Who You Say I Am

I was sitting in a teacher meeting this week and one parent said, my child is really growing because you’re amazing. She kept going with her praise.

Honestly, I didn’t believe it. I agree with the parent about her child growing, that’s true and wonderful. I didn’t believe the part about me being amazing.

What do you do when people complement you or talk of the truth about you?

It’s quite a contrast because just a year and a few months ago someone, a parent, said they exact opposite about me. They not only wanted their child out of my class they wanted me fired.

My teaching didn’t change. People talk.

You feel things, you hear things, you go searching in people’s minds about how they treat you. Maybe its people you work with, maybe it’s family. Maybe its people giving you advice that seems more like a put down. We get told a lot of things about ourselves.

This week, I got a box that holds a statue. I opened it up, and here it is. It’s a skunk that says, “you Stink.” Now I earned this trophy by finishing dead last in Kenny’s fantasy football league and if you didn’t know a kind of hazing tradition is that if you finish dead last in Fantasy Football something has to happen. So I have a statue telling me I failed, which between friends is pretty funny.

What’s more important is what happened the next day. See I left the statue on the kitchen counter. My wife came down and saw it and assumed that someone, and there is still a real someone who sends me mean texts. She thought they took their meanness up a notch and actually sent me a trophy to hurt me. She thought it was mean and she took it and threw it out in the garage.

She didn’t think I stink. She protected me. She is awesome but Jesus is awesomest.

Some people say that what others say doesn’t matter but if you will go travel with me on an allegory the truth of our life is we take a lot of what we hear people say, we take a lot of comments and we put them on our mind’s kitchen counter. Trophies from horrible things we have done or horrible things others have said about us. Or maybe a bunch of your last place trophies for how you view your body, your family, where you are at in life.

So you have all those things on your mind’s counter, a ton of you stink trophies large and small, and then when you hear that Jesus died for you, exactly you.

It’s one of the highest complements you could ever receive. God himself, came to die for you.

Romans 5:8–9 CSB

8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath.

See this truth, that just as you are, whether you think you are good, whether you know you are awful. That huge counter with all those messed up you stink trophied. However many really messed up things you’ve done. God himself knows you, got beaten for you, stabbed for you, hung for you, died for you.

This is the reality of one of the songs that we often sing and the song that we are going to look at today called Who You Say I Am written by the staff of the church Hillsong.

It starts with this powerful question.

Who am I that the highest King / Would welcome me / I was lost but He brought me in / Oh, His love for me / Oh, His love for me

Revelation 17:14 CSB

14 These will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will conquer them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings. Those with him are called, chosen, and faithful.”

The Lamb is the symbol of Jesus in the book of Revelation. In this song, the focus is His Kingship. He is Lord of Lords, King of Kings. No one greater than Jesus. Those who follow Jesus, we are named.

Called, chosen, faithful.

Do you agree that Jesus lived, was God in the flesh, died for your sins, Rose on the 3rd day and is coming back again?

If that is true than what you see on the screen, this is you. “Called, chosen, faithful.”

But there is a problem that the first verse of this song nails down with a question.

Who am I that Highest King would welcome me?

Sit in that. Meditate in that. Stop here for a while and let it wash over you. Jesus, God, died for you because He loves you. Not who you will be. With full knowledge of you, The Highest King. Greater than Taylor Swift. Any president. Any mythical thing. God

There are things about our spiritual walk that can be proven. Lots of it is as easy as a little research or some thinking, but some Spiritual faith is often taking the words of what is stated, given or promised and live them out with full implication that even though it can not be proven before it is put into practice you do it anyway. You believe without seeing. You live that the Highest King, King Jesus, welcomes you. I can’t prove that, you can except it because He said it.

Believe it, change based on your belief only, and live out the new reality.

Excepting that Jesus loves you has the same challenges as proving that another person loves you or finds you attractive. You cannot. You can see what they do but we can’t prove it’s love. We have all seen in real life or in stories a person flirt with someone to get something they want. Lying exists but so does honesty.

There are people who do really love each other and God really does love you.

One of the coolest experiences of my life, was getting down on a knee, and putting on a ring on Lori’s finger and asking her to spend the rest of her life with me on my birthday in 1995. I chose her and to hear her voice and see her eyes and happiness.

Unlike my parents love for me which I expected and even my kids love for me, because that is universally natural. The choice in a relationship is special. Yet Lori never had to die for me. I never picked Lori with the specific intent to take any punishment meant for her and to pay its price.

Jesus is the all knowing God that when He died, he did know you, and chose to die for you because He loves you.

Yet just like Lori did on that night in 1995 when she accepted my choice, you too can accept the choice that God made when He said I choose you. Accepting his choice of you matters. It makes impact. Accepting that Jesus choose you changes things.

Who the Son sets free / Oh, is free indeed / I’m a child of God / Yes, I am

You are free. Free. Perhaps you don’t feel free. I want to warn you my friends of what I have been saying this whole sermon, your feelings will eventually fall in line with your faith

Accept this truth as fact. Who the son sets free is free indeed.

John 8:34–36 NLT

34 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. 35 A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.

Who the son sets free is free indeed. You are free, think about those implications.

You will begin to know that you are different.

Just as you believe that someone loves you only based on their actions and your feelings.

But if you let your feelings determine your faith,

You will not accept the promises of God.

You will be like the kindest person who feels incredibly lonely because they can’t see all those who genuinely call them friend. In freedom but believing you can’t because you remember too many times you failed. Your counter in your mind is filled with you stink trophies even though Jesus cleared the counter.

Do you agree that Jesus lived, was God in the flesh, died for your sins, Rose on the 3rd day and is coming back again?

If that is true God calls you his own. Jesus says you are free. God’s own hold promises from God.

You are filled. You are completed by God.

Colossians 2:10 CSB

10 and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.

You are filled. Completed. Toss those “you stink” trophies. You are free. Even The Devil can’t touch you.

1 John 5:18 NLT

18 We know that God’s children do not make a practice of sinning, for God’s Son holds them securely, and the evil one cannot touch them.

To many live in fear of evil spirits. Hold on to God’s promise, God’s son holds you securely. Jesus holds you. No potions, symbols or incantations necessary. Jesus secures you over the devil and demons.

Not only can the Devil not stop you, God is making good things for you to do.

Ephesians 2:10 CSB

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

These are true, true about you. You can prayerfully go through your day, your week and even your year and God will actually be there for you. God made opportunities for you more numerous than the prescriptions you take or the sins you can think of to bless this world with God’s goodness.

Colossians 3:12 MSG

12 So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline.

Free at last, He has ransomed me / His grace runs deep / While I was a slave to sin /Jesus died for me / Yes, He died for me

Colossians 2:14 NLT

14 He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.

When you accept Jesus as your God, then you are agreeing with what He said. He pays the punishment for your sins and Agreeing with these truths is the faith of a Christian. It means you are a follower of Jesus. You are saved today to live in the promises of being called, chosen, and with an opportunity to be faithful.

You are free.

You are filled.

You are protected.

You are compassionate, kind, humble, disciplined

You are forgiven.

These are true now. In your life today, tomorrow, and next week, and so on. But there is a promise for so much more in the future.

In my Father’s house / There’s a place for me / I’m a child of God / Yes, I am

John 14:1–3 NLT

1 “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.

It’s really common for people to go to a funeral and say things like, “they are in a better place.” Or “their pain is over now.” Things that are said and heard all the time. But that isn’t true. The promise of a better place, pain being over, is for those whose trust is in Christ Jesus.

There is a separation.

Jesus said, “

John 14:5–6 CSB

5 “Lord,” Thomas said, “we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And my friends this song calls on us to accept all of the truth of our life in Jesus. Jesus chose me. I have value. Jesus chooses you, you have value.

Jesus gave you a purpose as his chosen for His good. Whose good? God’s good.

When I hear my phone ding and open up to see why, I often feel like I get stuck in facebook reals or tik tok videos and it’s filled with people telling me how to be. Or showing there messages of success. Or how not to be with jokes of how people are dumb. Fail videos. Many of them with nothing wrong in themselves but add those many messages of people telling me what I need, want or should be, with other voices of criticism in each and every day. We can start to look at our lives with faith in the messages of what everyone is telling us like the metaphor I used at the beginning, measuring ourselves against society we fill up a kitchen counter in our soul with a bunch of you stink trophies because you don’t measure up to society.

My friends people really do think you are fools. People really do you think you are stupid, mean, or even stink.

Because they felt the same about Jesus.

But you are not, you are chosen.

I am chosen. Jesus said

John 15:16–19 CSB

16 You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. 17 “This is what I command you: Love one another. 18 “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you.

I am chosen / Not forsaken / I am who You say I am / You are for me / Not against me / I am who You say I am

Today some of you might actually say I have never, ever really accepted the promises of God. Today is the day I see I need to follow Jesus fully. I need to commit to him today not just for eternity but for the now.

Others of you need to clear off your counters. Throw away the last place trophies. Throw away the things saying your too old, too hurt, too sinful, too whatever to matter. And remember who you are.

Say it and live it confidently, you are called, chosen and you are faithful.

Oh, I am who You say I am / Yes, I am who You say I am

https://scripturesavvy.com/i-am-who-you-say-i-am/

https://freeccm.com/2018/06/26/behind-the-song-hillsong-worship-shares-the-heart-behind-their-single-who-you-say-i-am/

https://www.thebereantest.com/hillsong-worship-who-you-say-i-am