Music In a day full of conflicting opinions and ideas, the Word of God stands true, and the Bible is the source for absolute truth. In these days of confusion and questions, it is so important to know what the Bible says. In today's study, let's ask the Lord to open our heart and mind as Scott Pauley leads us into Scripture to help us discover God's absolute truth. And God said, let us make man in our image. What a privilege. What a mind-boggling truth that we, humanity, were made in the image of our Creator. That is found in Genesis chapter 1 and in Genesis chapter number 2 God expounds upon that. He gives even more detail to His creative work. The Bible says in Genesis chapter 2 verse number 7, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. If you want to know how man is different than the animals, here's how. He was, first of all, the only part of the creation that was literally shaped by the hand of God. We preachers get pretty artistic at times and we say God flung the stars into space and He carved out the rivers with His finger, but actually that's not what He did. Now when you read Genesis 1 and 2, you find that God just spoke. That's the power of the Word of God. He just said, light, and there was light. And it was very good. So God spoke all of the created world into existence. But with man, this was the first record that we have that God of His own hands formed man. He took the dust to the ground and He shaped him. Why would He do that? I think it's a very beautiful picture to all of us that from the very beginning of time, God always intended for man's life to be in His hands. In a very real sense, your life is in His hands today. Your times are in His hands. The time of your life and the time of your death is all in the hand of God, not in your own hand. But I wonder, is your life really in God's hand today? Have you put your whole life in the nail-pierced hand of Jesus and realized it's not your own? Have you said to your Creator, I want you to be my Redeemer? Have you said to the One who gave you life, I want this new life that comes through Jesus Christ? So the first way we are distinct is that we were formed by His own hand in this creative work. He made us. And then He breathed into our nostrils the breath of His life. Ecclesiastes says that God has put a little bit of eternity in every one of us. That's quite a thought to think that God has put an eternal soul in all of us. Everything you see is going to burn up, die, disappear, be gone, but not man. A million years from this moment, you'll be alive somewhere forever because you have an eternal soul. God says He made you a living soul. And when God gives that kind of life, His own life put into man, There is no end to that. We've been talking about how God created man, but think about man's constitution. He was made in the image of God. That word image literally comes from a word that means to shade, like the illusion of something, the resemblance of something. It doesn't mean that we are little gods. It means that He has made us in His likeness to resemble Him. He has used His own nature, if you will, as a model for creating us. Like God, we have life, an eternal soul. Like God, we have intelligence with the ability to reason and think and decide. Like God, we have emotional and relational capabilities. Like God, we have been made in three parts. Our God, the Godhead, we've talked about this as God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Well, we have spirit, soul, and body. Man is a spirit. And that's literally the part of you where God dwells. You have a soul, your intellect, your emotion, your will, and then He's given you a body. He's put that spirit and soul in a body. And with your body, you have five senses to relate to the world around you. That's really a beautiful, beautiful thing to see how God has reflected His own nature in the creative work. When He made us, He made us without sin. Every sinful thing, every wicked thing, every vile thing you see in this world did not come from God. Everything good had its beginning in God. Everything evil has its beginning in the devil and man's disobedience to his Creator. Sin is the source of every unholy thing. But in the beginning, Adam and Eve were made with innocence. He didn't have the presence of sin because God's not the author of evil. He had the possibility of sin. He was made with the ability to choose, with a free will and a responsibility to His Creator. Aren't you glad God made us as free moral agents, not as robots? He could have made us like robots. People sometimes argue that. Why would a good God make us so we could do wrong? Well, let me ask you a question. Why would a good God make us to only do what He says do? Why would He not make us to have a free will to choose? And so this was the way God created us in our constitution. But then you've got to look beyond man's creation and his constitution to his condition. His condition in the garden was wonderful. It was beautiful. What a life it was. Suddenly sin enters into that garden. Sin enters into the heart of man. And suddenly his condition is very different. The day that man sinned against God, the image of God was not lost, but it was marred. We might say it was not erased, but it was defaced. Because when sin enters in, it brings every wicked, vile, evil thing with it, which means that without God, we're sinners, we're lost in our sin, we're spiritually dead, we're under the wrath of God, and the only thing that separates us from eternal death is one breath leaving this world. Aren't you glad God did not leave us that way? Think about for just a moment the way God created man. Man was made to have what? Dominion. That means to rule and reign with His Creator and for His Creator. Now when He sinned against the Creator, what happened? He switched roles. Instead of being a man who had dominion over, now He is dominated by. Sin takes control of him. The devil takes over. His flesh suddenly becomes his own master. The only cure for that, friend, is Jesus. Aren't you glad that God sent a perfect man? He sent his own son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam, we're told in the book of Romans, who would live a sinless life and die for the sins of mankind so that we could be set free from the domination of sin. See, when Christ has dominion over us, you're free from the dominion of sin. And what does the Lord do? The Lord not only restores what Adam has, but I want to tell you, in the authority of the Word of God, praise God for this, He gives you much more. Now I'm saved. I'm a child of God. I have God's favor. I am as sure for heaven as if I were already there, and the Lord begins to restore the very image of Christ in me. You see, that's what the Lord's doing in your life today. By His Holy Spirit, He is seeking to restore the image of God, to allow you to once again reflect His beauty, His glory, His holiness, His light. And of course, someday we're going to rule and reign with Him. Adam was supposed to do that in the beginning and he messed it up. Someday we're going to rule and reign with Jesus Christ on this earth and then for all eternity. Are you getting ready to reign? Are you getting ready to rule with Christ? All of this talk about man leads us to talk about God. And so may I speak to every person who's listening to me today. If you're a human being, I'm talking to you. First of all, you need to know your Creator in a personal way. And the only way to do that is through His Son, the perfect man, the Lord Jesus Christ. If you're not a Christian, right now, would you just bow your head and by simple faith, would you repent of your sin and trust Jesus as your Savior? Would you say to the Lord, Lord, I'm a sinner and I'm lost and my life has been marred because of my sin nature, but I believe Jesus died for my sin. Would you invite the Lord Jesus to come into your life? You can enter into a new relationship with God, one that will not be broken. Praise God for that. And if you are a regenerated person, if you already know you've been born again and you've come into the family of God, would you just pause and praise God who created you and has sustained you and saved you? And would you ask the Lord today to form the image of Christ in you and to make it so that your life reflects more of Christ than it does of Adam? Would you pray right now that your life would be everything the Creator says that it should be? This is what the Bible says. Repeating what other people have said about the Bible is not enough. We must know the biblical reason behind what we believe. We hope you will visit us at etj.bible to access our library of Bible teaching resources, including book-by-book studies of Scripture. You'll also find studies to watch, listen to, or read. We are so grateful for those who pray for us, who share the biblical content, and for those who invest to help us advance this ministry worldwide. Again, thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time on Enjoying the Journey.