling the world to himself not imputing their trespasses to them and has committed to us the word of reconciliation

02:01Now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though Christ were pleading through us

02:06We implore you on Christ behalf be reconciled to God

02:10If we made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him

02:17Okay, so three readings speaking of our identity as God sees us our identity in creation in the image of God

02:26humans as God made us in the fall

02:30Lost humans as sin spoiled us and

02:34in redemption

02:36Humans as Christ restored us. So let's look at those three subjects briefly

02:41God in creation

02:43Genesis chapter 1 to 2 speaks about

02:47How God created the world and how he created everything good before the fall in Genesis chapter 3

02:54Now I have to say that throughout the Bible it's assumed that this is fact not fiction

02:59reality not myth

03:01God is creator in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth

03:06And you find that all cultures have some idea of God as creator. They may be wrong

03:10But in our culture, we've introduced a new idea called evolution

03:16You actually need faith to believe both creation and evolution I

03:21Think you have to have more faith to believe in evolution

03:25I don't find it. I find it does require faith to believe that they were in the beginning God created everything

03:32That the incredible complexity a miracle of life could only come from a higher power who has life in himself who is God

03:40Seems to me that's a reasonable assumption

03:43If you believe evolution you have to believe that life came about through billions of years of chance

03:48After nothing exploded and out of that explosion of nothing which existed before the Big Bang an

03:54infinite ordered universe came into existence

03:57You have to believe that life in its incredible complexity came out of non-life

04:02And it evolved from simple organisms to creatures like us

04:08You can believe that well, good luck to you. I can't I

04:12Accept there are difficulties in believing the Genesis account of creation

04:15But there are answers as organizations like answers in Genesis have shown us

04:21I've never found answers to the big questions about evolution

04:26Now evolution reteaching itself shapes a view of who I am if you do take on board evolution

04:32You have to believe that we're here as a result of millions of chart years of blind chance

04:38There was no God directing it. It just happened by chance

04:41So you're part of an atom which came out of the atoms which were there at the Big Bang 4.5 billion

04:46Or was it more than that years ago?

04:50Whatever it's a long time

04:53It also means there's no God who loves me and is ordering my life and is ordering the world in which I live and

05:00Ultimately, there's no meaning in my existence. I'm just here by blind chance and when I'm gone, I'm gone and that's the end of it

05:07Now Genesis 1 tells us something different it tells us that God created us

05:11Tells that there's something special about us. It tells that we're made in the image of God that it says in our image

05:18Even the use of the plural pronoun there is interesting our image not my image

05:23Suggesting that God is himself a triune person of Father Son and Holy Spirit

05:28Not spelled out, but they're implicitly even in the first chapter of Genesis

05:32So

05:34We're made in the image of God. Does that mean we look like God?

05:37Or does it mean we have some spiritual connection to God which is programmed into us and not into the animals?

05:44That humans have a created to have a relationship with God to reflect in some way the glory of God in our lives

05:52In other words, there's a God-shaped space within us

05:55in Genesis chapter 2 verse 7

05:57It says the Lord God for man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his lost straws the breath of life

06:03And man became a living being

06:06God breathed into him as God breathed into us God breathed into himself

06:11Something of himself into us. So we have both a physical part of us and a spiritual part of us

06:16Spiritual part of us made to relate to God

06:19We have that God-shaped space within us, which

06:23Which in humanity which is made to relate to God our Creator

06:28Now this stage in Genesis 1 and 2 humans only know good

06:34Everything which God has made is good and

06:38Evil is going to come in in chapter 3, but even after having lost

06:43This special relationship with God through sin

06:46There is still that God-shaped space within us still that desire for God

06:51Book of Ecclesiastes writes he has made everything beautiful in its time. He's also put eternity in their hearts

06:58Except that no one can find out the work that God has done from the beginning to the end

07:03God has put eternity into our hearts. There's something which God has put into human beings, which makes us desire to find God

07:10You don't see animals trying to find God do you but humans have this instinct that there is a God we need to relate to him

07:17Ecclesiastes also says in chapter 3 verse 21

07:20Who knows the spirit of the sons of men which goes upward and the spirit of the animal which goes down to the earth?

07:26Otherwise, there's something spiritual about human beings, which is not there in the animal kingdom

07:31And in chapter 12 verse 7

07:33It says the dust will return to the earth as it was and the spirit will return to God who gave it

07:38otherwise, we have that spirit part of us, which is

07:41Given into us by God, which is part of our identity as human beings

07:45And when we die, it says here that the spirit part of us is going to return to God

07:49Either prepared to meet God or unprepared to meet God. That's the big question

07:53But the point is that we're different from the animal kingdom, which is another reason why evolution cannot be true

07:59We didn't come here as evolved apes. We came here as created by God in his image

08:06We also see that in the reading in Genesis 1 that God created this male and female

08:11So God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female

08:16He created them

08:17Then God blessed them and said to them be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it

08:22Have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over every living thing that moves on the earth

08:29So part of God's created order is that he's created us male and female

08:34The same species the same human species but different in our bodies and also in more than our bodies in our whole

08:42makeup

08:43Men and women are different and if you notice that

08:46Not just whether you have a penis or a vagina is much more to it from that

08:51fat according to

08:52Science they've discovered that men have XY chromosomes and women have XX chromosomes

08:59Which are programmed into your body as your whole your whole makeup

09:02Which means that if you try and mess around with your sex organs as the transgender people do it doesn't make you one gender

09:10Or the other you're still whatever gender whatever you were born into. That's how God made you

09:17And he made us with a purpose. He made man and female with a purpose in order to procreate to have children

09:22That doesn't mean you have to have children, but some people do some people don't but if you have children you're

09:27You're doing something which is programmed into you from creation

09:32It's another vital part of God's created order and if you think about the whole process of sexual reproduction is hugely complex

09:41The idea that that could have evolved by chance is to my mind impossible. Not just in probable. It's impossible

09:49One point if it didn't work first in the first generation

09:53There'd be no more humans and therefore no human race

09:56So it's part of God's created order and

09:59God created us male and female and if you go against that you're going against God's created order

10:07God also created male and female to come together in one flesh to read in Genesis 1 2 verse 24

10:14so it's part of God's order for the

10:17procreation of the human race

10:20We also read that God created humans good

10:23humans to relate to God and

10:25In sense to act as a region under God looking after the world which he had made

10:30Genesis chapter 2 read and out of the ground

10:33The Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight of the good and good for food

10:38The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

10:43Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it and the Lord God

10:48Commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden you may freely eat

10:51But of the fruit over the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat

10:55For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die

10:59First point everything that God made was good. Very good. And at this point there was no knowledge of evil in the human race

11:07They knew God, but they didn't know evil

11:10Now we have to assume from this that evil already existed that the fall of Satan had already happened according to

11:17Isaiah 14 Lucifer wanted to be like God and was thrown out of heaven thrown down and became Satan or the

11:25devil

11:27Now humans are created then in the image of God of the ability to relate to God

11:32But we also have now another one being introduced who is the devil?

11:37And once he comes into the picture, we'd see humans as fallen

11:41Fallen from grace fallen from the position which they had

11:45Losing their position of dominion of being regents under God to look after the earth

11:50We now have another one who comes in between it

11:52that is the devil who is described in the New Testament as being the prince of the power of the air and

11:58We are described as being the sons of disobedience. We're under his power

12:03Now you have after Genesis 3 evil entering into the human race sin and disobedience to God

12:08Our

12:10Identity now includes pain in childbirth

12:12Hard work for the man and the prospect of death which wasn't there in the beginning

12:18No longer do we have access to the tree of life eternal life

12:23We're still in the image of God. We're separated from God because of the influence of the tempter of the devil

12:29Now we know good and evil

12:31And as you read on in Genesis

12:33You see that Cain kills Abel in chapter 4

12:35By the time you get to chapter 6 in the days of Noah

12:38It said that every imagination of the heart of man was only evil continually

12:43So we have our second definition of how we are our identity

12:49Spilled out in a number of verses in the Bible

12:52Jeremiah chapter 17

12:54The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it

13:00Jesus speaking in Matthew 15

13:02Says those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and they defile a man

13:07For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts murders adulterers fornications thefts false witness blasphemers

13:14These are the things which defile a man but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man

13:20So Jesus saying that out of the heart of man come all the evil things which we see today

13:24So don't look into your heart to find your identity

13:27Look to God because then your heart you're going to find all kinds of bad things

13:31And Paul writing in Ephesians chapter 2, which you've already read, but I'll read it again

13:35It says you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked

13:40According to the course of this world according to the Prince of the power of the air

13:43The Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once conducted ourselves

13:48In the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature

13:54Children of wrath just as the others

13:58Notices says we all once walked in that some people might think they're better than others

14:04Some people are definitely better than others

14:06There are some people who live reasonably good lives and some people live very wicked lives

14:11But when it comes to God's verdict, we're actually all

14:14Under his condemnation because we all sin and come short of the glory of God

14:18We're all nature by nature children of wrath bringing forth evil things

14:24Now people don't like that definition of themselves

14:26So they reject it and a lot of people in the world say I'm not a sinner. I don't do bad things

14:31I'm a good person

14:32But God's verdict actually upon the whole human race

14:36Not just people like Adolf Hitler

14:37But upon all of us is that we all fall short of the glory of God and all have sinned and come short of the glory

14:43of God

14:45that's the problem and

14:47The problem is if you are coming back to what we began with this idea of focusing on your identity

14:53if you're focusing your identity on this part of your

14:57Life, if you like you're focusing on the wrong thing. You're focusing on our fallen human nature

15:03Which is mired in sin and unbelief which is separated from God

15:08So if you want to find your identity there, it's not actually the good place to find your identity or

15:13Your identity may be there that may be existing

15:16But it's not the place you want to be not how you want to be defined as a person if you're in Christ

15:23Now fortunately praise God God remains in the business of redeeming humanity

15:29Even from the beginning in Adam in Genesis 3 first question. God asks is Adam. Where are you?

15:36He's looking for Adam Adam sinned. He's gone away from God

15:40Remember I played you that song the other week by Don Francisco Adam. Where are you God comes in and he asks a question

15:46Where are you?

15:48That's what he's asking down through the ages to the human race. Where are you?

15:52And as he's asking that question, he's saying I know where you are

15:55Actually, you're in the wrong place

15:57But I want to bring you out of that bad place into the good place of being in a relationship with me

16:03Wants to bring you into a relationship with God in which you have Christ in you the hope of glory

16:09He wants to redeem us through the blood of Messiah

16:13Ephesians chapter 1 we read in him

16:15We have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace

16:21Which he made to abound to award us in all wisdom and prudence

16:25Having made known to us the mystery of his will according to the good pleasure, which he purposed in himself

16:30That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ

16:35Both which are in heaven which are on earth in him in him

16:40We've also obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will

16:47That we who first trusted in Christ to be to the praise of his glory

16:52Wonderful verse wonderful passage

16:54We did a Bible study on Thursday at John Ephesians chapter 1 and I learned a lot from doing the study

16:59All the we inherit in Jesus Christ and all that we're given through the redemption

17:04the redemption through his blood blood that he shed for us when he died for us on the cross and

17:10Transformed translated us from being under the condemnation of God to being under the blessing of God through faith in Jesus Christ

17:17As we repent of sin and believe in the Lord Jesus

17:21And as a result of this we have a new identity

17:25Christ in you the hope of glory

17:29One Corinthians chapter 15 as in Adam all die

17:33Even so in Christ shall all be made alive

17:36What we inherit from Adam is our sin nature which is heading for death

17:40What we inherit in Christ is our new nature in Jesus, which is heading for eternal life

17:46On Corinthians 15 verse 42. It says so is the resurrection of the dead

17:51The body is sown in corruption. It is raised in incorruption. It's sown in dishonor is raised in glory

17:56It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power

17:59It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body

18:04There is also a spiritual body and so it is written the first man Adam became a living being

18:09The last Adam became a life-giving spirit

18:12came giving us identity as both

18:15humans in a physical body

18:16but also with a spiritual part of us the God shapes part of us which God wants to fill with his Holy Spirit and

18:22To give us new life in Jesus

18:26Be raised in incorruption raised in glory raised in power

18:30First continues however, the spiritual was not first but the natural and afterward the spiritual

18:35The first man was of the earth made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven as

18:40Was the man of dust. So also are those who are made of the dust as is the heavenly man

18:45So are those who are heavenly as we born the image of the man of dust

18:49We shall also bear the image of the heavenly man

18:53Get that last verse we born the image of the man of dust

18:56First we born the image of the man of dust. That's our natural condition

19:01Natural conditions as humans born into this world

19:04Into a world into a body which is subject to the power of sin because of Adam's sin

19:11If we're born again into the holy into the kingdom of God, we bear the image of the heavenly man. Who's Jesus?

19:18So God wants to put his image into my life into your life

19:22So that we bear that image in our lives so that we are knowing Christ in you the hope of glory and

19:30Our last reading from Corinthians chapter 5 15 no chapter 5 which we've already read but we'll read it again

19:39Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old things have passed away. They hold all things have become new

19:45Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ

19:49Has given us the ministry of reconciliation

19:52That is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself

19:56Not imputing their trespasses to them and has admitted to us the word of reconciliation

20:01Now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were pleading through us

20:05We implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God

20:09If we made him he knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him

20:15Praise the Lord. That's what it's an offer in the gospel. We're now identified with Jesus Christ

20:22Here is our ultimate identity

20:24We bear the image of the holy heavenly man

20:28We're a new creation in Jesus Christ

20:32Sadly much of the contemporary church is trying to affirm people who make their identity in the sinful human nature

20:37While you have gay affirming churches, which you can't do

20:41We need Jesus Christ, we need to come back to the Word of God and we need to affirm our new nature in the Lord

20:47Yeshua Hamashiach

20:49Jesus the Messiah

20:50We need him to make us into that new creation

20:54Having been saved we need to go on with him to be sanctified to allow him to change us from the person we were

20:59to the person he wants us to be through

21:02Keeping his commandments to reading his words through praying to him and through living our lives as believers in Jesus the Messiah

21:10We're all a work in progress. None of us have arrived

21:13When we do arrive, we will be glorified and we'll be like unto his glorious body as we are with him in eternity

21:22Now we need to receive the Holy Spirit

21:25We need to continue right through our lives. We need to cooperate with God through Jesus Christ

21:30And we need to know now that our ultimate identity is not determined by whatever race religion

21:36We were born into whatever our life experiences whether good or bad

21:40Whatever our sexuality is our identity is in Jesus Christ

21:45These things may have an influence on our life. Of course, they do on our life experience

21:50But our true identity if we believe us in Jesus is now in Jesus Christ, and we're all one in Jesus Christ

21:56wherever we've come from

21:58And

22:01Our identity is defined by Christ in you Christ in me the hope of glory

22:09That ID

22:11identifies me

22:13Both here on earth and now throughout and throughout eternity

22:17And just one thought once you're dead

22:20It won't matter what your skin color was what your race was what your gender was

22:25if you're buried, then your body will be

22:29Just decompose and all that remain will be your bones if you're cremated nothing will remain really except some dust

22:37so

22:39What we have in this physical world will be dust to dust ashes to ashes

22:43In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead if you're a believer in Jesus the Messiah

22:49Won't even matter what your sex is because Jesus said in heaven

22:52They're neither married nor given in marriage, but are as angels of God

22:55Now I don't understand how that's gonna work out

22:57But we have to work out see what how God

23:00Does that but we know that we have a glorious future and the eye hasn't seen nor has ended into the imagination of the heart

23:06Of man the thing which God has prepared for those who love him

23:10So what should we do? We should live out our lives in our relationship with Jesus Christ who is our true identity

23:18If you continue in this life out of fellowship with God, and if you die in a lost condition and rebellions again against God

23:25Or you're still in that condition when Jesus comes again

23:28you'll be lost forever and

23:31With no chance of redemption and you don't want to be lost

23:35You don't want to go to hell because you want to go to heaven. Is that right?

23:39Praise the Lord

23:41You do meet people to say I want to go to hell and speak with my friends there

23:44Well, it won't be like that at all. They're deluded

23:48Nobody wants to go to hell because it's a place of infinite internal punishment and eternal pain

23:53We want to go to heaven and the only way we can go to heaven is through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ

23:59and

24:01If you are saved you'll be saved forever in heaven, and there's no possibility of being removed from there

24:07so now is the day to choose God and Jesus Christ to make sure of identity in Christ alone and

24:13The sign that we're truly in Christ is coming back to what we read in the beginning is that we love God

24:18With all our heart. We love our neighbor as ourself

24:21And we truly love and want what is best for ourselves in this world and the next which is Christ in you the hope of

24:28glory

24:28Praise the Lord. Amen

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