Who am I?

Life's Most Important Questions and God's Answers

0:00 Before you say to yourself, oh no, not another religious broadcast cluttering up the airwaves and then turn the dial on your radio, before you reach the conclusion that everything said on this broadcast will eventually lead to an appeal for your money, will you not listen long enough for me to demonstrate to you that by this broadcast we are not seeking anything from you? Rather, this program is prepared, sponsored, and aired in order to give something to you, something of inestimable value. And what is it that I am prepared to offer you today? Well, it is nothing less than God's answers to life's most important questions. Would you not agree with me that life's most important questions are not found in such concerns as, Who will be our next president? What will happen to the stock market in the next five years? Where will I live when I retire? Or, who will win the Super Bowl next year? Rather,

1:09 the most important questions in life find expression in such words as these. Who am I as a human being? What should I live for? What standards should govern my life? And what will happen to me when I die? These, I say, are life's most important questions. And it is just such questions which I propose to answer from the Scriptures on today's broadcast. Were I to give you my opinion concerning these questions, I would be assuming the role of a philosopher. However, my opinions on these issues are less than worthless, as are the opinions of all other men. However, God has addressed these very issues in His written Word, the Bible. And it is from the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments that I would derive our answers to these questions that really count. If we are to know the answers to the questions, Who am I? Why am I here?

Humanity as God's Unique Creation in His Image

2:20 What should I live for? and other such concerns, we must begin where the Bible begins, that is, we must begin with the recognition that as human beings we are God's unique creation. The Bible begins with the words, . And then later on in that first chapter of Genesis, man is described as that creature who, above all other creatures and in distinction from every other creature, doesn't touch this issue of being and knoweth God.

2:57 was created in God's image and in God's likeness. We read in that chapter that God said, Let us make man in our image and after our likeness. And in the image of God he created he, him, male and female created he them. Now what does it mean when it says that man was created in the image of God?

3:25 Well, certainly it means at least this much. That man, unlike the beasts, even those with the highest mental capacities, man alone was made with the capacity to know God. Man alone was made with the ability to hold conscious and delightful communion with God. Man alone was able to receive verbal instructions from God concerning God's image and image of God.

3:55 Man alone was able to receive God's will for him as his creature. Man alone was made with a moral obligation to obey God. And man alone was made with a real accountability to God. We might imagine one of the cows or the other beast of the field that God made accidentally kicking over a bucket of feed that Adam might have set before it.

4:22 But surely such an act would have, no moral significance. But when God said to Adam, of all of the trees of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree that is in the midst of the garden you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die. For Adam to do what God had forbidden was to put himself in the posture of true guilt before the living God. And so you and I can never begin to answer life's most important questions until we come to accept the reality that we are made in the image of God. That we are made with a capacity to know God, to commune with God, to receive verbal instructions from God, with an obligation to God, and with valid accountability, to the God who made us. Now we live in a day when for approximately a hundred years we have been told that man is simply the highest expression of brute forces exerted upon matter over eons of time in the so-called evolutionary process.

The Conscience and Creation as Witnesses to God

5:48 That we eventually will rise to higher and higher heights from our origins in society, some primeval pool of slime. We are told that we are basically nothing but cosmic dust blown together by time plus space plus chance, and that we are accountable to nothing but our instincts and our urges. But my friend, your own conscience will not let you really believe the lie of evolution. For stamped upon your own consciousness as a creature, made by God, is the knowledge that you are accountable to God.

6:32 How else can you explain the faculty of conscience, that little moral monitor within your breast, who has a very limited vocabulary, who, when you contemplate an action, says either right or wrong, who, after you have performed an act, or spoken a word, or thought a thought, says right or wrong, with our predisposition to love our sin, surely we would never have implanted this moral monitor within our own breast. We seek to do all within our power to remove him. But his very presence is a monument to the fact that we are creatures made in the image of God. Furthermore, according to Romans chapter 1, when you and I look into the microcosm of God's creation, creative handiwork, or out into the macrocosm of the vast heavens that he has made, these things that God has created speak to us in language that we cannot misunderstand, that there is a God, that this God has created all things, including us. And we can only deny that by doing what the Apostle Paul describes as putting down the knowledge, of God. And if you and I would begin to find

8:00 a solid, a substantial, a satisfying answer to the questions in life that really count, we must begin by accepting the reality that we have been created in the image of God. We are not cosmic dust. We are not simply the emerging and presently the highest expression of love, life on some mechanistic evolutionary scale of being and existence. And it is when we accept the reality of our being created in the likeness and image of God with true moral accountability to God, then and only then do we have a framework within which to grapple with life's most burning questions. But furthermore, we must not only come to grips with the biblical teaching as to our identity as creatures made in the image of God, if we would answer life's ultimate questions, but we must also know that we are creatures who have fallen from our original integrity. We are creatures in whom the image of God has been greatly marred and twisted. Now let me ask you a very simple question this morning.

The Fall: Humanity's Marred Image and Spiritual Death

9:28 What would you call a man who in the pursuit of knowledge destroyed his faculty of thinking? Who in pursuit of seeing beautiful things put his own eyes out? What would you call a man who in the desire to hear lovely sounds pierced his own eardrums? What would you call a man who in the pursuit of finding a higher and more meaningful life killed himself?

9:59 I think you would call such a person a fool. And that is exactly what you and I have become. In our first father, Adam, in seeking to see what God had forbidden, to know what God had forbidden, to enjoy and experience what God had forbidden, man, the fool that he is, has put out his own eyes, pierced his own eardrums, and has killed himself. And you and I can never begin to answer life's ultimate questions if we are not prepared to accept the biblical teaching that as creatures made in the image of God, we have, through sin, become alienated from God. We have become spiritually deaf and blind, and blind, and dead. But then the same Bible that approaches these burning ultimate questions of who am I, why am I here, what is the purpose in life, by setting before us the truth of our creation, the truth of our fallenness in Adam and the reality of our sin, it is this Bible which affirms to us and proclaims

God's Redemptive Intervention and the Promise of a Redeemer

11:25 God's intention to intervene into the human predicament and to rescue man from his sin. There in Genesis chapter 3, the very chapter which records man's original sin, there is a marvelous ray of light that breaks forth amidst the darkness of human depravity. It is God who comes seeking man, the creature, Adam and Eve are found hiding among the trees of the garden. But God takes the initiative and comes to them saying, Adam, where are you?

12:07 And as God begins to deal with man, the sinner, He pronounces a curse upon man and upon the earth for man's sake. And He clearly indicates that His threat was no idle threat in the day that you eat, you shall die. But wonder of wonders, against that dark backdrop of human sin and divine judgment upon sin, God takes the initiative to announce that He is committed to intervene in that very tragic scene of human sinfulness. And God says, speaking both to man and to the devil who worked through the serpent, I will put enmity, warfare, between the seed of the woman and between the serpent and his seed. And then God gives this initial gospel promise. And the promise is that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, though in the process the heel of the seed of the woman would be bruised by the seed of the serpent. And that promise in Genesis 3 and verse 15 is the first ray of gospel light and it breaks out of all of the darkness

13:34 and the heaviness of the account of man's sin. And then throughout the Old Testament with ever increasing precision through the prophets, through the types and shadows of all of the institutions of the Old Testament tabernacle and temple and the priesthood, and the offering and the sacrifices, God is saying to man that I will bring a Redeemer. I will bring one in whom the whole problem of human sin will find resolution. I will bring one who will be my anointed prophet to teach perfectly the way of God.

Jesus Christ: The Wisdom of God and Answer to Life's Questions

14:17 I will bring one who will be my anointed priest to offer an acceptable sacrifice and to intercede on behalf of all who trust him. I will bring an anointed king who will destroy all of his and his people's enemies. The scriptures tell us that in the fullness of the times God sent forth his Son made of a woman made under the law that he might redeem them that were under the law that we might receive adoption, as sons. And this is the glory of the message of the gospel that because Jesus Christ came and Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried and was raised again from the dead on the third day according to the scriptures, ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty, sent forth the Holy Spirit, you and I now can find a resolution and a satisfactory answer to these ultimate questions in life. Why am I here on this world that God has made? Well, I am here that I might come to know God, to serve God. What is my purpose in life?

15:44 My purpose is to glorify the God who made me and to enjoy him forever. How can I be prepared to die? How can I be prepared to die? How can I be prepared to die?

15:52 How can I be prepared to die? The answer to these questions is found in the glorious gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is for this very reason that one of the names that is given to Jesus Christ in the New Testament is this. He is called Christ the Wisdom of God.

16:17 And the scriptures tell us that he is made by God to all who believe in him. Wisdom from God as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. It is in Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, that we find the answer to all of these ultimate questions. They are not to be found by looking into ourselves.

16:47 This is the wretched teaching of the so-called New Age philosophy and new way of life. The New Age religion and Eastern meditation, the fundamental premises, the answers lie within yourself. Get in touch with your deepest inner self. But the scripture says no.

17:05 We must go out of ourselves to him who is the objective revelation of God, even to Jesus Christ who is the Wisdom of God. And in Christ we find, yes, we are, we are sinners. We deserve the wrath of God. But we are not cosmic dust.

17:28 We are not cosmic junk. We are not merely the highest expression of animal life. We are creatures worthy of one coming and taking our place, taking upon himself a true human soul and a true human body. And in the mystery of that union, in the one person our Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ, God is demonstrating that man is a unique creature with unique worth.

18:01 And it is for man that Christ died. It is for man that Christ was raised from the dead. It is for man in all of his wretchedness and bondage and ignorance, in all of his blundering, in his own self-imposed torture chains, in his own chamber of self-will and rebellion. It is for man that Christ has come as the wisdom of God.

The Call to Repentance Toward God

18:31 And so as we contemplate these ultimate questions, these questions that pertain to our identity, our purpose, our destiny, we must consider God's call to have dealings with him in terms of the person and work of his own beloved son. And in closing this morning, I would focus your attention upon a very pivotal text of scripture found in the book of Acts. In Acts chapter 20 and verse 21, the apostle Paul is summarizing the substance of his preaching among the Ephesians for a period of over three years. And these are the words by which he summarizes what he preached. He says that he testified both to Jews and to Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul says that the two pivots on which the main thrust of his message turned were these, repentance towards God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Consider these in that order for a few moments with me at this time.

19:57 What did he mean when he testified repentance towards God? Well, he meant that creatures made in the image of God, made to know God, made to obey God, made to have fellowship with God, but creatures who've turned away from God, who've turned to their own way, who do not desire the knowledge of God, communion with God, or obedience to God, they must have a change of mind and heart. They must turn away from everything that has caused them to turn away from God. And in turning away from our sin, our pride, our independence, our rebellion, turning away from everything that has drawn us from the God who made us and turning back to this God with a faith with a full purpose to obey Him, to honor Him, to glorify Him, to serve Him, to find in Him the object of all of our heart's desire. This is repentance toward God. And my friend, you can never know for certain the answer to these ultimate questions in life so long as you seek to find that answer with your back turned to the God who made you. You were never made to function as a man or a woman

21:25 apart from face-to-face submissive, love-bound communion to the God who made you. And so if you would find an answer to those questions, you must experience repentance towards God. But then the Apostle said there was a second pivot around which his preaching centered. And he describes it in these words, faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Call to Faith Toward Our Lord Jesus Christ

21:56 That is, he called upon men to throw the weight of their guilty souls not upon an institution, not upon a ritual, not upon a set of rules, but upon a person. Faith literally upon our Lord Jesus Christ. The little Greek preposition literally means to rest upon. If I were to set something upon the table, that would be the preposition I would use.

22:28 And Paul said, I preach faith upon our Lord Jesus Christ. The resting of the soul in all of its guilt, in all of its defilement, in all of its bondage, in all of its ignorance, resting the whole weight of the whole soul upon a whole Christ. He said that he preached faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. You must rest the weight of your soul upon one who is the Lord, who is a sovereign seated upon a throne.

23:07 You must be willing to get out of the God business and to have Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Master. But he is called the Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ and Jesus is that name given to him at the incarnation which literally means Jehovah saves or Jehovah is our salvation. That means in resting your soul upon Christ as Jesus, you're acknowledging that all the saving virtue is in him. There is none in yourself.

23:41 You're prepared to say with the hymn writer, nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to thy cross I come. But then it is faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ and Christ simply means the anointed one, the long promised Messiah, God's final prophet, priest and king. Oh my listener today, if you would know the answer to these ultimate questions, you can only know them by accepting the reality of your identity as a creature made in the image of God.

24:20 A creature who has fallen into sin but a creature to whom God extends the offer of life and salvation in the person and work of his beloved son. I call upon you this day repent towards God and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.