The perspective of God

Genesis 1:26–29 “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; 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. You shall have them for food.”

Genesis 1:30–31 “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.”

I’m like almost guaranteeing that every single one of us in this room and I’m betting to believe that in this world, we have all at least once (even though I’m sure its way more than once) compared ourself to other people and always found something that we think they have and we don’t.

And the feeling you then get is, damn I wish I had what they had, whether it be characteristic, whether it be a thing or whatever it may be - I’m sure we have all had that feeling of, if I had that then I would be satisfied with myself.

And so I thought, what is the purpose of us trying to do this - like what is the reason that we want what others have? It’s because deep down we feel like what we have isn’t enough to satisfy us, that what we have in our life doesn’t fully satisfy us and we have this hole that can’t be filled and then what we end up feeling is that we don’t feel good enough.

And do you know what the interesting thing is - you know that person you look at and think damn I wish I had what they had, I can almost guarantee (prefacing that they are not 100% Christian) that they feel the exact same way or even more to another person, and then this next person feels the exact same way or even more to another person and it keeps going on and on.

I know Pastor Ali always talks about Palestine, and I think I always tend to talk about my work but what I have heard and continously seen at work is that everyone always seems to want what someone else has and the most interesting part is, is that its kind of like a circular thing. Ill try to explain this in an example, the people around the same level as me wish they had more money and so they try their best to get promoted, look good in front of the big dogs but what they have is a good relationship with the people around them. But interestingly, the big dogs that have alot of money (what people around me want) really want relationships with other people.

And so the conclusion becomes, we as people always have something that we want in someone else life but why? Why do we feel this way no matter what we have? Why doesn’t it feel like I’m enough to meet my own standards?

What is one thing that you have always wanted that you saw someone else have?

For me, the one thing I want these days and if I’m completely honest what I still want for myself is more time. I just wish I had more time - I have so many things going on in my life and I want to do everything that I do to the best of my ability - I want to prepare the best sermons for you, I want to prepare the best sermons at camp for you, I want to be a good representative of Christ at work, I want to show the loving care of Christ to the close people around me, I want to be all these things and from my perspective I just wish I had more time so that I can show the best of me to God and glorify him and to be very honest I want to just rest.

But do you know what is wrong with whatever you thought was the thing that you wanted that someone else had?

What we are actually saying and will think is that God didn’t create us perfectly, God didn’t create the world perfectly, we are saying that God’s creation (which is me and you) is not good in OUR eyes. If we think that we don’t have enough in our life, if we think that you want something that someone else has, we are saying that “Hey God, I’m feeling like this part of my life theres a hole and you kind of missed it, did you forget to put that in? Or like, how come they get that and I don’t”.

But what we have ought to realise here is that, the feeling of trying to fill that thing in our heart will be there and in fact it is natural that the feeling is there, we are supposed to have that feeling BUT this is not a result of God’s doing, but ours. And so we will figure out why we have this feeling and how do we fix it?

What is our purpose?

Genesis 1:26 “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.””

God said that we, as humans, were made in the image of God, after his likeness. What does this even mean?

It means that we as humans resemble God, his characteristics, his righteousness and holiness

Now the bible uses “image” for a specific reason because we are not God in the same way that you are not your parents right? Like when you are born you can’t just assign yourself to be a parent, but you are in the same way made as an “image” of your parents where you share the same qualities, same looks, same characteristics as them maybe in some things, or maybe in all things.

But we collectively as humans were made to show the characteristics of God and glorify him BUT not out of obligation, not feeling like we HAVE to, but feeling like we WANT to. and why is that? Because it says that God said “Let US make man in our image, after our likeness” where US relates to the holy spirit, the father and Jesus Christ where “after our likeness” represents the relationship that these 3 have which was perfect in love.

And so what does that mean for humans, is that we were created to image the same relationship that the holy trinity had which was to have a loving relationship with God the Father meaning, we didn’t need anything apart from him.

God had created only HUMANS in the image of God, not anything else, not giraffes, not lions, not fish, but only humans where we were supposed to live forever in holy communion, best relationship with God. This was who we were made to be.

And so in essence what does this all mean, from God’s perspective we are so important to him, we are so important that he made us in the image of him - you wouldn’t make something in the image of you KNOWING you are good and then not call it good.

And so the question turns back to, why dont I feel important to him, why don’t I feel like how God had created me to be?

We decided that the way that God had created us was not good enough in OUR eyes which if you know that God is all-knowing and perfect, just seems silly but thats exactly what Adam and Eve did, and we’ll see that this is exactly what me and you do:

Adam and Eve , they would live forever, in the presence and glory of God, glorfying him, and have the authority to rule over all of God’s creation - live how they were created to be

But they thought that wasn’t enough, because they were tempted by the serpent who told them that God was hiding something from them. The serpent convinced them to think that what they had wasn’t good enough for them and ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil which was a complete disobeyment of what God had commanded in:

Genesis 2:16–17 “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.””

This very thing is what sin is - Alot of us might think that sin is just doing a morally bad thing, or that sin is an actual thing in itself, but SIN is the act of disobeying what God has commanded, it is the act of trying to be our own God, which in this case was thinking that they had been given by God wasn’t good enough.

This very tendency, this very nature of sin is what we inherited from Adam and Eve who sinned, and also introduced death which we see in Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”

What this means is that the very moment you are born, we are born with the tendency to sin - this doesn’t mean we sin straight away when we come out into the world, but we do have the tendency, the ability to sin when we come out into the world.

And so to answer the question of why we don’t feel good enough, why we don’t feel like what we are doing is ever going to make me feel right about myself is exactly this:

We are not currently doing what we were made to be, which is why we continously search for “who we were made to be”. The truth is to have a right relationship with God and glorify God. But because we are born a sinner, born win the tendency to go against God, we do everything BUT glorify God and try to find the answer of “who were made to be” in our own way.

Because of this sin we have inherited, we live in a broken relationship with God, continuing to deny what God the creator has called "very good” (me and you) and continuing to accept what we think makes us good enough.

And the fact that you are trying to search for this answer, means that you are trying to fix it. And to do this we need to first identify what the actual problem is.

The fact that we continue to search for our purpose is because we are looking at our own life through our own perspective instead of God’s and we will see why this will never work out

When we ask ourself this question of “How do I feel good enough?”, what you will find yourself doing is chasing something, whether it be buying something, having alot of friends, having alot of money, or whatever you think will make you feel good enough in your own perspective.

But what will happen, is that once you do get it in the end - no matter how hard you try, it will never be enough and you will always continue to have the question of “How do I feel good enough”

Then you will try look for another way of making yourself feel good enough, and again you will ask yourself the question “Am I good enough?” and you will say no, and then you find another way again and again and it will never end.

Why does this happen?

Because we are looking at ourselves in the perspectives of our own eyes, and even more common than that, we are looking at ourselves in the perspectives of other people’s eyes - Why shouldn’t we do that?

If you look at yourself and think things about yourself, what you are saying is that you are a judge, right? If you say this parts not good enough or this part’s alright or this part is not bad - What you are doing is saying that you know what is right and wrong about yourself

If you look at yourself from the perspective of other people about yourself, what you are saying is that other people are a judge, right? And what you think is that you wish you had what that other person had - What you are saying now is that you think that other person knows what is right and wrong about yourself.

But, how can we trust a judge that is not truly righteous and just, who doesn’t truly know the difference between right and wrong and is not biased in their own judgement, how can you trust someone who is literally a sinner because that is who you, me and other people are.

The same decision of the court judgement for the topic “Are you good enough”, will be “You are not enough” and its kind of expected isn’t it? Because the judge itself is corrupt, but here we are believing in this idea that whatever that thing is in your mind, will help us to be “Good enough”.

For me personally, don’t we just want one definition of what is right and wrong? Everywhere you look, everyone has their own defintion of what is right and wrong, what is cool and not cool, what is good and bad.

Talk about English creative essay example. I was so sick and tired of trying to match what they thought was a good essay and everyone else thought.

What we have to be aware of is that it is this inherited sin that is making me, you, everyone around you feel this way, not how we were originally created by God because as God said in the beginning we were made in the image of God, but what happened after we were created which is the sin that is in our hearts and the choice that we made.

And why it is so important that we need to be aware that it is sin? Because the very cause of why we are having the feeling of the need to compare ourselves with other people is SIN, meaning we are disobeying what God had called good enough (which is you) .

The problem that we have is that we try to fix the problems resulting from sin, but don’t realise that it is the sin problem that we need to somehow fix.

Tree example

Think about a tree, where I actually researched this cause I’m a bit dumb and wasn’t sure if trees grew back branches if you chop them off but they do. However when I looked it up, interestingly they do grow back but not in the same place and not in the same form. And so no matter how many times you cut a branch off it will regenerate somewhere else in a different form continously.

But if you want to chop the tree down for whatever reason, what do you have to do? You have to cut it at the roots under the ground, the source of the tree’s life.

If you think that just cutting the branches will make the problem go away, it will just regrow again in a different form and in a different place and you will be doing that forever. But once you realise how these branches are growing, which is from the root of the tree, you now realise that the source of these problems in your life is sin.

And so all our life we have been trying to get rid of this feeling because in our heart theres just something telling us that it is wrong, but we solve it by cutting little branches which will grow again. And so now, just like the tree where if you cut the roots then the tree dies, so then how do we cut the roots of this tree? How do we stop thinking that I am not enough?

We have got to stop looking at ourselves from the perspectives of unrighteous judges but the perspective of the righteous being - God.

Jesus Christ

We are right in one way thinking that we aren’t good enough, but our perspectives of it is wrong. We think that we are not good enough in our own perspective and other people’s perspective clouded by sin, but who we are truly not good enough for is, is in front of a righteous and just God, meaning he is the one true defintion of right and wrong.

Give Lawyer Court example

One side of the room is Satan, one side of the room is people, and the judge is is you (wrong), other people (wrong), and then finally God

This is because we are sinful, meaning in front of the eyes of a righteous judge, we will always be declared guilty no matter what we try do.

Uh oh, now what, now in front of the actual creator will we be declared guilty as well?

We were guilty and deserve punishment but not anymore, where we see in the most famous verse in the bible John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Explain the verse

Explain how Jesus is the lawyer that God had given us - do you want him to get you out of everything or not ?

We are worth much more to God than any grade or verdict assigned by the world that “God showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners” meaning while we were still not good enough for God, Christ approved of us to be good enough in front of God, and not just good enough, but to be loved, and have the loving relationship we once had with God

If Christ Jesus, the one who died and resurrected, now sitting at the right hand of God says we are good enough, then I best believe that I am good enough despite what other people say, and more importantly what Satan says. If Jesus defeated sin and death, I best believe that if he says I am good enough for the one who controls everything and is the true righteous judge as opposed to us unrighteous judges, then I truly am good enough.

It is not about how you look in front of the world, but it is about how Jesus looks at you in the world. Its not about how I look at you, not how your friends may look at you, how other people may look at you, but your worth comes from Jesus who loves you so much that despite being an enemy to God, he loved you so much that he was willing to suffer and die just for us.

Jesus continues to chase after you saying I accept you, I want to be in a relationship with you, I love you and he continues to do so even when we continue to reject him. But lets stop running, lets stop going around in circles, lets stop going after the things that God has created, but just stand still and have Jesus take over your life. Have Jesus reveal how much he cares about you, how much he loves you.

Jesus loves us not because of who you are, but because of who he is. He loves you no matter what, and no matter what you believe he will continue to love you every single day. It is up to us to see that, it is up to us to realise that his love is the one true love that we have been searching for.

This weeks homework: Memorise 2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”