This morning, I want to focus primarily on verse twenty six of chapter one, but I'll be tying together a handful of items from the book of Genesis and from all over Scripture. As the sermon progresses, I'm looking at essentially the doctrine of the image of God in man, the image of God in man. It really is as ancient as Christianity itself. And it's arguable that when the doctrine of the image of God in man is asserted and believed, Great things happen on behalf of men. The value and dignity of man is asserted and cultural and political and other otherwise good activities on behalf of mankind are done, especially the needy, especially those who are poor, especially those who are in need of help. Today, we face the daunting challenges in the area of respect for life. As I thought about this particular sermon and why to choose it, I have been, I don't know about the rest of you, and maybe it's just me. I don't think it is frustrated. Maybe it's too strong of a word. Overwhelmed at perhaps at times when you see things said about the image of God and man today that would have been a joke just a few years ago. They literally would have been a joke. They were jokes. People wouldn't believe that five, six years ago, things that we joke about are now actually not only encouraged, but great, quote, unquote, political leaders are encouraging it as well. Judges from federal benches are asserting things that are patently absurd about humanity, human beings, what a right is. The right, for instance, to have a homosexual partner, a right, literally a human right. And the astonishing thing for me is that Every time I hear this thing, whether it's genetic engineering, by the way, we're going to have to face this issue more and more. It's not going to go away. It's not going to be easy. And I have a feeling, given how powerful the tide is in terms of pushing or eroding away the doctrine of the dignity of humanity as the image of God, we're in for a long battle, especially our children as they face codified or legal things like gay marriage, so-called gay marriage. really no such thing. But so-called gay marriage, as they, and as we also will have to face the questions of genetic research, genetic engineering. One of the last times I was in the UK, a discussion that had occurred there was fascinating to me as to whether or not, and they do this in the UK in some areas, whether or not it's acceptable for a scientist to use human embryos and to splice animal genes into them. to experiment with them, to figure out, to see what happens, to see what they can grow, just to see what comes of it. Living human embryos spliced with animal DNA. And there are some people who are, who don't hold to a particular doctrine that says mankind or humanity is particularly different from an animal. What would be the big deal? I mean, if we are just a higher, more higher evolved animal, if we are just a different species, Then, what's the big deal with experimenting with us to see if we can become better, to see if genetic engineering might not make us something better in terms of the species. Abortion, of course, is something that I actually hope that you will renew an interest in, in seeing stopped and seeing work done in it. Sometimes we hear about abortion so commonly that we just assume that it's going to be a part of our culture and always will be. And yet, when you think about the fact that abortion is the taking of a human life inside a mother's womb, it's abhorrent. It's appalling. It should be something that shocks us and makes us incredible. Evolutionary ideas and earth worship, I think, have created a culture in which it's almost impossible to even discuss some of these things openly. Evolutionary secularism and earth worship have created a culture in which the doctrine of the image of man is ignored altogether. When we see, for instance, lately I saw some people appalled, and I saw a woman at University of California, Berkeley, gender studies professor, become violent with some students who were showing pictures of aborted babies, fetuses, as they called them. She became violent against the protesters, and there's still some question as to what's going to happen. But what made her so agitated, after all, if it's just tissue? What's so agitating about seeing little body parts cut up into pieces if it's just tissue? That's all it is. I think what's so agitating sometimes is when the stark reality of the fact that the humanity who made in the image of God is torn to pieces at the will of another human is astonishing to us. Man is distinct and unique as a creature of God. It's no small irony in regard to that, and I don't know if you thought about it. I did when I was reading. We're going to Genesis years ago. It struck me as interesting that after the flood, one of the first things God said to Noah, this is really, in some cases, shocking. But he said to Noah, I want you to execute people. I want you to engage in capital punishment for anybody who takes a human life, because why? Well, in Genesis, God said, because they're made in my image. Humanity is made in my image. Therefore, if a man takes another man's life, his own blood should be shed. Now, the reason it's so shocking is because God had just wiped out every living creature in the earth. Everything that breathed life was destroyed and God didn't want to see that happen again. So what did he do? He wanted to protect human life above all. He wanted to protect human life, because human life is made in the image of God. Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, it says the following. It says, God made man, or he 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 birds of the heavens, and over the livestock. He uses two words there. He uses image and likeness. I think essentially they have the same meaning. likeness and image are used in the same way in later text. It's helpful sometimes when we have we do have a Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and it uses the word icon, which sounds like our English word icon. An icon is simply an image that's pieced together, usually a two dimensional image made from glass or tile or some such thing. The word icon means an image. And here we see that God says, let us make man humanity. And eventually, we'll know Adam and Eve male and female. Let us make them in our image. And it says later, the image of God, he made them. He created them male and female. He made them twice. The image of God is repeated. Male and female is also emphasized as well. We see later in the book of Genesis that likeness and image are used interchangeably. In other words, it looks like Hebrew parallelism or Hebrew repetition to say that they use two different words to emphasize the same thing. In Genesis 5 it says, this is the book of the genealogy of Adam, in the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God, the image or likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them and called them mankind in the day in which they were created. Genesis 9, 6 says, as I noted earlier, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man. God emphasizes over and over throughout the Scriptures that he has made man humanity. I am still resisting the gender neutral language of the gender studies. It'll pass by the way. It's going to pass because it's a fad. the ancient sense of man terminus technicus that the way I'm going to Latin phrase always kind of make things sound better. I'm going to use man because I don't always want to use human being or person and it's perfectly appropriate because the word Adam man is used in Hebrew. He made man and he made Adam ish and Esau he made them male and female excuse me. He says in the image of God, he made man, male and female. He created them. So the Bible itself uses the generic term man to refer to both male and female. So there, that's my defense for the politically incorrect language you're going to hear throughout the sermon. So when I say man, I mean human beings, humanity. God made man in his own image. And over and over in scripture, we see that he loves man in particular, and he's given man a role in creation and the created order. And the image of God is part and parcel of that role. It must be protected. It must be loved. It must be cherished. The image of God is significant, and we see it in words of redemption from Colossians and Ephesians that I'll go to later. With it, we bless our God, our Father, and with it, we curse man who have made in the likeness of God, James says, in James chapter three. Some of the quizzers probably knew that, because James was their book this year towards the end. Even in James, when it talks about how we bless or curse or treat other people, one of the centerpieces of how we treat other human beings is to think upon the fact that they're made in the image of God. And we should think about the image of God in man. I happen to think that it will fundamentally change a lot of the ways that we act and think about everything in all of our relationships, making us genuinely more sympathetic, making us genuinely humanistic in the best sense of the term. To be a Christian humanist, not in a negative sense, but to see in humanity the great potential and dignity and worth that God has given to them and to see in Christ the centerpiece to the restoration of that dignity to humanity. Because we see that at the beginning, God created man, male and female in his image and his likeness. But something happened in Genesis chapter three. We see the fall of God, the fall of man into sin, and we see the image of God disrupted in that sense. The image of God had been destroyed in the fall, not completely destroyed, but it had been damaged. Well, what is, first of all, the image of God? An image is something that if you look in a mirror, you see something that's like the person standing in front of you. The image is not the person, but it's a reflection of that person. The image of God is something we're thinking about, especially as we think and reflect culturally, especially as we as a unique people. And I'm hearing it more and more. And culturally, I lament it because I think it's bad. It's genuinely bad. But I also I'm also thankful for it because as the as as culture pushes back the image of God. Destroying it, hating it, striving against it. More and more, it's only going to be the church that has an answer for how mankind, how people are restored. How are we supposed to live? What is life supposed to look like as a human being? God, when the Bible describes the image of God. It's actually not that easy. In some senses, you just say mind, emotions and will. There you go. That's probably the textbook definition. Most of you have heard mind. We think we have feelings, emotions and and we have volition or the ability to choose. But it's not that simple because the mind and emotion and the intellect or the will are connected together in such a way that mankind you see in Genesis chapter one is a unique creature. All creatures think, reason, feel, and make decisions. But no other creature except humanity, no other creature except a human being, makes these kinds of decisions in the context in which their mind, their emotions, and their will are fit together so that they relate perfectly to God. In other words, they can worship. Intellect, emotions, and will uniquely designed for worship and community. I see some of you writing down, so I'll repeat it. intellect, emotions, and will the fancy word is sometimes volition. That is, we have a moral choice, intellect, emotions, and will uniquely designed for worship and community for worship and community. There's a longstanding debate in Christian theology about the nature of the image of God. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine. I'm not going to go into it, except as to say this Aquinas argued that what made mankind distinct from animals was his ability to reason and to think. his ability to use language and art for surpassing the abilities of any other animal. And it is true. And I mentioned this. I noticed when I was watching the video once was a great illustration. I mean, one of the things that distinguishes us from animals. is that we do create a language and an art with that language that surpasses any other language. To give you an example, whenever, and it's completely unique, whenever you see those nature videos of a grizzly bear, a big brown bear, you know, the salmon, they're spawning up the river, they're jumping, and the bear reaches out and grabs it and puts it in his mouth and starts to chew it. You know, you would never see this. The camera will never pan out. Now, you wouldn't see this in humans, but you'll never see the camera pan out and then go up to a series of bleachers with other bears going, yeah, good job. I'll give him a nine. Give him a nine for that. Now, the bears, why not? Why wouldn't bears be cheery? Why do we create stadiums in which we watch art? Why do we watch the why do we watch the basketball game? What is there about watching and observing a sport and who wins? You see, the animal king, it is we're the ones watching the nature shows. We're the ones with the cameras creeping around watching the beauty of a grizzly bear able to snatch the salmon and able to do what he does in terms of his own nature and instincts. It's a wonder. And we're in awe that the other bears are wondering when they can get in and get the leftovers. Right, because they're animals and they're not humans. We watch things, we observe things, we find joy and pleasure in things in a way that animals are simply incapable of doing. And this is where Aquinas is right. Our ability to think and to reason and to use language and art far surpassing the ability of any animals. But it's not merely simply that we're smarter than other animals and thus we can write things down and so forth. But I think Augustine is right when he says the image of God means that we have an intellectual soul. Our soul, the living spirit within us, has the ability, the capacity for worship and religious community, unlike any creature on the face of the earth. Animals don't do this. They don't build churches. The only schools we know of are with fish, right? Who swim around generally for protection. Unlike the cartoon of Nemo, the Nemo cartoon where he had trouble getting, Dory had trouble getting to school. School in the fish world really isn't for education. They don't do that. Animals operate primarily by instinct. They operate according to those instincts in ways that do not betray morality. When, for instance, an animal kills another animal, he's not taken to trial for it. Why is it? Why is it that when, and I know we always feel sad for the antelope, but when the cheetah swats the back leg of the antelope, gets him by the neck and holds it down until it can't move anymore, we feel sad. But we don't think murderer, right? You murder. Now, some of you may. There are a few of you here, but most on the whole, even the greatest animal lover among us would probably say, I'm so sad for the animal. If I were there, I would have shoot something. I would have done something to stop it. But that's what animals do. That's the way animals act. He's hungry. So he kills another animal and he eats it. Why is it, for instance, that when humans do that, we condemn it as murderous? It's inherent to who we are. Of course, we would condemn it. Of course, we create courts and laws and justice and a sense of justice because we reflect the image of God. We reflect God himself and his justice. It's who we are. It's not just that we're smarter, but our abilities as in terms of mind, emotions and intellect and will have been formed together in such a way that we are able to have the capacity for worship and religious community. We write history books, for instance. No animal, no creature other than humanity. Humans write history books. Why would they care? Why would a cheetah care to know the history of Central African cheetahs? They wouldn't. They don't care. They want to survive and they operate according to their own instincts and they survive according to such. They live and they work and they move according to their instincts. But mankind is different. We were made in the image of God in order that we might love the Lord our God and have dominion over the earth. So love for the Lord our God and dominion provides for humanity a dignity that no other animals have. And incidentally, that doesn't mean that we don't care about how we treat animals. Proverbs says that a human being, because we're made in the image of God, will be judged for the way they treat animals. Sensitivity to animals, even needy ones. It's going to be a characteristic judgment of the way we ourselves are judged. But you'll notice there is judgment for us because we're unique. We're made in the image of God. And also, incidentally, what did the fall do for that? Well, the fall destroyed that image, but not completely. And this is something that as we were studying through St. Augustine's confessions this past Wednesday, I'm glad for the home groups. I'm really excited for them, but I'm a little sad that we won't be discussing confessions anymore because it was exciting. It was interesting to see how Augustine dealt with the frustration that we have in life, the restlessness that we tend to have in life because we don't follow the way we're designed to follow. When sin came into the world, you see, it destroyed the image of God in the narrow sense of knowledge, righteousness and justice with dominion over the creatures. Our catechism describes it. When mankind was created, he created a male and female with knowledge, righteousness and holiness with dominion over the creatures. We lost that in the fall. But guess what? We did not lose our mind, our affections and our moral freedom or a moral volition. We lost in the sense that we lost our ability to know and think about this. This is so significant. Augustine pointed this out. The scriptures point this out when we long to see Jesus and have his image formed in us. We're thinking on this when we lost what we lost in the fall is our ability to do naturally and spontaneously what God wants us to do to be what he wants us to be. And in that sense, we've lost we've lost the direction, but we have not lost the image of God. We're still created with an intellect and a mind and choices that are designed to worship him. And when we do anything other than worship him, we frustrate ourselves. You know this, we all know this, and it's important to think about when we frustrate the image of God in ourselves and in others, we hurt and harm and confuse. That's what sin does. That's why sin is so often described as confusion and darkness and chaos. Our capacity to worship is never lost. Your children are growing up now with the capacity to worship and you are training them to worship somehow, some way, one way or another. They don't simply not have an ability to worship. That's who we are as those made in the image of God. We have the capacity for worship, it's how we're created, we're created for the need to worship and the need to rule dominion and community are central to this. It's significant as we love each other, as we relate to each other. Men's being in the divine image of God involves dominion over the earth and keeping in hope with all those in the world governed as such. We should want and long for the government of God in our lives and for everyone else. You sound like one of them. They're a theonomist, Pastor. Sound like a theonomist. We should long for the rule of Christ in everyone's life because that will restore in them the image of God and it will restore in them what they were designed and created to have dominion and community. We never lose the capacity for dominion and community. We simply misdirected and harm ourselves. That's what's so harmful about. And that's what we need to think about today with all the cultural issues. The gay, the so-called gay marriage thing is so deeply destructive to the image of God in humanity. We ought to cry out against it. It's more than laughable. It's dangerous and harmful. It destroys and strikes at the very image of God as it created at the creation scene. It upends everything that human beings were designed to be. And now we have presidents and other people saying, we're going to make this law. We're going to make everything equal. If marriage, equality, if they change this, you're not going to make things equal. You're going to harm and hurt people. And worst yet, the most devastating to be harmed in this are the children that have been given to these perverted relationships that we've somehow signaled is okay by the law. What's a child going to say when he's asking class, what's your family like? I have two daddies. What does that mean? It's confusing. It's harmful. It's dangerous. And it's harmful for the most innocent among us, especially children. Dominion and community is part of what we are as those who bear the image of God, male and female. There is a reason that God designated male and female relationships, because in the male female relationship, marriage is created and one man and one woman come together and create another human soul, another human being that produces the race and moves us forward. The image of God in man requires us to think of human beings with dignity and kindness and love. It should and has been reflected in our education. It's not reflected in our educational system today, not in the government schools. In fact, it's outlawed. It's outlawed. When we replace the dignity of humanity with an evolutionary secularism, when you replace that, what would you expect to happen as human beings treat each other as if they were just more highly evolved animals? What would you expect from that? It's much like what C.S. Lewis has said. He said, you basically rip out the soul or the chest of man and you bid him to be courageous. What do you expect from people who are told we're just animals? We can arrange our lives, our marriages, our political system, whatever way we like. But rather, the uniqueness of the dignity of the human image of God in man was one of the reasons the Puritans in particular wanted wide scale education in the first place. so that people could know their place and they wouldn't be deceived by Satan. The earliest law in Massachusetts is called the Old Deluder Act, and it was called such because they wanted to have little children at a very early age learn to read and write and learn to understand the Bible and understand their place in this world as those made in the image of God. Human dignity for ethics is the same. If we reject the image of God in humanity, we reject a basis for the kind of morality that I described earlier. Understanding the image of God is helpful for presenting why we don't kill, why we don't hate, why we're not prejudiced. Why we want laws and a culture that reflects a morality and a system that shows dignity to people. Will and moral responsibility, not animals of instinct, but moral beings commended to obey God. We do have a choice in the way we act because we're not animals. We're not animals for human beings made in the image of God. And even if we are inclined to a particular kind of weakness, frailty or sin, it doesn't justify the sin were made in the image of God. And thus, we have a capacity to worship him and to choose to worship him. Not like animals who follow their instincts and live according to their compulsions of their own nature. They eat because they're hungry. They kill other animals out of instinct that we do not hold them morally responsible. We do humanity. We do humans. This is what's so particularly pernicious about arguments we're hearing coming from those who would redefine homosexuality as a genetic issue. I'm born that way. I have the gay gene, they're calling it, even though it's never been found or spotted. Show me anywhere under a microscope in the whole world the gay gene. You cannot because it does not exist. There may be some people inclined to particular kinds of sins, and that may be one of them. But it doesn't justify the choice to continue in that sin because we're made in the image of God. To tell them as such is to destroy and to encourage the destruction of the image of God in them and to harm them. It doesn't liberate them. It doesn't give them equality. It doesn't free them. It harms them. It damages them. And it should be that particular kind of plea for pity that drives us in this debate in this discussion today. Not because we're angry. Indeed, no, but because we're sad. How would you feel, for instance, and I heard about this when we were in Italy, we were doing our tour. You do your tour. We're doing one of those student tours and you're hitting, you're running. See the Mona Lisa. Okay. You're going around seeing all these things. And we heard that the statue of David had been attacked in Florence. Somebody had gone up and started jumping towards a pretty huge statue, actually jumping towards hitting it, you know, trying to take a hammer and damage it. It's appalling. And it's angering to think that all that that's made a marvel by Michelangelo, you know, hundreds of years ago. You want to protect it. You want to care for it. We feel that way about art, don't we? We feel that way about fine things, things that are significant, things that are beautiful. Things that are true, things that are good, we feel that way about them and we would be appalled if someone went and tried to deface it. That is the way we should feel when sin scars humanity as well. We should feel the same kind of pity, same kind of anger mixed with a concern and a desire to have it stopped, not because we hate people, but because we love people. It's precisely the opposite. The image of God and man causes us to have a desire to see them restored. To see their their their thinking restored to see their emotions restored, we should desire to see it in ourselves. We should all of us understand that when we when we think about the image of God in ourselves, that we're thinking about taking our mind, our emotions and all of our choices and doing exactly with them exactly what God has designed us to do with language, with creativity, with everything that we do. Imagine. Should pick up this few weeks ago, Brad mentioned imagine, didn't he? Not John Lennon's imagine, but imagine, and you should, imagine what your relationships would be like if you really wanted to do what God wanted you to do. Imagine that. Most of us know it in our relationships because, and here I'll pick up on James for you Bible quizzers. What causes fights and quarrels among us? Now, I'm not. Don't get me. You misquoted it, Pastor Jackson. You missed a word. I'm not on Bible quizzing, by the way. But what happened? Why did we fight? Why do we quarrel? Well, because we want something and we don't get it. What if our desires? What if our will? What if our mind? What if our emotions were reoriented to the way Christ says it? What if we actually knew what we wanted but weren't willing to fight for it? Imagine the relationship restoration that would occur in our lives if we simply wanted to do what God wanted us to do. We would restore, we would restore in our own life and dignity of the image of God in us. Slavery, abortion, disgraceful treatment of humans would cause us to be riled up, not with hatred for people, but with love for humanity. That's where we should be. The image of God in man is a matter of praise and honor. It should also incidentally cause us to be stirred up when we see people in sin. The first response should not necessarily be judgment, but mercy. Look how they're entrapped in that sin. Look how that sin is destroying their lives. Look how that sin is disrupting the image of God in them and in everyone around them. Pity. is one of the responses when we stir up in ourselves a healthy, a healthy sense of the image of God and man. We begin to pity people who are in sin. And that's difficult, incidentally, especially if the sin is against you. If the sin is against you, it's particularly hard to stir up pity for the person who's angry at you all the time or who's jealous of you or who's fill in the blank. The image of God and man is a matter of praise and ought to stir up in us a multiple number of emotions about ourselves and about others and about our relationships, but mostly about the praise that God has given us. Look at what the psalmist said, and I'll get back to the psalm that was read at the beginning, Psalm 8. It says, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic, how excellent is your name in all the earth, who have set your glory above the heavens. Now to the mouth of babes and nursing infants, you have ordained strength because of your enemies. that you may silence the enemy and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that you're mindful of him? Ever wondered that? Why? Why? Some people say, why do you think mankind's so important? I think these animals are just as important. Well, in many cases, so do we. I wonder. You look at the heavens and you look at the stars and you look at the size of mountains and you look at the gigantic, enormous oceans and the waves and the currents and the power of God. You wonder why God even cares about it. What does he think about us? And he goes on, though, look, because this should stir us up. The doctrine of the image of God and man should stir us up to praise and worship and wonder about the dignity and honor and beauty of the image of God in man and in us. Because what I consider your heavens and the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you redeem. What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels and you crowned him with glory and honor. You made him to have dominion over the works of your hands. You put all things under his feet. And he repeats the creation scene that we just saw. He goes back to the fact that God made all things and put all things under Adam, all fish of the sea and the birds of the air and everything that creeps along the land belong to mankind for their use. Verse six, as you've made him to have dominion over your works, you put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, even the beast of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the paths of the paths of the sea. Oh, Lord, notice what it does. Starts out in praise, but as he considers the image of God in man and the place of humanity among the creation, he's back to the majestic praise of God. How excellent, how majestic is your name in all the earth? Why do you do that? We're in wonder and awe, and the doctrine of the image of God in man stirs us up to that and should. Why does God even care about us, let alone love us enough to give us dignity and honor and place us in a seat and a position to have dominion on the earth, to rule over this earth? And furthermore, why does God give us a church and restore us and love us through Jesus Christ, who is the second Adam sent, you see, to restore fully the image of God in man? All that was lost in the fall is to be restored to Jesus Christ, the community, the hope, the dignity, the equality, everything that mankind was created to be is going to be restored in the person of Jesus Christ. Listen to the way it's described in Ephesians four. Now, I say and I testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They were darkened in their understanding, alienated from God. And I want you to notice, incidentally, in all of this, the confusion and the frustration and the restlessness that happens when we don't live the way we're designed to live. There it is laid out, darkened, understanding, alienated from the life of God because of ignorance that is due to them in the hardness of their heart. They become callous and even given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to the former manner of life and is corrupt, the deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the image or likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Smack dab in the middle of redemption and restoration is a reminder of the image of God in us, the beauty The goodness, the truth, the centrality of the image of God in man is one of the desires that Jesus Christ has in the restoration and redemption of humanity. Colossians three, you'll notice, and I emphasize this when I preach a lot, Bible doesn't just come along and tell you, stop this, stop that. Don't do this. Don't do that. The Bible encourages and offers us grace to be restored to our purpose and dignity in Christ. Colossians three, five says similarly, it says, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming in these. You, too, once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene talk from your mouth. Don't lie to one another. Seeing that you have put off the old self with his practices and put on the new self, which is renewed in the knowledge after the image of its creator. Here, he said, there is not Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slavery, but Christ is all and in all the image of God restored to Jesus Christ and bringing true community to humanity. No more hatred. I see that's better than a John Lennon song, right? No more hatred, no more division, no more racism, no more tribalism. No more nobody thinking that they're better than other people, true dignity, true equality, true humanity that is restored in Jesus Christ, where he says Christ is all and in all in Christ and in union with him provides the key to genuine human dignity restored in us and a dignity and an honor that we should long to have restored a dignity and honor that we should long for ourselves, getting rid of the anger and the pollution and the guilt that hangs around our neck. like an anchor. We had a practice when I was a kid. We had a German shepherd that used to kill chickens. And my dad did various things, probably animal cruelty today. But one of the things the vet told him to do is hang a chicken around his neck so he can never get rid of it. That'll cure him. So, they hung it around, you're supposed to hang it around there as long as possible and it would hang there and it would begin to smell and nobody wanted to be around the dog and so forth and so on. It reminded me of how often our lives are lived in sin. We live that way until we cut it off, until we get rid of the burden, get rid of the anchor, get rid of the smell of the pollution of death around us and get the image of God restored in us. and learn to live the way God wants us to live, not in the pollution and the guilt of sin, but in the freedom and liberty of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you so much that you have made us in your image. You've given us minds, you've given us emotions and you've given us moral choices. All placed together mysteriously, yet wonderfully, so that we can worship you. And as we worship you, we can find community with each other. Community, husbands with wives and parents with children and church members, members of the same body, unique and distinct, but part of one body. Father, restore in us your image, help us to think the way we ought to think, help us to feel the way we ought to feel and do what we ought to do. It helps to do so, Lord, as we have union with Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Redeemer, in whose name we pray. Amen.