Settling Our Identity Crisis | Psalm 8 & Romans 11:33-12:2 | Reclaiming Our Humanity

In a world that tells us we are cosmic accidents who "clawed our way out of the ooze," nihilism and meaninglessness often win the day. This sermon grounds our identity in the truth of Scripture: we are created by a sovereign God and crowned with glory and honor. Because God the Son took on human flesh to redeem our bodies, we have a purpose that transcends technology. This message provides three practical resolutions for the New Year to help us live as "living sacrifices" in a digital world.

 

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week, we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.

This Lord's Day that ends up between Christmas and New Year's is kind of a hard one to plan for. We finished up from Advent but it doesn't feel right to start a new series—we're going to the book of James after the start of the new year. And so I was thinking about what to do with this Sunday, and I went through a few different options in my head and decided the new year's coming, I’m gonna tie something into starting new. This idea of maybe looking at the world a little different or making a commitment to something.

And I was thinking about where are we at in our modern world? And one important theme that kept popping up for me as I stood over some different ideas in my head was the idea of what does it mean to be human? Because I keep seeing people wrestling with what it means to be a person in our modern technological times. Now this has come up in casual conversations I've had with people I barely know; it's come up with deep discussions with people I know very well. I see things online where people are asking these questions as well. People who are not even Christians are wrestling with these things; we're seeing them turn towards faith as a way to understand this.

Now this concern is expressed in a lot of different ways, but the basic idea is the same. People feel like we're losing our humanity. Some people express it as a frustration of technology taking away our need to think. Others talk about screen addiction and talk about how staring at a backlit device that comes out of our pocket all the time makes us zombie-like. The problem is both a cultural problem and a personal problem. I feel it all around us and I’m guessing you do as well.

Well, this past October, when I attended the Reformation and Worship Conference, one of the speakers, Dr. Carl Truman, addressed a lot of these issues in a few of the lectures. Now I'm well aware of the way that constant connectivity, social media algorithms, and the creeping of artificial intelligence makes me feel personally. But his lectures confirmed other things that I have been seeing in the greater world as well.

In our technological age, it seems like we think we are in control of reality. The belief is that we can alter our bodies or perhaps even make it so that we no longer need to die. And as absurd as we know this to be, it doesn't take terribly long for you to come into contact with people talking this way. One example that was particularly alarming to me was Dr. Truman shared in one of his lectures that he had seen a televised interview where they were talking about somebody who was doing some research in altering humanity. And she had said that it wouldn't be too much longer until we would no longer need to bother women with the inconvenience of pregnancy. Instead, we would perfect artificial wombs and children would functionally come from factories.

And my point in bringing all of this up is that while you and I feel the stress of our connected world, there is more to this than your phone listening to you so that artificial intelligence can figure out what to sell you. There's an undercurrent in all of this that sees the body as a limit to be broken, not a gift that we receive from God.

I've actually been contemplating these ideas a lot over the last few years, and one of the things that I've realized is that these issues have actually been stewing for a really long time. This is not just something that we're seeing in our current cultural moment. Looking back, several of the bands I listen to and have listened to for a long time have been exploring the ethics of altering humans to extend life. In fact, the first compact disc—that tells you how old I am here—the first compact disc I ever bought was the album Brainchild by the Christian industrial band Circle of Dust, and they explored those ideas. That was 33 years ago.

Also in the 80s, Neil Postman expressed concerns about how technology was changing us when he wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death. Going back even further, C.S. Lewis gave the lectures that would become the book The Abolition of Man back in 1943. He was concerned about the abolition, the destruction of man, all the way back in 1943. And a lot of those themes that in the things that we're seeing in our culture now, we're also present in his fiction book, That Hideous Strength, that was released in 1945.

And my point in bringing that up is that this isn't a new problem, and we've been sliding towards this cultural moment for a long time. But I'm spending the time on it this morning because I think the greater culture is finally feeling the weight of all of this in a new way. And I believe one of the ways that we as Christians can best prepare for 2026 and beyond is to be ready to offer hope to the despair that we see in the world.

Because there is an overwhelming sense of hopelessness in the world. And honestly, why wouldn't there be? We don't know where we came from, we don't know what we're doing, and we don't know where we're going. That is a recipe for a feeling of meaninglessness and nihilism. And evolutionary thought and materialistic atheism doesn't provide hope to this situation, and pagan thought, with its distaste of the material world, doesn't have any hope to offer either.

But Christianity offers an understanding of the creator and the creature. We understand that we are made in the image of God. And even after we fell into sin and rebellion against God, He came to rescue us in a real material body. To redeem not just our souls; He came and redeemed our bodies as well.

And one of the most important things that we can do to hold on to these truths is to remember the high status that God places on humanity. As humans, we are not cosmic accidents. We were made in the image of God. We are not cosmic accidents that sprouted legs to walk out of the primordial soup. We were created by a wise and sovereign God, and we remain in His image.

And the story of creation not only tells us where we came from, it is a story that is very distinct from a pagan understanding of the world. Because in Holy Scripture, God is outside of creation. But in paganism, matter has always existed, it's all there is, it's all there ever will be, and everything springs out of that. But the Bible paints a picture of a loving God who creates from nothing and he cares for and sustains that creation. We are not on some random rock floating around a giant ball of fire in an indistinct part of the universe. God made everything for a purpose, and He is able to act to work all things together for His purposes.

And just the fact that we are created in the image of God, Genesis 1:27 here, is enough for us to drive the truth that our lives have a purpose. But the eighth chapter of the Psalter that we read from this morning helps us to understand this more deeply.

And here, the psalmist establishes the glory of God in all his splendor and majesty. His glory is beyond the heavens. There is no one who is like him. He is beyond our comprehension. And we can't even begin to wrap our minds around his power, his majesty, and his holiness. But yet, we know that he is mindful of us.

And the psalmist observes these truths about God and the created order. He says that the moon and the stars show us just how powerful God is, and yet God is mindful of humanity. The moon and the stars are huge. They are distant. They're majestic. And if God made those things and sustains those parts of creation, why would he even bother with us little specks?

Well, the psalmist lets us know that it is not the heavenly bodies or even the mountain peaks that are the crowning jewel of creation, it's humanity that he made in his image. We are so easily enamored with a beautiful starry night, the aurora borealis, or the view from a mountain peak as something that shows us that God is real and his glory. But you don't need to leave this room to see the crowning jewel of creation. You are the most beautiful and majestic part of what God has made.

And the psalmist tells us that the fellow image bearers sitting near you today have been made a little lower than the heavenly beings. We are not divine. But we are not like the animals or other parts of creation. And we know this because he has given us the glory and honor of being made in his image. And he has given us a job to do. He gave us dominion.

Humanity has not just come to the top of the food chain over a long period of time through chance biological processes. We were created to have dominion over creation. And this is made really clear for us in verse five here. Look at what it says, we were crowned with glory and honor. It's not something that we've achieved or worked to.

Humanity is perpetually trying to crown ourselves through our achievements. In our personal lives, this can be trying to curate an online persona, or at a larger scale, it might be the assumptions that people have that technology can shatter the limits put on us by our bodies. But we don't need to try and elevate ourselves. We have inherent dignity and value far behind anything that we could ever garner for ourselves.

When we deny that we are creatures under a creator, we don't become more powerful. We just get more lost and we become more deluded. We lose the very identity that we think we're elevating. And it's important that this is an essential part of how we understand ourselves. If we are dignified, crowned, but still dependent creatures, how do we then live? How do we settle this identity crisis that's going on in a culture that seems bent on dragging humanity down from the elevated status that we have been gifted by God?

What do we do? Well, the apostle Paul in the book of Romans works through the depths of God's grace and how through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are declared righteous and able to go before a holy God. And when we arrive at the end of chapter 11 here, Paul hits a point where all he can do is acknowledge God's wisdom and knowledge and express how all of this runs contrary to the way man works. Paul realizes that when you truly understand who God is, you finally come to grips with what your purpose is. And right here in verse 36 of chapter 11, we see that all things are from him and through him and to him and he deserves all the glory.

When our junior high catechism class meets, we start with a scripture reading where we progressively read through a book of the Bible, then we move into five to 10 minutes of review time. We go over the definition of the gospel that we've learned, we go over the 10 commandments, stuff like the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed, and we also work on reviewing specific catechism questions during this time.

But there is one question that I review with them over and over all the time every week. Westminster Shorter Catechism, question and answer one: What is the chief end of man? And every last one of them can tell you that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Now that's a pretty easy question to memorize because it's really terse and it's to the point and there's kind of a rhythm to it, right? But I don't drill them on that over and over because it's easy and as their teacher I can feel like they actually remember something I taught them. That's a nice win there. But that's not why I do it.

I ask them that question over and over because I want them to understand that their life has a purpose, that their life has meaning. Because there is so much hopelessness and particularly, it is affecting younger generations because they are missing an understanding of reality that I've been talking about here that we saw in Scripture. You can't tell generation after generation that they are cosmic accidents who clawed their way out of the ooze and not think that nihilism, a philosophy of meaninglessness, won't win the day.

We need to be expressing to our young people, and frankly, all people, that they have a purpose, that they were created for a reason. They were not only made to glorify God, but because of the gospel, they can glorify him forever. Because you see, because of the gospel, this is all more than just a philosophy that is different than the philosophy and the mindset of the world.

The gospel informs us that even though we break God's law and rebel against His holiness and defame the image that He gave us, God still loves us enough to redeem us. Not just our souls, not just our consciousness, but our bodies. Just a few days ago, we were in this room. We celebrated that God the Son took on human flesh to redeem us. And the salvation that he brings is only possible because he was born in a real human body.

In that real human body, He lived a life that I cannot and do not live in my body. He kept the law for me. He bore the wrath of God in that very real body. And he rose again with that same body that suffered and died. And He did not suddenly abandon that resurrection body and leave that earth suit behind when He ascended to the right hand of the Father. He ascended bodily and is bodily interceding for His people at the right hand of the Father. And He will bodily return to judge the living and the dead at the end of history when He delivers His kingdom to His Father.

You see, Christianity is very concerned with the body. Not only because God created it, but because God redeemed it through the work of his most precious son. And while humanity is busy playing God by using technology to create womb factories or to extend life by transferring consciousness into machines, we have something far greater. Desperately trying to alter the human body to cheat death, we have lost sight of the fact that our future isn't some mystical, technological utopia. Our future is a restored creation and that has already been secured by the victory of Jesus in his death and his victory over the grave.

And when we understand that, it is going to naturally affect how we live our lives. In light of this great gift that we have by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we see that we are to present our bodies to God as living sacrifices. We live in these bodies to the glory of God. This, Paul says, is our spiritual act of worship.

And this is where we land today as we consider what glorifying God and enjoying Him looks like for you and I as the redeemed people of God in 2026 and beyond. We tend to relegate matters of faith to the immaterial, right? But we live in a physical world created by a good and loving God and we have material bodies and we have been given a mission in this world.

In light of the mercy God has given us, the call in our lives is to give our lives for Him. This is where we find meaning and purpose in a world that has lost all of that. That is where we are able to proclaim a gospel of a redeemed creation as the world is trying to alter and bend it to their desires.

While one of the ways that we apply what I've been talking about this morning is by being sure we have a biblical understanding of the world, we have to remember that this is more than just a philosophical exercise. It's more than just ideas. We are called to be living sacrifices.

And as we head into the new year, I wanna challenge you with a few real tangible ways that we can focus on living as creatures who serve the creator. I hope that these things are good tangible ways that you can live out your humanity and not only find direction in a world of chaos, but I also hope that it becomes a way that you can witness to a world that lacks hope and purpose.

The way that we help change the distorted way of viewing the world that we see out there isn't by arguing with people and hoping that we'll win the argument and they'll agree with us. We make a difference by living as real embodied servants of God that bring hope to the lost in simple, understandable ways.

So the first thing that I want to challenge you with into the new year is to prioritize those who are in reasonable proximity to you over the distant and the digital. Because often we find ourselves more concerned with how we look on social media profiles and we connect with people who are distant there. And we also find ourselves concerned with global causes far more than we concern ourselves with those in need that we might actually know.

And I'm not saying that caring about a cause is a bad thing. It's good to care about someone on the other side of the world. What I'm saying is that we've all been guilty of prioritizing the distant or the digital over concern for those that we actually share space with. It's so easy to love humanity in the abstract. But let's be honest, it is really hard to love the neighbor whose dog barks too much or whose politics I don't agree with.

So all of this starts with loving one another in the family of God as Christ commanded us. We start here and it moves out from the people of God caring for all people as a witness to the grace that God has shown us in Christ.

So what does this look like? Maybe for you it's initiating a conversation with someone you've known for a really long time but you've never had a significant conversation with them. Maybe it's looking others in the eye and let them know that you really care about them being present with you and you care about what they have to say instead of looking for an opening to talk about what you want to talk about. Maybe it's putting the phone down or stepping away from social media for a while to prioritize real relationships.

By loving your actual neighbor, you are rebelling against a world that wants to turn people into pixels. Your neighbor is more than binary code on a screen. They are image bearers. And the technology of our day seems bent on making us forget that. Don't let it happen. Focusing on in-person relationships is a simple way to make sure we don't lose the fact that we are created by God to glorify him and enjoy him forever.

Second tangible thing we can do: I challenge you to engage scripture with your body. Now, there's nothing wrong with using a Bible digitally, but that constant refreshing screen does not lend itself to meditating on God's word. Those screens distract, and we can so easily become doom-scrolling zombies just by switching from the Bible app to our favorite social media platform.

Now maybe you already insist on a physical Bible, but as you head into the new year, I wanna challenge you to take in the physical nature of the Bible as you handle it. Take in the paper, maybe use a pen and take notes in a notebook or in the margins of your Bible, because God created us, he designed us to have a profound connection between our hand, our eyes, our heads and our hearts.

And whether you are taking in God's word personally, whether you're reading it with someone else, or maybe it's here as we read, pray, and sing it as we worship together, take in the beauty of the fact that God delivered the word to us as his people. Relish the fact that you can know that God is speaking to you and that he has revealed himself to you, that you might glorify him and enjoy him forever.

And finally, resolve to accept our creaturely limitations as a gift from God. The world tells you that you're a machine, so you need to be optimized, and really the world wants you to believe that you are a small g God capable of redefining reality, but you're not.

Scripture reveals to you that you are a creature, and it makes it clear that you are not only designed to work, but you are designed to rest. You don't need to be everywhere at once. Only God is omnipresent. You don't need to know everything. Only God is omniscient. Let yourself be content with being a creature. Let yourself rest.

That's what the Sabbath is about. We come here, we take rest in anticipation of that eternal rest that we've been promised in the Lord Jesus Christ. Take in your creaturely limits and accept them and rest and enjoy God.

So in 2026, remind yourself that your chief end is not to be a mindless machine. Your chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And you do this by being exactly what God created you to be: a human being made in the image of God. Enjoy the gifts that He provides. Enjoy the rest that He commands. And find joy and fellowship with the people that He has gathered together.

So as we leave here today, we're gonna continue to live in a world that struggles with this identity crisis. It will continue to look for answers and hope in the next algorithm, the next medical breakthrough, or some other new digital distraction. But as the people of God in Christ Jesus, you have an identity that has long been settled.

From before history even began, you were set apart as a child of the king. And he made you in his image. He redeemed you through the blood of a real savior who is still serving you in a human body in this very moment. And because of that, you have a purpose that no technology can take away from you. Not even death can destroy that hope.

Our chief end is not to find a way to transcend our humanity, but to find our identity in the one who made us and saved us. So may we enter the new year by offering ourselves as living sacrifices that glorify God, walking confidently with a peace that we will enjoy Him forever. Amen.

Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank You that Your Word tells us where we came from, tells us what we are doing, and lets us know the hope of where we are going. We pray that we would remember this great truth, that we are created in Your image, and that we would desire to be image bearers who love one another, and serve you for your glory.

May we be persistently mindful that you have come and redeemed us. And may the good news of that gospel be on our lips, that others might hear, and they would desire to glorify you and enjoy you forever as well. It's in the name of Jesus we pray, amen. Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reform Church, head to our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org

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