Sermon Tone Analysis

A bunch of Impostors

There was a story a couple of weeks ago out of London.

A priest showed up at the British Army barracks right next to Windsor Castle, the home of Queen Elizabeth.

After identifying himself as a friend of the priest stationed at the barracks, he was welcomed to dinner and drinks where he spent the evening talking about his own military exploits.

He was offered a bed and spent the night and then the next morning was promptly arrested.

Apparently this man was not a priest, simply an impostor looking for a good time… and what tipped off the soldiers something might be amiss is that during the evening he had claimed to be have been a military ejection seat test pilot.

The man did not belong.

He was an impostor.

Spotting impostors has become increasing difficult thanks to technology.

There are websites dedicated to creating virtually fool-proof Fake IDs for teenagers who hope to imbibe in forbidden activities… all for the price of $100 or more.

We now have a scientific term for those who feel as though they are not as smart or accomplished as other people thing they are: impostor syndrome is the feeling that you don’t belong because you don’t really measure up to the way people talk about you or the expectations they have of you.

This is just the personal stuff.

Add in all the Fake News being cranked on by conservative and liberal media and you get the sense that it’s impossible to know what is true anymore.

Increased feelings of isolation and loneliness contribute to a sense a global impostor syndrome: we aren’t sure of anything anymore.

We aren’t sure if we belong anymore.

How do we know the next guy talking to us in the barracks isn’t a priest?

And how do we know we aren’t the impostor?

How do you know you belong to Jesus?

Which brings us to the question of this morning: How do you know that you belong to Jesus?

How can you be certain that you are God’s child?

We’ve spent the past few weeks in our series asking the question: Hey Alexa, where is Jesus?

And we’ve answered this question a couple of different ways so far: baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The Sacraments.

We’re going to spend the next couple of weeks asking the question behind the question: How do we know that Jesus can be found in baptism and the Lord’s Supper?

And how can we be certain that Jesus is doing in baptism and in the Supper what he says he will do?

All these questions.

We’ll start with where we tend to answer these questions, being good American Christians.

There are two ways we’ve been told that it’s possible to be certain that we are going to heaven when we die.

And I’ll say right up front that I almost never talk about our salvation in terms of going to heaven when we die because 1) the point about salvation is not heaven, the point is Jesus and 2) our ultimate landing place is the new heavens and new earth, which is a bit different than the way heaven is typically explained.

How do we think we know?

But we’re not going to talk about that this morning.

Anyhow… the first way we know we’re going to heaven is

Works

Feelings

Decisions

works.

Our good works prove that we are saved.

Our good works prove that we know Jesus.

The problem with that being our certainty… where is the emphasis?

Can I be trusted?

Can my works be trusted?

No.

They can’t be trusted to tell me whether or not I belong to Jesus.

If my works are the barometer… all of those same works can be done by an atheist.

Or a Muslim.

My works are no better than their works.

The works are the same.

They can’t be proof.

feelings.

Our feelings prove that we are saved.

Especially feelings as we worship.

Just like good works, there’s nothing wrong with feelings.

But like good works, what happens when these things go missing?

What happens when the elated feeling you felt in worship goes away?

How do you know you can trust your feelings?

decisions.

This is the biggie.

My decision.

That day that I chose Jesus.

I point to that and I say, yes, I’m in.

I know I belong.

That’s my ID card.

It proves I belong.

I said the sinner’s prayer, I raised my hand, I chose Jesus.

All of my assurance of salvation comes from that decision I made in order to get saved.

That sounds biblical.

But at the end of the day… where’s the focus?

Me.

My decision.

Thank my lucky stars I decided to say the magical words in the sinner’s prayer.

We cannot trust our feelings or our good works or our decisions.

Again… who is the point of all of it?

What’s the reference point for all of it?

That’s the critical question here.

What do all of those we’ve listed have in common?

They all start with “me”.

We are taught to trust ourselves.

We are the center of our base of knowledge.

Our experience and our feelings and our decisions become the center for our entire existence.

We do this with Jesus.

Our focus is turned in on ourselves.

We are taught to do this.

So we use the Bible to attempt to create all sorts of standards to live by.

We come up with Bible-based checklists.

We measure our decisions, our works and our feelings by the checklist.

And if the checklist all checks out, hey… we’re good with God, we’re headed to heaven.

But we are not trust worthy.

On the best day, the Bible says, the best we can muster is just nothing but a bunch of dirty rags.

You know how we know?

You know how we belong?

You know how we know we are not impostors?

The Word

We read it moments ago.

It’s really very, very simple:

The Word.

The Word.

Jesus himself and the Word he gives.

But it’s not the Word that we manipulate into giving us behavior checklists that somehow tell us we are good with God.

We’re going to use a different kind of checklist that doesn’t involve us.

That doesn’t center itself on what we “do”.