The Healing Word

Jack Morris: What has happened is that the image of God within us is stamped in the invisible part of our being, and that has been marred by our choice to sin. But when we come back to God and reunite with God, God again breathes into us and we become alive unto Him, and that image then is in the process of being restored back to God again.

Guest (Male): Who are we? Why were we created? And what does it truly mean to be in the image of God? Today on the Healing Word, Pastor Jack Morris continues Foundations of Faith with the Image of God. We'll discover humanity's divine design and how Jesus Christ restores what sin has marred.

Jack Morris: But we do wonder about our ancestry and where we came from and who we really are in an attempt to identify ourselves and establish our identity. We are thankful that we have the word of God that really unfolds this and makes it extremely clear to us. But there are those that choose another book other than the Bible. They choose their own thinking, their own reasoning.

They choose to believe that they came from the impersonal, the mechanistic, the purposeless, and that kind of reasoning always takes us back for the most part to the book that Darwin published in the 19th century entitled The Origin of Species. There he talks about the survival of the fittest. Now, we have a choice. All of us, we all have a choice. We can choose to believe that and follow that kind of rationale.

It has become so prevalent that it has reached the sacred halls of Supreme Congress, and instead of enlightenment, most of the time the argument becomes heated. So, it has been fought and addressed and looked into from the home to the school to the Supreme Court. But God has authored another book, His book, the Bible, the book of books, and He chooses to tell us clearly and succinctly where we came from and why we are here.

He has purpose. He tells us that we came as a result of His doing from His loving hand. So, we didn't come from a purposeless, mechanistic, cold survival of the fittest. We came because God designed us delicately with intent, with purpose, and we have a being. None of us are an accident of nature. We're here because God wants us to be here, and every person here today has a purpose in being here. Everyone of us.

May God help us by the revelation of the Holy Spirit to know why we are here on God's green earth. We each one have been produced by His loving hand with purpose and with design. I hope you know why you're here. I hope I know why I'm here. I think I know why I'm here. I think I'm here to love God, to serve God, to do God's will. I'm here because of Him, and I have special connections with Him, and so do you.

Everyone of us have this very special connection, intimate relationship with God. It's not the survival of the fittest. If we look anywhere other than this book, that's how it is. It's the law of the jungle. And we have a choice to serve God, to believe God, to love God, to be loved by God, or to get out there and be animal-like. But God has given us great design, and may we follow Him and may the Holy Spirit help me today to speak to you from this holy word that you and I might know who we are.

One minister said that a hitchhiker was hitchhiking and he pulled over and picked him up and talked to the young man. The young man began to express his inner feelings and his great desire in life. The great desire in life of this young man was to find himself. And the minister was being a little facetious and he says, "Well, I know where you are. You're right here beside me in the car." They both got a little chuckle out of it.

But a lot of people, I talked to a man this past week who mentioned that he's now 50 years old and he said, "I'm really trying to find myself." I thought, "Dear Lord, you're over half gone, sir, and you haven't..." I didn't say that. My mother taught me better. But God wants to find us, to love us, and to give us purpose, for we all have purpose in being. Now, the scripture says that God created it all, everything there is, from the tiniest invisible piece of matter to the far off galaxy in outer space.

He created it all, the scripture says, in six days. Wow. Six days. Now, I'm not going to argue with you about whether it was six days each day of 24 hours, or if it were each day represented a thousand years, or if each day just was figurative of a great expanse of time. I really don't care. That isn't the important thing. But I just want to say this. I have no problem with the 24-hour six-day because God is God.

If He decided He wanted to do it in six days or if He wanted to do it in six hours or if He wanted to do it in six seconds, I mean, He's God and creation is beyond time. But God did it all in six days. The sixth day, the scripture says in verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image.'" This is what God did on the sixth day. Everything that He made had a progressive order of ascendancy and complexity. Everything kept going up until God created His masterpiece, which is man.

Man is also woman. Now, look at verse 26. I'm going to really get into this next week. Verse 27, I mean. "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Look at it. "So God created man; male and female He created them." So when the Bible speaks of man, it speaks of woman equally with man. Oh, I'd like to preach next week's message right now, but I have to do this one first.

Look how God created man. Everything God did, He did it with the word of His voice. He speaks and everything came into existence. But when He created you and me, when He created man, notice He begins with discussion. He didn't just speak. He discussed the matter. Verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'" There was a discussion. God had some prerequisite thought that He put into it.

He gave some consideration. He was going to do something great. This was going to be His final act and it had to be perfect. It had to be exact. It had to be right. And so we see the triune Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit conferring together like a group of architects, I guess, just how we're going to make him and her and put them forth and produce them. Then look at chapter 2, verse 7. "The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the earth."

It puts God forth somewhat of a technician now. He's not just speaking. First there's a discussion. He reasons it out, He discusses it, and then He forms man. Step by step, He's bringing forth His masterpiece, and He formed man from the dust. Somehow God designed our bodies from the dust of the earth and made us in His own image like He would have us to be, the image of God actually being the spirit part of man, not the dust part of man.

But it's important that we look at this for just a moment because we are dust and we're going to go back to dust. It says in Genesis chapter 3, verse 19, God spoke to the man that He created and told him how he was going to work and sweat, and that's how he would eat his food "until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." We're dust. We're on our way back.

It was never meant that we would be here forever. Mister, you're going to die and it's not going to be very long. It won't be long. Our pilgrimage here is so quick. James says life is but a vapor like steam coming out of a teakettle. You see it and then it's gone. Where did all those years go? If you're going to serve God, if you have plans, you better go on and get on with it. Don't put off. Today is the day of salvation.

It's appointed unto man once to die. On God's divine calendar, He knows exactly the day you and I are going to take our last breath and where we're going to be and the circumstances. The question I have to ask myself is, am I ready? Am I ready? Do I know Christ as my personal Lord and Savior? Is Jesus in my heart? Am I ready to face God? Because inevitably, I will. That's one area He's taken the decision out of. I don't decide that.

He's decided that, for we're all going to stand in the presence of God. We're going back to dust. The body is going back to dust. But then look at the second part of verse 7. "The Lord God formed the man of the dust from the dust of the ground," and then what did He do? He "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," and what happened? Man became a living soul. Look at this great design. Step by step how delicately God put man together and then He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

He breathed. Something from inside of God comes within me, within you, and that part of God is going to live on forever. That part of you is going to live on forever. That is the part where we are in the image of God. God's not going to turn back to dust. God does not have bodily parts. The scripture says God is spirit. Remember the scripture says God is spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

The body goes back to dust, but the spirit within us will live on forever and ever and ever. I think of God forming the man and then breathing. Now, here's where we're going to learn of the intimacy of our purpose in being. We are made for God. God is made for us. We are made to be together. And here God comes after He made the man. See God and man face to face, mouth to mouth. Intimacy. Intimacy. Closeness.

And then God breathed into man and man became a living being. Man stood up in the image of God. Man became God-like at that very moment. So it's that part of you that's going to live on forever, the very breath of God that is within you. Spirit, you see in your notes that you have the outline. Spirit is mental likeness. Do you see it in your notes? The mental likeness of God. In mental likeness, this is the spirit within you. This is the image of God within you.

The spirit is the soul part, the spirit part, that invisible part, that eternal part that will go back to God and stand someday in the very presence of God. There is that mental likeness, that intelligence. God is intelligence. He's the wisdom of the universe, and He put intelligence in man so far superior to the intelligence that we're experiencing today because of the fall and the marring of that image. But man was created a very intelligent being.

You think of Adam, how he could be in the presence of God and then in the presence of all creation and begin to observe all of creation and he would name the animals. He had the ability of zoological knowledge. He could observe the animals' nature and their varying nature from beast to bird and then give them a name. So that means man was here with the ability to speak. He had speech. He could pronounce names.

He could observe in a scientific way. He was very brilliant. Here is the image of God. Mister, you're never going to forget today. You're never going to forget the opportunities that you've had. God has given you a memory, and I believe eternity, some people are going to be very miserable because they're going to remember the opportunities and they're going to remember the delays and they're going to remember the procrastination and the times they put things off and they waited for a better time, a greater opportunity.

God has made us in His image with intelligence, and that part of us is going to live on forever. You are an intelligent being. Look how Adam could maneuver with all that he had about him. A very intelligent being. That is part of this God-given nature that is within us. God put within us, according to Psalm 42, verse 1, we're told how that there's that desire, that craving for spiritual things. As the heart or the little deer will seek after water brooks because it's thirsty, "so will my soul seek after you."

There's a God-hunger within every person, every man, every woman, every child. There's a God-hunger, and we will yield that over to the Lord and allow Him to satisfy it, or we will try to satisfy it in our own ways. But this is a part of this image of God, this creation of God that is within every one of us. We are made in the very likeness and in the very image of God. This image of God has been blunted, so blunted by sin.

See, man had this great intelligence. God made him a moral being in moral likeness, an upright. He was not all down on all fours. I remember the man was telling me in a little store across the street one time about how we all came from monkeys and our ancestors, and I thought to myself, "Well, yeah, I can see why you might think that. Maybe yours, but not mine." But we were created intelligent beings.

We were created upright beings. We were created morally correct. We knew right from wrong. We could reason right from wrong. I don't know that pigeons and dogs have that ability to reason in this fashion, but you and I have that ability. God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil, told them not to touch it. He sovereignly designed what was right and what was wrong for them. He expected them to obey.

He put that there. What is the third likeness in the image of God in your notes? Social. He made us a social being. Think of God, the triune Godhead, the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The socialness of the Trinity. Think of God now creating man, seeking man also to become part of that fellowship. Then also He created the woman so the woman and the man could be together and then the woman and the man be with God, God talking with them in the cool of the day, fellowshipping them, talking with them.

Why did God create man? So He could fellowship with man, so He could talk with man, so He could have an intimate relationship with man. If we are not in that place, then we are missing our purpose in being in life and we don't know why we're really here. When man sinned, that image was not completely eradicated, the image of God. When man sinned, the image of God was stained or marred. It was like a building was defaced.

Man is still intelligent. You still have convictions. There is still that longing in our hearts after spiritual things. On one occasion in Matthew 22, Jesus was talking to a group of Pharisees and Herodians, and they wanting to crucify Him, put Him to death, tried to trick Him and they said, "Should we pay our tax?" Isn't this the time you're getting your going to the H&R Block and all those places getting your taxes done?

Isn't this the time? You know, I think we ought to really have some H&R Block people come in here and say, "Okay, now it's tithing time." You have to pay your taxes. But everything in God is a willful choosing. It's deliberate. It comes from our volition. This again is the image of God. God made you with this choice. But so they asked Jesus, "Should we pay taxes? Is that really something that we ought to do?"

And remember the story, what did Jesus say to them? He said, "Give me a quarter. Anybody have a quarter on them? Give me a denarius." And so they gave Him a coin and Jesus looked at it and said, "Whose image, whose superscription is on this?" And they looked at it and they said, "It's Caesar's." You see, back then every time a new king came into power, he would have new currency, and he would always have his picture.

I think I look at a dollar bill, is it George Washington's picture on there? And even today we sort of carry that through, but we don't have paper money. But every time a new king would come, it put his image on the coin. And Jesus looked at it and He said, "Well, that's the image of Caesar. That means Caesar owns that coin, and if you have that coin, then Caesar owns you. And so render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."

What has happened is that the image of God within us is stamped in the invisible part of our being, and that has been marred by our choice to sin. But when we come back to God and reunite with God, God again breathes into us and we become alive unto Him, and that image then is in the process of being restored back to God again. Many of us today, we have but the image of the earthly. That's all.

We think earth, we think time, we think now. That's the result of the fall. Man used to think God, think of God's coming, think of conversation with God, but today we think of me, now, bless me, pleasure, money, security. Almost 100% of our waking hours. Very few of our waking hours is given to the thought of spiritual things. But when that image of God is returned, now we begin to not only think in the realm of time but also with the thought of eternity.

What is beyond time? Not only my relationship with God now, but what will my relationship be with God after I die? We begin to think long range, long term. We begin to think eternity. So Christ has come to do what Adam failed to do. You see, what Adam did when he sinned, he polluted the whole human race. He's the father of all mankind. He polluted the stream. He sent sin and disobedience. We are just like our daddy.

We are all just chips off the old block. We're all like Adam. The scripture says after Adam, God created Adam like God, and then it says Adam sinned and then Adam had a son in his own likeness. We are all so earthy in our thinking, in our being, in our living, in our ambitions and aspirations. But Jesus came because God saw what Adam failed to do. God sent another man. God sent the first man and he polluted the human race.

So Jesus came, God sending Jesus, another man who will now send a new stream into the human race. That stream flowed from Calvary to cleanse us. The enzymes of Calvary to clean up the pollution that Adam brought into us. And today we can be cleansed, we can be forgiven, and the image of God be restored, and we can become that very purposeful being that God intended us to be. Do you know Him today as your personal Lord and Savior? Are you walking in His ways? Are you following Him? Do you have eternity stamped in your heart? Is the image of God there? Friend, only Jesus can put it back. Adam took it away, and because you are sons and daughters of Adam, you've lost it. Now Jesus comes to put it back.

Guest (Male): Today Pastor Morris reminded us that we were created with purpose, designed for fellowship with God, and destined for eternity. Though sin has distorted that image, Jesus Christ came to restore it. At the Healing Word website, you'll find more Bible teaching from Pastor Morris, along with weekly devotionals and free ministry resources designed to strengthen your faith. If you would like to help this ministry continue sharing the Gospel, your prayers and financial support are deeply appreciated. Thank you for joining us today on the Healing Word. Next time, Pastor Jack Morris shares God Made Woman, examining God's beautiful design for marriage, partnership, and the family.