Doug McMasters: So we're in the last of our series that we titled Imago Day, The Image of God.
Doug McMasters: We started it back in February.
Doug McMasters: And on that Sunday evening in February, I offered five scenarios of five different portraits of people.
Doug McMasters: One was a young professional, spent her whole day at work, had finally gotten in the car, was driving home, pulled into the driveway.
Doug McMasters: And as she sat there in the driveway before she got out of the car, she asked herself the question: why is my life just feel so directionless?
Doug McMasters: Introduced a teenager taking his phone and scrolling through social media and asking himself as he was doing that, what is my life meant to be?
Doug McMasters: And then a man in his midlife, looking back on the past 20 years of a career, and asking himself, is this all there is?
Doug McMasters: And then we looked at a scenario of a widow who was sitting around an empty table, looking out the window, and in the middle of her loss and loneliness, wondering, Does my life matter anymore?
Doug McMasters: And all the way down to a child who asked a very simple yet a very profound question, why did God make me?
Doug McMasters: We began to look at those scenarios because they're human questions and they are uh our questions often.
Doug McMasters: They're questions I know I've asked myself in various times of life.
Doug McMasters: And we began to answer those questions by going to a very what is now familiar passage of scripture to us in Genesis chapter 1, where it says this, where God said in 126, let us make mankind in our image.
Doug McMasters: We've been inside that verse and inside the truth of that statement, that we, humanity, have been made in the image of God since February.
Doug McMasters: We've traced it all the way from the time when God announced it to his creation of Adam and Eve, to the rebellion of human uh sin, to the fracturing that that brings into all of our life, to the reclamation in the representation of Christ, but also in the redemption that comes in Christ, and then all the implications that that has for us as the gathered body of Christ to display his image in this world, to various areas about the dignity of human life, to our very bodies, and all sorts of different areas.
Doug McMasters: And this evening we're going to take that question and bring it to its final end, to its destination, not the journey so much as what the final place is, the arrival of that question: who am I?
Doug McMasters: Why are we here?
Doug McMasters: Where am I going?
Doug McMasters: And we're going to be looking at a place that is already arrived in the mind of God who made us, already arrived in the work that Christ has accomplished.
Doug McMasters: And waiting for that day when the morning comes, and all of it will be the point of arrival, entrance into the fullness of why God designed us.
Doug McMasters: And we're going to be looking at that in various ways this evening.
Doug McMasters: In February, when we started that first series, I said there were three things.
Doug McMasters: We were made by God, we were marked by God, and we are to manifest his glory.
Doug McMasters: And so we talked about God's design in making us.
Doug McMasters: We talked about our purpose in uh in why we're marked by God, and then the destination that we have, in which we are to be fully manifesting his glory.
Doug McMasters: And so tonight I want us to show each of these three things and where they're answered in the destination that we come to, where God has made us, our body, and where that ends up, how God has marked us, and how that ends up in a face-to-face knowledge with God, and how we manifest his glory by living our life to the full expression of his glory in everything that we do.
Doug McMasters: So that's what we're going to be looking at: the image glorified, the image home, and the image finally seeing God face to face, that image in which we were made.
Doug McMasters: So the first thing we're going to be looking at is 1 Corinthians 15, that the image will be glorified.
Doug McMasters: And the Apostle Paul brings us into a discussion about this in this passage.
Doug McMasters: Like I said, in February, we said that we're made by God.
Doug McMasters: We're not accidents, we're not biological accidents, we're not made by the random collision of atoms across vast stretches of time, but we're made by divine deliberation, Father, Son, and Spirit, determining to make us and not just bring us into life, but to give us his image.
Doug McMasters: That's where this series began.
Doug McMasters: And the question that we perhaps have been wrestling with is if I've been made by God to be in the image of God, what does God intend to do with what he's made?
Doug McMasters: My body.
Doug McMasters: We realize we live in this mortal frame.
Doug McMasters: This world is still groaning under the weight of loss and decay.
Doug McMasters: And we've been holding on to that with our body for some time.
Doug McMasters: A couple of weeks ago, we recognized that our bodies are made by God's craftsmanship.
Doug McMasters: And last week we looked at the idea that we needed to hold our body in hope of a future resurrection.
Doug McMasters: But a question underneath all of those that Paul answers here in 1 Corinthians 15 is what is God's intended end for us?
Doug McMasters: Our very bodies, this that He's made, what's going to happen?
Doug McMasters: Well, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul, in a very condensed, concentrated way, gives us an answer to that question.
Doug McMasters: And I'd like for us to read verses 42 to 44, because in this very breathtaking way, he tells us that the what the body is now and what the body will be like on that coming day.
Doug McMasters: Listen to verse 42.
Doug McMasters: So it is with the resurrection of the dead, sown in corruption, raised in incorruption, sown in dishonor, raised in glory, sown in weakness, raised in power, sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body.
Doug McMasters: In just three verses, Paul gives us four drastic contrasts between who we are right now and what we will be on that day of completion.
Doug McMasters: Listen to that.
Doug McMasters: Corruption, incorruption, dishonor, glory, weakness, power, natural, spiritual.
Doug McMasters: And he's not describing two separate categories of things.
Doug McMasters: He's taking this body that we're in now and saying that this very body is not going to be replaced with something completely different, but the very material of us is going to be transformed.
Doug McMasters: That this body, which is corrupt, dishonorable, weak, and natural is going to be changed into that which is incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and spiritual.
Doug McMasters: This very body of ours.
Doug McMasters: And take a look at verse 49.
Doug McMasters: He talks about Adam and the second Adam.
Doug McMasters: And here he says, just as we born the image of the man of dust, so we also will bear the image of the man of heaven.
Doug McMasters: And there it is.
Doug McMasters: We bear the image of Adam, the earthly man, the man of dust.
Doug McMasters: When God made us, he pulled up some dirt and blew the breath of life in it, and we became living beings.
Doug McMasters: We bear that image, made in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: But after the fall, that image fractured.
Doug McMasters: And Genesis chapter 5 says something extremely important to us about the transformation of the fall.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what it says.
Doug McMasters: This is the document containing the family records of Adam.
Doug McMasters: On the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
Doug McMasters: Grab a hold of that.
Doug McMasters: He made him in the likeness of God.
Doug McMasters: He created them male and female.
Doug McMasters: And when they were created, he blessed them and called them mankind.
Doug McMasters: So there it is.
Doug McMasters: Humanity made in the image of God, blessed by God, called out, male and female together, equal partners in this glorious image-bearing.
Doug McMasters: Now let's get to the man Adam.
Doug McMasters: Adam was 130 years old when he fathered his son in his likeness, according to his own image, and he named him Seth.
Doug McMasters: What Genesis 5 doesn't mention is Genesis chapter 3, that in between the time of God creating Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and now they bear children.
Doug McMasters: And instead of passing on the likeness of God in its fullness as it was designed, they are now passing on to their progeny their fallen condition.
Doug McMasters: And so it says this.
Doug McMasters: Adam lived 800 years after he fathered Seth, and he fathered other sons and daughters.
Doug McMasters: And so Adam's life lasted 930 years and he died.
Doug McMasters: And when you read the genealogy of Genesis chapter 5, you have that same pattern.
Doug McMasters: And every time it ends with this, and he died.
Doug McMasters: And he died.
Doug McMasters: And every human from that point forward has lived under the light of this fallen humanity.
Doug McMasters: Every one of us in this room, every one of us who have drawn breath today, are bearing the image of this man of dust.
Doug McMasters: And we bear the consequences of our fallness.
Doug McMasters: We live a life of woe, of decay, and death.
Doug McMasters: But listen to what Paul says here when he talks about those who are in Christ.
Doug McMasters: Yes, we have borne the image of the man of dust, but we shall bear the image of the man from heaven.
Doug McMasters: And he's there speaking about the second Adam, the one who is the true image, not created according to the image, but who is the image of the very God Himself, because he is God, the one in whom the image is never fractured, the one in whose resurrection body Thomas held and touched, the one who stood there on the banks of the waters and cooked food and ate together with his disciples.
Doug McMasters: Paul says we will bear that image as well.
Doug McMasters: Not a spiritual image in some metaphysical way that's just metaphorically describing some spiritual disembodied state, but we embodied people as we are will be resurrected to a newness of life that is radically different than what we experience now.
Doug McMasters: So much so that we could contrast it with weakness and power, mortality and immortality.
Doug McMasters: We can take all of those things and say that is where the destination is for us.
Doug McMasters: The body that was sown in weakness, sown in dishonor, who lives in the slow accumulation of everything that mortality has brought upon our human frame, will be the body raised in power, will be the body raised in glory, will be the body raised in incorruption, where death cannot touch it, and time will etch no mark on it.
Doug McMasters: Made by God.
Doug McMasters: Not a soul floating free of matter in some vague, pleasant spiritual state, but real people in glorified bodies, resurrected image bearers, fully and finally able to live the way we were designed to live in Genesis chapter one.
Doug McMasters: That's our design.
Doug McMasters: Think about that lady staring at the steering wheel, wondering why her life was so directionless.
Doug McMasters: She was asking an image question.
Doug McMasters: She was asking the very substantive question of who she was, what she was here for, and where was life going.
Doug McMasters: And without Christ, she had no answer, just gnawing questions.
Doug McMasters: But the scriptures tell us that those who are in Christ can understand that they're designed by God and that their destiny, even for their physical body, is one of hope and life.
Doug McMasters: This is the beginning of a story, the greatest chapters of which have not yet been written.
Doug McMasters: We have no idea just how magnificent that is going to be.
Doug McMasters: But here we're told that image will be glorified, made by God, remade by God, raised by God, and completed by God.
Doug McMasters: Let's look at the second point, not only about our body, but let's go to Revelation chapter 21, where we had talked about that first point, made by God, marked by God.
Doug McMasters: And here in Revelation chapter 21, we get an understanding of this dignity with which God has made us.
Doug McMasters: When I introduced that phrase, marked by God in February, what I was saying is the fact that we're made in the image of God invests us with a dignity that nothing that we do can acquire.
Doug McMasters: That the dignity that we have as humanity is not vested upon us because of where we were born or what color skin we have or how educated we are or how large our bank account is, whether we're capable people relationally or any of those matters, that we are invested with a dignity from God because he has stamped his image on us.
Doug McMasters: It's not ability or productivity, things that we can achieve or fail to achieve that will change that whatsoever.
Doug McMasters: We have been marked by God and have an inherent dignity about who we are that cannot be earned and cannot be lost.
Doug McMasters: But where is it going?
Doug McMasters: What does it look like in its fullness?
Doug McMasters: So here I want us to see in Revelation chapter 21 what the answer to that is, because Revelation 21 answers that very question.
Doug McMasters: And in Revelation chapter 21, John sees a new heaven and a new earth.
Doug McMasters: The first heaven and the first earth have been transformed and passed away.
Doug McMasters: And listen in verses 3 and 4 how he describes this.
Doug McMasters: I heard with a loud voice from the throne, Look, God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them.
Doug McMasters: They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God.
Doug McMasters: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Doug McMasters: Death will be no more.
Doug McMasters: Grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
Doug McMasters: One of the most significant things about that is something that we need to let settle into our hearts deeper.
Doug McMasters: It says this the dwelling place of God is with humanity.
Doug McMasters: We possess an inherent dignity because we've been made in the image of God, but there's nothing so much so close to what the dignity would be to be actually received into the very presence of the Creator Himself.
Doug McMasters: I mean, just think about that in an earthly perspective.
Doug McMasters: I lived most of my life under the rule of Queen Elizabeth II.
Doug McMasters: And how wondrous that would have been.
Doug McMasters: And for those of you that don't know, I'm a dual citizen.
Doug McMasters: I'm a U.S.
Doug McMasters: and a UK citizen.
Doug McMasters: So I salute the president and I said to the Queen that she's she's also something worthy of my honor.
Doug McMasters: But to think about being in her presence, to be received into the very place where she would move, into the very throne room in which she held her court, where she would invite prime ministers in and ask them to form a government on her behalf, and to be brought into her presence.
Doug McMasters: And you would think there's no better place of dignity or honor than to be received in that kind of environment as a citizen of or as a person within the populace of the United Kingdom.
Doug McMasters: And here we are, created humans, made by God, and the highest place of dignity would be to be in his very presence, received into him where we might say, God is with us.
Doug McMasters: And this is what John is writing about here.
Doug McMasters: The God who walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening had been separated from his people after the fall, from that point forward.
Doug McMasters: He had manifest his presence in the temple and the tabernacle, and yet there was a dividing wall there only by sacrifice, and with the high priest only once a year, after himself giving up offerings for himself and for the people, and only for a short amount of time.
Doug McMasters: The veil now separate, us and God.
Doug McMasters: And yet, here is this time when God says, I am going to be with my people.
Doug McMasters: The distance that sin has created, the separation that's been there, is over.
Doug McMasters: We're brought into the presence of God, and we live forever with him.
Doug McMasters: And take a look at verse five as it goes forward.
Doug McMasters: It's one of the most quietly astounding sentences in Scripture.
Doug McMasters: The one seated on the throne said, Look, I am making everything new.
Doug McMasters: He's taking all those things that we call us and transforming them, remaking them, renewing them, glorifying them, not discarding them and replacing them, but taking them up and transforming them.
Doug McMasters: The God who said, Let us make mankind in the beginning is the God who says he is making all things new.
Doug McMasters: The maker becomes the remaker.
Doug McMasters: The creator becomes the grand restorer.
Doug McMasters: And he tells John these words.
Doug McMasters: Write it down.
Doug McMasters: Because these words are trustworthy and true.
Doug McMasters: This is not just a wistful hope or a dream of some special place and a special time in which we will all live in perfection, but a reality that God says is going to happen based upon his character.
Doug McMasters: And then in verse 6, he says this he said to me, It is done.
Doug McMasters: God speaks about it as the completed effort.
Doug McMasters: And everything that the fall has brought into our life.
Doug McMasters: By way of loss, tears, and separation and death being over, he said, Those things are done.
Doug McMasters: I am making everything new.
Doug McMasters: This is trustworthy and true, and it's completed, because the one who speaks is the Alpha and the Omega, the one who holds every moment of history in his hand, the one where the end is as certain as the beginning, because all things are held by him.
Doug McMasters: And this is where we find ourselves in that place of ultimate dignity.
Doug McMasters: Every person marked by God, no matter what place of weakness they might be in, are going to be brought into the very presence of God and received blameless and without fault in his presence and full of joy.
Doug McMasters: So whether we're capable or not capable in this world, whether our bodies are marked by sin or disabled in any fashion, whether our mental capacities can rise or cannot rise to our potential, whether we're able to succeed or not succeed in this life, whether or not society shines or sets its shadow upon us, in that day none of that will matter.
Doug McMasters: Because the ultimate dignity of dignities will be laid upon his people when he says, I am with you, and you are with me.
Doug McMasters: That is the ultimate of what it means to be marked by God.
Doug McMasters: And that day is as certain as the God who said it to be true, because he's the Alpha and Omega.
Doug McMasters: And that leads us to our last point: made by God, marked by God to manifest his glory.
Doug McMasters: God's determination and his design, God's dignity that he rests upon us, and God's determination for our ultimate destiny.
Doug McMasters: And I'd like for us just to turn one more page over in the book of Revelation to chapter 22.
Doug McMasters: And here in verses 1 to 5, we see the fullness of it all.
Doug McMasters: He showed me the river, the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the city's main street.
Doug McMasters: The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month.
Doug McMasters: The leaves of the n trees are for the healing of the nations, and there will be no longer any curse.
Doug McMasters: The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him, and they will see his face, and his name will be upon their forehead.
Doug McMasters: Night will be no more.
Doug McMasters: People will not need the light of the lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Doug McMasters: We were made by God not simply to exist and not simply to bear an inherent dignity, but to have a destiny in which we reflect his character in everything that we do.
Doug McMasters: And for all of us, those aspirations to live to the fullness of our designed purpose have gnawed at us when we realize that our potential and our actual are very separate, that the things that we reach for and long for and want to do with life end up being a lot more like the book of Ecclesiastes than they are this passage of Scripture, where we realize that our aspirations falter and fail, that the race that we would run in this life doesn't end up the way that we hoped that it would.
Doug McMasters: And disappointment can often be our closest companion.
Doug McMasters: But here we find an existence in which there's no mitigation whatsoever of the bounty that's there and of the blessings that can be had, and that God's people are living in the fullness of life as it was meant to be.
Doug McMasters: And this is why the Eden imagery is put here again, where where we were created now becomes the place in which we thrive once again, where there is that place that's lush and full and healthy and beneficial, where God's presence is and where people flourish in all of their fullness, so much so that it says about us that we will reign as if we were holding dominion over everything ourselves.
Doug McMasters: That high school student who was scrolling through social media on his phone and saying, Where is my life headed?
Doug McMasters: was asking an image question.
Doug McMasters: A question that's fundamental to who we are as humans, seeking purpose while flipping through people's manufactured realities on Instagram.
Doug McMasters: Bad place to look.
Doug McMasters: But here is the truth of God's word that speaks about the ultimate destination for us.
Doug McMasters: Where is your life really headed as a believer in Christ?
Doug McMasters: What is the fullness of this existence that I have?
Doug McMasters: It is to be in the very presence of God with all the fullness of God's blessing in an environment that is without any taint of sin whatsoever, where all of your expressions are pure to the full glory of God, and that you could literally do anything you want, and it would be in a place of maximum pleasure to God and ultimate display of your gifts and your human purpose.
Doug McMasters: That's what it's talking about.
Doug McMasters: Why did God make us to see his face and to live fully before him face to face without any loss or any fear, but to be in that place of that permanent destination, to see the one in whose image we were made.
Doug McMasters: Revelation 22 is the last chapter of the Bible.
Doug McMasters: And it shows us some of this imagery of the new Jerusalem and the fullness of the city that's designed as a garden in all of its completion and surpasses even Eden in its original state.
Doug McMasters: A river with the water of life and trees bearing fruit, and the throne of God and the Lamb at the center of it.
Doug McMasters: And that final statement to culminate, we will see his face.
Doug McMasters: Moses wanted to see God's face, and God said no.
Doug McMasters: He put Moses in the cleft of a rock and let him see his back as he passed.
Doug McMasters: And that was as close as any human got.
Doug McMasters: But here is this time in which Revelation says the rock is gone, the cleft is gone, the veil is gone, and the face is seen.
Doug McMasters: We will see him in a real relationship with real worship, with real knowledge, and real love, in which we will dwell fully in his presence.
Doug McMasters: Revelation 22 arrives.
Doug McMasters: In Revelation 21 and verse 26, it says, The nations will bring their glory into the city.
Doug McMasters: Everything that redeemed image bearers across all of history could make or build or cultivate or offer in obedience or creativity are now brought into the presence of God and received fully.
Doug McMasters: It's mind-blowing to think that way.
Doug McMasters: And I think getting a hold of that is what prompted C.S.
Doug McMasters: Lewis when he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia to end those books with this story.
Doug McMasters: When he talked about Aslan's country being finally entered and the old Narnia passing away.
Doug McMasters: And he said that the things that were about to happen he couldn't write about because they were too great and too beautiful to put into words.
Doug McMasters: And I think this is why the book of Revelation stops where it does.
Doug McMasters: Because, like the book of Acts, you're longing for another chapter.
Doug McMasters: You read Revelation chapter 22, and you're longing to understand, well, what's after all of this?
Doug McMasters: And this is how C.S.
Doug McMasters: Lewis, with his ability, wrote the things that began to happen after were so great and beautiful that I cannot write about them.
Doug McMasters: And as for us, this is the end of all the stories.
Doug McMasters: And we can truly say that they lived happily ever after.
Doug McMasters: But for them, this was really only the beginning of the real story.
Doug McMasters: All of their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page.
Doug McMasters: Now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story, which no one on earth has yet read, which goes on forever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before.
Doug McMasters: That's Revelation chapter 23 and 24 and 25.
Doug McMasters: We were made in the image of God, designed by God, given a dignity because he invested his image on each of us and didn't ask us to measure up in order to gain that dignity, conferred upon us because we were made by him.
Doug McMasters: But we were also designed for a destiny that is more glorious than our imagination can ever begin to wrap around.
Doug McMasters: This is why the apostle Paul said, Eye is not seen, nor is ear heard, nor is it entered into the hearts of men, the things God has prepared for those who love Him.
Doug McMasters: These pictures in Revelation chapter 21 and 22 are simply taking imagery that we're familiar with to bring us to places we cannot yet imagine.
Doug McMasters: And this is where God is bringing all who are in Christ.
Doug McMasters: If you know Him, you this is your destiny, this is your dignity, and this is your design.
Doug McMasters: Those fundamental questions that get asked in the hollowness and the emptiness of our heart and our days have been answered by the living God.
Doug McMasters: And he has the most glorious answer to every one of them.
Doug McMasters: Hear him and live in hope and live in joy and live in gratitude because the fullness of it all has yet to be expressed.
Doug McMasters: It's coming.
Doug McMasters: And if you're here this evening and you don't know Christ, and those questions gnaw at you still, who am I?
Doug McMasters: Why am I here?
Doug McMasters: Where am I going?
Doug McMasters: This world will not answer those questions for you.
Doug McMasters: You'll drive by people's houses that look 10 times larger than the one you grew up in.
Doug McMasters: You'll see people with more degrees on their walls than you might ever acquire.
Doug McMasters: You might find in magazines peoples whose images look far more beautiful or handsome than you think you could ever make yourself.
Doug McMasters: And I want to tell you, underneath all of those degrees and all that house and all of all of those looks is someone asking the exact same questions you are.
Doug McMasters: Why am I here?
Doug McMasters: Why am I existing?
Doug McMasters: Because that question can only be answered by the living God who made you for himself.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Our Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we've shared together as your body to learn more about your designs and purposes in our creation.
Doug McMasters: And we pray, Father, as we go together through our life, longing and hoping for that coming day, may we encourage one another in this hope.
Doug McMasters: May we strengthen one another in faith, and may we be alongside one another when the woes of this world that we still live in, fractured by the fall, continue to weigh heavily on our hearts, to bear gently and kindly with one another, to pray with those and to weep with those who are in distress, and to rejoice with those who find the blessings of God in the land of the living.
Doug McMasters: But in always, may we cast ourselves toward you as we find ourselves marching on forward to Zion.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.
unknown: Amen.