A God's Eye View: Of You!
Significant Identity Passages from Isaiah
Walls of Salvation
August 9, 2020 • Rev. Dr. Gerrit Dawson
Christianity identity is received. It’s a gift that comes from placing your life in Christ’s hands. Shed your baggage, pride and stubborn will in order to enter the gate of the City whose walls are salvation. Before you make the decision, those gates look very narrow. Rumors are that life in the city is constricting and dull, oppressive and confining. But the people on the ramparts are shouting a different message. Come in! It feels like death. And it is. You have to drop your pride, your personal identity markers, your goals of what makes for security and well-being. You have to take up the song of praise to the LORD of the City. It’s a narrow pass. But inside, you get reclothed. You get gifted with a new identity that is actually the one most like you all along. You get identity as a beloved, redeemed child of the High King. You become part of his massive re-blessing plan in the world. We have a vision. We have a message of highest hope. We have a gospel. Good news. Good tidings of great joy which shall be unto all people. For unto us a savior has been born. A savior has lived the life of true flourishing love and faithfulness. A savior has died to cleanse away our stains. A savior has risen to break death. A savior reigns who beckons the world to come to him and be part of the building of his great City. Jesus Christ, the Son of God who became the Son of Man, is the Lord of this City, and there is room for all who come. Could there be any better vision for our world than the City of God whose walls are salvation and whose gates are praise?
The City of the LORD
August 2, 2020 • Rev. Dr. Gerrit Dawson
Interaction with the world, even enjoyment of its good, is not what undoes us as Christ’s people. Our over-identification with the world is not simply because we have common cause with the affairs of the world. Rather our failure to lift up our hearts, to see Christ in heaven and give thanks is what undoes our mission and compromises our witness. As citizens of the City of God, we may participate in the life of the world, striving with it, thankful for it, bruised by it, hoping for it, knowing that this is not our truest home. We touch these things but lightly. We do not possess anything and so we possess everything. For we belong to Christ and all things are his (I Cor. 3: 22-23).
Priests of the LORD
July 12, 2020 • Rev. Dr. Gerrit Dawson
The reason we are given such a privileged title, "Priests of the LORD," is so that we may proclaim God's mighty acts of mercy toward us to the world. We have been called in order to be sent. We are the ones who get to make the connection between the Triune God and the world of lost humanity.
Oaks of Righteousness
June 21, 2020 • Rev. Dr. Gerrit Dawson
Isaiah envisioned the redeemed people as being the result of God's own gardening efforts in the world. The LORD calls us "the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified” (60: 21). The LORD is both the gardener and the ground in which we grow. He nourishes us with his life so that we become what we were made to be. God is the garden itself: “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28). His soil is filled with righteousness. This means that if our lives are grown in God, there will be an essential rightness, a wholeness, in all our living. We will be living from an organic relationship with God.
Repairer of the Breach
June 14, 2020 • Rev. Dr. Gerrit Dawson
Before blame and shame, we let tears be tears. We just agree that this isn’t right. And then before our emotions are corrupted by an angry agenda, we embrace. And we say, “I am in this with you. We’re together.” Because the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases. He calls a people to himself, and then sends us to suffer alongside the suffering. In a thousand, thousand ways, from that place of tearful love, we discover how to live out the name, “Repairer of the Breach." Keep claiming the tears of Christ. Keep praying for your enemies and your friends. Keep calling up faith in the mercies of Christ. Keep repairing the breach in his name. It’s how God see us. It’s who we are.
The Redeemed of the LORD
May 24, 2020 • Rev. Dr. Gerrit Dawson
God had simply had enough of the corruption and the resulting affliction and pain of his people. He realized, “They can’t do this on their own. They can’t clean this up. They can’t fix themselves. I’m coming down. I’m coming down there myself.” And so God suited up for battle. He took off his fancy royal robe and for a moment his mighty arm was bared. Then he put on his armor. But the LORD’s warrior gear was donned in order to save. His helmet was not metal, but made of salvation. His breastplate was made not of iron but righteousness. He was coming to squash resistance to his rule of love and get his people back on the right footing. “A Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from their transgressions” (59: 20).
Sought Out
May 17, 2020 • Rev. Dr. Gerrit Dawson
Found. That’s a strong word to those of us in exile. God seeks your company. He knows where you are. And he wants to bring you home. But you’ve got to be willing to let him find you. We can be exiled so long that we don’t even want to be found. We just want to stay diminished and alone. That’s a spiritual hazard. God’s view of you is this: You are Sought Out. I came to seek and save the lost. So get the point of why I came to you as Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior. The goal of life is to get found! I seek you and I see you. Won’t you come to me?
Seeing Through
April 26, 2020 • Rev. Dr. Gerrit Dawson
What do you look like from a God’s-eye view? What is God’s opinion of you? What is God’s desire for you? These are all identity questions. In fact, they’re the ones that really matter. God sees truly. God sees all the way through. God sees me as I am. His view is the only one that matters because he is the Creator. He is the one who alone sees according to Reality. Because God is Reality and Truth. God’s opinion is the one opinion that gives me my identity. Because it’s the only opinion, the only view of me, that actually matches what is truly so.