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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
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Ephesians 1:4
Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." 1 Peter 1:15-16
Do you see how the holiness of God (as I mentioned last week) affects everything about our understanding of theology?
We’re going to discover next week how sin twisted and marred the image of God in every man… God’s purpose for you was to make you holy so you would reflect his glory and image.
3. I was made to last forever.
[God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men… Ecclesiastes 3:11
“But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” John 6:50
“I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."
John 8:51
God put his thumbprints all over us. One of the ways we were made in the image of God is that we were created to last forever.
Buddhism teaches “absorption into the collective consciousness”… that you will only exist like a drop that falls into the ocean.
Atheists teach that you cease to exist.
But Christians believe that 10 billion years from now, your personality, your consciousness will still be alive somewhere!
We will talk more extensively about this in future weeks, about the afterlife. But for now, just know that every Christian believes: You were made to last forever!
4. I was made to have a choice.
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
Joshua 24:15
Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him."
1 Kings 18:21
"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." Luke 16:13
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life… Deuteronomy 30:19
The Bible teaches that we were created to be able to choose… just as God has a will, he created us to be able to choose between good and evil.
The secular view is that you are simply a compilation of highly evolved chemicals, and you are bound to your instincts… you are no different from the animals, so you have no choice about your life in reality.
This belief has a profound influence on your behavior, your relationships, everything!
< ILLUS> On the TV Show “Home Improvement”, Tim Allen is caught by his wife, Jill looking at another woman as he passes their table. She is upset and confused, and goes and asks their neighbor, Wilson, why Tim would do something like that. Wilson answers that cavemen needed to mate with many cavewomen to propagate the race, to make sure they survived, and so it was “only natural” for him to act like that.
I bet if you watched that show, you never thought they were making a theological statement… but they were.
This is VERY different than the picture that the Bible gives us of man. Adam and Eve were given to each other to become one for a lifetime. Wives, which would you rather have your husbands think? “I have an inborn natural desire to mate with many women handed down from the cavemen -- I’m going to have to suppress it the rest of my life” OR …. “I was created by God to be sexually fulfilled by one woman, my wife only, for the rest of my life?”
What you believe impacts everything about your life.
ILLUSTRATIONS ON CHOICE
Next week, we’re going to talk about how sin has BOUND your free will, and forces you to choose wrong… and how that bondage can be broken.
Some of you here today have said, “I can’t help the way I am.” You’re right – not alone. Your free will is in bondage to sin. God created you to choose, and Satan has tied you up with sin. You are chained, doomed to make the wrong choice, except for one thing: GRACE.
Today, you can choose to be free, because Jesus came to BREAK YOU FREE! He came to free the slaves to sin.
You have a choice that you are going to have to make… Jesus stands here and says, “I am the way, the truth and the life… come and follow me.”
The world stands on the other side and says, “Jesus is A way, A truth, A life… do whatever you like.”
The choice is yours. God has come right now, and freed your will. That’s what God’s grace does… his grace enables you to choose good.
If you believe that God created you as more than a body – an animal…
If you believe that God created you for a purpose – to be holy…
If you believe that God created you to last forever – somewhere…
If you believe that God created you to be able to choose – Jesus!
Then why don’t you make your choice to follow Jesus right now?
“I don’t understand it all…” I know, I don’t either. But you know enough to know that you have chosen to sin, and that Jesus died to make you free. You know that you will last forever…you know that God has a purpose for you. Why don’t you come forward, ask God to forgive your sin, make you holy and pure, and give you a fresh start toward his PURPOSE for your life?
Four classic worldview questions EVERYONE must answer:
Who am I?
Where did I come from?
Why am I here?
Where am I going?
What the Bible says first about 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. Genesis 1:26-27
Made in the Image of God: Doesn’t mean that we _____________________ ______________. “God is spirit…” “…a spirit does not have flesh and bones…” John 4:24, Luke 24:39
You were created with:
o ___________________ – the ability to think and be self-aware.
o ___________________ – The ability to choose freely.
o ___________________ – the ability to love and hate.
This gives us four foundational truths for your life:
1. I am ______________________________________.
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 am ___________________________________.
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
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Ephesians 1:4
Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." 1 Peter 1:15-16
3. I was _____________________________________.
[God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men… Ecclesiastes 3:11
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” John 6:50
“I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."
John 8:51
4. I was _____________________________________.
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:15
Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him."
1 Kings 18:21
"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." Luke 16:13
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life… Deuteronomy 30:19
