God's Design - Gen. 1

Genesis 1 HSM

How would some of your friends describe God? Someone who is not a Christian?

Often the view from those who are not Christians of God is a God sitting up in heaven giving us a bunch of rules to restrict us from enjoying and having fun. There is a movement of wanting to be free.

- Princess Elsa “No right, no wrong, no rules for me I am free.”

o For most of us, we would define freedom as no rules, being free to be who we want and what we feel. Now I want you to remember those two words.

§ We want to Do what we want, so our passions

§ Go with what we feel, our desires.

Now as most of you know this series called God’s Plan: a study on sexuality, gender, and relationships. Even within the title you may get a little hesitant, maybe because the word sexuality is used, but could it be the title of the series is God’s plan. The moment we here that someone has a plan for us we get uncomfortable. Why? Because that usually means they have rules for us to follow, things they want us to do, and we push back against it.

o CALL SOMEONE UP AND ACTUALLY DO THE EXERCISE.

- If I was to come up to you and say hey, I have this plan for your life. I want you to go to this college, major in this, get a job at this company, and live in this area of town.

§ What would you think? How would you respond?

· Why?

o Because I don’t know you, I don’t know your story, you know you best, therefore you feel as if you need to decide what is best for you, right?

This is our view of freedom, rules are bad, I know me, let me do me.

- But can I put forth two thoughts for you:

o Doing what you want is not actually freedom

o There is no higher view of human beings, who they are and their sexuality than what scripture puts forth as God’s view.

§ So keep those in mind and put me to the test.

We are going to tackle the second thought first of God’s view of humanity then we will look at freedom after this. Turn to Genesis 1, it is the first page in the bible, incredibly easy to find.

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.”

27 So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

28 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.” 29 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.

Quick summary, what is happening here? Creation. What do we know about God so far? That he is the creator of all and human beings are a part of this. We actually see that humans are created last. But it is the longest account of how they are made. They are of the utmost value in God’s eyes. They are made in the image of God.

Image of God, what does it mean to be made in the image of God?

- Tim Mackie, Hebrew Scholar, The words “image” (Heb. tselem / צלם) and “likeness” (Heb. demut / דמות) are most commonly used to refer to physical statues of stone or wood, and these words are usually translated “idol” or “statue”

o Easier way to understand is that we are made to represent God to the world.

§ In 1991 Gatorade came out with a commercial about a famous basketball player that some would say is the greatest of all time. The commercial starts of with highlights of Michael Jordan, he is dunking, shooting dribbling, and then they show your average joes playing basketball. And you guys know what they son playing in the background says?

· “I want to be like Mike, if only I could be like Mike.”

o The whole commercial was based around people playing basketball trying to be like Mike. They were trying to be made in the image of Michael Jordan. They were never going to be Mike, but they wanted to be like Mike, to image him. In a sense this is what Genesis is saying.

There is no greater dignity given to human beings than what God says, than what scripture says right here.

- Every other, especially ancient, depiction of the creation of humanity is that they were made FOR the gods. They were made as slave to serve and do whatever the god was to say.

- Even today, we don’t like to believe in God because we want to do what we want, I just covered that. But can I contend, when you do what you want you aren’t actually doing what you want. You are a slave.

o Comer - Princess Elsa “Its no right, no wrong, no rules for me, im free.” That is the western worlds understanding of freedom. Jesus called that exact same thing slavery. Because when you don’t have right, wrong, rules for me, you are not actually free to do what you want but you are enslaved to your flesh. Paul “slaves of the belly” “lovers of pleasure”. As long as you need it you are enslaved to it.

§ What does scripture say right here? Humans are made in the image of God, they are made in the place of God. Why? To rule with God, to take care of creation, to work together, walk with God and lead the earth to flourishing.

· You have to see it here. We need to get rid of the picture in our head of God sitting in heaven mad that we aren’t following rules. Gods heart is that we would understand His view of us and we would live out of that. Live with the value, the honor, the dignity that he has created us for. And understand that our purpose is flourishing, the flourishing of humanity, the flourishing of the world. BEAUTIFUL!!

· Bible Project – “The portrait of God is of one who summons and invites things to be that we’re not, and then invite them to just become what they’re made to be. The portrait is of a god who wants to share.

o “Revolutionary thinking, no other culture is even coming close to something like this. The God of the Bible is a God who delights in partnering with others…”

Humanity is made in the beautiful image of God, yet we look around and we do not see beauty, why? Because we have stiff armed our creator.

- What is a part of that image? Male and Female

o This is not a rule for restriction but a rule for freedom

“To rebel against God is to embrace death because you are turning away from the giver of life Himself.” – BP