#3 - Man: God Creates Series

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#3 – Man

Scriptures: Look under MAN in the Thompson Chain Reference

Four classic worldview questions EVERYONE must answer:

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

Why am I here?

Where am I going?

Every worldview answers these questions. Evolution does… Buddism does… the Moslem religion does… atheism does… and Christianity does.

Every answer is not equal... for instance, if I told you that I could take your watch and do this:

What if I assured you that if I shook this back for 65 million years, the watch would be put back together so cleanly that you couldn’t even see the cracks, that it would be working and would tell the correct time?

Would you believe me? NO! Yet, every day, teachers teach this in school, only about the human body which is infinitely more complex than any watch!

This is what evolution teaches… only more absurd! As if we looked at the May 5th tornado in OKC, and saw all the houses it tore down, and then looked in the middle and somehow it had swept through a junkyard and assembled a working 747 and set it in the middle of the destruction, or that an explosion at Lowes put together a 5,000 square foot mansion!

Contrast that with what the Bible says about the creation of man:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

EVERY man is made in the image of God… no racism.

Psalm 8:3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:

Made in the Image of God.

What does that mean?

Well, let’s first talk about what it doesn’t mean: It DOESN’T mean that you LOOK LIKE God. God is a spirit, a person/personality without a physical body… except for the Son, Jesus, who took on a physical body (we’ll discuss this in a couple weeks.)

“God is spirit…” John 4:24

“…a spirit does not have flesh and bones…” Luke 24:39

When the Bible talks about God having a “face” or an “arm” or a “hand” or “mouth”… these are ways that we talk about God in terms we can understand and relate to – not saying that God has a BODY.

SO then, what is the “image of God” that you and I were created in?

It is this:

 You were created with:

o Mind – the ability to think and be self-aware.

o Will – The ability to choose freely.

o Emotions – the ability to love and hate.

This is fundamentally different from animals, which were not created in the image of God.

 They were created with:

o Body – but not self-aware intellect.

o Instinct – but not free will. They instinctively choose what is natural or trained into them.

This gives us four foundational truths for your life:

 I am more than a body.

 I was made for a purpose.

 I was made to have choice.

 I was made to last forever.

1. I am more than a body.

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Matthew 6:25

For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

1 Timothy 4:8

But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding. Job 32:8

“…and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” Ecclesiastes 12:7

2. I was made for a purpose.

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ… 1 Corinthians 1:2