Created in the Image of God
Download MP3Scripture text for tonight is Genesis 1 verses 26 through chapter 2 verse 15. And as Jeff said, listen carefully for this is God's word to us. Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So, God created man in his own image.
Speaker 1:In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. And God 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.
Speaker 1: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 I have every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.
Speaker 1:And there was evening and there was morning, the 6th day. Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. And on the 7th day, God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the 7th day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the 7th day and made it holy. Because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Speaker 1:And these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God had made the earth and the heavens. 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 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 the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, And there he put the man whom he had formed.
Speaker 1:And out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became 4 rivers. The name of the And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are there.
Speaker 1:And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihan. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the 3rd river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria.
Speaker 1:And the 4th river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Thanks be to God. If you would pray with me. God, we thank you for your word. We ask now that you would lead us to your heart, that you would reveal to us more of your glory. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but, lord, may your words remain, and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:In the strong name of Jesus. I pray. Amen. Last week we began our series on Genesis. That's likely gonna take us through February or early March.
Joel Brooks:And last week, we saw how Genesis was written by Moses during the time of 40 years of wandering of the Israelites. And it's important to understand this when reading this book or you're greatly going to misunderstand the point behind it. Genesis was written to a people who had only known a life of suffering and toil. They'd they'd only known evil influences around them. And these were people who were wondering who they were.
Joel Brooks:Did they have any purpose in life? Had this evil world always been this way, and would it always be this way? And these are questions that I think we all still have. And we also saw last week how in the beginning, there was God, and God, he spoke the whole universe into existence. Everything owes its existence to god.
Joel Brooks:He's the only reason that we are here. He is the only way that we have any purpose in our existing. If one believes that you simply came to be, you came to exist just through, you know, a random series of particle collisions, then there cannot possibly be a purpose for your existence. Because you were not designed, and you have to be designed in order for there to be a purpose. And I don't know if this caught your eye.
Joel Brooks:Just a few days ago, the physicist Stephen Hawking, is on the front page of, I think USA Today, if anybody reads papers anymore. But he said this, because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing. It's why the universe exists. Why we exist.
Joel Brooks:It is not necessary to invoke God to set the universe going. Now there there's a lot of problems with this statement, and I can't go through everything, but I wanna go through one of the implications of a statement like that. Because if if one takes the creator out of the equation, then, and says somehow that, you know, the universe had just happened and we're by mere chance. If, if, if you say that you have to acknowledge that there is no purpose in your life. Everything's an accident.
Joel Brooks:Everything is random. There, there can no longer be any absolutes. There can no longer be a right or wrong unless there is a creator. To, to have a purpose, we have to have design. And that is why these opening verses in Genesis are so important to us.
Joel Brooks:Because we see here how we were created by all powerful and all loving God. And this means that we have value. This means that we have purpose. And if you were created, and I believe we are created, it means that you need to understand what you were created for. Because everything created has a purpose, but what is your purpose?
Joel Brooks:The only way for you to actually experience joy in life is to know what your purpose is so you can do it. You're going to be deeply frustrated if you begin to do things that you were not created to do. Probably a lot of you have been to my house. I live in a 99 year old house that's in constant state of disrepair, and so I'm always doing house projects. And inevitably, this happens.
Joel Brooks:I'll be up on the ladder working on something, and I will need a hammer. And so I'll reach, and I don't have a hammer, and I always I'm like, okay, I've got a screwdriver. And I and I could look at the screwdriver, and I could think, I know it's got a particular purpose. I I know it was designed for a purpose, but I'm too lazy to go down the ladder and go and get my hammer. And so I will always start whacking, you know, a nail or whacking whatever it needs to with a screwdriver, which always happens.
Joel Brooks:The screwdriver is going to chip, the nail is going to turn sideways. I'm going to get really frustrated because I'm using a tool for its unintended purpose. That's not what it was designed for. And it's a very frustrating experience. And this is how a lot of people live their lives.
Joel Brooks:They're doing what they were not created to do. They're they're being a screwdriver, being used as a hammer. And so when you rebel against your purpose, what God has designed you to do, when you begin rebelling against that, you are going to feel the same pains and sufferings like a screwdriver trying to hit a nail. Your life is going to fall apart. You know, you were designed to do things like love your neighbor.
Joel Brooks:You were designed to to keep sex within marriage. You were designed to both work and have a Sabbath. You were designed to worship. These were things you were designed to do. And when you try to do other things outside what you were designed for, you're gonna feel suffering.
Joel Brooks:You're gonna feel pain. Your life is going to be become unraveled. And it's not because God is actively punishing you there. It's like you're just not doing what you were made to do. So of course there's going to be pain.
Joel Brooks:Your screwdriver hitting a nail. So what is it that we were created to do? What is it that we as humans were created to be? That's what this passage tells us. And so, I want us to look at the creation of humans.
Joel Brooks:You have on the 6th day, God creating man. Humans were the last, and they were the greatest of His creation. Look back at Genesis chapter 1 verse 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image In the image of God, he created him.
Joel Brooks:Male and female, he created them. Now, verse 27, which talks about us being created in the image of God is one of the most discussed verses in all of the Bible. You can literally spend a lifetime of reading commentaries just on this one verse. And everybody's got their own interpretation as to what being created in in the image of god means. Does it mean we have a spirit?
Joel Brooks:Does it mean that we have moral faculties? Does it mean that we are intelligent? Does it mean that we have freedom, freedom maybe to do right or wrong or to choose to follow God or not? Is it the ability to love one another, to be in relationship with people? Everybody's got their own interpretation of what it means to be created in the image of god.
Joel Brooks:And so, let me go ahead and disappoint you, and tell you that I do not know what this means, to be created in the image of god. I do not know. And I think we actually need to be careful about speculating as to what it is, because simply put, the text does not tell us what it means to be created in God's image. Simply declares that we are. And a lot of speculation will get you in trouble.
Joel Brooks:God just says, let us make man in our own image, And then he makes man in his own image, but he does not tell us exactly what that image is. It's being created in this image, though, is where we find our worth. It's where we find our value. Because no other created thing is created in his image. Only man.
Joel Brooks:We're the pinnacle of creation, if you will. You can actually see up to this point. We don't have it in Genesis 1, but it's apparently happened. God has created a spiritual world. He has created spiritual beings.
Joel Brooks:He's created angels at some point. And then the rest of this time he's creating the material world and he creates material or physical beings. He creates the animals. But then in man, we have the combination of the 2 and only in man, we have the physical being being combined with a spiritual being. And so man is both physical and he is spiritual and somehow that's being created in the image of God.
Joel Brooks:That's not what being created, what the image of God is, but it's gotta be part of it. We will be forever, both physical and spiritual. And this means that since we are created in his image and all of man is created in his image, that means that we have to value all human life. No matter what your color is, no matter what your race is, no matter what your education is, no matter what your social status is, we have to value all human life. And so without trying to sound hokey, and this is going to sound hokey, I'm going to say that you guys are special.
Joel Brooks:You are. You're special among all of God's creation. You're special. No one is like you. There's no other created thing like man.
Joel Brooks:I mean, we see this just in how God created people. He creates light and he just says, let there be light. Boom, there's light. He says, you know, let there be land. Boom, there's land.
Joel Brooks:Let there be plants and animals. Boom, there's plants and animals. He does not say, let there be man. He does not speak man into existence. He does something utterly different.
Joel Brooks:Look at Genesis 2 verse 7. Says, Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living creature. And so when God created man, he got his hands dirty. That's what we see here.
Joel Brooks:He he slows down. He takes his time. This is a deliberate, it's a joyful act on the Lord's part and he's not rushed. The, the word for formed there is different than the word create that we've been getting up to this point. Create.
Joel Brooks:He created. Here we see formed and it's the word that a potter would use to to form the clay. To mold the clay into something beautiful. This is similar to what Paul says in Ephesians 2, when he says that we are his workmanship. We're God's workmanship.
Joel Brooks:You could actually translate that, we are his masterpiece. If you have one of those, you know, like super liberal translations out there, it it would say, You are his poem, which actually isn't that bad of a translation. It's this idea of incredible thought and beauty, a masterpiece. Now, the implications of this, of being created in God's image are enormous. We've already looked at, for starters, we we we have this intrinsic value in us, and we also have to value all others.
Joel Brooks:There's a quote in the front of your worship guide from CS Lewis because I think he he puts it best when he says this. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization, These are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.
Joel Brooks:Immortal whores or everlasting splendors. Every person we meet bears the image of God, and therefore deserves respect. They deserve, they they have this inherent dignity to them. Everyone, From the CEO of a large company, to a homeless man on the street. If you are walking down the street, and there is somebody homeless, give them dignity.
Joel Brooks:They have value. Look them in the eye. Don't just pass them by. They were created in the image of God. From college professors to the mentally handicapped, all bear his image.
Joel Brooks:The boss or the coworker that you cannot stand, bears the image of God. Yes, there's sin there. Yes, it's deformed or it's distorted, but still bears the image. And so we have to, as James says, tamer tongue, and remember that these people are created in the image of God. So understanding that we are created in the image of God is the foundation actually of you know, our good old American belief that we so often say that every person is born with these certain rights.
Joel Brooks:We're born with these rights. Where do we get that? It's based in the image of god. The idea comes from the Bible because it it certainly has not been understood or taught for much of history. Did you know that up until the spread of Christianity, infanticide, which is the killing of infants, was common throughout the world.
Joel Brooks:It's estimated that even in a civilized culture like ancient Rome or Greece, even in a civilized culture, 20% of all babies were killed by exposure, babies that had nothing wrong with them. And the percentage increased greatly if this baby happened to be a girl. I ran across a letter written from a Roman soldier to his wife. It was written around 1 BC, and, I was struck by just the casualness of this letter. He says, I am still in Alexandria.
Joel Brooks:I beg and plead with you to take care of our little child, and as soon as we receive wages, I will send them to you. In the meantime, if you have good fortune and you give birth, if it's a boy, let it live. If it's a girl, expose it. End of letter. There's a somewhat well known anthropologist, Leila Williamson, and, in a recent article, she stated that throughout history, infanticide has been very, very common.
Joel Brooks:She says this, infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception then, it has been the rule. And it hasn't just been infants who were killed if you go back in history, but, but anybody who became a burden to society, a burden to the family was allowed to be exposed. You were allowed to, to leave an exposure to the elderly, the mentally handicapped. If it was a daughter, leave them outside to be exposed.
Joel Brooks:And it was all legal. It was Christianity coming onto the scene, holding onto the belief that all of life, every human was created in the image of god. It was Christianity that began began changing things as Christianity began taking root and spreading. The effects of this, you could trace it through history. In Rome, finally, in 3/18, when Emperor Constantine became a Christian, he finally outlawed the killing of infants, And this began to spread and to spread worldwide.
Joel Brooks:It's extremely the reason I'm going on about this, it's very important to understand because in the 21st century, especially in America, we believe every human has this dignity and these natural rights to them. We believe this, but we've forgotten how we have come to believe this. And the dignity of human life and the idea of an absolute right or wrong and all those things are based in the image of god, and if you take that away, which it's being taken away, you take away the foundation in which human dignity stands. This is one of the applications, one of the implications of believing and being created in the image of God. Now I want us to look at why god created us this way.
Joel Brooks:What was his purpose in doing this? And I'm just gonna point out 2 brief things. One is found in verse 28 chapter 1, and god blessed them, and god said to them you you could actually just stop right there. Notice for the first time, god speaks to one of his created beings. Man is utterly unique in this.
Joel Brooks:God speaks to man, meaning man can have a relationship with God. We were created, if you will, to be in conversation with our creator. And this is huge. God did not just create us or wind up a clock and then leave. He created us to be in conversation.
Joel Brooks:He, he later walks with Adam in the cool of the evening. God longs to be in relationship with us. And so that's one of the first purposes of us being created in the image of God is we are created to be in conversation with him, to have relationship with him. 2nd, being made in the image of God means that we are to have dominion or we are to rule the earth. Go back to chapter 1 and just notice the pattern with me starting in verse 26, 27, and 28.
Joel Brooks:The pattern in here. You have verse 26 that says, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion. Then you have verse 27. It says, go, God created a man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him. And then later, right in verse 28 says, and let him have dominion.
Joel Brooks:And so we see that the outcome or the function, if you will, of being created in the image of God is that we would have dominion or we would subdue the earth. And what I think we're we're seeing here, and a lot of commentaries point this out, is just if you go back to ancient kingdoms, the kings or the emperors would often erect statues of themselves in the local villages and all the cities. They would erect a statue of their image in order that people could look at it and be reminded of who rules over them, who is their king. And so when god is going through creation and he looks at his world, he doesn't set up statues. He sets up man.
Joel Brooks:Man, bearing his image. This is royal language being used here. This, this text is saying that, that we were created to rule over the earth, but not like a tyrant. As the image of God, we are to demonstrate love, faithfulness, justice, mercy, beauty to the world, and how we rule over it. In a sense, you could say that we are a kind of priestly King, meaning that we are to lead all of creation into worship of God.
Joel Brooks:That's our function. Which sounds like a pretty huge task we've been given to, you know, somehow lead all of creation into praise of God. If I were to just end it right there, I'd be a little frustrated. But I think God, he shows us how we're to do this in chapter 2 verse 15. Look at verse 15.
Joel Brooks:Says, then God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Okay. So after God creates man in his own image, after he says you are now to have dominion over all the earth, then the first thing he does is he takes man, and he puts him in a garden. And he says, work it. God says, I got my hands dirty when I made you, and now I am putting you in a place where you are to get your hands dirty and work.
Joel Brooks:God did not build Adam a little throne, and say, here's your little throne, now go and rule the earth. You know, start shouting orders to all of creation. He didn't give Adam a gun, you know, or something to say, you know, subdue the earth by violence and by force. Get man, get the rest of creation to obey you. He doesn't do that.
Joel Brooks:Says, have dominion. Here, let me put you in a garden. Work it, tend to it. That's what it means to work as God's image bearer. That's, that's what it means for us as well.
Joel Brooks:Your purpose in life is gardening. It is. Your purpose in life is to be a gardener. Dolphins are made to swim. Eagles are made to soar.
Joel Brooks:You are made to be a gardener. I probably should define gardening. This is what I mean by gardening. Gardening is the worshipful experience of taking the raw materials of this world and turning it into something beautiful and life giving, all for the glory of God. It's the worshipful experience of taking the raw materials of this world and turning it into something beautiful and life giving, all for the glory of God.
Joel Brooks:That's what gardening is. And And you can see that when you just look at gardening, because the gardener takes the raw materials of the world. He takes soil, he takes seed, he takes water, puts in a place where they could be sun and there grows fruit. There grows flowers, life giving things, beautiful things. And so to be a gardener is to bring out God's potential in the world.
Joel Brooks:To bring out His potential in creation. And that's what we are called to do, being created in His image. It's how we represent him as his image bearer. And this does not just happen in a garden. Don't think, okay, I gotta go home and now plant a garden.
Joel Brooks:No, this happens in all of work. All of work is to be gardening. If you're a janitor or you are a maid, you do this all of the time. You, you bring order to chaos. It's what you do.
Joel Brooks:You take dirty and messy things and you make them beautiful or functional again. That's not just being godly, that's being godlike. That's what god did. If you were a lawyer, you can do this because you could take on chaos, and you can set up laws to create rule and create order. You can help set up laws that will help people, that will protect people.
Joel Brooks:Laws that will enhance life. If you're a writer, you can take the raw material of words, and you can put them in certain orders where they have purpose, where they have beauty. If you were a seamstress, you do that. You take cotton, you take wool and you, you put it together in such a way to where it's could be something beautiful or life giving like clothes. If you're an accountant, it's the same thing.
Joel Brooks:There's, there's chaos and all the numbers and all the data and you organize it. You make it to where it can be useful, functional. If you're a stay at home mom, you are constantly creating order out of chaos. Whether it's from cooking, whether it's from cleaning, whether it's from teaching your child how to use a restroom. That is creating order in a chaotic environment.
Joel Brooks:It's taking the raw materials that you have been given, and making them into something beautiful and God glorifying. And so, all of work is like gardening. You know, I was thinking about this. I bet, I hope I'm not wrong, but I bet that for most of you in here, some of the most satisfying experiences you've ever have had is when you have found something that maybe somebody has thrown out or discarded or a piece of junk and you took it and you kind of restored it and you made it into something beautiful or useful and you just feel so good of it. You could go down the store, buy one for like $2 but the fact that you restored or brought something back and made it functional makes you feel so good and satisfied because that's being godlike.
Joel Brooks:And when she earth was formless and void, and he took it and he fashioned it and he made it into something beautiful and God glorified. You do not have to go into the ministry to do God's work. Not at all. All work properly understood is God's work and is done for his glory. It's only when you begin trying to glorify yourself and work that it becomes a burden rather than a joy.
Joel Brooks:And we're going to look at that when we come to the fall of man, how working in the garden, all of a sudden became blood, sweat, toil, instead of joy. You know, if you become a doctor, not in order to, you know, promote health or life and others for the glory of God, but become a doctor, to become rich, and to gain respect. Work is going to become a burden for you. You are a screwdriver being used as a hammer, and only damage will follow from that. Work for all of us because of sin has become a weariness.
Joel Brooks:I don't know if you feel that I feel that, you know, one of my things I say probably more than anything else is gosh, I'm just tired, Tired work work has this toil. It's become a burden at times. And so, you know, what do we do with this? You know, am I supposed to just, you know, say, all of y'all, you know, put hands in the middle, go break, go try to be better images of God. All right?
Joel Brooks:Go out there into the workplace and try to redeem it. How do, how do we do that? And I'm gonna give you a very simple answer. We do that by simply looking at Jesus Christ, is how we become better image bearers. Colossians 1:15 says that he is the image of the invisible God.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is the image. We are just created in the image, but Jesus actually is the image of God. Hebrews 13 puts it this way. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. And so the more we gaze at Jesus, the more and more the image of God is restored in us.
Joel Brooks:And that's what second Corinthians 3 is about. And I'm gonna close with this verse. Way too much here to preach on in a minute or 2. We just might have to, in March, come back here. But in 2nd Corinthians 3, Paul is told how people have read the scripture and they just don't understand the scriptures.
Joel Brooks:It's like there's a veil before them and they can't get it. And they don't understand. And he says this, but when one turns to the Lord, this veil is removed. Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all now with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image.
Joel Brooks:From one degree of glory to another. So as we turn to the Lord through looking at his word, through prayer, through gathering together as a church, as we look to the Lord, the veil is removed, and as we begin to see his glory, we begin being transformed into his image. We become better image bearers. The image of God becomes restored. And we start seeing that work out in all of our life for his glory.
Joel Brooks:I pray for you as you go out this week, and as you go to whatever task you have, that you would ask God, by faith, to reveal to you how you can be his image in this situation, how you can bear that image, how you can use whatever you are doing for the glory of Jesus. Pray with me. Lord, we just looked at some amazing stuff, some deep, deep things. Things I'm certain people here have some people here have never heard before. Lord, what is truth?
Joel Brooks:May it remain. May it bounce around in our heads all week. May it reverberate in our hearts all week, and then maybe you anchor it there. Lord, you have created us. You've created us to glorify You and the work we do in this world, and the relationships we have in this world.
Joel Brooks:Lord, there is such joy in knowing our purpose and then doing it. I pray that everyone here would know the freedom and joy of that. And I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
