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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 A.m.. If you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find [email protected]. Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: The 90s were a really odd time for fashion, and some of you may not agree with this. To me, it was one of the oddest times of fashion because there was little quirks about it that I hope that never, ever get repeated. One of those was one of the things that I remember from, like, middle school to high school that was really popular was to get a perfectly good pair of jeans that you purposely bought, like, four inches too long. That you wanted to get scissors and cut like three or four inches up the side so it would make, like, a bell bottom, look at the very bottom, and then lay over your timberlands or your wallabies. Now, some of you, when I say timberlands and wallabies, you have no clue what I'm talking about. But they were something that were really popular, and that's what you wanted to do. And I'll never forget when I took a perfectly good pair of jeans and just decided to get scissors to them. My mom was not that happy. Next time I put them on, they were all sewed up, so it wasn't that successful. The other thing that was very popular that really never needs to come back ever again, that was the bowl cut.
And the bowl cut is exactly as it sounds. It looks like someone put a bowl on your head and they just took some scissors and you just rotated while they cut it. And I am so extremely glad that my parents didn't have social media and post everything, because then you guys would be able to find pictures of me with that.
So you would have to go to my house to find that. But those have been long gone, and no one has done the bowl cut well since Jonathan Taylor Thomas. There's never been another person that's actually done it well. And for those of you that might laugh at what we did with our jeans, some of you wore bell bottoms. And some of you men, I found out this morning, wore leisure suits. But then those of you that are laughing at the leisure suit wearers, some of you also wore parachute pants. So what I'm saying is, we all had a thing, right? But the one thing that I remember about the 90s more than any other thing. To me, the thing that was emphasized the most was the labels you wore.
Like, if it had a tommy hilfiger logo on it, or if you had a t shirt that was a literal tommy hilfiger flag, then you were that person. Or if you were able to have a polo shirt that actually had the polo horse on it, you were somebody. Well, growing up, I remember I didn't have access to all the tommy hilfiger and the polo things. But what I did have access to was every other year, my dad and i, we would go to bangkok, thailand, on a mission trip. And when we went to thailand, right around the corner from where we stayed, there was this three story hotel, excuse me, mall. And at the bottom floor, which was kind of like a basement right near the hotel, you could buy everything that was fake. It was awesome. Like, if you wanted a fake coach purse, you could buy a fake coach purse for like, dollars. You could also go there and buy fake polo or tommy hilfiger shirts. Or what was really popular in the 90s were oakley sunglasses. And you could buy all of this for not much money. And so I would take like $20 american money, exchange it for some currency in thailand, and I would buy several polo shirts, some tommy hilfiger shirts, and some fake oakley sunglasses. And I'll never forget when I first wore that shirt to school, I was so proud of the hilfiger logo and the polo logo. But then I put it in the dryer and it shrunk. It went from like a youth large to a youth extra small. But some five year olds at church loved it. And the other thing I'll never forget is I got a pair of fake oakley glasses. We used to call them jokelies, and I wore them one time to baseball. And this boy that was evidently kind of like, I guess the fashion police, he wanted to point out, he's like, hey, those aren't real oakleys, because the oakley symbol in the middle that was written in there was slanted, and then the side was popping off. That was devastating to me because in my mind, but in also other people's eyes, that the value of something was directly connected to whether or not it was the real thing.
We live in a world still today that labels really matter. And the reality is every single person in this room has and is carrying around some kind of label.
For a lot of you, there have been labels that you have carried that are so extremely positive. You're labeled as a hard worker, you're labeled as a very creative person. Maybe to some of our young people, you're labeled as athletic, or you're a great musician. We've had those positive labels at some time. But there have also been times we know that we've carried around some very negative labels.
And in some of the times that you've probably thought back to some of the things that you've heard, you would probably say that you've heard 100 positive things.
But if you hear one negative label, it overshadows all of those positive ones. See, the danger of labels is this that you and I can wear a label for so long. It's not just something that just defines who we were in our past, but if we let it, that label can start to determine and to impact our future. The reason why I decided to talk about this today is I had a really good lunch with somebody a few weeks ago. And one of the questions I like to ask is what's something you think we should preach on? What's something that you would like for us to share? I keep like a little place on my phone. And one of the things that they mentioned, they said one of the things that I see that our youth deal with, but also that we deal with a lot, and that is really under attack is identity.
That our young people's identity is being questioned that even once we put on Christ, we start to even buy into a little bit of that and we start to devalue ourselves, devalue life, and devalue our own identity.
And the reason why this is something that really matters is there was a study that was done by this lady. She was getting her doctorate. She wrote her dissertation on the impact of labels and education.
What she did is she took a classroom that was filled with students, and she did this. She said, all right, I'm going to label half of them as advanced, and we'll label half of them as slow.
And to the students that were labeled advanced, they didn't change their home life, they didn't change the education that they received. Those children that were labeled in that way excelled.
But then the students that were in that same classroom that were labeled as slow, what happened to them? Their productivity decreased, their grades went down because they carried with them those labels. Labels matter. But here's the thing. While labels do in fact matter, the other thing about labels excuse me, in the flip side, is that they don't have to define us. In fact, there's a lady in the Bible that we're going to look at today named Rahab. And what's interesting about Rahab, from the very beginning of Joshua, even into the New Testament, she carries around with her the label of prostitute.
And you see this time and time again. But what we're going to look at today is that even though we might carry around with us some type of label, that there is a way that God can still use us, but not just use us, but for us, ourselves, to see ourselves as people that are still valuable. So what I want to talk about today is, I invite you to turn with me to Joshua, chapter two. We're going to discuss today what it looks like to live as somebody that is valued by God. So as we look at this, I want you to turn to this text, and as you're turning there, I want to give you a little bit of background. Moses was the leader of God's people for a while. And if you remember what happened, moses was about to die, and he said, hey, Joshua, you're now taken over. And so Joshua is now the leader, and they're being led through the promised Land. And one of the things God promised them as they go through the Promised Land, that if you're faithful to me, if you trust me, I'm going to deliver you, but you still have to do your part. And so what happens is they get to a place called Jericho, and Jericho is really well known for its fortified cities. If there was advanced technology of the day, if there was an advanced war group, they were it. The walls were extremely well built, they were thick, and they were seen by people all around that you cannot get through these.
So this is who's standing in front of them. And what's interesting, if you'll notice in the text, it says this joshua, the son of Nun, he sent two men, two from Shidom, where they were to go and to spy out the land. Now, here's why I want to point that out. Several years before this, you might remember that Moses also sent out a group of men, right? And how many did he send to spy out?
Twelve. But this time, two are sent out. And if you remember, the last time the twelve were sent out, two of the twelve involved these two guys, a guy named Joshua and another guy named Caleb. And if you remember, when they went into that land and they were spying out the land, all twelve came back. But ten of the twelve, when they came back, the only report of what they said was, listen, we go into this land and the people there are giants. We feel like grasshoppers in their eyes, and so there's no way that we can overtake them. But then Joshua and Caleb, what do they highlight? They don't talk about the giants, but do you notice what they do talk about the grapes.
But have you seen the like, I really resonate with that kind of group of people, because anywhere I go, the first thing I know and I want to talk about and Brandon, Jason know this is the food. Like, have you seen the food? I mean, that's what happens when you grow up in Montgomery. There's nothing else to do but to so have you seen the grapes? And it's interesting that they both went to the exact same place, but they saw two different things.
And the reason why I want to bring this up. And I know it might seem like an OD question to ask, but when you go into situations, are you one of those people that only sees the giants or do you see God's creation? Do you see what he's done? When I was growing up, my preacher Randy Medlin, said this in so many sermons, and it was along these lines. He said that if you look for the negative in a situation, you will see it and hit it with remarkable accuracy every single time.
Do you see the grapes or do you see the giants? So the text says this, that the two men, they came into the house of a prostitute whose name was rehab, and they lodged there of all the places they could stay and go to, but also for God's promise to be lived out, they're going to go to the house of a prostitute.
Why? Well, one of the reasons I thought was a very blunt and yes, I'll say a difficult thing to talk about is that knowing she is a prostitute, her house was usually and constantly a place where people would go for their names not to be known.
And so that was part of maybe the reason, but I think it's even a bigger reason.
As we advance into this text today, we're going to see that God is about to use this woman in a major way.
And what I love about what's about to happen is that God doesn't say, hey, let me change everything about you, then I can use you. He said, hey, I'm going to use you and I'm going to change you through that. And what's so neat about this is rahab is somebody that we would have thought of as, yes, dismissable, but also in her day, having a very awful reputation.
This is not the only time in the Bible she's called rehab the prostitute, and we'll get to some of those later. But isn't it interesting that the God who has a perfect spotless reputation decides in order to bring about his promise, he's going to use a woman with a reputation.
See, part of the reason why I believe that this is happening is he's trying to give us, even in the book of Joshua, a picture of what God's kingdom is going to be.
The people that oftentimes we write off, the people that might be easy to overlook, the marginalized, the dismissed. We might even feel like the dismissable, those are the very people he says, no, that's who I want to use. That's who I came for. But the other part of this is not only keep in mind is she a woman with a reputation, but she is also an enemy of Israel. In fact, there's a word in the Hebrew that is used in this text that we don't have time to get into that kind of signifies that she was involved in the worship of a false god. So not only was she living in enemy territory, she was worshiping with the enemy. Like that's who she was.
And the reason why I want to point that out is even though she was an enemy at time to God and their people were an enemy of Israel, isn't it interesting that the enemy still knew about God?
Because in just a second she's going to make an amazing declaration of faith that she's heard about what God has done and she's heard about the one that they are identified with. And the reason I want to point that out, have you ever felt before like the enemy knows more about you than you know about you?
I love Justin. Boatwright's lesson Wednesday night. It was awesome because he talked know, we talk a lot to our kids about God and Jesus, which is good, but he made a statement and know, we don't talk enough with our kids about Satan.
Satan hates you, he hates your family, he hates your kids.
And if you read the description of Satan, this is what it says. He steals from you, he kills you. And then when you're already dead, he destroys you.
Like he hates everything about you. But at the same time you think about if Satan feels like he's always attacking, like that doesn't seem to make sense because I'm doing the right thing. But here's what we know about Satan. Satan doesn't waste bullets. And what I mean by that is that maybe part of the reason it feels like Satan is attacking you so much is because he sees and God sees that you are so incredibly useful for his kingdom.
And the reason why I want to bring that up is I do think we do set up this false expectation that just because I am faithful, just because I have done this and I've done that and I've been in God's favor that the fights and the difficulty in life is going to decrease and the pain is going to go away and the comfort is just going to increase. That's not always how it's going to be. The enemy knows a lot about you.
But what's interesting is this woman named Rahab that was well known for her reputation. What was interesting is she didn't let that reputation eventually become her reality. If you have not had a chance to go to Jason's class on Wednesdays, it's awesome. And one of the things he talked about this past week was kind of like our online reality and our online reputation. And you and I all know that right now we are living in a time where is it not incredibly easy to project a false virtual reputation.
Like you can project anything. I mean, you could put on your Twitter handle that you are a life coach when you're 13 years old, okay?
You could put that you're an influencer and you have six followers. Like that's what we're living in. You can project anything online. So the issue though is this, that you can project this virtual reputation, but the reality is it's not reality.
And the reason I bring that up is that there might be some of us in this room that when it comes to work and our jobs, oh wow, we have an amazing reputation. We're known as a leader, we're known to handle and diffuse situations, we have compassion, but reality is when we get home, we're a totally different person.
So I want to ask you this question and kind of reflect on it just a little bit for you. How big is the gap between your reputation and your reality?
What you want people to see you as, but what you really are?
Now, I don't want to just pose the question. I wanted to do something with that answer that we all come to.
As you start to think about that, I came across an article that was written by this Christian counselor, and she was talking about this very thing. And she said, you know, what gives us those bad reputations and what gives us also this deep inclination to project something to everybody else but live something else? She said there's these two things. She said, what gets us in that boat is our relationships and our repetition. I want to say that again, our relationships and our repetition, it's the people we surround ourselves with, but it's also the things that we continually do. But what was also interesting at the very end of that article, she said interestingly enough though, what I found over the years is the very thing which is relationships and repetition, that give people their reputation, that in order to bridge the gap between their reputation and their reality, what gets them back into reality is relationships and repetition.
How in the world do relationships and repetition bridge the gap between our reputation and our reality? Well, I think about Proverbs 1320 where it says this if you walk with wise people, you will be wise. If you surround yourself with a company of fools, you're going to be a fool. That's like the most nod verse, but yet do we think that at times in our heart, right?
I've seen how in my life, how relationships have helped me. But there was a really weird way, and this might be a funny, weird illustration, but when I was a I guess from the moment that I had my adult teeth through my first two years of college, I never smiled with my teeth in any picture because I had butt teeth. In case you don't know what that is, that's where your two teeth are longer than all the other ones. It was kind of one of those situations my teeth would walk into a room before I did. And so because of that, I never ever wanted to smile with my teeth, ever. And I remember like if you go to our house and look at the Olin Mills pictures from church where you're all coordinating and I was doing because I didn't want people to see my teeth. I had the most awkward smile and just like you won't be able to see my bowl cut you probably won't be able to see those because those are tucked away in Lazar leader's scrapbooks of old. But anyway I didn't want people to see my teeth. I always smiled awkwardly and my mom in picture like Andrew smile and I'm like you know wouldn't do it but then I get to faultner crazy thing happened. I started dating this girl and we were getting ready to take a picture for something and she hits me and goes Andrew smile with your teeth. And I was like and all of a know this guy that wouldn't smile. This girl gets me to do something that I had not done before. I know it'silly but that's the way relationships work.
That just like those relationships give us and get us into that false reputation or even to a bad reputation is what can help us get out too here's. The second part is repetition. How in the world does repetition get us in order to build and bridge a gap between reputation and reality?
Well, one of the things that I love in Exodus is God's. People are living this gap. They will say, hey, we worship you, we love you, but also we'll worship this false god if it's convenient. Oh, we love you and we'll worship you. But if a temptation comes, we'll probably fall to that and oh, we worship you and we love you. But if Moses has gone a little bit too long up on the mountain we're going to take the jewelry that God gave us and we're going to make a false idol out of that. But hey yahweh, we're still going to worship you tomorrow. Like they were projecting one thing but then they were doing and reality was another thing. And so in Exodus chapter 23 god's people are in front of this enemy. It's a bunch of ITeS, it's the amazites and the hittites and other ITeS and they're right in front of them. And what he says in Exodus 23 about how he's going to deliver them is this he said I'm going to send the hornet before you. He's saying I'm going to send my presence, I'm going to go ahead of you and I'm going to drive out the enemy, the hittites, the canaanites and the hittites. But notice what he says in the next verse in 29 I'm not going to drive them out before you in just one year lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. But I'm going to drive them out little by little out in front of you until you have increased and until you can possess the land. This might not be correct English but what he's saying is before you can obtain you've got to maintain could God in this moment, go ahead of them and drive out all the enemies instantly?
Absolutely.
But he says, you know what? If you read the context, I'm going to need you to do your part. Yeah, I can drive them out, but I want to create a discipline within you that I'm going to drive them out little by little. So you will do your part little by little. See what he's saying? In order to bridge the gap between what you're projecting to me and what is your reality, it's something you need to continually do, relationships and repetition.
But when I think back to Rehab, when it says here that whose name was Rehab and she was a prostitute, what's interesting in this text, and not to spoil the rest of the narrative for you, but you get to Hebrews in Faith's Hall of Fame. In Hebrews eleven, it says by faith. And it doesn't just call her Rehab, it says Rehab the what the prostitute hid despise. And then in James chapter two, verse 25, it says that Rehab the prostitute was justified by her works.
She can't seem to shake that label. And the reality is, she's not the only one.
I think about Jacob. You know what his name means? Trickster swindler. That's what his name means. But God gave him the name Israel, which means the God who fights. And that's a much better name. But what do we still call him as Jacob?
I think about this one, ruth the Moabite. The Moabites were known as terrible people. And even Ruth makes an incredible declaration of faith and life of faith and identifies herself with God's people, but yet we still call her Ruth the Moabite. I was going through the Jesus storybook with our boys and I noticed in that book and in another one, that even after Naaman was cleansed of his leprosy, you know what we still call him? Naoman the leper.
And then you got Mary Magdalene. And Magdalene carried with it a very negative and difficult connotation in life. We know previously she had had several demons, but yet we still call her Mary Magdalene. But yet she was the first one on scene to see a risen Jesus. You got Zacchaeus, the tax collector. Not only do we still call him the Tax Collector, but we sing a song that I feel so bad for him as he's looking down from heaven. We're singing A Wee Little Man and a wee little man was he. I mean, that's like the most emasculating thing for a man to have to hear. So we're sorry. But the other thing that I think about is this one, thomas the Doubter. We call him Thomas the Doubter. We call him Doubting Thomas. But do you remember what Thomas said in an incredible statement of faith, let us go to so we can die with him?
That doesn't sound incredibly doubting to me. I mean, that's an incredible statement of faith. And then we get to Rahab, the prostitute.
Good Morning America had these two ladies on recently. One was Lucy Roberts, and another one was named Robin. And they were talking about all the things that Robin had gone through with her cancer. And in the interview, one of the things that Lucy said at the very end of their interview was this robin cancer has made a mess of your life, but make your mess your message.
I love that, because here we are in 2023, and we're about to read some incredible statements of faith by rehab and actions of faith of how this woman did not let the label take away from her value, but she made her ministry her mess.
And as I was thinking about this, there's a text in Jeremiah that really to me describes the world that we're living in today.
God's people are in exile.
And at times, it kind of might feel like that, like we're the only ones.
There's not very many faithful people around. There's a lot of people that are calling it quits. There's a lot of people walking away. And we hear those kind of things.
And I think sometimes when we tell each other those things, it almost sounds like we're asking for someone just to be like, well, just get away from all the people. Walk away from all the people. Do you know what he says in Jeremiah 29, verse six?
He said, you know, in exile, what I want you to do, I want you to have families.
And he said in this, I want you not just to have families, but I want you to seek the welfare of your city.
And then he makes this statement, because in its welfare, you will find welfare.
He doesn't say to leave. He doesn't say to walk away.
He says to infiltrate. That's the picture. And so we think about, all right, well, what is our city like? What is it that are people's needs? Where is the mess? This was done several years ago. They did a study on all the churches, like Bible Belt and down. I think there was 30,000 respondents that gave results back when it was asked, in your community, being the Bible Belt, what are the four biggest needs that you see? Had a long list of things. These are the top four that people mentioned that people are concerned about. They're thinking about safety, where they're going to sleep at night. Is there going to be a safe place? Am I going to have a place to go? Number two, hunger, food, poverty.
Number three, addiction, recovery and rehab. And number four, generational success, which is where mom and dad were. I'm not there. And talking about marriage, talking about family. These are the top four things on people's minds. Let me tell you what all of those involve, because we all find ourselves somewhere on there, we've all felt unsafe, but some. Of us are literally living in an unsafe situation. There's been those of us that we see people being hungry, hearing about it. There's those of us that have all been we've all struggled with some type of addiction, but there are those that are struggling in a huge way that they're reaching out, looking for help.
But if you'll notice that all of these things are not easy, they're not always beautiful, but that's letting us know where the ministry is. The ministry is in the mess. The mess is the message. That the very things that it feels like we should walk away from, he's saying, no, I want you to have families there. I want you to infiltrate. I want you to show love and I want you to come and to show compassion if you're like me. There's a lot of times I've written off certain people before I even gave them a chance.
I don't outwardly say it, but I've said in my mind, there's no way that person or there's no way that person I love how God has proved me wrong over and over again.
That when we are people that prejudge people, we're limiting their potential, we're limiting their value. But the other thing you think about Rahab in Joshua, chapter two, she is about to make an amazing statement of faith when she was the only one that believed, when she still had this label and name attached to her. And here's what it says then the king of Jericho, this is beginning in verse three.
The king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, bring out the men who have come to you who entered your house, for they've come to search out the land. But the women had taken the two men, the woman, excuse me, and hid them. And she said, true, the men have come to me, but I don't know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men ran away and went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them. So evidently the Jericho police Department passed on word to the king to say, hey, there's some spies here. Go to the house of Rahab. That's where they last were seen. They go to the house where Rahab was, and Rahab's like, yeah, they were, you know, they're gone now.
I read this to our boys the other night, and one of them pointed out the fact that Rahab lied and asked this question. Well, is God condoning lying? And that is a good question, but I want us to remind us of a few things. Number one, God never needs our help. Like, if Rahab would not have lied, God still delivers.
Go back in your biblical history. Like if Moses in front of the burning bush. Have you ever thought about this? What if he would have? No. Like, I know I've thrown the rod down and became a snake. I know you're speaking, but he says, no, you know what? God's not going to do well, I don't know what to do next. He's going to raise up somebody else. God doesn't need our help, just like God doesn't need our lives. God will use anything. Like go back to Abram's example. Do you remember when he felt threatened that somebody could kill him because of who his wife was? So he lied and said, oh, that's not my wife, that's my sister.
But yet we call him the father of faith.
God doesn't need our lies, god doesn't need our help, but he can use those things. But the other thing I think we need to think about is rahab was still very young in her faith, just like us, she has a very flawed faith. There's still areas where she needs to grow.
But the other thing that I love about Rehab is what you see in verse eight. It says, before the men laid down, she came up to them on the roof and said, men, I know that the Lord has given you this land and that the fear of the Lord has fallen upon all of us, and all the inhabitants of the land are melting before you. We have heard of the Lord and how he dried up the water of the Red Sea before you came out of Egypt and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were before the Jordan. And it goes on to say this in verse eleven, and as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you. For the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth. How do we live when we've carried different labels as a person that is valued by God, one of the things that we have to do is an amazing thing that she does here, is she understands the difference between gossip and truth, truth and lies.
She was living in the land of the enemy, but yet she still was opening her heart to the truth.
It's amazing that she's like, yeah, I know I'm living in the land of the enemy, but look what God has done.
And so we get skip down to verse 15.
It says that Rehab did this. She let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall so that she lived in the wall.
And she said to them, go into the hills of the pursuers, or if you don't, they will encounter you. And what we're going to do is hide there for three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterward, you may go your way.
Rahab opens up her window and puts this red cord out. It for them to go down. And what's interesting about this, I read different archaeologists and people that study geography. One of the things that they were talking about in their archaeological digs of Jericho is the wall.
It did not have many windows.
Don't you think about that? Just a second.
But she just happened to live near a window.
And what's interesting about that is the wall was the place usually you didn't want to live. The wall was actually the cheapest place to live because the wall was the most vulnerable to the attack of the enemy. But remember what we talked about, satan doesn't waste his bullets. That maybe part of the reason why it feels like Satan might be attacking you is that you are the very person that God is wanting to use.
That wall didn't have many windows, but here's the thing, it did have this one. It makes me kind of think about how all these different moments, god provides us a way out. One Corinthians 1013 when dealing with temptation, he said that God will always give you a way out. But isn't it neat to think about that God didn't change rehab before he used her, he used rehab in order to change her. That's what we're talking about, that we can't limit people and to kind of give you the end of the story because we don't have a lot of time.
God ended up delivering them from Jericho, broke the walls down, except for the window where rehab lived. And what I love about rehab, if you fast forward to Joshua, chapter six, verse 25, when it recalls rehab's life, it says that not only because of her act of faith did she deliver herself, but she also delivered her family.
Right now there might be a lot of homes in this room that when it comes to your job, you have a great reputation.
You're seen as a leader, you're seen as creative, loving, compassionate, but reality is you're a totally different thing.
What was interesting is that when Rahab decided to bridge that gap between her reputation and her reality, she actually, through her faith and through some very conscious decisions. Because of that, it actually took more people with her.
This past weekend at the family retreat, one of the things that Becky was talking about when we did a class on how to handle kids basically when they're losing their cool, one of the things that she mentioned is the best thing to do is literally just to model good behavior yourself. It's that simple. But also at the same time is it not that difficult.
But if you think about what that's saying, is that by our actions or our inaction, it either takes people with us in one way or it takes people with us in another way.
Next week we're going to do a lesson on adoption and we're going to dig into Ephesians One and look at what the term adopted meant for that group of people in Ephesus. And I'm going to use our adoption story to tell it. But to kind of introduce it for next week, but also kind of bridge the gap between the two. In Ephesians, chapter one, there's three things that are mentioned. And I love this, because before Paul tells this group of people what they need to do, he first lets them know that number one, you need to know who you are.
If you and I are going to live like people that are valued by God, we have to remember who we are. But number two, we also have to remember what you and I cost. You know that red cord that was released down that window? A lot of people draw connections between that red cord and the blood that was put over the doors of those homes in Egypt when the angel passed by of death.
That people also point to that red cord being symbolic of the blood of Christ that washes away our sin. It's the idea that even in the Old Testament, even then and until now, that God's red cord is weaving throughout the Bible, giving people a window, giving them an opportunity to bridge the gap between their reputation and their reality.
But number three, in order to live like someone that is valued by God, you have to understand you're valuable because of what you become. The Bible says you're a new creation. I love how we're also called a royal priesthood, a holy nation, god's special possession.
Maybe you're here this morning and you feel anything but valuable. Maybe part of it is because the labels that you've given yourself, maybe it's the labels that other people have given you.
I want you to know this morning that you are valued by God, but God doesn't want you just to understand that value. Who wants to encourage you to live in that value? Maybe some of you have never made that decision. The blood of Christ, that red cord weaves all throughout the Bible. Maybe you need to make that decision to put on Christ today in baptism, to have all of your sins washed away. Maybe for some of you, you see that gap between your reputation and your reality. You're tired of the masquerade. You're tired of the charade. And so what you need and you want is the prayers of the church to be the father, the mother, the boss, the friend that God has called you to be. You can come forward this morning and we can pray for you. Or if you feel more comfortable, you can go to one of the exits and find one of our shepherds and let them pray with you. We love you so much, but our love doesn't match the love that God has for you. You're valued, and we want to encourage you to live like you're a valued person. Whatever it is that you have a need of today, please come while we stand and we sing this song.
