 You can open your Bibles with me this morning to Romans chapter six. I'm gonna get to several different scriptures before we get there. But this is part four of what I've been teaching on called When God Is Your Father. And today we're gonna be talking about this, that when God is your father, two things happen that are very significant that we just have witnessed right before our eyes. When God is your father, your identity is defined and your value is affirmed. When God becomes your father, your identity becomes defined and your value is affirmed. You see, one of the greatest longings of the human heart and one of the most, I believe, difficult issues of our culture that we're facing in our day is that people are asking questions and one of the major questions and it's an internal longing, it's an internal question. It's this, it's who am I? And what am I here for and what is my value? These are some of the questions that people wrestle with. Who am I really? And one of the central aspects that's completely appropriate because the gospel is good news is this, is that not only does God and God alone have the ability to define for us who we are, but he's also the one that through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross has fully affirmed our value and redeemed us from our broken identities and given us a brand new identity and it's not based on a meritocracy, it's not based on us achieving anything, it's based solely on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and God's mercy. And that's the good news is that in a world where we're all searching for who we are, you know, for many, many years in my family, if I had time I would show you some family pictures and tell you a little bit more background, but in my family's history, especially on my mom's side we had all these rumors that we had Native American in us. And so like I grew up hearing all of these stories about oh, your great, great grandmother was a Shawnee, full-blooded Shawnee Indian and that kinda come through the family line and so we talk about that a lot. And so several years ago, maybe four or five years ago, I got one of those kits, the 23 and Me genetic DNA testing. Anybody done those things where you spit into that vial and you're like, this is nasty and you ship it off and somebody in a terrible lab job takes your spit and evaluates your DNA. And anyways, I got back to report and no shock, like I'm 95% Northern European. I mean, shocker. I mean, I mean, I looked apart. Irish, Scottish, English, all in the middle of a big civil war in the middle of our family. But then as I'm scrolling down the list, there was a little bit of German, there was a little bit of French, surprising. I was 3% Ashkenazi Jew. I was like, I'm part of the tribe, baby. All right, didn't see that one coming, but I'll embrace it. But there was absolutely no Native American Indian in our genetic code. In fact, I had like 0.3 Portuguese and Spanish. I'm like, I'm more Spanish than I am Indian or native. And I broke it to my mom. I'm like, mom, just to let you know and my younger brother who's like really captivated by I'm like, there are all those stories about us being Native American, they're not true. It's all a lie. Well, here's what I discovered. I discovered because on ancestry.com and 23andMe, they list like important documents, like ancient documents like census polls, birth certificates, weddings, all those kinds of things. What I discovered was a document from the 1800s where one of my relatives living in Illinois wanted to get subsidies from the government. So somehow scammed it to claim that he was Native American and got his name put on a roll. That's my family. That about sums it all up right there. They got their name signed on some line in Southern Illinois in order to get some subsidies. And I'm like, yep, that's as accurate as it gets. So all of these years, I thought I was somebody other than who I really was. And you know what's interesting is I think a lot of us struggle, not just in our family dynamics, because we know our last name, we know our family, we know the good, the bad that comes with that. But there's a deeper level that we're all searching for of who we really are. And more importantly, who we were meant to be. And who we were always meant to be, no matter what kind of background that we come from is we were always meant to have a part of us connected to the heart of God, because we were destined and we were created to be children of God. Sin messed that up. But when God is your father, he alone opens the eyes of your heart and defines for you who your identity is now that you are in Christ Jesus. You see, in order for God to become your father, John chapter one in verse 12 says that to all who received him and believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God, who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. You see, when you are born again, when you believe in Jesus, two things are required for you to enter into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. You have to believe and you have to receive. We believe that Jesus is the Son of God who came to the earth, sinless, spotless man, both fully God and fully man, that he went to the cross of Calvary to pay for the sins of the world, my sin and your sin. And when we do that, he gives us the right to receive sonship or the right to enter into God's family. And when we believe that and we receive Christ, the Bible describes what happens to us as being born again. We experience a second birth into the kingdom of God and more specifically into the family of God. John chapter three, Jesus is having this conversation with a good Jewish Pharisee named Nicodemus. It's in the middle of the night, Nicodemus doesn't want anybody to know that he's asking Jesus of Nazareth questions. And so he comes to him and so this is the original Nic at night. Nicodemus comes to, I'm sorry. But Nicodemus comes to Jesus and he says, what does a man have to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says to him, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus is using language about how we come into the world, how our identity in sin and our broken identities that are fractured self, our fractured soul, our sin-impeded spirit is born the first time. But now Jesus says the way into the kingdom of God is you have to be born again. In fact, in John three, five, he says truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water, that's your first birth. You're born out of your mother. It's born out of water and born of the spirit. You cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That's our first birth. And that which is born of the spirit, that's the second birth. He says, do not marvel that I say to you that you must be born again. So the way that we come into the family of God and God becomes our father is we're born again. We receive him, we believe. And to as many as believe, he gives the ability to become a child of God. So it's not, listen, it's not just about believing in the existence of God. It's about believing in God's way unto salvation, which is his son Jesus. And so when we believe in him and we receive him as our savior, then we're described as going through a new birth experience. It's being born again. It's like coming alive on the inside. God puts his spirit, his life, his identity in us. It's like all those old identities and all the things that we thought were our true identities get exposed at the cross for the fraud that they are. Well, I thought I was an addict or I thought I was enough or I thought I was a good person or I thought I would be able to figure it out. All of those old identities, the generational, the family identities, even the social identities that we identify with because they give us this false sense of belonging. All of them get brought to the foot of the cross and exposed for how weak and how insufficient they really are. And when we believe in Jesus, we go through this experience like being born again and we enter into the kingdom of God and we enter into a relationship with the Father. And when we do that, he defines for us who we are, who we really are. And it's not in ourselves, it's who we are in him. Do you remember when Jesus was beginning his ministry and it says that he went to the Jordan River where his cousin John the Baptist was baptizing and he had him baptize him. And when he baptizes Jesus, it says that the heavens opened up, it says that the Holy Spirit came like a dove and landed and remained on Jesus. Think about that. And a voice came out of heaven that said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Sonship has to be defined and has to be declared by the Father. This is what God does. God says, you're my son, you're my daughter. To as many as received him, to them he gave the ability to become children of God, to be born again. First Peter chapter one three, it says, blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy. According to his great mercy, that he's caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. See now look over at Romans chapter six and when you see in Romans chapter six, beginning in verse three, it's talking about what water baptism is specifically and why it's so important. I know that maybe many of us come from lots of different quote traditional or denominational backgrounds where baptism is actually something that we do as a way of identifying and marking children or infants. And you know, at radiant, one of the things that we do is we dedicate children because we see incredible value in that and that family coming together and making that commitment that we're gonna train up our children and the Lord. But baptism, the reason why we baptize by immersion and we baptize believers is because that we believe that baptism on the other side of our faith is more than just an impartation of grace. It's actually a public funeral and a birth announcement. Look here at Romans chapter six. It says in verse three, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life. Verse five, for if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him. That's our old identity, that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. That's what happens when we're born again. Our old identity is crucified with Christ and now we're raised up with Christ in the newness of life by faith. Now if we have died with Christ, we no longer believe that we will also live with him and we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once and for all but the life that he lives, he lives to God. So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. So what happens at baptism when we're water baptized is first of all, baptism is something we do after we believe, we've declared and we've received. We believed, we've received and now we're called to be water baptized because it is a public declaration. It's an announcement. You see, many of us have gone to funerals and we open that up and we invite people to come and to watch as we bury those who in their death are now being committed to God. But we also show up at showers and hospitals and our family members' homes and church services for dedications, when we're celebrating a new life, baptism is both of those things. See, because when you were born the first time, you were issued a passport and the passport, this is probably one of the most valuable things that as American citizens we own. People around the world wish they had a passport from the United States because of the benefits that goes with that and the freedoms that we have. I mean, all passports are not the same, right? If you had a passport from Pakistan, you might be very proud of your nation and your people, but there are limitations on your citizenship because you are limited by the rights of whatever nation you are a citizen of. There's no other passport in the world, in world history, that people wanted more than an American passport. And so when you open it, it's got my terrible picture on there because everybody knows driver's license and passports are all about humiliating you. Okay, so I've got your picture there, but it's all of your details, your height, the date of issue and the fact that it has the seal of that government. Now here's what I want you to recognize. When you were born the first time, your passport did not say the kingdom of God. It did not say in Christ, what it said was in Adam. What it said was darkness. You were part of the kingdom of darkness and you were limited as a citizen of the kingdom of darkness in the nation of Adam that was under a curse and only the rights and the enslavement to sin were the privileges that that passport gave you. All it did was guaranteed you slavery and death and a curse. But when you are born again, when you receive Christ Jesus as your Lord, God becomes your father. He incorporates you into his family, but he takes your old passport out of the kingdom of darkness and in Adam and he destroys it and he buries it in the waters of baptism and he issues you a brand new passport that says in Christ in the kingdom of God with a brand new name that it never expires with all the rights and the freedoms and the privileges of eternal life, forgiveness, adoption and salvation, healing, provision and his blessing upon your life and it can never be taken away. That's what happens when we're saved. That's what we mean when we're saved. What are we saved from? We're saved from what we were under and now we've been brought in, translated. Which literally means taken out of one and brought into the kingdom of God. And so literally when we just watched, people go down into the waters of baptism. There's nothing holy about this water. It's Kalamazoo water. It's better than some other towns but there's nothing holy about this water but there's something holy in the act of faith, of getting in the water publicly and declaring, you know what, I was dead but now I am alive. I was a citizen of the world and bound under the judgment and the curse of my own sin but Jesus took it and paid it all and has made it possible for me now to become a child of God. I've been born again. I'm a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. And so now I am publicly standing in the water and I'm burying my old man, my old identity. I'm burying him and I'm coming up out of the water just like Jesus came out of the tomb on the third day in the newness of life filled with the spirit, beloved by the Father with a destiny and eternal life and a family called the church and the power of heaven called the Holy Spirit living on the inside of me and nothing can separate me from the love of God. Church, that is why we celebrate when people are baptized. It reminds me of a story that I read years ago about a missionary who went to China. I believe, I may be incorrect, but I believe he was part of Hudson Taylor's inland China mission and he went into the interior of China and as he began to proclaim the gospel from village to village and from town to town and every village there was a chief of the town. If you could influence the chief, the rest of the town, the rest of the village would open up but they'd never heard the gospel before and as he proclaimed the gospel to the chief, the chief was very serious or this leader of the village was very serious in listening to it for many, many days. And after many, many days he said to the missionary, he said, I believe what you are saying, give me 24 hours to prepare to receive this new king. And the missionary thought to himself, he was like, man, this man is taking it very, very seriously. So after 24 hours he came back and the leader of the village said, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready to be baptized. And this missionary had explained to him that we are saved by grace through faith that we believe and then receive but then baptism is our public burial of the old man and the resurrection of the new man. And so this man said, I'm ready to be baptized. And so the missionary was gonna take him down to the river and the leader of this village said, first let me, let me greet my family. And he took his kids and he embraced them and he hugged them and he kissed his wife and he gathered everybody together down and with tears in his eyes, he walked down into the water. And the missionary, so called off guard by this is like, I've never seen anybody so sober about this moment. And the missionary said, now I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Identifying with Christ in his death, his burial, his resurrection. And he put the man down into the water and he held him there. And then he brought him back up and when he brought him back up, the man's face was so shocked because he was under the impression that in order for him to make Jesus Lord, he was going to have to literally die. And yet he was willing to do it. And the very fact that he was brought up, even though he misunderstood it through a translator, the language wasn't clear, he came up and for the rest of his life, he served Jesus. And the reason why he was later asked why he served Jesus so passionately, this village leader was used to be an apostle to other villages and to bring the gospel to other people, groups of China. And he said, because I've already died and been buried once, everything from this day forward is a gift of life from Jesus. Oh, that we would view our identity and our baptism this way. Because this is what happens. It's a watery grave where we bury our old identities. And listen, just like all those years I believed part of my identity was partly Native American. And then I was surprised by some things that were in there and there's all kinds of history in my family lineage just like there probably is in yours. Things that we're proud of and things that we're not. All our earthly identities are buried with Jesus. And we come up not only in the spirit but out of the waters of baptisms and the newness of life with a brand new identity in Christ with the Father speaking over us. This is my beloved son or daughter in whom I'm well pleased. If you were just baptized today the Father is speaking that over you today. That this is my beloved son or daughter in whom I'm well pleased. If Jesus Christ is truly the Lord of your life if you've really been born again and you've repented of your old identities and you've traded them in for your brand new passport in the kingdom of God. You've been born again than what the Father says over you. He doesn't see your past. He doesn't see your stains. He doesn't know about your mistakes any longer. Those have all been washed by the blood of Jesus. All he sees is spotless, holy, blameless son and daughter of the living God. And he speaks blessing over your life. Isn't that good church? It's so good. See, in Christ we're no longer free agents. We're not left to ourselves. That's what a free agent is. In Christ Jesus, we are no longer free agents but we are redeemed. Everybody say redeemed. Redeemed. Redeemed is a word that is in New Testament first century language. When you read it, we understand redeemed like Christian language. Oh, I'm redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. But we don't oftentimes know what redeemed means. When Paul uses the word redeemed, he's thinking about slave markets. He's thinking about people that have been enslaved and indentured and are owned and who have been dragged down to the slave markets and put on a stand and stripped and humiliating fashion naked to be inspected and to be purchased by other people to be enslaved. And according to Paul, this is what happens to us in our own sin, as citizens of darkness, under sin. Our old identities, we're enslaved to sin, to our passions, to that internal fire that burns and combusts that we can't control, that we know is wrong and we don't know how to fix it. It enslaves us and humiliates us and strips us of our human dignity and the image of God that we were created to bear. And here we are in the slave market. In the enemy, the devil knows that we're on a chain, that we're on a tether, and that he has legal right in our sin to abuse us and to take advantage of us and to deceive us and to manipulate us. But what happens when one man comes to the slave market and he sees a broken, scarred, worn out, abused slave? And he says, how much? And the answer is, your life. And the man who comes down to the slave market says, I'll pay it. And he instead takes the slave off of the stand and he allows his own very wealthy garments to be stripped off of him in humiliating fashion and to be placed on the stand and to be abused and to be mocked and ridiculed and to be murdered, all so that the slave could be set free. That transaction is to be redeemed. And when the Bible calls you and I in Christ, it means we're not our own. This is part of our identity. We are not our own. In 1 Corinthians, chapter six, Paul is writing to the church filled with people that came out of paganism and idolatry and immorality and great wealth and influence in a Greco-Roman culture. They also were people that were very familiar with this language because they had their own slaves and many of them were slaves or they were familiar with the slave markets. And so when Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 60 says, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? In other words, you've been born again. You are not your own. Wait a second. The world says you do you or be your best version of yourself or do it yourself or self-improvement. But the Bible says you, this is to Christians are not your own for you were bought with a price. The New Testament language of you were bought with a price is you were redeemed. In other words, Jesus paid the price to buy you, to redeem you, to set you free and to make you fully alive. You see, that's what happens when our God becomes our father is he changes our identity, he defines our identity and then he reveals to us our identity and affirms our value. This is the beautiful thing about Christianity church. It's not about a religious construct only of just here's a bunch of rules. Now you do them. There's God's law, there's God's standards and there's God's guidelines. Absolutely. But we're not required to do them in our own strength. God actually saves us and redeems us and puts his own life on the inside of us after he's exchanged his own life for us. And he tells us what our value is. Turn over into Bibles to Ephesians chapter one real quickly. Ephesians chapter one, this is one of the most powerful chapters in the entire New Testament. This is Paul's Magnum Opus chapter about our identity in Christ. And in Ephesians chapter one, Paul writes blessed, blessed be the God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places even as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him in love for he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us. New King James says in which he has accepted us in the beloved in whom we have redemption. There it is. And what's the price of the redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us. Ha! If you memorize any few verses in the New Testament you need to memorize those. Blessed be the God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. I mean, memorize this. Get it deep on the inside of you. And you say, well, why do I need to memorize it? Because it's who you are. It's your passport. If you are a child of God, this is your passport. Because let me tell you, there are a lot of Christians. There are a lot of people who believe in Jesus Christ who have been born again, even been baptized who are walking through this life with old passports. You don't realize your new passport's been issued. Everything's changed. Your citizenship is different. Your citizens are the kingdom of God. Philippians says that your citizens are the kingdom of God. It says in 1 Peter that you're foreigners and strangers living in exile here in this world. This is not our home. But there are a lot of us still walking around with old passports that say kingdom of darkness, slave, curse, death. A lot of old pictures in our old passports of how we used to look that are affecting the way that we're living today. What did Paul say? We come up out of the water in our new identity wise so we can walk in the newness of life. In other words, he wants us to live differently. Listen, when you got a brand new identity, everything changes. Just sit right back and let me, you know, it's like a fresh prince of Bella. Let me tell you about a prince who lived in Bel Air. But down, but down, down, down, down. Went to live with my auntie and uncle in Bel Air. I don't even remember the lyrics anymore. It's been so long. But you think about the change of identity. What if we're walking around with our old passports? And so every time we get into a situation where we're like, I'm struggling with my value. Do I mean anything to anybody? All you have to do if you wonder your value, just look at the cross. What was the price of your redemption? Jesus' blood? For you? What does this blood say about you? Better things than anything out of your past. Ephesians one tells us this about our new identity. It says, we're chosen by God, we're not tolerated. You're now holy and blameless. You're not stained by sin anymore. You've been adopted into a family. You've not been rejected and left as an orphan any longer. You're accepted, not rejected. You're redeemed no longer a slave. And the price, the price that was paid for you, the value, Jesus' blood, God's own son. And God willingly paid it. And at the end of the day, what does God give to us? He's not lavished. He's not poured out judgment, condemnation, anger, frustration. It says no. Think about these words in verse eight. God has lavished his love on us. It's lavished, not sprinkled, not rationed. He's lavished his love on you. When God is your father, he's the only one who can define for us who we really are. And to affirm our value, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. Do you know that if you are in Christ, God's no longer looking at you through your good days or your bad days, through your best efforts. He's not waiting on you to earn anything. It's all been paid for. He sees you now through the rose-killer glasses of Jesus' blood. And when he sees you, he sees Jesus. When he sees you, he sees spotless. When he sees you, he sees forgiven. When he sees you, he doesn't see the pauper with an old passport. He sees the prince or the princess seated with Christ in heavenly places, with robes of righteousness on, with a ring of the family on your finger, and with a new way of living sandals on your feet, and a sword of the spirit in your hand, your name written in the Lamb's Book of Life, an internal destiny before you, and nothing in this world, nothing above, nothing beneath, nothing in your past, nothing in the future, not in heaven, not in hell, not in your own mind can separate you ever from his love. And that is the good news of the gospel. I want you to stand with me if you would all across this room. Second Corinthians chapter five and verse 17 says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. All things are gone. And behold, all things have been made new. All of this is from God, a new creation, which means the old creation's done. Who we were before is put away, but a brand new identity, a brand new beginning, a brand new future is found in Jesus. This morning I want to invite our prayer team down to the front, make their way up along the front, and I'm gonna pray and dismiss here in just a moment, but before I do that, I wanna just say to all of us, you may have come today, you may be here in church, it's your first time or maybe this is all new to you, but I want you to know this, the same Jesus who died for the sins of those who you just watched get baptized today is the same Jesus who died so that you could receive eternal life. He's the same Jesus who made a way for anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord. What's required of me that I believe and that I receive to as many as believed in him, to them he gave the ability to become children, the right to become children of God. You can become a child of God today. God can become your father, not because you've earned it, but because Jesus has paid for it. If you believe, the next step is to receive that, and I'm gonna pray today, and we always open up the altars for those who have prayer needs, and if you are here today and you have a need of prayer, we invite you to come after we pray and dismiss, but you may be here today and say, I need most a relationship with God. I want my sins to be forgiven, I want a new identity in Christ. What do I do with that? First, believe it, and then in a moment when we dismiss, come and receive it. We're gonna invite you, if you are here today and you would like to make Jesus the Lord of your life, our prayer team would be thrilled, beyond comprehension to pray with you and help put your hand in the hand of the Father and to see a change, a born again experience take place in your life. So let's pray together, church. Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your mercy upon mercy and your grace upon grace. Thank you for Jesus, thank you for his precious, redeeming blood. We pray, Father, that as we leave today, we celebrate the new life that we've witnessed and that we walk in the newness of that life, each and every one of us. Or go before us, follow after us and lavish your love upon us and help us to do the same to those who are around us today. We go in your name, in Jesus' name, amen.