Good morning Trinity Bible Church. Welcome any guests or family that might be here on the eve of the snowpocalypse. There are several members of the church that are currently running the Houston Marathon, or they might have already finished, I'm not sure. If they haven't, then I don't know what they're doing. It was the half marathon. And so they're enjoying the warmth as well. We are continuing in our time of going through the first three chapters of Genesis. The first three chapters are part of what is a kind of company of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, just seen as kind of primordial history. account of Genesis. We've gone through most of the days kind of as an overview of how this was written, both emphasizing especially the original audience, the Israelites that were coming out of Egypt and in the wilderness on their way to taking the Promised Land, although they would be in the wilderness for a time. for a generation, and then while emphasizing this original audience to better understand perhaps some of the language used and the imagery, also kind of introducing to some, although others not introducing at all, is this idea of Moses writing this as a polemic or an argument against every other philosophy of life or idea that the Israelites would come across both coming out of Egypt and through foreign lands and into the promised land and that would carry them into the future and their times in exile and everywhere else that they would go is to be reminded at all times that there was one true God and all other gods were counterfeit. And so in the midst of that, we also have an emphasis on the who, like the author Moses is at all times showing this audience of freed slaves who their true God is, the one true God, and what he's done, not all the other counterfeits. And so the emphasis being always on what God is doing, what God is saying. He's creating with the greatest of ease. There's no conflict, there's no chaos He has to overcome. God with the simplest of speaking brings things into existence in order to bring glory to His name. And so where we find ourselves here, it will be towards the end of chapter one today, specifically on day six, specifically on the creation of man. And as we've been doing every week, as we remain in chapter one, I'll be reading the entirety of chapter one. After the reading of chapter one, give you an opportunity to pray silently, and then I'll pray for us corporately, and we'll enter into the time of the word. Reading now, Genesis one in its entirety. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. The darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning the first day. God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse, and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening, and there was morning on the second day. God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear, and it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called seas. God saw that it was good. God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit, and which is their seed according to its kind on the earth, and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, according to their own kinds, trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning the third day. And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, to separate the light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning the fourth day. And God said, let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens. So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. God saw that it was good, and God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the waters and the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day. God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the earth, every living thing that moves on the earth. God said, behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in it and its fruit, you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and every bird of the heavens, to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food and it was so. God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good and there was evening and there was morning the sixth day. This is the word of God. Please take this time to pray. Heavenly Fathers, the Church gathers here on the Lord's Day. We come to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, our Lord and King, who has given his blood for his people, paid the price of the curse on the cross, and will one day return in all of his glory to claim those who are his. Lord, now we come and we celebrate the victory of Christ over sin and death. Lord, and while we here now, until the time of the final consummation, when Christ returns and the resurrection of the dead and the recreation of the new heavens and the new earth, until such a time, Lord, we are burdened by our sinful flesh, by the broken world around us. and the adversary, Satan, who seeks more than anything to steal the joy of your faithful. So Lord, now we come and we ask in this time of public worship where we have already acknowledged your goodness through praise, we've called upon your mercy and your attention of God the Holy Spirit through prayer, We've enjoyed the sweetness of fellowship of the saints, which more than anything is a celebration of our union we share through God, the Holy Spirit, and celebration of the work of Christ. And now, Lord, we come to your holy and true word. Lord, may you focus our minds and the intent of our hearts on the truth of your word. And Lord, through God, the Holy Spirit, May you draw us away from whatever things have taken our attention, continue to take our attention, and seek to steal our attention from proper worship. Lord, and focus us on the word. May all glory go to your name, Jesus Christ. We pray this time that you will be glorified and your church will be edified. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. As we continue in this time in Genesis, we're reminded of several things like these verses that we're covering today, primarily Genesis 1, 26 and 27, have been contended and dealt with all throughout the history of the church. In it I want to just put before you like yes, I'll have to go through a few things rapid-fire as quickly as I can the way these things have perhaps been interpreted or still interpreted or that you may be familiar with and want to emphasize the Again, the who what is this really centered on even when it's talking about all of creation the center of the idea or the center that we're supposed to be looking to is the one who's doing all the work if we make this man-centric, you walk away from the creation account only with part of the idea being, oh man has dominion, man is special, well okay, all these things. Or if you walk away from it with some other idea around the creation itself and look at God's done through creation, look at all the honor he's bestowed on creation, look at all these things, well then you kind of water down this uniqueness of man and kind of make everything together. And this all has implications with how you view God, how you view man, and how you view all of the cosmos or all of creation. Rather than going, who is this one who communicates to a group of slaves who are now wandering towards a promise or a gift that they're going to receive. And that gift will be the land. And that gift is a promise that they haven't earned and not a promise, anything that they've done. As a matter of fact, the originator of their line, Abraham, if you will, is said to be, have been an idol worshiper in Babylon. And so in all of this kind of history of Israel and this current giving of this, ancient kind of action that happened by God to these Israelites. He's letting them all know who God is, and God is a God of mercy, and he's a God of creation, and he's a God who is unbound by any human attempt to understand him in any totality. And that was the polemic or the argument against all other systems of belief that they were going to be having come out of and go into. Because if there was anything you could do is you could explain the gods of Egypt because they were simply aspects of nature. given human attributes. You could explain the cruel and capricious gods of the Canaanites because they were the same way. It was simply attributes of humans bestowed upon dragons or monsters or gods or whatever it might be. And this was everywhere they were gonna go. But here this God is saying, I'm beyond your total comprehension. In fact, you only comprehend what I tell you about me. And in part of that, he bestows something unique and incredible on the sixth day. On mankind, on Adam, on man, he gives this specific, unique designation. One who is a bearer of his image. Now, you probably throw that out a lot for the people who go to school where you have to learn Latin and say things like Imago Dei or whatever it might be, and then you feel fancy or whatever it might be. The image of God is something that is central to the understanding of humanity. And this is central to what plays out in a few different things. So I'm gonna give you a little background just on this word being rare in all of the Old Testament. This idea of being the image of God or being made in his image is used here. It's used then in the creation account of man. And then it's used in five. Chapter five is when Seth is born. Now that's going way past where we're going to go, but basically saying this is after the fall of man. And when Seth is born, Seth is now attached to this idea of being Adam's son, but is still called the image of God. And then after that, it's going to go all the way through kind of the Old Testament before you get to some of these ideas of what it means. So if I had to get a hand raise, can any of you tell me what does it mean to be made in the image of God? Raise your hand. Don't tell me, don't talk. I got it down. Right, not many hands. Or in God's likeness, right? Any hands? And yet it is the foundation of human existence. So my hope today is to show you the image of God in man, in the perfection of which it was created, the marred state in which it was lost, but not permanently lost, And then the beauty of the New Testament authors showing an image for the Christian faithful being restored. Did you know that? Colossians, Ephesians, and then a picture of that image once again made in perfection in the resurrection. All of this is, again, to show you a strain of thought that is the beginning of human existence, as mentioned later on after the fall, and then the imagery is used pretty profusely in the New Testament to tie the ultimate victory of Christ in reconciling this original image of God in man. To me, that's magnificent. So let's look at 26. So then God said, this is after the day, this is still day six after making all of the land animals that fill the sphere of the land. has three correspondence to six, and it says, then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. I'm gonna reverse engineer this passage. I'm gonna go at the latter part of 26, and then deal with the first part of 26, because the latter part is easy, and the first part is not, and I guess that makes me a wimp, but here we go. When it says after the likeness and it says, let us have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Now so far in the creation account, you have all these things that are created by the who, by God, this one who identifies himself to his creation in his work of and as creator. And now so far you have all the animals that you can imagine and there's all these things. and he puts now this kind of bestows a work for this man for humanity right now as Adam both is is the word that's used to describe humankind and then later Adam will be used as as an individual as man as Adam so right now it's kind of like the title of humankind But all of these things that have prior been created now fall under the rule of this new creation or this pinnacle of creation on day six. And so they rule over everything else. And then because of this likeness and because of this image, that's what sets them apart. And I'm saying this for a specific purpose because it does away with both a prominent belief throughout several cultures in the history of humanity, but also kind of a really strange belief among Christians today. And so let's deal with it. Number one. No matter how awesome your dog is, I'm looking up because I don't want to make eye contact with anyone. I don't want to make eye contact with a camera because our kids are homesick and Christina's watching sitting next to the dog. So it doesn't matter how awesome your dog is or how terrible your cat is. It doesn't matter at all. It doesn't matter if you liked the fish you had as a kid or a lizard or a snake or any other strange pet that doesn't actually do anything. It doesn't matter because they are lesser than humanity in this sense. What does that mean? It means there's nowhere in the creation account that ascribes any special interaction between God and animal other than he created them. I'm gonna take it a little bit further. Have you ever observed your dog worshiping God? or innately wondering who his creator was, or her, or your cat, caring about anything other than itself and its other demented tactics that go through its twisted mind. or any pet. The reality is that this is conferred, this uniqueness, and I say that jokingly for you, but also not to make you angry, but also one of the most prevalent ideas in human history has been this idea of animism, or some idea that human animal are kind of all equal in the same way in the same cycle you can deal with this in cultures or religions that have reincarnation into certain animals being kind of equal or even better than being a person or having animals as deities and things like this there's this this equality or in some cultures in either greater rendering of animal are the other creatures than humanity, and it shouldn't lead you to hubris to go, no, I'm better than my dog, because you are. In God's eyes, Christ's blood, an appointment of curse-taking, is for humanity, for his elect, not for, insert idea. Now, I don't know how many of you are like, I'm never listening to him for the rest of my life. Maybe that's where you are, but that's a stark reality of the difference between all other living creatures that were created and the difference between God and his relationship that he engineers specifically for man. and he is to have dominion or rule or shepherdship or stewardship over all of it. We'll see this more played out and explained further in chapter two. But now going all the way up to the top of 26 says, let us, and let's just stop there. Let us make man in our image after our likeness. The words for make is synonymous with the word that's create in Hebrew, but we have to deal with this aspect of let us. This is a plural form of dialogue. This is God speaking in plurality, if you will. And this is also a bit of a... a bit of a rarity in the Old Testament. And so there's only a few times this takes place. It happens in addressing what you would say like some type of distinction between a singular, which happens in 27, and this plurality. Now, this verse in particular, 126, has been interpreted in a multitude of ways throughout the history of the church. I'm going to give a few of them. There's way too many to list. I'll give the few most popular and the one that I think makes the most sense and why I think it makes most sense. One of the critical views would be that this was a remnant of polytheistic or pagan mythology that just found itself in the midst of this Genesis account. We can throw that one out pretty quickly because he's already dealt with that idea and that's generally an idea that's more modern and that people would have that don't actually believe the Bible is inherently a God document, it's a man document. And then you have another view that it has to do with the kind of, this is a very popular view and one of the more prevalent views, is that he's talking to or referencing to some type of heavenly court. the heavenly court would be like the elect angels and God's letting them know like that. This was a view that was kind of prominently held throughout the Middle Ages and other times throughout the history of the church. It's specifically dealing with a idea of Genesis 6 when it's talking about the sons of God and the daughter of men and it's assuming that sons of God are angels because Sons of God is a designation used for angels elsewhere, but the reality is Sons of God in Genesis 6 is never said to be angels. And you also have to supernaturally almost insert all of that into this one phrase of let us. And this phrase is repeated again in the fall. It's repeated again to say like us. Now man is like us. It's the same Hebrew phrase. And so really the most prevalent view and I think the most responsible grammatical view and probably the one you were all like going, why didn't you just say that? It's the only one that makes real sense is that it is something that I will say at this point is something you should call the divine dialogue. Rolls right off the tongue. meaning there's some type of inter Godhead conversation. Now, here's where that goes off a little bit in terms of like, what did this original audience understand about that? Well, they might've understood very little. about the idea of a triune God in the way that it's developed in the New Testament, but that is how it works in terms of like God revealing himself progressively throughout history as he broadens or and or narrows his plan of salvation is the fullness of the Trinity is really taught exclusively in the New Testament. although there's shadows of it, if you will, in the Old Testament that the New Testament authors point to. This happens to be one of them. This plurality more than likely would seem to be a dialogue, an inter-Trinitarian dialogue, without the original audience knowing that, but doing that by interpreting the old from the new. This was a became a prevalent view and has been the majority view of the reformers, the early church, and so on, is that this was an underdeveloped Trinitarian theology. Now, if any of you are still awake, the simple way of maybe understanding, let us, is God, in this time in history, referring to the Godhead without it being fleshed out entirely in the Old Testament. We do know that the Spirit's hovering over the waters. We do know that Job considers the Spirit that gave him life. We do know that Abraham is visited by an angelic messenger who is called an angel and yet appears as a man and yet speaks with the authority of God. We know Joshua interacts with someone similar to that. There's signs of God, Trinitarian. pre-incarnate Christ, the Holy Spirit, God the Father, are rife throughout the Old Testament, but they're never put together by any Old Testament author and said, this is the Trinity. That doesn't happen until the New Testament. So all of that babble to let you know, I could have taken 30 seconds and said, this is probably the Trinity, but I want you to have something to go on. So when God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, Image and likeness, unfortunately, because of the Latin Vulgate, which was the Latin interpretation of the Old and New Testament, it added something, a phrase, that wasn't there in the Hebrew and kind of made image and likeness to where the church fathers began to separate them. and kind of point one as is image was this and likeness was this. It'd say that image was man's ability to reason. Likeness was man's spiritual ability to communicate with God. So when the fall happened, likeness was destroyed. man's spiritual ability, but image was kept, the ability to reason. Now this kind of isn't really there in the text to separate these two. These are kind of synonymous. These are kind of talking about the same idea of what the who who is creating is communicating. But that idea was prevalent and it went to the Middle Ages and then Aquinas got a hold of it and it got even worse. And then the Reformers rejected all of that and they kind of went back to what would kind of be a central idea of these are synonymous phrases that are speaking about something. What makes man or God being God making man in his image, in his likeness, is the unique ability that man has to commune with God. And so when we see Adam walking in the garden and speaking with God in chapter 2 as the creation of man is expanded, you're seeing the benefit of this image bearer, of the one who has this likeness of God. God is making man have the ability to commune with his creator in a state that is incomprehensible or not understandable to us after the fall, but that is the purpose of how God makes him. And no other created thing is exactly like man. And so he is, what you would say, given a certain amount of glory. Glory that no other created thing has. He's given a type of honor that no other created thing has as it comes to his relationship with God. And you would even say, perhaps, that it eludes mankind as a type of inherent sonship. in his relationship with God as an inheritor and also as one who stands in God's place in dominion over all creation. These themes go throughout the creation account. So taking image and likeness and trying to take the words and go this stands for this and this stands for that, it leads you to a place where you have to say one of them was destroyed. And then we get that back. Rather than, these are synonymous terms for the glory and the honor that God has bestowed upon humanity innately in his creation. And then when the fall happens, those things are broken or marred, but they're not destroyed completely. But in that rupture and what happens in the fall, it's that relation, it's the glory, it's the honor, it's the communion with God that are all broken. and it's all shattered. And so when we talk about the image of God in man, and then it goes to post fall, and it says things like, if man takes life of another man, he shall pay for it with his life. Why, why does it say that? Because man is in the image of God. The idea of being this honor and this glory bestowed on man while still marred, while still broken post-fall, still matters. It still matters in the distinctiveness of humanity as created in God's image. It talks about the innate kind of respect, honor, glory that is owed to man by man. And so when we think of perhaps the way we talk to other people, or even think about other people, and often what happens when you hear a phrase like you're dehumanizing someone, and you're making them less than human, it makes it easier to say terrible things, or even worse, do terrible things. When Marxism became, this is not a political thing, this is a religious conversation. When Marxism came about, the idea of the religion being the opiate of the masses, Marx wasn't trying to just get rid of Christianity, which was the majority position in the West, he was trying to replace it replace it with the state and what the things that they had to do was terrible bloody revolution to get rid of all the old ideas bring in the new and now what replaces a people who believe in a God who is above and beyond and created and bestowed and put honor on humanity therefore everyone around me innately has that honor if you take that away And you say, none of that's true. All that matters is the state. All that matters is making sure the state runs and the state is preeminent. And if your parents or your children or your siblings are not on board, well, you should hand them over to the state. There's still people alive in China today, in this older generation, during Mao's revolution, who handed their children over to be executed. Or their parents. Why? not because it was a good idea, it's because they replaced the idea of who man was. They erased this uniqueness of who man is, this innate honor and glory bestowed upon him by his creator and made him just another animal for the slaughter. And so how much easier does it become when a populist goes, you know what, I think I agree with that. I think that we are just animals and I think that that person's money should be my money or that person's wife should be my wife or this. That's the history of not just Marxism, but of the human mind that forgets God and forgets who we all are. You have people probably in your life, if you're a human being and you mostly are, that you can't stand family, coworkers, neighbors, whatever it might be, that you just have no good thing to say or do, and yet when you look at that person in the midst of them, frustrating to the point of where you have extreme violence that you're trying to push down in your mind, that, although marred, although broken, is someone who bears the Imago Dei. That is someone with whom honor and glory is owed. Now, for some of you that might be wondering what the glory word, I'm not talking about glory in terms of like equaling God's glory. I'm talking about in line of all other creation, humanity is given a place above and that by nature and by grammatically is known as glory. But that is an image bearer. That's something we're supposed to be reminded of, even if a person is not a believer. Better yet, if a person is not a Christian, and you come across them, and they're just vile, and they're angry, and they're sinful, and you're like, why are they like that? Like, because they're broken, because they're marred, because they're sinners who have not been reconciled back to their creator in Christ. Oh, maybe I should tell him, now you get it. So when the Christian message comes out of this and we see things like the image of God. being restored. Now the image as we said we're not at three yet but we're fast forwarding and it's real quick. The image is marred and broken in the fall and then moving forward the first thing you see is murder and then after murder you see someone do some more murder who creates a song about himself to talk about all the murder he did where he was a better murderer than his ancestor. And then after that you have people gather together and God says people should not gather together so they decide to gather together and they try to make a monument for themselves and they try to ascend to God and he scatters them and scatters their languages and all these things. All of this is pointing to, oh, that's dramatically different than Adam walking in the garden and speaking with God. Something terrible has happened to the human person. and it is sin, yet the image is not broken because after the sin, it is repeated as a reason why man has honor still bestowed upon him. There's something future that God has in mind. Where I'm getting the honor from is Psalm 8, which of course is quoted in Hebrews. Honor and glory. Now, if Man is created in the image of God, and if he is created in his likeness, there's dramatic, dramatic conclusions that have to be drawn about our society. Where is this ideology? Now I'm talking about politics. For the last four years, I've read, heard, watched, proclaimed Christians say awful things. about people who believe different philosophically than them when it comes to political views. Not a, hey, this is why your idea is bad because it's devoid of God. Instead, it becomes that person is evil, scum, you know, villainy, all these things. And maybe that's true with some people, but there's been very little what you could see differentiation between the professed Christians speaking about their held beliefs in whatever it might be in society and the unbeliever who's clearly defined by their beliefs. As they talked about each other, there's very little I saw different. The other side was wicked and evil and terrible, and then all the names came out, and then all the memes, and then all the other dumb things, and all these kind of things, like, where is this idea of the beauty of humanity, that a person who's fallen and broken, who speaks and believes terrible things, and the idea in the Christian mind is like, well, of course they're thinking and believing those things, because they don't have Christ, and I can tell that their ideas are fallen and broken and ridiculous, but I can do that while still bestowing honor on them that God demands I bestow on them. I say that to myself, I say that to all of you, like the image of God in man means more than we're better than all our dogs. Now it says, He created him, male and female, he created him. This we'll get more into in chapter two, but the thing is clear. Humanity is derived of man and woman. And in that, in this particular text 27, this is where Adam is used initially to describe all of humankind and now is separated to male and female, which are different designations. And the idea is really, really, really clear. If you want a clearer text about man and woman being only things created in all of the human race, you're not going to have to look far. It's right here. and is bestowed upon them, and the honor is given to them, and they're of equal value, and equal worth, and equal honor, and equal glory, while their roles will be differentiated, particularly in chapter two, as the man is leader and the woman is helper, and that goes out for the good of God's creation and all of society. Yet here, he's laying down who it is who is going to rule over all of his creation, as his representatives, male and female, created in his image, bestowed honor and glory and communion with him. And God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding food, every green plant moving forward. God saw that everything he made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. At the height of the creation of the sixth day, towards the end of the sixth day, all the other days when God is talking about the end of creating something, it's a Hebrew phrase for good. And then here he proclaims that after the sixth day, particularly if you're, I believe the best way to grammatically read it is because of the inclusion or the conclusion of the creation of humanity, it is very good. Meaning he's completed his work. And he's put the crown achievement of that creation, humanity, to now rule over his work, his created order. And it makes God, the creator of the universe, who's announced himself in this divine dialogue and has created man for honor and glory and communion with him in perfection. And he looks and goes, this is very good. And so in this, prior to the fall, it's all there. All the pieces are fit together and humanity is the crown. But now we know of the fall, the brokenness, the sundering of that relationship, typified in Eden being barred from Adam and Eve. And then as you go forward into the Old Testament, the whole story is now coming from this foundation, as the Israelites in the wilderness are given this account by Moses hearing of it, there would have been no questions like, oh, there's male and female. I didn't know that. There would have been no questions of like, there's birds of the air, there's fish in the sea. They know all that. Now they're being told this is where it's from. And then hearing, this is who humanity is. And now orally or part of the tradition, they know the rest of the story that these, honor and glory and bestowed upon them and was owed them. They'd been slaves for four centuries and saw none of that. And now they're going out of the wilderness to a gift that the same creator is giving them. Nothing they've done, nothing of value that they have to give back and the full acknowledgement of that. And as they head into this other land, they're hearing all of this. Oh, that's who we are. We're not just descendants of Abraham or, you know, Joseph, you know, set everything up in Egypt and the Pharaoh forgot us and this strange God introduced himself to us. They're like, oh no, no, what we are is this. We're created for communion with God. We're created with honor higher than any other created thing. And that's why we've been given all these statutes. And then when they go to the mountain and they receive the law, it's another example of, oh, God's ratifying or continuing building on this relationship that's been broken in order to show broken people how they relate to God, how fallen people, changing people relate to an unchanging holy God. And it moves forward through all of the Old Testament. And so when Christ comes and Paul calls him the image of God, is to let you know that aspect of sonship, that aspect of representative. Adam will be called by Paul both a human, Adam, who fell and brought sin, and he'll also use Adam as an idea or a type, someone who represents all of mankind. And then Paul will use Christ, as in call him the second Adam. And so when Christ comes, And he fulfills the law given to these Jews who had received this word of Genesis when he's the only one who's able to do it. In his incarnation, in his humiliation, and he goes to the cross and he pays for the curse of all of God's people. who have believed in Him in the past and all who will believe in Him all the way until Christ returns His blood for them, for their curse, in order to redeem the image, to restore the image. And so if you are a believer, and if you have the Holy Spirit, and if you're thinking about sanctification in your life, it's not just that God has empowered you to fight against sin, or perhaps throw off some sins to where they never bother you again, giving you the ability to read the word and understand it and illuminate your mind to it. It's not just that. He's also knitting together the broken image that was lost in the fall. It's being restored. Being restored in a manner that is promissory, meaning that in the future, that image will be redeemed. And so if you are a believer and you are indwelt with the Spirit, you are not just redeemed, you are not just being sanctified, you are being repaired. And never to the fullness of what the original creation account was in perfection without sin, but one day when Christ returns and resurrects the dead, the new body, the immortal body, immortal spirit in complete sinlessness, when Paul is giving that in 1 Corinthians 15, he's giving an image of the created order, but perfected. That's why there's a recreation event, new heavens, new earth, resurrection of the dead. It's all made new. It's all perfected that which was marred in the fall. And for those who are in Christ, those who are God's very own, you will experience this, the fullest of glory, the fullest of honor, and the full communion with the triune God who has created you redeemed you, and put a place for you in the family of God. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we are, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that those who love God, all things will work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to what? The image of the Son. in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers, and those whom he predestined he also called, those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave free, but Christ is all and in all. Image bearers renewed. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time. We ask that you continue to bless us in our public worship. I pray we hold fast to the dignity and the honor bestowed upon humanity by Creator God. Lord, may we love each other well. May we fight against the temptations to yield to anger and frustration and insult, but rather be reminded of the honor bestowed upon humanity. Lord, help us live lives of disciplined minds, devoting ourselves to the Word and to prayer and to the fellowship of the saints. We pray your name is continued to be glorified as we conclude our time of public worship. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.