God’s Purpose for People - Genesis 1-3 - Skip Heitzig

god isn't really something to worship he's just waiting to destroy all of us i guess there's a god out there somewhere i hope there is a god that isn't really something of worship [Music] god is everywhere would you turn in your bibles please to the book of genesis chapter 1. genesis chapter 1 i want to bring a message on god's purpose for people you know we've been doing a series 2020 uh seeing truth clearly we've been looking really at a systematic theology in in in a layman's way but looking at the character and nature of god the person and work of jesus christ the holy spirit's work in the world and in us believers and now we want to look at people at humanity at you and i i want to begin with a little fable once upon a time a little boy found an eagle's egg and after he found it he placed it in the nest of a prairie chicken so the eaglet hatched but grew up in this environment of prairie chickens so as it grew thinking it was a prairie chicken it started doing what prairie chickens do it dug in the dirt for seeds and insects it clucked and cackled like prairie chickens do it flew in short increments furiously flapping its wings but not going very far and it did that for years and one day when the eagle was very very old it looked up in the sky and noticed this magnificent bird soaring overhead hardly beating its wings as it glided through the atmosphere and it said what is that and one of the other prairie chicken's neighbors said that is an eagle it is the chief of all the birds but then quickly said but don't give it a second thought you could never be like him so the eagle never gave it a second thought and died thinking it was a prairie chicken that little fable is by way of introduction to simply say that we've been lied to by this culture this culture has basically said y'all a bunch of prairie chickens you're an accident you're ape-like though advanced in your evolutionary stages but you are simply an animal an accident a cosmic accident when in fact you were meant to soar like an eagle you are uniquely made as god's crowning creation now three thousand years ago david who wrote the many of the psalms asked a question that has been asked reverberated through the ages by a number of people including philosophers and that is the question what is man what is man psalm 8. david said when i consider the heavens the work of your fingers the moon and the stars which you have ordained what is man now that question what is man is what i want to talk to you about today not everybody answers that question the same way what does it mean to be human one of the great philosophers emanuel kant was taking long summer walks as he often did he was walking in his neighborhood stopped in a park sat on a bench for several hours and just sat there and a policeman saw him and walked over to him and wanted to know what he's doing he said what are you doing and kahn said i'm thinking a policeman inquired further and said who are you and emmanuel kant that great philosopher turned to the police officer and said that's precisely the problem that i've been thinking about who am i now the study of that is called anthropology anthropology the study of humanity mankind behavior practices origin past and present and the question what is man or who are we is one of the most fundamental questions in fact i noticed the other day an internet survey that said of all the questions that people ask on the internet the number one question is what is the purpose of life in effect what is man why are we here what is the reason for our existence now some people answer that question through different lenses some answer to the lens of philosophy some answer to the lens of biomechanics and so you get a variety of answers but let me throw up a smattering of what people have said we are so mark twain said man the machine man the machine very very basic level aristotle called us a political animal i suppose that is true especially in the next coming weeks more and more of us are acting like political animals ben franklin said a tool-making animal blaise pascal the french philosopher said man is a reed the most feeble thing in nature and i wanted to throw up what uh buck minster fuller said you go who's that guy that guy invented the geodesic dome he was a futuristic thinker and architect but listen to his description of humanity the human is a self-balancing 28 jointed adapter biped an electrochemical reduction plant didn't that make you feel great that's what you are listen all of those things that's like telling an eagle you're a prairie chicken that is not the full scope that is not what it means to be human so we need better answers than that to be anthropological you must first be theological you have to discover where you came from and if you were created what that creator's original intention was for you that's how you answer the question what it is to be human so let us discover in the book of genesis what it means by three distinct stages that is god's creation of man and god's reflection in man and finally god's interaction with man let's begin at the beginning genesis chapter 1 verse 1 god's creation of man we're told in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep and the spirit of god was hovering over the face of the waters then god said let there be light and there was light i'll take you down to verse 26 then god said let us make man in our image according to our likeness let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over the cattle over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth now that verse verse 26 is the verse of primary reference meaning it's the first time we discover god's intention for what he created in mankind it's a verse of primary reference when it comes to humanity this is god's original intention god created people artists have depicted that for centuries i want to show you probably the most famous depiction of that you've seen that before this is the at least in pictures you've seen it this is the ceiling of the sistine chapel in the vatican in rome this was painted in 1508 to 1512 500 years ago put up there by michelangelo spent four four years on a 70-foot scaffold painting the ceiling there's a lot of images on the ceiling but the two most prominent ones are adam on the left and god on the right it's a picture of creation it is genesis 1 26 put in art form so we have a picture of adam lying on the ground and sort of languidly with his hand out not really purposefully just sort of hanging in there in midair this is what art curators will point out but god moving toward man he's the initiator he has a more purposeful point because god is the one who's creating adam now what what people do in looking at art like this and it's it's part of a vast ceiling is they'll say there are two images that dominate the scene god and adam and depending on your world view you will make more of one than the other so for instance if if you were a greek thousands of years ago the greek world view was man-centered anthropocentric they lived in an anthropocentric world that was the mistake they made they began with themselves and built outwardly and upward and as they wanted to find out their purpose they had to fill in a lot of gaps a lot of blanks they had to make stuff up so they came up with gods and goddesses a whole pantheon belief system of of of of beings that did things that explain why the world is the way the world is now all of that not all of that but a lot of that comes from a philosopher a greek philosopher in the 5th century bc named protagoras protagoras said man is the measure of all things man is the measure of all things that's the world view man centered anthropocentric all about us and they built their system outwardly the bible does not do that the bible on the other hand is theocentric god-centered because god initiated things so rather than looking at it and filling in the gaps with speculation and imagination like the greeks did the bible gives us revelation god explains to us what he did and what he meant to do in making mankind there was a college class and i think it was a biology class and the professor stated that the goal of the class was to instruct his students that the only hope of civilization is in the pursuit and application of scientific knowledge that's what this class is about he said and he he explained to his students i have no room for god i have no room for religion i i don't believe in metaphysics this is science and that's all life is and the only hope for the future is that well at the end of the semester each student wanted the professor to not only evaluate the student but write a reference for the student's future so one of the students by the name of john did that and the professor gave this description of john he said john biological description john is a living organism group vertebrata class mammalia order primates genus homo species sapiens okay body structure organs tissues and cells protoplasm five organs of sight taste touch sound and smell chemical description a large quantity of carbon some gallons of h2o various amounts of iron calcium magnesium phosphorus sulfur lime nitrogen and some mineral salts psychological description mind conscience and unconscious intellectual emotional volitional powers various instincts iq 130. so far it's a very accurate description of john scientifically but it still does not define what it is to be human so listen to the concluding paragraph of the professor i hope john will fit as an admirable unit into the various machines industrial and commercial and so on that make up our scientifically planned society but regrettably i have serious misgivings about this there is something in john that refuses to be cribbed cabined and confined and reaches out to a fulfillment beyond the capacity of a machine-like destiny to supply in his eager pursuit of scientific knowledge and passionate love of music as well as in the deep discontent to which he once confessed his inability to live up to his own ideals it seems to me that john is on a quest that existence even in a four-dimensional space-time continuum can never satisfy now let me give you my translation of that in skip english he's saying we've been telling john his whole life he's a prairie chicken but john knows something else is up john believes that he's an eagle and he can fly so he he's not satisfied there's something in john that reaches out beyond this so that takes me to my second stage here after god's creation of man we have god's reflection in man and i want to zero in on these verses verse 26 again let us make man in our image that's what i want to focus on according to our likeness let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over the cattle over all the earth over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth so god created man in his own image in the image of god he created him by the way the bible uses that terminology and and reference of were made in the image of god six times male and female he created them then god blessed them and god said to them be fruitful and multiply fill the earth subdue it have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over every living thing that moves on the earth and god said see i have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth every tree whose fruit yields seed to you it shall be for food also to every beast of the earth to every bird of the air to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life i have given every green herb for food and it was so then god saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good so evening and morning were the sixth day we have in genesis 1 is essentially a summation of five days of creation and then a sixth the 5 days of creation god made a bunch of stuff looked at it and said i like it or it's good on day 6 he paused and he said i want to make something different i want to make something that reflects my image my glory it's amazing to think that when god wanted to think of something that would reflect his image he made you you ain't no prairie chicken if you're in the image of god to be in the image of god is to bear the reflection of god to be his representative on earth the two hebrew words here image and likeness they roughly refer to the same thing they're hebrew words that refer to something that is similar but not necessarily identical similar but not identical so a mirror how's that a mirror gives you an image you look in it you have an image of yourself you may like it you may not but it's an image you can orient the mirror in a different way and get an image of somebody else you can see other things but the image is in the mirror as our lives are oriented toward god we can reflect the glory of god what that means is i'm not just protoplasm i'm not just a bunch of chemicals i am different from a dog or a cat or a whale or a spotted owl or an orangutan i've always loved the story of the man who went to the zoo he knew the zookeeper he goes to the zoo and he's going through all the little exhibits and he goes to an orangutan exhibit and he notices that the orangutan is sitting there with two books one in each hand one is a bible the other is darwin's origin of the species and he's thinking no way so he he starts talking out loud he goes excuse me you can't actually read can you the orangutan looked at him and said of course i can and so the man said well do you understand what you're reading the orangutan looked puzzled and he said well i'm not so sure because this book holding up the bible says that i am my brother's keeper but this book says i am my keeper's brother and so i i have a conflict going on which is it you are made in the image of god god formed us look at chapter two really quickly and again we're just looking at a few verses we're not really digging deep here chapter 2 of genesis verse 7 the lord god formed man out of what dust wait a minute dust dirt that's pretty humbling a dirt clod the lord god for man out of the dust of the ground ah but breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became in hebrew a nephesh a soul a living being it's translated the lord god planted a garden eastward in eden and there he put the man whom he had formed pretty humbling in one hand to realize the origins of a dirt clod pretty amazing on the other hand to think of the image of god so we have a combination of something very low and something very high let's call it dust and glory dust and glory combined yep physically speaking we're made up of a bunch of chemicals and i remember in school some of my teachers would say you know if you were to add up all of the chemicals in your body your body would only be worth two dollars that doesn't make a kid feel really good about himself that's telling an eagle he's a prairie chicken and actually my teacher was wrong today in the this day and age accounting for inflation your body chemicals are worth about 160 dollars but that's not the point if you evaluate your life only in those terms you're speaking prairie chicken language not eagle talk so what does it mean to reflect god's image well there's a few things and i put them in your worship folder i'm just going to touch on these four things it means first of all we are god's reflection in that we are rational beings we are rational beings now not not always sometimes we're quite irrational and erratic and crazy right now we're in political season people get a whole lot of crazy going on right now but we are rational beings we have intellectual power we can think we can learn we can research we can explain we can formulate thought animals do not do this they cannot do this only tv animals do that okay i grew up with mr ed i thought that was the coolest thing in the world a talking horse i want a talking horse that only works on tv disney characters can talk right mickey mouse can talk donald duck he can talk but not in real life only we can reason we can evaluate we can have original thought animals react to stimuli we like god can create we can make paintings and sculptors and music and we can imagine we can build we have relationships of love animals have instinct animals can mate animals can show affection but that's not love you go oh no i know my dog loves me you are explaining a disruption in the endocrine system of the animal essentially that's about it it's not love like on the relational level that we have we are rational beings like our creator another aspect of this is not only are we rational beings we are moral beings we have a sense of morality a sense of justice an inner sense of right and wrong just as god who made times these binary comparisons that's right that's wrong that's good that's evil that's just that's unjust that's righteous that's unrighteous we have a conscience it's part of our humanity it's why humans battle with good and evil my pets do not c.s lewis referred to this as the moral law the moral law that people innately have a sense of just versus unjust animals don't do this animals respond to the fear of punishment or the hope of reward but god put a moral law within us granted it varies from culture to culture there's a lot of programming that goes along with that but in romans chapter 1 verse 19 paul writes for the truth of god is known to them that is to us instinctively now with this sense of morality comes a sense of destiny and a sense of accountability the only reason we know the world is crooked we look out there and go man the world's so messed up it's so crooked is because we have in our conscience the idea of something being perfectly straight by which to compare it to that is the moral law we would say without reservation mother teresa is better than adolf hitler now we don't mean that she has a better posture than adolf hitler or that her breath smells better than adolf hitler we're speaking in moral comparisons that one has a better character than the other we know this intuitively a third aspect of being in the image of god is we are immortal beings immortal beings isaiah said of god god dwells or inhabits eternity he inhabits eternity he'll live forever from beginning to end you and i the bible tells us also are immortal ecclesiastes chapter 3 god set eternity in their hearts this is a quality that humans have that cannot be explained by science or evolution we yearn for something like john in the biology class we have a yearning that this scientific world cannot explain now it's been estimated that if you were to look at what you do in your lifetime if you were to add up seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months that altogether in your lifetime you will spend 20 straight years sleeping you will spend another 20 years working you will spend seven years playing five years getting dressed one year on the phone some of you all spend a lot more than that on the phone you will spend eight months opening junk mail that's all part of life that's the routines we go through but we were made for eternity he set eternity in their hearts by the way we talk about anthropology comes from the greek word anthropos for man anthropos that greek word comes from two words combined that literally means one who looks up we are ones who look up no other species is as restless as we are animals are satisfied once their needs are met so i have a couple dogs let me just show you this is my excuse to put my pets up so these are my two dogs the guy on the couch is mac mac is the old man in the herd he's been around a while and the one on the rug this is maisie they're both little welsh terriers cute little pups um she's just about eight months old we take care of them we pet them we feed them they play they go on walks and obviously they sleep i have never seen those creatures worry i've never seen mack over in the corner putting his head in his paw going man coronavirus he's never done that um i have never seen them contemplating the meaning of their existence the meaning of life to them that is the meaning of life right there sleeping eating snoozing playing getting a snack going on walks that is to them the meaning of life we alone have a sense of restlessness there's something beyond this we think god has given us that eternal capacity that's what prompts us to probe that's why your kids ask so many questions why daddy why why that and well then what happens dad they're probing they want to know more they're they're yearning beyond just this saint augustine put it so beautifully when he said thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee so we are rational beings moral beings we're immortal beings and a fourth certainly not the end of the list but fourth we are responsible beings we have a responsibility verse 28 it says god blessed them that is the first man and woman and said to them be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over every living thing that moves on the earth you are different from all the other animals i want you to rule over this planet subdue is the hebrew word kabash which means to tread upon it's still a word we use in our slang put a kabocha on it it's from that hebrew word to tread upon the word have dominion means to subjugate or to rule back to psalm 8 where david said what is man that you are mindful of him in that psalm david in describing us said you to god you have made him that is us you have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands you have put all things under his feet in other words we are managers of this creation we are stewards of creation there is to be a theology of creation care uh that we work off of simply because this is god's world and god put us here to manage it and to care for it so we are not only created by god we are reflections of god we are in his image far different than than animals you know when something goes awry and you hear a news article about violence or extremism and i hear people say this is so horrible look at those people acting like animals well your educational system has told them for decades that's what they are so when they start acting like what you say they are why should you be surprised at that you've been telling them they're prairie chickens when god's intention is that they soar like eagles made in his image so we are in god's image we embody god's communicable attributes of reason of emotion of love etc but and i haven't even touched on this the image has been marred the mirror is scratched that's where sin comes in that's where the fall comes in that's also part of the story we haven't touched on it yet and that's the reason that jesus is needed to restore the image that has fallen but we'll get into that next time what i want to show you this time is not only god's creation of man and reflection in man but finally god's interaction with man this is all part of the purpose go to genesis chapter 3 again just skimming a couple verses genesis chapter 3 in verse 6. so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food that it was pleasant to the eyes a tree desirable to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate she also gave to her husband with her and he ate and the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings it's a very humorous in many ways story but i don't have time to get into all of my mind's thinking i'll do that next time but here's what i want to show you verse 8 and they heard the sound get this of the lord god walking in the garden in the cool of the day what up with that they heard the sound of the lord god walking in the garden in the cool of the day and adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the lord god among the trees of the garden and the lord god called to adam and said where are you this is an amazing description god made some kind of an appearance in the garden can't tell you exactly how or what some manifestation of his glory uh maybe a luminescent apparition of some kind we don't know how god appeared in the garden some visible form but the word is used here walking walking in the cool of the day a better translation would be walking to and fro in the garden in the breeze of the day i infer from that the evening time when things cool off so the way it's worded in this verse it sounds like this was customary that god sort of showed up at a set time every day to take a walk with his creation adam and eve to have a daily chat with god the word walking in hebrew is the word ha lok which means to move among to be at ease with to be conversant with in other words god created man for a purpose not just to reflect his glory his image but to have fellowship with to reciprocate god's love now i'll just touch on this because i don't want to get deep into the weeds of this we've already stated before in this series 2020 seeing truth clearly we've stated that god by his very nature is independent he is the only what we call non-contingent being in the universe what it means basically is he doesn't need anything or anyone he's perfectly okay just by himself and before he created human beings he had a loving relational fellowship in the trinity between father son and holy spirit that's what's up in verse 26 when they pause in creation and have this inner trinitarian discussion hey let us make man in our image and so in the image of god god made man and woman so in that fellowship they had one another there is a desire to expand the circle of fellowship expand the relational circle the circle of love let us make man in our image so god's creation of man was so that his reflection would be in man but the ultimate purpose is that god might interact with man and woman fellowship intimacy to be conversant with at ease with to interact with let me just end there and say say this ask a question do you take advantage of that privilege do you take advantage of god's desire to walk with you god has a desire god has a purpose for you and one of his purposes for you is that you know him that he walk with you that you do life together with him do you walk with god is that a concern of yours is that a stated goal in your head in your heart i want to walk with god i want to live to please god i want to know god it should be it's why you're here you know sometimes i take walks i take my dog on walks but dogs on walks actually they pull me but that's another story sometimes i go on walks alone and when i do it's usually a prayer walk i like to walk and pray and i get the idea that i'm actually talking to god like in a in this kind of a situation and oftentimes i'll be praying out loud so my neighbors think it's the crazy old man that talks to himself on walks but i'm really trying to just have a prayer walk talk with god but the question i want to leave with you is do you take advantage of god's desire to walk with you albert einstein once said scientists make poor philosophers but every now and then you get a scientist who makes a great philosopher and one of those i think was one of the great scientific minds of all times and that is sir isaac newton sir isaac newton is widely regarded as the one who discovered gravitation sir isaac newton said that he could take his telescope and look millions of miles into space with his telescope but what you may not know is sir isaac newton was a strong christian believer and though he was this great scientific mind and studied the universe he said this and i want to close with this quote he said but when i lay it aside when i lay my telescope aside after looking into the heavens when i lay it aside go into my room shut the door get down on my knees in earnest prayer i see more of heaven and feel closer to the lord than if i were assisted by all the telescopes on earth such a great great statement of a scientific mind who said but i know why i'm here i'm here to be in relationship with my creator so do you take advantage do you walk with him do you know the creator have you found your purpose in life you are not a prairie chicken i know you look around at a lot of us you go i see prairie chicken but that's the marring of the image that's the scratch on the glass we're meant to soar with our creator we're meant to know him and walk with him to interact with him it could be that some of you don't even know god yet yeah you'll come to church you'll visit you know people who do that and you think maybe that's a good thing to expose yourself to that so you do that and you you think about the thoughts that are being said but you don't have this relationship that we're talking about with god you know if you want it can begin right now it's that simple god made it that simple that he will draw near to you if you draw near to him the bible tells us that so how do i know if it's true try it you can philosophize all your life about it or you can actually step over the line and receive him as lord and savior give your life to the one who gave you life paul calls that the smartest thing you could ever do your reasonable service let's pray and maybe some of you want to do that father thank you for the opportunity to get together to look at to uncover drill down into what we believe to be your word revelation not speculation not imagination but revelation you you laid it down what you did what you were thinking why we are here what your purpose is for us thank you that we could do that lord it's edifying whenever we do especially when we discover that we are far more than just chemicals or protoplasm we are meant to walk with our creator to soar like eagles father i pray for those here who may not know you yet haven't had a personal relationship with you they've never volitionally cognizantly personally giving you the reins of their life you've given us incredible power called volition free choice free will and we can say yes or no we do it every day of our lives and we can even do that with you to you we can say yes to you or no to you i pray that more will say yes to you today [Music] and if you're here and you want to say yes to him and tell him talk to him right where you're seated or wherever you're watching this or listening to this just give him control say lord i give you my life tell him that right now lord i give you my life you gave me life i'm giving my life back to you i give you my life i know i'm a sinner forgive me i failed forgive me i believe in jesus i believe he came here to earth i believe he died on a cross and i believe he rose from the dead turn from my past i turn from my sin i repent of it i turn to jesus as lord the savior fill me with your holy spirit help me to live a life in fellowship with you i want to walk with my god help me help me in jesus name amen let's all stand if you did pray that prayer would you identify yourself after the service and all that means is uh just find one of the pastors that have a badge that's a pastor on it you're going to look at some of them go really you're a pastor but but if it says pastor they are one and just uh say i i prayed that prayer i prayed that prayer we would you if you want to see a man get really stoked really quick tell them that you prayed to receive christ and you're going to find that those pastors are going to give you next steps to take we're going to put materials in your hands that have been sanitized and washed and hazmated and everything else you'll be okay good to go with that but but we want to welcome you into god's family we sincerely want to walk you uh through the next steps of a relationship with god best journey you can ever take let's sing together we hope you enjoyed this special service from calvary church we'd love to know how this message impacted you email us at my story calvarynm.church and just a reminder you can support this ministry with a financial gift at calvarynm.church give thank you for joining us for this teaching from calvary church

Channel: Calvary Church with Skip Heitzig

Views: 10,728

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Keywords: Bible Study, Calvary, Albuquerque, Skip, Heitzig, Jesus, Sermons, Gospel, humanity, anthropology, creation, eternity, ethics, fellowship, God's image, human, immortal, meaning, morality, purpose, science

Id: 9pOpCMRC7kQ

Length: 44min 15sec (2655 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020