I invite you to turn to Matthew 22. This month I've been leading our church in a three-part study of what it means to be a human being. Most people do not know the right answer to that question. So we've been considering this question from three different angles. As a human being, how should I see myself? As a human being, how should I see God? As a human being, how should I see others? That's what we're going to be talking about today. This morning, I'm going to be doing just a little bit of an extended review of the first two weeks. Then after I do that review, I'm going to answer the main question for today, how should I, as a human being, see others? And then I'm going to apply that point in three different ways. And I just want to give you a heads up that today's sermon in some ways has been a colossal undertaking for me. I mentioned this previous weeks that this is material that I had the privilege of leading our teens through earlier this year. And I get to take about four months worth of material and distill it down into three weeks. And it's actually a little bit worse than that because the first two sermons were really only like a couple of messages. Today's sermon is like two thirds of the messages. So there's a lot of things that we're gonna be working through and I am both excited and a little bit daunted about what we get to cover today. The first week we considered how should I see myself as a human being? We said that in order to answer that question, how should I see myself as a human being? We said that in order to answer that question, you have to go to the source. We must learn from God what it means to be human. After all, the one who made you should get to define you. So we go to the one who knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves. We studied Psalm 139 and we saw that God knows every thought we think. He knows everywhere we go. He knows everything we do. He knows every word we say. He knows us. And he knows everything about us because he planned us. He wrote the story of our lives Every moment, every second of our existence is not just known by God, it was planned by God. So we should let the one who knows us better than we know ourselves define us. We should let the one who knows us and understands us better than we understand ourselves tell us who we are. The Bible teaches that as a human, you are wonderfully made. You are wonderfully made by God and you're wonderfully made for God. And then as we look to the second week, you're also made in the image of God. Wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God. Psalm 139.14 says, I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. So when you look at yourself in the mirror, you think about yourself. Because we all look in the mirror and we have thoughts that pop in our minds when we see our face looking back at us. When you look at yourself in the mirror, the thought that you should have is I and fearfully and wonderfully made, wonderfully made by God, wonderfully made for God. In the second week, we answered the next question. How should I, as a human being, see God? We also considered how does God see us as human beings. We took our gaze off of ourselves and we fixed it on the one who made us. We compared ourselves to our creator. Psalm 8, we looked at, says, when I look at 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? We marveled not just at how God made us, but why God made us. Because despite our weakness and our insignificance as humans compared to God, God has, according to Psalm 8, verse 5, He's crowned us with glory and honor. He's given us dominion over the works of his hands. We trace God's grand purpose for humanity in four parts, starting at the very beginning of the Bible. Part one, image made. God made two kinds of humans, male and female, to reflect and represent him in the world. According to Genesis 127, every human being has been made in the image of God. God made humans to be sort of like mirrors, reflecting and resembling and representing their creator in the creation. And that is why, in the very beginning, God made this world. When he made humanity, he declared that it was very good. And yet, in part two, Image Shattered, Genesis 3 records how the very first humans, Adam and Eve, rebelled against God. They believed Satan's lies, that they could somehow become more like God, even though they were made in the image of God. They believed the lie that Satan told them, that they could escape death. even if they turned against the God of life. And in the moment that humans rebelled against God, their ability to reflect and represent God perfectly was ruined. The mirror was shattered. Which leads to part three, image retained. In part three, we saw that despite being warped by sin, human beings continue to reflect God in the world. And there's a couple implications that come from this. It means that both every human life is precious and valuable, but it also means that every human life is inescapably accountable to God. And I want to take just a little bit of extra time, and I want you to help you try to appreciate the significance of this point. I'm going to offer an illustration. I want you to appreciate what it means that we still bear God's image and that God still shows us honor and mercy. Parents, I want you to think about the fact that school is starting up pretty soon. Nothing like starting off on a positive note, right? This fall, you get a phone call from your daughter's high school principal. And the principal says something to you like this, Mr., Mrs., I need to let you know that we've got a pretty heavy situation that we need to talk about. We've received a couple of videos that show your daughter doing some things with her friends that are both illegal and horribly inappropriate. He tells you what the videos are, what they show. You're shocked. You can't believe it. You head over to the school office, he shows you the videos, and sure enough, there's your daughter. And she's doing and saying all of the horrible things, all those horrible and heartbreaking things. The consequences come. She gets kicked off of her sports team. She's denied a scholarship. She's humiliated in front of her whole school. And yet the whole time, she's telling you, I didn't do those things. That wasn't me. But what can you say? There's video evidence to prove it. But then some time goes by, and it comes out that your daughter was telling the truth. She didn't do any of those things. In fact, the video was a fake. It was made by somebody who was jealous of her, who wanted to ruin her life. The police end up arresting that person. They charge her with cyber harassment. That story that I just described is not something I made up. It's a true story. It happened just about a year ago, Pennsylvania. There's a person who was jealous of three girls in a cheerleading squad, and she made fake videos of them using something called deepfake technology. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, deepfake is an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said. This technology has been around for a few decades, but it's gotten really, really good recently. It's an emerging technology, and we're going to see this more and more. Can you imagine, just for a moment, can you imagine if this happened to you? Somebody makes a video. And they take your face, your appearance, even your voice, and they make a video in which you appear to be doing something shameful or embarrassing or horrible that you would never, ever, ever do. Something that could harm your marriage, your reputation, your testimony, your relationship with your kids. Something that could make you lose your job. Everyone who sees that video will think it's you because it looks like you, it sounds like you, it's your voice. That video will tell a story and a message about who you are and what you're like. And yet that representation will be misrepresentation of the worst sort. What sort of anger would you feel if somebody misused your image like that? The anger you would rightfully feel is like the anger that I think God feels towards his image bearers, speaking and acting in ways that he never would. That's why Psalm 11 says, God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. It's not just that God hates the evil itself, which he does. It's that he cannot stand to see his image say those things and do those things. And this is where, like I said, I want to say this to help us appreciate the responsibility that we have, but also the mercy that God shows us. Because can you imagine our holy God from his heavenly throne peering into our world and seeing a planet filled with billions of men and women who bear his image, speaking and acting in ways he abhors? What type of anger would he feel when he sees his image saying and doing things he abhors? Can you imagine the sort of fury that he feels? I want to suggest that the horror and wickedness of deepfake technology misrepresenting people, that is the horror of human beings made in God's image speaking and acting in ways God never would. Because the depiction of the image is telling a lie about the original. And that leads to the wonder of part four, image restored. The wonder of the gospel is that God looks at blasphemers, fornicators, liars, narcissists like us, we who are entrusted with bearing his image and who horribly misrepresent him, and he offers us full forgiveness and love and restoration. You'd expect him to incinerate us on the spot, obliterate us. But our God responds with love and mercy and kindness. And that is the gospel. That's good news, amazing good news. Those who refuse to turn to Jesus will perish, but all who turn to Jesus will be saved. The amazing good news of the Bible. is that God has not abandoned us in our broken, warped condition, nor has he doomed us to the punishment we deserve, because God is on a mission to redeem and restore shattered image-bearers into the perfect image of Jesus Christ. It is so important that we understand the human story. where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going. Because the Bible from cover to cover is the true story, it's the true account of human existence and purpose. It tells us how we should see ourselves and how we should see God. So just by way of review, how should you as a human being see yourself? You should see yourself as wonderfully made by God, for God, and in the image of God. You are an embodied soul, and both your body and your soul are wonderfully made. How should you as a human being see God? You should see God as the source of your life, the source of your worth, the source of your dignity, the source of everything that truly matters about you. Sin separates you from God. It cuts you off from him, but through Jesus, you can be restored. That's a bit of an extended review. The first two sermons, first two weeks. If you missed either of those, the audio and the video of both sermons are available. I'm glad to send you my notes and slides if you're interested. I said in the first sermon that as I prepared to teach this material to the teens, it came from a few different burdens. One of my burdens for teens for a long time has been teens need to understand the gospel. That's probably my number one priority. They need to understand the gospel. I also think teens really need to understand the local church, the significance of local church. That's what God has designed as like the engine that compels Christian growth. All the resources that are available to a Christian are brought to the surface in the church. So teens need to know the gospel. They need to know the local church. They need to know the Bible. They need to know the significance and the reliability of the Bible. One of my emerging burdens has been teens, and not just teens, all of us, We need to know what it means to be human. Because if you look at the most controversial, most touchy subjects in our world today, they all go back to understanding what does it mean to be a human being. This is a burden that I've had and it's out of this burden that this series has been developed. And I would love to do everything I can to help equip you to learn these things, understand these things. If I can be of help to you, please let me know. Today, we're answering the third question. How should I, as a human being, see others? Because you are wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God, and so is every other person you have ever met or ever will meet. Every human soul is precious and priceless, and Christians must affirm and defend the dignity, the worth, and the value of all people, no matter who they are or how they are different from us. Christians who submit their lives to the Bible's teaching will see every other human being as profoundly valuable and intrinsically deserving of respect and honor. Let's pray. God, you are the source of our life, the source of our value. You're the source of our dignity. Every breath we take and everything we are comes from you. Your plan for humanity is beautiful and glorious. both in the honor and the dignity you have given us as the ones entrusted with bearing your image in the world, but also in the grace and the mercy that you have poured out on us in our sinful fallen condition. God, the gospel humbles us, and all the more when we compare ourselves to you. You, God, are the one who hung the stars in the sky, and you are absolutely and utterly perfect. You are holy and righteous altogether. And yet, God, you know everything about us. We are completely exposed before you. You know our every weakness, our every failure, and yet you offer us relentless love and forgiveness and acceptance through Jesus. We worship you and we pray, God, that you would help us see you and see ourselves and see others rightly. We need help. We ask you to open our eyes to behold wonderful things this morning in your word. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. This morning, we are answering the question, how should I, as a human being, see others? We're going to look in Matthew 22, the conversation that Jesus had with some Jewish leaders called the Pharisees. This chapter actually tells of an earlier conversation with them, back in verse 15, in which Jesus makes the point that the coin stamped with Caesar's image belongs to Caesar, but the human stamped with God's image belongs to God. You and I and every other human being on planet Earth belongs to God. Just like your fingerprint points back to you, his image in you points back to him. So what does the creator God expect from the humans he made in his image? What does he want from you and me? So we're looking at in verse 34. Verse 34, Matthew 22, verse 34. When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the questions of the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? This lawyer wants to know. What is the greatest, most important commandment? He's asking, out of the 600 commandments given to Moses for the people of Israel, which of the 600 some commandments, which of those is the most important? And yet, what's interesting is that Jesus quotes two commandments. Not just one. He quotes from both Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. Look at verse 37. And he, Jesus, said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and the first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is the preeminent commandment. The supreme responsibility that we have as humans is to love God with the entirety of our beings. We were made by God and for God. We exist for relationship with God. We exist to love God, and we exist to receive His love. But that's not the end of Jesus's answer. Because the second most crucial responsibility that we have as humans is to love other human beings. In fact, this responsibility, it's so important that Jesus includes it with the greatest commandment because love for others is inseparable from love for God. Don't miss this. Your love for God is proven by your love for other people. Make no mistake. If you do not love other people, you do not love God. John said this in his first letter. Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. So how should you as a human being see others? You should see every other human being, similar to how you should see yourself, you should see every other human being as wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God, and therefore as profoundly deserving of your love. You should see every other human being as wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God, and therefore profoundly deserving of your love. Do you see people like that? Do you see others? and instinctively think, this is a person who is profoundly deserving of my love. Our love for people is a result of both valuing the image of God in people, it's also the result of the overflow of the love that God has shown us, that God has poured out on us through Jesus. God has set his love on us, not because we deserved it, not because we earned it, but entirely out of his own grace and mercy, because God is love. So what does this love look like? I think it's expressed through attitude and action with a sincere heart cry. I want what's best for you. I want what's best for you. That should be my attitude towards every single human being I encounter. Because I'm looking at them and I'm valuing them as somebody who's wonderfully made by God and for God and in the image of God. and both because of who they are and because of who God is and because of what God's done for me, I see them as profoundly deserving of my love. Do you see people like that? Is that your attitude towards all other people? Because I'll confess, it's not normally mine. That does not come naturally for me, but it is something that God wants to grow in all of us. Now I need to clarify what's meant by that suggestion of that, I think that's getting at the attitude that we should have towards showing love towards people. This attitude, this sincere desire that that's my attitude towards you. I really, sincerely want what's best for you. Because I'm a parent with young children. I have a four-year-old and I have a two-year-old. And we see the world differently. What they think is best for them is often different from what mommy and daddy think is best for them. Most of their decisions are driven by what's easy, what feels good, and what makes them happy in the moment. And if we're honest, I don't think we really ever outgrow that. But what's easy and what feels good and what makes us happy in the moment isn't always what's best for us. And that's why it requires tremendous wisdom to love someone well. We must love people with both compassion and conviction, with both truth and love. I'm going to apply this point in three ways or with three convictions that should compel our love for people. Before we get into it, I want to give you a heads up that we are going to be talking about a lot of sensitive issues this morning. The difficulty of my job today is that I need to try to speak clearly and helpfully on topics that are exceedingly complicated and sensitive, things that need lots of carefully chosen words and nuanced explanations. on just about every point I'm about to make, there are a hundred more things I want to say. And that's really not an exaggeration. You would be so proud of me if you looked at my notes and you flipped through the five or more pages of material I wanted to include and decided this won't fit. So I just want to say, I am going to try to handle these topics carefully, but there's a lot more that needs to be said on each of these things. I actually hope that today's sermon starts lots of conversations about these things, because I am certainly not saying everything that needs to be said about them. We as Christians, we must learn how to think clearly and biblically about the things happening in the world around us. So here are three convictions that compel our love for people. Number one, with convictional love for all people, We must insist on the design of human life. With convictional love for all people, we must insist on the design of human life. In the first sermon, we saw that to be human is to be wonderfully made by God. In other words, God designed you. He planned your entire life, every detail about you. And that includes whether you would be born male or female. Jesus taught this plainly in Matthew 19. He asked the Pharisees, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. God made no mistakes when he made your body. He might not have given you a perfect body, but in his wisdom, he did give you the perfect body for you. Our God does not make mistakes. And the body that he gave you, it tells you who you are. It tells you what you are. And it also tells you what sort of role he expects from you. Our culture rejects and denies God's design for human life, specifically his design for gender, for sex, and for marriage. But as Christians, we know that God's design is good, and it's not just good. It's essential for human flourishing. It's essential for picturing the truth about God. So what has God designed for gender, marriage, and sexuality? Let's talk about gender first. And I just wanna give you a heads up. I've got a lot of content today. To help you out, I tried to put a lot of it on the screen, but I'm going to be moving quickly. So the main points, you'll have enough time to write those down. Pretty much everything else that goes up there, you won't have enough time to write down. So for me, if I'm taking notes and I start writing a paragraph, and then it goes on, I'm like, that's it. I'm done. I just put my pen down. I just quit for the rest of the time. I don't want that to be you. So I just want you to manage your expectations for what you're going to be able to get. I'm glad to share the slides with you later if you want to go back and get something. So right now, just listen, absorb. What is God designed for gender, marriage, and sexuality? Gender is an inviolable part of one's physically embodied human identity. The Bible teaches that both male and female are created in God's image, that men and women are absolutely equal in value and yet complementary in their roles within the home and the church. The roles that God has assigned to men and women are designed to tell the true story about who he is and what he's like. Marriage is a sacred, lifelong covenant between one man and one woman that pictures the relationship between King Jesus and His Bride, the Church. Human marriage and romantic love is designed to be a signpost that points beyond itself to the real thing, Christ's love for His Church. And sex is a profound gift of pleasure and blessing by which a husband and wife can express their love for each other, It is lawful only when enjoyed by one man and one woman, joined exclusively together for life in the covenant of marriage. That is God's design. And God's gifts, enjoyed God's ways, leads to God's blessing. It leads to the greatest human flourishing. But if you tinker with the design, if you change it or reject it, you set humanity up for moral, psychological, and societal disaster. For example, if you tell people that they are nothing more than highly evolved animals, that no desire should ever be denied, that sex is nothing more than a purely recreational activity that can be enjoyed apart from any hint of love or commitment, and that the only moral constraint to sexuality involves age and consent, that you set them up for a world marked by heartbreak, divorce, prostitution, abortion, and unwanted children. And pretty soon, despite those fragile parameters, the whole system collapses into abuse and pedophilia, objectification, rape culture, trafficking, and so much more. The rejection of God's design leads to the dehumanization of human existence. Humans become nothing more than meat and objects for selfish gratification. And that is both logically and morally permissible in a worldview that says that we came from nothing, we're accountable to nothing, and we're going to nothing. The problem is, it's not true. and people instinctively know it's not true. They know that there's more to them than that. We all possess an instinctive awareness of the image of God within us. We know that human life carries profound dignity and worth, which is why people are so devastated when they're treated like they're nothing because they rightfully discern that they are not nothing. They are something profoundly valuable and precious made by someone profoundly good. As Christians, our hearts should break when we see the harm done to precious people all because they or others around them have rejected God's design for marriage, gender, and sexuality. And that is why we, as Christians, we must insist, without apology or compromise, on God's design for human life as part of our love for human life. And if you do, you will be hated. If you, out of your love for people and your biblical conviction about what's best for them, if you insist on God's design, you will be hated. The first two sermons, I said that all of us need a robust, vigorous, strong understanding of what it means to be human. And it must be more than just knowledge that fills our brains. It must be conviction that we believe with every part of our being, truth that we are willing to live and die for. Do you realize that it could actually come to that? that if I preach the exact sermon, this exact sermon that I'm preaching right now, if I preach this in 10 years, that I might go to prison for it. What I'm saying is controversial, it's not politically correct, and it could soon become illegal. There is a cultural war raging right now, and there is a segment of our society that paints conservative Christians like us as the enemy. They oppose us. Many of them hate us and they desperately want to silence us. So how should we see them? Should we think of them as our enemies? Whether you do or not, the command of our King could not be more clear. The command of our commanding officer could not be more clear. Jesus told us, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. I love how Nancy Piercy, an apologetics professor at Houston Baptist University, puts it. She says, Christians need to muster their courage to be radically countercultural. They must do the hard work of making a case for the beauty of the biblical sex ethic with both their words and their lives. The reason they speak out on moral issues should not be because their beliefs are being threatened or because they feel offended. They should erase the word offended from their vocabulary. After all, Christians are called to share in the offense of the cross. This is not about us. Christians must make it clear that they are speaking out because they genuinely care about people. No matter how compelling the case for a biblical ethic, people rarely change their minds based on intellectual arguments alone. They are even less likely to change if all they hear is moral condemnation. Christians must present biblical morality in a way that reveals the beauty of the biblical view of the human person in a way that people actually want it to be true. And they must back up their words with actions that treat people with genuine dignity and worth. So, Tri-County Bible Church. Whether or not people agree with God's design or are living according to it, We must see all people as wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God, and therefore, as profoundly deserving of our love. You should look at all kinds of people, even if they view you as their enemy, and think with compassion and conviction, I want what's best for them. Which leads to the second point. With convictional love for all people, we must also defend the sanctity of human life. In our church constitution, we say that as a church, we believe that life begins at conception and that all human beings are made in the image of God. As such, human life is sacred and it should be protected and respected at all times. Why? Why do Christians believe that human life is sacred? What makes the taking of another human life such a horrible offense? The answer is in Genesis 9. God made a covenant with Noah and his family after the flood. God repeats the command to Noah and his sons to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And then God also gives them commands and laws that they must follow. Genesis 9 verse 5, God said, and I'm reading the New Living Translations paraphrase. God said, and I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person's life. If a wild animal kills a person, it must die. and anyone who murders a fellow human must die. If anyone takes a human life, that person's life will also be taken by human hands, for God made human beings in His own image. God declared to Noah, that human life must be protected and that justice should be dealt against any person who commits murder. Three times right here, God says that anyone or anything who murders a human being must die. One theologian I read asserts that human life is so valuable that the taking of an innocent life can only be paid for by the life of the one who took it in the first place. So God gives special authority to governments to protect human life and to punish those who destroy it. And all of this is expanded many other places in the scriptures. But why? Why is murder so wrong? Because if a bear in the wild attacks another bear in the wild, we don't care. I mean, you shouldn't. Maybe you do. How dare she? We don't care. We don't send CSI out there to arrest any bears. They're bears. So why are we okay with that? But if a human being violently attacks another human being, we do care and we should. If humans are just highly evolved animals, why does it really matter? Why is survival of the fittest not a reasonable ethic for humanity? And the answer is because murder is attacking God's image. That's the reason God gives in verse six. Another Bible scholar I read writes that, God made man in his own image, and so to murder another human being is to murder what is most like God, and it's thus implicitly an attack on God himself. And that is why we as Christians, we must defend the sanctity of human life. It's also why we as humans must fiercely oppose the unjust taking of any human life. In our society, it means that Christians must vehemently reject practices like abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide, not to mention Russia's unjust war and the taking of innocent human life in Ukraine. I wish that we had time to carefully think through each of those, but given the landmark decision that the Supreme Court made a month ago over turning Roe v. Wade, I want to focus on the issue of abortion. Abortion, even despite our society's refusal to admit it, abortion is murder. because it is the intentional ending of a human life and a human person. Nancy Piercy points out that the pro-choice argument, it used to be, this is, if you go back a few decades, this is what people who were pro-abortion would argue. It used to be that the argument was that what's in the womb, what's in the mother, it's just a blob of tissue. It's a potential life. It's a collection of cells. But today, due to advances in genetics and DNA, virtually all professional bioethicists agree that life begins at conception. An embryo has a full set of chromosomes and DNA. It is a complete and integral individual capable of internally directed development in a seamless continuum from fertilization. Dr. Michelin Matthews-Roth, a Harvard University Medical School professor, testified 40 years ago before the U.S. Senate in 1981, it is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception, when egg and sperm join to form the zygote, and this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life. That was about 40 years ago. Harvard University Medical School professor testifying before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. So in other words, if you hear somebody and they argue that a fetus is just a clump of cells, it's not actually a human life, they're actually using an argument that leading scientists rejected 40 years ago. Because the science is crystal clear on this. Human life begins at conception. Which leads to the question, why are so many people still pro-abortion? Why don't more people, if science clearly says that human life begins at conception, why don't more people agree that that is morally wrong? And it's because modern philosophy, we've moved away actually from objective science and we've actually moved into subjective, less non-concrete, abstract philosophy. Modern philosophy now draws an arbitrary, non-scientific distinction between a human life and a human person. Nancy Peercy explains, according to modern philosophy, just being biologically part of the human race is not morally relevant. Individuals must earn the status of personhood by meeting an additional set of criteria, the ability to make decisions, exercise self-awareness, plan for the future, and so on. Only those who meet those added conditions qualify as persons. Those who do not make the grade are devoted to non-persons. And a non-person is just a body. a disposable piece of matter, a natural resource that can be used for research or harvesting organs or other purely utilitarian purposes, subject only to a cost-benefit analysis." She concludes that this worldview is dehumanizing, one in which humans do not have rights, only persons do. The only way to stand against the culture of death is to accept that all humans are also persons. We must defend the sanctity of human life. You can see how that logic, the inner logic that's behind that, that's applied to, here's this human life, we're all agreeing this is a human life, but the argument, but it's not a person yet, can all of a sudden be applied to people at other stages of development or lack of functionality. And we get in really, really dangerous territory when you have a group of people getting to decide who's a person and who's not a person. We must defend the sanctity of human life. That means that we regard unborn human beings as wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God, and we regard unborn human beings as profoundly deserving of our love. It means that we do the same for scared moms and scared dads who feel unprepared for parenthood. We see those young parents as profoundly deserving of our love and care and support. And it means that we do the same for the children long after they're born. We see the thousands of babies and kids and teenagers in the Ohio foster care system as profoundly deserving of our love. I said earlier that the attitude of, I want what's best for you, should also be expressed with action. We must never see people in need and say to them, we want what's best for you, but then fail to meet their needs when it is within our power to do so. Because according to James, that sort of faith is dead and useless. That's James 2, 14 through 17. And so as a church, let us rise up to meet these needs. Tri-County Bible Church, we have every reason to expect that the current foster care system is going to be flooded and overwhelmed with scores of children who, because abortion is no longer legal in the state of Ohio, they will enter into a world that some would argue does not want them. Who's gonna take care of all of those precious children? Who's gonna take care of the precious children who are already in the system? May we, as a church, rise up and meet this need with strong love, strong faith, and strong hope. May we sacrificially open our homes and our hearts and our lives to rescue these precious boys and girls who are made in the image of our God. God help us. Which leads to the third point. With convictional love for all people, we must champion the dignity of human life. The image of God present in every human being demands dignity. The image of God present in every human being, it demands dignity. And one of my prayers for this entire series, both for our teens and for our whole church family, is that God would raise our view of all people and all kinds of people, that we would see, treat, and talk about all people with dignity and honor, even if they are different than us, even if they seem less than us in some way, May we see and value the image of God in everyone we meet. C.S. Lewis put it, there are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. I want to briefly highlight six groups of people. Number one, champion the dignity of men and women and families who are poor, and champion their dignity as people who are wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God, and profoundly deserving of your love. Poverty is the result of both sin and the curse in our broken world. Bible has so much to say about this topic. Proverbs is a wealth of information on this topic. Bible clearly explains that some people are poor because of their own fault. They may be lazy. They may be addicted to pleasure, drugs, or alcohol. They may have made foolish decisions in their past, or they may be poor as a result of their own arrogance and unwillingness to be taught by others. But the Bible also clearly explains that some people were poor because of circumstances outside their control. Sometimes their family failed them, or they lost or lacked any sort of solid support system. Sometimes it's because those with power chose to oppress them. So they might be poor because of their sin, but they also might be poor because of the sin of someone else against them. Whether it's their fault or not, Christians have an obligation to care for the poor. We extend the same love to others that Christ showed us by being generous to them. by advocating for them, by giving them a hand up, not a hand out, by honoring and welcoming them with love and compassion, and by ultimately pointing them to Jesus, the one who became poor for their sake that they might become rich, the one who offers them grace and kindness and eternal life without any cost required of them, who pays in full the biggest, most impossible debt that they and every other human faces and offers them complete forgiveness and welcome. So champion the dignity of men, women, and families. who are experiencing poverty. Number two, champion the dignity of men and women who look different than you, who have different colored skin, who speak a different language, who come from a different culture or country. We know that the likeness of God has been passed from Adam and Noah to every single one of their descendants. God made all people in his image, but he also made, he's the one who actually made every original human language, and he intentionally scattered humanity around the planet to form distinct societies. cultures that he would one day reunite in the worship of Jesus, people from every tribe and language and people and nation. We are all ultimately the same. We have the same worth, no matter our skin color or ethnic backgrounds. We also have the same problem. We are sinners against our creator, God. But praise God, we will share the same savior. He is joining us together in the church as one new family. As Christians, we welcome. and learn from those who are different than us. We celebrate the good things that make us different. We grieve the devaluing of every human being. We oppose racism in any and every form. And we worship the one God who made all of us. Number three, physical and mental disabilities. champion the dignity of men and women who have or develop physical or mental limitations. Some issues may be immediately obvious. Some of them might be invisible to other people. Some people are born with, others develop limitations because of disease or injury. Some render a person incapable of functioning independently. Some don't actually make that big of a difference to daily living. But as Christians, we commit to loving people with physical or mental disabilities by showing them compassion. Just like Jesus moved toward the leper, we move toward people even if we think they can't do anything good for us in return. We show dignity. We refuse to crack jokes or make fun of anyone. We take the initiative in learning how we can serve and care for them. We show them welcome. In the church, even the outcasts should know and feel that they belong, that the church is actually better with them. We seek to extend the same care to the members of their family. We do this because we're Christians, we're followers of Christ. Jesus was moved with compassion for the sick, the disabled, the mentally and the spiritually unwell, and so are we. Number four, old age. champion the dignity of men and women who are advanced in years. I was wondering if I'd hear an amen on that one. Our culture worships the beauty of youth. Celebrities invest thousands of dollars on plastic surgery to look younger. Special creams to get rid of wrinkles. Hair dye to hide the gray hair. Special chemicals and implants to hide balding. And on and on. Magazines are packed full of tips on how to look younger. They can't offer tips on how to become younger. Time travel doesn't exist yet, so they're just trying to hide from the reality. Our culture also worships the strength of youth. One author in his book on dementia observed that society values youth, wit, independence, and control. We're tempted to equate our individual value with our IQs and our ability to accomplish things. In old age, the accompanying slowing down of the mind and body threatens all these things. The Bible calls us to listen carefully to the wisdom of the elderly, to care for them, and to show them honor. Even though our culture worships the beauty and the strength of youth, Christians champion the dignity and the worth of the oldest members of our society. And then finally, digital media. Champion the dignity of the very real men, women, teens, and children that you encounter with digital technology. The private nature of using a smartphone or personal computer gives the feeling and the illusion of being invisible. That nobody knows what I'm doing, what I'm seeing, what I'm accessing, and that it doesn't really matter. It can even feel less real than the things done in real life. And yet how you look at, how you think about, and how you interact with even the image of people on your TV screen, on your computer screen, on your smartphone screen, it matters. These are people wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God, and they are profoundly deserving of your love. Christians are called to treat every person with respect, dignity, and honor, including when you look at them, talk to them, and think about them. And our responsibility to honor and respect people does not change if it's just a picture or a video of a person, if the person doesn't even know that you're looking at them or thinking about them, or if the person is himself or herself wanting some sort of objectifying attention. Even if the person is not aware of how you are looking at or thinking about them, or even if they don't care, God sees your every thought, your every glance, your every gaze, your every swipe, your every pinch, your every click, and he does care. He cares about how you treat his image in other people. He cares about how you represent him with his image in you. So how should we see other people? As wonderfully made by God, for God, in the image of God, and profoundly deserving of our love. May we, with compassion and conviction, insist on God's good design for human life. May we affirm and defend the sanctity of human life, and may we always, in our thoughts, words, and deeds, champion the dignity of human life. May we look at every person, and with sincere compassion and actions that match, think, I want what's best for you. Let's pray.