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00:39 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:43 Welcome to KJV Cafe. I’m so glad you joined me. It’s so good to be here today.
00:48 Amen. Hopefully you’re doing great. Hopefully you’re having a great week, a great day as we dive into God’s Word.
00:54 And here we are in the third part of a three-part series on being made in the image of God and what that means. Our text verse here is Genesis, Genesis 1. This is on the first page of your Bible. If you’ve got a King James Bible like me at least for Genesis 1:26-28.
01:13 And 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 fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him.
01:33 Male and female created he them. And God blessed them. And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
01:48 That’s Genesis 1:26-28.And this is a very important statement, I believe, because it points out who we are and responsibilities that God has given us. And as we’ve gone through these messages, just to kind of recap, we’ve discussed how we are made in God’s own image.
02:08 It is an incredible compliment, amen. It is in plural form when it says let us make him in our own image. O you are our.
02:20 Why is it plural? Because God is three parts. So it’s one God, but he is a triune God. There are three parts to God.
02:29 God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. That is the three-in-one God. That is the fullness of God.
02:35 That is the Godhead. The significance of that is Jesus Christ being mentioned here on the first page of Scripture, because Jesus is the second part of the Trinity. So that is why this is so significant.
02:47 The word Elohim is used in the original or earliest manuscripts, which means gods, but it’s a plural, singular God. So it’s one God, but in three forms. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
03:05 And so we know it’s a compliment to be made in the image of an all-powerful, all-knowing, everlasting God. But at the same time, it’s a responsibility because we don’t want pride to creep in and say, hey, we’re made in the image of God. Look at those suckers over there.
03:23 No, they also too are made in the image of God. James 3.9 so eloquently puts it, therewith bless we God, even the Father, therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.
03:32 Such a great, biting, cutting point made in James 3, that we are blessing God, we are praising God, and at the same time, sometimes in the same breath or sentence, or sometimes within the same minute or hour, we’re tearing down someone else that is also made in the image of God.
03:53 That’s not praise to God, that’s hypocrisy. And so we have to be mindful of being made in the image of the Almighty God comes with responsibilities. Like our body being the temple of God, 1 Corinthians 6:20, for you’re bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
04:12 We are to glorify God in our body and our spirit. That’s important for us today, Colossians 3:10, and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.
04:21 So when those that are saved, in order to be saved, we have to believe in what Christ did on the cross, have to realize our sin nature, our need for a Savior, realize that we couldn’t do it on our own, trust in Jesus Christ as the one that saves us from sin, make him Lord of our life by believing what he did on the cross, the finished work of the cross at Calvary.
04:42 It’s already been done, it is a free gift. When we accept that free gift of salvation, we say, Lord, I can’t do it on my own, but Jesus died for my sins. I trust in him.
04:55 I trust in what he did on the cross. I believe that he truly went to the cross with me in mind, and that he was crucified there, he was buried three days, he was risen from the grave, he walked the earth 40 days and 40 nights, ascended up to heaven, is at the right hand of the Father, alive today, and you believe on Jesus, you accept him as Lord and Savior, what happens? You’re born again. Well, when you’re born again, you’re no longer your own.
05:16 You’ve been bought with a price. What is the price? You’ve been bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. God’s only begotten.
05:21 Remember, he was innocent, sinless, he didn’t need to die. He obediently and willingly died for our sins. He paid the price.
05:28 Him going to the cross wasn’t anything he had to do. He’s God in the flesh. He has all power.
05:34 He could have called legions of angels down and wiped everyone out. I love the scripture, and I gotta write it down, the exact verse where they come to the garden to get Jesus, Garden of Gethsemane, and they come to get him, and they say, they ask who he is, he says his name or something to that extent, and everyone falls down, all those soldiers, the Roman soldiers, they all fall down because he speaks. And that’s a, just a little bit of a, like a tidbit of us seeing God’s power through Christ.
05:58 Christ didn’t have to die for our sins. He willingly died for our sins. The Bible tells us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
06:06 And so we have that kind of love from a Savior, which should create or ignite a love within us to put on the new man, and to have that renewed knowledge after the image of him that created him.
06:20 Romans 8:29, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And so what we are to do in God’s poetic program, we are created like God, right? But we’re not his children until we’re born again.
06:44 That’s when we become sons and daughters of God, when we are saved, amen? We believe on Christ, and then once we’re born again, we are to be more and more like Jesus each day until he calls us home.
06:52 So God’s poetic program for us is to come into creation in an image of God, and then still being spiritually dead, be born again, become spiritually alive, get the Holy Spirit living within us, and then become more and more evolved, more and more like Christ, being more Christ-like through our actions, through our life, through our study of the Word, through our love that we show others as Christ showed us, doing all these things that we’re called to do in the Bible, more and more so, until the day comes when we’re called home to be with him. And so we become this evolving image of God.
07:21 That’s a sermon in its own right. But look, this is what it means to be an image-bearer. It means to realize our responsibility, and it means to realize that God’s called us to be fruitful and multiply, which in a lot of regards we have.
07:37 The world’s got almost 8 billion people in it. I wonder how many it would have if we didn’t have abortion, but that’s for another message. But it’s got 8 billion people in it, and all these people are rooted in Adam and Eve, amen. They all started from Adam and Eve.
07:51 They all have that sin nature, yet God still has allowed us to be fruitful and multiply. America, I say us, so here in America, we’re the third largest country in the world. That’s a statistic that surprised me.
08:02 I was surprised we’re that big. We’re the third largest country in the world, and God has richly blessed us, has he not? He has richly blessed us. He has been long-suffering with us.
08:12 As we have gone and lived in sin, he has not wiped out America. If I were God, if you were God, I’m sure at some point your patience would come to an end, and you say enough, and you say, you know, enough.
08:23 But God remembered his promise, remembered Noah, remembered the rainbow, said I’m not gonna flood him again, and I’m gonna live by prophecy, that future history which has been made in the Bible, which God’s program will fulfill, in which time he will rapture his church out, and the tribulation will begin, and so forth, and the earth will eventually be made anew.
08:43 So we realize that there is a change coming, but right now we are in the age of grace, and that change has not arrived, so therefore anyone could be saved right now by simply believing on Christ.
08:53 The Bible, God himself says he desires all to come to repentance, all come to the knowledge of him to be saved. And one thing we’re called to do while we’re here is replenish the earth.
09:02 Psalm 8, Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy in the adventure.
09:17 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou has made him a little lower than the angels, and has crowned him with glory and honor.
09:30 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. Thou has put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, and the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.
09:50 Psalm 8, that’s the whole psalm by the way, just nine verses, it’s an absolute testament to Genesis 1. It absolutely recertifies everything in Genesis 1 in a beautiful, beautiful way, and helps us to understand our role here. Helps us to understand that God uses unlikely figures. Verse 2 of Psalm 8 says, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies.
10:16 So God will use the unlikely, the poor and physically inept, to win great battles for him. An example of that would be David beating Goliath, or even Paul who was strong in letters, but when people would see him in person he was kind of sickly and so forth. He had that thorn in the flesh.
10:33 And many other examples throughout the Bible where God will use unlikely carriers, characters I should say, real true characters in the Bible to win major victories.
10:47 Gideon in the 300 is another one, I could go on and on. But God is using those people because it brings him glory for people to say, hey it couldn’t have been them that did it, it must have been God.
10:55 And we see that consider the heavens and the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained. And if you get into the moon and the stars, and that’s how we have seasons, and I’m not a scientist amen,
11:07 but we have we have all kinds of things that come from the way that the moon and the stars and the earth and how they all relate, that’s how we have different seasons, and so how we have night and day and on and on.
11:18 And God has done all that and yet he’s mindful of man to the point where he made man in his image and he said go ahead and replenish the earth.
11:26 We’re privileged to have dominion over the things of this world. We have a responsibility to take care of this world until he returns because he says to take care of it. He says to have dominion, to subdue, to replenish.
11:38 That means physically replenish. That means having kids and being fruitful and multiplying. And also naturally in nature we are to plant, you know, the plants.
11:48 We are to take care of the ground. We are to take care of the animals. God cares about the animals.
11:54 In the story of Jonah and Nineveh, I believe it was, Jonah saying why bother these backslid people? And God says there’s many thousands of them here as well as the cattle. That’s one example of God telling Jonah and also letting us know that God cares about the animals. He cares about the birds.
12:10 He cares about the cattle. He cares about the fish in the sea. These are God’s creation and we’re called to take care of them.
12:16 I don’t want to get all environmental with you, you know, I’m not trying to be all environmentalist, but at the same time we really are called to take care of what God has made us stewards over.
12:26 And that’s an awesome responsibility. And I believe that God wants us to be busy for him in taking care of the land and utilizing the land and doing things for him in the land, amen. We should take care of it.
12:39 We shouldn’t litter. We shouldn’t just build just for the sake of building to destroy a bunch of stuff, but we should be good stewards of land. And spiritually it’s most important.
12:48 We have to continue to replenish the earth with spiritual Christians, telling them about the ways of the Lord when they go, when they wake up in the morning, and throughout their day,
12:57 and when they go to bed, and leading them to Christ, and giving them the gospel so clearly outlined in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, and walking them through Romans Road, and helping them understand godly principles, and leading by example moms being moms, and dads being dads, amen.
13:11 And families being close, and kicking the world to the curb, canceling Netflix, getting rid of all the wicked stuff, getting the alcohol out, getting the drugs out, getting all the bad things out, and living good godly lives as an example,
13:25 so that the children grow up and they don’t depart from the Lord, but they go close to the Lord, and that they raised up in the right way, and that they are then raising up the next generation.
13:35 And how many generations could the Lord raise up if we would just go ahead and stand up and be godly in this ungodly world, and be good stewards of what he’s given us?
13:43 Oh, how God could help us if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and turn from their wicked ways. What God could do, what God could do.
13:52 I wish I had more time, but my time is up. Know that we are made in the image of God. We are made in the image of God, and we should do something with that beyond understanding it.
14:02 We should live as if we are made in the image of God, and live out those responsibilities soberly and righteously until he calls us home, and we will be blessed for doing it.
14:12 I thank you so much for listening. Take care, God bless, and amen.