What Is Man?

It's good to see everyone. I hope you're doing well. School's off and running now at this point, so hopefully you've obviously survived so far, so hopefully you continue to.! Last week we started our series in Genesis 1 through 11, and we looked at all of chapter 1 and the first part of chapter 2.

Tonight I want to kind of zoom in on one particular important thing from Genesis 1, particularly man being made in the image of God. And as we think about this, our title tonight is, What is Man? What is Man? As we think about us as human beings, who exactly are we?

Who are we? What are we? How did we get here? What's our purpose? And the Bible actually asks this question, and I'll read for you from Psalm 8.

You don't have to turn there. But in Psalm 8, David wrote, O Yahweh our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You set your glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babies and infants you have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place.

Very Genesis 1. What is man that you're mindful of him? And the son of man that you care for him? Yet you've made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You've given him dominion over the works of your hands. You've put all things under his feet. All sheep and oxen, also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Yahweh our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! And the psalm is very thought-provoking. It asks the question, what is man? And as you notice, I'm sure it's very Edenic.

It reminds us of the Garden of Eden when God created Adam to rule and have dominion over everything that he's made on land, in an air, and in the sea.

And so we want to study tonight what we are. Who are we as human beings? And as we answer that question, as we study this topic, we want to make sure we're not doing it from a man-centered perspective.

Okay, so we're going to study who we are and what we are, but we don't want to make it all about us. We don't want it to be centered around us. We want to do it from God's vantage point.

We want to do it according to God's word. And so what is man? The world tries to answer this question, and they get it horribly wrong, because they cut God out of the picture.

They try to give an answer for who we are or how we got here without including the Creator Himself. And that's also a problem in many churches today, too.

They might preach the gospel truly. They might try to preach the Bible accurately, but it is so man-centered. It never gets to the glory of God being the ultimate motive.

And so this question, what is man, appears in the Bible. It's significant, though, that when the Bible asks this question, it's always in a mystified way.

It's always almost in a confused way of saying, who are we that God would take an interest in us? And so as we think about ourselves, we should not say, I must be really special because God saved me.

Look at what God did to save me. We should say, why would God save a sinner like me? That's how we should approach who we are in relation to God.

And we saw last week that man is a direct creation of God, so we have dignity and purpose. And we need to know who we are so that we can know how we should live.

And maybe your mom or your dad has told you before, maybe there's been an argument or something went wrong, and they said, you're not going to do that in this house. What they're saying is, you belong to the Johnson family, or whatever your last name is.

You should know who you are, and that should affect the way you live. And that's really what the Bible is saying. If we know who we are, we will understand how we should live.

So who are we? What is the purpose of humanity? Why do we exist? And I typed that question into Google, accurate source of information. And Google AI responded to me like an actual conversation.

It was wild. They said, some say, I say they, Google said, some say that the purpose of human life is to interact with others, survive, and become more powerful.

All right. Others believe that the purpose of life is to seek happiness, serve others, or fulfill a spiritual destiny. Last line here.

Ultimately, the purpose of life is up to each individual to determine for themselves. How sweet. You get to just determine how you live.

Your purpose, you find it. It's out there somewhere, you've got to search for it and find it. Good luck. Is that true? True. No. And so our goal is, as always, but especially tonight, to look into the Bible as a mirror, to see who we are so that by God's grace we might become who we should be.

If we can see who we are, we'll have an accurate roadmap to, by the Lord's grace, become what we should be. And I said last week, I'll say it again a couple times tonight, we can only properly understand ourselves if we start with God and His Word.

The only true knowledge of self comes after a true knowledge of God. And so, open with me to Genesis chapter 1. And tonight will be a different kind of message, probably than you're used to at our church.

We won't be covering a ton of verses like we sometimes do on Wednesday nights. We'll be kind of zooming in on just a few verses and looking at what they mean for us in our lives.

And in Genesis 1, if you were here last week, you saw God typically begins His creative work by saying, let there be, or commanding the earth to bring forth creatures or the sea to bring forth creatures.

But when God creates man, He says, let us make man in our image after our likeness.

There's a divine contemplation here. There's the Trinity itself is coming together to discuss the creation of man. It's not as if God didn't plan ahead or think about what man was going to be like before this moment, but it's just showing human beings are set apart from the rest of creation.

In the rest of creation, God just commands and He creates. When He creates man, He's showing us that we are set apart from the rest of creation by this kind of conversation that takes place.

And so, God sets us apart and we see that through the conversation that God has with Himself. And then if you look at chapter 2, which we'll see next week, all of chapter 2 is kind of a replay of God creating man and woman.

And so, when we look at the creation of man, basically, a chapter and a half is devoted to the creation of man. And when you compare that to just a handful of verses about the stars, the sun and the moon, all the land animals, all the sea creatures, we see that the emphasis of these first two chapters is to describe how man was created and what his relationship to God should be like.

So what we see is that man is the crown of creation. It's the last thing He creates. It's the ultimate thing He creates. It's the creatures that are to rule over all the rest of creation.

And so, let's look tonight. We're going to look at just two things tonight. One is the image of God and number two is gender. The image of God and then gender. So what does it mean to be made in the image of God?

We know we're made in the image of God. The Bible says that very clearly. But what does that actually mean? The animals weren't created in the image of God.

So what is it that makes us different from the animals? What is it that sets us apart from the rest of creation? creation. Well, we see that man's not only the crown of creation, but he's patterned after God Himself.

So He says, let us make man in our image after our likeness. And so mankind is not just the finest thing that God has created. It's actually patterned after who God is.

And so each of us being made in the image of God are essentially a picture of what God is like. And our purpose is to reflect Him accurately. Our purpose is to know Him and then show Him to those around us.

And as we think about the creation of mankind in the image of God, we couldn't have evolved into the image of God. We couldn't have gone from, you know, something swimming in the sea to a monkey to a human being.

Because according to Genesis, as soon as mankind exists, as soon as mankind has life, he is in the image of God. And so in Genesis 2-7, it says that God formed Adam and then breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living creature.

And so Adam did not exist before God created him in any form. And so the fact that we are made in the image of God shows that we could not have evolved into that image.

our life as mankind didn't evolve from a lower form. It began with an intimacy with God. And if you look in verse 27, it says, God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And so we see that woman was also made in the image of God. So whether you're a guy or a girl, you are made in the image of God.

And that's important. And again, it goes against evolution. Because if you believe evolution, what you have to say is that woman is a mutation.

Woman's just a mutant from man. You know, all these millions of years of evolution and an atom is produced and at some point there's a genetic mutation along the way and woman exists.

That's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that man and woman are equal and created in the image of God. And we as God's image bearers have certainly been messed up by sin.

We've certainly been wrecked with sin. You feel that in your own life and hopefully recognize that. But even still, we are made in the image of God. The Bible tells us we're in the image of God even after the fall, even after the flood.

And this affects how you treat people. people. This affects how you interact with people. The person at school that's rude to you, the person at school who is harsh towards other people, people at school who are difficult to get along with, being made in the image of God means that they have dignity and worth.

They deserve to be treated with respect. they deserve to be loved because they are made in the image of God.

And so this affects how we treat everyone in our church, in your school, in your family. And today, there are many things about us as human beings that are wildly corrupt.

There are many things about us as human beings that are sinful and broken. but even still, we cannot deny that we as human beings are glorious creatures.

We as human beings are glorious specimens of God's divine wisdom and goodness. And you can see this pretty clearly in engineering.

I think about engineering because I'm a nerd. But if you've ever driven down to Texas and you see the highways of Texas, they're just wide because everything's bigger in Texas. And this ain't Texas.

And they're just wide and they're like stacked on top of each other and they're like tied in knots and stuff. I don't know how, I get lost every time I go there. But it's amazing that mankind could think of that.

I don't know if they planned that in advance or it just ended up all knotted up like that. And then the fact that they could build that is pretty incredible. And so engineering kind of shows the glory and creativity of man even after the fall.

And then did you know that we can build tunnels underwater? That's just wild. Like, I watched a YouTube video six months ago. I was like, do they build it and then just drop it underwater?

How does this work? They build it underwater. It's amazing. And the longest one is an underwater tunnel from England to France. France.

And it connects these two countries that aren't connected. It's wild. And what's even better than the fact that they were able to create that, though, is the name they gave it. It's a tunnel that goes under the English Channel and they call it the Chunnel.

Brilliant name. And so anyway, mankind is wildly creative. I don't even know, like, someone must have been so high to come up with that.

Like, what if we put a tunnel underwater, bro? That would be sick. But I don't know who came up with that idea, but it's brilliant and then called it the Chunnel. So even after the fall, we are still glorious creatures.

We're distorted and corrupt. But even if we can show so much creativity, what were Adam and Eve like in the garden? How much creativity did they possess?

How glorious were they without sin in their life at all for this short period of time? What were they like? And this image has been corrupted and scarred by sin in our life so we don't reflect this image as purely as Adam and Eve did in the beginning.

But there are still hints of what we once were. When I was in high school, my family and I one summer got to go to the peaceful place of Mexico.

And we went to Cancun. It's not peaceful at all, actually, but we went to Cancun on a vacation. The ocean was blue, which sounds like an obvious statement, but if you've been to the Gulf of Mexico, you understand what I'm talking about.

And the water was blue and we went to this place. It was a place of ruins called Tulum. And as we got to walk through this place, you could see all these Mayan ruins, these temples they had built, this city, basically, that had just been run down over time.

And so there, in some places, you could tell where a building used to be. There was just an outline of the foundation or the walls, but many of the walls had fallen down. The rocks were just kind of black or green with age and being close to the sea.

And so you didn't see it in all of its glory, but you could tell and in your imagination kind of picture how glorious and majestic it used to be.

And one of their little temples, like you walked up and you could see over the ocean and it was beautiful and then you're like, oh, they sacrificed people here. But anyway, Mayans were terrible, but they built good stuff.

And so anyway, we as human beings are very similar to those ruins. We're not what we once were because of sin. You can still see hints and traces of the majesty and glory that were ours before sin came into the world, though.

And if you can just imagine, what would our world be like if Adam and Eve hadn't sinned? What if Adam and Eve and everyone in the world today used all of their creativity and energy for good?

How different would the world be? And when God created these first two people, he said, verse 26, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

God distinguishes us from every creature that he has made. We're the most mysterious and glorious of God's creation that he made to rule over everything that the Lord had made.

He created us as visible representations of his glory to rule over his creation. But what is it that comprises the image of God? What is it that makes us image bearers?

It makes us glorious for sure, but can we put our hands on anything that makes us in the image of God? And it's important that we recognize there's mystery here.

Not a mystery like clue where you've got just a few clues and you're trying to piece everything together. God's spoken very clearly to us. By the way, did y'all see the murder mystery thing on Dude Perfect?

That was cool. Anyway. So not a mystery. When we talk about the Bible, mystery isn't because God didn't reveal enough to us. It's just that our minds are limited.

And so we can't fully get our minds around what God has spoken. And this is true of the image of God. So when you think about us as human beings, our bodies are essential to who we are.

Human beings are made in bodies. We're body and soul. And yet we're said to be image bearers of God, but God does not have a body. He is invisible.

He is a spirit. And so how is it that we're made to be like God, and yet the thing that is perhaps most true and obvious about us is so unlike God.

And so there's mystery here. We can't figure all of this out, but we need to do our best. So I think the image of God primarily refers to our minds and our hearts.

Our ability to think and to relate to others and to communicate with others. I don't think our body is completely cut out of that.

I think that's an essential part of it. If you think about us, we have bodies that stand upright. If you have two Achilles, we have a sight line that naturally looks up and can ponder the heavens and the skies above us.

Most animals look down at the ground. We have various facial expressions that reveal what's going on inside of our minds and in our hearts. Some of you don't have very nice facial expressions, but that's okay.

We can work on it. And then we have the ability to communicate with each other what's going on inside of us. And when we think about our souls, what's inside of us, we are immortal, meaning that we will always exist from this point on.

Here on earth or in heaven or in hell, we are self-conscious. We know what's going on around us. We know what's happening and we're discerning. We can make judgments.

Some of us judge too much. Some of us not enough. We're trying to figure out the world around us all the time. And when God created the universe, he made a spiritual world and a physical world.

And in verse 1 of Genesis 1, it says God created the heavens and the earth. And so he created angels whose primary domain is in the spiritual realm. He created animals that are here on earth and in the sea.

There's one creature that fully participates in both, and that's mankind. We have our feet set on the ground, but our hearts long for heaven. Our hearts want to contemplate bigger things like love and justice and righteousness.

Mankind is the only creature that can participate in both. Angels will sometimes step in to the physical realm, but mankind fully participates in both.

And when we think about the image of God, what comprises it? Well, one guy said, his name is Wayne Grudem, he said, every way in which man is like God is part of his being made in the image of God.

And so we can't necessarily set limits on it of like, hey, this is a full definition of the image of God. This is exactly how we are like God. But he is just saying every way in which we can resemble God is part of what it means to be made in his image.

And so when we think about who God is, we describe what he's like through what are called his attributes or his characteristics, what he's like, his love, his justice, his eternality, things like that that describe who he is.

And when we think about God's attributes, there are some of those that he shares with us. And in theology, they're called communicable or incommunicable attributes.

And don't get scared by that. You've heard that word. Like COVID is a communicable sickness. You can share it with people. Sharing is caring. And so there are certain attributes that God shares with us.

And we don't share them fully with God. We can never love like he does, but we do love. We can never speak as clearly or as wisely as he does, but we can speak.

But then there are some attributes that we don't share. Like he is completely independent. He doesn't need anything. And so one way I think we can figure out what it means to be made in the image of God is by looking at how God is described in Genesis 1.

And if you look at the verbs or the action words that are used of God, there are several of those that are used to describe Adam as well in chapter 2. So one thing that God is described as doing is creating.

And the Bible never uses that word to describe anyone other than God. God alone creates. But if you look at the verbs, I've got them written out here. You can just listen to them. God is described as having created, said, saw, and he saw that it was good, so he's also evaluating.

He's separating light from darkness, water from land. He's calling things into existence and calling things certain names. He's making things and he's blessing things.

Adam functions in a pretty similar way to a lot of these action words. So we'll look at chapter 2 next week and we'll see that Adam is seeing these animals and he's evaluating them to determine if they can be his partner in ruling over creation.

He is calling things certain names. He is blessing his wife. And so these are things that comprise the image of God that make Adam like God in some similar way.

and we today have the ability to use logic and reason and language to communicate. We can talk to each other and understand each other.

And you know, Jane Goodall or Bill Nye will be like, animals can communicate too. Yes, they can. But they have no ability to communicate abstract ideas.

How do you describe love to an animal? You can't. We can kind of talk about what love is. How do you talk to an animal about what righteousness is?

They can't understand that. We, as human beings, can understand those kind of abstract things and have conversations about them. And so God created us in bodies as embodied creatures.

If you look at Genesis 131, God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. everything God made was good including mankind.

Including these creatures that he made that have both souls and bodies. And perhaps no one is fully satisfied with how they look after the fall and after sin, but our bodies are good things.

Our bodies are created by the Lord and given to us. This doesn't mean that we can't become more or less healthy, but it does mean that our bodies are not inherently evil.

And our bodies are not just a temporary thing either. One day we'll die, but at the end of time, God will raise everyone up and everyone will receive a resurrection body.

Some will be gloriously transformed to be in the presence of the Lord forever, worshiping him. Others will receive a body that is able to receive the wrath of God for all eternity, but every human being will have a body for the rest of eternity.

And so our bodies are good things, it's part of who we are as image bearers of God. And this is under attack by Satan. Satan would love for you to believe your body is an evil thing, or your body is a mistake, but the Lord has made our bodies and he makes all things well.

people. In verse 27 again, we see that he created male and female. He created two types of humans, he made two distinct genders, both in his image. And so the phrase mankind or man in Genesis is inclusive of both man and woman, so we don't need to say mankind and womankind, we don't need to say unmanned aircraft and unwomanned aircraft, okay?

So mankind is inclusive of both genders, and it's actually important because in the New Testament, Paul will write and say, brothers. And he's not just talking to the guys, he's talking to all of the siblings there.

And so it's important we recognize that. And in verse 28, he says that God blessed them, he said, to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over it.

And so here's the purpose of marriage in a nutshell in one verse. Purpose of marriage. Have lots of babies, spread God's image over the whole earth, and exercise dominion over everything. And so God created Adam and Eve in the beginning, and it's as if as they go out and as they have kids, the image of God will spread over the entire earth.

Eden would like grow with them if they continued in holiness. And they ruled over all creation. And one guy asked me last week, what about Leviathan?

Like, did they rule over Leviathan? What did that look like? And Leviathan, according to the Bible, is a massive sea creature, a sea monster. People today with lots of degrees would probably be like, according to my calculations, it's a myth.

But it's a real sea monster. So how did their dominion relate to Leviathan? I don't think they were going out and feeding him every morning, but they would have had peace and harmony over every great creature, both in the sea and on the lands.

We don't know exactly what that world was like, but we get hints of it here. And so this dominion, this ruling over it, comes with and from the blessing of God. And today, people will say that human beings are the worst thing that has ever happened to the planet.

And so the Bible says we're to rule over creation, have dominion over it, that doesn't mean abuse it, but to rule over it. And many people today will say, you know, we need to preserve the planet.

And the worst thing happening to the planet is people. So we need to get rid of some people, basically. And they call it population control, but it's more like human extermination.

If we believe the Bible, we are not a curse on this world. We need to take care of it, we need to steward it well, but God made this world for us and not the other way around.

people will sometimes talk as if we were created to serve and to protect the animals when really they were created for us. We were created to rule over this world.

And he calls them to multiply and fill the earth. And he says, be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion. And now this text doesn't call Adam a king. That word's not used here, but I think that's how he's being described.

That's how he functions. He is the ruler. He answers only to God. No one on earth can question him. And it reminds me, our daughter's four.

When she was like two or three, we introduced her to Mary Poppins, the old one, the real one, not the new fake one, with Julie Andrews. And we were watching it and we had to pause it at some point and later she was like, I want to watch the princess movie.

I'm like, what is she talking about? We didn't watch a princess movie. And I finally figured out she's talking about Mary Poppins. Now is Mary Poppins a princess? Is she ever called a princess? But when you think about how she functions, she's kind of princess-like, right?

She's got kind of these powers, she can appear and disappear, kind of princess-like. And so I was like, wow, that's actually a pretty good observation. And that's kind of how Adam is functioning here. He's not called a king, but if you look at how he functions, he's ruling over creation.

He's not called a priest, but he relates directly to God. He's not called a prophet, but he speaks God's word to his wife. And so for this brief moment in Genesis 1 and 2, Adam shows us what Jesus would be like.

A prophet, a priest, and a king. And when Jesus shows up on the scene in Daniel 7, it says, one like a son of man was coming, and he has an everlasting dominion.

Same word. And so Jesus is this Adam, what Adam was supposed to be, but he has no sin, and so his dominion has no end. His dominion continues forever because he is forever sinless, and he is the image of God.

And so let's think for just a few moments now about gender. First two chapters of Genesis lay the foundation for a Christian view of the world and human relationships, and our world is very confused about this.

Our world is very confused about gender. You've probably seen that at your school. But gender is foundational to God's creation of us.

And the Bible speaks with great simplicity and great clarity on this, and so we need to pay careful attention to these straightforward words. What we learn is that gender is something created by God that is good.

He created them male and female, and he called it very good. And so gender is not a personal mindset, and gender is not a social construct.

And so what people say is gender is a social construct, so what that means is it's basically like a speed limit. Is there like an eternal law that says you cannot go 60 miles an hour on Mustang Road? No.

We've just, I say we, someone somewhere just said 55 seems good, they won't mind that. And so that's just an agreed upon limit to kind of keep society orderly.

That's what people will talk about gender like. This is just a made-up rule, it's good if you can abide by it, but it's not really that consequential. What we see is that this is wired into creation by God himself.

He created man and woman in the beginning. So it's not something we choose, it is something that God has created. And now this can be manifested or demonstrated in different ways.

So when we think about masculinity and femininity, they can be expressed in different ways. So if you think about a biblical example, Jacob and Esau, twin brothers, right?

Same parents, they're twins, raised in the same household, shared childhood experiences together, they were wildly different. Esau was a man in the field, he was a hunter, Jacob was a great indoors man, that's not a word, but he was an indoors man, he liked to be inside.

And the Bible doesn't say that Jacob was more in touch with his feminine side because he liked to be inside. It doesn't describe him as less masculine because he wasn't a hunter. It wasn't like he didn't play football so he's not a man.

They're both equally male, equally masculine even though they look different in terms of their interests and what they're drawn towards in terms of hobbies.

And so there's not a cookie cutter personality that goes with being male. However, there are certain characteristics that do go with being a man.

Things like leadership, strength, bravery, courage, protection, sacrifice. These are male characteristics. And people today, maybe in your school or in your family would be like, that's toxic masculinity.

That is toxic. Strength, leadership, toxic. And one place that's really done this a lot is Australia.

And Australia is just a horrible place to live and it's been like that for a long time. Everything there can kill you. Like every animal has the ability to just like somehow kill you. And their politics are bad too.

So it's just, it's a dangerous place, okay? Dangerous place. And they're kind of like on the front line of like, ah, gender stuff, you know, toxic masculinity is bad.

And there are bad men, but sin is the problem, not masculinity. But they've said, you know, we need to get rid of toxic masculinity. And, you know, nothing really good has come out of Australia.

Bluey is great though. We just got to give it up for Bluey. Bluey is the best thing to come out of Australia since, well, yeah, there's nothing. Anyway, Bluey is great though.

But a couple years ago, they had a lot of really bad wildfires. It was far out. It was a bad accent. But anyway, they had all these wildfires they couldn't put out. And do you know what happened?

America sent firefighters over to them. In this country that's complained about toxic masculinity and complained about men being the worst thing ever, the country stood up and applauded in the airport as these men who had left behind their families and potentially their lives to come fight these fires in Australia.

All these men coming off of the airplane, walking through the airport, were being applauded for their sacrifice and bravery. They recognized that masculinity is good in that moment.

And so these things we're talking about are part of God's good design. And that's not to say that women aren't brave or strong or sacrificial in their own way at all. But these things, this bravery in the face of danger is what men were created for.

And we see that primarily and ultimately in the life of Jesus. And there are not just personality differences like with Jacob and Esau, there's also cultural differences in how gender is expressed or lived out.

So in some cultures, it's shameful for men not to have beards. beards. In other cultures, it's shameful for them to have beards.

In some cultures, it's shameful for men to show their legs at all. In other cultures, men are much less modest. Skies out, thighs out. Some places value men who are quiet, stoic, reserved.

Other cultures, men who are loud, expressive, passionate. In some cultures, men wear skirts or dresses, call them kilts. In our culture, men don't do that.

Praise the Lord. Although, one time there was this guy that showed up for a little bit. Maybe he was an angel or something, I don't know, because he just disappeared. But he wore a kilt.

And he was just like, yeah, a lot of cultures do it and it's comfortable. I was like, get some help. Get some help, bro. And the same is true with femininity as well.

It can be expressed in different ways. Some cultures value women who are quiet and reserved. Others who are talkative and outgoing. Some cultures want their women to be extremely modest, very demure.

And others, women who are less modest. And so there are various ways that masculinity and femininity get expressed, but that does not change the reality that in every single culture, there are two genders and there is a difference in how they present themselves in that culture.

Regardless of what that culture kind of values in masculinity and femininity, there is a distinction and there are only two genders. And so even with this kind of different presentation of these realities, there's always a distinction in every culture.

And there's also things that will never change. Women have babies, men don't. Period. That'll never change. That's the way God created it.

And it's very good for a man to be a man, for a woman to be a woman, and we should not try to erase that. We shouldn't ignore our differences, but we should not also belittle each other for those differences.

The distinction in genders is something that God created in the beginning, and it was very good, and so we should live in that reality instead of fighting against it.

So what is man? Man is a glorious creature that God created as male and female in the beginning. And so our highest joy, our highest satisfaction as creatures will be to live in that purpose, will be to fulfill that purpose of being the image bearers of God, to walk in His design for us.

So what should we take away from this? What are our goals as a church, as a student ministry, as individuals? How should we live in light of these truths? Our ultimate goal as a church or student ministry isn't just to get men to act like men and women to act like women.

That would be good, but that's not our only goal. Our goal is for men and women together to glorify the God who made them, to exalt Him, to live in line with His purpose for them.

And again, we can only properly understand ourselves if we understand who God is in His Word. And so your ultimate design is not to be rich or healthy or productive or influential.

Your ultimate goal and destiny and design is to know God. That is what we were created for as men, to know the God who made us.

And how is it that we know Him? How is it that we come to know Him? It's through His Son, Jesus Christ. That is how He has made Himself known, is through Jesus. And I'm going to read for you 2 Corinthians 3 where Paul talks about this, us knowing the Lord.

And 2 Corinthians 3 verse 18, Paul says, we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image.

That's the image of Jesus from one degree of glory to another. And so Paul is saying that as we see Jesus, as we behold Him, we will become like Him.

So how do we see Him? How do we behold Him? How do we know Him? Through the written Word. And so we look to Jesus who is the Word made flesh and we read in our Bibles the words on paper to know Him and to behold Him and to meditate on Him.

and so how is it that you should live as an image bearer? Read your Bible. Love your Bible. Meditate on the Bible.

Memorize the Bible. Share the Bible. Teach the Bible. This is what we were made for. And so are you fulfilling your purpose? And are you inviting others to find theirs?

This is what we were made for. And so our ultimate goal is that we and those around us would not just be made in the image of God but would be remade in the image of the Son of God.

That we would be recreated in the image of Christ and become more like Him. Because as Colossians 1 says, everything was made through Jesus and everything was made for Jesus.

Jesus. You exist because of Jesus. You exist for Jesus. And so if you do not know Him, if you do not obey Him, you are not fulfilling your purpose regardless of how happy you might seem to be.

So we as image bearers must love the Word of God both made flesh and in the Bible and we must obey it in order to fulfill who we were created to be.

Our Father in Heaven, we praise you for the glory with which you created us. And we do not say that in a boastful way or an arrogant way but I hope we reflect like the psalmist did, who are we that you would have created us and been concerned for us and sent your Son to save us.

Father, I pray that we recognize our bodies are a part of your good design and for the Christians in here, our bodies are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Our bodies are not evil but are very good in the beginning as you made Adam and Eve.

Father, I pray for us as we struggle to overcome sin, as we fight against sin, that you would be with us and strengthen us in that fight. I pray for students in here who are not saved, that you would wake them up to that battle, change their hearts and cause them to believe in your Son who died and rose.

And it's all for the glory of your Son through whom we exist and for whom we exist. It's in his name we pray. Amen. Amen.