Know Who You Are

From John chapter 13, verses 2 to 5. And during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with a towel with which he was girded. Knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, that he had come from God and was going to God.

In other words, Jesus knew who he was. And, you know, before somebody says, yeah, well, he was a son of God, of course he knew who he was. He knew who he was by the power of the Spirit.

Exactly the same way you and I need to know who we are. But that's the rub. The reason we all have such a hard time laying aside our garments and actually getting down and washing feet is because we're still trying to figure out who we are.

Most of us have a very, very shaky idea of our own identity. We're like a man who wakes up on a plane, looks out the window and wonders where he is and how he got there, and doesn't even remember his name, can't decide where he started out or has no idea where this plane is going to land, and is hoping with all his heart that when he gets to the destination there will be somebody in the terminal that will look familiar and help to bring it all back to him. To be poor in spirit, to be meek and lowly of heart, does not mean that we're supposed to be a bunch of groveling idiots who don't know who they are.

Does not mean that we're supposed to forever have an identity crisis. Rather it means that we ought to be secure enough in here as to who we are that we can joyfully, cheerfully admit our desperate need of God's mercy. Many believers, instead of finding themselves by losing themselves in God, are losing themselves by forever trying to find themselves in the eyes of men.

Just like the rest of the world. The whole world is like a giant party game. When we were kids, you know, we went to parties and you'd tie a balloon, you know, on a string.

Maybe they still do it. You know, and everybody runs around trying to break the other guy's balloon. You know, and that's about what our identity is.

And your identity is forever blowing up in your face and you have to find a new one because we build our sense of who we are on men's opinions instead of on the Spirit of God. Here's this woman who a few years ago entered into marriage, overflowing with joy, strikingly beautiful. But now, she has three kids, a husband who watches ABC's Wide World of Sports all the time.

Sickness, boredom, the walls are crowding in on her. You ask her if she's the ravishing bride that went down the aisle a few years ago and she'll laugh in your face. And take a look at her husband.

There was a time when he had wonderful plans for his life. But now his personality looks like it's just been spin-dried. You know, boring job, monotonous home life, grouchy wife, whining children.

His only escape is football, hockey, baseball, basketball, golf, and whatever else there is. He wants to, but now he's lost any idea of who he is. His mind is shriveling like a prune, getting smaller every day.

And these scintillating personalities that we see on our TVs and read about in Time Magazine whose lives look like they must be very interesting, are most of them, you can be sure, having the same problem. Chasing around, trying to discover themselves, trying one technique after another to find out who they are, panicking about their own identity, empty inside. Ever since the fall of man, human beings have tried to find out who they are by looking at their fellows.

Cain looks at his brother Abel with envy that leads to murder because Cain's opinion of himself depends on how he stacks up with Abel. So he kills him. You know, and this has gone on between men, women, races, nations, down to this day.

And it'll get worse. And when... What was his name? Byron and the three men who rebelled against Moses in the wilderness with 250 others did this. You remember they said, in effect, Moses, who do you think you are? You're no better than the rest of us.

And of course Moses never said he was. But they were getting their idea of who they were by looking at Moses. And that's the way it goes, right down to this moment.

You know, and if our sense of who we are hinges on that, we're in trouble. In the kingdom of God, our identity, our sense of who we are hinges not on how we stack up with this one or that one, but our sense of who we are comes up from within. It comes from our relationship with the true and living God.

And if it isn't that way, we're in trouble because the road that you and I are called to travel outwardly does not give us much reassurance. We're not going to have crowds, you know, waving banners in front of us and bands playing as we walk down the street, or somebody even patting us on our head, you know, like they did when we were children, telling us how nice we are. But, you know, if we don't know who we are and don't keep knowing who we are, things will get so rough that we're going to get swallowed up in the monotony and the boredom and the opposition until finally we are easy prey for any lying spirit that comes along.

And this is precisely what happens to many believers. They start out running well until things get hard, you know, and no appreciation comes from the world around them, and success seems to elude them. And so finally now they're just waiting for any demon to come along and tell them how nice they are.

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, that he had come from God and was going to God, rose up from supper, laid aside his garments, girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel with which he was girded. This man, down on his knees, naked but for this towel, washing the feet of his friends, the lowly act of a slave, was able to do this because there was no doubt in his mind as to who he was.

You cannot serve in this way if you're insecure in your heart as to who you are. Paul, for this gospel I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, and therefore I suffer as I do. But I'm not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I'm sure that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.

Paul was able to suffer in ways that are beyond our comprehension without losing his mind because Paul knew who he was, who was the anchor of his life, where he was going. This was clear. And if you and I are going to make it through the storms and through those eerie calms that come down over our lives, where everything is nothing but a monotonous boredom, without having to look to our fellows for reassurance, without having to try to get a little cheer from some lying spirit, we are going to have to know who we are, not as some little idea that was attracted to us that we read in a book, and not as some idea that we picked up in a sermon somewhere, but we are going to have to know who we are from here, ourselves.

It's our responsibility to continuously know and all the time renew our knowledge of who we are under God. Don't depend on somebody else to give that to you. For instance, it's your responsibility to know and keep knowing that you are a redeemed child of God.

You've got to get that from in here. You're not going to get it from out there. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that they might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So, through God, you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir.

A son of God, male or female. The reason the masculine is used there was because in those days it was the male who was the one who got the inheritance, not the female. But in the kingdom of God, male, female, we are sons.

Daughters, whatever you want to call us. Bearing the nature of God, and because the nature of God has been put into you, you are able now to conquer the old nature that has made a mockery of your will and a mess of your life all these years. And the proof that you are a son or a daughter of God is the presence of the spirit of God in your heart, right now, crying, Abba, Father.

Crying out to God. It's there. And that's enough if you're willing to cultivate it.

Any man, any woman who bases his or her life on that truth, that they are now sons and daughters of God, will see the confirmation of that truth in all their circumstances, in the midst of whatever problems they may have. And they will begin to talk like sons of God, think like daughters of God, pray like sons and daughters of God, conquer like children of God. But if you're going to live that way, it's your responsibility to continuously know who you are.

You've got to know that. It's your responsibility to know and to continue to know that you are a chosen vessel. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain.

Long before you ever heard of Jesus, he already picked you out. And now he has ordained that you should go and bring forth fruit. And notice, by the way, that he did not choose us because we were so likely.

You know, we're so spiritually inclined, so kind-hearted, and so gifted and talented. That's why God picked us out. Uh-uh.

You know why God chose us? So that he could manifest his mercy. Evidence of his mercy. If he can save us, he can save anybody.

And man, if he can use us, there's nobody that he can't use. That's what it means to be a chosen vessel. Nothing to brag about.

Well now, how in the world can a chosen vessel ever have an identity crisis? If you're a chosen vessel, isn't that enough? The chosen vessel will never have an identity crisis as long as it looks at the one who chose it. But the minute it gets its eyes off the one who chose it and starts looking around at the other chosen vessels and measuring and comparing and weighing, that's when the crisis starts. Like Peter says to Jesus, just before the departure of the Lord, Lord, what shall this man do? John over here, what's going to happen to him? And Jesus says, if I want John to remain until I come back, what business is that of yours? You follow me.

It's not Peter's responsibility to worry about what John's is. Concentrate on Peter's job. And you concentrate on that work for which you were chosen and ordained and leave your brother and your sister's work alone.

And you'll never have an identity crisis. It's up to you to know and to continue to know that you have been called into a royal priesthood. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you might declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

So what does the royal priesthood do? It does everything that the great high priest does. It worships the living God day and night. And it brings the life of God, the redemptive life of God, to bear upon that needy world out there.

And above all other things, it prays. It intercedes. And the one place where you will for sure remember again who you are before the eyes of God is in prayer, especially intercessory prayer, as you pray for people by name, lifting them up before the throne of God.

Unworthy as you are, nevertheless you do this, you will find out for sure that you are indeed a priest of God. And you will see, you will see, blessing flowing down from the throne upon those very people for whom you pray. And finally, it's your responsibility, not somebody else's, to know and to continue to know that you are on your way to glory.

Beloved, we are now God's children. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

And so we see our Lord, knowing that he had come from God and was going to God, knowing where he was going, he was able to look through the awful agony which lay right ahead of him in the path to the blinding glory that was up the way of it. And he was able to pursue that and go through. And if we lose track of what our goal is, the real goal, our destination, that glory toward which we move, we will immediately be sucked in by some false goal or any little sidetrack that the enemy can dangle in front of our minds.

The glory, my friends, for which we were made, the goodness our heart has longed for since the day we were born, the beauty of the living God to which the whole universe sings his praises in harmony day and night, is going to be visible to our eyes. We will see glory. And we will hear unspeakably beautiful music.

And we will taste delights that are beyond our imagination. And the proof that these things wait for us up the road is that the foretaste of all these things is now ours through the Holy Spirit. But it's up to us, nobody else, up to us to continue to remember where we're heading, where our goal really is, to keep our eyes on that glory.

Your sense of who you are is directly connected with your sense of where you're going. And if I forget that I'm a pilgrim moving through this world in the service of God toward that world in the service of God, then I forget who I am. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, that he had come from God and was going to God, rose up from supper, laid aside his garments, girded himself with a towel.

And you and I, knowing that we have been redeemed as sons and daughters of God, that we are chosen vessels, that we are a royal priesthood, and that we are on our way to glory, can also now lay aside our garments, get down on our knees, and start washing feet. And keep right on washing feet until Jesus comes back. God help us to know who we are as we leave this place today and to continuously keep knowing who we are until the day dawns and the night is passed forever.

Let's pray. We're asking that this day, Lord God, you would deliver us from the vanity and the futility of trying to establish ourselves in some permanent way before the eyes of men. We just ask that through the Holy Spirit's power today, every man and woman and young person in this place that opens the heart to you, Father God, will be given firm confidence that they are yours.

Children of the one who owns the universe, and that they will be delivered forevermore, Heavenly Father, from depending upon human opinion. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.