Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church Sermon Podcast.
We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,
builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.
Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible
and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.
So welcome and enjoy the message.
If you have your Bible, please open it with me to Genesis chapter 1. We're going to
begin in verse number 26 here in just a moment in a message I'm calling, Who Are We? Now,
while you're turning there, I want to celebrate a few attendance records for our church.
Last Sunday, we had 5,068 people in attendance, which is our largest Sunday.
That's a non-Easter Sunday.
Last Sunday in Life Group, we had 3,621 people, which is an all-time record as well.
And three Sundays in a row for the first time ever, we had over 3,000 in life groups.
So God's working in a special way, and I'm so thankful for each and every person who's
given their life to Christ and is now getting connected to the body of Christ here at Valley
Baptist Church.
And so God's at work.
Now hopefully you've made your way to Genesis chapter 1 in a message I'm calling, Who Are We?
Human beings, that is.
Who are we and why are we here?
Now, I was warned after the last service, someone said, this was a little more of an
intellectual sermon.
I didn't mean it that way, but perhaps they're right.
So stay with me.
We're going to connect a lot of dots of Scripture,
and I don't want to lose you, all right? So who are we and why are we here? Are we
a cosmic accident? Are we just animals who happen to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder? Or
have we been created differently, uniquely, and with purpose. In Genesis chapter 1, God answers those questions for us.
We pick up the creation account in verse number 26, right in the middle of day number 6. It says,
Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion
over the fish of the seas, over the birds of the
air, and over the cattle. Many translate that as livestock. Over all the earth and over every
creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. Here's our first principle. We are the masterpiece
of God's creation. Now, if you've ever doubted your worth or your significance, please think again, because you
are God's masterpiece made in the very likeness of God himself. Now, last week we saw a rhythm
within the creation account. God said, let there be, and there was. Let there be, and there was.
Let there be, and there was. But then in verse 26, there's a break in the rhythm, and a dramatic change happens
in the narrative. It's as if God pauses, and he has this divine conversation within the Godhead.
He says, let us. Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Now, we cannot arrive
at the doctrine of the Trinity from this one verse, but we certainly can
see the Trinity in it, as a Godhead mysteriously converses together. In this heavenly conversation,
it signifies that the pinnacle of God's creative act has arrived. It's the crescendo moment,
the masterpiece of all masterpieces. God makes mankind in His image. Here's our principle.
We are image bearers of God. That's who we are. Now, what exactly does that mean? Well,
admittedly, it's very difficult to know for sure all that that means. When I was in seminary,
I wrote a 20-page research paper on being made in the image of God,
and I recently looked for that to help me with my message today, but I couldn't find it.
Now, I'm sure it was brilliant, you know, but we'll never really know because it's gone. It's gone.
Here's what I remember about that paper, though.
There are all kinds of differing opinions on what it means to
be made in the image of God. So I'm not going to cover all those opinions today. Instead, I'm going
to point out just some of what it means to be made in the image of God. So this isn't exhaustive,
but I hope it's helpful. First of all, broadly speaking, I believe being made in the image of God has to do with one's essence and one's actions.
Who we are and what we do.
Our essence and our function.
We were made to be like God in our character and in our conduct.
Now, our image has been marred by sin.
It's been tainted by sin.
We're going to get to that later in the message.
But we, even as sinners, we are all made in the likeness of God.
Now, in terms of our essence of who we are, it's not that we just have God's image.
We are God's image.
Listen, we are God's image. Now, we are God's image.
Now, we're not God's image in an exhaustive sense.
He's beyond us.
We're the creature.
He's the creator.
It's not exhaustive, but nonetheless, it's very real.
God created us in his image to be a reflection of him and his glory.
Everyone that looks on our lives, we should be reflecting
who God is and what God is up to. Now, on your computer, I am sure you probably have some icons
that you could click on to open certain programs. On your smartphone, you'll have little icon apps,
images that represent a particular app. Now, those images that you can touch represent a greater reality
that later opens up. That's us, human beings. We are the image, the icon that reflects and
represents a greater reality who is God. Now, in the ancient world, it was very common for kings
who ruled over a vast domain to have statutes built of themselves in their image
that they would place all throughout their kingdom. They were called icons, and their image or their
icon represented them to their kingdom. Now, those kings were not the first ones to think about that.
God was. You see, God is spirit. He doesn't have a physical body. And so when He created us,
He created us with a spirit just like He has, but also with a body so that we can be a spiritual
and physical image of who He is. Now, do you remember the second command that God gave in
Exodus chapter 20 among the Ten Commandments. You shall not make for
yourself a carved image to worship. I think God gave that command perhaps in part because we
ourselves are the only proper images of God. And we weren't made with hands, we were made by God himself. And so we are living images of the living God.
Now, not long before Jesus was arrested, the religious leaders came to him and the Pharisees,
the scribes, the Herodians, they came and they were trying to trip Jesus up with some gotcha
questions, asking him about the resurrection, all these different things, and included in that was the question, is it lawful for man to pay taxes to Caesar? And so Jesus said, well, bring
me the tax money. And so they brought him a denarius, and he looked at the coin, and he said,
whose image is this? And they said, Caesar's. And then he said, render therefore to Caesar what is
Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
Now, most of the time, the application for you and I is be sure and pay your taxes to the government.
And it's good to give money that belongs to the Lord to him as well.
But Jesus also said, render to God the things that are God's.
Now, everything is God's, isn't it?
But I think that perhaps Jesus had Genesis 1 26 in mind when he said that. You see,
the coin belonged to Caesar because his image was on it, and we belong to God because his image is
on us. We've been marked by him in a special, unique way that is different than all the rest
of creation. Now, the question becomes, how does
being made in the image of God distinguish us from other life forms that God created? Well,
the first way, I think, it means this, that we have intrinsic value and dignity. Every human life,
including yours, is incredibly valuable and worth so very much because you've been made in the
image of God. Now, the world tries to lie to us, doesn't it? Don't they? Tell us, you're only worth
something if you look a certain way. You're only worth something if you have this kind of money.
But our value does not come from any of those things. Our value comes from the fact that we bear the image of Almighty
God, and that makes us incredibly valuable. Now, this truth that every single human life has
intrinsic value and dignity, this is why we oppose things like slavery and racism and abortion. Human life is not a clump of cells. It's the
image of God, and therefore it's sacred and should be protected. Now, when Adam and Eve sinned,
they remained in the image of God. We all are in the image of God, but that image was marred.
It wasn't lost, but it was distorted. The glory of it was diminished and
tainted, but the value is still there. And we see that from Genesis chapter 9, verse number 6. It
says, whoever sheds man's blood, this, by the way, this is after sin into the world, by man his blood
shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man. So the basis of capital punishment is that
as sinners, you and I, we still bear the image of God. Therefore, there's incredible value in each
one of us so that God looks upon us even in all of our sin, and he still loves us. And he loves us
so much and finds us so valuable that it was worth the price of his son, and Jesus came
willingly to pay for our lives. Now, as image bearers, we also see that we have divine purpose.
The world that's around us tries to make us believe that we're cosmic accidents,
but God says, no, no, no.
You were made in my likeness.
You bear my image.
You're special.
I have a wonderful plan for your life.
You have purpose.
You ever wondered why depression is so rampant within our culture?
Well, it's because people are told their life doesn't have any meaning.
There's no real purpose.
It's just one pointless day after another pointless day.
Get up in the morning, brush your teeth, comb your hair, get dressed for work, go to work, make some living.
So you can have a roof over your head to go back to bed, brush your teeth.
Just do it over and over again.
It's like this endless, mindless, purposeless life. Listen, that is a lie from the
devil. Your life has divine purpose because he made you for a specific reason, to bear his image
to the world. Now, being made in God's image also means that we have the capacity for reason, creativity, and relationships.
Now, these are some of the things that uniquely distinguish us from animal life. Unlike animals,
we have the ability to use logic and wisdom. Now, where did we get that ability? We got it from God,
who's the source of logic and wisdom. John said, in the beginning was the Word. The Word is logos in Greek. We get
the word logic from it. Jesus is a very logic and reasonable person of God. Now, we also have the
ability to create, don't we? Now, some animals are creative as well. Well, take wasps, for example. They have the ability to make a wasp nest,
but actually they do that not out of creativity. They do it out of instinct. A thousand years ago,
wasps were making wasp nests. A thousand years from now, if the Lord tarries, they'll still be
making wasp nests out of God-given instinct to do so. Human beings are different. We have a creative willpower to choose
to make and create all sorts of things. We have a capacity for creativity. Now, admittedly,
everyone's capacity is a little different on creativity. I did not get a real artistic gene
in me, okay? That part of my image has been distorted, I can tell you. And grade school,
arts and crafts were my worst subject, you know? Fold the paper like a taco, and the lines just
never lined up. But we have a capacity in our own way, each and every one of us, to be creative.
Now, we have the capacity for deep relationship, don't we? Deeper relationship than animals have.
You see, God is relational.
We see that in verse 26 within the Trinity,
this divine conversation between God and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And so when God created us in his image,
he created us to share a relationship with us because he's relational.
So that every human being, we have this deep
longing for God. We have this craving to know him. Pascal said that within every human life is a God
shaped vacuum. And people try to fill it with all kinds of different things, but it's only shaped
like God. So only God can fill it. Verse number 27, it says, so God created man in his own image.
In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Here we learn that we
are either male or female. Now, for millennia, this simple reality wasn't questioned, but recently
there's a widespread rejection of this basic truth, so that. But recently, there's a widespread rejection of
this basic truth so that now people will say there's like over 70 different genders.
What our world is saying to many of our young people is, you're a mistake.
You were made the wrong gender. And you can fix that mistake by becoming something you're not, because biological facts
don't matter. The gender God assigned you at conception, it doesn't matter. Listen, those lies
are creating untold insecurity and anxiety and depression among our young people.
And so if you're a young boy that's listening to this message, you're struggling with the thought of being a young boy or you're a young girl
struggling with the thought of being a girl,
you don't need the world adding to your struggle.
You need us pointing out how God beautifully and wonderfully made you.
You are a result of divine purpose.
I mean, so what if maybe you don't fit all the stereotypes? God made you an individual boy or
a girl with specific interests and passions when he created you, and those differences should be
celebrated, not used as an attack to attack your gender and who God made you. Now, with that said,
I recognize that because of sin and the fall,
and because of the predatory nature of our world upon these young people, there are very real and
significant gender issues that many young people have to work through. And as a church, I want to
let you know that we are here to help you. We have wonderful youth pastors and wonderful youth leaders that are here to help.
Verse number 28, then God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth
and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every
living thing that moves on earth. You see, both men and women were both created in the image of God,
and we are told to multiply.
Later, we're going to be told to get married and then multiply. Spread out over all of the earth,
have dominion over it, and then together, together, men and women, we exercise dominion,
which means we're caretakers of creation. We should take care of our own individual bodies that are being made in the image of God. We should take care of all creation, which means we're neither to destroy the environment nor worship the environment.
We'd rather rule over it since we care for it.
Here's the principle.
We are representative extensions of God's rulership over the world.
I know that's a wordy point, but it's stated precisely.
Now, God has ultimate rulership over the world,
but he created us in his image in such a way that we share in his ruling.
And really, that's actually part of what it means to be made in the image of God.
We are made as God's image to be God's image. So in other
words, there's action involved in, that comes out of our essence of who we are. So that the rest of
creation, they see us, and when they see us, they are supposed to see our maker, the image of God,
and be reminded of his rule and his reign. Now, remember, in ancient kings, when they conquered
a land, He would have a statue built in His image called an icon. It would be placed in a distant
land to be an image of the king's rule and His reign. We are that image, that icon of God,
made in His image. But unlike lifeless images, we're living images capable of exercising dominion
ourselves, or at least we were. See, when Adam and Eve sinned, everything changed. And this is
where you're going to have to stay with me in this message. I'm going to connect some dots for you,
but I want you to stay with me. We are now born in the image of Adam.
And because of that, our image has been corrupted by sin.
And here's what else that includes.
It includes the consequence of sin, which is death.
That accompanies our very existence.
You see, when God told Adam and Eve,
in the day that you sin against me, you shall surely die,
that's what happened.
When they sinned, death entered into the world.
And all of their babies, all of our babies, are sinners that are now marked by death.
Now, there's two aspects of Adam and Eve's being that was marked by death and died.
Immediately, their physical bodies began to die.
They began to age.
Cells were corrupted, and they eventually died. But immediately, their physical bodies began to die. They began to age. Cells were corrupted, and they eventually died.
But immediately, their spirit died.
Now, death fundamentally is separation.
So that when our body dies, what happens is our spirit is separated from our body.
But when our spirit dies, our spirit and the spirit of God are separated.
So that while in one sense we are living images of God, in another sense, until we're born again by his spirit, we're spiritually dead images of God.
Now we see in Genesis chapter 2 that when God created Adam, he breathed life into him by his spirit.
Genesis 2, verse 7.
And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and man became a living being.
Now, there's a word play in Hebrew that you can't see in English.
The word breath or breathe and the word spirit are the same exact words.
God breathed the spirit of life into man so that he now was fully created in the image of God.
But when Adam and Eve sinned, God's spirit was removed from them, the relationship was separated,
and the glory of God's image was now marred and diminished.
Praise God that's not the end of the story, is it? If you know your scriptures, you know there's so
much more, because the Bible is about God restoring our image of Him through His Son, Jesus.
You see, Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God. He's God himself, and he exercised dominion
over creation in ways that we have failed to do. When you read the Gospels, you see that Jesus
actually exercised dominion over the livestock, over the birds, and over the fish. Remember when
Jesus went into Jerusalem, his triumphal entry, and when he was about to go down the Mount of Olives,
what did he tell his disciples? He said, go get that donkey that's never been ridden. And Jesus
got on that donkey. He rode down the Mount of Olives through the gates of Jerusalem. I can
tell you from experience, donkeys that have never been ridden don't allow you to get on them and
ride them unless you have special dominion over them. Jesus did the same
thing with the fish of the sea. We read about how he didn't have any money to pay the taxes. And so
he told the disciples, here's what you do. Go throw a hook into the water and you pull up that fish
and the fish that you pull up, you look in his mouth, there's going to be a coin lodged in his
mouth. You take that coin out. You use that to pay the temple tax, clearly orchestrating his dominion over the fish. Now we know he did that
with the birds as well. On the night that Jesus was arrested, he told Peter, he said,
before the rooster crows the third time, you're going to deny me. And it's as if Jesus gave permission to the crow
to crow when Peter denied him a third time. Listen, Jesus exercised dominion over all of creation,
and he did so, I believe, in part to reclaim and regain what it looks like for mankind to bear the glorious image of God.
And the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3 that believers, you and I,
who have come to faith, saving faith through the grace of God in Jesus Christ,
that we are being transformed back into the image of God, back into the image of Jesus.
And he says, from glory to glory. You see, we started out as glorious image bearers of God. Then that glory was diminished and tainted, and now Jesus is
transforming us back into glory bearers, both in essence and in action. So that when we believe in
Christ, this is how it works. When we believe in Christ,
Jesus pays for all of our sin on the cross, and then it's removed from us. It's atoned for.
And God's Spirit then returns to us, and He begins a good work in us, perfecting us once again into
His image. The dominion that was somewhat lost is now restored.
You see, when Satan tempted Adam and Eve
and they sinned against God,
in a sense, when they did that, they gave dominion
that God had given them, they gave it to Satan.
We know that from 2 Corinthians 4, verse number 4,
whose minds the God of the saints, that's the devil, has blinded,
who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,
who is the image of God, should shine on them.
So Satan's the God of this age.
He's exercising dominion over this world that was actually given us to have dominion over.
We gave it away.
So that when Satan tempted Jesus in the desert for 40 days,
he took Jesus at one point up on a high mountain, and he said, look at all the kings of the world
that have been given to me. They can be yours right now if you'll simply bow to me. You see,
what God gave to us, we gave away to the devil. But that's not the end of the story because God sent his son Jesus
back into the world to regain dominion. Now, Jesus did not do so by bowing his knee to Satan.
He did so through paying for sin on the cross and rising on the third day. So,
that in the book of Revelation, the very end of our Bible, chapter 1, verse number 6 that we read Wednesday night,
it just jumped off the pages of me, for me, I think by the Holy Spirit.
Verse number 6 says, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
That's Jesus.
Growing up, I heard Pastor Phil say it this way probably a thousand times.
He said, the Bible is about the king and his coming kingdom.
You see, the king, almighty God, created a world.
And he created us as human beings in his image to exercise dominion,
rulership over the world.
But everything changed when we rebelled against God. The living images of God were now
marred and marked by death. And the world that we were supposed to rule over was handed to the
king's enemy, Satan. So the story of the Bible is that King Jesus is coming back to claim his world, to bring back to life his image bearers,
that's you and I, and to re-engain dominion over the world and to establish an eternal kingdom
on earth as it is in heaven. So let me say it again. I'm on repeat. Make sure you stay with me.
I'm going to summarize it again. We were given dominion. We gave away our dominion.
Jesus won back our dominion.
And now he's sharing his dominion with us forever.
Did you realize that?
The New Testament teaches that for those of us who have, by the grace of God,
surrendered our lives to Jesus in faith,
that we are now joint heirs with Christ through adoption as sons.
Can you imagine that?
Real glorious, glorious truth. We will reign with him forever and ever.
Amen.
Verse number 29.
It says, Then God said, See, I've given you every herb that yields
seed which is on the face of the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed. To you it shall be
for food. Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that
creeps on the earth in which there is life, I've given every green herb for food. And it was so. Then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good.
So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
So it seems like we were all originally created as vegetarians.
Even the beasts of the earth were vegetarians.
Remember, there was no death before sin, so no animals were being eaten.
Now, later, God would give us permission to eat meat.
And I praise God for that because I really like to eat meat.
But that was not the original design prior to death entering into the world.
I guess originally it was more like what it will someday be in the millennial reign of Christ on the earth. The lion laid down with the lamb, and it was all very, very good.
As we begin wrapping up, I want to end where we started today. Who are we? We are the masterpiece of God's creation. We're like Michelangelo's painting on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We're his masterpiece. Now, let's suppose that after
Michelangelo finished painting that wonderful masterpiece of Adam and the last judgment,
and his wonderful masterpiece
on the Sistine Chapel, the ceiling of it.
Let's suppose that someone walked in
and looked at that incredible work of art
and said, man, wow,
look at the incredible detail,
look at the incredible beauty.
Isn't it amazing that that just accidentally happened?
I can't think of a greater insult to Michelangelo than that, to be in awe of the art while completely dismissing the existence of the artist.
Folks, we have an artist, designer, a maker, and he made us really special. Now, the world doesn't revolve around us.
Don't think you're special in that sense. We are the creature, but we are loved, and we have value,
and we have purpose. But here's the deal. We messed it up with sin. But Jesus came back to fix it, to fix us. And he'll fix you. You'll just open your
heart to him in faith and invite him to do a work in your life that you can't do without him.
The Bible says that it's appointed for men to die once and then the judgment. Each and every
one of us someday will stand before our maker and we'll give an account to him for all the ways that
we distorted his image. Remember, our very existence through the relationship we have with God. We are intended to reflect God to all the rest of creation.
We've distorted it. Instead of being loving, we've been hateful.
We have not been what we ought to be.
Now, the Bible teaches that God has written eternity upon our hearts. In fact, I believe
that's part of what it means to be made
in the image of God. God is eternal, and so when he made us in his image, he made us to be everlasting,
so that every single human soul will exist forever somewhere. There was a time when we were not,
but there will never again be a time when we will not be. We're eternal.
So I want to invite you today to come to your maker and be restored by him.
The Bible says,
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. You say, man,
pastor, you don't know what I've done. You don't know the sin and the corruption. You don't know my thoughts. Listen, I know what Jesus did. I know that Jesus paid for all of your sin,
and it'll be applied to your life, you'll just believe.
And the way you do that is with humility,
to recognize that you've blown it and that you own that and that you admit it
and you come to God in faith.
You see, God, I believe, is pursuing you.
Maybe he's been pursuing you for some time, and
there's been a little bit of an awareness, but maybe right now there's a new awareness
of your own sin, an awareness of God in a fresh way, and I believe that that's the case. That's
the Spirit of God saying, come to me. Come to me. The truth Truth is, Bible says, whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. I want to invite you to call on the name of the Lord today. Let's bow together
in an attitude of prayer, if you will. This is a holy moment in the life of our church, but
this isn't a formal moment. I think sometimes people think
the invitation time is a formal, it's a holy moment, but in just a moment after I pray,
we're going to stand to our feet and we're going to have pastors and other leaders,
prayer partners scattered all across the front of our worship center. And the reason we're doing
that is because we've been praying for movement in our service. Because I
personally believe that when God is moving on hearts, we physically move. This is like we've
got to encounter him. And so I want to invite you, if that's the case for you, to actually physically
move and walk down one of these aisles, walk down one of these staircases, and say, man, God, there's something happening in my life, and I know I need him.
Say, I want to give my life to Christ.
This team will know exactly how to help you.
You can just step out and come as you are.
In fact, that's the only way you can come.
Sometimes we get the thought, man, I've failed so much.
I need to clean up my life.
I need to do better.
I need to do more.
No, no, no, no.
What you need is the hand of a Savior
to rescue you out of a mess that you can't rescue yourself out of.
And his name is Jesus. I want to invite you to know him, know about him but to know him for his spirit
to touch the depths of who you are
where no one else can touch but him
for his spirit to touch your spirit
and breathe new life into you
in just a moment if God is tugging on your heart
I want to invite you as we stand just to come forward.
Let us know what God's doing.
We're here to help you.
Maybe you want to come to these steps and pray.
It's not necessarily even about what the message was about,
but you need to bring something to the Lord
and you want to allow these steps to serve as an altar
between you and him.
I want you to feel free to come forward and to move as God moves and to pour out your heart to
him. Maybe you want to be baptized like others in our service were baptized earlier. Say, I want to
go public with my faith. It's time. I don't want to be ashamed. I want to identify
with Jesus in the way he asked me to identify with him. You let us know. We would love to talk
to you about your relationship with the Lord and about baptism. Let's pray. Our gracious heavenly I'm so thankful, Lord, for the way that your word is woven together from beginning to end.
That you looked at the mess that we made by our sin and that you didn't leave us in that mess.
But you sent your son, Jesus, and he willingly came on a rescue mission
Lord help us
draw close
not by our own goodness
but by your goodness
Lord we love you
and I recognize that for some,
perhaps this message was more difficult
to stay with me for whatever reason.
But Lord, I just trust that you've spoken.
And I'm asking, Lord, that you do a mighty work
in the hearts of all of us.
If we know you, Lord, help us know you more.
More intimate, closer.
Help us turn from our sin and just walk with you, abide in you.
Lord, if there are people that don't know you, please, Lord,
please do a special work in such a way that you give them the courage to step out and come
and give their life to you in faith.
We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Thanks for listening today.
We hope you enjoyed this message.
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No matter where you are in your journey, know that we love you,
we're praying for you, and we can't wait to see what God will do in your life.