“ Our Biblical Worldview” (4) Men and women as the image of God 10/03/2021

First Baptist Church Leominster

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Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please

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God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the

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Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the

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Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the

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Lord is the avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

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For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives his

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Holy Spirit to you. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout

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Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

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But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others who do not have hope.

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For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

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For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the

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Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

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But then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

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Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words.

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Let's pray. Gracious Father, we thank you for these words.

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And Lord, we eagerly and anxiously look for your return. But until then,

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Lord, we pray that we would live lives that are holy, that we would live lives that are without blemish, that our walk would match our great position in Christ Jesus.

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Lord, we pray that we would remember our sanctification, that we would flee immorality.

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Lord, very often we flee to immorality. We are immoral in our thoughts. We're immoral in our actions.

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And Lord, we confess these things to you. We confess the fact that we often choose our own will over your will.

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But Lord, we are so thankful that you are faithful and forgive us all of our sins. We're thankful that we have an advocate, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. We're thankful that we have a mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. We're thankful that we have a propitiation, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, you have accomplished everything on our behalf, and we are so thankful.

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We pray that we would remember our calling, that we would live to your glory and your honor. And Lord, as we continue our worship through this preaching of the word, we pray,

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Lord, that we would be mindful of what the word of God says. Help us, Lord, to hear these words. Help us to be undistracted.

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And we pray, Lord, that the Spirit would take these words from our ear to our hearts, and that we would apply these things and live them out in our lives through the power of your

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Spirit. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, if you have your

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Bibles, you can turn with us to Genesis chapter 1 once again. As we continue to deal with this subject, our biblical worldview.

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Now, this is the fourth Lord's Day, which we're giving attention to this subject.

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I don't know how long we're going to be here, but things keep coming to mind.

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In the first three messages of this series, we emphasize that the study of this subject is best begun with God having revealed himself as the creator of all things.

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And this isn't just in Genesis 1, it's found throughout the Bible. We considered it in the first couple of messages in Romans 1.

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And also Hebrews 11. But it's in Genesis 1 and 2 where we learn first and chiefly what

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God is like and how he relates to his creation. But we also see how his creation, particularly the pinnacle of his creation, mankind, is to regard and know him.

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And how he would have them, us, relate to his creation as well as to one another.

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As his creatures. And so our biblical worldview is not solely a matter of our understanding who

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God is and what he's like, as central and foundational as that truth. Our biblical worldview must also focus carefully on who we are as God's creation and the purpose for which our creator brought us into existence.

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And so we'll begin to give our attention to this matter this morning. And we'll do so by again looking at Genesis 1 and give our attention to the sixth day of creation.

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And then we'll also refer to one verse in chapter 2 or two verses in chapter 2.

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And so here's Genesis 1, 24 through 31. It describes God's work of creation on the sixth day.

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And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature according to his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth, each according to its kind.

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And it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind.

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And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

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Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

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So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him.

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Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

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Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

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And God said, see, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed.

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To you it shall be for food. Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life,

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I have given every green herb for food. And it was so. Apparently all of his creatures were vegetarian at the time.

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And then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

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Several weeks ago, we considered the biblical truth that the entire creation is a revelation of God to people throughout the world, as we read in Romans 1 20.

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For since the creation of the world, his, God's invisible attributes are clearly seen. They're invisible, but they're clearly seen.

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Being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they, that is worldly, the world, they are without excuse.

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And so God reveals himself, not only through the physical geology and geography of this world that he's created, and also through the observation or contemplation of celestial bodies of the universe, but it is in the living creatures that God formed where his glory is most fully manifested.

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And in the record of God's creation, Genesis 1, we read of a sequence in which

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God formed creatures that display his glory. We read first,

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God created the heavens and the earth, verse 1, in the beginning, and then he called forth light to be divided from darkness, verses 2 through 5.

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He formed the sky, the waters, and the earth, verses 6 through 10. God then created plant life and trees on the third day.

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On the fifth day, God created the birds of the air and all sea creatures. All that he had made,

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God saw that it was good, but it was on the sixth day that we just read that God created the creatures of the earth, land animals, which is recorded in the verses we read.

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It was on this sixth day that after divine deliberation, the triune

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God, we would say, that God created human beings, man, and clearly here, man is to be understood generically, that's no longer scholarly or popularly popular, but we're not going to change the word of God.

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When we talk about man, we're talking about mankind, men and women, mankind generically.

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He made man in his own image, not as animals. Very precisely, it said that the animals were made according to their kind, but in contrast, we as people are made in his image, according to his likeness.

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This shows that mankind is unique in all of God's creation, although all created things display his glory, mankind displays

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God's glory most clearly and most fully. There is a hierarchy in creation, and God has ordained mankind to be the pinnacle of his creation.

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And so the entire world is a revelation of God, a mirror of his attributes and his perfections.

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Every creature in its own way and degree is the embodiment of a divine thought, wrote one. But among the creatures, only man, again, generic man, is the image of God, God's highest and richest self -revelation and consequently the head and crown of the whole creation.

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Well, just that itself is contrary to the worldview of most people today, isn't it?

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So let's consider the creation of mankind. Let's read again verses 26 to 28.

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And God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on earth, the earth.

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So God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him, male and female.

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He created them. And then God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.

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Now, when we turn to Genesis 2, we read of more detail of God's work of creating

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Adam. And so verse 7 reads, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being, according to the

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New King James Version. But the King James Version says soul. Man became a living soul, which

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I prefer. And so the Holy Scriptures record God creating Adam. And by the way, the

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Hebrew word Adam is the Hebrew word translated man. Adam means man, mankind.

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He created Adam, man, and he created him so that he had become a living soul.

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It can be said then that man is both a creature of God, and that he is also a living soul or a person.

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And those two should be distinguished from one another. They convey different ideas.

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These two ideas suggest two major aspects of the identity of a human being. Every individual is both a creature as well as a living soul, a person.

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And so each of these suggests the nature of every individual who's lived in the world. You are a creature of God, and you are a person that God has created.

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Let's consider what this means. First, man is a creature of the Creator. We are to see ourselves as creatures, having been created by God.

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This suggests and reveals to us that we are dependent on God for not only the beginning, having created us, but also for the continuance of our existence.

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He's not like a watchmaker, made a watch, wound it up, now it's running on its own. When we speak of God as the

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Creator, we're talking about him, our dependence upon him and his continual sustaining us and all that exists throughout history.

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We as human beings are, as all other creatures in God's world, totally dependent upon God, our

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Creator. We not only owe our origin to him, but we owe our ongoing existence to our

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Creator. Nehemiah 9, verse 6, pulls these two ideas together. You alone are the

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Lord, you have made heaven, there's the Creator, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them.

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And then notice something more is said, you preserve them all. He's not only the

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Creator, but the sustainer. And when we speak of God as the Creator, we should also understand we're speaking about him sustaining, providing for everything that he has created.

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Paul expressed it this way on Mars Hill, which we've referred to recently. Nor is

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God worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything, since he gives all to life, breath and all things.

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And he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, as determined their pre -appointed times.

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God's called you to live at this time in history, the boundaries of their dwellings, he's chosen for you to dwell here at this time, so that they should seek the

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Lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he's not far from each of us.

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He's talking to pagans. God's not far from any person within this world. For in God, in him, we live and move and have our being as also some of your own poets have said, for we are all his offspring.

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And Paul was actually quoting a Greek poet. And so acknowledging that God is our creator and we are his creatures should be accompanied with our recognition that nothing happens to us.

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Or nothing we might think or do is independent or in isolation of God. God our creator is in control of his creation.

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And when we say that you're a creature, this is what this acknowledges, that we're depending upon God, who governs and providence all his creatures, including all human beings that have lived in this world.

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And the scriptures declare this truth throughout. Arthur Pink set forth this matter in an entire chapter, third chapter of his classic book,

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The Sovereignty of God. Two alternatives confront us. And between them, we are obliged to choose either

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God governs or he is governed. Either God rules or he is ruled.

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Either God has his way or men have theirs. And is our choice between these alternatives hard to make?

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Shall we say that in man, we behold a creature so unruly that he is beyond God's control?

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Shall we say that sin has alienated the sinner so far from the thrice holy one that he is outside the pale of his

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God's jurisdiction? Or shall we say that man has been endowed with moral responsibility and therefore

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God must leave him entirely free, at least during the period of his probation? Argues the

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Armenian. Does it necessarily follow because the natural man is an outlaw against heaven, a rebel against the divine government, that God is unable to fulfill his purpose through him?

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We may not merely that he may overrule that God may overrule the effects of the actions of evil doers, nor that he will yet bring the wicked to stand before a judgment bar so that sentence of punishment may be passed upon them.

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Multitudes of non -Christians believe these things, but we mean that every action of the lawless of his subjects is entirely beneath his control.

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Yea, that the actor is, though unknown to himself, carrying out the secret decrees of the

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Most High. Was it not thus with Judas? And is it possible to select a more extreme case than Judas?

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If then the arch -rebel was performing the counsel of God, is it any greater tax upon our faith to believe the same of all rebels?

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In him we live and move and have our being. What a sweeping assertion is this.

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These words, be it noted, were addressed not to one of the churches of God, not to a company of saints who had reached an exalted plane of spirituality, but to a heathen audience, pagans,

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Mars Hill, Athens. Do those who worship the unknown

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God and who mocked when they heard of the resurrection of the dead. And yet to the Athenian philosophers, to the

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Epicureans and Stoics, the Apostle Paul did not hesitate to affirm that they lived and moved and had their being in God, which signified not only they owed their existence and preservation to the one who made the world and all things therein, but also that their very actions were encompassed and therefore controlled by the

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Lord of heaven and earth. God is sovereign. Of course, he's not the accountable or responsible author of sin in any way.

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And so man as a creature of the creator.

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God not only created us, but he is governing us. Every creature in the world.

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If we had time, we could go to the prophets and show how God feeds the animals. He feeds the deer on the mountains.

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He feeds the animals when they cry out to him. Obviously, they're not praying to God, but it shows that God provides for all of his creatures.

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He governs them and he governs you and me as his creatures. And so when the word of God sets forth a person to be a creature of God, it will commonly depict him as body and spirit.

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Man is not a trinity, a triunity of body, soul, and spirit.

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The Bible teaches that man is comprised of a body and soul. That's what

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Genesis said. All right. He fashioned the body. He breathed into Adam and he became a living soul.

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But when there's emphasis on his creaturehood, oftentimes man is described as body and spirit.

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The word spirit conveys this idea that he is our creator. Spirit carries the nuances of the soul's derivation were derived from God.

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Dependence on God and distinctness from the body as such. The real you is your soul inhabiting a body.

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We are utterly dependent upon God and he has determined the entirety of our existence. And he is directing us according to his sovereign will.

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He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined their pre -apportioned times and the boundaries of their dwellings.

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And so the Genesis account of creation shows that to be a human being is to be a creature of God.

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But secondly, man is also a living being, as the New King James Version reads, or again, a living soul.

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He became a living soul when God breathed into that body, his breath.

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And so the Genesis account of creation not only sets forth Adam as a creature of God, but Adam is also declared to be a living being or a soul.

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Again, Genesis 2 .7, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

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This sets forth every human being as a created person. You're not just a creature, you are a person.

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And this conveys different ideas. This does not emphasize man's identity chiefly as a creature, living in dependence of God and fulfilling his eternal decree, respecting him and the mode and manner of his living.

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This speaks of a person's individualism and his independent decision -making quality.

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Anthony Hokema wrote a very good book on this matter, in which he contrasted the ideas of man as a creature and man as a person.

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Man is not only a creature, however, he is also a person. And to be a person means to have a kind of independence, a kind of independence.

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Not absolute, but relative, and he means God is still sovereign in his authority.

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But we have a relative independence from God. To be a person means to be able to make decisions, to set goals, to move in the direction of those goals.

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It means to possess freedom, at least in the sense of being able to make one's own choices.

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The human being is not a robot whose course is totally determined by forces outside of him.

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He has the power of self -determination and self -direction. To be a person means, to use

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Leonard Verduin's picturesque expression, is to be a creature of option. In sum, the human being is both a creature and a person.

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He or she is a created person. This, now, is the central mystery of man.

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How can man be both a creature and a person at the same time? To be a creature, as we have seen, means absolute dependence on God.

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To be a person means relative independence. To be a creature means that I cannot move a finger or utter a word apart from God.

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To be a person means that when my fingers are moved, I move them. And when words are uttered by my lips,

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I utter them. To be creatures means that God is the potter and we are the clay. To be persons means that we are the ones who fashion our lives by our own decisions.

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It's very important that we keep this in balance. Because some Reformed people actually really diminish this role, this idea of persons.

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And Arminians will commonly misunderstand our biblical understanding, that we're denying personhood.

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We're not. People make choices according to their affections, their desires, their sinful desires, until God gives them a new heart.

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But we do not take away the freedom. We don't make God the author of sin or the author of sinful actions, although he is sovereign over those sinful actions.

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Very important distinction. And so man is a creature and man is also a person.

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Now, secondly, let's consider mankind as the image of God in creation. Again, verses 26 and 27, we read

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God first planned and then purposed. And then he made male and female in his image.

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God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

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So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

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Actually, two words are used to describe man. He's both God's image and God's likeness.

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You see that? Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Two different Hebrew words.

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Although there have been many efforts to distinguish between these two words showing that two different aspects of man's essence are described, there should probably be little or no difference in meaning.

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His image and his likeness are synonymous. As one wrote, while the two words image and likeness are certainly not identical, there may be a nuance of difference.

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There's no essential material distinction to be made between them either. They are used interchangeably in other places of the

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Bible and alternate for no good reason. So here are the comments from the

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Reformation Study Bible about this matter. That the Bible says we're created in the image and the likeness of God has led some to conclude that there is a difference between being in the image and being in the likeness of God.

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But the structure of the biblical language indicates that image and likeness refer to the same thing.

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We are the icons of God, creatures made with a unique capacity to mirror and reflect the character of God.

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What does it mean to be the image of God? And by the way, we don't have the image of God.

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You are the image of God. First, recognize that man is the image of God, distinguishes man and women from all other creatures, and exalts mankind above all other creatures.

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For man alone was created in the image of God. Very important. All other animals were not.

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Man is distinct. He is not an animal. He is a wholly different creature from the animals and should be regarded as such.

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Man has a dignity and worth that far surpasses any other animal in creation. Jesus himself said you are much more value than many sparrows, right?

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But we live in a world today where value is all. Animal life and human life almost as equal, conferring human rights on animals.

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That's contrary to this basic teaching of Genesis and the Bible. Man has a dignity and worth that far surpasses any other animal and creature.

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God created mankind to serve him in this lofty role as bearers of his image.

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Animals reflect the glory of God. Only men and women are the very image of God, who reflect what

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God is like more clearly and fully. Second, man is the image of God, suggests certain characteristics of human beings.

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First, man is a living soul or spirit. And so this is saying that he is a personal being.

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Again, person. We talked about it earlier. This means that he has a self -consciousness with respect to himself.

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He is able to contemplate and act upon his reflection of who he is and what he wills to do.

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He's able to acquire knowledge and to reason based on acquired knowledge. Animals don't have self -consciousness.

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They're unable to think upon their past or wonder and meditate on their identity and capabilities or plan and improve their condition in life.

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Animals operate on the principle of instinct, not from a principle of self -awareness.

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Man was created with the ability to reason, to contemplate, create, and develop things within his environment.

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Art, music, the incredible inventions that people are able to fashion and form, reveal they're the image of God.

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That creative aspect of them is a reflection of who God is in a very limited, finite way.

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Secondly, man is a moral being. He has a conscience that governs his thoughts and actions.

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Animals don't have a conscience. Your dog does not feel guilty because he remembers having chewed your best boots when he was a puppy.

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He doesn't reflect on things like that. Conscience is an aspect of the image of God stamped in human nature.

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We're moral creatures. We think in terms of morality, right and wrong, good and evil.

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Man, thirdly, has the ability to communicate and to develop and maintain a relationship with others and with God.

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Now animals do in a very, very limited way, but they don't have relationships based on communication of values and ideas.

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That's beyond them. They don't commune with or pray to God. They're incapable of entering into contractual agreements or arrangements of privileges and responsibilities.

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This is part of the divine image. Four, man is capable and qualified to rule or to have dominion over creation.

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Yes, animals can maybe be mightier than other animals, but man is able to receive instruction, consciously understand, devise plans, execute his plans, solve problems along the way.

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This is unique to the human condition. And then the human body itself is an aspect of the image of God.

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Through this body, we're able to relate to and manage the world in which we're given rule through our five senses.

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And of course, six, God has given to man and women the capacity for eternal life.

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God created him alone of all the creatures of the earth, excluding angels, to live forever.

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Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, wrote the wise man Solomon, which goes upward and the spirit of the animal which goes down to the earth.

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In other words, dissipates, doesn't exist. But seventh, most importantly, perhaps

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God has made male and female persons in his image, enabling them to reflect and display him and whose likeness they have been made.

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And this is the primary purpose for which God created you and me, to display who

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God is and what he's like. And so let's consider being

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God's image in his world. We were all male and female created in the image of God.

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As God's image, we're to reflect the glory of him and whose image we were made, like a mirror. Reflects the image of the one standing before, we should reflect the image of him before whom we are always standing.

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We should be like God. Again, in limited finite ways. But we're to live so that when people watch us, they may understand better the

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God whom we represent and display before them. I remember a little girl,

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I won't mention her name. She's an adult now, mother now. But I remember when she was a little girl back in the

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North Act, she was standing in front of me and she looked up to me, is he Jesus? That was a strange encounter, you know, and his mother rightly said, no, he's not

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Jesus. But we're to reflect what God is like. You know,

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Jesus must be a lot like my mother in the way she, you know, manifests herself to me.

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Perhaps a better illustration than a mirror is that of a coin. The Lord Jesus, show me a coin, whose image is it?

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Caesar. Caesar's image was stamped on that coin, it belongs to Caesar.

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And so you and I are stamped with the image of God and we're to reflect the glory of him of God.

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We bear the stamp of his nature. To see Jesus Christ, we're to see

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God displayed. He's the very image of God, according to Hebrews 1, 3. But you and I were made in the image of God, not in the same way, of course, as the

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Lord Jesus, who himself is the eternal son of God, but we were made, created by God to reflect who he is.

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Our lives should make known the glory of God. Again, this is finite. God is infinite. We cannot reflect the full glory of God perfectly, only

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God's son is able to reveal the father fully. But in our own small way, we're capable to reflect and should reflect the glory that is

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God. That's what it means to live to the glory of God. The finite wisdom that we should, that we have and display should be an indication to others the nature of God's infinite wisdom.

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The justice we manifest should reflect in a measure the nature of God's justice. The love that we show to one another, although certainly flawed and limited, nevertheless should reflect the infinite love that God has for his people.

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When Christians do good toward others, may they see the source of our good works and that we are fashioned after the image of God, and thereby they glorify

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God, our father, which is in heaven. And that's what the Lord Jesus said to do, of course. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and look past you.

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Glorify your father who is in heaven, Matthew 5, 16. So being

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God's image in his world, this is why God made us. This is how we should face every day.

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And then certainly the high regard for every human being has created the image of God should characterize us.

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Not only are you create the image of God, but the person next to you is the image of God. And that should affect how you regard that person and treat that person.

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We are to show high regard for all people because every human being bears the image of God. There's an inherent dignity that every human being possesses, which we should recognize and we should show regard in the way we relate to them, regardless of their gender, male or female, the image of God, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, stature in society, possession of wealth, position of power and influence.

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Every human being is of equal worth and is to be regarded with the highest dignity as bearers of God's image.

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Paul said, henceforth, I regard no man after the flesh. He regarded every man as particularly

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Christian men and women as creatures of God in Christ. If any man is in Christ, he's a new creation.

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And that's how he regarded people. He wasn't talking about himself. He talked about the way he regarded others. This is exactly what we're talking about.

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Clearly, God regards all people as made in his image. That's all people everywhere have dignity and are to be shown regard and respect.

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And so we affirm that every human being is the image of God. Some might only regard our first parents,

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Adam and Eve, of deserving such dignity. After all, God himself assumed the role of the potter.

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That's what he did when he fashioned that body from the dust of the earth. And then he breathed into him the breath of life.

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And then God caused Adam to go have a deep sleep, took that rib out of his side and created

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Eve. But their offspring are also the image of God. And this can be demonstrated like in Genesis 5.

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We won't read it. But Seth also was created in the image or likeness of Adam.

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And Adam himself was in the likeness of God. And Adam's described that way after Adam had fallen into sin.

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He was the image of God. God had made Adam his image and his likeness. And Seth is born in the likeness of Adam.

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Just as Adam was the image and likeness of God, so Seth his son. All people everywhere.

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We also see this in Genesis 9 after Noah came forth from the ark with his family after the floodwaters dissipated.

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Genesis 9 .5, from the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds men's blood by man, his blood shall be shed.

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Why? Here's the explanation. For in the image of God, he made man. See, fallen men are the image of God.

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Many argue that they're against capital punishment because all human life is sacred. And God created human beings in his image.

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They reason, therefore, capital punishment should be abolished. But the word of God affirms, even commands the use of capital punishment in crimes of murder because man has made the image of God.

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When one raises his hand to slay another, he's striking at that which God has created and commissioned to bear his image to the world.

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It warrants the forfeiture of one's life. God instituted the death penalty for murder.

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The reason for capital punishment is because of the high exalted value and position that he's conferred upon humanity.

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To kill the image of God is to strike at God, the creator who made him.

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Murder is not just an assault on a man. It's an assault on God who made man and gave him his dignity and stature.

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As Anthony Hokema wrote, the reason that murder is here said to be such a heinous crime, that it must be punished by death, is that the man who has been murdered is someone who imaged

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God, reflected God, was like God, represented God. Therefore, when one kills a human being, not only does he take that person's life, but he hurts

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God himself, the God who is reflected in that individual. To touch the image of God is to touch

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God himself. To kill the image of God is to do violence of God himself. Interestingly, in the

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New Testament book of James, the same basis of argument is set forth as a reason not to speak evil of other people.

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We could all take this to heart, because that other person is

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God's image. No man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, folly of deadly poison.

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With it, we bless our God and Father. With it, we curse men who have been made in the similitude, likeness of God.

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Out of the same mouth, proceed blessing, cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. So here, human beings are described as in the similitude of God, that is, in his image, in his likeness.

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Just as in Genesis 9, when murdering a man was a great crime because it was assaulting God himself, whose image was the murdered man, here, the one who is cursed is the image of God.

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So to curse another human being is in effect cursing God, whom he represents and reflects.

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Think about that. And, you know, this is such a common occurrence in the world.

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And so, as one wrote in verse 9, James points out the inconsistency of which people are guilty when they use the same tongue to praise

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God and curse men. Why is it such an inconsistency? Because the human beings whom we curse, note

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James' use of the first person, are creatures who have been made in the likeness of God. Therefore, to curse men means, in effect, to curse

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God and whose likeness they have been made. See how God identifies himself with people?

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And not just Christian people, every individual in this world. The Lord Jesus treated people with courtesy and dignity.

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He never had a patronizing spirit acting and talking as if he were superior to others, and that he would have them know it.

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A patronizing spirit is an alienating spirit. It conveys to others that you're better than they are, or at least you think you are.

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Jesus, though he was the son of God, did not treat people in this manner. He did not look down on people, nor did they sense any kind of, you know, that spirit of him.

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People are created in the image of God, and therefore even those that some would consider the most despicable persons in behavior should be treated with respect and courtesy.

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All human beings, rich or poor, male and female, Jewish or Gentile, educated or illiterate, should be regarded as possessing dignity, because they are a creation of God made in the image of God.

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You can see how central this is to having a biblical worldview. We're to have courtesy toward people.

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We're to measure politeness and dignity. We're to view people as having great potential for glorifying

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God in their lives. This is the end to which God created us all.

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There's an inherent capacity that every individual possesses to glorify God in his or her life, and we should see this potential in people and work with them toward its realization through their lives.

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And moreover, when we look at an individual, we should view him or her as redeemable, an eternal soul, ones for which the second person of the blessed holy trinity became man in order to redeem eternal souls like them.

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But we should also understand that to be the image of God brings great responsibility and accountability before God.

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We should view people as greatly accountable to God because of who they are, image bearers of God.

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So this doesn't give a pass. It doesn't make an excuse for the wretchedness that is true to us.

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We should not think that because people are the image of God that somehow that lessens their guilt or accountability.

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It actually aggravates their condemnation. You're the image of God, but look what you're doing with it.

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Look at what they're capable of doing and becoming, but look at what they become. To squander one's high position and opportunity is to incur

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God's great wrath. We should view people who only live to themselves rather than to God who made them as ones who are under great guilt and condemnation unless they experience the forgiveness that is in Jesus Christ.

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And finally, because all people are God's image bearers, we should desire the end, the injustice and inhumane treatment of all human beings everywhere.

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When we see or hear of injustice or cruelty inflicted upon others, we should have a holy zeal to see its end and resolution as well as justice rendered.

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Why? Because to afflict a human being with injustice is to strike at God whose image has been disregarded and destroyed.

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We ought to be compassionate people, concerned and desiring the well -being of others.

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What about mankind as the image of God after his fall? We don't have time to go through this. It's already over time, but man didn't lose that image when he sinned.

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Now, it was marred terribly, but he didn't lose it. He didn't cease to be human when he sinned, and so the image of God is marred, terribly deficient, defective in all of us.

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But, page 8, 3, man is the image of God through the redemption of Jesus Christ is restored.

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Jesus Christ is the true full image of God, and so in salvation, God is purposed that we become like Jesus Christ, and so this image of God is renewed in us and developed in us and through life in this process of sanctification, and one day, of course, it'll be fully realized when the

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Lord Jesus returns, and God has predestined us that we will be conformed to the likeness of his

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Son. You're the image of God, and through Jesus Christ, one day, you and I are going to reflect the glory of God in ways that we cannot even fathom.

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Paul said you and I can't even imagine the glory that's going to be revealed in us as the children of God one day, as adopted children of God.

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We're going to be impressive, impress one another, be surprised at ourselves, because this is the purpose of God.

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He's predestined that we'll be like our Lord in his resurrection glory. We have to close with this.

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I have to apply this, the implications of our worldview in today's world, toward the bottom of page 9, there are four things

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I just want to state, then we'll close. Again, the truths we hold as Christians who believe and embrace the truths of Holy Scripture are increasingly becoming unpopular and denigrated in our culture.

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In fact, some of our beliefs, if expressed or even discovered, result in sanctions and financial penalties, forfeiture of hiring or advancement.

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Certainly, as in the military now, which seem to be the last bastion of sanity, it would seem, in our culture.

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Even the loss, possible loss of employment, people are being fired. In some cases, our biblical convictions are becoming criminalized with possible consequences of imprisonment.

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It's coming. What are some of these biblical convictions that are placing us in difficulty in our culture?

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Well, from the passage we considered today, we can cite a couple of matters. And so we affirm the following as universal truths, according to the

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Word of God, and we resist any pressure and reject any course of compromise regarding them. This is who we are.

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First, God has created two genders, male and female. How simple is that?

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But look where we've come in the last 20 years. It's now believed, in the last two decades, that gender is a fluid matter, something that can be chosen and changed according to one's own preference.

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And you better recognize it and celebrate it. This is a failure to acknowledge

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God the Creator, and it's to rebel against his good design and purpose. It's to usurp the place of God the

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Creator when someone desires an attempt to recreate himself or herself into that which God did not ordain and create.

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Nevertheless, there are demands upon us to affirm their views and practices, forcing, coercing us to use their preferred pronouns.

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For us to do so may be regarded as our denial of the truth of the Word of God, and it would be a failure to bear faithful witness to those who believe a lie.

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And no doubt, it's only going to get worse for us. Secondly, God has equal regard for both male and female genders.

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We advocate this so strongly. This means that we reject, on the one hand, what some refer to as toxic masculinity, but we also reject radical feminism.

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Not only has God created mankind with two and only two genders, but he has given specific and distinct roles for males and females that are to be manifest both in families and churches.

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We've not addressed this yet, but we'll have to soon, probably. C, racism and or caste system, a caste system is evil.

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Our nation has had a history of racism, of which we're all aware, and has been the case with most nations through history, by the way, not just our nation.

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Great injustices have been perpetrated upon people because of their race or their country of origin.

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And then in other countries, there is a sinful hierarchy of social status and privilege that characterize them.

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They're still let in England. These notes are being read, probably have been read in India. They had that four, you know, strata of caste system, which brings great privilege to a few, a great oppression to those in the lower caste.

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This is evil. There's no place for racial or social animosity or distinction, especially in the churches of Jesus Christ.

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We're all one in Jesus Christ. And then, fourthly,

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God is the creator of all human life, whether born or not yet born. We don't apologize for that.

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And human life has to be highly regarded and always preserved. No human being should be marginalized or devalued due to mental deficiency or physical deformity.

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And certainly life should never be terminated because of the difficulty that might be supposed of raising that child.

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Abortion is a great sin. With over 60 million abortions in the last generation, there are multitudes of guilty souls who will give a reckoning to God, whose image he has created, but they have extinguished.

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There's guilt there. They claim that this is the woman's right to choose. We would say that that right to choose was made when she chose to engage in behavior that resulted in her pregnancy.

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Then responsibility came upon her, to which

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God will hold her accountable. And not just her, the father many times is the one that coerces and forces that kind of, that kind of action.

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Our land lies under great guilt, not just those who have done that, but the innocent blood that's been shed.

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Is it any wonder that we're seeing a land, a nation abandoned by God, when you can see the innocent blood that's been shed in the manner that it has?

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It certainly was in ancient Israel. They found a murdered man out in the field, they went to the nearest township, and then they had to deal with it.

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Even if they couldn't catch the perpetrator, there was a guilt associated, a collective guilt. Our nation has a collective guilt.

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Just because somebody does it in private doesn't mean it doesn't influence or affect other people. There's a collective sense and guilt about a citizenry.

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Thankfully, however, and we want to underscore this, through Jesus Christ, there's forgiveness of sins and the fullness of salvation available to the greatest of sinners.

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Abortion is not the unpardonable sin. And with 60 million abortions, there are numbers of Christian women that underwent or experienced an abortion in earlier years, for which they probably have regret.

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I don't think that they should sense guilt, however, because they're pardoned through Jesus Christ. And they should regard themselves as righteous through their justification before God through Christ, thankfully.

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But Jesus Christ paid for those sins upon the cross, and they should be accounted as part of his suffering and his death in order to redeem us from our sins.

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May our Lord help us to take to heart these biblical truths. May he enable us to see the world through the lens of scripture that he's given us.

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And may each of us, all of us, display the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to the world in which he's placed us.

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And it may require of us in these days to have some courage. Also, wise tact, concern, and love.

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But by all means, let's make God known and his word known because the day of judgment is coming.

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Let us be prepared with the gospel of the forgiveness of sins and new life in Jesus Christ for all who humble themselves, turn from their sin, and believe and submit to Jesus the

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Lord. Amen. Let's pray. Thank you,

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Father, for your word and for the truths that we find there. We believe your word, our

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God. We thank you for being our creator, and we thank you for the privilege. And yet we're mindful of the great responsibility we have as your creatures.

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Help us, our God, as persons to willingly and humbly submit ourselves to you and attempt to fulfill our purpose, your purpose, our

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God, that you have you have decreed for us that we would make known who you are and what you're like through the way we think,

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Lord, the way we act, the way we react, through our attitudes, through our words, certainly through our actions, our

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God. And again, we're mindful of the Lord Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for our sin.

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In him alone, we have redemption, our God. Otherwise, we'd be wholly, totally lost and deserving of your damnation.

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Thank you for your love, our God, and for your wisdom and grace and power, our

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Lord, through Jesus Christ, to bring us to know you. For it's in Jesus' name we do pray.