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IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
First Things, Part 2
Genesis 1:26-27; 2:7
September 16, 2007
Pastor Bob Sanders
A moment ago we sang about how “all nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.” Nature singing! All creation joining together to declare their Maker’s praise! Does that sound at all familiar? If you were here last week, it should. Last week we looked at Genesis 1, and we heard about the song of Creation (“The Maker loves us and says we’re good”). Remember? It was the start of a new series of messages of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, a series we’re calling First Things. Last week was the foundation for today’s message and several more to follow, so if you weren’t here go to our website and get a copy or download the audio version. Today we drill down a little further and think about what it means to be made in the image of God. Listen once more to what Genesis has to say:
Genesis 1:26-27; 2:7
26Then God said,
“Let us make humankind in our image,
according to our likeness;
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the wild animals of the earth,
and over every creeping thing
that creeps upon the earth.”
27So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
7The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and the man became a living being.
God’s Spitting Image
The first thing a family does when a baby is born is to try to figure out which parent, which side of the family, the newcomer looks like.
“He’s got his mom’s eyes,” we say, or “She’s got her dad’s chin.” The first time the baby screams, the parents point at each other and say, “She got that from your side of the family.” As our kids get older and we watch them develop, we can see it in a gesture or expression, in that particular way of walking or laughing – we get a glimpse of the folks they came from. “Spitting image” is how we sometimes describe it. It’s fun to see in kids. It’s not so fun to see in middle age. Don’t raise your hand, but how many of us have looked in the mirror at some point, noticed with dismay the sags and wrinkles, the receding hairline, the expanding waistline, and said, “My God! I’ve become my mother or my father!”
Genesis 1 says you and I bear a striking resemblance to our Maker. And it’s meant to be a compliment. There’s no higher praise than to be told we’re made in God’s spitting image. In verse 26 God says, “Let us” – that’s Trinitarian language, remember? The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all take part in creation. “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness. . . So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” What does it mean to be made in the image of God? It’s a very big topic for theologians, and lots of books have been written on it. Today I want to explore it by asking two questions. First, what does it tell us about God? What does it reveal about our Creator? And second, what does it tell us about us? What does it tell us about being human, being the men and women God intends.
About God
What does being made in God’s image tell us about God? I’ll mention just three things – three important truths we learn about God from this passage. One, we learn he is a God of order and design. Two, we learn he is a God of intimacy and relationship. Three, we learn that he is a God of work. Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
Order and Design
First he is a God of order and design. Unlike those who say we’re here by accident, that life is nothing more than a chance collocation of molecules, Genesis says there is an order and design behind this amazing world. No, Genesis isn’t a scientific textbook, but even in the poetry of this first chapter we can see God working in a purposeful way as he prepares the world for humanity’s arrival. First he establishes basic boundaries of order and predictability. He brings light out of darkness, times and seasons out of emptiness, dry land and vegetation out of watery chaos. And finally – when all is ready – human life appears. Step by step, we see God creating this safe and secure cradle for human life – a loving and purposeful Creator.
Evidence of this careful design is all around us. For example, science majors know that the earth’s relationship to the sun is not perpendicular. It’s tilted at a 23-degree angle. And while tilted at this angle our world rotates on its axis at about 1,000 miles per hour. If the rotation were only 100 miles per hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long, and whatever survived the incredibly hot days would freeze at night when temperatures would plummet to something like 240 degrees below zero.
This 23-degree tilt is not absolute. It wobbles off by about 3 degrees with amazing regularity, and our seasons and climates are affected by it. If the world strayed up or down more than the 3 degree tilt, life might perish. Without the tilt to deflect the light and heat, the earth would absorb too much heat. Moisture would be pulled to the north and south poles to build up in tremendous ice caps.
Another thing: the depth of the earth’s oceans. If they had been much deeper back in the dim and distant beginning, that much more water would have been absorbed and would have dissolved the carbon dioxide and oxygen out of the air. Life could never have begun in such an inhospitable environment.
As we all know, the earth travels around the sun in an elliptical orbit at a fairly constant speed. If our world slowed down, it would be pulled so close to the sun we would all be burned to a crisp. If we were to greatly increase our speed, we would be thrown far out into space and quickly freeze to death. Our distance from the sun is approximately 93 million miles – which turns out to be just about right to receive neither too much nor too little heat and light for us to live.
Does all this prove the existence of God? No. But it makes it difficult to believe that it all happened by accident. It shows evidence of order, design, purpose. As one science writer puts it, “As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that must have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.” Genesis 1 shows us a God of order and design, a God who does all things well.
Intimacy and Relationship
Second, it shows us a God of intimacy and relationship. Verse 27 again: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.” And then this: “Male and female he created them.” We’re made in the image of God, and that means male and female. Both sides are part of that image. In fact, you can’t grasp the image of God, it doesn’t make sense, without this joining of male and female. Both are needed to have a right understanding of God.
We pointed out last week that God is known in Genesis 1 as a God of community – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in this eternal circle of love. To be formed, therefore, in God’s image means that we are intended for community, for intimacy, for relationships. I’ll say more about this in a couple weeks when we come to the story of Eve, the first woman. But for now, notice that the image of God is defined by both sexes together. “Male and female he created them.”
I’m sure you’re aware of this, but let’s be clear: God cannot be reduced to a male authority figure of a female fertility figure. Clearly, the God of the Bible is neither male nor female. Yes, the Bible refers to God most often with the masculine pronoun. But there are lots of places where the Bible uses feminine images to describe God’s character. Last week we saw the Spirit of God hovering over the unformed creation and pointed out that in Hebrew word “hover” is always used of a mother bird hovering over her young. Jesus picked up this idea when he cried out to the people of Jerusalem, “How often I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (see Matthew 23:37). Both dimensions – male and female – are needed to capture the image of God. It’s an image of intimacy and relationship.
Work
A God of order and design. A God of intimacy and relationship. And third we see a God who works, a God with dirt under his fingernails. Look again at chapter 2, verse 7 where it says, “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” God gets down and forms humanity from the dirt of the ground. Like a potter shaping the clay, God shapes this dirt into a body and then breathes life into it.
It’s a surprising, radical view of God. I mentioned last week the cultures surrounding ancient Israel had their own creation accounts, and that one of these – the Babylonian account – is known as the Enuma Elish. In that account the world is created by a god named Marduk from the body of a slain sea monster named Tiamat. And Marduk calls the other gods and invites them into this new world he’s created. But they say something like, “Do you know what it takes to keep up a world like that? It’s a lot of work, and we’re not sure we like doing all that.” So Marduk creates this lowly primitive creature called man to do the labor, to do the heavy lifting, to do the grunt work, while the gods kick back. See, in the ancient world work is demeaning. Work is for the underclass. Gods don’t work. They create humans to do that.
What we have here in Genesis flies in the teeth of that view. Here we have a God who works, a God who gets down in the dirt (how demeaning!), a God who labors. And that’s not all. When this same God shows up in the person of Jesus of Nazareth he comes not as a philosopher (which is what the ancient Greeks would have liked) or as a military ruler (which is what the ancient Jews wanted) but as what? A carpenter. A union guy. Genesis 1 and 2 show us a God who works, a God who’s not ashamed to get his hands dirty.
About Us
Now, I’ve used up almost all my time describing what this passage tells us about God, and I said it also tells us some things about us, about being made in the image of God. I’ve got six things it tells us about who we are. Yes, I know what time it is, and no, I’m not planning to go into extra innings. But I am going to have to go very fast. So, if you’re taking notes, here are the six things it says about us. It says we’re workers, thinkers, creators, lovers, caretakers, and respecters. Got that? Here we go.
It says we’re workers. Work is something God does, and if we’re made in his image it means we work also. No other religion does this. No other religion gives work such dignity. Whether you’re blue collar or white collar. Whether you’re digging a ditch or directing a multinational corporation. Whether you’re raising a child at home or doing brain surgery in a hospital. Genesis says all work is given dignity by God. As human beings made in the image of God, we’re workers.
But not just workers. It also says we’re thinkers. If God created the world of nature with such intricate order and purpose, then one way to understand God is to understand the world he’s created. In other words, we’re called to study, to examine, to discover, to think. In a sense, Genesis 1 forms the basis of how modern science works – the principle of induction, which says that what happened in the past gives us the basis for predicting what will happen in the future. So to be made in the image of God means we’re scientists and philosophers (and theologians), students and teachers, physicists and biologists. We’re thinkers.
And we’re creators. God puts all kinds of potentialities into creation, and we who are made in his image are called to discover them and develop them. For example, there are only a few notes in any scale of music, but how many different songs and symphonies can be created from those notes? God the Creator gives us this world and all that’s in it and invites us to join him in the ongoing work of creation. We’re made to be sculptors and painters, musicians and dancers, poets and writers, architects and photographers and film makers. To be made in God’s image, to be human, is to be a creator.
It means we’re lovers. The God who made us is a community, a circle of unending love. And if we’re made in his image, then we’re made for community, for relationship, for love. Male and female he created us. Stay tuned. We’ll say more about it in a couple weeks. We’re made to be lovers.
And we’re caretakers. As we’ll also see in the coming weeks, God charges us with caring for creation, with being good stewards of this world and its inhabitants. That means caring about the environment. That means cleaning up hurricane ravaged regions like New Orleans. That means providing clean water and medical care for people in Zambia and Senegal. That means building decent housing for low income seniors in Lake Oswego. The God in whose image we’re made cares about this creation, cares about the souls and bodies of all its people. So must we, or we’re not like our Creator. We’re caretakers.
And it says we’re respecters. If we are created in God’s image, then so is every other human being. Every person in this room, in this city, in this nation, in this world is made in God’s image, and is therefore worthy of our deep respect. There was an article in last week’s Oregonian about how for the first time since records have been kept the number of deaths of young children around the world has fallen. That is, fallen to just below 10 million a year. I did the math, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. That means some 800,000 kids under age 5 die each month . . . 28,000 each day . . . 1,200 during this hour we’ve been meeting. Statistics numb us. We have to see that each one a person: a little girl or boy, a son or daughter. Each one is made in the image of God. This is why more of us need to go to places like Senegal or Zambia or Honduras – so that we can see the people behind the statistics. The individual children – each one with a face and a name and a story, each one precious in God’s sight. To be made in God’s image is to respect each person – Sunni or Shiite, American or Iraqi, Christian or Muslim, CEO or street beggar – as one made in the image of God, same as you, same as me.
No Junk
God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
You are not here by some accident. You are here by design. You’re not a chance collocation of molecules. You’re created in the spitting image of God.
And in the words of a poster I once had, “God don’t make no junk.”
So work . . . think . . . create . . . love . . . care for . . . respect. In the name of the Father, and the Son (who is himself the image of the invisible God), and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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