Amen. Well, if you turn to your Bible, so the book of Genesis, we are going to look at only three verses this morning, so we're hitting a big change of pace, verses 26 through 28. It was an ancient Greek skeptical philosopher who asserted that man is the measure of all things. And what he meant by that was whether anything exists or not is determined by the knowledge of man. And he even had the temerity to say that if the God exists or the God exists, we can't ever know that for certain. He was one of the sophists, and he aroused by the common grace of God, the iron of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and they opposed him and brought a certain common grace recognition of real objective virtue and reality and truth to the world that God used, even to, bring about the Greek culture and the Greek language that he inspired for the New Testament. They don't doubt that he was sovereign and all those things. But this early form of humanism has not always been so extreme. In the Middle Ages, humanists like Lorenzo Bala and the Sederius Erasmus helped pave the way. They laid the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation. In fact, early reformers like Calvin and Malikthen were humanists, and they studied in that way, focusing again on the virtue and dignity that is in accord with the divine perfection of the Amago Day that man is. And this was Christian humanism, and it continued until about the time of the referer, sorry, of the Enlightenment. And then that gave way to more of a godless, relativistic, changing, and evolutionary view of man where we no longer agree on even what it means to be. Human man is now believed to be nothing more than a billion or so years old bacterium accidentally brought to life by purely mechanistic forces. It's funny because once they wanted by knowledge to liberate man's nature from God and elevate human dignity. By doing that, however, unbelieving man has lost the ability to even know human nature, and with it they've lost all possible grounds on which to establish any human dignity, ironically. But Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy infamously wrote in 1992, if you don't know this quote, listen to it, you'll be shocked, quote, at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life, end quote. That's at the heart of liberty. That's at the heart of anti-human bondage, because that is what it has brought about. The fact of the matter is if each person really does have the right to define existence, to define meaning, to define the universe, to define human life, then by definition these things can have no meaning in themselves. We just make it up. And we know that we're making it up. This is the freedom of non-being, no limits, no constraints, because there's no definitive, there's no objective thereness that must be defined according to what actually is there. Now no limits equals no meaning, because there is no thing there that is which thereby would have and necessarily would limit meaning. And so this freedom of nothingness, which seems to be what our society is pursuing with all possible speed, has gotten to the point that even the most basic forms of empirically real humanity, like male-ness and female-ness are denied, objective reality day. That's why you hear this phrase, gender is a social construct, it's not objectively real. We make it up socially. The most basic definition of insanity is the inability to distinguish what is real. Let me submit to you that modern, Western democratic society is fast becoming an insane asylum. Because we don't know what's real anymore. And the good news for us is that our text this morning is and provides the antidote to this madness, and that's exactly what it is, madness. The objective, factual, unchangeable reality of what it means to be human, declared by the Word of God, that's our text this morning. Let's praise, we turn to God's Word, Father, again we thank you that there is the real, which we know and we can't help but know, and help us to be built up in the real this morning and faith in your Word, and Lord God, that you might even deliver this world from its insanity. We pray more and more. It would be your will in Jesus' name, Amen. Give your attention to the Word of God in Genesis chapter 1, beginning in verse 26. This is God's holy Word. And God said, let us make man an hour image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And 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, 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 the earth, the Word of the Lord. I want you to notice, first of all, this morning, the Divine Council. The Divine Council, verse 26, the first part, then God said, and God said, literally, let us make man an hour image according to our likeness. For the first time in human, not in human, in the history of existence, God has a divine counsel within himself, that's what this language connotes here. Let us make man an hour image. Twelve times in Genesis chapter 1, we get a let there be, or let them be. It's a third person verb that has the form of a command, and that's hard because Hebrew doesn't allow for imperatives in the third person, or the first person, it's like English. All imperatives in English are in the second person. You can't say him go do something. You say you go do something, second person, singular or plural, Hebrew is the same way. But what Hebrew does is it offers a what's called a juice of form of the verb, didn't know you were going to be getting Hebrew this morning, and that means that in the third person, the verb has the force of an imperative. So even though it's not an imperative, it's to be understood as one, and every Hebrew person understood that. And in English, we add the word let to let you know that, and we do the same thing in Greek because Greek does the same thing. So when God says let there be light, he's using the word to be in the third person in a juice of form that makes it a command. And therefore we to say a command rather than just say be light, we say let there be light. It doesn't mean let it be possible or allow it. It means command, let it, let him do what he's supposed to do, right? Let it be, well here God doesn't do that. God doesn't use the third person, you see it, let us. And in Hebrew there's also a first person form that gives the force of the imperative, and that's the cohortative form, and it's used for the first time here in Scripture, where God says to himself let us do this. And again it's a command within the Godhead, and a lot of scholars and critical scholars see this and they say well Moses couldn't possibly know that God is triune, that's not revealed to the New Testament, and that's true, Moses couldn't have known that, and it's not revealed to the New Testament. And so they say well this is the royal we, you know, like we get when we think about England with the queen and the king, you know, well we say the Americans are rude and crude because they don't know it. There's something like that, you know, the we, the royal we, or something. But that's not what's being said here, that's not what God's doing. Some say he's speaking to the council of angels, that he's including himself in the heavenly council, you know, we've been looking at the heavenly throne room of heaven, and there are beasts, these not really beasts, but creatures, living creatures, and there are angels and there are elders, and so God's speaking, let us, you know, my heavenly co-un, C-I-L-C-I-L council, let us make man an anonymous problem with that is God does not make man in the image of other creatures, and God never includes himself in a, let us do something. God doesn't put himself in the category of creature, and God doesn't have the angels help to make man, which they would have to do if God is saying let us make. So that can't be the case either, know what's happening here, is God, remember God revealed these words to Moses, and so when God revealed to Moses how he made man, God used the first person plural because there is a plurality in the Godhead, this is in it, an affirmation of the Trinity, it doesn't come out and teach the Trinity, but it teaches a plurality in the Godhead, and no Moses wouldn't have been able to completely fathom that. And Scripture is filled with places where the prophets are constantly wrestling with their own prophecies, trying to understand the fullness of them. Peter writes about that explicitly, that even the angels long to understand the fulfillment of the prophecies, and so no Moses wouldn't have been able to fully understand this, but God told Moses, this is what I said, let us, because all the way back in Genesis 1, there is three persons in the one Godhead, and we are made in the image of the one God, and we are persons. My God is three persons, and that's what's being said here. And so what is the image of God? In the ancient church and all the way up through the middle ages, it was said by the scholars and the ministers pretty much universally that image was one thing, and likeness was another, that these are two different things, and that's because of the way in which they understood Scripture and they had this fourfold way of understanding the different meanings, and they really took the word of God, and they made it something other than a human book, and they were always finding all sorts of allegories and so forth in Scripture that eventually led to the obscuring of even the basic literal meaning. And so for example, some of the early scholars said that image is the natural earthly creaturely and likeness is the divine, because man is a combination of the earth and the heavens, and of course, that's a radical, because man is not divine, and so the Orthodox scholars threw that up, but what they did say was that image was like human nature, and likeness was original righteousness, and man loses the one, but retains the other, and that's not what Scripture means here. In fact, it was the Reformers, the Protestant Reformers who recognized that image and likeness don't mean two different things. They mean one thing. It's a common figure speech called a henditis, where two things, two words are used to describe the same thing, but we use two words for emphasis, right? We might say, man, that person is so smart and intelligent. You know, we want to say two words because we're trying to emphasize, you know, his learning or area edition, or we might say, you know, that woman is so beautiful and lovely, right? We're not saying two different things. Well, hidden her earthly nature, she's beautiful, but in her soul, she's lovely, or something like that. That's not what it means. Or, you know, he is so muscular and strong, again, it doesn't mean two different things. It's a common figure, and we see it in many places, even in the early chapters of Genesis, God will multiply her pain in conception and child bearing, it's mean two different things. And so this is a henditis. It's an emphasis that God is making man, yes, in his image, yes, in his very likeness. And we know that's the case, because in verse 27 it says, twice God actually goes about now and makes man just in his image. It doesn't use the word likeness. It's not losing anything. God didn't change his mind from verse 26 to 27. It's just that the word image captures everything that the word image and likeness say. And then if you turn over to chapter 5, verse 1, you'll see that God made man in the likeness of God, and it drops the word image, because it's the same thing. It's a figure of speech. But what is being said by this figure is that man is really, really made in the very image, yes, the very likeness of who God is, and so we really need to understand, especially today. What does that mean? We need to see how God makes man in order to understand it. Man is made the last creature of all. It's clear that there is a hierarchy. God begins with the most basic elements just brought into existence, a chaotic mass. God begins to give the natural laws of physics and physicality to that mass, and makes the atoms and all the rest. And we begin to see the forming in the early days, and then the distinguishing of the realms, the earths is formed, and then there's water, and there's land, the heavens are formed, and the stars and the planets, the atmosphere is formed, all of those different realms, that God is now distinguishing and ordering and organizing and preparing ultimately for man. And there's a hierarchy of, you know, from going from the more chaotic to the crowning achievement, the final work, which would be man. And so we even see that in life. God begins with the plants, and then he goes to the fishes and the birds, and then the land animals. And last of all is man. And so this does point to, and we saw in our Cold Worship and in our Scripture reading, from Psalm chapter 8, how exalted man is, that God has crowned man with glory and honor. He is man's crowning work. We can lay claim to that by the fact that we are made last of all, however. We also, by being made last of all, have to affirm that we are entirely a creature that God doesn't need. Why? Because God didn't ask us about anything He did before we got here. He didn't want to check with man to see if we would like these kinds of trees, or these kinds of animals, or maybe we would like something different, or maybe we have some input that would help him out. No, on the contrary, this is what the significance of God's rebuke to Job was, and Job 38, if you remember, when he appears to Job, when he says to him in verse 4, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding, who determined its measurements, surely you know, or who stretched a line upon it, to what were its foundations fastened, who laid its cornerstone? In other words, he's saying to Job, you weren't there, you weren't there at all. You had nothing to do with what I've made. I didn't need you. And so at the same time that we know that we are the highest work of God, that we are in this image, we're also reminded that we are a creature, and that God doesn't need us, and we need to know both of those things. This is the divine counsel, by the way, counsel, C-O-U-N-S-E-L, God taking counsel with Himself, and that's a great act of significance. The fact that God stops from everything else that He was doing, and says within Himself, as it were, let us do something. That points to the fact that man is unlike anything else. In fact, if you compare it to the other, things that God made, the other forms of life, even of the land animals, God says in verse 24, let the earth bring forth, the land creature. But we, last we get some, any idea of evolution, you know, the land creatures coming from the earth itself, it actually says in verse 25, and God made the living creature. And the same thing is true of the sea creatures and of the birds. If you look at verse 20, it says, let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and yet, verse 21, and God created, so it's not like the water just, you know, sort of evolved into creatures, no God created it, so He says it one way, but He creates it another. And then, of the vegetation, let the earth sprout, sprouts, remember the Hebrews in the same noun and verb, I'm just trying to be consistent so that you see how it's read, but it's very interesting to see it that way. Let the earth sprouts, sprouts, and then verse 12, and the earth brought forth, but that's the way plants come. They do come from the earth, and so God caused it to happen that way, but God makes all of the creatures, but when God makes man, He doesn't say let the earth do anything. He says, let us, you see that, I mean, that's, that's huge, that shows us, again, our place in God's creation, and so God speaks very highly of man, and yet man doesn't even get his own day. The land animals are made, you know, first couple of hours, and then maybe 10 o'clock or so, God makes man, the same day that He makes the land animals. So again, at the same time that we see our exultation, we need to see that we are butt creatures who are entirely dependent upon God. This is the divine counsel. Secondly, I want you to notice the divine placement. Notice the divine placement, verse 26, and God said, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds, the cattle, and every creeping thing, and so forth, dominion. Some argue this is the image of God, the socineus, the time of the Reformation, the socineus, argued that the actual image of God is dominion, and this is how they reason. Well God is an authority over the creatures He has made, which are less than Him, so man is like God, and that man is placed in authority over creatures that are less than Him. So in so far as we have dominion, we are like God, and the problem with that is that our being like God would not be in our being, it would be in our doing, well think about that. The entire likeness of God would be in function, would be in function, which would mean very young infants who really can't take dominion over anything would not be anywhere near as human as adults. You see the ramifications of this, very old elderly folks who have trouble even getting up, how can they exercise dominion, and if dominion is the image of God, then they are far less than the image of God. See, we can discard the unborn, we can discard the elderly because they are not in the image of God because the image is function, the image is not being, the image is doing. That is not true. We are not, keep made in the image of God by dominion. We are given dominion because we are made in the image of God, and it is a consequence and not a cause. And we need to keep it that way because Karl Bart does something similar, Karl Bart does the father of Neo-Orthodoxy if you are new to the form of faith, or if you are new to this church, Karl Bart is not one of the good guys, okay. Neo-Orthodoxy is not a good thing. There was a reaction against theological liberalism, and it was against it, and that was good, but then they went and did something kind of worse and made a theology just nonsensical. But Karl Bart said, God exists in relationship, therefore it is the male, female relationship that we are like God. Now male and femaleness is important, it is crucial to our being made in the image of God, but once again, God makes man, physical man, male and female because he is in the image of God, not in order to be the image of God. It is a consequence, and our relationships are what we do because we bear God's image, not it is God's image. Once again, somebody who is not able to have a relationship is not the image of God, is not human, is less human, and in the ancient world this was common. In the ancient world it wasn't all mankind who were divine, who were made of God. No, it was only the kings, it was only the rich, it was only the conquerors, it was only the powerful and their wives, and this gave rise to the divine right of kings, they are better, they are higher, they are more human. There are the sons of God, think of Pharaoh, he is the son of God, not the people, they were his slaves, they were the last human, they didn't have the rights that he had, and so forth, the emperor of Rome and the Babylonians and all the rest, it is the emperor who is the son of God. This gives rise to not only the divine right of kings, but the slavery, everybody else should be under me, and the polygamy, why man ought to have a bunch of wise if he is a higher order of being, and so forth, but in Scripture beloved, notice it, all human beings are made in the image of God. No one is any higher, no one is any lower, this is the death of all classism, this is the death of all racism, there is no higher blood, in fact acts as he made from one blood, every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, for we all are also his offspring, all of us. This is both the source of the dignity of man and the end of any group supremacy over man. It's in Scripture that we find it, and it flies in the face of modern theories of evolution and others, which by definition there have to be some people that are higher than others, more evolved than others, and evolution shamelessly says that. But it's Scripture that shows that we are made in the image of God, we're given dominion because we're in the image, we're made male and female because we're in the image, and notice here God only makes one man and one woman, that becomes explicit in chapter two where we zero in on the sixth day of creation. But right now on the sixth day, God has this counsel within Himself, He finishes the animals, it's about 10 o'clock in the morning or so, maybe in a little bit funny, but it's the sixth day, He's made the animals I'm allowing for a few hours, He has this divine counsel within Himself, He says let's do this. And then He makes them male and female, it happens on the sixth day. We need to see that because by the end of the sixth day He blesses them and He says to them, be fruitful, multiply, so everything that we see in chapter two with Adam naming the animals, seeing that there's no one like him, God causing him to sleep, bringing Eve, that all happens later on the sixth day and we have to recognize that. But we're just getting a sort of a broad picture here and God makes them male and female, He makes them on the sixth day, but He only makes two and that doesn't seem to be the case with the other animals. And He says of the sea creatures, let swarming things swarm, it gives a picture of schools, the fish being created, and birds flying, flocks of birds in the land animals covering the earth, it seems as if God makes many pairs at once, not just one of each kind like He brought under the, under Noah's Ark, but with mankind He doesn't do that. He makes one man, He makes one woman, we know originally He makes one man, and everybody comes out of that one man. And what that teaches us, beloved, is that we are not only all equal, but we're all actually family, right? I know in Pittsburgh, everybody, you know, pit fans, we don't like Penn State, we don't like West Virginia, and we like to say that everybody in West Virginia is related, right? That's the joke. Well everybody in the world is related, but that's just the fact, we all come from one man, we all come from one person. That means that we should never have any wars, or injustice, or cruelty. You've never met a stranger, you've never met a non-family member. Now kids don't, you know, if your parents say don't talk to strangers, don't say past the rightful, said there are no strangers. We're talking about something a little different now, listen to your parents. You don't want to talk to strangers, but really, and truly, I mean do you think about that when you're walking down the street or in the mall, that everybody you see, you all go back to one couple, you all go back to one man. We're all related, we're all family, there shouldn't be cruelty, there shouldn't be injustice. We are one, God made us one, like He is one, and He made us multiple, like He also has a plurality in the Godhead, and so third day I want you to notice the divine calling, I want you to notice the divine calling, so He makes man a dominion, man is equally in the image of God, all human beings, equally in the image of God, all human beings, the children of God, the one family of man, the one race of man, by definition that's true, the image of God is given dominion because He's the image of God, and yet God says to Him in verse 28, to take dominion, right, to have dominion. He says fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion, these are commands. The man is placed in this place but he has to actually exercise obedience as he is called to subdue and called to take dominion, dominion means rule, subdue means to trample. When Israel was going in to take the promised land, it says the land was subdueed before the Lord, it was subdueed before them, and this is what we're called to do to the creation. Now we need to understand the creation is not evil, there's not something out there that needs to be conquered. Remember every day God says it's good, it's good, it's good. So what God has done is He has taken the creation, He has begun an ordering, a distinguishing, a beautifying process, and He stops, and He makes man, and He says, man, finish the job. And that really is the purpose of human life, that we would take this creation, the raw materials, the seeds as it were, and we would bring it to fruition and maturity. Man was designed to make earth like heaven, to bring it to its fullness, to bring all of that potential glory to God, into its fullness, and man was to do that. He was to order, He was to distinguish, He was to name, the very thing that God's been doing up into this point, man is God's vice-reaching, God places Him to rule over His stuff in His name to do what He Himself would do, and man, we get the glory for it, and be in this position of glory. You see the high place that God places man over the creation, and what we have done in our fallenness is rather than to do the earth. We try to subdue one another, in fact a lot of the modern environmental movements, we become servants to the earth, we're not allowed to use the resources of the earth, that's evil, that's sin against Mother Earth, it's idolatry, it's a guy coming to life again and she will have her sacrifices, there's already in my opinion millions of people who have died because of the foolishness of climate change, and mandating corn being used for ethanol, you know when we were in Oklahoma, there was ethanol free gas you could give, that's not an option here in Pennsylvania, and it's more expensive because it makes your car run better. You know what happened when they mandated the use of ethanol and gas, corn went up, you know how many people starved because the price of corn went up in third world countries, but we don't care, it makes us feel better about the environment, you know, Mother Earth has to have her sacrifice. We don't subdue the earth anymore, we subdue one another, in fact Jesus forbade his disciples from doing this, Matthew 20, 25, Jesus called them to himself and said you know that the rulers of the Gentiles here is Lord it over them, same words subdue. The Lords of the Gentiles subdue one another, Jesus is telling his disciples it's not supposed to be that way among you. You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and that those who are great exercise authority over them, yet it shall not be so among you. What does Christ say should look like in His church and redeemed humanity, whoever desires to become great among you, that would be your servant, that's what it ought to be, God doesn't make, Christ doesn't make apostles to subdue the church because they're so unruly. The apostles are to serve the church, the apostles are to be like Paul and pour out his life for the church and just consider himself a drink offering. Elders are to be examples, not Lords, Peter says this explicitly, first Peter 5, 3, instructions to elders, nor as being, listen, being Lords over, that's the words subdue again in our text. Elders are not to subdue the church, that would be examples, they're not to lord it over, they're to be examples, they're to be servants, being examples of the flock he says. And so this is the divine calling, man is to subdue, have dominion, to do with the earth with God, designed him to do and so forthly before I get there, let me just say this, and man is able to do that because creation is good, creation is complete, God has made the different arenas, he has filled them with everything that man needs and he has made man's nature good like him so that man is complete, man can carry out the command of God, he can make the earth the kind of glorious heaven that God wanted it to be because he is like God in his nature, so what is the image of God? Still been answered the question, fourthly I want you to notice the divine image, the divine image, we looked at what it's not, it's not dominion, it's not relationship and male femaleness, these things are in consequence of the image, by the way it's not the blessing in chapter 28, God blessed them, God said to them be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, that's the exact same thing he said to the birds and the fishes and they're not made in the image of God, so it's not the blessing, I could add it's not in our physicality. It's not in our bodies, not that our bodies don't reflect the image of God in many ways, not that our bodies are not as central to our being in the image of God, but we can't locate it precisely in our bodies because if we're going to locate what the image of God said is in this text, since this text doesn't explicitly say that, we have to look at what is it that man would need in himself in order to do what God has commanded him to do, to have dominion and to subdue. What is it that God has given man that he is able to do that with? And clearly it's two things, theologians have divided, distinguished really, the image of God in man, as the broad image or the broad aspects and the narrow image or the narrow aspects. And narrowly, man is like God in that he is righteous, and that he is holy. And that every part of his being is in complete subjection to God, in complete love of righteousness, the judgment, the affections, the will, perfectly in harmony with reason and the intellect. There are no inordinate passions in created man, no sinful desires. The senses are fully obedient to reason. He does not go too far, he does not make mistakes out of ignorance. He holds back his judgment until he has enough facts by which to make the decision his will is completely good without any corruption of any evil God has made him this way, righteousness and holiness, but also there is what's called the broad aspects of the image. And that's the ground for being righteous and holy. Birds can't be righteous and holy. There can apes, neither can dolphins, neither can squirrels. They can't exercise the reason, the will, the judgment that man has been given. This is the broad aspects of the image by which it's possible for us to be righteous and holy. We recognize this, right? If man has to have dominion over the earth and we do, we have dominion, right? We don't go down the street worried that the lion's going to take us out because the lions are master. We bastard the lion and yet put a naked man against the lion, who wins? Not a lot of new weapons, that's using your mind. Just you and your body against the lion and his body. To see how the lion is superior to us, if we're just going to talk physicalness, what about in the water, put the man up against the dolphin or even the goldfish, put the man up against the skunk or the porcupine? Who has a better system of defending itself? He can drive away the lion, we can't. In every way our bodies are inferior to the animals, we're not as fast, we're not as strong, we're not as able to defend ourselves, we're one of the claws and the teeth. I mean, it's going to be dear season. I used to go hunting every year. There was always Monday after Thanksgiving weekend, oh man, I used to look forward to it and would take the kids out and we just had so much fun. And every hunter knows, you've ever been in the woods, how inferior we are to the deer in every way. You have to be out in the woods, close in all this clothing, sitting as still as you possibly can with all this, you know, scent cover on and everything that you do to try to get the deer within eye shot. And then if they come into your vision, all of a sudden they're there, you don't know how they got there. And you're not moving and you see them and if you move, they're gone, they're so fast and they smell you a mile away, you have to be like upwind and you want to be downwind. There's so many things that are so much their hearings better, they're smell, they're speed, everything. We are so inferior to the animals in our bodies, but with our minds, our bodies become that by which we exercise dominion. The Westminster Confession says it this way and it says both the broad and the narrow aspects. Chapter four verse two of creation after God had made all other creatures. He created man, listen, male and female with reasonable and immortal souls. We have to have those. We have reason. We think we make decisions. Every swallow makes its nest the same way. It can't do it any other way. It's held captive by its instincts. It has a certain amount of freedom. I guess it decides to pick up that sticker, that one, but it can't help, go and pick up sticks and make that nest. Human beings aren't like that. Right? I take my dog outside to go to the bathroom and the colder and reindeer it is, the more he wants to sniff the ground. He has to sniff the ground. He doesn't say to himself, you know, I'm going to make my master happy and get more trees. I'll just go real quick and come right back. He can't do that. He doesn't have reason, not that kind of reason. Man with reasonable and immortal souls, in due with knowledge, righteousness and true holiness, there's the narrow aspects. After his own image, having the law of God-written in the hearts, the power to fulfill it, yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will. We have a will and we can choose to do whatever we want and we think and we plan and we have judgment. Our minds that God has given us, that we think his thoughts after him and yet it's by our minds that we rebelled. The highest thing that God gave us, the thing by which we exercise and so forth the glory of God, we used it to rebele and to sin against him and so fifthly and lastly, I want you to notice the divine restoration, the divine restoration. So it is by our reason, by our knowledge that we exercise dominion, that we believe, that we can understand the gospel because it comes to us in knowledge and we are renewed in knowledge scripture says, but that isn't by our own efforts. That's because there was a man who came, who bore that image, who was rational, who was willful and who was righteous and who was holy and he kept God's law perfectly and he bore our curse and our penalty that come about as a result of our sin. And so it's in Christ Jesus that we can have this image restored and that's another way in which we can see what the image of God is in Genesis here because of how Jesus restores us. Listen to the scriptures that talk about this. First of all, the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 729, God made man upright. There's the narrow aspects but they have sought out many devices. There's the fall. James says with our tongues, we curse men who are made in the likeness, just the likeness because it's the same thing. In the likeness of God, he says who are made, fallen man still has God's image. That's why it's important for us to distinguish this. Did we lose all righteousness? Yes. Did we lose all holiness? Yes. Are we no longer in the image of God? No. We still have this image. That's why sin is still heinous. If we didn't have God's image anymore, then what does it matter if pagans kill their babies in the womb? They're not made in the image of God. What does it matter if we put the elderly to death? They're not made. We lost the image in the fall. Do you see the ramifications of that? No. We are still willful. We still are knowledgeable. We still are rational. We still have a conscience. We still know right from wrong though we deny it and we distort it because we use all of our powers not to serve self in this temporal world rather than to glorify God. That's really the essence of the fall and that's what Christ restores. That's what he gives about in the new birth. So this life matters, righteousness matters and sin matters because every human being you've ever met and you ever will meet is an image bear, corrupted, depraved, fallen but that image is there. God will not let it be lost completely. It will not. And so in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's renewed, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 24, put on the new man who was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. That righteousness and holiness restored. That new man in Christ, in fact, if you're a believer, Colossians 3, 10 says, you have put on the new man who is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. That once again, we can walk in that image. Now we're not to go out and try to make this world even again. That's not why God saved us, right? This world's judged and it's going to be judged and Christ is going to come back and Peter says it's going to be judged with fire. The new heavens and the new earth are going to come down from heaven. Jesus is the true Adam. He has fulfilled the covenant. He is built already the kingdom of heaven. It will come to the earth when he's ready and our job is to proclaim that message, to proclaim the possibility, the reality of a new you, delivered from the curse, delivered from guilt, delivered from shame because there was one man, the second Adam who completely imperfectly kept the image of God, who completely imperfectly displayed it in a sinful fallen world and his message was proclaim the gospel of salvation that men would be saved and yes, we get to taste again what it means to once a serve God, even though we still feel the weight of sin. So, beloved, as we leave this focus and I want to notice, next week we're going to notice male and female in this, I didn't do anything with that because that is so distorted today. I think we need an entire sermon on it, but at this point I just want you to notice everybody has the image of God, fallen distorted, but it can be renewed in Jesus Christ and there will be a heaven and an earth that will be completely free of the effects of man's sin. Let's pray. Father in heaven how we thank you for your goodness, we thank you for your word, we thank you Lord God that you made us in your image and we do confess, Father, that apart from you we are dead in our trespasses and sins according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air and the sons of disobedience and we indulge the desires of the flesh and of the mind and we are only children of wrath even as the rest but you owe God, even when we were dead. You made us alive in Christ, Christ achieved your purpose in creation. He kept your commands and he bore our curse and so, Father, even as we look at who we are by nature and what we've lost by nature, we want to see mostly. What Jesus Christ offers to all, help us to live that out, help us to be thankful for, to rejoice in it and help us Lord God, to bear witness of the message of salvation that other people would recognize their fallenness and that would be renewed in Christ for your glory we pray.