Who Do You Think You Are? Series

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Colossians 3:8-3:16

8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselvesver with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.

A woman was working in her front garden one day weeding and planting new flowers. She was dressed in her gardening clothes and had dirt all over her hands.

She looked up and saw a Pickfords moving van pulling into the drive next door. Behind the van was a car and a nice looking family got out of the car.

The new family noticed the woman and came over to introduce themselves to her. They spoke for a few moments and the woman in the garden invited the new family for a welcome dinner that evening.

Then, she went inside and told her husband to start getting ready, and she began dying her hair. As she was getting dressed, she put on false eyelashes and false fingernails the husband asked her why she was going to so much trouble just for a dinner.

She told him how the new family had seen her all dirty before, but now she wanted them to see the ’real’ her!

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This lady exemplifies many churchgoers today. They get ready for church and put on their Sunday go-to-church clothes and all too often, hide the real person.

Many go to church regularly, they know much about what is expected of them, but of all the things they do know, they don’t know who they really are.

So this morning I want to ask the question

WHO ARE WE?

1 JOHN 3:1-2 says –

‘How great the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.’

We are the very children of God!

We are made children of God through a personal and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ as our Savior.

And, as children in the family of God, we have certain responsibilities to other family members.

Before we are saved through Jesus,

we are sinners of the world, and we still tend to act like sinners of the world, too.

Oh, we can be very nice, but only when things are going well for us.

As soon as something, or somebody, creates conflict with what we want, we stop being so nice, don’t we?

When we get angry with somebody,

or say something negative about somebody,

we are being ungodly and we actually choose to sin. As much as we try not to, we all do this from time to time.

To show the seriousness of these actions, lets look at this from another angle.

Let’s say I do something you really don’t like.

You get upset and later on, you talk to somebody else in the church and you tell them what I did and how much you didn’t like it,

only when you tell them, you use sharp criticisms or bad negatives about me.

Do you know why you do that:

Because you are angry and you are trying to convince somebody else to be mad at me, too,

like that is going to make you feel right or make the situation better.

Now, I am using me as an example, but we have all done that in our lives to someone else, haven’t we?

The problem is that each time we repeat something, we tell it a bit differently.

And if you hear something and then pass it on,

you will pass it on just a bit differently, too.

So, in this case, by the time four or five people have been given negative information about me,