How Do I Find My Identity?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, how do I find my identity, my self-identity?
00:00:08.000 | Directly or indirectly, we get that essential question all the time in the inbox.
00:00:12.000 | Take, for example, this email from Nick, a listener and a
00:00:16.000 | former collegiate volleyball player. He gave his life to competitive
00:00:20.000 | sports in college, and he discovered, as every athlete eventually does,
00:00:24.000 | that his career would end. And it ended
00:00:28.000 | sooner than Nick expected. And when it did, he fell
00:00:32.000 | into a season of darkness. He had failed to achieve his
00:00:36.000 | athletic goals, and he hadn't prepared himself for the abrupt end, unprepared
00:00:40.000 | to be separated from the competition, from his school, and
00:00:44.000 | from his teammates. So how does a serious athlete like Nick
00:00:48.000 | find his self-identity now? Well, self-identity
00:00:52.000 | was a theme in John Piper's very first message in his famous sermon series
00:00:56.000 | on the Book of Romans. Many of you know about that sermon series.
00:01:00.000 | Pastor John preached through all of Romans in 225 sermons over the course
00:01:04.000 | of eight years and eight months, spanning from the spring of 1998
00:01:08.000 | to the end of 2006. All 225 of those rich messages
00:01:12.000 | are collected under the series title, "The Greatest Letter Ever
00:01:16.000 | Written." As we recently heard, Romans is a
00:01:20.000 | key to his own self-identity. And in sermon number one
00:01:24.000 | of his series, number one, he started with verse one of Romans.
00:01:28.000 | That's all he covered in the first sermon. To cover the
00:01:32.000 | Apostle Paul's identity. And from it, our
00:01:36.000 | identity. Here he is in 1998 reading that first
00:01:40.000 | verse. Paul, a bond
00:01:44.000 | servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle,
00:01:48.000 | set apart for the gospel of
00:01:52.000 | God. Now, there are three phrases there. We'll look
00:01:56.000 | at them. And I want you to see the man. I want you to see his letter. I want you to see
00:02:00.000 | his God. And just by way
00:02:04.000 | of application, right off the bat, you know, sometimes you read a verse and
00:02:08.000 | even before the exposition comes, it says a word
00:02:12.000 | to you so personally that it sort of
00:02:16.000 | skips over the exposition. And I just have a feeling that
00:02:20.000 | the word that just blurts itself
00:02:24.000 | out here is, it isn't who Paul is.
00:02:28.000 | It's whose Paul is. You see
00:02:32.000 | that in those three phrases? Servant, one,
00:02:36.000 | bought by another, a called one, called by
00:02:40.000 | another, a set apart one, set apart by another. There's
00:02:44.000 | somebody else in this verse. Right?
00:02:48.000 | Paul looks like he's what this verse is about. This verse
00:02:52.000 | is not about Paul. The one who bought him, the one who called him,
00:02:56.000 | the one who set him apart, there's somebody lurking behind this man.
00:03:00.000 | The big questions in life are not, "Who am I?"
00:03:04.000 | The big question in life is, "Whose am I?"
00:03:08.000 | You've got to answer that question, "Whose are you?" "Whose
00:03:12.000 | are you?" That's the issue. We get all, in the 20th century,
00:03:16.000 | we get all bent out of shape about self-identity and stuff. "Who am
00:03:20.000 | I and my worth and my esteem and my value and all that?"
00:03:24.000 | Man, when you read the Bible, the huge
00:03:28.000 | issue is right relation
00:03:32.000 | with God and whom you belong to.
00:03:36.000 | Whose you are.
00:03:40.000 | So let that be the question hanging over this verse.
00:03:44.000 | Phrase number one, "A bondservant of
00:03:48.000 | Christ Jesus."
00:03:52.000 | Now we religious types who read the Bible for dozens of years,
00:03:56.000 | we've got to realize what a shocking
00:04:00.000 | phrase that is. We've got to decide here if this man's
00:04:04.000 | crazy. Jesus Christ, according to
00:04:08.000 | Tacitus, secular witness, as well as all
00:04:12.000 | the Christian witnesses, as well as Josephus, said
00:04:16.000 | Jesus died 25 years ago.
00:04:20.000 | He's dead. He's not
00:04:24.000 | master of anybody. And Paul says,
00:04:28.000 | "He's my master and he's alive."
00:04:32.000 | I am a slave
00:04:36.000 | to the living Christ Jesus. So you've
00:04:40.000 | got to decide now at the beginning of this book, are these the
00:04:44.000 | rantings of a madman who thinks people die and then pop up out of the grave
00:04:48.000 | three days later and then become masters of people?
00:04:52.000 | Is he a crazy man? Or did possibly
00:04:56.000 | that happen? And that's reality.
00:05:00.000 | And all the people in the world who ignore that
00:05:04.000 | or mock that are unreality. You've got to
00:05:08.000 | decide this. These are huge issues.
00:05:12.000 | Is he crazy to call himself
00:05:16.000 | the bondservant of Christ Jesus?
00:05:20.000 | What does that mean to be the bondservant?
00:05:24.000 | It means he's bought by Jesus, owned by Jesus,
00:05:28.000 | ruled by Jesus. I'll show you where I get that. 1 Corinthians
00:05:32.000 | 7, 23, he says, "You were bought
00:05:36.000 | by a price, with a price. Do not become
00:05:40.000 | slaves of men."
00:05:44.000 | So to be a slave of somebody is to have been
00:05:48.000 | bought by them. So he calls himself a slave or a bondservant of
00:05:52.000 | Christ, which means Christ bought him. And that's what he says, "Christ bought
00:05:56.000 | me. And since he bought me, he owns me."
00:06:00.000 | If you're a Christian this morning, you are doubly owned by God.
00:06:04.000 | You are owned by virtue of creation and you are owned by virtue of
00:06:08.000 | purchase. You are doubly your...
00:06:12.000 | doubly not your own. Doubly his. He owns
00:06:16.000 | you. He can do with you as he pleases.
00:06:20.000 | Which leads us to the third thing it means, namely that he
00:06:24.000 | rules you and that what you want to do is please
00:06:28.000 | him. Where do I get that? Galatians 1, 10.
00:06:32.000 | "Am I striving to please men?"
00:06:36.000 | "If I were still trying to please men,"
00:06:40.000 | Paul says, "I would not be the bondservant
00:06:44.000 | of Christ." "If I were trying
00:06:48.000 | to please men, I would not be the
00:06:52.000 | bondservant of Christ. But I am the bondservant
00:06:56.000 | of Christ, therefore I don't give a rip about pleasing
00:07:00.000 | men unless my
00:07:04.000 | pleasing them might lead them to please my master."
00:07:08.000 | Which is what Romans 15 says. "Let us seek to please one another
00:07:12.000 | for edification that we might glorify God
00:07:16.000 | through bringing others to him." But what's driving this man is
00:07:20.000 | a radical Christ orientation because Christ
00:07:24.000 | bought him, owns him, and rules him now and all
00:07:28.000 | of his thinking is, "How can I please him? How can
00:07:32.000 | I honor him? How can I magnify him?" And what we want to create
00:07:36.000 | in Bethlehem, and I know that the vast majority of you are with me on
00:07:40.000 | this, what we want is a church of people who
00:07:44.000 | are radically oriented on pleasing Christ, honoring
00:07:48.000 | Christ, magnifying Christ, and letting the chips fall
00:07:52.000 | where they will instead of being what most people are, namely
00:07:56.000 | second-handers. Get that phrase from I.M. Rand
00:08:00.000 | who wrote the novel Atlas Shrugged, who despised
00:08:04.000 | second-handers. That is people who have no
00:08:08.000 | vision and values of their own for which they live triumphantly
00:08:12.000 | and are always looking over their shoulder wondering, "I wonder what they think about this, and I wonder
00:08:16.000 | what they think about this, and I wonder what they think about this," and they live their whole lives
00:08:20.000 | second-handedly, always trying to get into other people's
00:08:24.000 | good graces and be liked and stroked and praised
00:08:28.000 | and complimented and paid. It's a
00:08:32.000 | horrible way to live. And Paul said,
00:08:36.000 | "I am owned by another. I have
00:08:40.000 | been bought and I am ruled, and I have one person to
00:08:44.000 | please, Christ, and he has revealed his word
00:08:48.000 | in me, and that's my life. Let's be like that."
00:08:52.000 | Owned by another. Amen. The foundation of our self-identity
00:08:56.000 | is not who am I, but whose am I.
00:09:00.000 | That was from John Piper's April 26, 1998 sermon title,
00:09:04.000 | "The Author of the Greatest Letter Ever Written." It's a wonderful clip,
00:09:08.000 | one that my wife found and brought to my attention. If you have a John Piper
00:09:12.000 | sermon clip, email me your name, hometown, the sermon title, and the time stamp
00:09:16.000 | of where the clip happens in the audio. You can tell me what stands out to you in that email
00:09:20.000 | and put the word "clip" in the subject line and send it to me at
00:09:24.000 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's our email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:09:30.000 | As you can see here, there's so much gold to
00:09:34.000 | glean in the Bible when we study it phrase by phrase.
00:09:38.000 | So if I want to slow down and study something in my Bible with greater focus,
00:09:42.000 | what's a good Bible commentary to use?
00:09:46.000 | In fact, are there any good commentaries that cover the entire Bible?
00:09:50.000 | That's a great question, and it's up next when Pastor John returns.
00:09:54.000 | What are the best whole Bible commentaries available?
00:09:58.000 | I'm Tony Reinke. We'll see you Friday.
00:10:02.000 | [no audio]
00:10:06.000 | [no audio]
00:10:10.000 | (Thanks for watching)