Doug McMasters: I invite you to take your Bible and go to the book of Genesis in chapter one.
Doug McMasters: You don't have to go very far.
Doug McMasters: And we'll spend most of our time there.
Doug McMasters: We live in a world with questions of identity and purpose and meaning.
Doug McMasters: Who am I?
Doug McMasters: What is my identity?
Doug McMasters: Why am I here?
Doug McMasters: That's my purpose.
Doug McMasters: Where am I going?
Doug McMasters: Does my life have any significance or meaning?
Doug McMasters: These are questions that press on everybody.
Doug McMasters: Regardless of how old you are, regardless of your background, regardless of your story, they surface in a thousand different ways.
Doug McMasters: Just think about someone who is a young professional, just finishing working.
Doug McMasters: At the end of the day, she's in her car and wondering why her life still feels purposeless, even though she's done everything that's been expected of her.
Doug McMasters: Or think about a high school student looking through social media and looking at all the different profiles of people and wondering, you know, what about my life?
Doug McMasters: What am I supposed to do with it?
Doug McMasters: What kind of significance do I have?
Doug McMasters: Or, like I was in the U.S.
Doug McMasters: Air Force at the age of 20, lying on my bed in the barracks and looking up at the ceiling and saying, Is there more to life than this?
Doug McMasters: There's got to be a purpose here.
Doug McMasters: Or a widow who's sitting at a table alone and wondering if she matters anymore.
Doug McMasters: Or a child.
Doug McMasters: And the simplest but even deepest question, why did God make me?
Doug McMasters: Those are questions, right, that all of us ask.
Doug McMasters: And they're not abstract questions, they're very, very personal and very deep questions.
Doug McMasters: The world around us has a lot of answers.
Doug McMasters: They have loud answers, they say them confidently, as if they're speaking the truth.
Doug McMasters: But when you think about them, they're really actually very thin.
Doug McMasters: Secular humanism tells us we've evolved from animals and we have to invent our own meaning.
Doug McMasters: Individualism tells us to look within and define meaning according to our own interests.
Doug McMasters: Consumerism tells us that our worth is what we can produce or what we purchase.
Doug McMasters: Eastern spirituality tells us that we're really just a drop in an ocean of being, some ethereal being.
Doug McMasters: Postmodernism tells us our identity is fluid, it's constructed, and it's endlessly shifting.
Doug McMasters: And political ideologies will tell us that we're defined by our group, our class, or even our struggle.
Doug McMasters: Now, each of these frameworks tries to answer those deep questions we ask ourselves.
Doug McMasters: And even if there was a kernel of truth in them, and there's not much truth to be found in any of those, actually, but even if there were, it would be incomplete.
Doug McMasters: There's no one of them that can hold a soul and carry it.
Doug McMasters: And it's into this confusion that the Bible speaks and speaks to us with breathtaking clarity.
Doug McMasters: And it doesn't answer us vague philosophical uh explanations or self-help slogans.
Doug McMasters: It actually answers us with a truth.
Doug McMasters: A truth that's found on the very first page of Scripture itself.
Doug McMasters: One that will ground our identity, one that will anchor us in dignity, and one that will guide us with purpose.
Doug McMasters: It tells us that we were made by God, that we're known by God, and that God has an intended purpose and destiny for us.
Doug McMasters: And so, because of that, we are creatures with dignity and purpose and destiny.
Doug McMasters: Among all of God's creation, including the angelic realm, we are unique.
Doug McMasters: For God made us according to his image.
Doug McMasters: Men and women set apart with God's own person and with a design specially made for us.
Doug McMasters: We're not accidents, we're not products of chance, we're creatures that God has made for a particular purpose that He spoke into our being.
Doug McMasters: And so we're going to look at this more deeply over the next several weeks.
Doug McMasters: And I pray that this study does things for us and to us, that it'll reshape how we think about ourselves and reshape how we might think about other people.
Doug McMasters: That it'll bring assurance to us in the midst of this morass and confusion that's in our culture and maybe even rattling around in our own minds.
Doug McMasters: That it'll bring stability to us when we're brought to places of insecurity by the assertions that we hear all the time.
Doug McMasters: And I pray that it'll also bring hope to those who have been so pressed upon by these ideologies that they find themselves in despair.
Doug McMasters: It's going to trace a story from Genesis through Revelation.
Doug McMasters: We're going to see all of Scripture in these next several weeks.
Doug McMasters: We're going to see how God's intentionality for us gives meaning to our life.
Doug McMasters: It provides and exposes the brokenness that we feel and reveals the beauty of God's redeeming work in Christ.
Doug McMasters: It's going to go several different places.
Doug McMasters: So tonight we're going to begin at the foundation.
Doug McMasters: Created in God's image, his divine blueprint.
Doug McMasters: And we're going to spend time in Genesis chapter 1.
Doug McMasters: And there we're going to see God's intentional design for us.
Doug McMasters: We're going to see God's exalted place of us.
Doug McMasters: And we're going to see his calling over all of us.
Doug McMasters: And there's a refrain that we're going to use this evening that's the three points of the message, but it's also a refrain that I think can carry us through every single one of these.
Doug McMasters: We are made by God, we are marked by God, and we are designed to manifest God's glory.
Doug McMasters: We're made by God, marked by God, and designed to manifest God's glory.
Doug McMasters: So let's open Genesis chapter 1 and begin a look at our first text and see this: that we are made by God, by his deliberation and by his design.
Doug McMasters: If you take a look at verse 26, and just rest your eyes there on the very first phrase of that.
Doug McMasters: Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.
Doug McMasters: Now, before we go any further into this text, lift your eyes just some verses ahead of that, where God is creating the other things.
Doug McMasters: And notice the shift of the language.
Doug McMasters: Up to this point in time in Genesis chapter 1, God has spoken with a very steady pattern and rhythm.
Doug McMasters: Let there be, let there be, let there be, and there was.
Doug McMasters: Creation is unfolded at his word, his majestic, ordered, effortless word.
Doug McMasters: And then we get to verse 26.
Doug McMasters: Do you see the difference?
Doug McMasters: God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.
Doug McMasters: This is not how God's spoken in all these other places.
Doug McMasters: Every time he's made something, he's simply told it to be until he gets here.
Doug McMasters: This is not a language of accident.
Doug McMasters: It's a language of intention and divine deliberation.
Doug McMasters: And it's crafted in such a way, obviously, there's no occurring to God's occurring.
Doug McMasters: Like someone said, Did ever occur to you that nothing's ever occurred to God?
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: But here in this language, it is as if God pauses, as if God deliberates, as if he considers and consults, and then speaks.
Doug McMasters: This is to highlight, to slow us down, to break the pattern, to cause us to recognize something different is happening here.
Doug McMasters: Humanity is not spoken into existence with the same formula as light, as land, or created creatures.
Doug McMasters: We are different.
Doug McMasters: Humanity is a result of God's divine counsel.
Doug McMasters: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Doug McMasters: And here, Genesis is bringing us through these plural pronouns, let us are, to overhear the inner counsel of God, if you will.
Doug McMasters: The Father who says, Let there be, the Spirit who hovers over the creation, the Son and John 1, who was made all things, and by him, and without him nothing was made that was made.
Doug McMasters: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Doug McMasters: Speaking here, in divine contrast to everything else that's been made.
Doug McMasters: What does this tell us?
Doug McMasters: Our making by God sets us apart.
Doug McMasters: Naturalistic evolution will tell us that we're products of random forces, an accident of atoms and time.
Doug McMasters: But Genesis tells us, in just a short phrase, that God has deliberately made us with intention and purpose.
Doug McMasters: We're not random at all.
Doug McMasters: Secular humanism would tell us that we're simply rational animals that must invent our own meaning.
Doug McMasters: But the book of Genesis tells us that God implanted meaning into us before we were even made.
Doug McMasters: Individualism tells us to look within and define ourselves by our feelings.
Doug McMasters: But here, Genesis tells us that we are defined by God's intentions, not our own.
Doug McMasters: Eastern spirituality says we're a drop in an ocean of being, but God says that He's made us personally crafting us with care and with purpose.
Doug McMasters: Postmodernism tells us our identity is fluid, constructed, and endlessly shifting.
Doug McMasters: But the book of Genesis tells us with these words that we were designed with unchanging purpose in God.
Doug McMasters: Political ideologies tell us we're defined by a group or class or struggle.
Doug McMasters: And Genesis tells us we're defined by God's creative word.
Doug McMasters: In a world of these competing narratives, this verse is a thunderclap of truth against all those errors.
Doug McMasters: It declares that we are not self-constructed, we are not societally constructed, and we are not politically constructed beings.
Doug McMasters: We're God-shaped people.
Doug McMasters: Now take a look at verse 27 as we dig a little deeper into this.
Doug McMasters: So God created man in his own image.
Doug McMasters: He created him in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: He created them male and female.
Doug McMasters: God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
Doug McMasters: They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.
Doug McMasters: In two verses, four different expressions of us being made in God's likeness and image.
Doug McMasters: What is that?
Doug McMasters: Does God have a stutter?
Doug McMasters: Is he simply tripping over the same words that he has to say?
Doug McMasters: No.
Doug McMasters: This is a Hebrew mechanism in order to bring emphasis to us.
Doug McMasters: You'll see this in the book of Isaiah, where in Isaiah 40, where it breaks into a new theme: comfort, comfort my people.
Doug McMasters: There's that double expression to show how deeply God wants his people to be comforted.
Doug McMasters: There is that statement in Isaiah 6: holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Doug McMasters: And here we have a four-peat, not a three-peat, but a four-peat.
Doug McMasters: This is unique in all other places of Scripture for it to be repeated four times like this.
Doug McMasters: It's not a grammatical accident, it's a theological revelation.
Doug McMasters: God wants us to capture that we are a unity and a plurality, a commonality of people, a single human family made up of different people, male and female.
Doug McMasters: There's this idea of a corporate reality and yet also our individual lives.
Doug McMasters: There's a lot to say about that.
Doug McMasters: And on February 22nd, when Micah opens up this passage of scripture and others to talk about being created male and female, we'll be able to unpack some more of that.
Doug McMasters: But for this moment, we want to see this that we are not merely isolated individuals.
Doug McMasters: And we're not simply a member of a particular group as opposed to other groups, but we're part of a whole humanity that God has designed, intended, and dignified by being made according to his image.
Doug McMasters: So listen to these words.
Doug McMasters: Before you were ever made, before you ever made a choice, before you either succeeded or failed in any of your days or any of your pursuits, God has already spoken his dignity over you.
Doug McMasters: There's passages of scriptures that talk about God's design before the ages, before the world was even created.
Doug McMasters: Jeremiah was called in Jeremiah 1:5.
Doug McMasters: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.
Doug McMasters: It's like an architect.
Doug McMasters: I'm not an architect, but I used to love watching the Brady bunch.
Doug McMasters: And Mr.
Doug McMasters: Brady was an architect, and he used to sit there in his architectural drawings in his den, right?
Doug McMasters: You remember seeing that?
Doug McMasters: And he'd sit there and look at all the designs that he had laid out there.
Doug McMasters: God has got a design and purpose and intent that reaches way before there was ever any matter brought into existence.
Doug McMasters: We're made by God, made by divine deliberation, made by divine intention, and made in relational love.
Doug McMasters: A part we'll look at later.
Doug McMasters: So if you've ever thought yourself insignificant, overlooked, or purposeless, hear this.
Doug McMasters: Let us make mankind.
Doug McMasters: Let's move on to the second point.
Doug McMasters: Not only are we made by God, but we're marked by God.
Doug McMasters: Again, look at that passage, 26 and 27.
Doug McMasters: Make man in our image, according to our likeness.
Doug McMasters: So God created man in his own image and created him in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: He created them male and female.
Doug McMasters: As I said, this is Hebraic intensification.
Doug McMasters: This is a poetic expression meant to plant within us just how important this is.
Doug McMasters: If we're to know anything about ourselves, we should know this.
Doug McMasters: We're made by God and we're marked by God.
Doug McMasters: Now, the text doesn't say that we are the image of God in the sense that we are a perfect reflection of Him, but we're made according to the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And that distinction matters because we'll in a few weeks be talking about Christ, the true image of God.
Doug McMasters: And we'll understand that we were made according to Christ, who is already that image.
Doug McMasters: He is the express image of this person.
Doug McMasters: And so here we're designed not only with dignity, but also designed with destiny.
Doug McMasters: That we were destined to be brought into the very image of Christ Himself, who is the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And even Adam and Eve, when they were created, before they even fell, still needed something more than what they were at that first creation.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures tell us in 1 Corinthians 15 that we'll be bearing the image of the heavenly, in which death will never ever grip us again.
Doug McMasters: So there's something about being in Christ and according to his image that's greater than even the possible sin and death of Adam himself.
Doug McMasters: There's a divine intention, a God-given identity, according to a blueprint of Christ Himself.
Doug McMasters: Now, a lot of us have been taught that the image of God is to be understood and related to terms of abilities that we might have, whether it's our rationality or our creativity or our moral awareness or our capacities to relate to one another.
Doug McMasters: Certainly all those things are grand and glorious things, and don't want to look at any of those in a narrowed way.
Doug McMasters: But they show the fingerprints of God on us, but they aren't the image themselves.
Doug McMasters: They are expressions of a person who is made in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: Just think about it for a second.
Doug McMasters: If image was reason, then what would happen to those who have their cognitive abilities diminished by sickness or accident?
Doug McMasters: If image was creativity, what about those who are more creative than those who are not?
Doug McMasters: What if image was moral awareness?
Doug McMasters: Then what does sin do to that image?
Doug McMasters: If image was relational capacity, then what happens when we face a trauma or we're left in places of loneliness?
Doug McMasters: Does that diminish our likeness and our mark of God on us?
Doug McMasters: No, it doesn't.
Doug McMasters: Scripture tells us in Genesis 9 and verse 6, after the fall, after the flood, humanity is still in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And the basis for our protection of human life is given in Genesis 9, 6, where it says, Whoever sheds human blood by humans, his blood will be shed.
Doug McMasters: For God made humans in his image.
Doug McMasters: Even after the flood, which is well after the fall, an expression about those who are in a place of vulnerability and weakness, who are possibly empowered and even killed by someone else, God says you should not do that, because that person who was murdered was made in God's image.
Doug McMasters: Or James chapter 3 and verse 9.
Doug McMasters: It tells us this that cursing another person is wrong.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Not because their qualifications didn't meet up, not because they had some sort of value to them that we thought was important.
Doug McMasters: It says we shouldn't curse another person because that person is made in God's image.
Doug McMasters: So image is not something we achieve, it's something that God declares.
Doug McMasters: And like I said, he declares us as people with a corporate and yet also an individual identity.
Doug McMasters: So we can't think of ourselves simply as an isolated individual.
Doug McMasters: And we certainly can't think of ourselves as a member of a particular group, as though our identity was marked by that and that alone.
Doug McMasters: We're part of a whole humanity that God Himself has designed and dignified and claims.
Doug McMasters: And like I said, not only do we have dignity, but we have destiny.
Doug McMasters: We're designed to be made in the image of Christ Himself.
Doug McMasters: Think about these passages of where our glorification intends to bring us.
Doug McMasters: Romans 8.29, for those he foreknew, he also predestined to be what?
Doug McMasters: Conformed to the image of his son.
Doug McMasters: 2 Corinthians 3 18.
Doug McMasters: We all are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
Doug McMasters: Colossians 3 10.
Doug McMasters: You're being renewed in knowledge according to the image of God.
Doug McMasters: Your creator.
Doug McMasters: There's a destiny that God has designed for us.
Doug McMasters: A destiny we find can only be found in fulfillment through Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: This image is a blueprint to what God has intended for us.
Doug McMasters: So what does this dignity and destiny of our marked by God mean for us?
Doug McMasters: What are the implications of it?
Doug McMasters: It tells us that our worth is not based upon our ability, it's not based on our productivity, it's not based on our intelligence, it's not based on our success, it's not based on our age, it's not based on our health, it's not based on our social standing, it's not based on our group identity, and it's definitely not based on our self-expression.
Doug McMasters: We are marked by God, because He created us by design with dignity and a destiny in mind.
Doug McMasters: This is why every life matters.
Doug McMasters: This is why every person deserves honor.
Doug McMasters: This is why every act of injustice is an assault upon God's intentions for how we should live.
Doug McMasters: And this is why every person that we meet carries a weight of glory that they may not recognize or even welcome, but that they possess simply by being created by God.
Doug McMasters: Francis Schaefer was known for his deeply embodied reverence for the image of God in every person he encountered.
Doug McMasters: Students and visitors to Le Brie would recall that every time he would meet someone, especially someone he sensed who had been either wounded or overlooked or was spiritually adrift, that he would make some sort of physical gesture toward them, an expression of deference and respect, as an intentional act of honoring the image of God in that person.
Doug McMasters: And he did so with particular purpose toward those who might have never felt that that was them.
Doug McMasters: It wasn't a formal ritual, but it was characteristic of his posture toward all people.
Doug McMasters: He believed every person, regardless of belief or background, carried the dignity that demands recognition.
Doug McMasters: And so he did.
Doug McMasters: And this is where the familiar categories that many of us have grown up with that I even thought of, structural and functional as they are, as expressions of the image of God, really don't measure up.
Doug McMasters: Our ability to think or create or love or discern or relate.
Doug McMasters: They're all good.
Doug McMasters: And we'll see in a moment how they can be used as image bearers, but how they can't be used as definitions of image itself.
Doug McMasters: They're expressions of what it means to be created in God's image.
Doug McMasters: And they call us to be stewards of this creation, to cultivate creativity and culture, and to exercise dominion in a way that's responsible.
Doug McMasters: But those things aren't the image themselves.
Doug McMasters: So hear this clearly.
Doug McMasters: Now, let's look at the last point.
Doug McMasters: We've looked at being made by God and marked by God, but let's look at the last point about manifesting his glory.
Doug McMasters: Take a look again at Genesis 1 and verse 26.
Doug McMasters: And God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
Doug McMasters: They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.
Doug McMasters: You see, there's a purpose statement there, isn't there?
Doug McMasters: And again in verse 28, God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.
Doug McMasters: Rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and every creature that crawls on the earth.
Doug McMasters: So God who deliberated is the God who created, is the God who blessed, is now the God who commissions.
Doug McMasters: We're not only created with dignity, but we're also created with responsibility.
Doug McMasters: And here is where the functional dimension of image, those things that people define as image, our calling, our stewardship, our dominion come into view.
Doug McMasters: They're not the image themselves, but they are the mission of those who are the image bearers.
Doug McMasters: We're sent into this world to do something.
Doug McMasters: And what is that that we are to do?
Doug McMasters: We are to take the image of God that we have and bring it into this world.
Doug McMasters: He's inviting us to reflect his character in every place that we engage in this world.
Doug McMasters: Whether we're dealing with the earth or with plants or with animals or with each other, in every place, God is to be on display because we are the ones in this world who bear that image.
Doug McMasters: This is what it means to manifest his glory, to put his character on display.
Doug McMasters: So when we think about God, who's wise and just and generous and life-giving, so too we, as image-bearers, are to take our oversight of all the creation that he's made and do so in a way that's wise and just and generous and life-giving.
Doug McMasters: We're to mirror him.
Doug McMasters: Psalm 8, verses 4 to 6.
Doug McMasters: What is man, human being, that you remember him?
Doug McMasters: A son of man that you look after him.
Doug McMasters: You made him a little less than God and crowned him with glory and honor.
Doug McMasters: You made him ruler over the works of your hands.
Doug McMasters: We were made by God and marked by God to manifest God's glory.
Doug McMasters: And so, in our rule, in our relationships, in our reason, and in our responsibilities, we reflect Him.
Doug McMasters: We work with integrity, we create with beauty, we lead with humility, we serve with compassion, we speak with truth, we love with fidelity, and we treat one another with dignity.
Doug McMasters: Every sphere of life is a stage upon which we let the character of God shine.
Doug McMasters: The language here in Genesis 1 tells us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Doug McMasters: And it's not merely about population growth.
Doug McMasters: There's a lot to say about that, but I've been talking about missions a lot.
Doug McMasters: But it's about extending God's person into every corner of creation.
Doug McMasters: Yes, by procreation, but also by everything else that we do.
Doug McMasters: To fill the earth with Him, to fill the earth with His justice, with His mercy, with His beauty, with His creativity, with His order, with His life-giving flourishing.
Doug McMasters: And this is why culture matters and work matters and relationships matter, justice matters, and compassion matters.
Doug McMasters: I sat with an old retired pastor some years ago.
Doug McMasters: And he brought me into his library.
Doug McMasters: Well, his house was his library.
Doug McMasters: And he had a number of books pulled out away from the other books because he wanted to take me on a journey.
Doug McMasters: And he took me to this one very thick book and he pulled it off the shelf and he said, This is the first English printing of Calvin's Institutes.
Doug McMasters: And he said, In this one, election is not ever mentioned.
Doug McMasters: That was a surprise to me.
Doug McMasters: Might be a surprise to you, too.
Doug McMasters: And then he grabbed some other books and he said, This is the first English translation of Calvin's fifth edition.
Doug McMasters: And then he took it and he went about two-thirds of the way into it and plopped it open.
Doug McMasters: And he said, This is actually the first place where election's mentioned in Calvin's institutes.
Doug McMasters: He said, a lot of young theologians would like to think that Calvinism is about God's sovereignty and salvation.
Doug McMasters: And it is.
Doug McMasters: But it's so much more than that.
Doug McMasters: Calvin believed that God's sovereignty was seen in all spheres of life.
Doug McMasters: This was only just one expression of it.
Doug McMasters: And that's why election didn't show up in his first edition, and didn't show up until two-thirds of the way through of his fifth edition.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because we are to reflect God's justice and mercy and beauty and creativity and order and flourishing in everything we do.
Doug McMasters: Everything we do.
Doug McMasters: Every act of goodness, every work of creativity, every moment of faithfulness as a person who is in the image of God is something that manifests Him in this world.
Doug McMasters: Now, of course, Genesis chapter 1 is not the end of the story.
Doug McMasters: It's simply the beginning.
Doug McMasters: Genesis 3 is a reality.
Doug McMasters: And we live in a world where sin distorts and fractures and corrupts, where our stewardship becomes selfishness, and our creativity becomes idolatry, and our dominion becomes domination, and our relationships become battlegrounds.
Doug McMasters: But even in a broken world, that calling remains.
Doug McMasters: After the fall, after the flood, we hear the words of Genesis 1, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Doug McMasters: It still stands.
Doug McMasters: You are responsible to bring God's character wherever you go.
Doug McMasters: We'll get to that lesson.
Doug McMasters: That lesson's coming.
Doug McMasters: About how we can be actually as we were meant to be and live out our responsibility as we would.
Doug McMasters: So here we are.
Doug McMasters: Told that we were made by God, marked by God to manifest God's glory.
Doug McMasters: That we are to live a life of purpose.
Doug McMasters: Not just when we gather for praise, but in daily obedience.
Doug McMasters: Not only in spoken testimony within a church service, but in bodied faithfulness in everything that we do.
Doug McMasters: To live a life that says in every sphere, in every season, in every relationship, and God is good, God is gracious, God is glorious.
Doug McMasters: That's the divine blueprint.
Doug McMasters: You're made by God, the result of divine deliberation, crafted by Father, Son, and Spirit.
Doug McMasters: You're marked by God, creating, created with dignity and a destiny.
Doug McMasters: And you were called to manifest his glory with a responsibility to bear his image, his character, his goodness, and his purposes in this world.
Doug McMasters: Well, this is just the beginning.
Doug McMasters: We've started in Genesis, but I said this story is going to stretch us all the way through the end of the book of Revelation.
Doug McMasters: It's a story that's going to explain the world we're in right now.
Doug McMasters: It's a story that reveals this God who made us and Christ who restores us and the Spirit who renews us.
Doug McMasters: And so, for just a moment, I want to give you just a glimpse of what's ahead of us.
Doug McMasters: We've seen the divine blueprint tonight in two weeks, on February 22nd.
Doug McMasters: Micah will take us into male and female, God's intentional design for genders and relationships, the beauty of being male and female, the purpose of being in a complementary relationship.
Doug McMasters: And then we'll look at cultivating the garden, the stewardship of creation, where our work and our culture and our creativity are responsibilities that we have as God's representatives to display his character.
Doug McMasters: We'll look at the fracturing of God's designs, distorted by the tragedy of sin.
Doug McMasters: Not completely lost, but will help us to understand why this world feels broken, why we feel broken.
Doug McMasters: And then we'll look at Echoes of Eden, this deep human longing and ache for meaning, for belonging, for restoration, one in which every philosophy and every ideology and every religion is reaching to try to attain.
Doug McMasters: It helps to explain why we still feel like there's always something more to be had.
Doug McMasters: Echoes of Eden.
Doug McMasters: And then we'll see Christ as the perfect image, the true image.
Doug McMasters: And then we'll see ourselves restored in Christ Himself, the renewal that comes from Him, in which Corinthians says in 2 Corinthians 3.18, we're transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
Doug McMasters: Then we'll see our responsibilities as God's people.
Doug McMasters: The church, exploring what it means to be a community that's shaped by Christ's likeness, a people of unity, a people of love, a people of mission, and a people of witness.
Doug McMasters: We'll see how our responsibilities work themselves out in this fallen world.
Doug McMasters: We'll see how they work in areas of dignity of every life, how our work matters and can be an avenue of worship, where our ethnicity and the beauty of God's image can be seen in the diversity of how we're made.
Doug McMasters: We can see how we can understand the dignity of the human body.
Doug McMasters: And God has made us a body, and He's given that a purpose.
Doug McMasters: And we're going to bear the image of Christ who is the resurrected one who has a resurrected body.
Doug McMasters: We'll see the dignity of that.
Doug McMasters: We'll understand the hope of a restored image as we long for that life through suffering, as we seek future glory, and we'll see the promise of full restoration.
Doug McMasters: And then we'll close off finally, somewhere in the middle of July, God willing, where the Bible ends with worship and understand how we can live our days.
Doug McMasters: So let me just offer this final word.
Doug McMasters: You're not an accident.
Doug McMasters: You're not undefined.
Doug McMasters: You're not without purpose.
Doug McMasters: You're not without dignity.
Doug McMasters: God has made you.
Doug McMasters: God has marked you.
Doug McMasters: And God wants to manifest his character through you.
Doug McMasters: Those are beautiful things.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we're humbled by this.
Doug McMasters: The reality of it is not a truth that soaks deeply enough into any of us.
Doug McMasters: And so I, Father, I pray for us as a people.
Doug McMasters: As we go through this and see how it unpacks throughout all of your revealed word, I pray that it would truly bring us to a place of solid comfort and confidence with intent and purpose to show forth you as we should.
Doug McMasters: As we walk through this together in the weeks ahead, we pray, Father, that you would receive all the praise because this is your intent.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.