Being Human

Rory Mosley

091 Being Human

Genesis 1:26-27

October 22, 2021

D-Now Friday Night

Let’s Pray

Tonight we’re going to kick things off a little

And I’m going to do my best to sort of SET THE STAGE for some studies That we’re going to have the remainder of this weekend.

You see the theme: “Identity Crisis”

Amy is actually the one who first identified this as a good theme for Disciple Now this year, because she works in the school and she sees first hand the struggle that goes on in so many teenagers regarding this very issue.

Now probably at the FOREFRONT, and certainly the most controversial

Aspect of this topic has to do with GENDER IDENTITY.

Our culture has embraced the lie that your gender is not defined by your physical characteristics or even your DNA or chromosome makeup,

But rather your gender is defined by your emotions.

So today we actually see people who were born girls seeking to “identify” as a boy or people who were born boys seeking to “identify” as girls.

It just represents the CONFUSION OF THE HUMAN RACE in general

That they have no idea what their identity actually is.

And let me just put it out there for you

As clearly as I can to start this weekend.

Every single human is born with an absolute identity crisis.

Oh, you may know if you are a boy or a girl

But I promise you that even still

YOU ARE BORN WITH A TERRIBLE CONFUSION REGARDING YOUR IDENTITY.

When you are born you have no idea who you are.

SO YOU START THE DISCOVERY PROCESS.

· Now you quickly learn who mom and dad is.

· You learn quickly what your name is.

· And you begin to learn some things about life.

For example, you learn that you like sugar and you don’t like peas.

And you literally start processing all this data

And filing it away on a quest to find out who you are.

Then at some point you are THROWN INTO A SOCIAL CIRCLE,

· Maybe daycare

· Or you go to school or church

· Or you are around cousins or something

And you start trying to see who you are

In a cultural sense or a relational sense.

You try to figure out “Who am I in the grand community?”

I remember Hannah,

· About 1st or 2nd grade, coming home from school

· Talking about some of her friends

· And the things she perceived that they were good at.

She was starting to identify special qualities in some of her friends.

· I’m sure one could draw…

· I’m sure one was funny…

· I’m sure one was athletic…

· I think Kori could do the best armpit fart…

She was starting to identify other people.

And she asked me one morning, “Daddy, what am I good at?”

What was she doing?

She was trying, at an early age, to find her identity.

· Who am I?

· What makes me unique?

And so through the course of living around your community

You start checking boxes and unchecking boxes.

And YOU THINK your identity starts to come into focus.

And for some people this is a very POSITIVE EXPERIENCE

And for others this is a very NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE.

Those who see themselves as

· “the pretty girl”

· “the good athlete”

· “the smart kid”

They tend to develop this good self-esteem because

They have identified themselves as exceptional in some given area.

And the really quickly start to feel good about themselves

Because their identity (they think) is a GOOD identity.

It is FAVORABLE to them; they LIKE who they think they are.

That is certainly some of you.

But then there are those kids

Whose initial identity awareness is NOT SO POSITIVE.

They see themselves as

· “the chubby kid”

· “the dumb kid”

· “the non-athletic kid”

And they tend to develop this negative self-esteem because

They’ve identified themselves as below average.

And they quickly start to feel bad about themselves

Because their identity (they think) is a BAD identity.

It is UNFAVORABLE to them; they DON’T LIKE who they are.

It seems like God has played some sort of cruel trick on them

By not making them smart or fast or thin or attractive or whatever.

And their initial grasp of their identity is a negative one.

And so you come to this sort of point or epiphany of your identity.

You become aware of who you think you are.

And then YOU EITHER live with it or you strive to change it.

Now, to be certain, some are pretty ambitious

And they set out to either change their identity or forge a new one.

· You know, they work harder,

· they push themselves,

· they strive to be a better person.

· And since society praises that, people are really drawn to it.

Some even do this in a very negative way,

· They have even done harmful things like eating disorders

· or performance enhancing drugs,

· or things like that because their goal is to forge this new identity.

· They try reckless behavior to gain attention and break into the cool realm.

Others aren’t so ambitious.

· And then some just sort of settle in to whatever identity they’ve found

· And just want to make the most of it.

· They just adopt this attitude that “This is who I am, and you should just love me for me, and I don’t care what other people think”

You’ve heard it all.

And you probably see yourself in one of those descriptions

But here is what I want you to understand at the beginning tonight.

NOTHING of what I have just told you

Has anything to do with your identity.

None of that has anything to do with who you are.

As if being fat or thin, fast or slow, academic or simple

Had really anything to do with the purpose for which you were created.

God certainly created you.

God certainly designed you.

· If you are fast it’s because He made you fast.

· If you are slow it’s because He made you slow.

· If you can sing it’s because He gave you the ability.

· If you can’t sing it’s because He didn’t give you that ability.

But our world has picked out this perfect image

Of what they think humanity is supposed to be

And if you fit the image then you like you’re identity

And if you don’t fit the image then you don’t like your identity.

Let me tell you why that is so flawed.

· BECAUSE OUR WORLD HAS NO CLUE WHAT HUMANITY IS

SUPPOSED TO BE.

· OUR WORLD HAS NO IDEA OF WHAT IT ACTUALLY MEANS TO

BE HUMAN.

You heard me correctly.

Our world doesn’t even know what it means to be human.

(and I’m about to show you how I know that)

But if I’m correct that the world doesn’t know what it means to be human,

Then why would you let the world direct your identity?

So this is where we are GOING TO START TONIGHT.

Before we take a look at perhaps who you are individually,

Tonight we are simply going to examine

WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN TO BE HUMAN?

And to do that we’re going to look back in the Bible

At the first human ever created.

So turn in your Bible to Genesis 1:26-27

We read:

“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

So this is the creation of the first ever human.

And what are some things we notice about this human that God created?

What does it say about him?

HE WAS MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

“Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”

“image” and “likeness” are two different words

But they are regarded here as synonyms,

It is what is known as parallelism in the text.

But we see that man was in the image of God.

What else do we see?

HE WAS MADE TO RULE

“let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

This human was given the highest place in all of creation.

This human was created to rule.

You probably remember that it won’t be long before

God will bring all the animals to this man named Adam

And Adam will be charged with naming all of them.

Adam gets to name the creatures because he rules over them.

What else do we see?

THEY WERE MADE MALE AND FEMALE

“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

This certainly settles the question

Regarding how many genders there are in the world.

How many are there? - 2

It also settles the issue of who get to determine a person’s gender.

Who gets to determine a person’s gender? - God

But more than that, it also from the very beginning

Reminds us of the equality of men and women.

The Bible specifically states that both men AND women are created how?

“in the image of God”

Now this DOES NOT MEAN that they don’t have different roles,

Scripture is clear that they do.

(Perhaps you’ll learn some about that in the breakout sessions tomorrow)

But the point to see tonight is that

From the very beginning men and women

Were created in the image of God. They are equal before Him.

They are human.

BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

What does it mean to be born in the image of God?

What does it mean to be created in the likeness of the Creator?

Well that DOESN’T MEAN so much that we are VISUAL REPLICAS.

· The New Testament teaches us that God is Spirit.

· Yes the Bible says that God has hands or God has feet,

· But it also mentions His pinions or wings.

What it means is that

Man was created to be God’s image bearer in creation.

MAN IS GOD’S REPRESENTATIVE TO CREATION.

· Man above all creation was made to have a relationship with God.

· God breathes life into man’s nostrils and he becomes a living soul.

· And man is given rule and authority over all creation.

So man sits in the midst of creation as the image bearer of God.

He is God’s representative in creation.

· He is God’s authority in creation.

· He is God’s example to creation.

· He was created to be the picture of God to all of creation.

If I could put it another way.

Creation would learn of God by looking at man.

Man was the image bearer of God.

Let me show you an interesting verse about Adam.

· The third chapter of Luke gives us the Genealogy of Jesus.

· It traces Jesus back, through Mary and King David all the way back to Adam.

It starts like this:

Luke 3:23 “When He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli,”

And it ends with this statement:

Luke 3:38 “the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

What is Adam called?

“the son of God”

Adam was the image bearer of God.

He was called God’s son.

Now certainly Adam was the CREATED son of God

Whereas Jesus will be the UNCREATED Son of God.

But you see that Adam is called “the son of God”

You see the same language

Between Adam and God as you do between Adam and his son Seth.

(Turn over to) Genesis 5:1-3 “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created. When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.”

JUST AS Seth bears the image of his father Adam,

SO Adam was created to bear the image of his Father God.

Adam bears the image of God.

· This is the purpose of humanity.

· Man was created to be God’s representative to earth.

· He rules and reigns on earth under God’s authority.

But there was a problem wasn’t there?

What happened to Adam?

· He fell.

· He committed sin, he disobeyed

· Adam became the PRODIGAL son.

He failed to love God and he fell into sin.

And in Adam the human image became distorted.

In Adam the human identity became corrupted.

Adam was no longer the human he was created to be,

He fell into a corrupted form, a marred image.

We might say that

“Adam, after the fall, was a mere shadow of the man he used to be.”

Now covered in shame, now mortal, now fallen,

Adam was less than he used to be.

Now, he DIDN’T TOTALLY LOSE his identity.

He was still made in the image of God (it was just a corrupted image).

You may remember well after the fall,

· After God flooded the earth because of the sin upon it.

· When Noah came out of the ark God gave a command prohibiting murder

And here is why:

(Turn over to) Genesis 9:6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.”

So even after the fall, man is still said to be made in the image of God,

But that image was corrupted, it was marred.

And now we see humanity in a fallen form.

Paul described the deeds of the flesh

Galatians 5:19-21 “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Romans 1 describes humanity now:

Romans 1:29-31 “being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;”

And Romans 3 says:

Romans 3:10-18 “as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave, With their tongues they keep deceiving,” “The poison of asps is under their lips”; “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”; “Their feet are swift to shed blood, Destruction and misery are in their paths, And the path of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

When Adam fell, we lost our understanding of what it meant to be human.

Humanity fell into an “Identity Crisis”

But that wasn’t the only problem.

When humanity became corrupted

Humanity also lost its recognition of who God was.

Adams was the imager bearer.

Adam was supposed to be the explainer of God.

When the imager bearer of God fell into distortion and corruption

· Humans lost their sense of what it meant to be human.

· And since humans are supposed to bear the image of God.

· Humanity lost its sense of who God was (because the image was corrupt)

I heard it explained like this, and it is a great illustration.

Imagine a masterpiece being painted of God.

· Imagine a portrait perfectly depicting His likeness so that all could see Him.

· But then imagine that portrait getting marred or distorted.

And so the objective is to get the painting repaired or fixed,

But the problem is that no one has ever seen the original

To know what it was supposed to look like.

Since man was corrupted, so was our understanding of God.

Do you see the dilemma?

THIS IS THE IDENTITY CRISIS OF THE WORLD.

Now let me show you another verse about Adam.

(Turn to) Romans 5:12-14 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”

Did you notice what Paul said about Adam there at the end?

· Adam “is a type of Him who was to come.”

· Adam was the pattern of Him who was to come.

· Adam was a picture of Jesus.

The Garden of Eden was meant to show us the end.

The Son of God ruling God’s glorious creation.

Adam was supposed to picture that, but Adam fell and marred the picture.

And humanity was left in darkness.

· Humanity didn’t know what creation was supposed to look like.

· Humanity didn’t know what humanity was supposed to be like.

· Humanity didn’t know what God was like.

We had no sense even of what it truly meant to be human

Because we lost our only example.

But consider then what the Bible says about Jesus.

Colossians 1:15 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

The Bible says that Jesus came also in the image of God.

(Turn over to) John 1:16-18 “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”

If I can complete the illustration.

JESUS RESTORED THE PAINTING.

When we saw Jesus

We finally saw what it means to actually be human.

· No corruption…

· No defect…

· No sin…

He was never selfish, never cruel, never rude, never arrogant.

Jesus was the perfect human.

Michael Reeves said:

“Jesus was utterly loving, but He wasn’t soppy. His insight would unsettle people and His kindness would win them. Indeed you read the gospels and you see Jesus was a man of extraordinary and extraordinarily appealing contrasts. You simply couldn’t make Him up. Just try to imagine the perfect man. If you do you’ll come up with some wooden caricature of a man; a saintly bore. But Jesus is so much more realistic; so much better than any imaginary perfect man. See we would make Him only one thing or the other. But Jesus you see He’s red blooded and human, but not rough. He’s pure, but He’s never dull. Serious, but with sunbeams of whit. Sharper than cut glass, He would out argue all comers in debate, but never for the sake of a mere win. He knew no failings in Himself and yet was transparently humble. He made the grandest claims for Himself and yet does so without a whiff of [arrogance]. He ransacked the temple, He spoke of hellfire, He called Herod a fox, He called the Pharisees ‘corpses in makeup’ and yet never do you doubt His love as you read His life. With a huge heart He hated evil and felt for the needy. He loved God and He loved people. So you look at Him and you have to say, ‘Here’s a man truly alive, un-withered in any way, far more vital and vigorous, far more full and complete. Far more human than any other.’”

https://www.ligonier.org/learn/conferences/made-in-the-image-of-god

Jesus was the very epitome of what it means to be human.

· He is the very picture of what humanity was created be.

· He is the very image bearer of God.

And then Michael Reeves would go on to say.

“And so it is for those who come to know Christ. They find themselves being rehumanized in His image, after His likeness.”

(ibid)

That is to say that It is not only Christ who shows us what a human is, but it is Christ who re-humanizes us into what we are supposed to be.

The world thinks a good human is good looking.

The world thinks a good human is athletic.

The world thinks a good human is academic.

And the world goes looking for their identity in those things.

Well I hate to be the one to tell you but according to the Bible

· Jesus had no stately form that we should be attracted to Him.

· Jesus never won a single athletic competition.

· Jesus was never educated.

BUT SO WHAT

Because those things have nothing to do

With the true purpose of humanity.

Those things have nothing to do with who God made you to be.

Jesus didn’t care if you could bench press 400lbs.

Jesus didn’t care if you weighed 400 lbs.

Jesus wanted you to be like your Father who is in heaven.

What are the fruits of God’s Spirit?

“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

That was Jesus.

That is what a human was created to be.

BUT YOU WILL NEVER BECOME TRULY HUMAN ON YOUR OWN.

Only in Christ can we start to become truly human,

As we were created to be.

This is why Scripture says that God is at work in our life to make us like Jesus; in essence to make us truly human.

Romans 8:29 “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;”

This is what I want you to understand at the outset tonight

As we begin this weekend talking about our identity.

· God created humanity in His image.

· Man and woman were to be the image bearers of God.

· But sin and the fall totally wrecked humanity and now humanity has no idea

even what it means to be human.

But Jesus came, not only to show us what it means to be human,

But also to restore us to what God created us to be.

And that is why in Christ we have verses in the Bible like this:

1 Corinthians 15:49 “Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.”

· We have all spent enough time looking like the fallen Adam,

· But in Christ we now begin to bear the image of what we were created to be.

2 Corinthians 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

· We look in a mirror and we see that distorted image of humanity,

· But in Christ it is being transformed through sanctification into what we were created to be.

Colossians 3:9-10 “Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him”

· That is the calling for those in Christ to realize that in Christ we are finally becoming truly human.

· We are finally beginning to bear the image of God in our lives.

Ephesians 4:22-24 “that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”

So tonight we begin with a simple premise.

Your identity is not bound up in what you do or what you look like

Or some other insignificant talent or feature.

You were created to be more.

You were created to be human.

· You are not a dog…

· You are not a cat…

· You are not a horse…

YOU ARE HUMAN.

You were created to bear the image of God.

That is your identity.

But apart from Christ you can never be truly human