This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Wintersprings, Florida, where Dr. Pete Owensin is our senior pastor. Today's sermon is part two in the offensive Christianity series and is titled, You Matter, Dignity, and Purpose, and is taken from Genesis chapter 1, verse 26. Now here's Pete with today's message. If you have your Bibles, take them and turn to Genesis 126, because that's our verse for today. As we continue our study, kids, extreme praise, I almost forgot, but I got it, right? So I'm okay, I'm not a sinner. Extreme praise, you may be dismissed for that great time of training. We're continuing our study in offensive Christianity, not because we need to learn how to become more offensive, because we do that quite naturally. But we're studying how we can come alive more and more as God's people. And it is good to be back with you. I was in the keys last week, suffering for Jesus there, and somebody had to go and do that with the rest of the guys. Now I notice that the ladies, the ladies are taking a cruise. What? Are they trying to do something one step beyond us? I don't know, maybe a healthy competition going on there, but we had a great time, we got some great men and ladies, some dynamite women in this church. And so plan to go and be a part of that. It's good to know when I'm gone, Steve Brown is here preaching. You know, I mean, you got to go out to the second or third tier every once in a while and how, oh, you know, it is so good having him preach here. And he didn't have to, he's plenty busy. So it's really an honor to have him here preaching. And if guys, other pastors knew that we had him here, they'd be jealous. That's why I tell him as much as I can. You know, Steve speaks at our church often and it's such a privilege. Well, we're continuing to study offensive Christianity and keep us on the offense, not to make us more offensive, but we're studying key verses that will make us come alive. You know, Christianity's tough. Living life is tough. Things don't work out the way we want them to. There are difficulties and struggles and your job and knowledge of what you want it to be, conflicts and marriage, conflicts in life. Life tends to tame us down. The evil one wants to keep us from being all that God wants us to be. And so a lot of times when I get lazy or when I don't feel bold anymore or when I feel like just Lord, let me slide through life. I don't want to be controversial anymore. He'll bring me back to a certain group of scriptures that makes me come alive. That says, Pete, you don't want to be irrelevant. You want to get out there. You want to live for me. I want you to, I want to do some stuff through you. And these are the verses that we're looking at because these verses are going to make us more dangerous and offensive in the world. Alec Ambray's in our church gave me this great quote from Jim Elliott. Many of you remember Jim Elliott the name at least there's a movie that's recently been released entitled The Tip of the Spear about missionaries that went out to Central and Latin America to bring the gospel to a tribe of Indians who had never, ever heard of Christ before. They'd never even interacted with anybody that didn't speak their language. And as these missionaries tried to make contact with them, they were killed before they could present the gospel. Jim Elliott was one of those guys who was so mission-minded, he was young, he was in his 20s when he was, when he was killed. But he spoke to the church as a prophet speaks to God's people and he said this, we are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace while we profess to know a power the 20th century does not reckon with, but we're harmless and therefore unarmed. We're spiritual pacifists, non militants, conscientious objectors in this battle to death with the principalities and powers and high places. The world cannot hate us, we're too much like its own. And then he ends with words I'm going to start using in my men's ministry called Dangerous Freedom. He says, oh, that God would make us dangerous. Jesus didn't die to make us nice. He didn't die to just fill our bank accounts for us. He didn't die so that we could name it and claim it in his name. He died to make us dangerous to a world system that doesn't know him, that is living without reference to him. They need us, they need the gospel, so he's died to make us a bit dangerous. That's why we're looking at these words and sometimes people will not like us because we actually believe what this book teaches. The first scripture that we looked at that will make us come alive more and more is Genesis 1-1. Remember, it's a long verse from the Bible. And you remember that one? In the beginning, God created the heavens in the earth. And we talked about that at length and how if you really believe that there is a God and that He created all this, it sets you apart from a world that wants you to believe that it all came about in a very random way just by chance. It makes you a little bit offensive to those who don't believe in intelligent. As Don Dodge sent me a story about some scientists who had gathered together and they were really frankly, they were tired of the whole notion of God. They'd made a lot of progress with cloning and they said, you know, it took a vote. Does God need to exist anymore? And they all said, no. And then they said, well, who's going to go tell them? So one of the scientists, I'm going to tell them. So he went to God. He said, God, you know, we can do a whole lot. We can clone now. We're pretty powerful. We don't need you anymore. God, we want you to go away. And God listened to the whole thing very patiently, very quietly. He said very well, I hear what you're saying, but how about if we have a little contest? How about if we have a contest, a man making contest, and the scientists said, sure, that's great. Let's do it. God said, we're going to do it the way we did it back when I made Adam. Scientists said, sure, no problem. God said, okay, let's get going. And so the scientists and meltdown began to scoop together some dirt and God said, no, no, no, no, no, you get your own dirt.
You know, when Genesis 1, 1 says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth that makes the astounding point that God created all things, ex nihilo out of nothing. You really believe that. You got a God of power in your life. And if you don't believe that, you're not believing the right God. Now, the verse we're going to look at today is a verse that builds on that creation. Genesis 126 is our text for today. By the way, in this series, I'm going to give you 20 or 40 verses over the course of the study to memorize. Genesis 1, 1 is easy, right? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This is not too difficult either. Genesis 126, I've memorized it, of course, but I'm going to read it just to make sure I don't mess it up. Then God said, let us make man in our image and 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. You live in Florida. There's a lot of creepy things in Florida. God made them all and some of you wonder why. Well, he did. Now, this text is powerful. And if you will get this one verse down in your mind and come back to it over and over and over, it'll help you out in key times in your life. It tells us something important about God and something very, very important about you. What it says about God as we start out here is it tells us about his being. Let us make man in our image. Immediately when you see that, you notice right away the plurals, don't you? You notice that, right? Well, you can't miss that. I wouldn't very good in English. Let us make man in our image or plurals. There's two plurals there. And so when God creates, he is speaking with plurals that we got to understand. And Christians down through the ages have looked at this text and tried to understand why the plural is used. There are several answers. One answer that is given is that this is what's called the plural of majesty. That in some languages, in the ancient East, there was the plural of majesty built right into the language. In other words, when a king would speak, he would use reference to himself in the plural. Now could you imagine if I spoke of myself in the plural in English, we can't even do it. Pete, you know, that loses the dignity right then and there. But in the ancient Near Eastern and Semitic cultures, they could speak of themselves with a plural. Elohim, the name for God is plural. El is the singular. God often speaks to himself as Elohim in the plural. And so it may well be when God says, let us make man in our image that he is simply emphasizing his dignity and his majesty. And that may well be. And if God wanted to do that, it'd be good. All right. Trouble is we're not sure Hebrew really even had the plural of majesty. Are they did that? And what we know is that when Moses wrote this down, as the Israelites were being led out of Egypt, we know he's being led out of a country Egypt that was polytheistic in Decaynin where there are a bunch of other people who were polytheistic. And they never want to send the idea that God, the true God was really many gods. And so they tried to figure this out. And they said, well, maybe the plural is about the fact that God is speaking to the host of heaven. And when he says, let us make man in our image, God is sort of speaking to the angels and the cherubim and everybody else who is there in his presence. They said, let us make man and sort of like he's not really asking their opinion, but he's including them in the process. But I don't know, the trouble is with that is that we're made not in the image of angels, made in the image of God. And so really what we're left with is a really difficult issue. And one that comes out later, clearer, more clearly in scripture, this doctrine that Christians call the Trinity. I told you in this verse, it tells us something very, very important about God, about his being. God is one in his being, in his essence, threefold in his person. Triunity, Trinity, the word is not found in the Bible, but we saw the idea already. Well, in Genesis 1, one, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1, 2, it says, the spirit of God was moving over the waters. Hmm. By the time you get to the New Testament, it says this, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Who's it speaking about? Jesus. It says in him, all things came into being by him and a part for him, nothing came into being that has come into being. It says that Jesus is the creator. So what we see here is something unique about God, not the full blown teaching of the Trinity, but the indication of it. And we're beginning to see here that God is revealing himself to us as someone who is awesome and bigger and much more complex. We tend to domesticate God and make him into our cosmic bell. God do this. God do that. I name this. I claim this. I want this. Do this. And God says, God says, you really don't know who I am. God reveals himself to us in a big way that he's far more complex than we ever thought. You think you got God, your back pocket? I think you got God figured out. He's laughs. I don't either. He's bigger than we thought and can't fully understand him. We're a contemporary church and we have contemporary worship. We do. But there's awe here. There are times when we celebrate Hebrew worship, times of instruments, flutes, liars, and guitars, or the prototypes of guitars. And they were celebrating before God. But there was dignity and humility and reverence there, too. Even though they celebrated God, they knew he was bigger than they knew. And so they worshiped. Yeah, Steve Brown often says, if you've never trembled in the presence of God, you've never been in the presence of God. And you can get into the presence of God in a liturgical church or in a contemporary church and never tremble. So style of worship doesn't matter. It's the God in your worshiping that does. Read Jeff Bogins, a worship reflections in the bulletin today. He tells us that because of what God created, we worship. Because of how he created, we worship because of who he is. We worship. Guys, what Genesis 126 tells us is that God is big and awesome and that we are transformed as we focus upon him. Do you want to get better? Listen, I love this congregation. You guys are wonderful, but you're a mess. So much. We sin and we're not what we want to be. We're not there yet. Are we? We let people down. We fail. We've blown it in so many ways. We want to get better. And so we try so hard. I'm going to keep the rules this time. I'm going to stay awake in church. I'm going to do all that the pastor says I ought to do. I ought to be, you know, I ought to do all these things. And God says, that's not the way you get transformed. Paul says this, San Corinthians 3, the Lord is the Spirit. There again, we get that Trinitarian teaching. Now, the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, but we all with unveiled face beholding as an amir the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as from the Lord the Spirit. How are we changed, not by focusing upon our sins, not by thinking about how bad we are, but by reflecting on his being, his bigness and his mercy and his grace. The more you see him, the more you're changed. So Dennis 126 tells us something very, very much, very important about God that he is triune and that he is awesome. By the way, if you were creating a religion, would you create a God that is one and three? No, I create polytheia. I create what the Greeks did. I create what the Romans did. I create not a God, not a God that made us and his image, his image, I created God who was made in our image, which is what humankind down through history has done. And God says, no, no, God says I'm big and awesome. And so we worship. So this text is so important, but it also tells us something very important about us. It says something about your dignity and your mission. So it says, well, let's say together, let us make, come on, let's say this together, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Now this speaks of your nobility. This speaks of your dignity. If God created you, then you are not a chance product of the universe as evolution would teach. You were created specially by the God of the universe. Every one of us is different. Partly, that's because he didn't want the same thing over and over and over again. And it speaks of your dignity that you are the pinnacle of creation. Now read sometime today, read Genesis chapter one. Won't take you very long. Okay. Read chapter one and you'll read, but look for these, these verses, verse 21. It says, God created the great sea monsters. He's thinking about the whales and other things like that. God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves with which the water swarmed. He created them. Here's a phrase after their kind. After their kind. He created every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And then God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind and the cattle and the creeping things and the beasts after their kind. In verse 25, there's a phrase again, after their kind, after their kind, after their kind, three times in one verse. And then God creates humankind. And he created humankind after whose kind, after his kind. And that speaks of your dignity. There is nothing that is created, not a mineral, not a plant, not an animal that is of greater dignity than you. Human beings are the pinnacle of God's creation. Because you are made and it's a sort of like, it's sort of like God's creating all this cool stuff. See that plant? Isn't that cool? Isn't that tree? Isn't that wonderful? Look at that animal. You never want to thought of that. Isn't it good? And then he says, but well, something better is coming. Something better is coming, made in my image. You heard that sort of about the lady who was raised in the church and she died of cancer. And in her will, it was stipulated that she, her funeral, have an open casket and she'd be buried with a fork. And the explanation in her will was this. You know, she'd gone to church all her life and she was a deep believer in Jesus. She knew that there was hope after this life, life after death. And all these potluck sufferers, she'd been at, all these coveredish suffers. The MC would always say, now we're going to take your plates but keep your fork because the best is yet to come. And she wanted to be buried with a fork because she knew that the best was yet to come. Well, that gets ahead of the story here. But when God creates, he says the best is coming because they will be made in my image. And God creates all kind of incredible, beautiful things, stunningly beautiful. Okay, when you go to the keys as we did, go snorkeling or scuba diving or something and look at all that stuff under there. Go out to one of the reefs and you see all these plants and all these animals and all this coral and it's beautiful, isn't it? God created all that stunning beauty that nobody would ever see for thousands and thousands of years until masks were invented. He created all this beautiful, beautiful stuff but only one being was created in his image. And to be in his image means that you as a, as a, how many dimensional are you? Three dimensional or whatever you are. Anyway, you're a living walking statue that represents God. God is spirit. The Bible tells us and he doesn't have a body. He will never have a body and there are some religions or cults out there that teach that one day you, you will become a God and you'll have a body and rule a planet and all that kind of stuff. That's not biblical and so on. It's not what Christianity has taught or ever taught. God does not have a body. But for you to adequately reflect his glory, you have to have a body and you, you contain, three dimensionally, the glory of God. Every time, every time you look at a human being, no matter how sick or weak, you look at them and you say, where did they come from? How did that get here? It reflects the image of God, the being of God. All right, what is this? This, for those of you who are the uninitiated, is a duck decoy. It's a cork one. It's pretty cool. They just make plastic ones now. So if you want to go buy new ones, they're all plastic. I keep this in my office and but you know if I were to put this out in the water in the right place, ducks, this exhibits duckness, doesn't it? It reveals duckness, doesn't it? Doesn't it look like a duck? A male duck. It reveals duckness and it's so persuasive that you put this in the water and I'll tell you, before done, some ducks flying by will see it and they'll catch it on the corner of the right because they have incredible eyesight and they'll see it and they'll come down because they like that they're garish. They want to hang out with their buds and they will come and sit right in front of your duck blind as you cock your 12 gauge. Don't say, oh, we'll talk about that in a minute, but the reality is that that reveals duckness but there's some severe limitations. Number one, it's not flying and it's not breathing. You reveal the divine image of God in all of your complexity. None of your character, you want to be better than you are. Why? Because God is God is God is holy. You want to be better than you are because God's character is mighty. You have ears. Why do you have ears? Because God can hear. You have eyes. Why? Because God can see. He sees you. He knows what's going on in your life. They're precious to him. We're made in his image means that we reflect him in a powerful way and you are the pinnacle of creation. Animals are not and that's going to take some of you off. But in the Genesis account, Genesis 126, don't buy into what the world says that the earth or the animals are more important than human beings or on an equal level as human beings. They are not. That's why I said, don't say, ah, when we talk about duck hunting, they aren't going to heaven. What about your pet? I don't know. I've got some goldfish that I hope aren't in heaven because I killed them, not on purpose, but you know, they're going to be awful mad and you can have my bird now because sometimes I feel like killing them. My dog will he be there? I don't know. I don't know if he's smart enough to accept Jesus, but if he's there, it'll be all right. His breath will be better in heaven. A young boy called the radio Bible answer man and said, sir, will my dog be in heaven? He said, I don't know. I've heard this so many times when you get there. Whistle see if he comes. If your pets are in heaven, I wouldn't surprise me because God is good and he loves you and he wants you to be happy and he might have them there for you, but never ever think that animals are as important as you are. Jesus came to dies. We take communion in just a minute. Remember that he didn't come to restore, he came to restore the balance of all things, but he didn't come to restore the image of animals. My dog is about the purest thing in the house. He came to restore your image to die for you so that we could have eternal life and so that right now we could begin to reflect what we were created to be as men and women of the living God. Genesis 126 made in God's image as a powerful verse that reminds us of our dignity. Know that one person that has the ability to destroy your view of yourself that says something to you or about you and you instantly feel bad, you instantly feel like a failure. You know the times that you failed or you've been divorced or you lost your job and you said, I'm not worthy. Go back to Genesis 126. Of course you are. Don't listen to them. Don't listen to the situation. I've got to create a view in his image like nothing else. You have dignity. You also have purpose. Genesis 126 tells us that we are to rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, over every creepy thing out there. We're to rule. And the word is Rod Ha. No, we did not study Revelation verse by verse, precept upon precept in the original Greek in the keys. We had time, didn't have time doing that. Here the original word in the Hebrew is Rod Ha, to trample down, to master. We're to rule to exercise dominion overall that God has made. Now this means several things quickly. It means number one that you're to be a hedonist. You're to rule this world. That means you're to be a hedonist to enjoy, to enjoy the world and the beauty that God has made. Enjoy it. John Piper has talked about that a lot and people, you mean I can be a hedonist? Yeah, I can enjoy what God has made. You ought to go outside more. We're inside way too much. You say, it's hot here. I know. Go get a tan. Go get burned. Look at how beautiful God is and what He created here. Go to the beach. Go scuba diving. Go on a walk. Go to the mountains, North Carolina where God lives. Go to the desert. I don't care. Go get outside and enjoy it. He gave it to us to enjoy and we enjoy it so little. I worship more outside than inside. Always have. He reminds me of his greatness. We're to be hedonist. Number two, we're to be environmentalists. Yeah, we got to protect it. We're going to rule over all that he made but we got to protect it too. I'm into that. Number three, we're to be industrialists. We're to use it. We're to use all of the resources that God has given us in this world. Use it. Use it. Enjoy it. We've got all these problems here today in our culture about energy, right? We're struggling with all these energy problems. Hey, listen, here's the answer. God has given us all the energy we need. We can grow all the corn we need and you can burn that. You know, we've got oil, two trillion barrels with oil up in Colorado and Utah and Alaska off the coast of Florida here. I'm running for president vote for me. Listen, we listen, we got an answer. God says use it when we make a mistake. Sometimes, sure, I grew up in a state where they drilled off the coast and they spilled some and cleaned it up. We can't worship the you say, this is politics. No. How stupid are we if we don't use what God gave us? We don't worship gold and silver. We use it. We don't worship the land. We use it. Hey, be industrious. Listen, everything that God has called us to is to remember that we have a mission to rule over our world and every time you are involved, every time you are involved in your job in marketing a product to help people, you're helping in this world. It's called the cultural commission. As you counsel people to help them get healthier, you're a part of ruling the world. As you, as you help build, yes, technical equipment that help us defend ourselves. You help rule,
as you teach, as you work at a hospital, whatever you do, you're a part of this to help rule. Part of our purpose is fleshed out where we work and it keeps us from turning inward and focusing upon ourselves. You imagine, you imagine what we'd be like if all we did was think about ourselves if we had unlimited money and all we did was think about ourselves and take care of ourselves. You say that sounds pretty good. I know, but God's given us people in our culture who have unlimited money and focus on themselves in an unlimited way and they're weird. He's called us to go outward at work in heaven. You'll have everything you need, but now to be part of this great thing, exercising our dignity and our mission in this world. As we take communion right now, if you don't know Christ, the elements are going to be passed by you and we ask you just to pass the elements by. Don't take the elements because the gospel says that those are for those who have embraced Christ. We encourage you and urge you to take him by faith so that you can be reconnected in your image to the God who made you. The only way to get reconnected in your image is to receive Christ as Savior and Lord. But the rest of us who know Christ, this is a time for us as we take the bread and take the cup to reflect upon our dignity. Jesus died for you to bring you back and restore your image and to send you back out into the world ready to work to help govern this world. Yeah, everything you do. Out there reflects your mission, your purpose. You matter. You really do. You take that the heart as we pray right now or Jesus or Jesus as our elders bring us the bread and the cup right now in this moment. We really ask that you would speak to us about our lives and those that make us feel less than worthwhile and those of us who naturally sort of depreciate ourselves and feel awful about who we are. May you remind us of our dignity and our worth and our nobility.
Thank you for dying on the cross for us in your body, coming to us with your presence that we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were worth something to you. Thank you God, you who are spirit, thank you for taking on human body, that we would never doubt that we had worth in your eyes.
And as we take of the bread, I pray that you would remind us that our sins are forever paid for that our dignity is forever restored in you or Jesus will give you honor and privilege. Willow Creek Church is associated with the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.willowcreekchurch.org and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.