Created On Purpose Series

On Tuesday of this week, another world record was broken when the population of our planet topped 8 billion people! I’m not quite sure what baby’s birth put us over the top, or even how they count this, but it’s fair to say humankind has kept at least one of God’s commands which is to “be fruitful and multiply” as found in Genesis 1:28-31. Let’s stand and read together.

“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. 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.”

Because everyone is made in the image of God, every person on the planet matters to God. Last weekend, in a message called “Gender Matters,” we celebrated this truth from Genesis 1:27: In God’s good design, He created everyone as male or female. Males and females are equal, but not identical, because their biological sex is separate and distinct. God created males and females on purpose with different purposes. We’ve been made differently by design with distinct capacities and roles to fulfill the divine mandate to serve as stewards of the earth.

To equip us to respond to the confusion in our culture, we shared several resources on Sermon Extras. We posted some additional links this week. The first is a free Christmas devotional by Ray Pritchard which will serve as a supplement to our December series called, “The Promise.” The next four resources give hope to those who want to “detransition” back to the biological gender they were born with.

As we come to the end of our study in the first chapter of Genesis, it’s helpful to review what we’ve learned these past seven weeks.

1. To move forward in our faith, we must go back to the beginning.

2. Genesis has a big beginning because God is a big God.

3. When God says it, that settles it.

4. We’re able to see God’s provision and providence, that He is powerful and personal, and our response needs to be one of praise.

5. God forms and fills His creation for His glory and our good.

6. Because we are image-bearers of God, our purpose is to reflect, reveal, and represent Him.

7. In God’s good design, He created everyone as male or female.

These past few weeks many of you have spent time reading the first chapter of Genesis. Way to go! How many of you read through the entire Book of Genesis in one sitting? The challenge was to do this before Thanksgiving, so you still have time.

Being made in the image of God involves having a personality, morality, spirituality, and the responsibility to respond. Because we have a soul, a spirit, and a will, we possess dignity and value. There is no one like you and there will never be another you. This has at least two implications. First, unless you are rightly related to the Creator through the new birth, your life will lack meaning and purpose. In the words of Augustine, “Thou has created us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee!” Second, you will never look into the eyes of someone who does not matter to God.

Our main point today is God created us on purpose for His purposes.

We see in verse 28 how God begins by blessing Adam and Eve: “And God blessed them.” To bless means to, “to enrich and endow, to salute on bended knee.” This word comes from the ancient practice of weighing coins on a scale to determine their value. To bless has the idea of recognizing worth and adding value to someone’s life. Interestingly, men and women are not the first created beings to be blessed. In verse 22, He blessed sharks and sparrows.

In the New Testament, the term translated “bless” is the Greek word eulegeo, from which we get “eulogy,” which means “to celebrate someone by paying tribute through giving high praise.” Since God does that for us, let’s make sure we celebrate those around us, before they die. In their book called The Blessing, John Trent and Gary Smalley encourage believers to bless others. It’s especially important for parents and grandparents to bless children and grandchildren. They use the acrostic BLESS to help us remember the main ingredients.