Only the Creator Has Authority to Define His Creation

Brian Hunter · May 17, 2026

Scripture referenced

• 1 Kings 5:6
• Isaiah 29:16
• 2 Corinthians 5:17
• Romans 8:15
• Romans 6:14
• Romans 8:37
• Jeremiah 31:3
• Ephesians 1:4-5
• 1 John 3:1
• John 16:33

This message was part of an ongoing series on working smarter and not harder, focused on the idea that before we can sharpen our tools and use our gifts well, we have to know who we are. Brian used the story of Gideon in Judges 6 to open up a conversation about identity: where it comes from, who has the authority to define it, and what God says about us compared to what we say about ourselves.

What was said

Brian briefly recapped the previous weeks, reminding the congregation that the Sidonians had a reputation as skilled lumberjacks because they kept their tools sharp. The application carried forward from earlier in the series is that God gives us gifts and talents to fulfill our unique calling, but it is our responsibility to keep those tools sharp. A sharp tool is a gift used in the Spirit; a dull tool is the same gift used in the flesh. Moses was the running example: one dead Egyptian when he operated in the flesh, and an entire nation freed when he operated in the Spirit.

The question that came up after those previous weeks, from texts and conversations with people in the congregation, was this: what is the difference between a gift, a talent, a calling, and an anointing? Brian said those words get used interchangeably, and that works to a point, but slowing down to define them brings clarity. That conversation starts with identity, because you cannot rightly use what you have been given if you do not know who you are.

Gideon in Judges 6 is hiding in a winepress, threshing wheat in a hole in the ground because he is afraid of the Midianites. He describes himself as the least member of the weakest clan in his tribe. Then God addresses him as a mighty man of valor before Gideon has done a single thing to earn that title. Brian pointed out that Gideon had accomplished nothing at that moment, and still God spoke his identity over him. Both things were true at once: Gideon really was small and afraid, and God’s word about him was a higher truth operating above that reality, the way lift works above gravity without gravity ever switching off.

Brian pressed on where identity actually comes from. His argument was straightforward: only the creator has the authority to define the creation. He used the illustration of a child’s artwork. A parent who looks at a tall yellow shape with brown spots and calls it a giraffe is wrong, no matter how much it looks like one, because the child who made it knows what it is. The potter, not the clay, assigns meaning. Isaiah 29:16 was quoted to make the same point from Scripture.

Brian was direct about the cultural moment the congregation lives in. Society, social media, the medical industry, politicians and college professors all compete to define who a person is. The reason humanity so often rejects God as creator, he said, is not complicated: if God made us, we are responsible to him. Pride does not want that accountability, so people work to erase the name on the bottom of the boot, even though erasing it does not change whose name is written there.

For people who have invited Jesus into their life, Brian said a further dimension of identity opens up. He listed five things Scripture says about believers: you are a new creation, you have been adopted back into God’s family, you are no longer a slave to sin, you are more than a conqueror, and you are deeply loved. He pressed the congregation to consider how differently they would move through a week, through social media, through hard news, through their own thought life, if those five statements were genuinely believed and held.

A congregation member named Renee added an observation Brian said he had never made before: Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress, and later in the story a Midianite soldier dreams of a barley loaf rolling into the camp and flattening it, which is interpreted as a sign of Gideon’s coming victory. What if Gideon’s actual skill set was baking? Renee’s point was that God was using Gideon’s everyday faithfulness in an ordinary occupation to prepare him for something he could not see coming. Brian said he would never read the Gideon story the same way again. The series will continue the following weeks with calling and then gifts, and how those things relate to and differ from identity.

Touch points

• Read Judges chapters 6 through 8 this week and watch how Gideon grows into the identity God spoke over him before he had done anything to earn it.
• Write down the five identity statements from the sermon, put them somewhere you will see them daily, and read them out loud to yourself each morning: you are a new creation, adopted back into God’s family, no longer a slave to sin, more than a conqueror, and deeply loved by God.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to show you one lie about your identity that you have been believing, renounce it out loud, and replace it with what God says about you.
• Look up the six scripture references Brian mentioned and spend time this week sitting with what each one says about who you are in Christ: 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 8:15, Romans 6:14, Romans 8:37, Jeremiah 31:3, and Ephesians 1:4-5.
• If you are a man, show up to the men’s Bible study Monday at 6PM, even if you have not been before, as Brian said it is never too late to jump in.

Doing a Bible study?

1. Brian pointed out that God greeted Gideon as ‘mighty man of valor’ before Gideon had done anything to earn that title. What does it mean to you that God speaks to who we are before we have performed or achieved anything?
2. Brian drew a contrast between how Gideon saw himself and how God saw him, and said both were true in a sense, but that God was operating at a higher level of truth. Where in your own life have you noticed a gap between how you see yourself and what God’s word says about you?
3. Brian said ‘only the creator has the authority to define his creation,’ and that society, social media, and our own shifting feelings will try to fill that role instead. What voices have most shaped how you think about your identity, and how do you weigh those against what God says?
4. Renee made the connection that Gideon’s seemingly mundane skill of processing grain may have been exactly what God was using to prepare him for what was ahead. Can you think of something ordinary in your own life that God might be using as preparation for something you cannot yet see?
5. Brian listed five identity statements from scripture: new creation, adopted into God’s family, no longer a slave to sin, more than a conqueror, and deeply loved by God. Which one of those is hardest for you to actually receive as true about yourself right now, and why?

Resumen en español

Topics

Gideon Identity Image Of God Self Worth Who Am I

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