What is Man - Be Fruitful and Multiply

Well, welcome to the roots, where it's all about Jesus.

We love God, we love people, we reach the lost,

we make disciples, and we want to help you grow

in your love and knowledge of Jesus.

So we do here.

But we also know that it's the deepest roots that

grow the strongest trees. So put down roots here. We

want to grow together, Amen. Psalm eight, verses three and four.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars which you have set in place.

What is man that you are mindful of him? And

the son of Man that you care for him? And

we see all that God has created. Can't help us

stand in awe of all of it, But it also

makes us ask the question, who are we?

Why would we even matter to God?

In comparison to everything that God has created, which is

a lot of stuff. He's created a lot of things,

and they're pretty amazing things. Why would he even care

for us? Why would he care for mankind? But the

truth is that even with all these amazing things we

see that God has created, he is mindful of mankind,

and he does care for mankind so much so that

he actually created a plan and a design for mankind.

He created it for us.

We've been in a series called what is man God's

design for mankind?

What is man? God's design for mankind?

And we're talking about God's blueprint for humanity has mankind?

What are we and what are we for?

Those are really important questions for us to ask as

ones who are standing in God's creation. And the only

way we're going to know the answer to those two

questions is if we ask the one who created us

when it comes to mankind, what is God's design for mankind?

So I want you to please grab your bibles and

open them to Genesis chapter one, and we have a

bunch of bibles on that back table if you need it.

Pastor Duncan, if you wave at him, he'll run you

one enis chapter one, and we're going to start today

with some verses that are really familiar to this series

because in these verses that we actually learn a lot

about God's design for us. So we're going to be

doing is reading Genesis chapter one, verses twenty six through

twenty eight.

Just a few verses.

So let's read these verses together and then we'll pray.

Then God said, let us make man in our image

after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the

fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens,

and over the livestock, and over 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 him male and female. He created them, and

God blessed 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 over

the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing

that moves on the earth. Letus pray, God, we thank

you for your word. We're serious about listening to you

when you speak, and you've spoken to us through your words.

So God, right now we set aside the distractions that

might be in our minds, the things that are concerns

that we have coming up for this week, or what

we just the week we just had. God, we set

all that aside to focus fully on your word for

us today. So God, we open our ears and open

our hearts to hear from you and receive from you.

Today.

We thank you that you lead and guide our time

through your word. And we thank you that it does

its purpose in our hearts as you intended to do.

So thank you for all these things in Jesus name,

everybody said a men, all right, I want you to

picture this with me. Kid's birthday is coming up, and

your child has been asking for one thing on repeat,

over and over and over again. Your kid just wants

a puppy. Your kid wants a puppy. So you finally,

after all this deliberation, you finally decide why not, why

not let's just get our kid a puppy. So you

take them to the pet store and you start looking

around at all these cute little puppies running around, climbing

all over each other. Sometimes these pet stores will let

you climb inside a little cage with all the puppies.

That's great, right, and the crawling all over you. So

you get to look at all these puppies, and finally

you find the fluffiest, most floppy eared ball of fur

there and you decide this is the one. This is

the puppy for us. So you take it home. And

although it keeps peeing and pooping on literally everything, tearing

up your furniture, ripping up the floors, you see how

much joy it brings your child, and how much joy

it brings the family.

It's a great family pet.

And then one day child's outside playing with a dog

and it runs away.

What are you gonna do.

What's the first thing you do when a puppy runs away, Well,

you obviously go look for it. You shout the puppies name,

You get the family out there looking out throughout the neighborhood.

You're asking your neighbors.

You might call the local animal control to see if

they found your puppy. But if you still can't find it,

what's the next step? The next step? So we got

to get everyone involved in finding this puppy. So you

find your favorite picture of that fluffball, that floppy eared

fluffy thing. Find your favorite picture, and you head down

to Kinkos or FedEx. It's time to make some flyers, right,

That's what we do. We make flyers of our puppy.

Your goal now is to print out as many images

of this puppy as humanly possible. You want to multiply

this image, to put a flyer on every single telephone

pole in the entire town, because you want to cover

the whole earth with the images of this puppy because

it's your child's favorite birthday present, it's ever gotten in

their life.

So you need to find this puppy.

You're trying to get the puppy back, so you want

everyone on the planet to know what this puppy looks like.

You are trying to spread its image everywhere. So why

am I talking about puppies and flyers and images. Now,

we as humans are not some lost puppy. But in

a similar way, this is what God did with us.

We're made in the image of God, and he wants

his images spread across the entire globe. He wants his

image on every telephone pole in every single town. He

wants humanity to be fruitful and multiply. To be fruitful

and multiply. Now, have you ever stopped and actually asked

the question why do we have babies? I didn't say

where do babies come from? That's not what I'm asking,

But why do we have babies? Now? I think it's

a funny, silly question to stop and ponder because most

of the time it's just naturally what's going to happen. Right,

People fall in love and then there's babies. That's the

natural progression of things. But what's the point or the

purpose behind having babies. We just read that God blessed

Adam and Eve and he said, be fruitful and multiply

to have babies to fill the earth, but not just

fill it, to subdue it, to subdue it, and to

have dominion over the rest of God's creation. That God

had tasked Adam and Eve with having babies to steward

his creation for him. He made everything, and then he

made managers to manage it for him. It's actually pretty

ingenious if you think about how God designed things to work.

But not only did he create managers to manage his creation,

he also built into these managers the ability to grow

the workforce. But you didn't think about babies that way

growing the workforce. He literally duplicated his image bears to

help have dominion over his creation. And what my hope

is that we see today as we consider Genesis one

and some other texts that we're going to look at,

is that God designed image bears to bear more images.

God designed image bearers to bear more images. There's a

job that needs to be done and it takes a

lot of image bearers to do it. So God built

into humanity a copy paste button for my computer nerds

out there, a copy paste button. And what I want

to talk about today is what it means to be

fruitful and multiply. That's the first thing I want to

talk about. And the second thing is what kinds of

images should we be multiplying? So what do those images

look like? Because if God wants his image bearers to

spread across the whole earth in order to exercise dominion

over his creation, if that's what his goal is, then

we should be very interested in spreading the right images.

Right.

That should be a big concern of ours. So let's

talk about it. What does it mean to be fruitful

and multiply? And to state the obvious, it means to

have biological children, to make babies, to reproduce, but also

to do so in the way that God intended within

the covenant of marriage.

Look at Genesis chapter two.

Just turn your page, or might even be on the

same page you guys are on Genesis chapter two, Verses

twenty four and twenty five. Therefore a man shall leave

his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife,

and they shall what become one flesh. And the man

and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

What's the ordinary or natural thing that happens when a

husband and wife are naked, unashamed and become one flesh.

Now I am asking where babies come from. The wife

gets pregnant, the wife gets pregnant, they produce offspring. That's

the normal or natural or ordinary thing that happens when

two people become one flesh. This is how God designed

it to work, that men and women would join together

in the lifelong one flesh union of marriage and produce offspring.

They would produce more image bears, or as we like

to call them, little bundles of joy. And they are

little bundles of joy. Right Autumn and Isaiah, they got

one of the littlest babies in the room. That's why

I'd appoint him out little bundles of joy, because children

are blessing from God. Anyone here with children knows that

for all of the difficulties that there are associated with parenting,

they pale in comparison to the joy of what it

is to have children. And I think how cool is

that to know that within our own obedience to the

commands of God that we get to have joy. I

think that's awesome because he didn't have to make it

that way. He could have said, be fruitful and multiply

out out of a sense of duty, and there's no

joy to be had, But he didn't do it that way.

He brought joy with children and parenting. Now, Genesis one

and two, they're not the only times that God talks

about mankind multiplying on the earth. In fact, after the

blood with Noah in the Ark, it's a huge pivotal

point in all of human history. He tells Noah, his wife,

his sons, and their wives the same exact thing. So

flip over to Genesis chapter nine. Just a few pages

Genesis chapter nine, will read the first seven verses, and

God blessed Noah and his sons. It's the same thing

he did to Adam and Eve right before giving them

the charge. So in God blessed Noah and his sons,

and stead of them, be fruitful and multiply and fill

the earth.

It's exact same charge that Adam and Eve were given.

And then he says, the fear of you and the

dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth,

and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that

creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea.

Adam and Eve were told to have dominion over all

those things, weren't they. So I think this might actually

be a result of the fall, that all the animals

run in fear of man. Maybe it wasn't quite that

way before the fall.

Maybe it was.

But nevertheless, God says, into your hands, they are delivered.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.

And as I give you the green, as I gave

you the green plants, I give you everything. So Noah

and his family are told to fill the earth and

to have dominion over it. But there are some restrictions,

as we're going to see here. This is where God

reinforces how he feels about murder. Look at verse four.

But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is,

it's blood. So we don't drink the blood of anything

that's living, because life is in the blood. And for

your life blood, I will require a reckoning from every beast,

I will require it, and from man, from his fellow man,

I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

Whoever sheds the blood of man by man, shall his

blood be shed. Why, for God made man in his

own image. It's a big deal to God when you

shed blood, shed the blood of one of his image bearers,

it's a big deal to him. And it's not just

because they're an image bearer. But remember what He tasked

mankind with verse seven, And you be fruitful and multiply,

increase greatly on the earth, and multiply it. If that's

the job that God first gave to Adam and Eve,

and then he gave him the same job to know

in his whole family, to populate the earth, to fill it,

to subdue it, and have dominion over him, then it's

a big deal when someone would end the life of

one of those image bearers. Is that not doing the

exact opposite of what God said to do. To shed

the blood of man is to do the opposite of

what God commanded mankind to do to be fruitful and multiply.

God designed image bears to bear more images, not take them.

It needs to have babies, not murder them. And that's

why currently there's such a rise in people being very

vocal about abortion as become more and more common in

our day and age. So whether it's the evil of

sinful flesh, the wickedness of the world, or Satan himself,

or maybe even a mixture of all three of those things.

The goal of an abortion is to do the opposite

of the exact opposite of what God commanded humanity to do.

It's to end human life, not multiply it. It's to

murder an image bear once it's been conceived.

That's what an abortion is.

So that means anything that intentionally stops the development of

a child once conceived, no matter what stage of development

it's in, and no matter what form it takes. So

it's even things like morning after pills. They all fall

under the murder of an image bearer. It's our modern

version of child's sacrifice masked as healthcare.

God is clear the life begins a conception.

Look at Psalm one thirty nine, Verse thirteen says four

you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together where

in my mother's womb. We were knitted together in our

mother's womb by God, or when he called.

The prophet Jeremiah and Jeremiah one verse five.

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

and before you were born, I consecrated you.

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

God knew who Jeremiah was before he was even conceived,

and before he was born, God had set him apart. Or.

The last example I'll give you today is John the

Baptist Luke chapter one, verses forty one and forty two.

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby

leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the

Holy Spirit. And she exclaimed with a loud cry, blest

or you among women, and blessed is the fruit of

your womb. John the Baptist leaped in his mother's womb

when Mary, who was carrying the baby Jesus spoke.

Blessed is the fruit of your womb.

It's at the moment of conception that a new, unique

genetic code is created by God.

Life begins a conception.

This is a new unique which means unlike anyone else,

it's a unique little image bearer has been created. And

every single life is valuable to God. Every single one

is valuable to God. Every single person is purpose. No

one is here by accident. God knew every person before

they were conceived because he decided to create them. God

formed every person in their mother's womb before they were

born because he wanted to have another image bear in

the earth. He wanted to continue to spread his image

across the earth. God designed image bears to bear more images.

That's what we do. We make babies.

But I need to pause here for just a moment,

because I know this can be a very difficult topic

to talk about for many reasons. There are some of

us who may be involved in an abortion in the past,

whether you had an abortion yourself, or maybe you were

a father and just weren't quite ready to be a father,

or maybe you were a friend who is trying to

be supportive and drove the mama to a clinic. But

for all of those things, there is forgiveness in Jesus.

There is forgiveness in Jesus. All those who repent of

their sin in turn to Jesus have been forgiven and

washed clean. And the red of crimson that we were

to white as snow when Jesus died on the cross,

he died for those sins too. Now, if you haven't

repented and put faith in Jesus for salvation, then that

sin is still resting on your head. And one day

when we take our last breath or Jesus returns first,

if you haven't repented, then you have to answer for

those sins.

So I plead with you to repent and believe. That

is my plea.

I'm imploring you, which is mean begging you to get

right with God, to be reconciled to God.

And it is only through repenting of your sin and

believing in Jesus.

But abortion isn't the only tough part or part of

this topic of being fruitful and multiplying, because what if

you've been trying to have children and it hasn't been

going well, or he went to the doctor and they

say you can't have children, or maybe you've lost a child.

All of this is very, very tough, difficult to talk about.

And we may never know the reasons why God's waiting

to bring you children, or why he would take them away,

or why he would close a womb, because in scripture

you read all over the place that God closes and

opens wombs to bear children. So I would say to you,

do not lose hope. Do not lose hope. But even

if this command to be fruitful and multiply is primarily

talking about biological children, I don't want us to miss

out on the huge topic of spiritual children. And I'm

hoping that by the time I'm done talking about the

spiritual children part. This does not feel like I'm trying

to brush your feelings under the rug, because I promise

you I'm not. I don't want us to overlook what

it is to bear more images or be fruitful and

multiply by spiritual children. Have you ever noticed how Paul

talks about the believers in scripture when he writes to them.

I want you to listen to a couple of these examples.

Galatians four nineteen says, my little children, for whom I

am again in the angle wish of childbirth, until Christ

is formed in you first Thessalonians too, for if you

know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted you,

each one of you, and encouraged you and charged you

to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls

you into his own kingdom and glory. If I leave

in one ten, I appeal to you for my child Onissimus,

whose father I became in my imprisonment one Corinthians four fifteen.

For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do

not have many fathers. For I became your father in

Christ Jesus.

Through the Gospel. You hear how Paul speaks about the

people he's preached the Gospel to. They are his children.

There is children that he exhorts and encourages and charges

them to as a father would do to a child,

that they became, that he became their father in Christ

Jesus through the Gospel.

Paul wasn't married.

Paul didn't have any biological children of his own, but

he had countless spiritual children. These are all children that

he cared deeply for, and he says cause him the

anguish of childbirth. Us fellas can't really empathize with that feeling,

like you ladies can who have birth children. But he's

saying the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in them.

That's how deep.

That's the illustration he chose to use to portray how

deeply he feels about needing Christ to be formed in

his spiritual children.

So I don't want any of us to diminish the.

Importance of being a spiritual father or a spiritual mother

to someone.

We can't diminish that because the goal for.

Biological and spiritual children's actually the same. We have the

same goal to guide them to properly reflect the image

of Gesuis. That's what we're trying to do, to guide

our children to properly reflect the image of Jesus. But

there's a problem. We're all born in atom. Every image

bear is born in atom, which means we're born in sin.

This image that's supposed to look a certain way has

been marred, it's been distorted. We don't properly reflect the

image of Jesus. Jesus is the perfect man. He's what

mankind was meant to look like when God created mankind.

But because of sin, we don't reflect that image properly.

So I'm going back to our lost puppy flyer example

so that we can take a full circle, I guess.

But it's as if the right image was put in

the top of the copy here, but there was a

mark on the drum like the printing drum inside.

I'm not going to explain how copy works, but.

Now every single copy comes out has a huge smudge

on it. So none of the pictures are coming out

the way they're supposed to.

But how do we fix that?

How do we get these image bearers to properly reflect

the right image, which is Jesus, and I hate to

break it to you, but you can't.

You can't do it. I can't do it. There's only

one that can.

This is a miraculous work that's done by God himself

in the heart of every single believer. But just because

God's the one who doesn't doesn't mean we're off the hook,

because we actually do have a job to do to

synergistically work with the Lord in his work. The first

step in transforming an image from being a marred and

smudged image into the one that properly reflects God's designed

for mankind Jesus is to preach the gospel to them.

Now, why God chose to do it that way?

You're going to take that up with him, because we're

not great at preaching the gospel sometimes cause we forget,

get scared, whatever. But I'm saying God chose to do

it through the proclamation of the gospel message of Jesus Christ.

That's the first step. God designed image bearers to bear

more images. But the images that we bear come out smudged,

and the Gospel is the only way to clean the smudge.

The Gospel is the only way to bear more images

the way God intended so what do we do. We

preach the gospel to our children. We preach the gospel

to our children, our biological children, and our spiritual children.

We preach that every single image bear, We preach that

every single image bearer is smudged. They're born with a

smudge on them. That we miss the mark that God

has set for how we are to be as people.

Because we're born in sin and we willingly continue to sin.

We've broken his laws. We've rejected God's rule and his rules,

and we all deserve and are destined to have to

pay for our own sin, to receive the wrath of

God in hell for all eternity.

That's the bad part of the news, But that is

the setup for the good news.

This is where the good news of the Gospel of

Jesus brings us amazing and eternal hope. That Jesus condescended,

I means, came down to our level. The eternal Jesus,

forever existing truly and fully God humbled himself, was born

of the virgin Mary, becoming truly man to be able

to empathize with us and our plight. But instead of

failing to live the perfect life, Jesus lived the perfect

life that God demands of all humanity. And then he

willingly laid down his life. No one takes his life

from him, He willingly laid it down. He is what

we just sang about, the spotless sacrifice, who died on

the cross for the sins of all who would put

faith in him. He absorbed the wrath of God, fully

satisfying the debt that we owe to thank you God

for our sin. But here's the kicker. He didn't stay dead.

If he stayed dead, we'd have a big problem. But

he didn't.

He rose from the grave.

Jesus rose from the dead, showing that he is God

of all, including death. And now he sits on the

throne at the right hand of God, the Father all,

until he returns one day to judge the living and

the dead. And on that day everyone who is turned

to Jesus and trusted in him for salvation, those who've

repented of their sin and turned to him in faith.

Every single sin we've ever done, past, present, future wiped

away in that moment is forgiven.

And what do we get.

We get raised to eternal life. That is really really

good news. That is the good news of the Gospel.

So the gospel message that Jesus removes the smudge from

our image. It's how He starts the process of transforming

us into his image. This is how God fixes the

marred images we've spread across the earth because God designed

image bearers to bear more images. So it's not just

any image, though, is it. God's after a very specific

type of offspring. Look at Malachi chapter two.

It'll be on the screen. You don't have to turn there.

Verse fifteen says, did he not make them one with

a portion of the spirit capital s in their union?

And what was the one God seeking? Somebody say it loud,

godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit. Let none

of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.

God specifically wants godly offspring. It's not just any offspring.

He wants godly offspring. And the way we produce godly

offspring from the sinful, marred offspring that we are and

the ones that we birth.

Is through the gospel. It's through the gospel message.

God corrects these marred images into the proper image through

the gospel, through Jesus life, death, burial, and resurrection. So

now it's our job as parents whether you're biological or spiritually.

A parent is to continue to guide them towards Christ's likeness,

to guide them towards Christ's likeness, to raise them to

properly reflect the image of Jesus. And when I was

looking up different verses on how to raise up your

children or how specifically how God tells you to do it,

I found forty three verses or like passages of verses.

So I'm going to read them all right now, just kidding,

we'll be here all night, but I do want to

read a few of them, and if I can have

the worship team come up, please, I want to read

a few of these, the first ones in Deuteronomy six,

verses six and seven.

And these words that I command you today shall be

on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall

talk of them when you sit in your house, and

when you walk by the way, and when you lie down,

and when you rise.

And this is speaking about God's law.

What God demands and commands of us were to teach

what God commands to our children diligently, and him saying

when you're sitting in your house, when you're walking, when

you're lying in your rise. That just means all the time,

wh're always preaching and teaching what God commands to our children.

Proverbs twenty two, verse six has train up a child

in the way he should go, even when he is old,

he will not depart from it. Parents, you set the

direction for your children's future. You set the direction for

your children's future, and God says they'll continue in whatever

direction you start pointing them in. This is a promise

I cling to for my two boys here on the

front row all the time. They both wave at me,

and one's like, no, don't point me out. I trust

what God says that if I raise them up in

the way they should go in the Lord, that when

they are old, they will not depart from it. I

cling to that promise. But again, what way should we

train them? This is Ephesian six, verse four. Fathers, do

not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up

in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. The discipline

and instruction of the Lord. That's like the second part

of the Great Commission that every believer is told. So

teach them to obey all that Jesus has commanded. This

is how we raise our children to properly reflect the

image of Jesus. We teach them God's word. God spoke,

He didn't leave us in the dark. He put it

all in well. He said it out loud, and someone

wrote it down for us. That's what the Bible is.

The reason we go to this book is not because

it's special paper and special ink on a special press.

It's because God said them. God spoke, people heard it

and wrote it down, and that's why we have it.

We have to teach our children God's word. What does

God care about more that our children know how to

change a flat tire, build a campfire, cook a meal,

get stains out of clothes, give a public speech, balance

a check book. These are very important things for us

to teach our children. We do need to teach our

kids these things. But what does God care about most?

He cares that his image bears look like him, that

they look like Jesus. Jesus is the image of the

invisible God. If you want to see God, look at Jesus.

I'm blanking on which disciple Asmaal might have been doubting.

Thomas says, just show us the Father. Maybe it's a pharisee.

Just show us the Father. And it will be enough

for you. And he's like, what do you mean, show

me the Father? Like, if you see me, you've seen

the Father. Jesus himself saying that.

I am the Father. Are one.

If he is the image of the invisible God, that's

who Jesus is. That's the image that we ought to

look like. That's the image that God is most concerned

with us looking like. God designed image bears to bear

more images, and he wants those images to actually be

in his image.

So it sounds like we got some work to do.

There's some things that we gotta do. But what is

that work? And I think it should go something like this.

Birth preach teach repeat, Just.

Kidding, that'd be cool if it ended like that, though, right,

Birth preach teach repeat. So, if you're married, birth, have babies.

If you're married, have babies, be fruitful and multiply spread

more image bears across the earth. If you don't have

babies yet, or if you can't, you're not done. You

still have a job to do. Find someone else's babies,

don't kidnap them. Find somebody else's babies though, and adopt

some spiritual children, or pray really hard and go officially

go through the legal process of adopting children into your family.

There are tons of kids who need a loving family,

Christian home to be a part of, kids who need

parents to raise them. So that's birth. Next is preach

for the love of everything. Preach the Gospel to your children.

Preach the Gospel to them. The Gospel. They need the

Gospel more than anything else they will ever need in

their entire life. There is no greater need that they

have than knowing the Gospel message. It is the greatest

need to solve their greatest problem. They're marred image bears

and they need the blood of Jesus to wash them clean.

So preach.

To your children, and once you've preached the Gospel to them,

teach them. That means disciple them. That's kind of what

we say the word disciple a lot disciple your children.

Train them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Teach them to obey all that Jesus commanded. Show them

who the true perfect image bear is Jesus, and then

shepherd them to be christ. The scripture says that we

are transformed into His image from a degree a degree

to glory more than the image of Christ.

So it's not a fast process.

It's slow, but also says that we're renewed in knowledge

after the image of our creator. You got to know

about him and you've got to know him. So teach

your children who Jesus is. And the last step do

it all again. You're not done yet. Also, discipling your

children doesn't usually have an end date. Anyway, You're gonna

need to continue to do that for the rest of

your life. But start the process again. Have more kids,

Adopt more kids, find another spiritual child, preach to them,

and teach disciple them.

The job never ends.

You read a lot of the Bible where it says

older men teach the younger men this, older women teach

the younger women this.

That's what that is. Just like Paul and his spiritual children.

That is us as believers having our own spiritual children

and growing them up, maturing them into believers who walk

according to God's plan.

Transformed to the image of Christ. Birth.

Preach, teach, repeat, so to kind of summarize everything we've

talked about today. God told humanity to be fruitful and multiply.

He created mankind in his image, and he wants his

image spread across the entire globe, to fill the earth,

to subdue the earth, to have dominion over all his creation.

God literally designed.

His image bearers to bear more images, but the type

of image matters. He wants his image spread across the earth,

So that means we need to raise up the image

bearers to properly reflect him, to raise up godly offspring,

offspring that looks like Jesus. So let's go be fruitful

and multiply more images of Jesus across the earth.

Amen. Can you guys stand to your feet please,