Our Old Testament script reading for this morning is from Genesis chapter 2. We're going to read from verse 4 all the way to the end of the chapter, verse 25. So let us hear the word of the Lord with reverence. It is his word. Genesis 2, verse 4. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up for the Lord. God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the site. and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold and the gold of that land is good. Bedellum and Ankh stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gaihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock into the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused the deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now may God bless the reading of his word. You may be seated. Well, before we dig into this week's sermon, let us ask for the Lord's mercy. Let us pray. Father, we do cry out to you for your help. Would you guard my lips that I would speak Truth, according to your word, that it would be clear that your Holy Spirit would be active amongst us, that our hearts would be enlivened, that we would be free from distractions. Indeed, you have given us this treasure in jars of clay, and these jars of clay have many weaknesses. Would you guard us from these things this day that we might be able to attend to your word? and grow in grace and knowledge of our Savior Jesus. Commune with us, meet with us, even as you've promised. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Well, I do have my sermon notes included in the bulletin, you may find those helpful as we move about. But I thought I'd start with our little couple of verses from our meditation this morning. When I look to your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. What is man? That you are mindful of him. And the son of man that you care for him. You see, there's nothing new about looking to the heavens and the size and grandeur of them and wondering why on earth Why in the universe do you pay attention to us? This is indeed a biblical reflection. It wasn't invented by, say, Stephen Hawking, who saw the little tiny speck that was earthed from far out, the picture that was taken, and thought, what hubris to think it's about us. But this is not new. And I think, when you don't believe, You missed that very point. Our smallness, I think, is part of the point. But nonetheless, the word of God makes it clear that as the image bearers of God, we find our ultimate purpose and our greatest joy in displaying his glory and being in his glory and displaying it, reflecting it out. As we consider Genesis, we'll back up a little bit into chapter one to these familiar verses that we were created in the image of God and his likeness. It says there in Genesis 1.26, then God said, let us make man in our image and our likeness. And we landed on that point that we have here, sort of hints of the Trinity. We're not going to go that direction. We're going to land on the word image and likeness this morning. that God created us in his image and in his likeness. And then in verse 27, using the word created three times, very striking in the rhythm of chapter one. He uses it in chapter verse one and then verse 21. And then here in verse 27, uses it three times. God created man in his own image. And in the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. So something stunning is going on here. Something amazing is going on here. And it has to do with the fact that we are to be like God. We are to reflect him. The word image here and likeness is the words throughout the rest of the Old Testament used to refer to pagan idols. Interestingly enough, that interesting amuse on. and in pagan idolatry you have something that was tried to be carved or molded that would be in the shape or form of the God that you were trying to connect to and then that would be a point of connection between the God that's out there somewhere and this picture of him, idol of him, here and of course the Lord universally condemned such a practice but these very words are used to describe the creation of humanity Weird to be that picture. Do you want to see God? You need to look at humanity, amazingly enough. And again, it's striking in the fact that I would think, you know, a fallen human being, I would think if you looked at the sun, especially now we can get a telescope and look at it and see how massive it is and it's burning out there and then it radiates out. And then if you're too close to it, it scalds everything. But then if you're far enough out, you can still get the life giving rays that come to our planet and then grow up into plants. And that's a good picture of God, don't you think? I think that's a pretty good picture. But that's not where God decided to show his real glory, is it? That's not if you want to know what God's like, you don't look at the sun and it sure it does display his glory. So there is a sense in which you do look at the sun, but it's not the main place. It's not the central. It's not the the the key piece of creation that displaces glory. Mankind is that. Isn't that stunning? What is man? That you are mindful of him. despised, endowed him with such authority to rule over the rest of creation. He created us in his own image, we were to be the way to know God. You see this then played out in the rest of the even in the creation week itself, that we are to imitate God's example of, for instance, work and rest. The creation is given account is given to us in a week long account. Work six days and rest one. Do you think God was tired? I mean, from what we know in scripture about God, I don't think God was tired. But he rested, so making that day holy set apart. for rest. And we find out later in scripture that through Jesus, in fact, that the Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath. In other words, there's a point that we are to know ourselves, that that we are to work hard for six days and rest one day because we were made that way. We are finite. We are also made to work during the days like God did and not during the night. We're to rest at night. This is a pattern just built into creation. There's morning and there was evening at the first day and then God does some work and then there's morning and evening and another day and then on the seventh day he rests. Just setting up a pattern for us. We were to follow God's example. You remember what I said last week as we introduced our study in Genesis, that Genesis largely is telling us about the origins of the world, the origins of humanity, and the origins of Israel. The origins of the world, the origins of humanity, and the origins of Israel in particular. In that order, we start off in chapter 1, the origins of the world generally, and now we're moving into chapter 2, we're getting into humanity. And I think the subsequent chapters, probably through really, chapter 11, Tower of Babel, you could say, are about humanity, generally. But these next, chapter 2, chapter 3, and chapter 4, in particular, give us an overview of humanity. And we have it introduced to us by the little phrase, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth. Now, You can look through, I have it in my end note too, in my notes, there's a little outline where you see all the different, these are the generations of the family of Adam, the generations of Noah, the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the generations of Shem, and so on. And you can look all those up, I have a few referenced here. Every other one of these generations phrases refer to a generation of a particular person. Except for this one. So this one's kind of an oddball out. Generations itself, inherent in the word, is a sense of a genealogy, but that's not really a perfect translation either. But what we see in the pattern is that when you have the generations of Adam, for instance, then it starts talking about Cain and Abel. The point is that this is during Adam's lifetime. You have the generations of Noah, and you have the key event that happened in Noah's lifetime. Starting off with some genealogies, oftentimes, and perhaps a little phrase may be specifically linked to those, but certainly the pattern of the book suggests that when we have these introductions, that there's a key person, Terah, for instance, the father of Abraham, then we have the story of Abraham. And so on. So coming back to our text, what does it mean to them to say that the generations referring to humanity, because we're talking about generations, we're talking about humanity of the heavens and the earth? I think what we have here is a general introduction to humanity, and it's laid out quite nicely for us. We've got creation in the garden, fall into sin and then consequences. Cain and Abel and so on. So it's laid out that way, and we'll move through that accordingly. But I wanted to get the big picture a little bit before we move forward. So Genesis 2, we'll start with verse 5, page 2 of my notes, the forming of Adam. When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, And there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was going up from the land that was watering the whole face of the ground. Now, some translations have that rivers. You know, it's hard to know exactly what to make of those verses. My best crack at it is it's setting you up for the creation of man, because the picture is that you have a fertile plain ready to be cultivated by a man. It's setting you up for that. We have this picture here. If you were living in that culture, this type of picture would come in your mind of you've got this place that could be beautiful, but it needed to be worked. And so it lays that out for you and saying there wasn't a man there yet. But then in verse seven, we have then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living creature. Now informing Adam in this way, giving us extra detail that wasn't given in the creation account in chapter 1. He's now zeroing in on mankind and giving us more detail. We see the man created first, and he was created out of the materials, the stuff of creation, matter, if you will, in our usage today. He created man, he formed him, but then he also breathed into his nostrils life. And we see this dual nature of man. He is matter, he's like the other creatures that God has created, and yet he's unlike in that he has this breathed out soul. Spirit. There's this inner man. And this is part of our essence. Beyond that, I don't think I can do any better than that. So he forms him, he breathes life into him, and then he provides all that Adam needs. We see this in verses 8 through 14, although I didn't reproduce the whole amount of them. In verse 8, And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden. in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed." Now, it's such a familiar story, we sometimes just cruise right on through, but the word for garden there means hedged in or walled in garden. It's implied in the word. So if you're reading this and you are a Hebrew reader, you'd immediately get a picture in your mind of something that had a protection around it, either a hedge or a wall. Of course, we see later on that when he drove Adam and Eve out of the garden, he put the flaming sword on the east side. Why not all encircling it? Well, because it's hedged in to begin with in some way, some shape or form. There's this enclosure, enclosed garden that God planted. You know, the picture before man's creation is this this area that was waiting to be cultivated. But God doesn't just plop man down there and say, go to it. He plants a garden to start with. And I think it connects with our being created in God's image. We were to be like God. So God plants a garden and then he puts us in the garden to cultivate it and to do what he did. But he starts us off with something that we can already work with. He plants the garden in the east, and then out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. First off, trees generally. He had a garden with fruit trees in it that were two-fold. They were great to look at. They were beautiful. So when you observe a beautiful countryside scene, that's part of why it was created. It was created for us to go, wow, that's beautiful. Isn't that nice to know? I think we intuitively know that anyways. But now we have Biblical affirmation that is clearly revealed that part of the reason he made the trees was for them to be beautiful to look at. And then he says they were also good for food. Good for food. Pleasant to the sight and good for food. Now what are we to make of the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? I just can't get into it this morning. I'm afraid. I have to mention it because otherwise, why isn't he talking about the tree of knowledge and the tree of good and evil? Well, we will talk more about that next week when man gets into sin with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life they don't get to partake of anymore. But you do have at least this. Let me at least say this. You have here, God is drawing a picture for us to understand the initial creation and the initial garden with a wall around it. as a special place of God's presence. When you go to, for instance, later in the later books of Moses, where he talks about how he got the picture for the tabernacle to make that was later going to be the temple. He was in the glory cloud of God and he said, you know, what you see here, now you're to reproduce. And God filled the workmen with his Holy Spirit so that they could make this temple the right way. They had the skill to do it. So too with the permanent temple. And you know, what do you find when you find descriptions of what they were to do on the walls or on the curtains and so on? You find trees and pomegranates and such. What's the point? Is that these temples were recalling back what the garden was like And what it's like in God's special presence. It is rich, it is beautiful. All you need is there. That's a picture we have here in this garden. Everywhere it's beautiful, everywhere is provision. And including provision for both life eternal and obedience. That's all I can say this morning. Perhaps we can pick that up in a little more detail next week. Even here though, in paradise, even here, Adam needs instructions. Do you see that in verse 15? The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it, and the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. The man would not have known this unless God spoke to him. Right, we have in creation, in the garden, in paradise, there was a command. You're to work the garden, but you are not that you can eat from any of these trees. Presumably even the tree of life. But not. But not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How would Adam have known that that was out of bounds without God's work? We were created to be like God, but also we have God giving us here what we need, not only in provision for food and comfort and so on, but instructions. This is right. This is wrong. You could make progress in obedience just by keeping that command. Our Savior has even said, Jesus even said to make progress in obedience of the man. He learned obedience through what he suffered. I don't have the reference down here, but he learned obedience through what he suffered. He had to suffer to obey God, but obey God he did. And so through that learned obedience, I dare say that at least this point could be made is that If we kept this command and didn't break it, we would be learning obedience. Learning obedience by keeping the command of God. I mean, if we're just to use our powers of observation, we look around and later on, Eve looks at the tree and it looks good. It looks good to eat. These other trees are good to eat. Why this tree? What's different from this tree and all these other trees? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has God's prohibition on it. That's what's different. It's got to do with authority and obedience. Who's in charge? Who decides what's right and what's wrong? God does. And he warns them, if you eat of it, you will surely die. And of course, we move from there to verse 18 and following. the creation of marriage, the creation of marriage. Again, God, you see, supplying what Adam needs. He's told that he is to, particularly back up in chapter one, that he is to subdue the earth and multiply and subdue the earth, that is to fill it and subdue it. Interesting to think about the command of God to mankind to subdue, which would be order, and to fill it. Because that's what God did in creation. Do you remember? He ordered it. He separated this from this, light from darkness, waters from the waters, and so on. And then after he got it all ready, he filled it with creatures. And then man to rule over all the other creatures. And man was told, you be like me. Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Be just like me. These themes are not really... As we continue to meditate on what God is actually saying here, there are rich themes that then ripple out into the rest of Scripture. I'm sure that when we're done with this week's text, you're going to go home and you're going to think it through, and I encourage you to do this and pray through it. You'll be thinking of, wow, then what about this or what about that? We should do that. This is why I don't want to spend from the pulpit too much time on the science of creation. This is good stuff out there. We need to touch on it, we need to be encouraged by it. But often times it hijacks the whole discussion. And we don't spend any time on the themes that are clearly taught. So guard yourself. In fact, I have, you know, if you're interested in the scientific questions, and I would say in our culture, we ought to be more and more equipped with that. And like I said last week, if we say that the God who created something out of nothing, then I think scientific objections just evaporate. God can create out of nothing. There's no problem for him to create in six days, for instance. Now, does that mean Genesis is absolutely teaching six days in creation? I don't know. But maybe. And certainly he could do it. I certainly think billions upon billions upon billions of years is probably out and is antagonistic to a biblical understanding of our history. And we could have those discussions another day. But these themes that we're talking about here, that God made us in his image, to be like him. So how are we going to be like him? Well, among other things, we are to subdue the earth and fill it. And how could Adam fill the earth without a wife? So we have here the creation of marriage. Now don't misunderstand me, this doesn't mean that every last person that is ever created needs to have a husband or a wife. Jesus himself never got married. Well, perhaps he was saving himself for his eternal bride. But the point is not that everybody has to have a wife, although it says in the New Testament some have this gift and some don't. Some have the gift of singleness, some don't have that, and so on. So we're not going to get into that, but the point is that Adam certainly could not have filled the earth without a wife as the first man. Could not. So here we have the creation of marriage here, verse 18. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now, this is striking in the account, because up until now, everything that God has assessed has been good. And chapter one, he says he created them male and female, and then he summarized at the end of it, it is very good. But now we're getting more detail in chapter two. He said created Adam first and he hadn't created Eve yet. And it's not good because it's not complete. Apparently, part of being an image God requires men and women and certainly marriage to be able to be like God, to fill the earth and to do it both in just being able to have more people and a suitable partner to do it with. Somebody to do it with. So, it is not good, it says here, and then we have, and I didn't repeat all the verses, but then we have Adam naming all the animals. And what's that all about? Well, certainly we see the fact that he sees all the animals, each with their kind. each with their partners, and none of them are corresponding to me. They are not like me. And so we get to that. But you're also seeing that every name that he gave them, that's what they were called. There too you see, God, that Adam is fulfilling his mandate to be like God. All in the creation week, God said, let there be light and darkness, and I called the light day, and I called the darkness night. He names things and that's what they're called. And then Adam, created in God's image, every animal that was put before him, he names him. And you're thinking, some of you who can't get off the science might be thinking at this point, now, if all this happened in day six, how did he have time to name all those animals? Well, I mean, my short answer is, I don't know. But a little bit longer answer. So there's lots of good speculation out there, but that's what it is, is speculation. I think the biblical category of kind is not exactly equal to our category of species. We've got thousands of species and so on. But, you know, you've got cats, house cats, and you've got lions and you've got tigers and their cats. Perhaps there was a just common kind in the beginning genetically that's certainly feasible and even probable Wolves and dogs and the same thing you can You can from a wolf breed Any kind of dog that now exists genetically they have the rich genetic information in a wolf whereas a poodle You can't go backwards because it's lost some of those genetics. But I've just exhausted my scientific knowledge. So there you go. So perhaps God created each animal according to its kind with an amazing ability to spread out horizontally into different horses and ponies and so on. But you can't change a horse into a dog. And that's certainly what we see today. A whole amazing variety of species, but there are only a certain number of kinds. And off the top of my head, I couldn't say how many. I don't know. But that's at least food for thought. And if that's distracting you, let's put that aside now. There are some plausible things along those lines. Or perhaps the day isn't a literal day. I don't know. I'm not sure. At any rate, we see the point in the text to get back to what the text is saying and not what it might be saying or what it could be saying. But what it is saying is that Adam named all the animals. And so is imaging his creator. He's being like God. Interesting enough, you see Adam naming his wife. In verse 23, the man said, This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. This is Adam saying this. And later, I have this in little brackets here, chapter 3 verse 20, we see him again naming her Eve, because she will be the mother of all the living. We'll get to that in its time, but there again, Adam is naming his wife. And the word in Hebrew for woman also means wife. And it has the same sort of ring for us. We've got men and woman. It has the same sort of phonetic similarity as well in Hebrew. And the word means both woman and wife. But Adam is naming his wife. and then setting up the paradigm for marriage. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now, keep in mind here, because this verse has often puzzled me. You know, it's God advocating, you know, in the garden, you know, some sort of everybody's going to go around naked. Is that the thing? But there is only one man and one woman. And we have marriage being created here. So keep that in mind. In the whole world at this point, they're bedroom. And the point is, is that they are unashamed in one another's presence. In a way, say, for instance, if you were to put a contrast to it, that you can be as a married couple, be unashamed in the bedroom together. And yet if you got divorced, then you would no longer be comfortable that way. Because there's been something that has broken in the relationship and separated and severed it. And so now there's not that comfort. So this is, I think, part of the point here. We also see later on, we'll get to it in time, but when Adam and Eve clothed themselves with fig leaves later on and God comes to them and said, we hid because we were naked. And yet they got fig leaves aprons on. So it wasn't just about being naked. There's more than being naked involved here. There's this open intimacy, nothing to hide. There's no shame to be covered. And when they put the fig leaves on, they're trying to cover their own shame. And we'll get to it later. And yet God then graciously gives them a cover. And that's what we all need. We'll get to that. I don't want to get too far ahead. It's tough, though, in this first few chapters of Genesis. It ripples out into so many biblical themes that it's tough to stay focused. But here we have the man naming his wife and establishing the pattern, one man, one woman. This is the pattern. You can say it unashamed. One man, one woman. What about the polygamy of the Old Testament? Well, God made allowances for our sinfulness, but this is the pattern. Here it is. And oftentimes we'll read something in a narrative and think, therefore, God approves of that. Or we'll see God make allowances for divorce, for instance, but then he goes back. It wasn't that way in the beginning. Jesus alludes to this passage to set up the way it's supposed to be. Life in the garden is the way it's supposed to be. This is the way it's supposed to be. And then God, in his graciousness, makes allowances for our hard-heartedness. Whether that be divorce, or whether that be polygamy in Abraham's day, or what have you. But Jesus made it clear, this is the pattern. This is the pattern we should look to. One man, one woman. And this leaving and cleaving pattern. They leave his father and mother. This is interesting. This is establishing a paradigm. There are no other parents here. They're the parents. But they understood what was what was coming. And a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, leaving and cleaving, they call it, and they shall become one flesh. So this intimacy and being able to be naked and unashamed was part of it, this leaving parents to cleave to your spouse and become one flesh. There's a lot of rich applications of that, but we're going to have to have to move forward. God establishes the pattern and paradigm for marriage here so that Adam is fully equipped. He has food. He has safe haven. He can be with God. He has a pattern to follow to cultivate the garden. And he is now charged by God to subdue the earth. Now, that's I keep going back to that. That's back in chapter one. And the word there does have the idea of using force. that he is going to shape the rest of the earth, make it habitable, and fill it, and to rule over all the other creatures, so that they stay within their bounds too, and do what they're supposed to be doing, because they were blessed by God, told to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So they have a charge from God to fill the earth as well. And man was given to oversee it. If I were to paint a picture, and again, I'm going to leap to some conclusions here because I've been reflecting on an awful lot of material that connects to this. If we put the metaphor of, we've got a garden that's like a temple where we get to commune with God and God tells man that you are my special glory bearer. You are to display my glory by being like me. So what do you see Adam doing? Naming the animals. What is he told to do? Fill the earth and subdue it. Then we're to make the whole earth a place fit for God's glory to dwell. And we're going to actually take that glory out there by multiplying ourselves because we're the representatives of God. formed out of the stuff of creation, but breathe life in by God himself, so that we are like him. All of creation could be said to be prepared for. What is it all about? What's the big picture? It's a visible display of the invisible God. What's the temple about? A visible display of the invisible God. Remember, Moses went into the glory cloud, the cloud of God's terrifying presence, who looked like fire, and followed that pattern to make a temple. What is that? But that's a visible presence of the glory of God. Fascinating to think about. Reflect on that, meditate on that. Let that turn around your head and see where God takes you with that. In creation, in the garden, we were given everything we needed. We've got food, we've got trees, beauty. We've got rivers. We've got minerals and rich stones. We had wealth. All of which to be able to utilize to spread over the earth and subdue it and fill it for the glory of God. Stewards of God to display God's glory. It's all about God. It's all about being made in His image. It's all about representing Him. Now, I'm just not making this up as I go along. As we consider some New Testament themes, I think they come into sharper focus for us. For instance, in Romans 3.23, we find that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now, why is that such a terrible sin? Because we're created to be like God. If we fall short of his glory, we're not doing what we're created to be. We're falling short. I'd like to think of it this way. Well, let me say that. Let me say that. First of all, let's see who did get it right. Jesus, of course, got it right. He was incarnated. He took on flesh to be the perfect image of God. Colossians 1 15. He is the image of the invisible God. Hebrews 1 3. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Jesus was the perfect man, you see. Now, he was the eternal God, made man, so that he could be the perfect visible display of God, like we were supposed to be, but we're not. And now in salvation, we are being restored as image bearers. I mean, this theme comes out in many places. Romans 8, 29. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. What does that mean? We're going to be just like Jesus. Well, what is Jesus like? He's the exact imprint of God's nature character. He's displaying God's character. He's displaying God's glory perfectly. And we're supposed to be like Jesus. He says in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers, you could say Jesus is now building his temple. I mean, you can in the New Testament says that we had time to go to those references as well. This is, again, it can make your mind hurt because it can go so many different directions at once. But he is now equipped by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came on Jesus so that he could build his temple. And then he commissioned his apostles to go out, but wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon you. And then you go out and you build a temple. What's the temple? People, living stones, temple. And we are to be conformed to his image so that we could be the firstborn among many brothers. Verse 30. And those whom he predestined, he also called those whom he called. He also justified that we are declared righteous in God's sight. Why doesn't stop there? And those whom he justified, he also glorified. We're being returned to glory. You want it even more clearly, we have it in Colossians 310. And have we put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator? This is what salvation is about. We're being renewed as image bearers or second Corinthians 318. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord. What are we looking at? We're looking at the Lord. We're looking at the Lord in the face of Jesus, by the way, in this context. We're looking at Jesus, so we're beholding the glory of the Lord. As we behold the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus, what happens? We are being transformed into the same image. From one degree of glory to another. That's what spiritual growth is about. We become more and more and more like Jesus, and so we're being restored to displaying the invisible God in the visible world. Isn't that wondrous? And I think it's... well, let me give you this illustration. When I... and I shared this in Sunday school. When I got out of college, I had two years as an intern within a high school ministry. And last summer, I got to lead some Bible studies. And that was daunting to me. Because this is the word of God. It says, He's breathed out this word. I want to make sure I get it right. I don't want to mess this up. I'm speaking for God here. You may think that's silly, you do that all the time now, you're from the pulpit. But what landed me here is that I wanted to go to seminary because I want to make sure I get the word right, because I knew that if I'm saying thus saith the Lord, then I better get it right. By God's grace, I just knew that if you're going to say that, you better get it right. At least do everything in your power to get it right. And so I went to seminary. Now, what I'm saying to you from this text, is that in our salvation, we are being restored to our proper purpose. Because we were all, all of humanity was created in the image of God. And we are all, at every moment, saying something about God. We are either liars, or telling the truth. Always. This is what the New Testament presents to us as one of the motivators to make progress in our sanctification, to make progress in our spiritual growth, because we're done with the old. We won't be liars anymore. We want to be like Jesus and tell the truth by who we are and what we say. And it's inescapable. Whether you get it or not, you are always saying something about God, because by your creation, you are made to represent him. You are either doing so poorly or you're doing so better and better. And as Christians, by grace, We should be on the better and better path, not arrived yet. When we see him face to face, then we'll be just like him. When we see him with our naked eye, we'll be transformed and we will be just like him. But in the meantime, our path should be better and better because we're beholding the perfect image, Jesus. This should motivate us to want to be in the word because we want to get it right, because we are representatives. Now, humanity is generally and that should be a good tool for us in evangelism. You represent God. This is why your sinfulness is so sinful, because you are lying about God. You are not telling the truth about God. You think your world revolves around you. That's a lie. You were created for another. And you will not have it, you will not hear it. This is what's sinful about your sinfulness. We want to get bogged down in the particulars of what it is you want to do. The problem is it's your plan, your ways, your path, your desires, your glory. And you are created for the glory of the one who really can bear it, the one who can bear our worship, the eternal God, the one who created it all, the one through whom all things exist, the one for whom all things exist. God, the eternal God, the one who made the sun and the stars, spoke them into existence with the words. speak them out of existence with a word. This God, you were created as His special emissary to display His character, and you're blowing it. You're missing it. And you know what? In so doing, you're also missing real joy. Real joy. And if you think, Like often scientists of our days, the recently passed Stephen Hawking, that you look at the smallness of us and say, it can't be there. You are missing the point. Didn't God say in 1 Corinthians 1.27 through Paul, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. This is the very point. As we start with the question, we finish with the question we started with. The very smallness of us, the very weakness of us, makes us the perfect recipient of being displayed in His glory. I should have looked it up. This illustration comes to mind from the scriptures where the prophet, to my shame I can't even remember which prophet now, you'll probably correct me afterwards which one, but who God took on the mountain and there was a whirlwind, but God wasn't in the whirlwind. And there was fire, but God wasn't in the fire. And then he goes through these things that we think are powerful, mighty. God wasn't in any of those things. And then there was a still, small voice. The point is, is that God's power is shown that he can work through the weakest things. In the garden, Adam was given everything he needed. And it was God who would walk with him, presumably, to subdue the earth. You wonder if I've heard some speculation from others that perhaps this was the very thing that really undid Satan. How can I serve something that's weaker than me? That's not right. How come they get to be the special displayers of your glory? I don't know. I'm speculating here. I'm going to be clear. I'm speculating. But you'd see how a mighty angel And Satan, presumably, was one of the most mighty of the angels. Powerful. Strength. I mean, if we're going to go one on one with Satan, we're losing that fight. But he is a creature and God decided to make us to be in his likeness, to make us to be in his image, to make us to rule over the rest of creation. Maybe that was too much for Satan. Maybe that was the occasion of his fall, for all we know. Pride got the better of her. No, no, you need something more powerful, something more awe-inspiring. And certainly all of creation does speak of God's power and glory, there's no doubt. But why choose something weak like us? Why become a man? Why did the eternal God become a man? Born in a stable. growing up in obscurity, in a nation that was a backwater nation in the history's eyes, to then die on a cross. Don't you see the point? If God can turn everything on its head through the weakest of things, does this not exalt His glory? So in the end, when all is put right, the last battle, there really won't be much to it. Because with a word, Jesus will send all his enemies to the pit. He doesn't need to get out a big sword. He doesn't need to look impressive. He just needs to say it. This is the God we worship. He is declaring his glory through little us. as we behold the glory of Jesus. Catch a vision for that. This is what we're about. And we don't have to fear our small size. All the more should we revel in God's glory. That God chose little us to display His glory and character. And in doing that, that's our greatest joy. I want to close with this one other illustration that, as I said in Sunny School, I can't remember the exact illustration that John Piper used, but that's where I got the idea for it. That if you look at something that is awesome, if you go to the Grand Canyon, or if you go to the top of a mountain, you go to a cliff and look at the sunrise, something that takes your breath away. If you would just picture with me for a moment something that you saw that was amazing, and Wow. I mean, even this morning, we're looking out the back door of our house and coming up over the hill, everything was orange. And you're like, wow, that's beautiful. When we behold God's glory, it's better than that. This is our purpose and our joy. This is our joy. to be in the presence of God as we see. I would like all of us to grow in our zeal for the word. And it's not because I want us to all be in the academy or I want us all to be scholarly. I don't have any interest in that. But I want us to stand in God's presence by being in his word and go. And then we're equipped to tell everybody else out there what we've seen and shine like bright lights in a dark world. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for your word that gives us a clear vision, clear vision of what we are created to be and what now we are being recreated to be. Oh Lord, would you continue this good work you've begun in us? Let us set our hope fully on your grace. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.