Imago Dei (part 1) - [Genesis 1:26-27]

Do you like elephants? I do.

I think they're fascinating. And I see commercials where they're trying to raise money to stop the hunting of elephants, to stop the gathering of their tusks, you know, for the ivory.

And I think, man, I mean, why would people do that?

Then I see another commercial, cats, you know, hundreds and hundreds of cats, and if you don't send money now, they're all going to be put to death.

I sort of feel bad about that one, a little. And then the dogs, of course

I feel bad for that one. Jen has to hide the checkbook, you know. No, I don't really contribute.

But those are moving things, right? We want to give money to those kind of things.

We want to see animals survive, thrive, do well. We don't want to see them mistreated or abused.

But here's the problem, and there is a problem. The problem is, in some ways, the world has kind of lost its mind.

What do I mean? Because ultimately, what are they trying to tell you? You know, if you go to the best colleges, right, what do they teach you?

That you descended from monkeys, which descended from, you know, whatever. And eventually you get traced back to cockroaches and single -cell animals and all that other stuff.

What's the message? The message is people are no more important than animals, than elephants, than cats, than dogs.

It's unbiblical. We're going to see that this morning in Genesis 1.

Please turn there. But on the other hand, you know, really what motivated me to do this message, besides the fact that I ended

John and I had nowhere else to go. Not true.

There were 64 other books I could have gone to. And we're not going to stay in Genesis for more than a couple of weeks.

But a few weeks ago, a question came up in Sunday school. And by the way, you should be going to that Sunday school class. It's really good stuff, talking about God and how he's other.

And we're going to talk a little bit about that this morning. But a question came up about the image of God. And there was some discussion about it.

And I thought, this is a good topic for us. Especially when I think about the church generally.

Not here, Bethlehem Bible Church, but the church generally. Just like I think the world has lost its mind in saying that people are just the same as animals,

I think sometimes the church has lost its mind. There's one pastor who started his services like this.

I am strong. I am healthy. I am confident. I am secure.

I am talented. I am creative. I am disciplined.

I am focused. I am valuable. I am beautiful. And this is a guy, by the way.

I am blessed. I am excited about my future. I am victorious.

Why does he do that? He tells us. When you talk like this, these things will follow you and God will provide them.

Unfamiliar, apparently, with the lives of the disciples, or Job, or any number of people.

But many churches have adopted philosophies that kind of resemble the world, whether it's this kind of Oprah -ish teaching, or whether it's about homosexual marriage.

There are actually branches of Christianity that are dividing right now over that kind of thing.

There are churches that are dividing over other issues. And ultimately, here's the problem.

A lot of churches are teaching this. Just like the world says people are the equal of animals, a lot of churches out there are saying people are the equal of God.

You are God, they will tell you. Or you're just as good, or you're on your way to being

God, or whatever. They have this high view. Then there's this low view the world gives you.

And sometimes, how do we talk about people? We say you're depraved, you're wretched, you're dead in your sins and trespasses.

Are those things true? Yes. But there are other truths that we need to balance those out with.

Let's read our text this morning. I'm going to read Genesis 1, verses 26 to 28. And sadly, we're not going to get through all this.

In fact, I was kind of... I felt like Mike, except for I could tell you how far we're going to get this morning.

But we're not going to get through all this this morning, unfortunately. So we'll be back in this again next week. I guess fortunately, because it's good to sit here for a little while.

Genesis 1, verse 26. Then God said, 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 God said to them, Five weeks ago, and I looked it up, so...

Five weeks ago, on a PM service, I preached out of Genesis 3. And why did

I do that? Because I think that looking at that chapter tells us a lot about the current world.

And the grace of God is evident in Genesis 3. In fact, many will tell you that it is the first kind of presentation of the gospel.

But what winds up happening in Genesis 3, verse 15, is that God promises an offspring from Eve that will ultimately crush the head of Satan, that will defeat

Satan. And that offspring we know as Jesus Christ.

But it does so much more there in Genesis 3, and I can't recap all of it. But it even explains why we have the world we have today.

Why there's so much anti -Christian pressure. Why people hate God, why they hate

Christians, is pretty much explained in Genesis chapter 3. So this morning,

I thought I'd go a little further back, all the way back to Genesis 1. And I have three

C's for you, three of six. We'll see the other three next week, Lord willing.

Three C's this morning that I think will help bolster your thinking concerning what I think are some vital current issues.

Really, your worldview. And like I said, the world is a mess, the church is a mess, and the world is a mess.

The thinking is all wrong, and I want to correct that a little bit this morning. Our first C is the creation of the universe.

Creation of the universe. Genesis 1 tells us that there was nothing, and then

God created. And you say, well, where's that? Well, it's actually Genesis 1, 1.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light.

And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness, and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day. Now, that was a lot to happen in one day.

But I want to draw your attention to a few things there. And I want to say this, first of all, that the

Bible is not, no matter what anybody says, the Bible is not compatible with evolution. The Bible is not compatible with the

Big Bang. And people say, well, wait a minute. How do you know that God didn't use yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I get tired of all those. How do you know? In the beginning. What does that mean? It means in the beginning of what?

Time. Okay. What existed before time existed? God. And that's it.

There was nothing else. God didn't find things, you know, lying out there, reorganize them, reshape them, and create.

What he did is what's called, he created ex nihilo. Okay. Ex nihilo.

Which means, it's Latin for, Bob Muto knows this. Out of nothing.

Exactly right. I didn't know if you knew that. I just pointed to him anyway. Good job,

Bob. Checks in the mail. It's not compatible with evolution.

Because the picture we have of God is one, as we heard in Sunday school, who is all powerful.

He never loses power. He's the source of everything. And as, we're not going to go to Isaiah, but he just, everything comes from him, and yet he remains the same.

You say, well, how can that be? Because he's God. There was nothing, and then everything.

Why? Because God spoke it into existence. And one of our problems as human beings is that we try to rationalize everything.

We try to relate to it, and we try to, ultimately what we do, sorry, is we drag God down to our level.

And we say, well, surely God had to come from something, or God did something that we don't quite understand and created things, but there's, like, no way that there was nothing and then there was everything.

And the answer is, yes, there was. God is atemporal. What does that mean? It means he's outside of time, right?

Time is his creation. And once we try to grasp that, if you can grapple with that a little bit, and you think, okay, if time is a thing that God creates and he's outside of it, well, then what else is outside of it?

Nothing. God. That's hard for us to fathom. Peter Sammons, professor at the

Master's Seminary, wrote this in Table Talk magazine. He said, if we serve a temporal God, that is to say a

God within time, we serve a creature of our own imagination, created after our own likeness, a

God who will be changed and weathered by time. This is not the

God of the Christian faith. What's the problem with that God? The problem with that God is, if he changes, we're in trouble.

If he loses power, we're in trouble. If he gains power, we're in trouble. We need a God who is what the

Bible says he is. He does not change. He cannot change. What's interesting about the

Bible is, the Bible never seeks to justify God's existence, never seeks to explain it, never tries to rationalize it.

What does it say? It just says, in the beginning, God. As I said, there is no room for evolution.

God created. It's an active verb. He did it. The Lenten Baptist Confession of Faith, our

Confession of Faith, says this, in the beginning, it pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness to create or make the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good.

There's your summary of Genesis 6 right there, or Genesis 1 right there. And that also makes plain that we are not

God, right? We don't have that capacity, and we never can be God. We are not from everlasting.

We are not from before time. We are creatures existing in time. We are not the Alpha and Omega, and we never can be.

On days 1 to 4, we're not going to read through all of it, but on days 1 to 4, God created and established the framework of life.

On day 5, he created life in the sea and in the air. Genesis 1, verses 20 through 22 say that.

In fact, I do want to read that, because if you just listen to the language, try to listen to the language and just see, it almost sounds passive.

God's not passive. He's active. But the reason I want to emphasize that is because the way the

Bible describes, the way Moses describes the creation of human beings is very personal.

As it were, God gets his hands dirty with man. But listen to how it describes the other creations.

Verse 20, And God said, Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.

So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying,

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.

Now on day 6, God introduced life on the dry ground of the earth, creating livestock, insects, and beasts.

The insects part. But at every step of the way,

God pronounced it good, meaning ultimately perfect, just the way he wanted it. There was nothing wrong with the earth.

No disease, no decay, and no sin. Now, just to let you know, that was one word of Genesis 26.

That was then. We're looking back at it. So, that's point number one. The creation of the universe. We're looking back.

That was one word of our verse. That's why we're not going to get very far today. Our second

C. The council of the triune God. Council, C -O -U -N -C -I -L, not

S -E -L. The council, in other words, meaning the intratrinitarian, within the trinity, council of God.

Verse 26. God said, let us. So, I read that, and I thought, the question is, who is us?

Now, there are, I think, six theories. I'm not going to go through all six of them. One of them is, and I think maybe one of the more common,

I think the two most common, the least common one that you probably wouldn't be familiar with is that God is announcing this to a council of angels, and then he does the creation.

Some say this is a plural of majesty, God using the royal we, you know, let us.

And that certainly, that carries a lot of weight. But after thinking about it and studying this,

I'm going to have to say that I think this is, again, the intratrinitarian council of the triune

God. Why? Because we know from verse 1 that God is active in the creation process.

We know from verse 2, the Holy Spirit's there, he's hovering over the waters, right? And we know from the

New Testament that, who else is there? Jesus Christ. John 1, and I'm going to give,

I'm going to give some cross -references. Later on, I'm going to have you turn to different verses. We have a lot of verses to cover this morning.

John 1, verse 3, John writes, It's pretty definitive.

Colossians 1, 16, Paul writes, In other words, angels, demons, everything that is, whether we can see it or not,

Jesus created everything, and they all exist for him. And again, after looking at all of creation and pronouncing it good,

God now, God now, is going to make his greatest creation, man.

As Kidner says, You should feel really good about that.

First sea, the creation of the universe. Second sea, the council of the triune God. And the third one, where we're going to spend the rest of our time this morning, is the creative pinnacle.

The creative pinnacle. The peak. The top. Again, verse 26.

And believe it or not, we're actually not going to get through all this, even this morning. It's going to carry on into next week.

But man, God's last creation, is unique among everything that he created.

He says of no other creature that it is in our image or after our likeness.

So, a few questions. Does God look like us?

Does God look like us? After all, there are anthropomorphisms, that is to say, language of accommodation in the

Old Testament, where we would see images of God that appear to be human, or we would hear about his mighty hand or his strong arm.

Those kind of things. Well, what about that? Does he really measure the heavens by the span of his hands?

And the answer to that, of course, is no, he doesn't look like us. John 4 .24

says, this is Jesus. He's explaining who God is. He says, God is spirit. Those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

1 John 4 .12, John writes, no one has ever seen God. Right? Talking about the

Father now, first person of the Trinity, no one has ever seen him. Jesus comes along and what does he do?

He explains the Father. He shows us the Father. If you've seen me, you have seen the

Father. People say, well, what about the appearances of God in the

Old Testament? The theophanies, that's what they're called. The physical representations of God, Theo, in the

Old Testament. And some of the ones that I looked up, for example, there's in Genesis 15, where Abram is sleeping, what happens?

A smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass through the dead animals, right? That is a theophany.

That is meant to represent God going through those dead animals. How about the burning bush in Exodus 3, where speaking to Moses, God's speaking through that burning bush.

Ezekiel 1 .26, and above the expanse over their heads, there was the likeness of a throne in appearance like sapphire and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance.

What do these things mean? Jacob wrestled the angel. For the most part, and that's where I was going, is

Christophanies, that is to say that these theophanies, when they're human in appearance, are

Christophanies, pre -existent appearances by the second person of the

Trinity, Jesus. In fact, he's often designated the angel of the Lord.

When you see that term, the angel of the Lord, I can't think of a single instance in which it is not

Jesus Christ, the angel of the Lord. Does he have a physical body?

Does he look like us? No. Now, why does Jesus wind up in the

Old Testament looking like a man? Why does he show up looking like a man? Because that's ultimately what he's going to do, right?

He's not going to come as anything else. Another question.

Is God male? I think that's kind of a...

Here's what I would say. He chooses to reveal himself with male pronouns.

Now, see, a couple years ago, that wouldn't have been funny at all, but now it's... But he does, right?

I mean, he could have chosen anything, but he chose to be represented by male pronouns.

People say, well, why can't it be female? I mean, I'll hear so -called Christians say, you know, it's okay if...

It wouldn't matter to me if God represented himself as a she or her or whatever. Well, he doesn't.

In fact, if you show up at a church and they start talking about, well, it doesn't really matter what the pronouns are, leave that church.

It matters to God. He could have chosen female but he didn't.

He's very careful about the language with which he reveals himself. Okay. In what ways are we like God?

Right? It says we're the representation. We're the icon. We're the image.

We're made in the image of God. Imago Dei, as the Latin goes, just means image of God.

In what ways are we like God? Well, we have his communicable attributes, his moral attributes such as love, goodness, kindness.

There are others. We have some reflection of his intellect, his holiness.

And some of you are going to say, well, how do we even reflect his holiness? Well, not well. Right? But let me ask you this.

Can an elephant be holy? No. I mean,

I suppose if it were some Old Testament sacrifice set apart, maybe. But, you know, as an animal, no, it cannot be.

And if nothing else, we have consciences. We have the law of God written in our hearts. That is a reflection of the holiness of God.

Now, in what ways is he different than we are? You know, we don't have enough time to cover all that, but each person of the

Trinity is an eternal spirit having no end. And here's the important part. No beginning.

Our spirits have no end, right? But we have a beginning. The only person of the

Trinity with a body is Jesus, and that is a condescension. He condescended.

He left his Father's throne, voluntarily came to earth, and then submitted himself to the will of the

Father as a human being perfectly obeying. Now, when we talk about attributes, incommunicable attributes of God, how about these?

Omnipotence. Omniscience. In other words, omnipotence being all -powerful. Omniscience being all -knowing.

Omnipresent, meaning he's everywhere. Infinity, meaning there's no beginning and no end. Self -existence, which we talked about in Sunday School this morning, and that is a satiety, meaning he is of himself.

There is no other being that can just say that he is of himself. I am that I am, he says.

If I could put it this way, and I am going to put it this way, so I will. What he is, we will never become.

And you say, well, wait a second. Doesn't the Bible say, I'm about to read it, 1

John 3, 2, Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

Yes, that is true. We will be like Christ, but we will never be like God.

We will never be deity. We will be like him in his perfection as a human being.

Listen to what Simon Kistemacher says. He says, the Bible nowhere states that we shall be equal to Christ.

Instead, it tells us that we will be conformed to the likeness of the Son of God. We share his immortality.

However, Christ has the preeminence, for the Son of God is the firstborn among many brothers.

Believers will surround the throne of God and the Lamb. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

Our name is not going to be on his forehead. His name will be on our foreheads.

And of course, sin, we're not in Genesis 3, but if we were, we'd see that. Sin has marred the image of God, the imago

Dei in us. And even so, it has not eradicated it. 2

Corinthians 3 .18 2 Corinthians 3 .18 And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the

Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. Talking about the transformation, the sanctification, right?

We're being transformed. We're being... If we look at it this way, our image of God, our imago

Dei, it's roughed up beyond recognition. And what happens is, salvation is the beginning of our sanctification, our transformation into the image of Christ, step by step, the

Holy Spirit, Christ in us, working on us, taking off our rough edges, restoring that image of God.

Won't be finished in this lifetime, but in glory we will be. I want to focus on some of the implications.

And that's the point of where I was going this morning. What are some implications of the image of God being in human beings?

Men and women, children. What does it mean? What's the import of it? First of all, as I've already said, and I'll emphasize again, each and every human being is immortal.

Now, what do I mean? I don't mean that we're not going to die. I mean that our souls will live forever.

And if we go around the world, whether we're talking about elephants or dogs or cats or platypi...

What is it? Platypuses. They don't have a soul.

And the fact that we have souls means that we are morally culpable. Made in the image of God, we have a morality about us.

We have consciences. We are morally culpable, which is to say that we are going to answer to God.

Exodus 20. How many of you know what Exodus 20 is? Ten commandments.

Good. You know a little seminary trick? I'd be like, okay, ten commandments or Exodus 20 makes perfect sense to me.

I don't know why. So you'll forget as soon as you walk out.

But anyway, Exodus 20 verse 13 says, You shall not murder. Well, what does that mean?

It means you shall not wrongfully, intentionally take an innocent human life.

It doesn't mean you cannot take the life of an innocent animal.

It doesn't mean that. You shall not murder is very specific.

Well, what about animal cruelty? It's terrible. It makes me mad.

I see stories about people get outraged on Facebook. I get outraged on Facebook by that.

It's not murder. And again, the problem with our world is we drag mankind down to the level of animals in every behavior.

And so animal cruelty becomes to a lot of people just as bad as what? Murder. No.

Genesis 9 verses 5 and 6. And for your lifeblood,

I will require a reckoning from every beast. I will require it. And from man, from his fellow man,

I will require a reckoning for the life of a man. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man, shall his blood be shed for God made man in his image, setting man apart from everybody else.

What's the crime or what's the right punishment for murder? Death. That's what the

Bible says. And this is a moral attribute of God that does not change.

Well, what about abortion? Is it the wrongful and intentional taking of an innocent human life?

Yes, but it's legal. Under the law, it's legal.

It's wrongful. The law can say a lot of things.

The law is not the standard. The law of man cannot be the standard. It's the law of God. It's wrong.

It's intentional, and it's human life. The pro -abortion advocate will say, it's a clump of cells.

It's not a human life. Logically, I want to say, well, without intervention, that clump of cells will be what?

Human life. Nobody goes to the doctor for a wellness check on a clump of cells.

They don't do it. They go to check on their baby. We know what it is.

It's impossible to imagine that God starts such a process inside a woman without giving that baby, without imbuing that baby with a soul from the moment of inception.

Since Roe v. Wade, 62 million abortions, they estimate. 62 million in the

United States alone. I don't even know what the total would be worldwide. Psalm 139, 13 says, for you, this is a psalmist writing about God.

He says, for you formed my inward part. You knitted me together in my mother's womb.

And you say, you know, somebody might say, well, that's just the psalmist opinion. No, that's the inspired word of God.

That's important to say. Is there forgiveness for abortion? Yes. We look at, there's a long list of sins that we could look at and say, you know, can

I be forgiven for this, for this, for this, for, I mean, we could go right down the list of the

Ten Commandments. Can I be forgiven for those things? Can I be forgiven for even abortion? Yes. There is no sin that you can commit, that you have committed, that God cannot forgive.

Another implication. Every human being has equal value.

Now, just think of all the discussions that are going on these days. If we are all created in the image of God, what does that mean?

You know, can somebody get, I don't know, I almost don't want to, okay, I can insult the car.

Can somebody get a Studebaker soul while somebody else gets a

Lamborghini soul? No. No, now

I want to be like Oprah. You get a Lamborghini, you get a Lamborghini, you get a Lamborghini. Every soul is of endless value.

Why? Because you're made in the image of God. What does that mean, though?

I'll tell you what it means. It means that ethnic prejudice, that is the idea that one color or another of skin is better than another, is sinful.

Why? Because every single human being is made in the image of God.

Every single human being has equal value, you know, to the racial people here these days.

I want to ask, let me ask you something. You believe in the Bible? Yes. I mean, if they don't, that's a whole other discussion, right?

I just want to go straight to the cross. You believe in the Bible? Let me ask you, what color was

Adam? We have no idea. Do we care?

I don't care, right? When I see him in heaven, I'm going to go, yeah, nice call on the apple, but that's...

And he'll say, I was a pomegranate, right? But getting back to seriousness here, what would the world look like instead of all the stress on ethnicity?

What would it look like if every person on the planet, 7 billion plus people, all treated one another as if we had infinite value, that we were all image bearers?

What would the world look like? I think it would look a lot different.

What if we thought each and every person that we see has infinite value, has an immortal soul, that one day is going to stand before his creator and give an answer for what he or she has done with Christ?

I think things would be a lot different. I think for one thing, we would love our neighbors as ourselves, right?

That takes on a whole different weight now, doesn't it? I'm just going to go through a few more of the

Ten Commandments quickly from Exodus 20. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.

These are all sins against other people. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, your neighbor's wife, your servant, all those things.

Why? Because if we view others rightly, we don't want to sin against them.

If we see them as image bearers, those in whom God has placed such value, then we view them as God does, and we have compassion for them.

I've told this before, but it's been a long time since I did, so I'll just say it again. Years ago, many years ago, I was in Portland, and I wandered into a shopping mall.

And let me tell you something about Portland. This was like, I don't know, 12, 15 years ago. The people in Portland are weird.

And I'm pretty sure they've gotten weirder. And I was looking around, just amazed at how weird all these people were looking, and then

I like slapped myself, and I was like, wait a sec. This is wrong thinking.

Every single one of these people is an image bearer. They're all going to give an answer one day for what they do with Christ. I need to be looking for somebody

I can share the gospel with. Stop thinking these people are bizarre. Because every single person, and turn for a moment to James chapter 3.

Every single person has equal value. And because we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves, how should we speak to one another?

And listen to how James puts this together. James chapter 3 verse 8. But no human being can tame the tongue.

It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

We bless our Lord and Father with our tongue, and we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

From the same mouth, in verse 10, same mouth come blessing and cursing my brothers, these things and mad sisters.

Ought not to be so? Does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and salt water?

Etc. The answer is no. We'd watch how we talk to people if we really believe that.

I was reading a story this week and a man said, you know, he goes, I have to constantly remind myself that everybody else is an image bearer.

He says, if I'm sitting at a stop sign and I'm getting ready to go straight through and somebody just blasts through, you know, in the other direction, runs the stop sign, and I could have hit him, do

I think to myself, oh, there goes an image bearer, you know, must be in a...

Probably not, right? That's not how we think, but it's true. If they hit us, do we think, hey, image bearer, we gotta talk.

And again, that we are immortal means that our souls do not disappear when we die.

I was telling somebody this week, there's no second chance after life. Hebrews 9 .27 says, and it just as is appointed once for man to die, and after that comes judgment because of Adam's sin, each of us is born with a sin nature.

We sin because of our image of God. Our relationship with him is marred by original sin.

At its most basic, we don't love our fellow image bearers as we should, and we don't love our creator as we should.

We call those things sin. And we don't have the ability, the capacity within ourselves to restore that image.

Our best efforts are all tainted by sin. We need a perfect, sinless high priest, and thankfully we have one in the

Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 4 .15 says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.

In other words, he was human, he gets it. He understands what life's all about, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Perfect, flawless. And as our high priest, he is our mediator.

Listen to Hebrews 1 .3. See if this doesn't chime in with image bearer.

He is the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of his nature.

And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

That's Jesus. The perfect image of God. Flawless, spotless lamb of God.

Truly God and truly man, born of a virgin so that he would be the offspring of Eve, who would defeat

Satan. He lived a sinless life, died the death we all deserve, suffering all the wrath, all the wrath of God for all the sins of all who would ever believe.

Then rose triumphantly on the third day. He did not die for elephants or cats or dogs.

He did not come in the image of elephants, cats or dogs. Why? Because we're not animals.

We're not temporary. We're not meaningless. We're not products of chance, of some explosion that God had nothing to do with or even started in, stood back and watched.

Jesus Christ died for God's image bearers so that all who believe in him will one day enter his presence, his glory, and stay with him forever.

Next week we're going to have some controversy. So be ready for that. Let's pray.

Our Father, weighty things to think about.

Lord, I pray for, specifically, for those here who are hearing this and are just thinking,

I don't get this. I don't like this. I know what I've learned in school or I know what

I've believed my whole life. Lord, I pray for your spirit to break through and to use your words to convict them of their sin and their need for Christ.

Father, there is forgiveness for sin. And we thank you for that.

We thank you that as we look to your word, we can see we are not animals.

We're not given over to craven urges.

But that you have created us that we might reflect you. Lord, I pray that we would better do that even as we interact with one another and as we interact with the world.

Understand that every single person we come in contact with is an image bearer. One who deserves respect, deference, and who desperately needs to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.