BORN IDENTITY

Introduction

-This past week was Halloween where people dress in costumes, concealing their identity, pretending to be someone that they are not. It got me to thinking about people’s identity and whether or not someone’s true identity is recognized.

-And it reminded me of something I did about 15 years ago. I was in seminary at the time, and then-President George W. Bush was coming to Southaven, MS, for a rally. They were looking for volunteers to work the doors, so I took the opportunity to do it and get to see the President.

~So I was dressed in a suit, standing outside the Landers Center, and my job was just to make sure people had a ticket before they went into the building. Well, I guess because I was in a suit, someone asked me if I was secret service. I didn’t lie, so I obviously told them no. But that doesn’t mean it got me to thinking.

~So just for fun, and just to mess with people, every once in a while I’d pretend I had an earpiece in my ear and was talking into the microphone in the sleeve thing that Secret Service members do…

-I may have pretended to be Secret Service, but obviously that was not part of my identity—and so I would have no credentials or proof to show that was part of my identity.

-And we see in the gospel of John that Jesus had made some claims about His identity that the Jewish people were very skeptical about. But the thing is, Jesus did have the credentials and proofs to show that it was part of His identity.

-During the Feast of Booths celebration in Jerusalem there was a lot of hubbub about Jesus and His identity. So, Jesus offers some proofs to substantiate the claims He made about Himself.

-And because of the identity that Jesus was born with, when we come to Him in faith it has implications for our identity as well.

-So today I want us to know Jesus’ identity, see the proofs that He offered, and then consider how it affects our own identity.

John 7:14–24 ESV

14 About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. 15 The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” 16 So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. 17 If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. 18 The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. 19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” 20 The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” 21 Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. 22 Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 23 If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? 24 Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

I) Jesus proved His identity with authoritative teachings (vv. 15-17)

-The city was packed for the Feast of Booths, which was one of three Festivals that required Jewish men to travel to Jerusalem if they were near enough. So, Jesus went up with His disciples, although He did so quietly.

-But there was a buzz around Judea and Galilee about Him, and people speculated if He would come to the Feast and they speculated about who He actually was.

-In the middle of the week-long feast He made His way to the temple and began to teach the people in the courtyard. While He was teaching, the people were amazed because He didn’t teach like the normal rabbis of the day.

-Normally the rabbis would expound upon what previous rabbis taught and then give their own opinion. But not Jesus—Jesus would just tell people the way it was. He didn’t have to quote other rabbis; instead, He gave authoritative teachings and commands based only on who He was.

-And it completely confused the people because He didn’t have “the right training” and He didn’t go to “the right schools.”

-And so not only in this passage, but elsewhere in the gospels you find statements like in Mark 1:22 that:

[T]hey were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.

-But Jesus explains where this authority came from, when in v. 16-17 He says:

"My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.

17 If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.

-What Jesus speaks and teaches and claims comes directly from God, and He says that people who desire to do the will of God would be given discernment to know that He is speaking the very words of God.

-But, kind of flipping that around, that means that people who do not really want to do the will of God won’t be able to discern His identity because their heart is not in the right place.

-So Jesus is saying that He is able to make claims about His identity (being the Bread from Heaven and other claims) and teach what He teaches in the manner He teaches because He gets this authority straight from the Father. And those whose hearts are open to the work of the Father are able to perceive that He is telling the truth.

-Jesus was able to provide authoritative teachings because He came down from heaven and speaks the words the Father has given Him.

II) Jesus proved His identity with compelled responses (vv. 18-20)

-Beginning in v. 18 Jesus says that He is not seeking to glorify His own name, but the name of the One who sent Him and is able to verify who He is. And what we find is that Jesus’ claims about Himself, His life, His teaching, and His ministry forces people to make a decision and a response.

-When you are confronted with the identity of Jesus Christ—that He comes from heaven, that He is the Messiah, that He is the Son of Man and is the Son of God, and that He is the Savior of the World—you cannot just be neutral and sit on the fence about it. You will either embrace Him for who He is, or you will reject Him for who He claimed to be.

-It seemed most of the Jews rejected Him. In v. 19 Jesus makes mention that some of them wanted to kill Him for who He claimed to be. Then in v. 20 others claimed He was out of His mind.

-But because of Jesus’ claims to His identity, you have to do something with it—you have to either accept Him for who He says He is or reject Him.

-Jesus Himself said in Matthew 10:34-36—

34 "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.

-Jesus did not come to somehow bridge the gap between all the religions—He came as the only Messiah and only Savior sent by the only God, so that He would then be set up as the only King in the hearts of mankind. That is His identity, and you have to choose for yourself how you are going to respond.

-The whole notion that Jesus is just a good teacher with good morals is ludicrous—the claims He makes about His identity won’t allow it.

~I love the way that C. S. Lewis described this in his book MERE CHRISTIANITY, where he said:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

-Jesus’ identity claims did not leave room for some sort of neutral ground—it forces upon us a response. Jesus claimed to be very God from heaven, and that we must be compelled one way or another to accept or reject is another proof of His identity.

III) Jesus proved His identity with supernatural wonders (vv. 21-24)

-vv. 21-24 give us a clue about what some of the uproar was all about. Back in chapter 5 of the gospel of John (which probably happened months or even a year before the current passage) Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, and some people were mad that He would do such a thing on the Sabbath.

-In our passage Jesus argued that since the Jews still performed circumcision on Sabbath days (according to the law given to Abraham and confirmed by Moses), is it not then allowable to do good in taking care of the needs of humans on the Sabbath?

-But with their arguing over the merits of whether or not what Jesus did was acceptable or not on the Sabbath, they completely miss the point—JESUS HEALED SOMEONE!!!

-Talk about missing the forest for the trees==the Jews were more concerned about when it was done rather than the fact THAT it was done. And all the supernatural signs and wonders that Jesus did prove His identity.

-Remember when John the Baptist was in prison, he sent some of his followers to ask Jesus if He really was the Messiah or not. Jesus doesn’t give them a straight answer. This is what He says in Matthew 11:4-5:

4 And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see:

5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

-It’s as if Jesus is saying: John wants proof of my identity—all he has to do is look at the supernatural works that I’ve done—

~people are healed of their illnesses

~demons are cast out of the possessed

~dead people are raised back to life

~water is turned into wine

~lepers are cleansed of their disease

~five loaves and two fish feed over 5000 people

~Jesus walks on water

~Jesus calms the storm

~Jesus tells winds to cease

-On and on the supernatural power of Jesus is at work, and all the time those works point to Jesus’ identity—He is God the Son sent to die on the cross for our sins and raised again to life, and He alone is the giver of eternal life to those who believe in Him----we can trust Him because He has proven His identity over and over again.

IV) Because of His identity we can have a new identity

-What does it mean for us, though, that Jesus is who He claimed to be? It means everything, because when we believe in Him we are placed in Him and our identity is found in Him.

-Comedienne Lily Tomlin once quipped:

“I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.”

-In our day and age we think it’s about being a self-made man or a self-made woman—we place our identity in what we do for a living, what family we were born in, how much money we make, how big of a house we own, what kind of car we drive, how accomplished in sports we become----on and on we try to form our identity in things of the world that will only let us down, and it almost becomes an identity crisis for us because all these other bases for identity will let us down and fail us, and we get confused and we lose ourselves.

-It reminds me of something I read about actor Peter Sellers, who is famous for his role of Inspector Clouseau in the old Pink Panther movies. In a biography entitled ‘The Mask Behind the Mask,’ biographer Peter Evans says that actor Peter Sellers played so many roles he sometimes was not sure of his own identity. Approached once by a fan who asked him, "Are you Peter Sellers?" Sellers answered briskly, "Not today," and walked on.

-If we try to base our identity on anything else, we are going to be confused about who we actually are. But when we come to Christ, Paul throughout his epistles talks about us being IN CHRIST—our identity is found in Christ.

-And because we are in Christ, listen to your identity:

~I am alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:5)

~I am God’s Masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10)

~I am chosen (1 Peter 2:9)

~I am treasured (Deuteronomy 14:2)

~I am a Child of God (1 John 3:1)

~I am secure (2 Corinthians 1:22)

~I am set free (Romans 6:18)

~I am loved (1 John 4:19)

~I am rejoiced over (Zephaniah 3:17)

~I am wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14)

~I am valuable (1 Corinthians 6:20)

~I am the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19)

~I am healed by His wounds (1 Peter 2:24)

~I am accepted (Ephesians 1:6)

~I am blessed with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3)

~I am delivered from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13)

~I am forgiven of all sin (Ephesians 1:7)

~I am more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37)

~I am washed in the blood (Revelation 1:5)

~I am victorious through Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:57)

-And on and on it goes—if you are in Jesus Christ, that is your identity, not anything you made for yourself, not anything that anybody else says about you-----BECAUSE JESUS IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS, YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE----His identity will determine your identity if you are in Him

Conclusion

-Let me close with this story:

~There was a pastor and his wife who took a vacation to Tennessee. They were having dinner at a restaurant when an old man started talking to them. When the old man asked the pastor what he did for a living, the pastor saw a chance to get rid of him, so he said “I’m a preacher,” figuring that no one wanted to talk to a preacher.

~But the old man said, “A preacher? That’s great. Let me tell you a story about a preacher.” The old man sat down at their table and started to speak. The old man explained that he was an illegitimate child. He was born without knowing who his father was, which was a source of great shame in a small town in the early twentieth century.

~One day a new preacher came to the local church. The old man explained that as a youngster he had never gone to church, but one Sunday decided to go and hear the new pastor preach. He was good, so the boy went back again and again. In fact, he started attending just about every week. But his shame went with him. This poor little boy would always arrive late and leave early in order to avoid talking to anyone.

~But one Sunday he got so caught up in the sermon that he forgot to leave. Before he knew it the service was over and the aisles were filling. He rushed to get past people and out the door, but as he did he felt a heavy hand land upon his shoulder. He turned around to see the preacher looking down at him asking, “What’s your name, boy? Whose son are you?”

~The little boy died inside, the very thing he wanted to avoid was now here. But before he could say anything the preacher continued to talk, saying, “I know who you are. I know who your family is. There’s a distinct family resemblance. Why, you’re the son of God!”

~The old man then said “You know, mister, those words changed my life”. And with that he got up and left.

~When the waitress came over she said to the preacher and his wife, “Do you know who that was?”

“No” they replied.

“That was Ben Hooper, a two-term governor of Tennessee.”

-His identity was not based on the circumstances of his birth, but lived out in who he was in Christ.

-Maybe you need a new identity—from sinner to saved, from condemned to beloved==that can only happen when you trust Jesus’ death and resurrection. Come forward today and receive Jesus and become a child of God, the only identity that will get you into heaven.

-Christian, maybe you forgot who you are—come to the altar and ask God to remind you about your identity based on His identity.

-Or maybe you are looking for a church home that preaches Jesus as Lord, God, and Savior—join us and minister with us in making His name known throughout the world.