Imago Dei Series - The Divine Blueprint - Genesis 1:26-28

I invite you to take your Bible and go to the book of Genesis in chapter one.

You don't have to go very far.

And we'll spend most of our time there.

We live in a world with questions of identity and purpose and meaning.

Who am I?

What is my identity?

Why am I here?

That's my purpose.

Where am I going?

Does my life have any significance or meaning?

These are questions that press on everybody.

Regardless of how old you are, regardless of your background, regardless of your story, they surface in a thousand different ways.

Just think about someone who is a young professional, just finishing working.

At the end of the day, she's in her car and wondering why her life still feels purposeless, even though she's done everything that's been expected of her.

Or think about a high school student looking through social media and looking at all the different profiles of people and wondering, you know, what about my life?

What am I supposed to do with it?

What kind of significance do I have?

Or, like I was in the U.S.

Air Force at the age of 20, lying on my bed in the barracks and looking up at the ceiling and saying, Is there more to life than this?

There's got to be a purpose here.

Or a widow who's sitting at a table alone and wondering if she matters anymore.

Or a child.

And the simplest but even deepest question, why did God make me?

Those are questions, right, that all of us ask.

And they're not abstract questions, they're very, very personal and very deep questions.

The world around us has a lot of answers.

They have loud answers, they say them confidently, as if they're speaking the truth.

But when you think about them, they're really actually very thin.

Secular humanism tells us we've evolved from animals and we have to invent our own meaning.

Individualism tells us to look within and define meaning according to our own interests.

Consumerism tells us that our worth is what we can produce or what we purchase.

Eastern spirituality tells us that we're really just a drop in an ocean of being, some ethereal being.

Postmodernism tells us our identity is fluid, it's constructed, and it's endlessly shifting.

And political ideologies will tell us that we're defined by our group, our class, or even our struggle.

Now, each of these frameworks tries to answer those deep questions we ask ourselves.

And even if there was a kernel of truth in them, and there's not much truth to be found in any of those, actually, but even if there were, it would be incomplete.

There's no one of them that can hold a soul and carry it.

And it's into this confusion that the Bible speaks and speaks to us with breathtaking clarity.

And it doesn't answer us vague philosophical uh explanations or self-help slogans.

It actually answers us with a truth.

A truth that's found on the very first page of Scripture itself.

One that will ground our identity, one that will anchor us in dignity, and one that will guide us with purpose.

It tells us that we were made by God, that we're known by God, and that God has an intended purpose and destiny for us.

And so, because of that, we are creatures with dignity and purpose and destiny.

Among all of God's creation, including the angelic realm, we are unique.

For God made us according to his image.

Men and women set apart with God's own person and with a design specially made for us.

We're not accidents, we're not products of chance, we're creatures that God has made for a particular purpose that He spoke into our being.

And so we're going to look at this more deeply over the next several weeks.

And I pray that this study does things for us and to us, that it'll reshape how we think about ourselves and reshape how we might think about other people.

That it'll bring assurance to us in the midst of this morass and confusion that's in our culture and maybe even rattling around in our own minds.

That it'll bring stability to us when we're brought to places of insecurity by the assertions that we hear all the time.

And I pray that it'll also bring hope to those who have been so pressed upon by these ideologies that they find themselves in despair.

It's going to trace a story from Genesis through Revelation.

We're going to see all of Scripture in these next several weeks.

We're going to see how God's intentionality for us gives meaning to our life.

It provides and exposes the brokenness that we feel and reveals the beauty of God's redeeming work in Christ.

It's going to go several different places.

So tonight we're going to begin at the foundation.

Created in God's image, his divine blueprint.

And we're going to spend time in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And there we're going to see God's intentional design for us.

We're going to see God's exalted place of us.

And we're going to see his calling over all of us.

And there's a refrain that we're going to use this evening that's the three points of the message, but it's also a refrain that I think can carry us through every single one of these.

We are made by God, we are marked by God, and we are designed to manifest God's glory.

We're made by God, marked by God, and designed to manifest God's glory.

So let's open Genesis chapter 1 and begin a look at our first text and see this: that we are made by God, by his deliberation and by his design.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

If you take a look at verse 26, and just rest your eyes there on the very first phrase of that.

Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.

Now, before we go any further into this text, lift your eyes just some verses ahead of that, where God is creating the other things.

And notice the shift of the language.

Up to this point in time in Genesis chapter 1, God has spoken with a very steady pattern and rhythm.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Let there be, let there be, let there be, and there was.

Creation is unfolded at his word, his majestic, ordered, effortless word.

And then we get to verse 26.

Do you see the difference?

God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.

This is not how God's spoken in all these other places.

Every time he's made something, he's simply told it to be until he gets here.

This is not a language of accident.

It's a language of intention and divine deliberation.

And it's crafted in such a way, obviously, there's no occurring to God's occurring.

Like someone said, Did ever occur to you that nothing's ever occurred to God?

Right?

But here in this language, it is as if God pauses, as if God deliberates, as if he considers and consults, and then speaks.

This is to highlight, to slow us down, to break the pattern, to cause us to recognize something different is happening here.

Humanity is not spoken into existence with the same formula as light, as land, or created creatures.

We are different.

Humanity is a result of God's divine counsel.

Father, Son, and Spirit.

And here, Genesis is bringing us through these plural pronouns, let us are, to overhear the inner counsel of God, if you will.

The Father who says, Let there be, the Spirit who hovers over the creation, the Son and John 1, who was made all things, and by him, and without him nothing was made that was made.

Father, Son, and Spirit.

Speaking here, in divine contrast to everything else that's been made.

What does this tell us?

Our making by God sets us apart.

Naturalistic evolution will tell us that we're products of random forces, an accident of atoms and time.

But Genesis tells us, in just a short phrase, that God has deliberately made us with intention and purpose.

We're not random at all.

Secular humanism would tell us that we're simply rational animals that must invent our own meaning.

But the book of Genesis tells us that God implanted meaning into us before we were even made.

Individualism tells us to look within and define ourselves by our feelings.

But here, Genesis tells us that we are defined by God's intentions, not our own.

Eastern spirituality says we're a drop in an ocean of being, but God says that He's made us personally crafting us with care and with purpose.

Postmodernism tells us our identity is fluid, constructed, and endlessly shifting.

But the book of Genesis tells us with these words that we were designed with unchanging purpose in God.

Political ideologies tell us we're defined by a group or class or struggle.

And Genesis tells us we're defined by God's creative word.

In a world of these competing narratives, this verse is a thunderclap of truth against all those errors.

It declares that we are not self-constructed, we are not societally constructed, and we are not politically constructed beings.

We're God-shaped people.

Now take a look at verse 27 as we dig a little deeper into this.

So God created man in his own image.

He created him in the image of God.

He created them male and female.

God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.

In two verses, four different expressions of us being made in God's likeness and image.

What is that?

Does God have a stutter?

Is he simply tripping over the same words that he has to say?

No.

This is a Hebrew mechanism in order to bring emphasis to us.

You'll see this in the book of Isaiah, where in Isaiah 40, where it breaks into a new theme: comfort, comfort my people.

There's that double expression to show how deeply God wants his people to be comforted.

There is that statement in Isaiah 6: holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

And here we have a four-peat, not a three-peat, but a four-peat.

This is unique in all other places of Scripture for it to be repeated four times like this.

It's not a grammatical accident, it's a theological revelation.

God wants us to capture that we are a unity and a plurality, a commonality of people, a single human family made up of different people, male and female.

There's this idea of a corporate reality and yet also our individual lives.

There's a lot to say about that.

And on February 22nd, when Micah opens up this passage of scripture and others to talk about being created male and female, we'll be able to unpack some more of that.

But for this moment, we want to see this that we are not merely isolated individuals.

And we're not simply a member of a particular group as opposed to other groups, but we're part of a whole humanity that God has designed, intended, and dignified by being made according to his image.

So listen to these words.

Before you were ever made, before you ever made a choice, before you either succeeded or failed in any of your days or any of your pursuits, God has already spoken his dignity over you.

There's passages of scriptures that talk about God's design before the ages, before the world was even created.

Jeremiah was called in Jeremiah 1:5.

Jeremiah 1:5

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

It's like an architect.

I'm not an architect, but I used to love watching the Brady bunch.

And Mr.

Brady was an architect, and he used to sit there in his architectural drawings in his den, right?

You remember seeing that?

And he'd sit there and look at all the designs that he had laid out there.

God has got a design and purpose and intent that reaches way before there was ever any matter brought into existence.

We're made by God, made by divine deliberation, made by divine intention, and made in relational love.

A part we'll look at later.

So if you've ever thought yourself insignificant, overlooked, or purposeless, hear this.

Let us make mankind.

Let's move on to the second point.

Not only are we made by God, but we're marked by God.

Again, look at that passage, 26 and 27.

Make man in our image, according to our likeness.

So God created man in his own image and created him in the image of God.

He created them male and female.

As I said, this is Hebraic intensification.

This is a poetic expression meant to plant within us just how important this is.

If we're to know anything about ourselves, we should know this.

We're made by God and we're marked by God.

Now, the text doesn't say that we are the image of God in the sense that we are a perfect reflection of Him, but we're made according to the image of God.

And that distinction matters because we'll in a few weeks be talking about Christ, the true image of God.

And we'll understand that we were made according to Christ, who is already that image.

He is the express image of this person.

And so here we're designed not only with dignity, but also designed with destiny.

That we were destined to be brought into the very image of Christ Himself, who is the image of God.

And even Adam and Eve, when they were created, before they even fell, still needed something more than what they were at that first creation.

The scriptures tell us in 1 Corinthians 15 that we'll be bearing the image of the heavenly, in which death will never ever grip us again.

So there's something about being in Christ and according to his image that's greater than even the possible sin and death of Adam himself.

There's a divine intention, a God-given identity, according to a blueprint of Christ Himself.

Now, a lot of us have been taught that the image of God is to be understood and related to terms of abilities that we might have, whether it's our rationality or our creativity or our moral awareness or our capacities to relate to one another.

Certainly all those things are grand and glorious things, and don't want to look at any of those in a narrowed way.

But they show the fingerprints of God on us, but they aren't the image themselves.

They are expressions of a person who is made in the image of God.

Just think about it for a second.

If image was reason, then what would happen to those who have their cognitive abilities diminished by sickness or accident?

If image was creativity, what about those who are more creative than those who are not?

What if image was moral awareness?

Then what does sin do to that image?

If image was relational capacity, then what happens when we face a trauma or we're left in places of loneliness?

Does that diminish our likeness and our mark of God on us?

No, it doesn't.

Scripture tells us in Genesis 9 and verse 6, after the fall, after the flood, humanity is still in the image of God.

And the basis for our protection of human life is given in Genesis 9, 6, where it says, Whoever sheds human blood by humans, his blood will be shed.

For God made humans in his image.

Even after the flood, which is well after the fall, an expression about those who are in a place of vulnerability and weakness, who are possibly empowered and even killed by someone else, God says you should not do that, because that person who was murdered was made in God's image.

Or James chapter 3 and verse 9.

James 3 · chapter mention

It tells us this that cursing another person is wrong.

Why?

Not because their qualifications didn't meet up, not because they had some sort of value to them that we thought was important.

It says we shouldn't curse another person because that person is made in God's image.

So image is not something we achieve, it's something that God declares.

And like I said, he declares us as people with a corporate and yet also an individual identity.

So we can't think of ourselves simply as an isolated individual.

And we certainly can't think of ourselves as a member of a particular group, as though our identity was marked by that and that alone.

We're part of a whole humanity that God Himself has designed and dignified and claims.

And like I said, not only do we have dignity, but we have destiny.

We're designed to be made in the image of Christ Himself.

Think about these passages of where our glorification intends to bring us.

Romans 8.29, for those he foreknew, he also predestined to be what?

Conformed to the image of his son.

2 Corinthians 3 18.

We all are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

Colossians 3 10.

You're being renewed in knowledge according to the image of God.

Your creator.

There's a destiny that God has designed for us.

A destiny we find can only be found in fulfillment through Jesus Christ.

This image is a blueprint to what God has intended for us.

So what does this dignity and destiny of our marked by God mean for us?

What are the implications of it?

It tells us that our worth is not based upon our ability, it's not based on our productivity, it's not based on our intelligence, it's not based on our success, it's not based on our age, it's not based on our health, it's not based on our social standing, it's not based on our group identity, and it's definitely not based on our self-expression.

We are marked by God, because He created us by design with dignity and a destiny in mind.

This is why every life matters.

This is why every person deserves honor.

This is why every act of injustice is an assault upon God's intentions for how we should live.

And this is why every person that we meet carries a weight of glory that they may not recognize or even welcome, but that they possess simply by being created by God.

Francis Schaefer was known for his deeply embodied reverence for the image of God in every person he encountered.

Students and visitors to Le Brie would recall that every time he would meet someone, especially someone he sensed who had been either wounded or overlooked or was spiritually adrift, that he would make some sort of physical gesture toward them, an expression of deference and respect, as an intentional act of honoring the image of God in that person.

And he did so with particular purpose toward those who might have never felt that that was them.

It wasn't a formal ritual, but it was characteristic of his posture toward all people.

He believed every person, regardless of belief or background, carried the dignity that demands recognition.

And so he did.

And this is where the familiar categories that many of us have grown up with that I even thought of, structural and functional as they are, as expressions of the image of God, really don't measure up.

Our ability to think or create or love or discern or relate.

They're all good.

And we'll see in a moment how they can be used as image bearers, but how they can't be used as definitions of image itself.

They're expressions of what it means to be created in God's image.

And they call us to be stewards of this creation, to cultivate creativity and culture, and to exercise dominion in a way that's responsible.

But those things aren't the image themselves.

So hear this clearly.

Now, let's look at the last point.

We've looked at being made by God and marked by God, but let's look at the last point about manifesting his glory.

Take a look again at Genesis 1 and verse 26.

And God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.

You see, there's a purpose statement there, isn't there?

And again in verse 28, God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.

Rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and every creature that crawls on the earth.

So God who deliberated is the God who created, is the God who blessed, is now the God who commissions.

We're not only created with dignity, but we're also created with responsibility.

And here is where the functional dimension of image, those things that people define as image, our calling, our stewardship, our dominion come into view.

They're not the image themselves, but they are the mission of those who are the image bearers.

We're sent into this world to do something.

And what is that that we are to do?

We are to take the image of God that we have and bring it into this world.

He's inviting us to reflect his character in every place that we engage in this world.

Whether we're dealing with the earth or with plants or with animals or with each other, in every place, God is to be on display because we are the ones in this world who bear that image.

This is what it means to manifest his glory, to put his character on display.

So when we think about God, who's wise and just and generous and life-giving, so too we, as image-bearers, are to take our oversight of all the creation that he's made and do so in a way that's wise and just and generous and life-giving.

We're to mirror him.

Psalm 8, verses 4 to 6.

Psalms 8:4–6

What is man, human being, that you remember him?

A son of man that you look after him.

You made him a little less than God and crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands.

We were made by God and marked by God to manifest God's glory.

And so, in our rule, in our relationships, in our reason, and in our responsibilities, we reflect Him.

We work with integrity, we create with beauty, we lead with humility, we serve with compassion, we speak with truth, we love with fidelity, and we treat one another with dignity.

Every sphere of life is a stage upon which we let the character of God shine.

The language here in Genesis 1 tells us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

And it's not merely about population growth.

There's a lot to say about that, but I've been talking about missions a lot.

But it's about extending God's person into every corner of creation.

Yes, by procreation, but also by everything else that we do.

To fill the earth with Him, to fill the earth with His justice, with His mercy, with His beauty, with His creativity, with His order, with His life-giving flourishing.

And this is why culture matters and work matters and relationships matter, justice matters, and compassion matters.

I sat with an old retired pastor some years ago.

And he brought me into his library.

Well, his house was his library.

And he had a number of books pulled out away from the other books because he wanted to take me on a journey.

And he took me to this one very thick book and he pulled it off the shelf and he said, This is the first English printing of Calvin's Institutes.

And he said, In this one, election is not ever mentioned.

That was a surprise to me.

Might be a surprise to you, too.

And then he grabbed some other books and he said, This is the first English translation of Calvin's fifth edition.

And then he took it and he went about two-thirds of the way into it and plopped it open.

And he said, This is actually the first place where election's mentioned in Calvin's institutes.

He said, a lot of young theologians would like to think that Calvinism is about God's sovereignty and salvation.

And it is.

But it's so much more than that.

Calvin believed that God's sovereignty was seen in all spheres of life.

This was only just one expression of it.

And that's why election didn't show up in his first edition, and didn't show up until two-thirds of the way through of his fifth edition.

Why?

Because we are to reflect God's justice and mercy and beauty and creativity and order and flourishing in everything we do.

Everything we do.

Every act of goodness, every work of creativity, every moment of faithfulness as a person who is in the image of God is something that manifests Him in this world.

Now, of course, Genesis chapter 1 is not the end of the story.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

It's simply the beginning.

Genesis 3 is a reality.

And we live in a world where sin distorts and fractures and corrupts, where our stewardship becomes selfishness, and our creativity becomes idolatry, and our dominion becomes domination, and our relationships become battlegrounds.

But even in a broken world, that calling remains.

After the fall, after the flood, we hear the words of Genesis 1, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

It still stands.

You are responsible to bring God's character wherever you go.

We'll get to that lesson.

That lesson's coming.

About how we can be actually as we were meant to be and live out our responsibility as we would.

So here we are.

Told that we were made by God, marked by God to manifest God's glory.

That we are to live a life of purpose.

Not just when we gather for praise, but in daily obedience.

Not only in spoken testimony within a church service, but in bodied faithfulness in everything that we do.

To live a life that says in every sphere, in every season, in every relationship, and God is good, God is gracious, God is glorious.

That's the divine blueprint.

You're made by God, the result of divine deliberation, crafted by Father, Son, and Spirit.

You're marked by God, creating, created with dignity and a destiny.

And you were called to manifest his glory with a responsibility to bear his image, his character, his goodness, and his purposes in this world.

Well, this is just the beginning.

We've started in Genesis, but I said this story is going to stretch us all the way through the end of the book of Revelation.

It's a story that's going to explain the world we're in right now.

It's a story that reveals this God who made us and Christ who restores us and the Spirit who renews us.

And so, for just a moment, I want to give you just a glimpse of what's ahead of us.

We've seen the divine blueprint tonight in two weeks, on February 22nd.

Micah will take us into male and female, God's intentional design for genders and relationships, the beauty of being male and female, the purpose of being in a complementary relationship.

And then we'll look at cultivating the garden, the stewardship of creation, where our work and our culture and our creativity are responsibilities that we have as God's representatives to display his character.

We'll look at the fracturing of God's designs, distorted by the tragedy of sin.

Not completely lost, but will help us to understand why this world feels broken, why we feel broken.

And then we'll look at Echoes of Eden, this deep human longing and ache for meaning, for belonging, for restoration, one in which every philosophy and every ideology and every religion is reaching to try to attain.

It helps to explain why we still feel like there's always something more to be had.

Echoes of Eden.

And then we'll see Christ as the perfect image, the true image.

And then we'll see ourselves restored in Christ Himself, the renewal that comes from Him, in which Corinthians says in 2 Corinthians 3.18, we're transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

Then we'll see our responsibilities as God's people.

The church, exploring what it means to be a community that's shaped by Christ's likeness, a people of unity, a people of love, a people of mission, and a people of witness.

We'll see how our responsibilities work themselves out in this fallen world.

We'll see how they work in areas of dignity of every life, how our work matters and can be an avenue of worship, where our ethnicity and the beauty of God's image can be seen in the diversity of how we're made.

We can see how we can understand the dignity of the human body.

And God has made us a body, and He's given that a purpose.

And we're going to bear the image of Christ who is the resurrected one who has a resurrected body.

We'll see the dignity of that.

We'll understand the hope of a restored image as we long for that life through suffering, as we seek future glory, and we'll see the promise of full restoration.

And then we'll close off finally, somewhere in the middle of July, God willing, where the Bible ends with worship and understand how we can live our days.

So let me just offer this final word.

You're not an accident.

You're not undefined.

You're not without purpose.

You're not without dignity.

God has made you.

God has marked you.

And God wants to manifest his character through you.

Those are beautiful things.

Let's pray.

Father, we're humbled by this.

The reality of it is not a truth that soaks deeply enough into any of us.

And so I, Father, I pray for us as a people.

As we go through this and see how it unpacks throughout all of your revealed word, I pray that it would truly bring us to a place of solid comfort and confidence with intent and purpose to show forth you as we should.

As we walk through this together in the weeks ahead, we pray, Father, that you would receive all the praise because this is your intent.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.