ephesians 1 – ptr. vetty gutierrez – 10am morning service

EPHESIANSMarch to June Series

I AM ___

WHO DO YOU THINK

YOU ARE?

What is your IDENTITY?

It’s the one thing that changes everything,

because when you know who you are, then you

know what to do. If you don’t know who you are,

then you don’t know what to do.

How do you see YOURSELF?

How does your IDENTITY alter

and affect your DESTINY?

WHO DOES GOD SAY

YOU ARE?

GENESIS 1:26-28

26 Then God said, “Let us makemankind in our image, in ourlikeness, so that they mayrule over the fish in the sea and thebirds in the sky, over the livestockand all the wild animals, and overall the creatures that move alongthe ground.”

GENESIS 1:26-28

27 So God created mankind inHis own image, in the imageof God He created them;male and female He createdthem.

GENESIS 1:26-2828 God blessed them and said tothem, “Be fruitful and increasein number; fill the earth andsubdue it. Rule over the fish inthe sea and the birds in the skyand over every living creaturethat moves on the ground.”

GENESIS 5:1

1 This is the writtenaccount of Adam’s familyline. When God createdmankind, He made themin the likeness of God.

Who are you? God says, “I’ve made you in

my image and likeness.”

That’s your identity. There’s the identity

statement.

FOUR THINGS THAT

GOD SAYS WHO YOU ARE:

1YOU ARE A REVELATION

RECEIVER.

That God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit have been

communicating with one another forever, and they make us in their image and likeness,

and they make us as revelation receivers. They speak to us - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do.

God speaks to us.

You don’t have to determine or decide what your identity is

because God has already chosen to

reveal it.

You must be in the Word of God and have the Word of God in you, because you

were created as a revelation receiver. God wants to speak to you through His Word. He

wants to hear from you through prayer.

2YOU ARE HUMBLY

HONORED.

Humility, the root of which literally means to know your place, is

to know that your place is under God, but above lower creation.

3YOU ARE MADE TO

MIRROR.

WE WERE MADE TO MIRROR.

aGod is loving, and when we love, we reflect His love to

others.

bGod is truthful. When we tell the truth, we

reflect His truthfulness to others.

cGod is forgiving. When

we forgive others, we’re reflecting His grace and

His mercy to others.

dGod is generous, andwhen we’re generous,we’re reflecting Hisgenerosity to others.

So many of our identity decisions are about, “How will this make me look?”

That’s the wrong question.

“How could they see God?” That’s the right

question.

That is why Jesus is called the image of the INVISIBLE GOD.

Everything that could be seen about God’s character is made visible on the earth

through the life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. He is the image of the invisible God. If we’ve seen Him, we’ve seen the Father.

3YOU ARE BLESSED

TO BE

A BLESSING.

Adam and Eve had not done anything.

He just blessed them.They didn’t earn their

blessing.

aOur God is a God who begins with

blessing.

bOur God is a God

who likes to bless His people.

cOur God is a God who is filled with grace, and filled with love, and filled with mercy, and in an

infinitely perfect way, far superior to mine, He’s a Father who adoresHis kids and would do anything

for them.

IN FCC, WE ARE BLESSED TO BLESS.

aWhatever God

teaches you is so you might teach others.

bWhatever God gives you is that you might

give to others.

cWhatever God does for you is so that you could learn to do that

for others.

TWO THINGS THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OUR IDENTITY:

1YOUR IDENTITY IS

RECEIVED,

IT IS NOT ACHIEVED.

Adam and Eve didn’t do anything to obtain this identity.God made them, God spoke to them, God defined them, and God blessed them. It’s all God.

Your identity is not achieved, it’s received. It’s not something you do, it’s something God does. It’s not what you earn, it’s what He

gives.

2YOU ARE NOT MORE

VALUABLE THAN ANYONE ELSE AND YOU ARE NOT LESS VALUABLE THAN

ANYONE ELSE, AS WELL.

All people equally bear the image and likeness of

God.

One of the great lies is that some people are more valuable than others.

Your net worth has nothing to do

with your self-worth.

WHO DOES SATAN SAY YOU

ARE?

Genesis 3 Satan tells us who he

thinks God is and who he thinks

we are.

An angel who was, according to the Bible, dissatisfied with their identity. Their identity

was created and under God to serve God.

Angels are created as messengers and ministers of God, and the Bible says that

Satan was an angel who became proud in his heart. He

didn’t want to be under God, he wanted to be alongside of God or over God. He didn’t want to

obey God, he wanted to do what he wanted to do.

The Bible says repeatedly that he’s a liar, he’s a deceiver,

and he’s a killer.

GENESIS 3:1

1 Now the serpent was morecrafty than any of the wildanimals the LORD God hadmade. He said to thewoman, “Did God reallysay, ‘You must not eat fromany tree in the garden’?”

But the first thing he does is he questions the

authority of the Word of God.

Satan is always going to question the clarity and

the authority of the Word of God.

GENESIS 3:5

5 “For God knows thatwhen you eat of it youreyes will be opened, andyou will be …”

What?“LIKE GOD”

Satan erodes their confidence in the Word of God and

lies to them.

IDENTITY IDOLATRY

EZEKIEL 14:44 Therefore speak to them and tellthem, ‘This is what theSovereign LORD says: When any ofthe Israelites set up idols in theirhearts and put a wicked stumblingblock before their faces and then goto a prophet, I the LORD will answerthem myself in keeping with theirgreat idolatry.

1Idolatry is when we take

a good thing and we make it a God thing, which is a bad thing.

2Idolatry is when we take a created thing and we put it in the

Creator’s place.

3Idolatry is when we live for something or someone other than

Jesus.

4Idolatry is when our identity, our

hope, our joy, who we want to be, and who we want others to

perceive us to be is something achieved, by us or others, and not

received from Him.

5The Bible says it has two

categories: worshippers and

idolaters.

ROMANS 1:25

25 They exchanged thetruth about God for alie, and worshiped andserved createdthings rather than theCreator—who is foreverpraised. Amen.

DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF

I. D. O. L. S.

Idols make promises they never

keep. Lies never bring life, they only

bring death.

ITEMS

So, you’re your own idol. All you care

about is what you think about yourself.

DUTIES

Again, idols can be good things in a God place, which is a bad thing.

If your identity is in your duty, you try to find your

thing.

WHO YOU ARE DETERMINES WHAT

YOU DO.

OTHERS

“If you will idolize, you will demonize.”

PROVERBS 29:25

25 Fear of man willprove to be a snare,but whoever trusts inthe LORD is kept safe.

LONGINGS

SUFFERINGS

UNDERSTANDING YOUR IDENTITY

CRISIS

Most of us don’t even know we have an identity idolatry

until we have a crisis.

1You live in fear that

your identity idolatry will fail you or be taken

from you.

2Your identity idolatry

crumbles under the weight of being in God’s place in

your life.

3When your identity idolatry begins to

crumble, you become panicked.

JESUS AND HIS PEOPLE

That’s all that ultimately matters in the end, and the only

thing that will be together forever is

Jesus and His people.