into the reality that the apostolic
writing gives insight and understanding to the whole of the revelation
of God and that we might learn to read the Old Testament in
light of the gospel of free and sovereign grace. Why is it important? Because I don't care how careful
we are or how Long we've been understanding the truth in a
precise way or how deep our vocabulary might be, beloved, we all have
a vein or a stream of error in us when it comes to how to understand
and interpret scripture. And unfortunately, we like to
look to the experts. We like to look to the people
who have been taught the science of it, the hermeneutic We like
to look at people who are exegetes, which is not a problem because
that's what we're doing. But they are professionals rather
than personal, instead of having personal investment in the word.
And it goes on and on and on. And so a lot of times, I was
thinking about this morning when I would be called at a last minute
to preach in other churches sometime, other congregations. And they'd
say, hey, you know, Pastor Tippins, we need somebody to preach tomorrow
morning. We know your church service doesn't start until two.
Would you mind coming and filling our pulpit? And the answer is
always, yes, I don't care what church it was. I don't care what
denomination it was or, you know, what ministry it was. I would
always teach. And, you know, I've got a handful
of texts that I can go to at any given time and just teach
because I've taught them and taught them and taught them.
But I'll tell you this. There are some times, even though I
may have taught these texts for years, that the Lord will just
slap me and say, why do you keep saying that? That's not what
I'm saying here. Well, that's what he says. That's what they
say. That's what the commentary says. God says, I don't care
what the commentary says. God doesn't care what history
says. God doesn't care what I said yesterday. God cares and is concerned
with what he is saying today. It doesn't change. And so we
are always in the place of adding to the word of God if we're not
careful. We're always in the place of taking away from the
word of God. And I'm not talking about in a malicious way or intentional
way, but just in a human way. We are that way. I need to clean
this room. I'll just sweep the floor. That's
not cleaning the room. That's cleaning the floor. I'm
gonna dust the house. Ah, maybe not. I'll just dust
the TV. You didn't dust the mini blinds.
Go check them. So we often, just because of our nature, just because
of the life that we live, we're often in a place of omission.
We're often in a place of dealing with the Bible in a way that's
not the way God intended for it to be dealt with. And so that's
why I think it's important for us to read, and within the context
of what we read, to just listen, to listen. A lot of people think
that sermon preparation is a bunch of books on the floor, and a
bunch of books on the desk, and a bunch of books printed out,
and a bunch of stuff. And that's not sermon preparation.
That is technical writing and outline preparation. That's taking
all sorts of other sources. That's called PhD work. That's
research. That's taking all the other sources
and putting them down and then organizing them in such a way
that they can be expressed to a larger or different or new
audience. That's not exposition. It's not
exposition. Exposition is to see the text
and the text says what it says and the text expounds and it
doesn't require It doesn't require a high level of cognitive function
in order for the word of God to be taught and preached. It
doesn't require intelligence. It doesn't require expertise.
It doesn't require a deep, deep handling of spiritual things.
It requires God, the Holy Spirit in the simplistic way, teaching
through the written word. But what it does require is the
discipline of the word. So sermon preparation is 90%
thinking and listening. And 5% chaos. And 5%, I can't
believe I pulled that off. But it's 100% the Lord. It's
100% the Spirit. Who am I that I am qualified
to stand here to teach this scripture? except that God has decided to
create me for the purpose of expounding and expressing that
which he has already written for the joy of his peoples, for
the revelation of his own face to his elect. That's all that
this is. This is not me doing what I do
best. This is me doing what God has
created me to do, being as the deer. or as the wind or as the
rain or as the dirt or as the sparrow is created to do what
it does so is the elder and the overseer so is each of us individually
and collectively as the body of Christ and then as this small
little tiny picture known as grace truth the assembly we are doing that which God has
ordained for us to do and he gets all the glory He gets all
the glory. Last week I spoke in a specific
way of dealing with the goodness of God, part two, and the week
before, the goodness of God, and that it is the centerpiece,
if we can say, according to Genesis 1, of everything that God is. Therefore, that everything God
makes is good because He made it. No matter the purpose. Why is there gnats? Gnats are
good. So we say, no, they're not. They're Picard of the Fall.
No, they weren't. They're pestilence because of the fall. And that's
God's intention. He created gnats. He created
spiders. I hate spiders, but I hate gnats
worse. So spiders eat gnats. And we don't have to find all
the good and the bad. Snakes aren't evil. Dogs aren't
evil. Cats aren't evil. They're great. They're good. but even evil is created by God
for the day of His purposes, for the day of despair. Why? As we saw last week in our closing,
because God does what He wants to do, and He does so for His
own purpose and for His own glory. And in being patient with vessels
of destruction, things created for what we would call bad, He reveals the amazing work of
creation in redemption for his own namesake. And we see it,
not because we're smart. We see it because we're his. And when God created the world
and everything in it, it is the outline of the entire revelation
of God. It is the purpose of the Bible. to show that God is
the only one that can do that which is done, and God is the
only one that can create, and God is the only one that can
put into order chaotic things. Another question came up a couple
of weeks ago about why do I refer to the creation beginnings as
chaotic, because that's what they are. Out of nothing came
things, and then the order, it's by necessity, we see it there,
until God separated these things, they were not in order. The absence of order is chaos.
So we look at if God were not creating and then God in the
creation ordering in his divine power and putting into its right
place for his purposes, we would have chaos and the cosmos is
not chaos. The cosmos is extreme order. Your body, even when it's sick,
is in extreme order. It's fighting a virus is absolutely
orderly. And it's not chaos. And so God's
creation of the world, as shown to us, through that oral transmission
for generations, then Moses wrote it down because God told him
to write it down. You gotta understand, it's the first time in history
when Moses wrote that the Jewish people were told to write down
these things. Before that, they memorized these
things. They spent their time not binging
on a movie, not reading poetry, not, well, I guess they did in
the Psalms and all, but I mean, you know, not dealing with all,
they spent their time hearing the truth of who God is. And they had to go to work. There
was always a lesson to be learned about who God is. When they were
sitting down for meals, it was always a lesson to be learned
about who God is. When there was a story to be told at bedtime,
there was a lesson to be learned about who God is. And now we
have it written down for our understanding. And then there's a lot of things
that are misunderstood, and I'm priming this for the purpose
of helping All of us, myself included, as I stand here and
speak openly out of my brain, that if we're not careful, we
will shut out that which God is revealing because we love
so much that which we have always understood. But God is kind and gracious
to us. And he's patient with us, and he teaches us, and he
tenderly corrects us in discipline because he loves us in Christ. And when we look at chapter one,
verse 26 and 27. I'll read all the way through
the end of chapter one again from verse 26 on. Then God said,
let us make man in our image after our likeness. And let them,
man, have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds
of the heaven, and 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
them. Male and female, He created them. And God blessed them. God approved
of 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, and dominion over the birds of the
heavens, and dominion over every living thing that moves on the
earth. And then God said, verse 29, behold, I have given you
every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth,
and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for
food. And to every beast of the earth,
and to every bird in the heavens, and to everything that creeps
on the earth, everything that has the breadth of life, have
given every green plant for food. And it was so because God said
it and then he did it. And God saw everything that he
had made and he looked and it was very good. Behold, it was
very good. And there was evening and there
was morning on the sixth day. And then we understand the Sabbath
because we talked about that about three weeks ago, four weeks
ago. Beloved, there's some things that I want to pull out of this
text real quick before we get into the point of today's message.
The point of today's message is to understand the image of
God. And there are, you talk about
books. Oh my, are there books on this
subject. There are probably more books
that I could put in this building on this subject. More writings
on the image of God or the imago dei as we like to often say. The likeness of God. There are
so many theories and propositions and ideologies and philosophies
and theological things that have come to just be accepted But
yet, God has not changed his message from chapter 1 verse
1 to chapter 1 verse 31. He's not changed what he's talking
about. And he's not going to change what he's talking about
in chapter 2 verse 1 to the end of chapter 2 and then in chapter
3 he's not talking, he's not changing the subject. God is
not changing the subject. The subject of Genesis 1 and
the creation of the world and the creation of man and the fall
of man and the promise of Messiah And then Cain and Abel and so
on and so forth. The purpose of this is to reveal
God as the one who puts order and goodness and all that he
intended to create in that way. And he alone can do it for the
sake of his own glory. And this is to point to the gospel
of Jesus Christ. There are many volumes also dealing,
and we'll talk about works here in a couple of weeks, and the
covenant of works, if you will, and the promise of work. What
is the promise of work? It shall yield a small portion
in time, but ultimately it shall end in death. And I'm just giving you a heads
up. You're going to have to change the way you think, and you're
just going to have to listen. Don't take my word for it. Take
the word of the Lord as truth. Why is it important? Because,
beloved, I think so many times the biggest way in which the
elect are deceived is that Scripture is twisted unintentionally by
well-meaning intelligence that comes to the table and goes,
good, look what I found out here in the world. Now I can make
the Bible fit it. Or look what I've been thinking.
Look at how we've been, you know, in our Renaissance minds, coming
up with all these different ideas. Now I can make the Bible work
for this. So we try to make God work. for our understanding. And out of that comes a different
God, a different revelation, a different gospel, a different
Christ, a different church, a different purpose, a different meaning.
Like some people would say that God created the world and everything
in it in order that man would share in his glory in their earthly
rule as he rules all things. Sort of like a co-regent type
thing. Some people say that. Some people say there's this
dominion ideology, this dominion theology where, you know, God's
intention is that the world gets back to this theocracy or this,
you know, these governments of divine purpose, like the monarchs,
you know. Constitution wouldn't be considered
a divine purpose. And there's a lot of thoughts.
But the scripture is revealing the gospel. No matter what we
look at in the Old Testament, it is revealing the gospel, the
old ideas of this old covenant now didn't work, so God tried
a new covenant. We've already taught in this
congregation many times that that's a fallacy. There's one
promise, and one promise alone that is eternal in the context
of God's purposes overall, and we call it the covenant of grace.
or the covenant of redemption, the covenant of salvation, that
God created Adam and Eve in order to save a people, to create a
people to save for himself, that he is glorified in it. That only
he can do it. He can create a people for his
own purpose. And he can make them good by
becoming like them in creation, in all goodness. No one is good
but God, as we talked about the week before last. And we need
to realize that all of the stories and the promises and the dealings
of God with His elect people, who are a shadow of the true
elect people, because not all of Israel are elect. And not
all the Gentiles are elect. They are elect from every nation,
from every tongue, and from every tribe in the world. And God will
certainly cause them to know this and cause them to believe
and rest in the finished work of Christ and the promises therein. But just as the covenants are
a shadow or as I like to say the commercial of the one and
only true, so is creation, so is the fall, so is everything
that we see and so is the image of God is a small commercial
of the one and only true God. The fullness of all that God
is, seeing him as he is, is revealed in the person of Christ to whom
all other temporary expressions point. From the let there be
light to the it is finished, to the Sabbath rest, to the true
glorification of the saints, this is eternally decreed. This is what Paul and the other
apostles expressed in the idea that God has caused us to be
born again. He has made us this way. All of these small things point
to the very one thing that is above all things, who is Jesus
Christ. And that's what we're going to see today in the image of
God. It's not new thinking. It's not
new stories. It's not a secondary tier. It's
not a dispensation. This is the gospel from start
to finish. And God has said it. God has
decreed, God has spoken, and it shall be. It is. So God spoke
concerning things that were not as if they were and then His
Word assured their existence. His Word brought them into being.
He has proven His power, yet only those to whom He speaks
will hear it and see it. He has promised that He will
speak to His people and that they will hear Him and that they
will know Him. So beloved, I pray that we will hear Him this morning.
So I want to focus in the context of this writing what God means
when he says, let us make man in our image and after our likeness.
And I want to do so without any interruption or interference
from any historical ideas on the subject. So I don't even
want to talk about those things. I don't want to talk about any
of the reformers or any of the theologians of antiquity or any
of the founding fathers, you know, the church fathers. I don't
want to talk about these things because their ideas are not wholly
exegetical. Their ideas are inferential. Maybe, maybe it's not yes. And the scripture teaches us,
a little bit of a pretext here, yes or no. Let our yes be yes,
let our no be no. So let us see what the scripture
is teaching in that. That's why I said a little pretext
there. I'm twisting scripture to make my point. But maybe is not in the equation.
It's not maybe, this maybe is what God, now what is God teaching
us? Not maybe, there is no maybe in the teaching of the church.
There should be no maybe. You know what that is? philosophical
ideas. It's the data we take, we think
about it, and we expand upon it, and we talk about it, and
we have safety in doing that, and there's nothing sinful or
wrong or wicked in any of those things, except that when we begin
to land our planes at the destruction of each other's joy, or at the
creation of a false revelation, which would be the creation of
a false god. Without the separation of things
in creation, as we've seen, it would not be perfect. It would just be chaos. But God
put order in life and God put order in creation because only
he can make things good. Only he can make things right.
Only he can make things perfect. And he does so with no, no help
from the creation. He doesn't need anything. He
himself is sufficient. Last week we talked in the very
closing of our sermon, before I prayed, about the nature of
man. So in the idea that God created man in his own image,
the image of God and in the likeness of God, I want us to be thinking,
as scripture uses that phrase throughout the Old Testament
specifically, and when it talks about the idea of image and likeness,
it is literally saying representative, statue, idol, I mean, if you've ever been to
New York and you go to a gift shop, you can get a little keychain
with Lady Liberty on it. A little teeny tiny statue with
a keychain on it. You can hang it on your mirror,
you can put it on your keys, or you can step on it at night
on the way to the bathroom and scream. Whatever you want to
do with it, it is not the Statue of Liberty. It looks like the
Statue of Liberty. It represents the Statue of Liberty
in its likeness. It is to scale whatever to the
Statue of Liberty. And for all intents and purposes,
you can study that thing right there and you can see a whole
lot of detail about the Statue of Liberty. But it is not the
Statue of Liberty. That's an idol. That's an image
bearer. That's the likeness. It's not
the truth. So man is created in the likeness
as an image bearer of God. Some people say, well, it's because
He gave the breath of life to man. He gave the breath of life
to fish. I just read it. He gave the breath
of life to creepy things that crawl upon the ground, crickets
and snails. You see how, I mean, how many
of us, you don't have to raise your hand, but how many of us have
heard, well, the image of God is that He gave the breath of
life to man. And I remember hearing that as a child. Oh, yeah, I
guess the other things just sort of started living. No, he gave the breath of life
to them. Because he is the giver of life. He is the one who breathes into
it. So everything that creeps on
the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given
every green plant for food. And when God said these things,
there were only two human beings standing there. Think about that. God created
everything. He gave life to everything. So
that's not the image of God, is it? He didn't say the image
of God in the trees. Let us make trees in our own
image. Let us make fish in our own image. Let us make cats in
our own image. He said let us make humanity,
them, male and female, in our image. Let us make them in our
image and likeness. And then in that same breath,
point being made, we see what God tells men to do. So there
is this idea, and I won't get into them, but there's this idea
that the image of God is seen in the doing of men. Possibly. But to what degree? There's the idea, we know, the
doctrine taught in scripture that we would call depravity. that all men are sinful, and
we'll get there in a couple of weeks when we get to chapter
three, all men are sinful, and no man but Christ that has ever
set foot on the earth, no man that has ever existed in the
world was actually righteous. Adam wasn't righteous. Adam was
not sinful, but he wasn't righteous, he was innocent. There's a difference. For righteousness cannot sin. And without God causing order
and keeping things the way he has decreed them and purposed
them, everything that is created will fall apart. But men and humanity, because
they have been told that they bear the image of God, has done
what Lucifer has done and put it upon themselves to think highly
of themselves. And I gave three or four things
to think about for today, last week. And one is that men think
too highly of themselves and often they think more highly
of themselves than they should. And sometimes, and I made that
comment about the Puritans, sometimes higher still in their humility
are panting after God's grace. as if their piety can control
the wrath of God. Look what we've made, God, not
king. Look what we've done, God. Look
what we've prayed, God. Look how we've stopped, God.
Look what you've done in me, God. And the examples of those
through the apostles show condemnation, not praise. So the image of God
in man is not about man's intrinsic value or worth, though do all
things have value? Yes, all life is purposeful. And because all life
is purposeful, all life has value, but when God has called one out
of darkness and one into destruction, it doesn't make the one who's
called out of darkness in and of itself more valuable than
the one that's been called to destruction. And there's a haughtiness
in the world today amongst believers sometimes where they feel like,
we feel like we're better than unbelievers, but we're not. We
are instruments of God's purposes. We are objects of mercy. It's
not because we are special, it's because God is merciful. God
is loving to His people. So we thank God for His grace,
as Paul would tell the Ephesians, right? To the glory. We thank God to the praise of
His glorious grace. What does glorious mean? The
all-revealing, seeing, absolute, perfect vision of who God is
by His mercy. We praise Him for that. God has
created His people for His purpose and it is not because we are
something to behold. Before God grants faith to us
to know Him and to see the Gospel, we are just like everybody else
in the world with our own ways to righteousness, with our own
ideas about how to please the Lord and appease the Lord, with
our own philosophies on what God is, or is there a God at
all? And by nature are children of
wrath, but God who is rich in mercy, who has caused us to be
born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead, has given us eternal life. By grace, you have been
saved, beloved, and this is the creative, powerful work of the
divine. that we call God, who is the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And sometimes men think of their
thinking too highly. Well, I know that I am but a
worm, you know. You know those songs, those Puritan
hymns. I remember a comedian sometime
in the 80s, I don't even, he said, you know, the King James
prayers and the King James hymns and all these things. And he made a spoof of A Mighty
Fortress in that same tune. I know that I am but a worm,
so step over me, God, and watch me squirm. You know, you can't
even hardly say that. And that's what we do. Sometimes
we think, oh, you know, I know what I am, so I'm just gonna
put that out there for the Lord, and now I'm more spiritual because
I'm so sinful. And I know that I'm sinful. Do
we know that we're sinful? Absolutely. All regenerate people know that
they're sinful. but we're also righteous. How? Because we have been credited
Christ's righteousness. So we have escaped the wrath
of God, not because of what we are, or who we are, or what we've
accomplished, or what God is doing in us, and how he's creating
us to be. That's Phariseeism, that's self-righteousness. We have escaped the wrath of
God because that is what he's created for us, in Christ Jesus,
to be his workmanship. And then the outcome of that
is a whole lifetime of learning and growing and loving and living
and serving and praising God through the love that we have
for one another and the patience and the long suffering and the
unity and the reconciliation as God has reconciled us to himself
through the blood of the cross. So we reconcile to one another
because of the blood of the cross, because of the blood of the cross,
not by the blood of the cross. But men think too highly of their
own thinking. And sometimes we get so bogged down into the intellectual
pursuits of these ideas that we actually take the majority
of the sheep of Christ and we push them out the walls. And
they stand in the corner going, what are you talking about? Not
important to me, I guess. I'll just go pick my nose. And I've certainly been guilty
of that. Intentional or not, it's still
sinful. Sometimes we find ourselves justified
before God because of the state of mind we're in. That's not
true, beloved. It's not true. Sometimes we think that we're
justified before God because of the knowledge that we hold.
That's not true either. Because the knowledge of the
new life, the new birth is that Christ is our righteousness.
The knowledge is that Christ has settled the debt. The knowledge
is that Christ has purchased his people by his own life. And
so on and so forth. Sometimes men think their service
and their works and their obedience or their zeal counts before the
jury of the divine. That's how I said it last week.
But there is no trial. There is no jury. God has decreed
guilty. There's no court hearing. There's
no hearing. The verdict is done. The sentencing has been sent.
We're waiting for the death row walk, for the green mile of eternity. But the saints will not see it.
The elect will not know it. We await for glorification, not
death. live as Christ, but to die is
far better than living in this world. Then why would we remain? Why should we want to remain?
For the sake of one another, for the sake of the name of our
Lord, together. That's why. The guilty verdict has been done.
And no amount of well-meaning service and sacrifice will do.
No, if we do not stand before our Father in His grace, we stand
before our Father in His wrath. So for us, beloved, we are thankful
that it's not up to us. We're thankful that the image
of God is not what He is creating in us. We're thankful that we
are not bound to some type of idea that we must rule as God
rules, and live as God lives, and be the righteousness of God
in our own merits, or our own ability, or our flesh, but that
Christ is the fullness of the image of God revealed in the
flesh. And so therefore we are counted
in Him, and that's the punchline of this teaching. Go to Psalm 8. We read some out of Romans last
week very quickly. It sort of popped into my head
at the end of things. But Psalm 8, I read this morning
as we began. Psalm 8 says, O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth. Have you ever
sung that song, the old Hosanna or Maranatha group, you know?
Oh Lord, oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
And that's all we do. Why don't we sing the rest of
it, you know? I used to love that song. I used to love that. It's a really
good song for instruments. And some trumpets and all sorts of
things. But that's where it comes from, song making. But listen to what David praises
after he says, O Lord, O Lord, how majestic is your name in
all the earth. You have set your glory above
the heavens. I want you to think about this
for a second. Above that which you have created, your glory
is greater. We can look at the world, we
can go to Romans 1. In fact, you probably put your finger
there. You can go to Romans 1 and you can see that Paul says that
God is known because we can see his divine power, namely his
creative power, right? But the glory of God is revealed
above what he's created. Above mere man, above mere animals,
above mere cosmic infinites. Above it. And he says in verse two, out
of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength
because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger. And
we don't have time to really get into that. But I mean, is
that not echo what Paul affirms in chapter one of first Corinthians?
Who is the wise? Where are the intelligent? Where
are those who know more than everybody else? They're not being
used by God in this context. Jesus, numerous times, would
say in a way of speaking, unless you have the faith like a child,
you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And a child trusts. A child expects. A child thinks, okay, I'm hungry.
Mama's gonna feed me. Not, oh no, now some children,
there are exceptions. It's a picture, folks. It's not
a rule. It's a picture. There are a lot
of children in the world who are hungry and who don't have
parents. But in a general sense, children don't walk around scavenging
for food in our culture, in our homes. Maybe they do, but they
don't have to. When I look at your heavens,
David says, He calls it the work of your fingers, verse 3. I see
the moon and the stars which you have put in order, which
you have set in place, which you have purposed. What is man? When I look at all this, he asked
the question, what is man? That you're mindful of him. Have
you ever heard this before? Yes, you've heard this before in Hebrews
1. Hebrews 1 and 2 gives us these
quotations as Paul writes to these Hebrew believers. and he's
pointing to one particular thing, and that thing is the Messiah,
who is Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living
God. Now look at all that you've made,
and what is man that you're mindful of him, and here is the direct
relationship to Jesus Himself as He took this mantle, as He
took this name, above any name on this earthly ministry, the
Son of Man. that you should care for him. And then we know that
David is speaking of the incarnate Son of God, Jesus the Christ,
because we see this in chapter, I mean, in verse five, we see
this in chapter one of Hebrews. Yet you have made him a little
lower than the angels of heaven and crowned him with all that
you are and with honor. You have given him dominion over
the work of your hands. You have put all things under
His feet, Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter three. You've put Him over dominion
and under His feet all things, all the beasts, the sheep and
the oxen, the beasts of the fields, all the birds of the heaven and
the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the
sea. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic
is Your name in all the earth. So here is the glory of God revealed
in the person of Jesus Christ. This is not new, we know that,
we see it, don't we? We know what John wrote, and
John used the creation account as the punch in the gut to get
the people he was writing to to pay attention to the whole
point of the revelation of God through Moses. In the beginning was the Word. And the fullness of all that
God is is revealed in Christ Jesus in its completeness. He
is the Son of Man. He is the great man. He is the righteousness of God.
He is what the law shows us in His person, in His being. So
the image of God is Jesus Christ perfectly. So now back to Genesis
1. This image of God. Back to idols, back to statues,
back to representations. Jesus is not the representation. In Colossians chapter 1, what
does the scripture teach us about Jesus? The scripture teaches
us that Jesus is the exact imprint of his nature. I mean, Hebrews
1. In Colossians chapter 1, we see
up in verse 13, He has delivered us from the
domain of darkness. He has separated us. He has transferred us to
the kingdom of his beloved son and whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of the sins. He is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him, all things were created
in heaven on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through
him and for him. And he is before all things,
and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body,
the assembly. He is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. You understand
when we hear this language in the apostles' writings, specifically
Paul here in Colossians and in Hebrews, he is showing that this
language is showing us Christ's preeminence. It's not talking
about Christ's existence. It's not talking about Christ
as a created thing. It's talking about Christ is
the first of all things, and the point of all things, and
the owner of all things, and he has dominion over all things,
and he upholds all things. Now think about that for just
a minute in the mystery of the incarnation. The incarnation
is when God created a body for himself in the womb that he created
in the person of Mary and he came into that as a human being
laying down his divine attributes that he might be fully man but
yet at the same time though separated in the context of his new created
body he was still God. And that's as far as we can take
it. That dumb look that we all just had That's as far as we
can take it. Or I had a dumb look, I don't
know if y'all did or not. That's as far as we can take
it. We can't come back and say, let's write some books on that. The book's already been written
on that. You realize that everything that we say that takes away from
the context of scripture is superfluous, right? So stick here. And God is in
the business of revealing Himself through His Word in every generation,
in every life, and in every person that belongs to Him. The problem
is the discipline of not being in the Word and together around
the Word. Enough. Yes, this may motivate us to
go, Billy Bob, gee, I'm going to go home tomorrow and I'm going
to start reading the Bible. And it works until tomorrow.
Because that's what life does. Some of us are so busy and burdened
that it's just tough. So thank God we have the ability
to gather together and take time out. But beloved, we're only
going to absorb that which we are eating. We're only going
to digest what we put in our mouth. We don't go to the buffet
and take snapshots of it, put it on Instagram and say, man,
I'm full. No, we eat. And that's what we have to do
with the scripture. So here we see that Jesus is
not an idol. Jesus is not a representation.
Jesus is the essence of God. He is God in the flesh. He is
the perfect man who is God. In Hebrews 1, God, in many times,
many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these
last days, He has spoken to us by His Son. Whom? He appointed the heir of all
things, through whom He created the world. He is the radiance
of the glory of God in the exact imprint of His nature. And here
Paul says again, and upholds the universe, how? By the word
of His power. So this is showing that Jesus
Christ is God in the flesh, the very eternal God. who became
a man to fulfill the very image of God in humanity as the only
son of man who is our righteousness. And then after making purifications
for sin, after he cleansed his people forever, after he purchased
them by his blood, after he appeased the wrath of the father, After
justice was satisfied, what does he do? He sits down at the right
hand of majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels
as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. For to which of the angels did
God ever say? He's not an angel. He's God the
Son. You are my son and today I begotten.
Or again, I will be a father and he will be a son to me. And again, when he brings the
firstborn into the world, he says, let all God's angels worship
him. Where in the world can we worship
something that is not God and not be in sin? Nowhere. And that's why I believe sometimes
that idolatry of humanism It's what Paul uses in Romans 1. They
do not give God thanks for who he is and what he's done, but
instead they worship man. They worship us. They worship
ourselves. They worship our accomplishments.
They worship, I mean, nobody's, I mean, probably somebody are,
but I mean, you don't hear people bowing down to statues of people
as a whole in our culture, but we do bow down in our hearts
and our affections to things that we have and things that
we've done and things that we are and those relationships that
we adore and we worship them instead of thanking God for who
he is because in our humanity we are going to love ourselves and thinking that we're something
when the scripture says that Jesus Christ is more excellent
than all things and that even the angels of the ether of the
spiritual realm are to worship the Son of God. Look at verse 8 of Hebrews 1.
If you haven't followed me there, sorry, I'm all over the place
this morning, I'm sorry. And I've got other places I want
to go, but I won't get there. God the Father says of the Son
in verse 8, Your throne, listen to this,
your throne, this is God the Father speaking of the Son of
Man. Your throne, oh God, he calls him God, is forever and
ever. The scepter, the ruling power
of your righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom, is the
symbol of who you are and your glorious kingdom. You have loved
righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has
anointed you. God calls Jesus God, and then
he says, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness
beyond your companions. And you, Lord, God says of the
sun, laid the foundations of the earth in the beginning and
the heavens at the work of your hands. They will perish, but
you remain. They will wear out like a garment,
like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will
be changed, but you are the same and your years will have no end. You want to see what creation
is all about? It is nothing but a temporary dust mat to prepare
the entrance of the fullness of Christ and the new creation
with his people that only he can make righteous. Sit at my right hand until I
make your enemies a footstool on your feet. We need to pay
close attention, Paul says to these Hebrews. Need to pay close
attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. Beloved,
we need to pay close attention to what we're hearing so that
we do not drift away. Jesus Christ is the fullness
of the image of God. Jesus Christ is the one, the
only one who has ever had the image of God fully in reality. Humanity It's just a little statue
of that. Just like the temple. And when
we get to Eden, I'm gonna show you, beloved. The descriptions
of Eden map out the description of the temple. Where God meets
man. It's inner, outer, and layers
after layer after layer. It's the exact, it's the exact
replica of the temple. So creation in and of itself
is nothing but a shadow of redemption, shadow of the power of God who
calls us to be his own because he's purchased us and he's called
us to be his own and to create it before the world began. And
the image that we bear is the shadow, just like the temple,
just like everything else. Everything else just points to
Christ. So the image of God and man is how we point to Christ
in the waiting as a temporal thing for the true thing. Let me give you some understanding. Idols, as we've heard, are small
representations of the true, the real thing. And so man reveals
God's goodness that he exists because God made him and therefore
man is good in that he is created for God's purposes, not because
man is good in and of himself. Man can display God's sovereignty
and rule because as we saw in Psalm 8, that Jesus Christ and
in Colossians 1 and Colossians 3 and Hebrews 1, Jesus Christ,
even in his humanity, even in his now glorified body, is the
ruler of all things. He is the one who has put the
image of God in its right place, its right perspective. So we
are just shadows of that. We're shadows of that and that
we have responsibility to maintain creation. We have a responsibility
to multiply and continue to see children born into our lineage. We have a responsibility to do
as Jesus tells us to do, like in Colossians 3, over in verse
8, where Paul tells the church of Colossae, but now you must
put them all away. What is he talking about? All
this idolatry, sexual impurity, passions of the flesh, evil desires,
covetousness. He says it's idol worship. Why
is it idol worship? Because we're worshiping man
when we have covetousness. We see something man has and
we wish we had it. We see something man was and we wish we were. It's idol worship. We're worshiping
the idol. We're worshiping the statue.
We're worshiping the shadow of Jesus Christ. This bodily form
and this living in this life and this creative order is just
a picture of who Christ is and one day will make all things
right under His feet. You realize things that are under
the feet of Christ don't crawl out from under there. It's not a storage ottoman where
things are just trying to get out. It's a conquering position.
It's done. It's finished. Some of you got
the storage ottoman picture. And so Paul says put away anger,
put away wrath, put away malice, put away slander, put away obscenities
from your mouth. Do not lie. Seeing that you put
off the old self with its practices and put on the new self, which
is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its creator,
who is Jesus Christ, the new Adam. The righteousness of God in the
flesh. This is what we do. We're being
renewed in our understanding of this knowledge, not in our
transformative lives. Even if we never lie again, we're
still liars. And that's not the point. God
is not going to share. He's not going to create in a
human being other than Jesus Christ the righteous a sense
of righteousness in which someone could compare this person to
Jesus in such a way that it might be hard to tell the difference. Joseph and Noah and Moses and
Jonah. All types of Christ. But there's
only one Christ. So creation and the human and
of humanity and the image of God is to show the set apartness
ultimately. We show how the image of God
should be understood according to the context. God has out of nothing separated
nothing to something and out of that something he separated
the sky and the earth and out of that he separated the waters
to create atmosphere and seas and out of the seas he separated
the land from under the seas and to the seas and then out
of that he created the platform, the place to where certain types
of things could live and only certain types of things could
live. We don't have, other than penguins, but we don't have birds
that live in the sea and we don't have, you see, we don't have
whales that live on the land. And He separated all these things,
and He separated the days, and He separated even the ruling
of the picture of the reflection of the sun at night with the
moon and the celestial things. Or to display this perfect order
and this promise of light never being overcome by darkness. So now, we understand what holiness
really is. by this example of Genesis 1.
Holiness is being set apart, being separate. So God's holiness
is that he's above all things. Christ is above all things even
though he came lowly for a while. He took on flesh for a while.
He was still above all things. That's holiness. That's separate. This is what we need to understand
about God, and what we need to understand about the persons
of God, our triune God, and we need to understand about the
purposes of God, and we need to understand about the people
of God. That we, just as humanity, has been set apart, and even
though we have the first son, Cain, and the second son, Abel,
of which God hated one and loved the other, to show his electing
purposes in grace, in separating, it didn't matter who you're born
into, God chooses you. God has created us for his own
purpose and separating that then creating a people out of no people.
Abram to be the father of many nations to become the elect who
are Israel that showing the separation and then out of Israel having
the remnant that are separated for his purposes but ultimately
it is Christ the God-man who is separated from glory coming
to the world that he created to show his good news redemption
and his power in redemption to separate a people for himself
by dying in their place and giving them and to their account his
righteousness, his goodness, the essence of his divine glory
that we one day now will share with him. So God is set apart from all
creation and man is set apart from all
creation. And then out of man the elect are set apart from
all humanity to be joined with the one who is above, who is
holy, who is above. who is holy, above, separate,
all things, and share in His glory. And what we do when we
share in the glory of Christ is that He recreates us with
a whole new world. He will roll this world up. He's
not going to make it better. He's not going to fix it. It's
not a renovation project. It is by the word of His power.
Let there be no more, and it shall not be anymore. Now let
there be the new, and the new shall be, and we shall be made
new. forever. And he will forever
get the glory for it and forever get the praise for it. And how do we share in the glory
of Christ? There's a lot of ways that we see that, but ultimately
we rest. As God sat down, finished the work of creation that has
no end, that day has no end. This is the promise of the rest.
As Jesus finished the work of redemption and now said, it is
finished. The light that came into the
world has finished the work of revealing the goodness of God
for His people and the purposes of all that exists in Christ
Jesus. That's why it says it was made
for Him and to Him and through Him. All things were made by
Him and for Him and to Him and through Him. I'm being redundant. But we share in that glory when
we share in that rest. And our faith today rests in
part, right? Yeah, we can see the truth, it
has come. We can see the pages of Scripture, but like 1 Peter
says, sometimes we are in the midst of life in such a damning
way, in such a disturbing way, in such a disastrous way, that
it's hard to find the joy of Christ. But we look to that which
is unseen. So Christ even today is unseen
except by the revelation of Scripture. The image of God in humanity
is unseen because Christ isn't here. So we look to the Word
of God and by the Spirit of God, we together begin to understand
what this day of rest is all about. And we long for that day
when Christ sits down with us forever and we share in the rest,
having been separated from this world and its fallenness for
the rest of eternity. We will be resting with Christ,
beholding what he has made as we are a part of what he has
made and having all unity with him because of his glorious grace. So the image of God is not about
in man, it's not about our work and all these different things.
It's about our rest, waiting for the one who truly bears the
image of God in fullness. knowing the one who truly bears
the image of God. Now, can we parse out some interesting ideas
and say, you know, I want to talk about work and all that
kind of stuff as the Lord grants me understanding. But beloved,
none of the things that we do as human beings will suffice.
Because only what God does in creation will suffice. God's
gospel is that he will make his people righteous. And he has
done so in Christ. and that Jesus Christ is the
final man. He is the new Adam, the second
Adam, the perfect, perfect righteousness. He is the image of God in flesh.
And so when we worship our work and we worship ourselves and
when we long in sinfulness, we're doing what the flesh does, we're
worshiping the statue, not the truth. But beloved, when we worship
Christ, we worship the one true God. Because He has told us and
the angels of glory to worship Him. For He is worthy. He is
worthy. And He has saved us from our
sins. Let's pray. Father, there are so many things
that we could talk about relating to this. And Lord, Your Word
is sufficient. Father, save us from our own research. And help
us to see the simple expression of waiting upon the true righteousness
who is Jesus Christ. Of understanding that even though
we are little tiny statues of your glory, it is only because
Christ came in the image of a sinner. But he sinned not. And His death counted as a substitute
for the forgiveness of sins for all of those whom you have loved
eternally. And His death satisfied holy
justice and righteousness and wrath. And you have poured out
your hate and wrath and vengeance upon the very one you love, the
Son of Man, the Son of God. so that you would be just in
forgiving your elect people their sin. And Father, His resurrection
from the dead, His glorification in His flesh is proof of the
promise, just as the stars in the sky are proof of the promise
of the election of Your glory to Abraham and the power of and
the permanence of your power to the world at large. Father,
you have shown us the beauty of the simple gospel and revealed
to us specifically who you really are in Christ, that we may see
you face to face by looking at Jesus. And that when we do see
Him face to face, in our flesh, we shall be made to be like Him
in all glory, to share that which is not ours to claim, but yours
to give. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Let's worship together, beloved.