GENESIS 1:26-27
Matthew 9:35-36
“You are of Infinite Worth”
By: Ken Sauer, Pastor of East Ridge United Methodist Church, Chattanooga, TN eastridgeumc.org
Sitting in her car--on a dark road just outside of town a young high school girl looks at her life.
This is what she sees:
“I am overweight.”
“I have no friends.”
“My future holds no promise.”
She thinks: “It’s no use-there is no hope.”
A middle aged executive sits alone in a motel room--a day of meetings just completed.
“The kids are all gone.”
“My wife doesn’t seem to care for me or love me anymore.”
“My job is a dead-end.”
A housewife sits at home, alone.
As she sits there, she looks at her life:
“My husband has his job.”
“The kids are all in school.”
“I am so alone.”
Then she pours herself another drink.
...And so it goes.
Everyday, we hear about it--people are checking out on life.
Children are running away from home.
Someone is committing suicide.
There is alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression.
And while all this is going on, we need to ask ourselves; “Why?”
“Why are people checking out on life?”
The answer to that question is as varied as the people themselves....
However, if we were to analyze the answers, there would be one thing that all these people would have in
common.
Most of these people have found that their lives, or at least an important aspect of their lives appears to them as
meaningless--empty--unfulfilling.
It’s as if there is a dark hole that they are living in, and they can’t get out.
And this is a feeling that many of us can probably relate to.
In fact, there may be somebody here this evening who feels this way right now.
Many, if not most of us understand the idea of emptiness, meaninglessness, and being unfulfilled.
Now, it may not be our entire life, it could just be a very important area of our life.
The Word of God gives us hope.
Your life does have meaning.
Your life can be fulfilling....
The Reason?: you were created in the image of God!!!
Every year the United Methodist Church, and locally, the Holston Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church has a Conference.
Jackie and Megan Watson, Clair and myself—we were there back in June.
Lots of decisions concerning the future of God’s Church were prayerfully considered...
Lots of decisions that concern you and me.
And we find in our Old Testament Lesson that long, long ago God held a very special conference, a divine counsel which majorly concerns you and me.
Notice in verse 26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness....”
This is plural.
God doesn’t say: “Let Me create man in my image.”
God says, “Our image.”
And why is this?
To show the great dignity and honor that we all possess.
We have been given the great privilege of being created by the full Godhead.
Our creation was so special--we are the very crown and glory of creation--that God called a very special conference to discuss the matter, a divine counsel that involved...
God the Father.
God the Son.
And God the Holy Spirit.
All three Persons of the Trinity consulted and became personally involved in our creation.
And if we meditate on this glorious truth, our hearts should throb with excitement!
But do they?
Human life is so very precious, and yet when we turn on the news, open the newspaper, or look at the internet it becomes immediately apparent that many of us do not understand this or believe this.
In verse 27 we read: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and
female he created them.”
So what does it mean to be made in the image and likeness of God?
And how does this relate to our value as persons?
There are painful realities in this world...
In this Fallen world there are painful realities aimed at crushing the ultimate truth about our unique value.
After suffering rejection from her peers at school and from her parents at home a young girl once wrote:
“This experience of rejection made me think that there was no God, because in moments of rejection I feel I am no
good. And if I am no good, how can there be any God?
Am I not made in the image and likeness of God?”
Rejection by others can greatly affect our faith and our self-worth.
Think of the freshman kid at Rutgers University, with his whole life ahead of him, who jumped from a bridge to his death due to the bullying of his roommate.
Or the young high school girl found hanging dead in her home following months of torturous bullying.
So often we believe the lies of, “You are not as good as others. You don’t measure up. It will never get better.
You are not accepted and you never will be.”
And without a relationship with the God of love and compassion, how much easier it is for people to succumb to the meanness and hateful rhetoric of the world.
Our value and dignity as human beings is not based on our actions or on the judgments others might make about us.
Our value or dignity is solely based on God’s love for us!
And that love is great....
That love is beyond measure!!!
Our Gospel Lesson tells us that Jesus looked out on the multitudes and felt compassion for them.
The translation of “felt compassion”
is a clue to the depth of God’s love for us.
Jesus’ body reacted to Jesus’ compassion.
It was an immediate and physical
response.
He felt it.
In the original language the word for compassion is quite descriptive.
It literally means “bowels.”
When you and I want to express love and compassion today, we probably choose another part of the anatomy, a different organ: the heart.
“Heart” sounds much nicer than “bowels,” doesn’t it?
I mean, it’s understandable why Hallmark hasn’t capitalized on this ancient expression of love.
Imagine writing your loved one a Valentine card that says, “I love you with all my bowels!”
Talk about a “moving experience!”
So, anyway, when Jesus sees you and
I…
…anyone, Jesus’ breath is taken away.
Jesus is hit in the solar plexus.
Jesus is bent over in discomfort.
Most of us are surrounded daily by
people who do not have Christ, yet we often walk through life without feeling it in our “bowels.”
Why?
Because most of us don’t see other people the way Jesus does.
But we can learn.
The Bible tells us why Jesus felt compassion for the crowds.
He saw them as harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
The two words translated as “harassed” and “helpless” are also highly descriptive.
They are violent words.
Harassed can be translated as “molested.”
And “helpless” can be translated as “pinned down by force.”
That really puts Jesus’ Words in a new context.
Jesus sees lost souls this way, molested and violently pinned down.
Imagine how different the Church, and ultimately the world would be if we all began to look past the calloused exterior of people and saw them as they truly are: molested and violently pinned down by a wicked brute!
If we can begin to see past surfaces to the true state of people’s souls, we become people of compassion, and thus more like Jesus.
Think of the people who we may so easily judge, but who so often come to Christ, because they respond to Christ’s compassion.
Former drug dealers, gang bangers, prostitutes.
Both in Jesus’ day and in our day, many folks “pinned down” in these situations have experienced the love and radical compassion of Christ, and now walk in freedom and compassion themselves!!!
God’s love is so great that even after the Fall of humankind---God--- completely out of God’s love for us-- decided to re-create us through the new birth!
If only we will accept and believe.
Not only were all three Persons of the Trinity actively involved in our creation....
All three Persons of the Trinity are actively involved in our redemption or re-creation!
The incalculable worth of human life has nothing to do with our gender, our race, our intelligence, the color of our eyes, the beauty of our bodies, the hair on our heads, or the way we wear our clothes....
At the very beginning of Genesis Chapter 1 we are told:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness
was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
These are tough words--words of chaos and hopelessness.
But, maybe that’s the point.
All of us, at some time or another have found something about our lives that can be described with words
of emptiness and darkness.
If this happens to be true in your life---there is good news!
Because it is exactly at this point that God often begins to work.
“The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
What an amazing gift!
In our time of darkness--when we need God the most--God is right there....
…waiting for us to turn to Him, waiting to create life in an otherwise empty world.
And sometimes we can find God in the most simple and unpredictable of places.
One night I was feeling kind of down, and was having a hard time getting to sleep.
So I got out of bed in order to get a drink of water.
Right beside our sink was a beautiful--very alive--green plant.
I looked at that plant....it was probably the first time I had ever even noticed it....
....and within the lush green leaves....I saw the love of God.....the beauty of the Creator....and I knew that
God was very, very near.
God has taken the beautiful work of creation and given it life.
And when we allow God to work in our hearts--God does the same thing.
Much of what is wrong with the world today stems from the fact that many lives are empty....
Nothingness abounds.
But in God--we have purpose--we have meaning.
God loves all of us no matter how desperate we become.
God wants to take away our darkness and fill it with light.
God wants to take away our emptiness and fill it with life.
God wants to take away the void and fill it with purpose.
God will do it, if we allow God.
The first chapter of Genesis ends like this: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good......”
Whenever God creates--that is the final conclusion.....
It is very good.
Praise God!!!
