hearty amen and thank you for the thoughts. It's going to lead in where we're going. We're going to start a series going through 1 Timothy. Go ahead and flip to 1 Timothy. We're going to look at the first two verses this morning. 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 1 says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God, our Savior, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope, unto Timothy, my own son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God, our Father, and Jesus Christ, our Lord. What I want to look at this morning is four different expressions, two referring to God the Father, to referring to Jesus Christ. In verse 1 he calls God our Savior. And then with respect to the Lord Jesus Christ, he calls Him our hope. In verse 2 he calls God the Father our Father, and Jesus Christ our Lord. So to put you in context for what I want to think about this morning, Dean didn't even know he was teeing this up. Who are you? Flip it around, a little common expression. Who am I? What is your identity? We hear a lot about identity today. Who do you identify as or what? And you can be very confused. about who and what you are. Sometimes we fall into the trap of identifying ourself as what we do. I am a lawyer. I am a farmer. I am a student. Maybe it's the relationships we have. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a husband. I am a father. Maybe it's by our sins. I am a alcoholic. I am a addict. I am attracted to this particular lust or that particular lust. And we get confused on who we are based on how we describe ourselves. There's a lot of different ways we can identify ourselves and a lot of different ways we can be confused. But as Christians this morning, I want us to be thinking about these four things that we all have in common. God is our Savior. Jesus Christ is our hope. God is our Father. And Jesus Christ is our Lord. Your identity comes from those truths. Things about your personality and the things that you do and the jobs that you have and the relationships that you occupy, all of that can change. Those things can be taken away very quickly. Jobs can be lost. Spouses will pass away. Children can pass away, children grow up, right? There's different roles that we occupy, if that's what our identity is, that can change. But if you base your identity on those things, when those go away, you can feel very lost. However, if you base your identity on these four things, these four things don't change. If God is our Savior, what does that make you? The saved. You are saved by who? By God. Is God able to save? Yeah! And in fact, it's our Savior, our deliverer. That makes us the delivered. Okay? So if you want to think about I'm not sure how to use this in words, but on my little piece of paper, as I was thinking about this, didn't even bring it up here, is I had a little period, and I had an arrow going that way, and an arrow going that way. Our little period is now, all right? And our period going backwards, I want you to think about God our Savior. This is a completed action. When you look backwards in time, look to God our Savior. You want to get confused about your identity, you look back in time and you focus on your past. Does your past identify who you are now? Do the sins that you committed, are they stronger than God our Savior? No, they're not. Why beat yourself up by going through and reliving the past with things? Can you change it? Learn from it, please. But going through and having those pity parties and the woe is me's and the wallowing in the past when you're looking at, let's see, in the grand scheme of the universe of time, you're looking at something smaller than the breadth of a hair. That's your entire life that you've been alive. But how long has God been your Savior? Right? Before the world was even formed, He put His love upon you. He has been your Savior that long. That's God the Father. I mean, the Creator God. But the Creator is also your Savior, who covenanted with His Son that He was going to come into this world and to complete this, this redemption. And so there is no chance that it will be overturned God is your Savior, and so my identity is that I am saved. I am delivered. I am made free. I am redeemed by God. Who gets credit? God does. If I am thinking of myself in something other than those terms, who am I really lowering? God. He loved me enough to send His Son to die for me. His Son was successful in everything that He set out to do. God is our Savior. So where is your identity? Your identity is not based on your past. Your identity is based on God and what He has done. God our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope. Alright, that arrow going forward? Alright, hope. Who is your hope? The Lord Jesus Christ. Alright? God our Savior, His plan, everything working in together for fulfillment up to now, and looking forward you have hope. Now this is not Sometimes how we use the word hope. We use the word hope in a really wishy-washy way. I hope it rains. I just washed my car. I hope it don't rain. But it has no bearing on what's actually going to happen. That's a real flimsy word for use of the word hope. When God uses the word hope in his word in our Bible, it's a very strong word. All right? It really has the idea of the cheerful waiting and expectation for what is going to happen. I am looking forward to something that will happen. The only question is when. So there is something that is happening. Your hope, the hope that we have in the future, and who is it embodied around? Jesus Christ, our Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ. Well, what's that? My future is uncertain. What if I don't get the grades I want? What if I don't get the promotion I want? What if, what if, what if, what if, what if, right? All these things about our little time. We get so wrapped up in and we get anxious about the future. He's predetermined your destiny to be conformed to the image of his son, who is Jesus Christ, right? Our hope. A hope of glory, a hope that's been prepared by your Savior from the foundation of the world, right? That's our hope. So if we have a hope, our hope, right? What does that make us? Hopeful! Hello! Redeemed. Full of hope. Not the wishy-washy hope, but the cheerful expectation. The mere waiting for this thing that will come to pass. Full of hope. That's all that comes with this. This inheritance. This being with Christ in eternity. That illustration of distance is fantastic. Use that same thing for time. How long will we be in heaven? Get on your little rocket ship and go the speed of light as far as you can for as many millions of years as you can and you're still not going to get anywhere close to the scale. and our little feeble minds and backs worry, well, wow, that'll get tiresome. It won't! It will be the best church service that never ends. We have a hope. That hope is not based on how good you are, how smart you are, how pretty you are, how whatever it is about you that makes you feel like, okay, I can handle this day. If it's on you, That's not a real sure footing, right? It's kind of feeble sand to build on, but that hope we have is in Jesus Christ, right? Who am I? I am saved by God our Savior. Who am I? I'm full of hope, and my hope is embodied in Jesus Christ and His work, and that He is alive right now! Which leads us to two more errors. Draw those straight up. Alright? From that now point, God, our Father, and Jesus Christ, our Lord. He has saved me. And I am looking forward to a great hope. But what do I do right now? Right now? Often, we're doing this. Focusing on the immediate problems, immediate concerns, immediate fears, immediate health issues, all those things the now. And what I want to encourage you today is to find your identity, look up. The stars are already bragging on him. God, our Father. Now, this is not a father in the sense that he is just your creator. Father sometimes is used in that sense. This is a special relationship that you can call God, our Father. All creatures see and know Him as the Creator, whether they voluntarily want to think about it or not. He has revealed Himself in that sense, as the Creator, to everything. The creatures know the Creator. But this is different. Because as your Savior, and as the One who has given you full hope, By His work, He has literally adopted you. He took you, and you think about an orphanage. You go through the orphanage. Who does the picking? The parents or the kids? Parents. Every single time. That's why we have this picture of adoption, is that your father After creating this whole universe, came into that adoption house, so to speak. And even though there was nothing good about you, he still picked you. He said, I'm taking this one home. It's got to get cleaned up first. I'll deal with that. but this one will be my child and I will be his father or her father. You think about that. Who are you? If he is your father, you are a child of God. All the other aspects of identity that people get so wrapped up in, what can compare to that? Nothing. I have been saved by my Savior. God my Savior. He has given me a hope for the future that's embodied in Jesus Christ and who I am right now is that I am a dearly loved child of my Heavenly Father. That term when you pray, my dear Heavenly Father, is not just a throwaway title. Y'all ever write letters? No. But if you do, what do you put before that person's name? Dear. Are they dear to you? Please find and close the check that I've been meaning to send you. It's just an expression. It's a way to start the letter. We don't know any other way. It's just a form. It's polite. Dear. I'm sure when somebody was first doing that, they really liked, they were really moony-eyed over somebody. Oh, my dearest darling, and you know, Shakespeare, insert gushy stuff here, and it meant something. And sometimes we get like that in our prayers. We get robotic. My dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Let me go to sleep now. Right? Sometimes we get like that, right David? When we're just tired and we're just kind of going through the motion. You're talking to your actual Father. Your Father who is in Heaven, but He is your actual Father because He has adopted you into His family. That's what Brother Dean referenced there in Ephesians. "...according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. In his presence..." Chose us. "...will be in his presence, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children." How? By Jesus Christ. To Himself. Why? According to the good pleasure of His will. That's a great answer. He wanted to. And who among the inhabitants of the earth is going to tell Him no? To the praise and glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved. The Beloved is a term for the family of God. You're not the only child of God. You've been adopted into a family. Way better than the Brady Bunch. Who am I? I'm a child of God. But in all of these aspects, the relationship between who am I related to, the other party is more important than who am I. I don't change God and Jesus Christ. I am changed because of them. How can I call the God of this universe, the creator of this universe, who you look at and you're just awed and your mind is blown, if we could really appreciate it, it would be, how can you have the audacity to say, Father, that's mighty bold of you. Who are you? You're nobody. But how can you, and legitimately have the right to, Because He has put His Spirit, the Spirit of His Son, within you, which cries out, Abba Father! Whoa! Should that wake us up? Should that clarify? I mean, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But we forget! And we get so distracted. It's like, you ever tried to drive and the windshield's all foggy? I mean, all the things in this world, they just fog up the windshield. I'm just here with a squeegee. Here's the truth. Clear the fog off. This is the reality. Look out. This is what's real. Who are you? Well, who's God? God's my savior. God is my hope. Lord Jesus is my hope. In heaven I have a Father, and you have a Father, which makes us kin. And if I love the one who loves me, guess what? I also love the ones that He loves. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another as I have loved you. What else? God our Father, not just the Creator, but that special, close, intimate relationship with a Father. What a love! So we don't have to look at God with that fear. Are we owed vengeance? Are we owed justice and wrath? I mean, let's be honest, as sinners, is that what we're really owed? Yeah! And when you look at the holy and righteous God, whose wrath is visible from creation, That's a really terrifying way to interact with God. It's honest, but it's terrifying. But as you go to God in prayer today, do you have to have that kind of fear and dread? No. Because you're going to a loving Father who loved you and the rest of all of His people so much that He sent His Son redeem you from that sin, to pay that price, so that you can be before Him holy and without love. But He is still a Father, and fathers do what to their children? Teach them. Because He loves them. Right? So if you have ever been chastened, or disciplined, or corrected by your father, it's not because he's bringing a hammer down on you because you're a bug who needs to be squished because you're so terrible. It's because he loves you. And he will teach you. For your good and for his glory. He's not a genie. We take him out of that box and say, oh, dear blue genie, give me what I want. Okay, I've got it back in your... I mean, sometimes we look at him like he's in a lamp. He's bigger than you can conceive. He's more powerful than you can conceive. His knowledge is infinite. Woo! And He loves you. And He knows what's best for you. What? But we really want to tell Him what's best for us. If any man lacks wisdom, let him pray for it. Let's pray for some wisdom. Lord, I don't know what I need. Lord, You give me what I need and help me to have the wisdom to recognize it. Lord, help me to grow in my knowledge of You and of my Lord. I'm going to grow in grace. I'm going to grow in love and charity. These are needful things to pray for. To our Father, who's given us these wonderful gifts, salvation, hope. Why would He not give us the other good things here if we're asking for good things? So God is our Father. And finally, this is something we need to remember. Again, from that pointing up, our little spot, we got past, we got future, we got now. God is our father and Jesus Christ is our Lord. Our Lord. All right. Lord Jesus Christ. What does that mean? That means he's in charge. Short answer, your Lord is entitled to you. For your respect, for your time, for your attention, for the resources that He's given you to put about in His service, it's all His. A Lord expects to be obeyed and served. The world wants to put Jesus in a manger. Dear little baby Jesus, the Ricky Bobby prayer of that He's not dangerous. He's not threatening. Jesus Christ is no longer in that manger. He's sitting on high on the right hand, and He rules and He reigns now. He is Lord, and when He returns, it will be patently obvious to all that He is Lord. But your identity, and that's the point of all this, is your identity, that not only is God your Father, but Jesus Christ is your Lord. So if you have a Lord, you're His servant. You're his! Yes, he is your elder brother in the context of that, and that's wonderful, but he's still your Lord. Just like Joseph, he had some brothers, and they really didn't want him to be over him. And guess what happened in the end? He was over them! And at the end, they're all bowing the knee, asking really nicely. if he'll be kind to them. We have a much better brother than that, but he is still Lord. You are not on equal footing with Christ. You may be an heir with him in glory, maybe co-heir, a co-participant, but he outranks you. And so what he wants is more important in your life than what you want. What you want should be Trying to seek what He wants. Order of priority is that, yes, I am a child of God. He's made me a king and priest, right? But I'm not a free agent here. I am under the Lord. The author and finisher of my faith, Jesus Christ. I look to Him. when I make decisions. I look to Him when I open my mouth. I look to Him when I decide to go and to do or not do. A Lord is entitled to your respect, to your service, but to ultimately your obedience. How does He reveal what He wants in your life? In His Word. Yeah, I talked to the Lord about it. I prayed about it. He didn't strike me dead with a thunderbolt, so I must be alright. I mean, I've got this opportunity and nothing has stopped me from going forward, so it must be the Lord's will. Y'all be real careful with that expression. You want to know what determines the Lord's will? It's what He says is His will. And you need wisdom to try and make sure that you're applying it as best you can. Because sometimes we see, well, this happened. Well, it's the Lord's will. Well, let's be careful with that. Not everything that happens is pleasing to the Lord, and that's really what you and I want to get to. Him tolerating things and allowing things to happen is not the same as things that please Him. He allowed Adam and Eve to sin. He is not pleased by sin. He knew it was going to happen. He allowed it to happen. He didn't stop it. He's got this whole salvation plan that he has worked out and how he was going to deal with it. But sin does not please him. Your sin does not please him. My sin does not please him. Be careful when we talk about the will of God. I want you to replace that from your vocabulary because I think that's a little bigger than our heads. Will this please God? Will this glorify God? Will this bring God honor? If the answer to any of those questions is no, you're getting closer. But I really want to! Now, look up. Father and Lord. Will it please your father? Does it please your Lord? That kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it? I hope so. All right, we're just kind of squeegeeing off. He's always been your father. He's always been your Lord. But sometimes we get insular inside our own head and forget. Paul's an apostle. How is it an apostle? You just make yourself an apostle? By the commandment of both God, our Savior, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope. Was Paul necessarily well qualified to be an apostle? If you say he put himself on the resume of, oh, this was a good servant of Christ, let's go ahead and bump him up to that apostleship position. Yeah. Yeah, put that on the resume. Yeah, and terrorize the church. Yeah, that's exactly my point, Patrick. Thank you. I'm glad you're listening and paying attention. Paul was a terrorist, right? He was at enmity with God's people and Jesus Christ hated everything about him. But the same grace that was extended to that terrorist to turn him into one of the most notable preachers, right? It's the same grace that was extended to you, right? You were at enmity with God. Your carnal mind, your sins, everything about you was at hatred with God. And yet He gave you new life and put you into His service and let you know what He'd done. and let you know what He will do and let you know who you are right now. You are my child. You are my servant. When you get discouraged and you feel like Who you are has just changed so much from who you thought you'd be, or who you used to be, where you're wrapped up in just feeling like a failure. Go back to these four things. Ask the question, who am I? And don't start giving the world's answers. It doesn't matter what your hometown was, who your people are, how long you've been in the county, I had a job interview or something. Boy, you just about related to everybody in the county, ain't you? I'm glad I was, but it didn't mean anything. I didn't live there. I didn't know them. But none of that matters as far as who I am. It's like trying to describe, well, what color is that sand? It's so insignificant. Can you even really see the different sides of it? But if you're looking at a relationship to who is God and what has He done for me, something that doesn't change, something that's secure in my past, something that is secure in my future, and what is every commodity's thing, you know, all these things you buy, stocks, everything. This is a risky endeavor, you know, profits are not guaranteed, you know. Trading involves risk. The future is uncertain. And anything in connection with men, that's true. But if your identity is in Christ, our hope, that is certain. I mean, imagine if you could have an investment that has that level of certainty. It doesn't exist because God's not on the other side. Past is secure, future is secure, and right now, When I look up and remember that I can talk to my Heavenly Father, the Creator who chose me and loves me and loves me still, and who will give me wisdom when I ask for it, and will teach me the right way, and will chasten me when I give the wrong way. Not because He's going to blow me out of the water, but because He continues to love me even in that. As I tell my children when I'm disciplining them, I love you. I will always be your Father. You will always be my sons and daughters. And because I love you, I will teach you, and I will continue to teach you. We talk about gentle parenting, right? That means you're not going to discipline them at all. Gentle parenting means you're, okay, my expression, right? You're disciplining as gentle as possible, but as firm as necessary. To teach, right, from Rome. A parent's job is to teach, right? And so we have to make sure the lessons are retained, right? But that's how your Heavenly Father interacts with you. Does He go thermonuclear and blow you out of the water when you sin? No. But He does teach. As gently as He knows, we'll get the message across. And you ever wonder why things may be so hard when you're getting chastened? Maybe it's you're hard-headed. It takes a bigger lesson for it to get across. We have a Heavenly Father and we have a Lord. So I am saved. I am delivered. I am full of hope. I am a child of God. And I am a servant of my Lord. And this is not just true for me. This is true for every single child of God. Across all humanity. Y'all, we should be stable. When you're standing on this, this doesn't change. If you base your identity on anything else, you're liable to have a disappointment. The definition of whatever you're defining it of could change. This is stable. This is secure. And guess what? This is real. Who am I? Thank you all for your time and attention.