Image Matters

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

The Meaning of Life and the Image of God

Ladies and gentlemen, radio listeners all across the universe, welcome to No Compromise Radio. I have extremely bad news for you today. You�re going to have to listen to me. Well, I mean, you�ve chosen to listen to me, so I guess it�s really not bad news at all.

So, this is Steve Cooley, the Tuesday Guy. Pastor Mike is on vacation. He foolishly left me in charge. What I�m going to do today is I�m going to talk about something I did a series on, well, a long series on in Sunday School, and I thought, you know, I can condense a lot of these ideas down and they�re just as relevant as they were a year ago because they�re all based on biblical truths.

You know, recently, even this last weekend, there was a political event and one of the speakers, a Democrat running for president, had the temerity at this event to say that all lives matter, black lives matter, white lives matter, every life matters, and he was booed off the stage.

Well, why was that? Because saying white lives matter and all lives matter was unacceptable to these people. The only thing that they wanted to hear were black lives matter, and, you know, there are a lot of political reasons about it, but I don�t really care about all that.

Let me just say this, here�s the issue, and, you know, when I termed this series the meaning of life, well, why? Because life itself, human life, has become, in my estimation, and I think in the estimation of many, terribly cheap.

When we think about issues like abortion, or we think about euthanasia, or we think about legalization of narcotics, you know, even just marijuana, all these things impact how society, or they give us insight into how society really views mankind, and how valuable or not valuable they think an individual person is.

So one of the issues I brought up was a case in Connecticut where a young woman, 17 years old, had cancer and didn�t want to undergo chemotherapy. So she just told her mom, �You know what, Mom, I don�t want to go through all the pain and suffering and losing my hair and everything that�s going to go on, and by the way, this is not going to be a funny, you know, 24 minutes and 30 seconds here.

I don�t want to lose my hair, I don�t want to deal with chemotherapy, so I�m just going to, you know, pursue alternative means and essentially, you know, die, death with dignity. I�m going to go out on my own terms.

And so the state of Connecticut actually took her to court to force her to get chemotherapy, and she wrote this, this young woman did, in the newspaper. She said, �This experience has been a continuous nightmare.

I want the right to make my medical decisions. It's disgusting that I�m fighting for a right that I and anyone in my situation should already have. This is my life and my body, not DCFs, that�s the Department of Children and Family Services, and not the states.

I am a human. I should be able to decide if I do or don�t want chemotherapy, whether I live 17 years or 100 years, should not be anyone�s choice but mine. Well, what�s wrong with that? There�s a lot of �me� and a lot of �I� there, and there�s absolutely no acknowledgment of the Creator.

And you know, I�m frequently not a fan of government intervention and things, but I just think this is a situation where a young woman, 17, was essentially about to end her life. You know, again, she was going to pursue alternative medicines, well, okay, fine.

But so far as we know, those alternative medicines, and by the way, they did have some fairly high hopes for her with chemotherapy. So what does the Bible say? What does the Bible tell us? Well, I wanted to read from Genesis chapter 1 verses 27 to 31, �So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, �Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

And God said, �Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.

And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Now, that idea of creating in his own image, in God's image, in the Latin, it's imago de, just means in the image of God, the image of God.

Bible knowledge commentary says this, �This image was imparted only to humans. Image is used figuratively here for God does not have a human form. Being in God's image means that humans share though imperfectly and finitely, meaning in a limited sense, in God's nature.

That is in his communicable attributes, life, personality, truth, wisdom, love, holiness, justice, etc. And so have the capacity for spiritual fellowship with him. When we think about being made in the image of God and that we are the only creatures on the planet that God made in his own image, that sets human beings apart from every other animal that is on the face of the earth.

And so, you know, a lot of times we'll see people wrestle with difficult issues like this one with the chemotherapy, but sometimes there are simple things and you just kind of wonder what people are thinking about.

If you follow an evolutionary train of thought, then you, you know, you run across things like this. Well, what makes me better than a squirrel? What makes my life more valid than an elephant's? What, you know, and you can run through all sorts of things.

Well, why is it right to do this or that or the other thing? And here's the truth. While we are, and Lord willing, I'll talk about this, while we are certainly to be stewards of the earth and we're to see it as something that we need to protect and nurture and certainly pollution and other things are wrong, we have dominion over the earth.

God gave it to mankind. And so often what we see is this kind of mindset creep in where maybe everything or other things are more important than mankind. And what's led, what's happened over decades, really, and you could say, you could argue over a couple of centuries since evolution became prominent and now dominant in our culture is human life has become devalued.

It means a lot less than it used to. And we see this in so-called Christian cultures. I mean, you know, for an example, it's not unusual to see the diminishment of human life, of the value of life in other cultures.

For example, in World War II, you know, the Soviets would send three or four guys into battle with one rifle. Why? Because when the first guy died, the second guy took his rifle. And when the second guy died, the third guy got the rifle, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So, they were just, they were as expendable as the bullets and the gun that they had. They were absolutely meaningless. There were other nations that would just, you know, run these human wave attacks.

Well, why? Because the humanity didn't matter. What mattered was, you know, getting the objective. So, I mean, we've seen this and it's just become more and more prevalent. And so, we have a situation like in Connecticut where this young woman actually wanted to take her own life.

And friends, we are seeing laws pushing this idea of euthanasia, the idea that you ought to be able to take your life whenever you want, you know, if you're depressed or what have you, as long as you're an adult.

I mean, this young woman thankfully wasn't an adult, so she couldn't make this decision. But there are states with these kind of laws and we're going to see this on the increase. There are countries already in Europe where you can end your life for a variety of reasons.

I think you still have to get some kind of either medical or judicial clearance. But imagine this, a doctor whose goal, whose motto is first do no harm is now in some places authorized to help people die.

That's his goal. And that's how, you know, this worldview change has happened. And why do we see things, so many social issues fall under this, you know, why do we see things changing so rapidly with regard to homosexual marriage and other things?

It's because of the abandonment of the Bible, the abandonment of biblical principles, the abandonment of any kind of notion of there being a certain order to life. And we are really, as a world, experiencing entropy.

That is, we are devolving. We are really becoming unhinged. So, man was given the image of God, he was created in the image of God, he's given dominion over the earth. In fact, one man, Hamilton, says of the dominion that God gave man, he says, Man's divinely given commission to rule over other living things is tempered, or better, brought into sharp relief by the fact that such dominion does not allow him to kill these creatures or to use their flesh as food.

That was early on and that they were only allowed to begin killing animals for food after the flood. So, God gave everything to man and he gave him or he created him with his own image. We have what's called the breath of life, another important early biblical concept, and we find this in Genesis chapter 2 verse 5, When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.

And a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

That breath of life, that idea that life itself is a gift from God, and we know it's a gift from God. I mean, it's evident there, it's evident in other places in scripture, but we've forgotten that, of course, as a society, as a country, and really as a race of people.

But all these things, if we view them rightly, if we see them rightly, we understand that we are creatures, that we are responsible to God, that we have been granted certain things by him. I mean, I almost sound like I'm running the Declaration of Independence, right?

But so much of that is being challenged, is under assault, really, in this country and across Europe and much of the world now. So, this young woman, what should happen to her? You know, should she be allowed to die?

This whole idea of euthanasia, what does it mean? Listen, I'm not saying, and I would never say that you have every obligation to prolong life as long as possible, no matter what. Otherwise, you could wind up living, I don't know, to 157 or whatever on some feeding tube, and you haven't been cogent and haven't been able to say anything, haven't been able to open your eyes for who knows how many years.

I'm not talking about serious life-extending measures. I'm just talking about, you know, I'm 38 years old. I find out I have, you know, such and such a form of cancer. Now it's treatable, but, you know, I'm going to have to do this.

Or, you know, I'm 70 years old and, you know, I just, I'm tired of living. I don't want to live anymore. You know, what is the right thing to do? And is it right to just end my life? Well, some people say it is.

Or, you know, I'm 45 years old and I'm depressed. I just don't want to live anymore. Why can't I end my own rights or end my own life? Isn't that my right? And the answer is, no, it should not be your right.

And we're going to, as I said, we're going to see laws on euthanasia, just as we've seen laws changing on the legality of marijuana and other issues. But there is a sacredness of life. And when we think about abortion, I mean, this is the classic one, right?

Because it's been so really traumatic over the last four-plus decades after Roe v. Wade to just see a country that where so many people profess to be Christians and yet so many millions of babies have been killed.

And this last week with this video, this Planned Parenthood, the undercover video where they went in and they looked or they were talking to this doctor and she's many of you, I'm sure, saw it. I won't even describe all of it, but she's eating this salad while she's describing the particulars of how she would go about preserving some well, I'll just call them what they are some body parts from this baby, she calls it a fetus or whatever she calls it, while destroying other ones depending on which ones were more valuable.

And here's what you can readily take from that. She's not nobody's interested and they're going to buy these body parts, but nobody's interested in them because they're potential human body parts or because they belong to a fetus or because of this, that, and the other thing.

They're interested in them because they're human body parts. And where do human body parts come from? From a human being. And so there's a tacit acknowledgment even in her horrifying little speech there that in fact she is murdering a child in the womb.

She would never say that. But I mean, what else would you call it? I mean, you're identifying all these parts of a body and you're just rambling on about what you're going to do to these little children.

And why is that? Well, because some body parts are more valuable than others. Well, they only have any value at all because they want to do research on them as human body parts. And it's just it's horrifying.

But this is the state we live in where the diminishment of what it means to be human, of what it means to be alive, the value of that life. We no longer think of it as a God-given life. We no longer think of being image bearers.

We no longer think of ourselves as being stewards of the planet. You know, it's like the planet is now in charge. The animals are more important. After all, they're innocent, right? It was fascinating to watch Senator Lankford from Oklahoma the other day give a speech on the floor of the United States Senate.

And essentially, here's what he said. He said, we've been debating the rights of orca whales and how we need to protect them. We've been debating, you know, this animal and that animal and animal rights and all this other.

And he says, what about the rights of human beings to live? And he just went on and he actually broke down and it really was the kind of thing that you would want to see more of in the United States Senate, if I can be honest.

But he hit the nail on the head. The question or the issues that we spend, our government spends so much time worrying about, well, how about human beings? How about the idea that human life is important?

Human life is the most important thing there is. And why is that? I'll tell you why. Because each person, each and every person has a soul and each and every person, no other species, and I'll just use that kind of scientific term for the sake of argument here, no other species on the planet Earth is going to appear before God on judgment day to give an account for their life.

No one else is going to be judged. There aren't going to be, I love dogs, but no dog is going to have to answer before their creator because dogs do what dogs do. Whales do what whales do. They don't have a soul.

Now, some of them are very intelligent. Some of them act in, you know, in ways where you say, well, he certainly has or she has a personality or whatever. Well, they do have their own little quirks, but they don't really have a personality.

They're not really persons. They're individuals. But ultimately, personhood, you know, the ability to act and think independently, to be apart from anything else, and to have a rational thought process that allows you to identify good and evil and all these kind of things, that is uniquely human.

We don't see whales or dolphins or anything else, you know, building cities in the ocean or whatever. I mean, it's just bizarre the kind of lengths that we will go to to protect other species, but not do that for human beings.

Christian Fellowship, Unequal Yokes, and the Gospel Call

Let me just get back to this whole Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, White Lives Matter, all that stuff. When we think about things like the shooting at Ferguson, we've had, you know, a number of police shootings and back and forth.

The one thing that has struck me so much is to see Christian, so-called Christian groups, and maybe they are, maybe they aren't, I don't know, but to see them lock arms with all these different people to protest, what?

To protest police brutality, fine. But when they actually do this, when they actually say, you know what, this is not just a matter of this one circumstance where we don't even know everything. This is a matter of morality.

This is a matter of right and wrong, and we have to stand together for what is right and what is wrong. Well, you know what? I'm willing to stand up for what is right and what is wrong. I'm against abortion.

I'm against euthanasia. Why? Because God's against it. But if you're going to tell me that I need to walk the streets to protest this right or this wrong or whatever, well, I want to know who I'm locking arms with.

I want to be able to, why? Because I think 2 Corinthians 6 verses 14 to 17 comes into play in this. It's about spiritual enterprises. It's most often put into marriages, but it has to do with any spiritual context.

Listen, we would not, as a church, we would not invite, you know, a Muslim to address our people on a Sunday morning. We would not invite a Jew in to give them our pulpit. We would not invite a Seventh-day Adventist to come in and give them our pulpit.

We would not invite a Mormon. We would not invite somebody from another faith to come in and preach to us. Why? It's because of this passage here, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?

Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God.

As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and will walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And what's his point? Paul's point is that there is not to be any kind of a spiritual union between believers and unbelievers.

So, when it comes to thinking, well, you know what, lives matter, we're all made in the image of God, we're all, we all have this breath of life, we're all valuable in God's sight. That is true. But when I go marching down the street and I'm sitting there and I'm with an anarchist and all these other atheistic groups, or I'm with some non-Christian groups and I'm marching down the street, I have to wonder what they're thinking about me.

Because what's my priority? Is my priority stopping social injustice or is my priority the souls of the people that I'm marching with? I should be turning to those people and saying, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?

Do you know that you're a sinner? Do you know that you don't have to go to hell? Do you know that God forgives sinners? He forgave me. I'm a terrible human being. If you knew me before God saved me, you'd say, well, you could never even be a Christian.

How could you ever be that quote unquote good? It's not about being good. It's about believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, about having a new heart put in me, new desires new affections. It's about God changing me.

That's not about what I did. It's not about what I decided to believe. That's what a lot of, well, if that works for you, Steve, or if you choose to believe that. I didn't choose to believe any more than Paul, well, Saul chose to believe on the road to Damascus.

God changed my mind. God changed my heart. I don't look back at it. I don't have any second thoughts. In fact, every day I just wake up and think how blessed I am that God didn't let me do what I wanted to do.

Because the direction of my life certainly wasn't what it is now and I wouldn't be where I am today if God had not taken action, if he had not intervened in my life and changed me. But, you know, get back to this.

I think it is just so important that we understand these concepts of breath of life, of being image bearers and what that means, but also how it applies to the gospel and how we need to view each and every individual as someone who has a soul, someone who is answerable to their creator, somebody who is going to one day have to give an account to say, I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ or I didn't.

And if it's I didn't and you knew them, how could you not give them the gospel? I mean, if they don't believe, that's on them. But you have to witness to them.