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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jonathan Zirkle

A Better Way to See Yourself

Dear Lord I ask that you would be with me now as I speak help me to speak your words and not my own and Lord I thank you for the care that you've given for frontline medics and our men that are out there.

And I pray Lord that you continue to protect them.

So I titled this message Ambassadors for Christ.

But I'm gonna tell you that that's a poor title.

And the reason why it's a poor title is that it's hard to express what I want to express in the English language in just 1 word or 2.

And so with that, forgive me and see that we are more than ambassadors.

So what we think of ourselves is critical to who we are.

And it's critical to how we act and behave.

I can remember I used to be the general counsel to the VA hospital here in Loma Linda.

You know, everyone knew I had a direct entry into the CEO's office.

And I'd go out and I'd kinda walk the halls and I'd run into people.

And 1 of the most interesting things I'd run into, there would be an attending there, and then walking behind the attending would be some residents, and then walking behind them would be the new medical students, right?

And the attendings tended to know me, and sometimes they would say hi to me.

But then I would see that third year medical student who's walking in the back.

They seemed to kind of walk in order, it seemed like to me.

I don't know if that's really true or not.

You know, I'd call him by name, you know?

And you should have seen the looks on everybody's face.

The attending's like going, oh, why is this guy talking to our attorney?

And the student would be kind of a little like, oops, what did I do?

It was everybody was kind of like stuck in their roles because of what they believed themselves to be.

You know, the doctors were going through this training process and there's a real hierarchy in the medical field.

But I say that as an illustration as to who we believe ourselves to be is kind of a lot who we are.

I know when I first was practicing law I was a deputy district attorney and 1 of the things they taught us as deputy district attorney this kind of drilled through your head it's almost like you don't need anybody to even tell you this, but they tell you it again anyway, is don't use your office as a district attorney for personal gain.

And I remember there was a restaurant over in San Bernardino that we would go to, and they had the law enforcement green and the law enforcement red.

And this was a Mexican restaurant, it's like, do you want red sauce or green sauce?

You get a big plate of food and it only costs like 4 bucks.

And I thought to myself, this doesn't even seem right, you know, because we were using our office for personal gain.

But I can tell you what happened as a deputy district attorney I would start to think highly of myself and I'd start to think when people would disrespect me Do you know who I am?

Do you know who I do what I do, you know, and and I realized that this is the root of corruption now By God's grace.

I don't think I ever used my position for anything other than maybe a speeding ticket or the law enforcement red, okay?

But it's there, and it's based on how we perceive ourselves.

And another thing that's important that maybe we've related to, have any of you gone on a short-term mission trip or even a long-term 1?

When you go on that mission trip, do you behave differently?

Because you know you're representing Christ.

So what do you think dictates who you are?

Now, we all know we're children of God, but that's kind of become a cliche almost.

We say this, but we don't think about the full implications of it all.

And so today we're gonna look through scripture and try to answer that question a lot more.

God is creating man, And he says, man in his own image.

In the image of God created he him, male and female created he him.

And God blessed him and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the earth, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." I think when we see this a lot of times, we think of image like, it just means God would look like us if he walked into the room.

In fact, You look at this, key phrases in here, image, dominion, fruitful and multiply, that's life, right?

Genesis 2, and the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

He didn't do this with the other animals.

And then he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.

I don't know why, but whenever I think of this I always think that God put his face over our entire face.

It had to have been both the nostrils and the mouth, because if you breathe in 1, it comes out the other.

It's a very intimate place for God to be with us.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

And the evening and morning were the sixth day.

And if you read the creation account, it was good every day, but when God makes man, It is very good.

I can do it without the slides, but I don't want to have people waste time opening their Bibles because time is so short.

I thought about all of this in relation to Revelation 13.

I've been studying Revelation 13 and it brought to mind Genesis 1.

And I held another beast come out of the earth and had 2 horns like a lamb and he spoke as a dragon.

And he exercised all the power of the first beast before him and caused the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed.

And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword and did live.

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

Now you know I do a lot of religious liberty and what's going on in Revelation 13 is important for religious liberty purposes.

And there's a whole overlay of religious liberty right here in Revelation 13.

But I saw this and I thought, wait a second, an image to the beast, what did God make us in?

Power to give life, God gave us life, right?

And to speak and to cause as many who would not worship the image of the beast should be killed." That's dominion.

And I started to realize, you know, everything that starts in Genesis ends in Revelation.

And I realized, wait a second, this is the bookend to the creation of man.

And you see, Satan is the master counterfeiter.

And what's interesting about a counterfeiter, A counterfeiter knows more about the money than he's counterfeiting than anybody else does, right?

The other thing is he's more interested in the money than anybody else is.

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A Better Way to See Yourself

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