Image of God (Genesis 1:26-30)

But after some inner turmoil, and having some really good and deep discussions last Sunday night I decided I needed to preach more indepth on the image of God, because it is so vital to understanding the rest of the Bible.

Really Genesis 1, 2, 3 are showing us what happened and all the rest of histroy is implications of these verses.

When we understand why things are the way they are, then we can understand why God moves in the way He moves and understand life much deeper.

So just to catch us up.

I am going to preach the text on Sunday Mornings, that is a conviction I hold to.

I will teach on Sunday nights. All preaching has teaching in it, but teaching is not preaching.

So I would highly encourage you to come on Sunday Mornings and Sunday nights.

On Sunday Nights we will walk and talk through various things that come up, last Sunday we talked alot about evolution and science, and tried to understand those things through a biblcial worldview.

Tonight we have Deacons meeting and Business meeting, but my devotional will be based on things in Genesis I have’nt got to teach on yet...

If you have a question that comes up, write it down, text me, my phone is on silent, email me, get me a written or typed up question.

I will use those in sermon prep and also on Sunday nights in teaching.

Genesis was written by Moses, we beleive this because jesus said it was so.

Moses wrote the pentatuch, the first 5 books of the bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Dueteronomy.

Those 5 books were extremely important to the Jewish people.

Moses wrote Genesis while the Isrealites had just been Exodused out of Egypt.

They are wondering in the wilderness, and they begin asking questions like,

Who are we?

Where did we come from?

What is our purpose?

What went wrong?

How can we fix it?

So I believe Genesis is literal, but I also beleive it is literarily.

So God used Moses to pen this story in such a way that it would attack much of the common things that the Isrealites had believed as we we will see.

So last week the overarching theme that I hope you saw was God created.

One God, out of Nothing created everything.

So there is two catagories we need to recognize,

The uncreated and the Created.

In the uncreated catagory it is God thats it.

In the created catagory it is everything else.

I want to zoom in the 6th day of creation and to really the last thing that God creates. Mankind.

There is something different about this that is special and tells us you and me so much about ourselves but more importantly about our God.

Let’s Read Genesis 1:26-30 and then we will pray and dive in.

Genesis 1:26–30 ESV

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. 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.

PRAY

Image of God Created

Genesis 1:26–27 ESV

So here was have the big key words.

God speak in the plural, let us make man in our own image.

Several things, up tp this point God speaking has been impoersonal.

It God said “let there be light” and it was.

But when we get to mankind, we see this personal languange.

Augustine of Hippo was a really early Christian. He lived from 354-430.

He has has a quote where he say

“The New is in the old concealed and the old in is the new revealed.

What he is saying is that in the Old Testament many of the doctrines and theology is present, but its concealed.

We see that here.

Let us is a reference, I beleive, to the tirnity. But there is no real attempt to explain it.

It’s clearly there, but just concealed.

In the New Testament Jesus and the other authors inspired by the Holy Spirit reveal much of what was concealed in the Old.

Paul often says this was a mystery but now is clear, or Jesus says you have hear it said.

So we see this perfect triune God created something that is different that the rest of creation.

This creation is much more intimate.

And all the other creation has been created accoridng to its kind, but not ma, man is created accoring to God’s image and likeness.

So what exactly does that mean.

There has been many pages and much ink spilled on this.

Some say it means this specific thing, others say it means that.

When I look at the scripture and try to understand this I see it means alot of differnt things that ultimatly culiminate in Jeuss.

What we need to see first is that We are created as God’s images and likeness.

At a very rudiemntary level, we don’t make images of God, we are God’s images.

Almost all of the ancient kinds and pharoh, that the Isrealites would have been exposed to claimed to be images of theri God’s.

Phatosh climaed to be an image of the Sun god, thus he has power and authrotiy.

But he is the only one.

What Moses through the Holy Spirit is saying is, No… All of mankind from Paharoah to the the lowliest slave in the image of God.

So in Exodus also written by Moses the first two of the ten commandments are about this image bearing.

Exodus 20:3–6 ESV

“You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Always what the temptaion is is to make images instead of being image bearers.

In college I took world religon class and part of this class was to go to a Hindu Temple, We went as a class, and we had to take our shoes off to enter.

All around this room were these idols and staues and figure.

There was food veggies and fruits for the gods.

There was a stage that only the holy man could be on.

On the stage were big statues.

One of their beliefs is that those statues each have a part of that god or godess in them.

They are not just satues they are gods.

I remember we were talking to the holy man, and I looked back and saw a man who had come to worship and he crawled on his hands and knoess to the top of the stairs to get to the stage and just barely touched it, hopeing to aborsb some of that holinessand purity from these idols.

That’s not the image of God.

Tha’ts not what God would have us do.

As Chrsitians we do not create statues that are holy and pure, rahter we seek to grow in Christ who makes us holy and pure.

We are image bearers.

God in the midst of creation before the fall, so sin isn’t part of this,

made mankind to be those images of him throughout creaitons.

becuase of this we rule over God’s creation with the authroity God has given us.

We are like God in that we have domoin over the creation.

Do you see the importance of tis?

Genesis 1:28–30 ESV

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. 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.

So let me show you. The best way for us to see this is through illustration about how we are different than other created things.

We have 4 cats (Elsa, Anna, Snowflake, and Pickle)

We have 2 dogs (Rolo and Sugar) we also are watching my brohter in laws dog Dailey.

And we have 2 chickens (Nugget and Fil-a)

If times get difficult, and mony gets tight at my house.

I can sit down and look at what cost me the most to keep.

Who brings the least to the family, and who takes the most.

By far for purly economic reasons if that is my only motization thenIt is Addi and Bryn who are gone first right?

My cats have caught mice and birds and insects, also I can them for like $20 a month.

My dogs have pinned up two skunks, and have killed 3-4 snakes including a baby rattle snake, and I can feed them for $40 a month.

My chicken eat bugs, fertilze my lawn, and produce egg and I can feed them with table scraps.

But Addi and Bryn… they don’t bring any income in. If someting break in our house it’s typicaly because of one of them.

We have started calling Bryn Decductable, because of her deminor.

They cost me far more than the animals, and bring much less. let that is appauling that I even suggest they would be what is cut first in a crunch.

That’s because we all know, we are born with this imporinted on our souls, and that humans are more important that animals.

This is the imago dei imprinted on our hearts.

We are created, yet we are very different than the rest of creation.

We have a worthy and a vlaue that the other creation doesn’t bear.

All human kind, male and female, not depentant on race, ethincics, sociual statsus, tax bracket, non of that bears anything to the imago dei.

Humans have worth and value from the moment they are concied to till death, and even after death their bodies are taken care of in a way that animal bodies are not.

I’ll be real honest we have gone through 7 snakes, 2 skunks, I think 3 cats and about 4 chickens. All died. I didn’t put them in a box when I burreid them.

I wanted Morgan to cook the chicken, but she couldn’t do it. We had this arguement at chick-fil-a to add irony.

The imago die imprints this on us.

It also means that we are moral beings.

Accountbale to God in ways that animals are not.

We have a snese of right and wrong.

Rolo our chocolate lab doesn’t.

Our chicken coop has the box I built on the back that the chicken lay eggs in and then you just open the flap, grab the eggs and then put the flap down.

One night I forogt to close that flap and all our chickens jumped outof the coop.

Nugget, fil-a, and Noodle.

The next morning I realized the chicken were out running and they were supposed to be pinned up.

So i went and I found two of the 3 chicken, I couldn’t find Noodle.

In the backyard I started finding noodles feathers, but it was a really windy day, I didn’t know maybe the wind was just blowing them.

It wasn’t until I fed the dogs that I put sugars food in her bowl and she eats it, and then I put Rolo’s food in his bowl and Rolo doesn’t touch it.

Rolo is a one year old Lab, he eats like we have never fed him.

Rolo ate Noodle.

Now listen I have been watching closely guess what, Rolo have no sympathy.

The chicken have not called their senators demanding justice.

Some animal law enforcement hasn’t shown up to ask Rolo questions.

And honestly he has no remorse, he stares at that coop just waiting.

You know what… because he is a dog and Noodle is a Chicken it was a big deal, but not really. I didn’t weep over it, the chicken didn’t either.

Yet, we as humans should weep over the amoint of babies that are aborted everyday.

According to the Texas.gov website- in 2019 there were 56,620 abortions in texas that year. That was up from 2018 by 4.2%.

I hear the other day from someone who knows the stats but didn’t cite it that of the millenial generation, 1/4 has aborted.

As a father who has wept over the loss of 3 children due to miscarriages, and tried to comfort my wife through them and deal with knowning that I am the father of 6 children, though I have only been able to hold 2 and name 3 Lord will i will get to hold him in June that break me down much more than losing a chicken or even a family dog.

But extends to the other end too, we have a bad tendency to placce loved ones in nursing homes, and forget about them.

As if they are somehwat less than us.

Imago Dei says humankind has value and worthy not becuase of thwt they bring bt because God created them with that stamp.

Christians shoud be the one who are standing up for unborn babies and for neglected seniors, because they offer little value to a society that only care about what they can get out of oyu.

When you can’t give beucase of physical alilments, out society tosses you to the side and moves on to someone else.

Being pro-life, means we valie ALL of life, from conception to and through death.

Imago dei makes us Spiritual beings.

We understandt that we are not just bodies, were are souls. We pray, we praise, we worship, we seek to know God more and be known by God.

I have never… in all my years of life and in all my study in school and for personal gain have never seen a dog pray.

Now i have seen a dog bow it’s head, it’s been trained and it’s super cute, but that prayer.

Rolo isn’t in my backyard pleading with God for forgiveness for murdering Noodle.

Else and the other cats do not meet up each night a bible study.

My animal have never once thought about life after death.

Their animals.

But not mankind.

Even those who reject God, worship something.

The imago dei makes us mental creatures

We think with logic and reason, awareness of future events (this is why so many people try to get right with God on their death beds), we have art, and literatrue, and science, and technology, and a complexity of emotions that animal just don’t have.

Rolo and Sugar are not in the backyard debating philosphy.

If I give Rolo a book he will chew it up and eat it.

If I give our Cats a book they will sleep on it.

If I give our chicken a book they will ignore it and walk on it.

They can’t read that do not know that is it.

Humankind has a desire to advance tahcnology and do things better and easier.

yet Beavers have been making dams the exact same way since ther were created.

Not humans.

We paint, and don’t comes at me with the dophon who paints pictures and then the zoo sells them as a fundraiser… come one really you probably like modern art too.

There is a difference.

This list can go on and on.

Humans get married, Rolo will never propose to Sugar no matter how hard hse asks.

Parents will disicpline their kids out of love and seeking them grow.

My chicken will teach the little chicken just enough to survivd.e

Parent comfort their kids with words, try to calm their feeds, while rolo is just as scared as Sugar and neither are helping eachother.

Justice and Rightouesoneess have never dawned on my cats.

Family relaitonships don’t matter to animal.

They do not congregate and form churches to glorify God.

They are animal and humans are not like them.

We are like God.

Infact We are told in Genesis we are created to have domion over the other created things.

This means we use creation, but also that we do not abuse creation.

This is why animal abuse is wrong. We are not to weild dominion as a totalitatiran who can wound lesser animals.

Image of God Corrupted

The image of God was perfect in the garden of Eden, but then sin.

It comes in and it messes everything up.

Mankind wwas to have domino over creation yet, a serpent slitters in.

More to that later.

After the fall, does Humanity lose this Imago Dei?

No.

Genesis 9:6 ESV

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

That after the fall.

James 3:9 ESV

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

So what we see is after the fall the image of God is still present though it too has been affected.

Sin defaced this image.

It’s like a mirror that is broken but has’nt fallen apart yet.

It still reflects but it’s not a perfect refleciton.

Our moral purity is lost.

We have a sinful nature not a holy nature.

Our intellectualy ability has been impeded.

We don’t always speak in ways that glorify God.

The thoughts of our mind… let not flesh that out.

Relationships turn slefish what can I get instead of lovging relationshsip.

God created mankind.

We aren’t to create images of God because God created imagies of Himself in us.

because of that we rule like God rules.

We have dominon.

But this ruling has been messed up.

We are supped to rule for the benefit of others.

To create societies that flourish and to help be fruituful and miltple across the world, that mandage from before the fall.

But ebcause of sin, we rule for own own glory and our own good.

Not so that others can flourish, but so that we can have power andcontrol.

Ecclesiastes 7:29 ESV

See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.

What this teaches us and is so important is that because of the image of God on us, we are more than just coasting through life.

We are more than just trying to make a living.

We are more than just surviing.

But if we are honest.

In ourselves, by our own power and our own might we can do no good.

We cannot be the image bearers we are suppoed to be ebcause we are broken.

With no ability to fix ourselves.

Image of God Redeemed

So God who created man in His image, comes to man in man flesh.

Jesus is 100% God even when we walk the earth.

And Jesus is 100% man.

he is the perfect man.

He is the one who bears the image of God perfectly.

He rules like we were supposed to rule.

He rules by serving.

he takes the negative of our rule, the sin and our punsihemnt and he bears that on the cross.

He is THE image of God.

2 Corinthians 4:4 ESV

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Colossians 1:15 ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Philippians 2:6 ESV

who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,

Hebrews 1:3 ESV

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,

1 Corinthians 15:49 ESV

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

All of those verse and there are many many more, Go read Hebrews go read Colossians.

All of those things are pointing you and me Jesus.

Isn’t that goodnews!

It’s not be better.

Fix yourself.

it’s look to Jesus the founder and perfecor of our faith.

But this does not give us permission to be stangnat in our faith rather this is the power of faith to grow.

GROW IN JESUS THE IMAGE OF GOD!!!

2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV

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.

Romans 8:29 ESV

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Colossians 3:10 ESV

and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

We are to grow more and more into the image of God and trust that day when we die or JEsus comes back and we stand before Him we will plead Christ and Him cruficed and he will perfect us in His Image so then we become what we lost.

Perfect image bearers because of Jesus.

Is that you this morning?

Maybe you struggling with this.

You don’t know about how bad I have wrecked this image of God.

brohter sister if that’s you you don’t know the love of Jesus and phow much that He can heal.

Run to Him He is enough.

Maybe for you you think… I got this.

This lesson is for someone else.

Brother Sister can I lovingly as your pastor say no you don’t.

none of us do.

Be honest with yourself, grow in Christ.

The Gospel always causes a repsonse in our hearts.

Sometimes that salvation. sometimes thats santificaiton, and brohter sns sister sometimes that a hardening of hearts becuase we do not want to be image beares of God we want to be image bearers of myself and my own desires.

Brothers and sisters don’t let that be you this moring.

Let’s pray.

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