Who Am I? - Who Do People Say That I am?

Lesson 2 – Who Do People Say that I Am?

Scripture: 41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” “The son of David,” they replied. 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says, 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.” 45If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions. – Matthew 22:41-45

THE NAME TAGS

Denise had worried about meeting friends, but she had managed to make a few friends. There was a problem, however. Some of Denise’s friends wanted her to do things she was not comfortable with doing. At first, it was only silly stuff. They picked on some of the quiet kids and played pranks on them. But now, the things they wanted her to do were getting beyond what Denise thought was right. In fact, she had felt awful about the pranks they had already been doing, but she went along with them anyway because she didn’t want them to think bad about her.

One evening as Denise was sitting in her room, she began to drift off to sleep. She began to dream. In her dream, she heard people talking about her. They were saying really awful things about her. She kept trying to yell and tell them that those things weren’t true. She wasn’t stupid or mean or any of the other things they were saying. What happened next was all the terrible things that were being said about her were being placed on her like name tags. When she looked at the tags, she began to feel really bad. Denise woke from her dream and began to wonder, “am I all those horrible things?”

~Examine the Word~

Jesus asked the Pharisees a question. He wanted to know what they thought about the Messiah. The specific question he asked was whose Son is he? They said He was the son of David. Jesus further asked if He is merely David’s son, why does David, speaking by the moving of the Holy Spirit call him Lord? They could not or better yet, would not answer Jesus.

The Pharisees were a group of religious individuals that were seeking to kill Jesus. They did not like Jesus’ teaching or the things He was saying. They did not want to accept the truth about Jesus.

Did you know that is true today? People do not want to believe the truth about Jesus. They do not believe that He came to save the world. They say He was only a good man, but not the Son of God. Yet, even though those wrong things were said about Jesus, did that stop Him from being the Messiah? No!

Did you know that people today will not believe the truth about you sometimes? Some people will not give the right answer when asked the question of who are you? Now, sometimes people do know some things about you, but do people know everything about you? Let’s take a little quiz to find out how much someone knows about you.

~Discovering the Truth~

The Pharisees did not know who Jesus was. Because of this, they missed receiving him as the Son of God sent to save them from their sins. However, this did not stop Jesus’ purpose or His understanding of why He came. He knew who He was based on His Father. God said that Jesus was His Son, and He was pleased with Him (Matthew 3:17, 17:5; 2 Peter 1:17). This helped Jesus to be able to go all the way to the cross because He knew who He was.



As we learned today, people will not always be right about who we are. Therefore, we can’t determine what God’s purpose for us is, based on what people think about us. Denise in our story had a dream where people were putting name tags (or labels) on her. She began to think that maybe those things were true. We have to be careful not to take labels on about ourselves, even good ones. If we are going to know who we really are, we can’t use others labels of us. What should we use then? Great question!

~Conclusion~

So what’s the answer to that great question? It is God that we have to ask to find out what He says about us. We learned that we can’t always trust ourselves to have the right answers about who we are to God. We also learned that sometimes we can’t depend on others either to tell us who we are to God. We need to always go to God about learning how to be the person he designed us to be.

~Additional Scriptures~

The poor are shunned even by their neighbors, but the rich have many friends. – Proverbs 14:20

With their mouths the godless destroy their neighbors, - Proverbs 11:9a

Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD. – Leviticus 19:16

Prayer: Lord, we cannot look to ourselves or to others to truly help us find out who YOU say that we are. Help us to see ourselves from YOUR eyes. Help us so that we can know like Jesus did, that we are YOURS and YOU love us, Amen.