Learning To Be Human Series

Learning to Be Human

Series: Reboot: Fresh Start for a New Year

Brad Bailey - February 5, 2023

Intro

Continuing in our series… thinking about how we are living our lives. We’ve begun a new year…and it’s a good time to consider HOW we are engaging with this gift of life.

We began looking at how Jesus lived with a central purpose… and that God created everything with purpose. He created you with purpose.

And then we allowed him to speak to us about how to live with priority…so that we can find fulfillment…knowing that we finish what matters most.

Jesus had one defining priority… to bring glory to God… his eternal Father.

We may falsely think that this reflects God being hurt by our lack of recognizing Him….as if He needs us.

We don’t give God glory… He IS the source of all glory… all goodness. There is a goodness that we all long for…and it exists in God.

He is the source…the center… the source of all that is ultimately true and good.

So when we center our lives in the glory of God…we are aligning with reality…with what is.

God is quite clear in making known that we were created from the beginning in God’s image that we might reflect that glory in the world. Human life was to multiply and fill the earth so that the knowledge of the glory of God would cover the sea. [1a]

And God makes clear that something became corrupted at the core… about what it means to be human.

As many may recall…in the Biblical Book of Genesis….Book of Beginnings…

Genesis 3:1-5, 7

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Here we see how the corruption to our human nature comes.

What was inserted? The belief that we could be like God…we could become independent…and we could be the center.

We chose to believe in our own glory…. and found ourselves in a state of shame…of being naked.

If a misguided pride is the root…it leads to shame…and a need to make something of ourselves.

This continues through the story of human nature and God’s work. Genesis 11… tower of Babel…when the people come together and declare

“Let us make a name for ourselves.” - Gen. 11:4

That is the need so many of us feel. We feel a need to make a name for ourselves. [1b]

Been working it’s way through time. There is a long history of wars between clans and countries…of trying to find power in cultural dominance and control. There are tales of heroes who tap into our longing to make a name for ourselves.

This past week, my wife and I were watching one of the of the Mission Impossible movies

(Fallout)…

They have mastered creating scenarios of saving the world…and scenes that are thrilling… physically…but also…heroically.

This one ends with the love of his life…saying essentially…“I know the world is safe as long as you are out there.” [2]

Awwww. What a line. Those are words that should be reserved for God. Yet… if I’m honest… they into my own desire to be such a hero.

The truth is that they reflect something of the corrupted narrative. They take something…particularly in the masculine soul….and distorts it.

They take the character of true courage…and adds ego into it… pride. It creates a heroic “bigger than life” drama.

And we do well to pause at the nature of the “bigger than life” story that we are drawn to. It is “bigger than life”… because we can’t find our actual place in life. It’s a reflection that we have been trying to live outside the role we have been given in this life.

We were given the highest role in creation… but we rejected the role of the created…and want to be the creator.

Creating our own image… is a powerful lure… and never more mastered than in our “age of image.”

It has been mastered by Hollywood.