Made in His Image

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Transcript:

Genesis chapter 1 this morning. Do you ever get down on yourself or down about yourself, however you want to say it? Just, you know yourself better than anybody else does, and if you’re like me, you don’t always like what you see.

This morning, I had one of those pity party moments. I had been so careful, or tried to be so careful. During the holidays, you know how we like to overindulge and, you know, it’s like it’s against the law to leave somebody’s house without dessert.

I have been so careful, you know, at Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s and all the various celebrations of those outside of those days, not to sit down and eat thirds and fourths of everything and not to have dessert. And so I was devastated this morning when I went to get dressed and I couldn’t get my pants on. Well, not to let you all in on too much, but try to squeeze the corners together, think skinny thoughts, and it just wouldn’t.

And I said, we had a, the last of all of our family Christmas festivities was yesterday. We are now officially over with Christmas. We had family that were out of town, and we didn’t get to see them at Christmas.

But the last of our holiday festivities, thank goodness, were over yesterday. And I said, Charla, I ate mostly vegetables. I didn’t even have dessert.

She said, well, you’re not going to lose weight from one day of vegetables. I said, I know that, but it just illustrates. It illustrates that I spent all this time.

That’s what I’ve done all through the holidays, and I have nothing to show for it. And I thought to myself, I hate this stupid body. I hate the belly.

And then I remembered what I was preaching on this morning, how we’re all created in the image of God. I don’t always feel like I’ve been created in the image of God. When I see myself in the mirror, or when I catch a glimpse of my attitude, or my behaviors, I don’t always feel like I’m a good image, like I’m a good representation of God.

But just like with so many other things, it doesn’t matter what I feel like, it matters what the Bible tells me, and that’s that I’ve been created in the image of God, as have you. And it’s something we need to remember when we start to feel down about ourselves. It’s something we need to remember with other people, too, that they’ve been created in the image of God.

There are several people that Charla and I know of right now that are mixed up in drugs and alcohol and don’t have their children and aren’t trying to take care of their children. And then we hear more and more stories like that of people just throwing their lives away. and it’s really easy, if that’s not the particular sin we’re mixed up in, to look at them and just think, ah, they’re just worthless.

And then sometimes I get pricked in the conscience and reminded that they were created in God’s image. And God wants them to live the life He designed for them just as much as He wants me to. And it breaks God’s heart, I think, just as much as if I go astray.

It’s a good reminder from time to time that when we look down on ourselves or when we look down on other people that we are created in God’s image. You may have noticed in the bulletin, the photo in there and the little caption about God being the giver of life throughout the month of January. We’re going to talk about the idea of God being the giver of life.

We know that He is, and yet sometimes the way we live our lives, we forget that the life that’s here in us and the life we see around us is a gift from God. It was designed by God. And it’s given by God to people that he created and whom he loves.

Sometimes I feel like we forget how much God loves us and how much God loves the people that we see around us. But the Bible says that we’re created in the image of God. It says it here.

We’re going to look at a few things in Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3 this morning. We’re not going to read the whole chapters. I encourage you to go back and read them for yourself.

You’re probably familiar with the stories in them. It’s the story of God creating the world and God giving Adam and Eve sort of their marching orders, what they were supposed to do, and then of Adam and Eve disobeying those and falling into sin. It’s a familiar story, but we’re going to focus in really on chapter 1, verses 26 through 29.

It says, starting in verse 26, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given to you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed. To you it shall be for meat. And he goes on there to talk about giving them dominion over the animals, giving them dominion over everything.

Skip down to verse 31. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Now the Bible teaches here and elsewhere that we are created in the image of God. And there are a lot of misconceptions about what this means. I grew up thinking that God must look like us.

When really that’s not the case. I mean, the Bible teaches that God is a spirit. He doesn’t have flesh and blood and bones.

Jesus did when he took on human flesh. But God doesn’t look like us. We’re supposed to look like God in a spiritual sense.

But it doesn’t mean that. . .

If you’re familiar with the painting, I can’t remember now. I should know this. I took enough art classes.

But I don’t know if it’s. . .

I don’t remember if it’s Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci. One of them painted. .

. It must have been Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Painted the photo.

. . Excuse me.

Where is my mind this morning? He painted a photo. I don’t think so.

Painted a painting on the Sistine Chapel. supposedly of God creating Adam, and you see Adam lying there sort of, I guess just before God puts the spark of life into him, and God reaching out, and God looks like an old man with arms and legs and a bousy white beard. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s not what God looks like.

I don’t know what God looks like. The Bible says we’re created in his image, but that’s more of a spiritual thing. There are all sorts of misconceptions, so I grew up thinking God looked like that.

That’s probably not true. I thought that’s what it meant, that we were made in God’s image. There are others who are a little more intelligent than I was as a child who say, well, that image is no longer there, who say that because the Bible teaches we’re totally depraved, that image of God was completely obliterated.

Otherwise, there’s something good still in us, and then we would have reason to boast of God’s grace. I don’t buy that either, because later on in Genesis chapter 9, After the fall, God told Noah, Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man. So God, even thousands of years after the fall, after Noah and the flood, and he destroyed all of humanity because we were so sinful, God told Noah, No, no, I still put a value on human life because you were made in my image.

So clearly that image of God was still there after the fall. And then James says, therewith bless we God, even the Father, and therewith curse we men which are made after the similitude or likeness of God. James is saying, how is it with this?

You bless God with that mouth is what he’s saying. We curse men. We run down men who are made in God’s image, and yet with the same mouth we bless God.

And he says, that doesn’t work. So even in the New Testament times, the inspired word of God teaches that that image of God is still within us. And some people will go to the far other extreme and say that the image of God means that we’re all inherently good.

And we’re all just wonderful and God loves us because we’re so lovely and lovable. And so that we’re all going to be saved and God’s just okay with however we are. And that’s not what the Bible teaches either.

The Bible does teach that we’re born with a sin nature. It does teach that we’re totally depraved. It does teach that we’re utterly separated from God in our sins.

There’s some sort of middle ground there. And I believe it’s that that image of God is still there, but it’s been marred by sin. And God looks at us and he doesn’t have to love us.

He doesn’t owe us love or acceptance or forgiveness. He doesn’t owe us putting any value on human life. But because of what he created us to be, God looks at us and chooses still to love us and still to put value on us when we would have no value otherwise.

There’s nothing good in me spiritually. There’s nothing of any inherent value in me spiritually. The reason I have value is because God says I do.

Kind of like if you open your wallet, and if it’s not like mine, you’ve probably got some money in it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to hand it to me. Take out your wallet in church once you plant it.

If you look at your money, I hate to tell you this, there’s no intrinsic inherent value in that money. That is worthless paper. It only has value because the government says it does.

There’s a frightening thought, huh? In economics, some people have said there’s the labor theory of value, which I’m not going to go into all that, but they say something is valuable to the extent of the value of the labor put into it. I don’t believe that either.

Just because you worked hard on something doesn’t make it more valuable. Value is established by what somebody is willing to accept for it and what somebody is willing to pay for it. So I could go get a handful of snow out of the parking lot right now and offer it to you for $1,000.

You wouldn’t pay me $1,000 for snow. You don’t put that value on it. But suddenly, if somebody’s willing to pay $1,000 for that snow, then it’s worth $1,000.

We have no inherent value. The only reason we have value is because God looks at us and says, I value you. You’re important to me.

You’re loved by me. Folks, we don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve for God to look at me and say, I love you.

I don’t deserve for God to look at me and say there’s value in your life, in the life that I’ve given you. And yet he does. And so it just is.

God said it. And that settles it. I’ve seen that on bumper stickers before.

God says it. I believe it. That settles it.

And there’s one statement in there too much. It doesn’t matter if I believe it or not. God said it.

And that settles it. So he created us in his image. And there’s a lot that we can be confused about by that.

There’s a lot that people are confused about by that. I don’t even fully understand what that means as I’m up here preaching to you about it today. But I do know from some other things that the Bible says, even in this story, some things that that means for us.

When we look at our own lives and when we look at people around us, what it means that we’re created in the image of God. When it says that God created us in His image, first we need to understand that we were not created to look like Him, but to be like Him. As I said, I grew up thinking that God was the white-haired guy in the Michelangelo painting.

God created us in his image not to look like him, but to be like him. He gave us dominion over the plants and the animals. Strangely enough, he didn’t give the animals dominion over the plants.

He didn’t give the animals dominion over each other. He looked at us and said, I’m going to give you just a slice, just a little sliver of the authority that I have. I’m going to give you just a sliver of what it’s like to be like me.

Now, we will never, okay, I’m not teaching Mormonism here. We will never become gods. That’s not what I’m saying.

But God created us to be like him. Sort of like I talked about last week, the kids showing what the parents are like. Benjamin is not me and never will be.

And the harder I try to make him be me, the more frustrating my life is going to be. He’s never going to be me. He gets to be Benjamin.

He’s shaking his head back there. You’re actually listening. Good for you.

He gets to be Benjamin. He’s never going to be Jared. But he is like Jared.

We were not created to look like God. We were created to be like God. We were created to follow in his footsteps.

To love what he loves. To live the way he tells us to. To represent him by example.

And there are a few ways that I see in this creation story that we do this. Where he talks about creating us. The first way that we’re like him is that we have an immortal spirit.

Now, God has no beginning and no end. He just always has been. We have a beginning.

But God created us to have no end. We have this immortal spirit that lives inside of us. It says in Genesis chapter 2, and we’re going to look at verse 7 and verse 17 here where it talks about this.

It says in verse 7, 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 doesn’t say that about any of the other critters that he put in the Garden of Eden.

But he says he breathed life into man, and he became a living soul. We were created by the breath of God to live forever with God. And it says in verse 17, he told them, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. He was warning them, don’t do this, because if you do this, you will die. Do you realize that we were not designed to die?

We were not created to die. We were created and designed to live eternally with the God who loved us and made us. Death is not.

. . Death may be a natural part of life, but it wasn’t supposed to be.

As they say about technology, it’s a bug, not a feature. It’s something that popped up that wasn’t supposed to. Because we disobeyed.

God created us to live forever with Him. And that spirit still lives on even after we die. Now the question is where the spirit lives on.

Whether it lives with God in heaven or separated from him in hell. But we were designed to live forever. Honestly, I don’t know whether the animals were or not.

Don’t throw things at me. I know there’s debate. There’s debate among Christians about whether your pets go to heaven.

I don’t know. I would like to think that Max will go to heaven with me, but I don’t know for sure. The Bible doesn’t talk about animals the same way it talks about people.

We were created to live forever. Part of being created in God’s image is that He loved us enough to say, I want you to live forever from the very beginning. God loved you enough that He created you with an immortal spirit.

The people down in town that we run into, the ones we like and the ones we don’t like, the ones we’re friends with and the ones we look down on, God created them with an immortal spirit because He loved them He desired eternity with them. Second of all, we have the capacity to reason and make moral judgments as hard as it is to believe. I know we look at the world around us and we don’t see a lot of reasoning and a lot of moral judgment, but we have it whether we use it or not.

We have it. We have the ability to reason and make moral judgments. I have the ability to think ahead and say, what is going to be the consequence of this action for me?

What is going to happen if I run this red line? What is going to happen if I decide I want to carry my gun with me into the courthouse? What is going to happen?

It doesn’t matter. Whatever the action is, we have the ability, whether we use it or not, to reason through the consequences. We have the ability to make moral judgments.

Is it right for me to do this? Is it right for me to say this? Do I have the right attitude?

We have the ability to do those things. God created in us the ability to do those things. Animals don’t seem to have quite the same reasoning and moral judgment capabilities.

The dog sees a few pounds of steak on the counter, and it’s a big enough dog. He’s not worried about the consequences. The dog doesn’t stop to ask himself, is it right or is it wrong?

The dog just gets on the counter and gets the food, doesn’t he, Charla? She’s a big dog with no understanding of consequences. Anyway, animals just do.

They act on instinct. They respond to stimuli, but they don’t reason through things. At best, they think, am I going to be in trouble?

Am I going to get a spanking if I do this? We have the ability to reason through things. We have the ability to think.

This is why in chapter 3, in the beginning of chapter 3, Satan comes to Eve and tries to reason with her. He says in verse 2, it says, And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. He started out saying, Hath God said?

And as I pointed out Wednesday night to those who were here, that stupid snake knew exactly what God said. This wasn’t a question. Did God really say that?

He knew very well what God said. And he was questioning the authority of what God said. So he comes to her and said, Did God say that you couldn’t eat from that tree?

And she said, Well, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God had said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die. And he talks to her a little bit. He says, well, you won’t die.

He’s reasoning with her. He’s trying to get her wrapped up in some kind of seemingly logical argument that will convince her that what she wants to do is okay. He’s trying to get her to justify this to herself.

You won’t surely die. God knows that. God knows you’ll just be like him.

God’s jealous of you. And in verse 6, it says, The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes of the tree to be desired to make one wise. She saw it, and she thought, Hmm, this looks good.

I really want that. It’s reasoning to herself in her mind. She took the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave to her husband with her, and he did eat.

Of course, we don’t see a lot of reasoning going on with the man. He just did whatever the woman told him to. God gave us an ability to reason and make moral judgments.

Sometimes we act like the animals and just give in to whatever impulse and don’t listen to the reasoning and moral judgments, but God gave us an ability that he didn’t give to the rest of his creation, an ability that he has to think through things and recognize consequences and make judgments about is this right or wrong. That’s another way that we are created in God’s image. We have that.

Third of all, we have a desire for fellowship. We have a desire for fellowship. I’m glad we didn’t cancel this morning.

and it’s not because I just needed to get up here and talk before I exploded. Because my wife and children can attest to you, if I don’t preach here, I’m just going to preach in the car. They get to hear it either way.

It’s because we need each other. When we do cancel for weather, and I don’t get to see y’all, I miss you. I miss being around you.

I miss the encouragement of seeing you. I miss talking to you and listening to you. I miss all these things, and you know why that is?

It’s because God designed us to be together. And I know there are people out there who say, I just like better off being alone. Okay, there are people like that.

There are times that I like being alone, but there are also times I need to be around people. And I think most of us are that way because God created us to need other people. There are some animals that can run by themselves and just be totally fine.

And they’re usually cold-blooded. God designed us to run in packs. God designed us to need each other.

This is a reflection of his character. God even said in Genesis 2. 18, it’s not good that the man should be alone.

That’s why he created Eve in the first place because he looked at Adam and said, I can do better than that, and created a woman because he knew it wasn’t good for Adam to be left on his own. We need fellowship. We need each other.

And God doesn’t need us. God doesn’t need our fellowship. But fellowship is part of the character of God.

There is a trinity that is described throughout the Bible. There’s a trinity that is at some places in Scripture, like this passage, is hinted at, where he says, let us make man in our image. And there’s a trinity that is in the Bible sometimes shouted about, like at the baptism of Jesus, where God the Son is in the water, God the Holy Spirit lights on his shoulder like a dove, and the voice of God the Father is heard out of heaven, saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I’m well pleased.

There’s a perfect fellowship within the Trinity. And God designed us to desire the same thing. He looked at Adam and said, it’s not good for you to be alone.

God enjoys fellowship. So we’re created to enjoy fellowship. We’re created to crave companionship.

And there’s something in our character that cries out for it. And it’s a reflection of Him. It’s part of us walking in His footsteps and being created in His image.

And fourth of all, and I’ll talk more about this one next week, but we have an inherent value. Now, I know I said there’s no such thing as inherent value to us. It’s only there because God says it’s there.

But the fact is, God did say it’s there. And so the reason I use the word inherent here is that we’re not valuable because of what we can do for somebody else. And people aren’t valuable to us because of what they can do for us.

We’re not valuable because we’re famous or because we have money or because we’re really good looking. or because we’re good cooks or because we’re good at fixing cars or we’re good at. .

. We’re not valuable because of the things we can do. We’re valuable because we were created by a God who loved us and said we were.

There’s nothing in God’s moral law about taking the life of an animal for a reason. Now, there are some things in there where God teaches us not to be cruel to animals. One of the first verses that I tried to teach Benjamin when he was just starting to learn to walk and wasn’t always nice to the dogs was where the book of Proverbs says that the righteous man cares for the life of his beast. And we’re going to take care of our animals.

We’re going to be kind to them. God told the Israelites not to eat part of a living animal. In other words, don’t cut off one leg of the sheep and eat it and try to save the rest for later. You will make that sheep suffer.

But it was nothing in God’s moral law for people to take the life of an animal if they were going to eat it or if they needed the skin for shelter or clothing or if they needed to make a sacrifice. God didn’t teach to torture animals, but God gave them no reason to think that there was anything wrong with taking the life of an animal for a purpose. But you know what?

A lot of God’s moral law deals with the taking of human life. A lot of God’s moral law says, you know what, we’re going to set up parameters and penalties here so that you’ll understand how serious it is to take a human life. We’re going to set up these rules so that people will be deterred, so that people won’t harm each other, so that people won’t take other people’s lives.

There is a huge problem in God’s word with taking the life of an innocent human being. And that’s because God looks at us and says, I value you. I’ve created you in my image, and I give you value.

And I go back to this point that I started with. There’s nothing in us that is inherently valuable other than the fact that God says, I value you. And God loved us and he created us and he said, you have value.

And so it’s true. And so it’s true. Your life is valuable.

The lives of the people in our community are valuable. Every one of them. Well, what about so and so?

Yeah, them too. We have value because God says so. And the purpose of telling you that this morning is not to say, well, let’s just feel great about ourselves and get, too big for our britches.

It’s to remind us that when we start to get down on ourselves and we think we’re worthless, or I’m just not good at anything, or I can’t do anything for God, or I, you know, I, you know how we think. Start to think I, it doesn’t, what I do doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether I’m there or not.

It doesn’t matter whether I try to do anything for God’s kingdom or not. It doesn’t, I’m not good at anything. Stop that.

Our value is not based on what we can or can’t do for anybody else. Our value is based on the fact that God said so. And we need to be reminded of that when we start to feel down about ourselves to not forget that we were created by someone who loved us and saw value in us, put value in us when we had none.

And we need to be reminded of that when we deal with the community as a whole. Because it is easy to look at people who are different from us. And it’s easy to look at people who are behaving different from us and say, well, we’ll never amount to anything.

And God says something completely different. God says they have value. And it wasn’t just that he said they had value because he created them in his image.

He backed it up. He backed up what he said. I feel like I’ve talked on this thing quite a bit with the last series.

But God didn’t just say he valued us. God proved that he did. God sent his son.

God loved us enough. God loved you enough that he sent his son to pay for your sins. And God loved them enough that he sent his son to pay for their sins.

There’s not a person in Seminole today, there’s not a person in our world today, good or bad, that cannot be saved by the grace of God. And we can look at people and say, well, they’re worthless, they’ll never amount to anything. It’s baloney.

God loved them enough that his son died for them. And over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking more about what it means that God is the giver of life, that he’s the creator of life, that he’s the architect behind it and the one who puts value in it. But this morning, we just need to realize that all of us were created in God’s image.

And even though that image has been marred by sin, God still looks at us and values us for reasons I still don’t understand. But he’s God just because he’s loving. And because of that, our words and actions should affirm the value of every human life.

We should live in such a way that because we are Christians, because we’ve been redeemed by a God who loved us even in our sin, enough that he sent a son to die for us, that we should treat no one like they’re worthless, that we should write no one off. We should do all that we can to serve those around us and most importantly bring them the good news of Jesus Christ because God valued them enough and loved them enough for Jesus to die for them. Jesus cared enough about his creations that he died to save us from sin in death and hell.

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