Speaker 1: You're listening to audio from Chapel Pointe. We are so glad you're here. If you'd like to check out more resources, please visit us at chapel-point.org. Now, here's this week's message.
Joel Wayne: Well, greetings to you. And it's good to have every single one of you here with us today. I've got a couple of questions for you that are very easy to answer. I do expect some participation from all of you. So it's going to be a lot of fun.
So everybody tell me your name on 3. 123. Okay. So it's good to meet you. That's an easy question.
Right? You know what your name is. Here's another one for you. Where I wanna where do you live? So everybody answers that a bit differently as well.
So where do you live on 3? 123. West Michigan. So some of you will say a neighborhood. Some of you will say, I just say West Michigan because when I say Hudsonville to people, they go, where's Hudsonville?
Well, it's outside of Grand Rapids. Where's Grand Rapids? It's in Michigan. Oh, near Detroit. No, it's the opposite.
That's how it kind of goes. And so that's another easy one. Here's a good one. How old are you? Ready?
123. 12. Okay. Another good question. These are easy.
Here's another question for you. Ready? Who are you? 123. Exactly.
It's a different question. What do you do for a living? Or where do you live? Or how old are you? Or what's your name?
How many kids do you have? All these things. Those are easy questions to be able to answer. But sometimes it's not as clear. You may know who you are in Christ, I get it, but it's just not as easy of a question to sometimes answer.
But that's what we're going to be speaking about today because what we're really addressing is what is humanity in relation to God and to whom He made us to be, right? Imago Dei, we were made in the image of God. We'll get into that more and more. But what does that even mean? So when someone comes to you and says, hey, who are you?
It's sometimes not that easy to answer, but today that's what we want to be able to do. It's called the doctrine or the theology of humanity. You have to remember, theology just simply means it's your idea or understanding of who God is. That's what theology is. Your doctrine goes a bit more detailed in that.
And so you have this doctrine of humanity and and knowing that because of my understanding of who God is, this is now therefore who I am. And so we get to jump into that understanding today, imago Dei. What's it look like to be made in the image of God? Because what that does is it grants every single person intrinsic value or that essential value for for for each person. So we're going to be able to look at that because again, we were created by God.
Now, in order for us to tackle this in terms of understanding two different questions, Who are we? Right? How did God make us is another way to think about it. How did God make us? And and for what reason?
Why? How and why? How and why? We're going to be looking at those things. How and why?
How were we created? Why were we created? But before we did that, I kept looking at the word created. And we need to recognize that there are different views of whom we were created by, why were we created, and even the creator Himself. So I want to give us very quickly to intro today.
I'm going to give you a four or five minute rundown of creation. It's not hard to do. Let's just talk about that very quickly. One, there are four primary views of creation. Today is a note taking day, my friends.
There are four different views of creation primarily. I could probably give you seven or eight pretty quickly, but these are the four prominent views that we're seeing in the world that we live in today. One is secular evolution. That's called the big bang theory. Right?
Boom, everything was. It doesn't matter. Right? I started researching the number of professors and universities fired over the last five to ten years because they believe in creationism. And it's remarkable.
The reason you don't have it being taught is because if you do believe it, you get fired. Right? But a secular evolution is this big bang theory that there is no God responsible for creation. That's what that means. That it was a big bang and then boom, everything happened.
Another primary view of creation is theistic evolution. So you have secular evolution, and then you have theistic evolution. Theistic evolution is that God set everything into motion. God set evolution into motion. So that way, what that the reason that has formed is because very few people actually know and have studied scripture in terms of creation.
And so for the one who believes in God, it's easy for them to say, well, no, God created and he created it through evolution. That's not what the Bible teaches. It's what's easy to to profess. Another is day age. Day age creation.
Day age creation is, hey, every day of creation is an extensive period of time And everybody can just kind of believe what whatever that extent of time is. So, hey, well, you you got the six days of creation and on the seventh day, what did God do? You should know this one. On the seventh day, what did he do? He rested.
And then everybody would tell you, but every day to God is different than our day. And so what that actually means is that every day was ten million years or a million years or ten thousand years or a thousand, you know, everybody has a different understanding of That's day age creation. The other, the fourth view of God's creation today is six day creationism. Now again, there's more, but these are the primary, the the prevalent ones that we are seeing within the world today. A six day creationist believes this.
And if you look at Genesis one five, Genesis one eight, Genesis one thirteen, they believe in a literal six day creation by God. Alright? All of this matters, especially, it's going to be a really hard message for you if you believe in the first. If you believe in a secular evolution of the world, that means you do not believe in God. Another way to say it is you're atheist.
I would say this, the theistic evolution doesn't necessarily mean that you're agnostic, but you're leaning in that direction. And then you have day age and you have six day creationism. I want I want to give you four reasons for creationism. Very, very direct and very simple. This is to kind of give us some tools to move forward within life.
Four reasons. One, the Sabbath law throughout scripture, the Sabbath law literally establishes itself on a creation week. Literally. It's because that's the way God created it. People never process that.
They don't grasp that. I'm like, literally, that's the reason we had the days of the week that we have. Also, Adam is spoken of. You have Adam and Eve in the garden. What's the name of the garden?
The garden of? Eve. Adam is spoken of by Paul and biblical genealogies over and over again. And I give you some texts to be able to look at here just to write them down. I know I'm going quickly.
They'll leave this up for a moment so that you can write these things down, take a picture, whatever you need to do. And by the way, the creation museum, if you look at that, go to their website, you'll find some of this. That's where I pulled some of it because it's remarkable stuff. People who live every day discovering more and more about God's truth. Third, scripture teaches worship of God as creator.
Psalm one thirty nine, Colossians one, Revelation chapter four nine through 11. You can go later in that chapter as well. And then finally, some people are going, well, how about dinosaurs? You know how many times in my life I've been asked, how about dinosaurs? Did you know the flood?
The great flood was to punish, but also it is why we are today as an earth. The flood gives explanation. It includes the presence of fossils. It gives explanation for that with the compression. It allows for a microevolution within a species, but not outside of a species.
So I know I'm teasing you a little bit today. Like right now, some of you want to get your geek on. But that's not the point of today. The point of today is to talk about humanity, but you first need to understand and recognize where are you in understanding who God is himself and how he created. Because then it tells us in our primary text today, Genesis chapter one twenty six through 28.
Now, if there's anything you need to know about Genesis chapter one, in the beginning, God created heavens and the earth. That's Genesis one one, of course. But as you look at Genesis chapter one twenty six through 28 gives us so much clarity about how we were created, but also why we were created. And so I wanna look at this together at this moment. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word?
Genesis chapter one twenty six and following. And 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 all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. Imago Dei. Everybody say, Imago Dei.
That's what that means. 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. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on earth.
This is the word of God. You may be seated. So right away, what do we learn? Well, we learn how and why we were created. And as a creator, God originated human life.
And we owe our being to that very same God in whose image we were actually made. That's Genesis one twenty seven that we just read. Our existence depends upon God. Now, whether you acknowledge His existence or not will shape your life for all of eternity because man cannot live without God. Hear me say this.
Man cannot live without God. And so we need to know how were we created then. We just read some of it, but I want to give you two reasons or or two statements on how we were created and then four reasons on why we were created. Two and four. That's what we're going to do today.
Two things that you need to know about how we were created. One, as we've already said in Mago Dei, we were created the how in God's image. We were created in the image of God. This gives every single person a dignity and a worth in their own life, but it also serves as a barometer of how we walk through life and how we process life. That's why we will say you can't define morality apart from Jesus and the word of God.
So when you remove Jesus and the word of God from understanding our own morality, what you end up doing is everybody can function and live however they want to live. And we'll go, that's true freedom. No, actually, we know that that ends up being slavery because there's only freedom in Christ. And so when we go, wait, we are made in God's image. This is Genesis chapter one twenty six through 27.
We recognize that God is even going to warn Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter two, I think it's verse 16 through 18. Genesis chapter two sixteen through 18. God is coming and he's warning Adam and Eve saying, hey guys, guess what? If you do this, you will. He says, will surely die.
And when they chose to step against God's will and His sovereignty, they may not have died in that moment physically, but they died in a manner spiritually. Because the presence of God in life gives us a barometer of living in every other way. The communion with God in that moment was broken. The freedom that we could have in God, well, in many regards was removed. In fact, let me say it more directly.
The freedom that we had in God in that moment with Adam and Eve, it was removed. It is the giving of Jesus Christ that allows us to now live in freedom once again. How were we created? First, you need to know, friends, you were created in God's image. Second, yes, we were created as male and female.
God only created two genders. That's it. And I know that we live in a world. I wanna be very sensitive to this only because I know that there's a lot of people in the world today that are struggling with this and we're listening to different things. But And then now you have trans and you have binary and you have all these different things that come into play, but you do need to understand according to the word of God, there are two genders.
Friends, according to the word of God, if you're a six day creationist, the world's been here for about seven thousand years because of the flood and what it did. But if you're believing evolution and if you're the world, it's been here for millions of years, millions upon millions. And it's literally, you think about the oxymoron ish of this, and I'm just wanna give you perspective. Okay? That after millions of years, if that's what you believe and you don't believe in God's creation, especially literal six day creation, that if you just go, no, we evolved over the course of millions of years, it's literally the last forty to fifty years that we've decided we could be something else.
It is the definition of arrogance. So it shows though, what it communicates, what it lets us know is it shows what happens to a society, to a world that removes the understanding of being created in the image of God from their culture, from their society. It reveals the very thing that I just said that we are created in God's image, which gives us a grounding for morality and everything else. But when you remove that, you start to question the basic tenets of creation. That we were created as male and female.
And yes, there are differences between men and women, not just physical. God has assigned specific roles to each so that we beautifully compliment one another. Yes. Genesis one twenty eight says, and we'll talk more about this later, but that's about procreation for many. They're like, oh, okay.
Well, well, yes. But God created two genders with differences that provide value and significance for one another throughout the companionship that they are to have. Here's the biggest thing that I see today in terms of how were we created in terms of male and female, why we're struggling with it, is there's a difference. And I spoke about this with you years ago. I did something Because It Matters, a series about some of the hardest truths that the world is struggling with today.
And one of the things that you recognize in that is there's a difference between a theological view and an emotional view or relational view. A theological view of something is something when you look at the world around you through the lens of scripture. The emotional or relational view is the opposite. It's when you see scripture through the lens of the relationships around you and the emotions of the world in which you live. The latter is incredibly dangerous because it removes truth from scripture.
You're going to continually alter the word of God based on the relationships that you have and the emotions that are at play. Our theology is to shape our relationship. Our theology is to shape our emotions. That's why in first Corinthians six, we recognize that Corinth, first Corinthians six, I'll read some of this in just a moment. Corinth, Paul's writing this to the people of Corinth and it is absolutely consumed with sexual immorality.
We know that over a thousand night, over a thousand prostitutes would come down every night into the city. It was completely acceptable. And what they would do is that it would literally be referred to, if you look at other writings, they would come down from the hillsides in order to practice their trade. Their trade was sex. And so in the in the midst of a society that had complete acceptance, not only a complete tolerance of such conduct, but a complete acceptance of such conduct, Paul shares these words.
That's important to remember the contextualization of what Paul is going to share and where he's sharing it. He's writing it to the people of Corinth in which this sexual activity of recognizing what it is is completely accepted. And he says, don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived. Some of us are being deceived in terms of our understanding of how we were created and why.
We're being deceived. Do not be deceived. The sexually immoral idolaters, adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy or drunkards or revelers or swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. As such were some of you, but you were washed and sanctified in the name of Jesus Christ and the spirit of our God. Later on in this passage in first Corinthians chapter six verse 18, he then gives instruction for all of us.
He says, so I need you to flee from sexual immorality. Not just acknowledge that it's around you. You need to flee from it because this is this is how God created us as male and female. And I'm going through all of this right now because so many of us are starting to compromise that biblical truth because of the emotions and the relationships of those around us rather than being grounded in the truth of the word of God. I want you to go chew on that.
I want you to go think about that. So that's how we were created. Let's go into the four reasons of the why we were created. First reason why we were created is to have fellowship with God. We were created to have fellowship with God.
Adam was created to live in fellowship with God. Right? We know this, but we also understand that he wanted to have the pleasures of life. And that's what the evil one came and did. Promised him greater pleasures in life.
And so Adam surrendered that very thing along with Eve. And we see that it broke the relationship with God. And the problem with the pleasures of life is we know automatically is that that's temporary. Right? And without fellowship with God, we really have no ultimate fulfillment.
It's because it's all temporary, right? You're like, oh, I feel fulfilled. But literally later on, it's the same as if you are struggling with gluttony and you're eating it because you want to feel fulfilled. And so all of a sudden you're eating that pint of whatever ice cream, Hudsonville ice cream, whatever it is, and you're eating it every single night to find fulfillment. And really it's escapism.
But later on, if it truly provided fulfillment, what you don't have to do is do it again the next day. It's a false gratification. It's not genuine. It's not real. And so without fellowship with God, there's no true fulfillment.
You can't be at peace with God when you're trying to find fulfillment apart from God. And as a result, it's often creating an inner turmoil within ourselves. And so, yes, we were created to have fellowship with God, but our fellowship with God is dependent upon us finding fulfillment in God and living according to his wills and his way. Some of us think that fulfillment is based on our knowledge, but we know knowledge by itself. Knowledge is part of the equation is good, but knowledge by itself is futile or futile.
This is the book of Ecclesiastes, by the way, it speaks very directly of that in Ecclesiastes chapter one, 12 to 18. Solomon is going to conclude that life is God's gift and the only wise, the only good, true, perfect, fulfilling way to live is to fear God. So we recognize that. Why were we created to have fellowship with God? Why what else?
Why else were we created? Well, second thing, to have dominion authority over God's creation. What's that mean? It means that we are to steward God's creation well. Right?
We're to steward God's creation well. We are morally responsible to God for how we treat His creation. We're entrusted with the responsibility and the freedom to make certain choices, moral choices. And with this free will comes the capacity for for incredible good, but also incredible destruction. But we now are to steward God's creation and we're a part of that creation.
The way we steward ourselves, the way we steward God's creation in terms of the physical planet, the way we steward our relationships, everything in our life is to be stewarded in a manner that is giving God glory and honor. Why we're created? To have dominion authority over God's creation. Third, why we're created? To be fruitful and multiply.
Now, fruitfulness here, I this is a we we do it in jest. Right? This is this is a passage that many many people have just absolutely abused. Right? Fruitfulness is not only about physical offspring men.
There's much more to it than that. It's also being fruitful and multiplying is also about a righteous living. It's about a spiritual health of living life according to the ways that God has arranged it. God didn't intend for us to have children just to have children. He intended us to have children so that they would, those children would understand the character of God.
You know, one of the things I often I I'm I've been asked and we'll go and my wife and I maybe will speak on parenting. Many of you have done the same and we'll speak about that. And I go, why why are the families and especially the children today struggling so much? I think we're having children for the wrong reason. It's we don't have children just to have children.
We have children to teach them the character of God and to know his son, Jesus Christ. And so now as a result, what we're doing is like, oh, I wanna have a kid. They're so cute and cuddly. You're so naive. They stay that way for about four weeks.
They poop a lot. Amen. I told you, I calculated. I've told you calculated the amount that I have spent on diapers in my lifetime. It's over $10,000 There's a reason for poverty in the world today.
But we go, man, it'd be so cool. And then we get it. And really we want them almost as an advanced form of a puppy. We really do because they bring us comfort. It is true.
I'm not being, this isn't silly. This is reality. It's the reason the greatest area of divorce is once the kids go to college. Why? Because they've learned to stay together for the children.
And that's what connects them. We have the same children and they have children in order for them to be cuddly and nice, and we get to hang out with them all the time. And it's going to fill our evenings and it's going to be incredible. And look at what we get to do even in the hard and the difficult friends. We don't have children for that reason.
We truly are to procreate in order to raise up children to know the creator himself. We don't understand this. So if you don't have a plan, I always go to the parable of the building of the house on sand or rock. Or you can go to the story of the building of the tower. And you go, who does this without counting the cost first?
If you're thinking about having children, your thought process is this, do we have a plan to raise them according to the will and the purpose of the heavenly father? Do we have a plan to raise them according to the truth of scripture and to raise them up in a spiritual community with brothers and sisters in Christ so that one day they will profess that Jesus is their Lord and their King? We've given up our army. That's what it is to be fruitful and to multiply. One of the most naive thoughts for believers today, you guys are going get me preaching.
Amen. One of the most naive thoughts today is that the church is here to raise my children and to teach them completely about Jesus. It is your responsibility. If you don't have a plan, having them. I should keep going.
Why were we created? Number four, To give God glory. And to glorify God is to honor him and to worship him and to praise him with every word that we speak and conduct that we have. It is most easily expressed in the willingness to serve others even in the midst of brokenness. Psalm one eleven verse three.
He is full of splendor and majesty is his work. In Revelation 14 verse seven, the entire world is told to give him glory and to worship him. Isaiah forty two eight. I am the Lord. That is my name.
I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols. My question for you be would be where are you yielding your glory? What are you giving it to? What excites you the most? I wanna make it as applicable as I can.
You all know that I went to University of Georgia and Georgia is known as one thing. The most incredible academic institution on the face of the planet. Your laughter is rude. It's known as certainly a football school along with the University of Michigan. Ever since I went to the University of Georgia, I've tried to care.
I just don't. If you care about football and all that stuff, that's fine. That's fine. Hear me say, that's fine. Baseball, don't care.
Football, basketball, don't care. Hockey, I question. But other things, good. Right? Like, I don't I really don't care.
That's why I make fun of it. It's just another thing in life. And here's the thing, I saw the celebration of athletics and I go, as long as my celebration of a king is greater. Yes. Amen.
And it's not. Not in our world. That's my issue with it. I don't care if you like football. I don't care if you like baseball.
I don't care if you want to celebrate some singer out there who just happens to be put on a pedestal. But trust me, they're not that much different than you are. They're not. The fact that you get geeked over a Taylor Swift or someone else, but you don't get geeked out over the fact that you have a creator whose image you were made in and then gave His son to die on the cross. That's what we should get geeked out about, right?
Like, I don't get it. And it's because we have idols. That's called an idol. Anything you give greater attention to, anything that gets you riled up more than God Himself is called an idol. We got people who spend hundreds of dollars to go see some concert, they give Jack to the king.
Help me understand that. You'll save money to go see a concert that lasts two and a half hours or a football game that lasts three hours or go see a golf tournament that lasts for eighteen weeks, whatever they do. And I go, but wait, you're not even giving back to the king of kings. It's called idols. You can't give the appropriate glory to God for which you were created to do if your energy is going to something else.
And I saw all the people around me and what they were doing. And I literally, I mean, would come, it'd be a Thursday morning and all these campers would start showing up all over Athens, Georgia, trailers everywhere. They're camping out for two days to get ready for the football game, which is fine. I don't care, but I care because I got this is far cooler than going to a game to me. Come camp out in our parking lot.
Seriously. It just shows where your value is. Now we don't have room for your trailer, but you get the point. Use the grass. I don't care if more people come to know Jesus, kill the grass.
I don't care. We wanna crowd heaven with people giving glory to God. And we were created to give God glory. Are you giving him glory? This is why we were created and how we were created.
What are you doing with it? What are you doing with it? And so God, I come before you and give you thanks and worship and gratitude that we are made in your image. And I know that we now live in a sinful, broken world, but God, may we do everything we can to to flee from that sin, that sexual immorality, and anything else that might be hindering our giving of glory to you. Anything that might be hindering our giving of worship and honor to your name at your feet.
God rip it out of our lives and may we declare your goodness. God, thank you for being so incredibly patient with us. We worship you. In Christ's name. Amen.