The Father Who Gives Identity

Our understanding of a father deeply shapes our identity and faith. In this series, we’ll explore how earthly fathers have impacted us, find healing for the places we’ve been hurt, and encounter God as the perfect Father who fully loves, restores, and defines who we are—so that His love overflows into the lives of others.

Transcript

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Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut. The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

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The gospel lesson for today is from Matthew chapter 3, verse 13 through 17. This can be found on page 961 of your Pew Bible. The words spoken by God over Jesus at his baptism affirm his identity and relationship with the Father. As children of God, we too find our true identity in God's declarations over us. A reading from Matthew chapter 3, beginning with verse 13. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were open to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

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When I was a seminary professor, our final classes for the week were Friday morning, as a lot of us had itinerant ministry out on the road. And you do a little bit of administration and get home Friday afternoon. And one of these Fridays I had a treat. It was the third day of the Masters, and I turned the television on, and Jim Nance was interviewing Arnold Palmer. Now, Arnold Palmer was one of those pivotal golfers that really started to tune the game up towards Americans. This was his 50th Masters, and it would be his final one. He had won it four times. Only Tiger and Jack Nicholas have won it more. He had won over 60 LP PGA tours events, and uh he was a star in America. As he got the interview going, Jim Dance said, uh, you grew up in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and your father, Deacon, was quite a taskmaster. Uh he had polio as a child, and so as the golf pro, he overcame that polio and he was the groundskeeper. Uh if Deacon were here today, what would he say to you, Arnold? And Arnold began weeping. And he said, he'd probably say, you done good, boy. We're all looking for you done good, boy, or you done good gal. It's in our system that want to know that we are bringing a contribution. See, identity deals with two aspects of life. The first is to love and be loved. I call this the safety net. That's the beginning of having a true identity. And the second part is knowing that our life has value and we're making a contribution, what we sometimes call calling or our mission. But if you begin with your mission, before you know you're loved, you end up spending a life trying to achieve your identity. And what Palmer got in that moment, or what he gave us, was a reminder that our world starts with a you done good, but God starts in a different way. He begins by expressing his love for us. We're entering our summer series, the heart of the Father. We want to press into the Father's love. I'm really excited about this series. I hope you'll take advantage of the resources that are there. There's a reason for this series is if you will allow the father's heart to become the main voice in your life, it will change everything about your reality. It has the potential to take all efforts of performance, trying to prove anything or trying to protect anything in life. You get to just show up and be you. And that's a great place to be. That we would be people that thrive in this world, not just survive. We'd be people that bask in what it knows what it means to be loved by the Heavenly Father. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Matthew 3, verse 13. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? So let me give you a little picture of what's happening here. God's voice through sanctioned prophets has been quiet for a couple centuries. Once the scriptures close, the Hebrew scriptures with Malachi, there's a waiting for this Elijah-like figure who's going to come and announce a better way. And John is that person. John the Baptist. This is his title. This is how we are. It's not John the Apostle, John the Baptist, because he's a revivalist. It hit me yesterday as I was thinking about this passage, is uh John is the one who gives us the kingdom message that we've been exploring for the last six weeks. Uh in verse two, John says, Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. He's a revivalist. Uh, he stands in the face of religious leaders who have a form of righteousness, but not the moving of the Holy Spirit. He calls them things like whitewashed tombs, calls them a bucket of snakes, you vipers. I haven't tried that in preaching yet, but one of these days I'm going to give that a shot. But John knew he was not the main character. Uh he's repeatedly saying things like in verse 12, uh, there's one mightier than I whose sandals I'm not even worthy to carry. I baptize you with water, but there's one coming who will baptize you in the Holy Spirit. John says these things, I must decrease so he can increase. If you want a life mission, there's a good life mission for you. Decrease so that Jesus will increase. And so when Jesus comes to him, John is like, I should, I should be baptized by you. The greater always does unto the lesser. And Jesus responds to him this way Jesus answered him, Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And then John the Baptist consented. So what's Jesus saying about fulfilling all righteousness? Matthew's already told us that Jesus was born of the Virgin. I hope you don't jump over that part of the apostles' creed too quickly. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Why is that important? Because Jesus is going to be the one who stands in the gap between divine and human. We're into mysterious territory. He's not a hybrid, he's not God, man, some kind of different being. Somehow he retains his divinity, but he puts his divine character and qualities on a shelf, emptying himself, and he takes on humanity so he can identify with us. He's identifying here with our sin. He is saying, I'm going to be your substitute. Paul says it this way in 2 Corinthians 5. For our sake, God made him to be sin, made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The writer of Hebrews says it this way: uh we have a high priest who was tempted in every way like we are, but without sin. And now Jesus is stepping into sin. He's identifying with the plan of God that says, we can't rescue ourselves. We need God to come and rescue us. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were open to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. I heard one preacher say it this way: you can almost see the knuckles of the Father splitting heaven open. I like that picture. All throughout scripture, the coming together of heaven and earth is what we long for. And every time God shows up in a unique way, you get to experience Him. When God comes, there's a hovering over the Spirit over that situation. In creation, there's chaos, God hovers over that creation. Before Jesus is born, the Spirit hovers over Mary. Each step before the church is born, the Spirit is hovering over. And so the Father pulls back heaven a bit for us, and the Spirit comes descending like a dove to come rest on Jesus, to be baptized. Now that Greek word baptizo is an interesting word. It means to be immersed, to be completely taken under the water. Paul says it this way in Romans: our baptism is our union with Christ. We go under the water, which is symbolic of dying to ourself in our old way and to our sin patterns, and we come up raised to life unto the Lord. It's a powerful expression. In an archaeological dig recently, we found this really cool document. It's a pickle recipe. I love you. You find scripture and these historical things, but a pickle recipe is perfect because you take a cucumber and you baptizo it. You put it into the vinegar and it changes everything about it. Now, at baptism, we're not saved. I mean, we gave Elle back to the Lord, but it's Jesus that is the source of salvation. Even someday, if she prays the sinner's prayer, that won't be salvation. It's Jesus that accomplishes the salvation. But we're saying, as a church family, we agree to bring her towards Jesus, who is the source of life. In the same way, being baptized under the water doesn't save you. What saving happens in your interior? There's a regeneration, a rebirth, there's a washing that comes by the Holy Spirit. And in water baptism, we're saying we are giving testimony to the fact that Jesus has done this in me. It's a powerful move. It's not just transactional, it's transformative. We get pickled. We get pickled with the life of God. That's good stuff. Let me just take my preaching hat off for a moment and do my teaching hat. There's two baptisms. There is the baptism by water, which is a baptism of repentance where we're agreeing with God's work, but there's also a baptism of the Holy Spirit. And there's two predominant theologies on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. One says you're baptized in the Holy Spirit when you come to relationship with Christ. You confess in your heart that Jesus is Lord and you declare that he's been raised from the dead. The other theology says that you have a second baptism that happens later in your journey. The Spirit comes and dwells in you at the relationship with Christ, because Paul says in Romans 8, if you are in Christ, you have the Spirit. But there's a second movement. There comes a time where you get more of His presence in your life. Which theology is true? Yes. I believe there's multiple baptisms in the Holy Spirit. There are different moments in our life where we need a fresh impartation of what God wants to do because the challenge before us is greater than any challenge that we've had up to that time. And we come back and we get pickled and we get pickled and we get pickled and we get pickled. So today, you may have already been baptized. If you haven't been baptized, you heard the invitation. Come out and get baptized. Better to go home with wet clothes and be refreshed in the spirit than to go home with dry clothes and be dry in the spirit. Even if you've been baptized and you just want to rededicate your baptismal vials, I'll hold you down till the sin floats to the top and then we'll go. See, there's something happens. Pastor Joan, who worked alongside Neely for years, I heard her say this in one of our early baptism teachings. She said, uh, at baptism, it's a sacrament. So it's not just symbolic, it's an actual moment where we give God a hook in our lives. I want to give God as many hooks as I can. And in Jesus' own water baptism, the Spirit descended on him according to the promises of Isaiah that the one coming, the Messiah, would have the Spirit poured upon him, and the Spirit would flow through him, that Jesus would affirm in Nazareth when he says, Today this is fulfilled in your hearing. And then the powerful words from heaven. And behold, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. You see, the power of these words is that Jesus hasn't yet done anything towards his vocational calling. This is the beginning of his primary calling and mission. The father declares worth his identity because he's a son. And the father declares, I'm pleased with you, and you haven't really done anything yet. Do you see how that's different than how our world works? First conditional love from God does not require anything from you except simply receiving it. But we live in a world of second-condition love which causes us to constantly work for it. What the Father is saying is, Jesus, I'm proud of you. Even before he's done anything. And this is the right order to knowing our identity. It's to be loved, and out of being loved, we find our purpose and our mission. My soul this morning is this you do not determine your own identity, you can't work for your identity, you can't receive your identity. Your ultimate identity is declared and spoken over you by the Heavenly Father. And when this lands on you, you become a different person. Folks, let me tell you, being on this side of the game, of knowing that it's all about his love in me, it is liberating. I never have to pose. I get to be obnoxious all the time for the kingdom of God. And you do too. And the one who gets one buries it and brings it back, he loses the one. But at the others, each time they bring it back, the master says, Well done, good and faithful servant. Every time I heard that passage, it drove me. I wanted to be the well done. Now there's nothing wrong with stewarding. It's to the Father's glory that you bear much fruit. But if that's your driving point, you'll be in performance mode your whole life. You'll live in a cycle of grief, not a cycle of grace. Later in our life together, Ingrid and I began thinking, I don't think the first thing God's going to say when we get to heaven is well done. It's probably going to say, I like who you've become. That's a good thing, but becoming still is something related to you. Yeah, I want to become more like Jesus. I want to have more of his character and his life on me. And then we heard this preacher about 10 years ago who said this. He said, When we get to heaven, I think the first thing God's going to say to us is, Did you know how much I loved you? Did you know how much I loved you? Because when you start with the love of God, it changes everything. You're liberated. Authoritative voices in our life take us down different paths. Whether it's a parent, an earthly father, a teacher, a coach, a boss. Things get planted in our mind and we make vows with them and we spend the rest of our life trying to live up to those realities. And it's an endless cycle. We never get there. Some of us have had absent fathers, maybe even abusive fathers. We experience God's love through the relationships we're in. This is written in our life group, man. I hope you'll really press into these things. Because this could really change everything for you. Jesus baptism provides a profound example of the significance of God the Father as our identity giver. Him declaring sonship over Jesus reveals that our true identity is not earned through achievements, performance, or the approval of others, but received directly from the Father. And he's waiting to speak this over us. Even the best of fathers cannot give you first condition love. I had a great father. My father's father died when he was six months old. I was the apple of his eye when I was a young boy. I can remember him getting off the bus working for Bethlehem Steel Corporation in New York and Cleveland. I could still see those size 13 wingtip shoes coming down the road, and I just couldn't wait to be with him. I had baseball glove in hand, and we would go out and break as many garage windows as we could before my mom yelled at us. My dad was there for me, but he could only take me to a certain point because he could only bring what he had. God sent spiritual fathers who brought the next stage. I knew my father loved me, but he didn't know how to speak it, and he didn't know how to affectionately pour it into me beyond grade six. And so I went off to university and played basketball, and I learned that guys are allowed to hug. Came home that freshman year for Christmas, and I put my arms around him, and he's standing there with his hands like this. He wasn't quite sure what to do. And through how he watched the way I parented my kids, he started learning the value of speaking. So my first 11 years here at Stanwich, I would call him every Sunday afternoon. And my dad was not good with technology, but you could hear the flip phone going all over the place, and he would see the number, and the first thing he would say is, Hello, my son, whom I love and whom I'm well pleased. And I would respond. Hello, Pops, in whose pleasure I take delight. And we would laugh. Dad didn't have much to say. He told me that he had prayed for me for preaching that day, and I said, Good, Dad, you need the practice and I need the prayer, so it's working out. It's a good equation. And we would complain about the Browns, the Indians, and the calves. If anybody calls them guardians around me, you're going to get the wrath of the Father, not the blessing of the Father. You see, I had to teach him. He grew into that. Someone said to me between the services, when he went away in university, he was wrestling with the fact that his father was a tough father, and the Lord said to him, Why would you expect your father to give you what only I can give you? And that was the transformative moment in his life where he allowed the father's voice to be dominant, the heavenly father's voice, not the broken voices around us. So what's my now what this morning? We get to choose the voices that we're going to listen to. I was really moved by our youth team leading us in worship today. I hope we do this more and more, but that one song, I will build my life on your love, it is a firm foundation. We get to choose. It's a choice. Will we allow the words of this world to be the ones that drive us, or will we allow the Heavenly Father's word? You are my beloved, and I find pleasure in you. Even Jesus was tempted against those words. If you remember, right after his baptism, he was set out into the wilderness to be tempted to fast for 40 days, and he's tempted by the uh evil one. And the first two temptations are this if you are the Son of God, if Satan would do that to Jesus, he's certainly going to try to get us insecure and knowing who we are and where our love comes from. 1 John 3, 1 says that what great love the Father has lavished upon us that we are called the children of God? What great love the Father has lavished upon us, that we are called the children of God. And then John adds these words. What does he add? And so we are. Why does he add those words? Why didn't he just stick with the words? What great love the Father has lavished upon us that we are called the children of God? Why does he have to add, and so we are? Because he knew that throughout history we would doubt whether the Father really loves us. And this summer is about pressing into the Father's love. Tim Keller says it this way: to be loved and not known is superfluous. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be known and loved is God. In 2017, the ground began moving underneath me, and I knew it was time to leave Stanwich. Told two senior elders and Ingrid, we were the only ones who knew this was going to be happening in a year. And there was a South African minister who ministered in this area for about 15 years. His name was Jan Mell. We had brought him in to do teaching on the prophetic and living in apostolic ministry. In that spring of 2017, before anyone else knew, he came up to me and he said, You're going to be leaving Stanwich soon. I said, Who have you been talking to? He was obviously talking to the Lord. He said, But there's a new mantle coming upon you. The Lord's giving you and Ingrid a mantle of spiritual fatherhood and spiritual motherhood that you're going to pass on to other servants around the world. And that's what we did the six years we were gone from here. But I don't want it just for out there. I want it for you. I want to pass on that father declaration that you are loved, you are beloved. And God takes pleasure in you. Because that's a church that will win the world. And so I invite you to get in a place of receiving. I'm going to move among you. And I'm going to invite God to release a fresh impartation of Father love. Now, for some of you, this impartation will be enough. You'll just continue in the path that God has given you. Some of you will need to rehearse father love over and over and over. You'll need to go down to the children's wing and look at that letter from God that's down there and walk among the pictures of our kids and all those declarations of what God says about them. Do that for a couple weeks and see if it begins changing how you view yourself. Some of you will need to stand in the mirror for a couple weeks and make the pronouncements of what God says of you until you actually start to believe them. But some of you are going to need inner healing. The tracks have been going on so long, you've believed the vows for so long that it's time that the blood of Jesus be applied to those spaces that you would find your freedom in life. And so receive now, Holy Spirit, the one who cries, Abba Father in us, would you pray what you want to pray through me in these moments? For every person that is here, would you open up our hearts in the same way that you cracked up open heaven to pour your spirit out on Jesus? Would you do the same in us right now? Lord, where there is regret where we haven't been able to forgive ourselves for things that have done, I pray now that you would release the blood of Jesus into those spaces, knowing that there's nothing that can separate us from your love. Where restitution needs to be made, Lord, make it clear to us. Where there's fear where we've experienced trauma, where we've heard words and they become the vows, we break those now in Jesus' name. We declare that they no longer have place, that the blood of Jesus sets us free to walk into the things that you have for us, Lord. And Lord, I'm asking right now that you would do that journey from our head to our hearts, that what we may come to believe is true according to your word would be the thing that embraces our very inner being, that we know that we are beloved. There's nothing we can do to add to that love. All we can do is receive it. So, Lord, today, in the community of believers, we open our hands and our hearts to you and we ask that you would pour your life into us in fresh, powerful, and vibrant ways. Lord, this is for our good, but it's also for the glory of King Jesus. So it's in his name we pray. Amen.

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