What Do I Matter to God
What do I matter to God?
¿Que Significo Yo Para Dios?
December 15, 2007
Introduction:
We live without God everyday. We make decisions without Him. Why do we need Him? He doesn’t care about us? Why should we care about Him? These are just a few things I have heard as I have talked to people. It is easy to go on living just the way we have instead of looking at the truth about what God really thinks about you and I. Tonight I want to share with you something that just might amaze you and lead you to think differently about God.
I want to share with you tonight what you really mean to God. I don’t want to waste anymore time tonight. I want to get right to the point.
The first thing you need to know is that you are God’s…
I. Principal Creation (Principal Creacion)
That’s right! Out of everything God has created. Out of all the planets, stars, galaxies that exist. Out of all the the mountains, rivers, lakes, animals, plants, and everything else that is on this earth. Out of every angelic being and living creature that God has ever created…you and I represent His Principal Creation. We are His most valuable possession.
Listen to this verse in,
James 1:18...
18He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. (NIV)
18 Por su propia voluntad nos hizo nacer mediante la palabra de verdad, para que fuéramos como los primeros y mejores frutos de su creación.
Another translation says it this way,
18God decided to give us life through the word of truth so we might be the most important of all the things he made. (New Century Version)
And one more translation calls us “the crown of all his creatures.” (Message)
God intended for us to be the best creation out of all things He created. God wanted you to be important. Not only does God want you be important…He wants you to know that you are important to Him. So He wrote it down in this verse.
Here is another verse that God wrote down to give us an idea not only of how important we are to Him but what we are capable of. (de que somos capaz)
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)
10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
“10 Porque somos hechura de Dios, creados en Cristo Jesús para buenas obras, las cuales Dios dispuso de antemano a fin de que las pongamos en práctica.”
The word “workmanship” (hechura) is the Greek word (poiēma), where we get our word poem from. Here it is used to mean not just God’s work of art but His Masterpiece. His principal work of art! (su principal pieza de arte)!!
We are his workmanship, we are the greatest art that God has ever created! We are His Principal Creation!
God doesn’t want us to miss this truth. He wants us to know how special we really are. How many people in life make it a point to let you know how special you are? Not many. God does. In the book of Psalms in chapter 139 we find a man that God had gotten through to. He understood what He meant to God. He understood how much God care about him.
Listen to this verse as I read it.
Psalm 139:13-18 (NIV)
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
“13 Tú creaste mis entrañas; me formaste en el vientre de mi madre. 14 ¡Te alabo porque soy una creación admirable! ¡Tus obras son maravillosas, y esto lo sé muy bien! 15 Mis huesos no te fueron desconocidos cuando en lo más recóndito era yo formado, cuando en lo más profundo de la tierra era yo entretejido. 16 Tus ojos vieron mi cuerpo en gestación: todo estaba ya escrito en tu libro; todos mis días se estaban diseñando, aunque no existía uno solo de ellos. 17 ¡Cuán preciosos, oh Dios, me son tus pensamientos! ¡Cuán inmensa es la suma de ellos! 18 Si me propusiera contarlos, sumarían más que los granos de arena.
This is a person that understood how valuable he was to God. You see, God has been very involved in your life even before you were born. When you sleep He is thinking about you…when you wake up God is still there thinking about you. You are His most precious creation. Psalm 139:14 says that you are “wonderfully” made! (una creacion admirable)
This is a Hebrew word, (palah) pronounced, (“pawlaw”) which also means, “marvelous”. You were made marvelously! How is that for a clear explanation of what God thinks of you! How is that for a clear explanation of what you really mean to God?
It doesn’t stop there. God doesn’t just think about us, He doesn’t just revel in the fact that He created us. He is not satisfied to just look at His work and say… “wow!, this is very good!” That is not why He created us. That is not why He decided to make us so marvelous.
God wanted His Principal Creation, His Masterpiece, His most wonderful and marvelous creation to become His…
II. Eternal Family (Familia Eterna)
He thinks so much of us that He wants to spend all of eternity with us. Not just the time you have on this earth. His plan is to be able to communicate with you, love you, protect you, and give you a great life for eternity…time without end.
If someone doesn’t like you…they don’t spend a lot of time with you. If someone likes you a lot they want to spend a lot of time with you. God loves you and thinks so much of you that He was careful to make you a marvelous person that He wants to spend an infinite amount of time with.
Listen to this…the Bible tells us that
John 1:12 (NIV)
12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
12 Mas a cuantos lo recibieron, a los que creen en su nombre, les dio el derecho de ser hijos de Dios.
When you are a child of God, you are at the top! There is nothing higher, nothing more powerful, nothing more glorious, nothing more loved, nothing more rich, nothing more important…other than God Himself!!! That is the position that God wants to give you.
Here is another verse in the Bible that really clarifies that you and I are not an accident. We are not just here. But that God really intends good things for you.
Ephesians 1:4-5 (NIV)
“4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world… In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will”
4 Dios nos escogió en él antes de la creación del mundo, para que seamos santos y sin mancha delante de él. En amor5 nos predestinó para ser adoptados como hijos suyos por medio de Jesucristo, según el buen propósito de su voluntad,
Nothing else has been given the opportunity to be called His sons and daughters…only us. Nothing else has been chosen before the world began to be his family forever. You have that opportunity.
Now I want to share with something very amazing. When you were born you had the same thing your mom and dad had…you had a nose, eyes, a mouth, a head, arms, legs, feet.
As you grew up you started to look more like them. You might have had your moms eyes and your dads lips or you might have had a nose like your dad and eyebrows like your mom. You began to take on the image of your parents.
As you grew more you began to act like them whether you wanted to or not! If your mom was a yeller maybe you became one. If your dad was a silent man then you might be the same. If your mom and dad liked to listen to music maybe you had the same love for music.
The God who created you also thinks of Himself as your Father. Sometimes the Bible refers to Him as our heavenly Father as apposed to our earthly father. The Bible also calls Him our Eternal Father. That means that not only is He counting on being our Father forever, He is also expecting us to bear His image. Which is the third thing I want to share with you.
III. His Image (Su Image)
To bear His image means to be an expression of who He is. He is expecting to act like Him, love like Him, be merciful like Him, be gentle like Him, be wise like Him.
The Bible says in Genesis 1 verse 26,
Genesis 1:26 (NIV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,
“26 y dijo: Hagamos al ser humano a nuestra imagen y semejanza.
God is not saying that our nose is like His nose. He is saying that we share attributes. We have the capacity to love, to have a personality, to enjoy affection, to stand for justice, to be wise. In other words, God created us to have the capacity to fellowship with Him! No other creature on earth has the capacity to understand and fellowship with God. This is a privilege given only to us!
He made us like Him so we could communicate WITH Him.
There is only one problem…but it is a big problem. SIN! What is sin? There are several descriptions that clarify what sin is, think about it in these terms.
1. Any action or thought that replaces God
2. Anything that is against the nature of God
3. Anything that seperates us from God
Let’s take the last one…“Anything that separates us from God.”
Whatever seperates us from God seperates us from God’s plan for our lives. The most dangerous thing we tend to do is to think that we have a better plan.
It is like you have built a table but that table refuses to be a table. It would be better as a table but instead it wants to be a boat. It is not a very good boat, it gets shipwrecked all the time…but it doesn’t want to be a table because it wasn’t a very good idea. So you are always rescuing it and putting it back in the house so that it will look beautiful there and serve many people and allow great conversations to take place and great dinners to be served and great plans to be made.
When we choose what we want our lives to be and our plans to be…we are saying that God’s plans were wrong, not very wise, not very intelligent. When we do this we end up shipwrecked and in difficult circumstances all the time.
Our sin destroys God’s plans for our lives. The biggest consequence of sin is that we die. God is perfect and cannot sin. He would destroy Himself if He did. Just like we do. He also cannot exist together with sin. When His creation became sinful He could not live among them anymore. In the beginning He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve but after they sinned He could no longer be with them in perfect fellowship.
This was not the plan. So God decided that He could not…
• Permit His Principal Creation to die
• See His Eternal Family Extinguished
• Let His image be corrupted
No podia…
• Permitir su Principal Creacion Morir
• Ver Su Familia Eterna Extinguido
• Dejar Su Imagen ser corrupta
He had to…
Rescue His best work…
Rescue His Eternal Family
Rescue His image
Tenia que…
• Rescatar Su mejor obra…tú y yo (Col 1:13)
• Rescatar Su familia y Su posición Paternal
• Rescatar Su image
He needed to redeem, to get back what was His. So the history of our redemption is like this…
God loved you and I so much that He came personally (no other plan would work) He could not depend on anyone else to do the job. This was a serious and important task to Him. So He came to earth and became flesh, He became one us, a human and He lived with us. His name? His heavenly name was “Emmanuel”…which is translated, “God With Us”.
Let’s read this part together…
Matt 1:20-23
Matthew 1:20-22 (NIV)
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”
20 Pero cuando él estaba considerando hacerlo, se le apareció en sueños un ángel del Señor y le dijo: «José, hijo de David, no temas recibir a María por esposa, porque ella ha concebido por obra del Espíritu Santo.21 Dará a luz un hijo, y le pondrás por nombre Jesús, porque él salvará a su pueblo de sus pecados.»
22 Todo esto sucedió para que se cumpliera lo que el Señor había dicho por medio del profeta:23 «La virgen concebirá y dará a luz un hijo, y lo llamarán Emanuel» (que significa «Dios con nosotros).
You may know the rest of the Christmas story. He was born as a baby in a humble place. Shepherds came to visit Him, wise men looked for Him afterwards and gave Him gifts. But the gift He came to give was eternal life.
He came to restore His best and first creation…you!
He came to restore His eternal family and fellowship with you!
He came to restore His image in you!
He came to make sure that you knew that you were special and to give you the chance to live with Him forever.
You have another option…you can choose to continue sinning, you can choose to be eternally separated from God. People that choose this choose not to accept God’s sacrifice and payment for their sin and choose to suffer the eternal consequences of sin. The place where people will suffer eternal consequences of their sin is called Hell. God gives us the option, and logically, you would think that everyone would pick being with God in heaven where you are loved, protected, healed, and safe.
Guess what? Many people would rather make their own plan for their life and believe that God’s plan isn’t good enough. Here is what God says,
John 3:16-19 (NIV)
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
16 »Porque tanto amó Dios al mundo, que dio a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo el que cree en él no se pierda, sino que tenga vida eterna.17 Dios no envió a su Hijo al mundo para condenar al mundo, sino para salvarlo por medio de él.18 El que cree en él no es condenado, pero el que no cree ya está condenado por no haber creído en el nombre del Hijo unigénito de Dios.19 Ésta es la causa de la condenación: que la luz vino al mundo, pero la humanidad prefirió las tinieblas a la luz, porque sus hechos eran perversos.
The question is…will you believe what God has done for you? Will you appreciate what He has done to save you? Will you live the life that God has planned for you and the not the one you have planned for yourself? If you do, I promise that you will have the best that God can offer for all eternity and it doesn’t get better than that!
You are created to be His Principal Creation
You are created to be a part of God’s eternal family
You are created to represent God’s image, who He is…
Do you want to live as who you really are…or do you want to settle for something less?
Tonight…God is wanting to communicate with you. He is wanting to tell you how very special you are. He wants you to know how great a sacrifice He paid to give you eternal life with Him. He wants to ask you if you will accept His gift…will you accept Jesus Christ who gives you eternal life and the decision to become a son and daughter of God?
The Bible says,
Romans 6:23
For the wages of asin is death, but the free gift of God is beternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“23 Porque la paga del pecado es muerte, mientras que la dádiva de Dios es vida eterna en Cristo Jesús, nuestro Señor.”
We can live in sin and die in sin, or we can accept the gift God made available through Jesus Christ…that gift is eternal life.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV)
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
“8 Porque por gracia ustedes han sido salvados mediante la fe; esto no procede de ustedes, sino que es el regalo de Dios,9 no por obras, para que nadie se jacte.10 Porque somos hechura de Dios, creados en Cristo Jesús para buenas obras, las cuales Dios dispuso de antemano a fin de que las pongamos en práctica.”
You can never attain eternal life by yourself. Last time I checked the statistics, every person that is born also dies. If we could have achieved it ourselves we would have done it by now. Instead, the Bible says that God has given us favor that we didn’t deserve…He has given us grace!
That is what God thinks of you…that is who you are meant to be. This is the night that God is giving you the opportunity to be that. Will you accept what He has done for you?
Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes…
[Give inivitation]
Amen.
Merry Christmas! May Christ’s birth mean something more to you this year. May it mean God personally saving you and giving you eternal life!!!!