In Whose Image Are You
Genesis 1:26-28
Prayer
Introduction
The assertion [that human brings were made in the image of God] confirms the genuineness of each man’s freedom. Experience tells us that we are free, in the sense that we make real choices between alternatives and could have chosen differently, and theology agrees. Self-determining freedom of choice is what sets God and his rational creatures apart from, say, birds and bees, as moral beings.
The men have been studying Peter and the other apostles on Wed. night and we have discovered that it takes many different kinds of individuals to work in God’s kingdom. We have studied leaders and we have studied workers and what we seem to have discovered is that life is a series of challenges. That it does it does not matter how difficult or how easy those challengers are what matters is how we meet those challenges. We can either meet those challenges in our own power or in the power of Jesus Christ. We have seen the disciples at their lowest point living in their own feeble strength beaten down by the challenges of the world. When Jesus was arrested we saw that all scattered lick little chicks from the hawk. They met adversity in their own power and strength and failed. Then we see them at Pentecost and after meeting every challenge in the power and with the authority of Jesus not depending on their own abilities but instead depending on Jesus’ abilities to see them through.
How hard it is for us to depend on a God that we must have faith in but can’t see, feel, or touch? At least that is what the world says. But I submit to you that as I look out over this assembly here tonight I see God in each and every face. We are created in His image. We are the image of God, but do we live like the image of God.
I. Why did God Create Man in His image?
a. To complete creation
b. To worship God
c. To serve God
d. What happened-Satan tried to destroy God’s plan by leading man to sin.
i. Uses our free will to trick us
ii. We choose to sin or not to sin. Satan can’t make a child of God sin because he no longer has control over us.
II. What does it mean to truly be the image of God?
a. We worship willingly
b. We serve Him willingly
c. We give up what we want for what God wants
d. We use our free will to choose salvation instead of damnation for eternity.
e. God blesses those who serve Him willingly
f. When people look at us the will see the image of God they will say that there goes so and so a man or woman of God. People will recognize
IV. “An Image Better Than Adam’s!” Isaiah 59:1-8 Key verse(s): 1-2:“Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear.”
Oh if we could but live one day as Adam and Eve. Have you ever wished this? If you could but experience for even the briefest moment the joy and complete satisfaction that must have been manifest in the lives of our first parents before they fell into sin. They walked innocent, naked and in complete communion with God their Father. Disharmony, sorrow, fretfulness, and anger were unknown to them. Doubtless they cried; but their tears could only have been as those which flow from a feeling of complete contentment and happiness. Their state was one of total cooperation, unswerving commitment and consuming love both for each other and for God. Created in holiness, they dwelled within its tent, secured and warmed by its amazing completeness and immeasurable capacity to grant happiness and promise. Adam and Eve were the lucky ones. They were created in pure holiness, a state which we have never experienced. We can only speculate what it must have been like. Can you imagine a day in your life when, in the presence of a person, even someone that you love with all your heart and soul, you do not harbor a single wrong thought or secure even the faintest glimmer of jealousy or resentment? Those little irritating thoughts that cross our minds constantly, the ones that are there for but an instant and then gone, would never happen. In a sinless world people would never know bitterness or envy. They would dwell apart from comparisons and they would have no need for justice. All these things would be made meaningless in the absence of sin.
Truly Adam and Eve were more fortunate than we. Unfallen man had in his possession the power of sinlessness, the ability to live in complete harmony with others and with God. Oh to be like them if but for an instant! We could throw off this coil of sorrow and woe. Our worst enemies would be our best friends. Our worst obsessions would be trivialized in the presence of such perfect promise and hope. Our worst fears would become nothing more than idle thought. To walk hand in hand with the Almighty God, Creator of the universe, if but for a moment, would be a thrill beyond expression. To step back into the world of Adam and Eve prior to Satan’s appearance would just have to be the one experience that nothing in this life could top. Or, would it be? Is there yet a state that could compare or, better yet, surpass this? How could there be anything surpassing to the joy and completeness our first parents must have experience before Eve took the apple and Adam placed his lips upon it? To be in a state of created holiness, holding the very hand of the One who made you and kept you each day; how could there be anything better than that?
When God created man the Bible tells us that He made man a little lower than the angels but in a state of complete holiness. God created man in His image to dwell in holiness and rule over the entirety of His creation. He did not, however, create man in equity to Himself. It was in His image He made us, not in His essence. Man was holy indeed. But, their was One to whom all things were subjugated and under whose domain the entire universe bowed down. That was and is the Son of God, Jesus Christ. There was no equity between Adam and Christ beyond the knowledge of sin. Although Adam lived in sinlessness at first, he had the capacity to sin later. Christ, the sinless Son of God, possessed power over sin. Not only did he live without sin, He dwelt in complete dominion over it. In that respect, Adam and Eve, bereft of the ability to defeat sin, could never know the power, the perfected love, that dwelt within the essence of Jesus Christ. Only Christ has power and authority over sin. Would it not make sense, therefore, to aspire to this greater power, one superior to the holiness of our first parents? To claim the authority over sin would be a greater power than the ignorance of it. C. S. Lewis writes, “Whatever may have been the powers of unfallen man, it appears that hose of redeemed Man will be almost unlimited. Christ, re-ascending from his great dive, is brining up Human Nature with Him. Where He goes, it goes too. It will be made “like Him.” (Miracles, chap. 15, para. 5, p. 135)
You and I in this sense are far better off than Adam and Eve. Even though we know sin, we aspire to a holiness even greater than theirs; the holiness of Christ Himself. Through the Holy Spirit we grow in this grace daily. When Christ descended into Hell to claim victory over the sin that Adam brought into the world, he arose with such a force and shout that we too are taken up with Him and made holy in that ascension to the throne of God. There can be no greater aspiration than this. To be like Christ would be far better than to be like Adam.
Are you the image of God or are you the image of the world (Satan). Tonight you have a choice to make are you willing to sacrifice yourself and the image of God. To give up the things of this world and take on the things of Heaven or would you rather continue living in the filth and evil of this world and be the image of corruption, filth, and evil.
