Does God Need A Little Help From His Friends?
Intro:
Eccl 3:11
Genesis 1:26 -
Bob Huber - North Street Christian Church
Four spiritual pointers to help you live IMAGO DEI:
- God does not have a Self - Image problem!
- God's created spiritual image in man has become Tainted since the fall
- God's image does not need Redeemed.
- God’s Image in Me does need redeemed.
- The image of God is Perfected in the Gospel of His Son – Jesus Christ
- The Church is the chosen vessel to portray God as He presents Himself.
- Imago Dei – a serious call and mission! So does God need a little help from His friends? The answer is to OBEY HIM!
Review: Isaiah 6:1-8
Review: John 14:8-9 | John 8:54-58 | Colossians 1
2 Corinthians 2:14-16
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:29-00:38
It certainly is an honor to be asked to come to Harvest, and a great honor to fill in for Jeff.
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Jeff and I go back a ways.
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He is my S-I-T-G.
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That's my Son In The Gospel.
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And I'm his F-I-T-G, his Father In The Gospel.
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And I would have to say that I'm proud of him humbled by Him in many, many ways.
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And one thing about Jeff Miller is he is sincere.
01:04-01:07
And in the Greek language, sincere means see-through.
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It was a way of judging cloth that had been dyed.
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And you would hold the cloth in the sunlight and look through it to see if the dye took evenly.
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And there's nothing fake about Jeff.
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And we're knit together in the Lord and I can tell.
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rubbed off on you.
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I want to say to you that this place is well-oiled from the inside out.
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It's genuine.
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And just continue to humbly serve the Lord together.
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Now today you had two fundamental Baptists.
01:44-01:46
Now you have an altar boy in front of you.
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I grew up Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy for many years until God got ahold of me in a new way and just led me to share His Word and His love and the message of the Gospel as often as I can and with as many people as I can.
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Today's message is entitled, "Immago Dei - Does God Need a Little Help from His Friends?" I want to tell you about my ride home from my church.
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I live about four miles from the church.
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And on my way home, I come to the intersection of three roads - Route 68 east and route 38 north.
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And I have to turn left on 38 north and it's on a grade up.
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And sometimes when I sit in that left lane waiting for the arrow to turn left, I notice the traffic on my right beginning to move, but I feel like I'm drifting backwards.
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You ever been there?
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Not really paying attention, but paying attention.
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And I hit the brake, and I hit the brake harder, and I realize, "Oh, I'm not going backwards.
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They're going forwards." And I think when we look at our condition of our spiritual world today, sometimes we wonder who's moving here, and who needs to move.
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Now the way to bring truth to what's really happening is if I look at a road sign, or a building, or a tree, something that's not moving, find a fixed point of reference.
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Then I can tell what's going on.
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It's not me that's moving, it's them that's moving.
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And spiritually, I think the same is true.
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We look around and we say, "Where are our spiritual bearings?" And we compare our positions one to another, but that's not the best place to look because we might be looking at each other as we're moving forward, moving backwards, going in circles or not making progress at all.
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We're losing ground.
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And I would say, how do we hold on in a day like today?
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And that brings me to Imago Dei.
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That means "in His image." We'll find some spiritual bearings here.
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Crowder, in his song "Praise the Lord," says this about God.
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He says, "I used to shake you like an eight ball." You know what one of those are?
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You shake it to get your fortune.
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We do that with God.
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And he says, "I used to shoot you like a gun.
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I used to hold you like a hammer, try to nail down everyone.
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And I've got to tell you, the older I get, the longer I go, the more I know this.
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We live by faith and not by sight.
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I used to have the answers for lots of things, and I know the answer now.
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His name is Jesus, but I may not have every answer for every need, and God is not my spiritual gun that I shoot.
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He's not my spiritual eight ball.
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not the hammer that I can win an argument with any longer." And Kruidiger's on and he says, "I used to keep you in a steeple.
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I used to bind you in a book.
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I used to take you like a prescription without knowing what I took." And today, I want to challenge your thoughts about God and about your view of God and about your very life and your theology and everything about you so that you might find those spiritual bearings or return to the one true God.
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Now listen, God is not bigger than the sum of all truth.
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Right doctrine.
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Because He is equal to the sum of all truth.
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All that is God is truth and all that is truth is God, but He is bigger than our comprehension of all truth because none of us have comprehended God completely.
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We don't have every doctrine examined and understand it as he presents himself.
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Ken samples in a book called Reasons, I Believe, says this about God and man.
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He says, "The Bible reveals that all of God's creatures, of all of them, only man, only humankind was created in the express image of God." The word image and the word likeness convey the idea of an object similar to or representative of something else but not identical to.
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God created human beings to be similar to himself but not identical to himself.
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Therefore the biblical perspective, human beings are in some sense both like and unlike God who made them.
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And so if we are Imago Dei, made in His image, what does it mean?
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A complete understanding of Imago Dei's meaning simply isn't possible.
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It would require an exhaustive comprehension of God's nature.
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Finite creatures by definition cannot comprehend or fully fathom the infinite nature of God, therefore by necessity people are faced with mystery and limited knowledge.
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And so I ask, is our spiritual, rational, volitional natures, is that what makes us like God in His image but not God?
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Is it that we engage in complex interpersonal relationships that best reflect the divine God in us?
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Is it when we take dominion over nature or appropriately represent God on earth that we are made in His image?
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Is that what it means?
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Well, here's a verse from Solomon - Ecclesiastes 3.11.
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He says this, "He made everything beautiful in its time, and He has set eternity on the hearts of men." Yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to the end.
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And so I think that verse tells us something.
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Do you ever wonder why we look up?
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Why would I even preach about the image of God?
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Why would you come to worship God?
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Why do you even have that spiritual, you know, desire in your life?
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It's because God put eternity on our hearts.
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Have you ever noticed cats and dogs and horses and cows don't have funerals when one of them dies?
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A cow doesn't stand in a pasture and wonder, "What happens if my calf dies tomorrow?" Wanders out on the road and gets hit.
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Will they go to heaven?
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God didn't put eternity on their hearts.
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He put eternity on our hearts.
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And there's no doubt, we are here to reflect God.
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So a lost and dying world has become more and more like Him in His image.
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And so, open your Bible to the book of Genesis in chapter 1, and we'll begin in verse 26.
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Where do we even get this idea?
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In Genesis 1 and 26, the Bible says that God said, "Let us, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, man in our image, in our likeness.
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That's what he said and here's what he did in Genesis 1:27, it says, "So God created man in His own image, and the image of God He created him, male and female." He created them.
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And then if you look at Genesis 2:7, here's how he did it.
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It says, "Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." I would have to say, even to the church, "Do you believe that?" I believe that.
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This is the God who spoke the world into existence.
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And when you study the Word, you find out it wasn't God the Father, it was God the Son who gets the credit and the glory for being the Creator.
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And so out of the dust of the earth, He spoke the world into existence, and then He took some dust and He made man.
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And the Father said to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, "Now let us make Him in our image." Let's make them male and female.
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And He took dust and made a man.
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And then Genesis 2, 20-22, "But for Adam there was found not a helper fit for him, and so "The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed it up in its place with flesh.
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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, He made into a woman." It's an out-of-man.
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That's what woman means.
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He made a woman out of man's rib and brought her to the man.
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And so we see that God declared it.
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Let us make man in our image.
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And He did it out of dust and out of a bone in the man's side.
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And I'm always mindful of this.
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Isn't it interesting?
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He didn't take a bone from His head nor His foot to make Him above or beneath her or her above or beneath Him, but from under His arm that two should become one in Christian union and just like the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one, three are one in marriage, two are one.
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And so I just make this observation.
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So we are made in the image of God.
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Who takes time to think about these things when you're driving down the road these days?
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These things are left to the philosophers and the theologians.
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We have things to do and places to go and people to see.
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We have such a fast-paced agenda today.
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We are gullible consumers who just go for the next and the latest and the greatest trend.
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And to a great extent, we have become a society of dupes and fools.
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We lose our bearings.
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When our eyes are caught up on, like 1 John says, the strong desires of the eyes, strong desires of the flesh, and our own pride, we forget where we came from, we forget what our purpose is, we forget who made us.
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I know this.
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We are way too busy, and we're way too preoccupied, and we want things to fit our way of thinking.
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It's built in.
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It's our nature.
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And so listen, when my leg vibrates and I know to answer my phone, I become conditioned like Pavlov's dog.
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And you have too.
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I purposely left my phone in my car today, told my wife I'm shutting it off, don't try to get a hold of me even if it's an emergency.
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I said call Brooke Rotenberger if it's an emergency, she'll be there.
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But listen, when my leg vibrates and my phone's not even in my pocket, that says something worse and something greater about our conditioning.
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Does that happen to you sometimes?
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Where you think, "Oh, and it's not even there." When I pick up the air conditioner remote to send a text, and I pick up my cell phone to change the channel on the TV, it says something about all that's at my hand and how mindless I become.
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And have you noticed that the more forms of communication we have, the less personal we become?
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Everyone wants to be a star in their own show.
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See we think it's about us.
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We don't remember it's about him.
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Look to Facebook and the many ways we communicate.
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It becomes evident daily.
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We can be in the very presence of another person, face to face, eye to eye, having a conversation and that'll take back seat to communicating with someone who's not even present. All it has to do is ding. All it has to do is make that sound.
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Oops, excuse me.
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And I think we've not only disconnected from one another, we have become quite busy and quite too busy even for the deeper things of God.
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We have become professional at growing impersonal relationships. And that's oxymoronic when you think of that. Growing impersonal? How does that happen?
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Here's how it happens. We just put everybody out here somewhere and we do what we have to do to get through the day. And I think the Word draws us back to say, "Hey, remember, take a look." So I would say, are we made in His image or is He made in our image?
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Someone said this one time, "You know, God made us in His image and we return the favor.
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We've made Him in our image." And here's how I would answer that question.
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And I think it depends if you decide by observation or by revelation.
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See the Scripture proclaims God's truth.
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In fact, the Scripture says without revelation, the people cast off restraint.
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That's found in Proverbs 29 and verse 18.
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It doesn't mean without the book of revelation, people cast off restraint.
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It means if God's not speaking, if there's not word revelation, how would we know?
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But most of us are not into what God has said.
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And those who try to make decisions about God and life and people and meaning and purpose by observation only always end up with their own version of the same thing.
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And here's what it is.
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If there's a God, by observation, you say, "Well, if there's a God, and I think there might be, if there's a God, and who can know for sure, then we just live the best we can and do the best we can, and when we die, if there's an eternity, we'll find out how we did." And I think of it this way.
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I think in most people's mindset, you see, this is a balanced scale.
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My mom had on our dining room table growing up this brass looking balanced scale.
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had grapes in it, wax fruit on one side, grapes.
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Did your mom have one of them?
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And a balance scale works this way.
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If I was a businessman and I sold grapes for a living and you wanted three pounds, I would put a known three pound weight on this side and I would add grapes until the weight evened out and then I would know this weighs three pounds.
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And so I think this, by observation, we typically conclude if I've done more bad than good, then I don't go to heaven.
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And if I've done more good than bad, then I go to heaven.
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And that's where observation will get you.
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Those who make decision about God and life and people and meaning and purpose by revelation as revealed in the Bible, find out this, that God's ways are not our ways.
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And God's thoughts are not our thoughts.
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He says that about himself in Isaiah 55.
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He doesn't think like us.
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He doesn't perform like us.
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But when we want to remake Him in our image, we want Him to fit our mold.
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But He said, "That doesn't happen.
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I'm not like you." His supernatural ways are higher.
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And His thoughts are higher.
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John MacArthur says this, "There are basically two religions in the world, or two kinds.
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Those based on human achievement, and the one based on divine accomplishment.
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One says you can earn your way to heaven.
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The other says you must trust." God's provision, Jesus Christ.
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And so, let's move over to the book of Exodus.
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I want to just look in on the Israelites as they were journeying in the wilderness, and they had an opportunity to trust God or not trust God.
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They were missing their leader, and when he didn't return when they thought he should, They began to doubt Moses as their leader and they began to doubt God as their God.
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If you look in Exodus 31 and verse 18, it says, "When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God." Now 32 and verse 1, "When the people saw that Moses was long and coming down from the mountain and as they gathered around Aaron - remember Aaron was Moses' brother and he was the high priest - they gathered around Aaron and said, "Listen, come and make us gods." Not turn us into gods.
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Make us some small "g" gods like we had back in Egypt.
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Make us some gods who will go before us because as for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what's happened to him.
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gone 40 days, you know. And he says, "Listen," they told Aaron, "this isn't working." You might remember there were 603,550 fighting men that left Egypt. So 2 or 3 million people at least. And Moses goes up on the Mount Sinai and doesn't come back and they look around and said, "Where's our leader?" And so Aaron, being the high priest, wanting to please the people, said, "Take off your earrings that your wives and your sons and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me." And all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron, and he took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool.
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And they said, "These are your gods, "O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." Now look at verse 5, "When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, 'Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD.'" And "Lords" with a capital "L", I think Aaron's intentions were half good.
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He didn't want the people to give up on God even though they'd given up on Moses.
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And there's this golden calf and he says, "We're going to make a festival to God by going through the golden calf.
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And the Scripture goes on in verse 6 and says, "So the next day the people rose early, and they sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings.
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They went to church.
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But it says, "Afterward, they sat down to eat and drink, and got up to indulge and revel." And so they tried to follow Aaron, but he didn't have a complete picture, They were following Jehovah God, the Shekinah glory, and then Moses disappears up in the Shekinah glory on Sinai and they made a God substitute.
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And they tried to worship God through their substitution.
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They found it didn't work and then things fell apart.
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When it says they went to revelry and they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge, What happened was, in the end, they ended up overindulging in food and drink and then actually having a sexual orgy.
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That started with church.
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They had lost their way.
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Now if you pay attention to this passage, God says to Moses, "Go down because your people that you brought out of Egypt, they've become corrupt already.
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They've quickly turned away from I've commanded them." And here's what God says to Moses.
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He said, "I'll wipe them all out." Every one of them.
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And if you look at verse 10, the last sentence says that God said to Moses, "Then I will make you into a great nation." Now He already did that with Abraham, didn't He?
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When He called Abraham, you see at age 75, He said, "I'm going to make a mighty nation out of your family." There was a problem.
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Abraham didn't have a child.
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And at age 100, he has the child of promise.
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In the meantime, Abraham and Sarah had tried to help God out.
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They had second-guessed God.
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Have you ever second-guessed God?
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Have you ever thought, "He's not delivering, so I'll help him out here.
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I think he didn't mean what he said." They had done it, and God said, "Listen, I can do it again.
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I'll just wipe out the whole nation of Israel.
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All two or three million, because they've all turned against Me.
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And Moses, I'll do what I did through Abraham through you.
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But Moses, look at this.
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This is gutsy.
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Moses sought favor with the Lord, and Moses went directly before God and interceded for the people, and he says to God, verse 12, "Why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth?
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Turn from your fierce anger.
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Relent and do not bring disaster on your people." This is Moses talking to God.
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Talk about prayer.
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Whoever was doing that prayer thing, go to that thing on Wednesday night.
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I could go on a whole other sermon, but I won't.
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I think oftentimes we say, I tried prayer and it didn't work, or I tried fasting and there was no result, or I really tried giving to the Lord and there wasn't a blessing.
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And I would say, I would agree with you that sometimes it looks like it didn't work, but I would disagree.
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I think we never have really tried.
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We've never really sought the Lord.
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We've never drawn ourselves into the presence for season after season and kept after the Lord and gone before the throne time and time again.
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And Moses had the guts to say to God, "Listen, if you wipe them out, it's going to make you look bad." That's the reasoning he used with God.
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Verse 13, he says, "Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self, 'I'll make descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.
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I'll give you descendants.
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All this land I promise them, and it will be their inheritance forever.'" Look at verse 14, "And then the Lord relented, and He did not bring on His people the disaster that He had threatened." Do you know what Moses did?
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He said, "God, this is Your image we're talking about.
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And You don't want to destroy Your own image because You're the God who made a promise.
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You'll come through." And God said, "Moses, you're right." And Moses turns and Joshua meets Him part way down the hill and he went down the mountain And then verse 17, "When Joshua heard the noise of the camp, he said to Moses, 'There's sound of war.' And Moses said, 'It's not the sound of victory.
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It's not the sound of defeat.
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It's the sound of singing I hear.' And when Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned.
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He threw out of his hands the Ten Commandments, breaking them into pieces at the foot of the mountain.
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And he took the calf they had made and burned it with fire, ground it into powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.
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And he said to Aaron, "What did these people do to you that led them into such great sin?" And Aaron said, "Do not be angry, my lord." You know how prone these people are to evil.
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You know what they're like.
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They have the reputation of being stiff-necked and hard-hearted.
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And Aaron says, "They said to me, 'Make us gods who will go before us.
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As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what happened to him.' And so I told them, 'Whoever has gold jewelry, take it off.' And then Aaron, the high priest, becomes the lying high priest.
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And he says, 'They gave me their gold.
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I threw it in the fire, and out came this calf.'" Now we already learned it didn't just come out.
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He had formed it.
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And Moses saw the people were running wild and Aaron had let them get out of control, had become the laughing stock of their enemies, and so he stood at the entrance of the camp and said, "Whoever's for the Lord?" "Who is on the Lord's side?" And I'd say to us today, we've made a profession of taking things in our own hands and going our own way and second-guessing God, and we've ended up, you see, pleasing ourselves, enjoying our party.
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And Moses said, "Whoever's on the Lord's side, to me and I would say, "Whoever's on the Lord's side, let's get back with Him the way we need to be." There were 3,000 slain. There was a plague amongst them. And so listen, if you think you need to remake God in our day, if you need to make God more palatable for culture, you've got to understand that God has not changed.
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He's still for what he's been for, he's still against what he's been against.
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I continue to say at North Street one of these days soon I'm going to preach a sermon called Does God Have Enemies?
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And he does.
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But we want to be friends with everybody and we want to make peace with everything and we want to make it as if everything's okay and it's not.
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And so I say this, the Israelites tried remaking God and they got a holy cow.
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What did you get?
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I mean, how do you make your God?
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And every one of us probably has our own little version of God.
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So now, I want to share with you four truths to drive you toward measuring life and circumstance from a fixed reference point.
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And that fixed reference point is the God of the Bible.
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And it's here we'll find our spiritual bearings.
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First of all, understand this.
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God does not have a self-image problem.
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God is serious about His name.
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When we look at the Word, when He called Moses, Moses said, "Who shall I tell them sent me?" God said, "You tell them that I am sent you." That's who I am.
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God has always been and will always be.
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He didn't have a beginning.
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He doesn't have an end.
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He said, "I am." And if you look at those commandments, the first four are all about Him.
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Do you understand that?
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The Ten Commandments?
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He says there is only one God.
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Don't forget it.
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There's only one God.
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And He doesn't combine Himself with small g-gods.
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He doesn't need a committee.
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He doesn't ask opinions.
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He is, I am.
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And he warned the people, the very tablets that Moses broke, the commandments that the people had broke, the commandment says, don't be making homemade gods.
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Don't make any images.
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And I want to say, you probably haven't taken a stick or a stone or some clay and tried to make a god for a shelf in your home.
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But I'll bet you you've shaped a homemade god.
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See, your God's for what you're for and against what you're against rather than you joining Him, you ask Him to join you.
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And God says My name is a big deal.
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God is masculine.
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He said I'm a father.
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He is strong.
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He is right.
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He is jealous.
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He said call Me jealous.
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My name is jealous.
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He doesn't share His glory with anyone.
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He is ready to punish.
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That's one side of God.
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And if that was the only side of God, we couldn't understand Him as a Father because the other side is He is merciful and He's loving and He's full of grace and He's ready to forgive.
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Just like any good dad in this room.
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And listen, God's not like good dads.
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Good dads are like God.
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See, good fathers are strong and right, righteousness, living by the things that are right, thinking the things that are right, saying the right things that are right, doing the right things.
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And good fathers are jealous.
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They'll guard their families and their children.
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They'll protect them.
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They'll lay their life down.
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And dads are ready to punish, but you see, dads are also merciful and loving and full Full of grace.
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And ready to forgive and to begin again.
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When we look at the characteristics of God, we find out that He is everywhere present.
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He is all-powerful.
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He is all-knowing.
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He is immutable, eternal, holy, just, merciful, and loving.
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So let's not make Him less than He is.
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And let's not forget about His justice, but let's not forget about His grace.
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He is the same for eternity.
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He does not change.
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We change.
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He remains the same, but He grows bigger in our eyes as we grow smarter.
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In Prince Caspian, one of C.S. Lewis' works, Lucy, the youngest of the children, goes to Aslan, the lion, who is the Christ figure.
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And upon seeing him after a period of absence, Lucy says to Aslan, "You're bigger now." Aslan says, "That's because you're older, little one, not because you are," she says.
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He says, "I'm not, but every year you grow, you'll find me bigger." And I think that's us.
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Don't turn from God, turn to God.
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Draw closer.
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Secondly, understand this, God's created spiritual image in man has been tainted since the fall.
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See, God's image didn't change.
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God's image doesn't need to change.
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God's image in us did change when sin came into the world.
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It became imperfected.
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It became damaged.
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And so understand this.
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God's image does not need redeemed.
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It doesn't need made new.
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It doesn't need bought back.
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It doesn't need taken from the junk pile and made useful again.
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And so I would beseech you to say, "Please quit trying to redeem God's image." But God's image in man does need redeemed.
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I love it in the book of Isaiah, when Isaiah has a heavenly vision.
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He says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
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And above Him were seraphs, Each with six wings, two wings, they covered their faces, two they covered their feet, two they were flying, and they were crying, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!
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The earth is full of His glory!" At the sound of their voices, the doorpost and the threshold shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.
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And Isaiah said, "Woe is me." "Woe is me. I'm ruined." "I'm a man of unclean lips And I live amongst a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty, and one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, that he had taken the thorns of the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, 'See, this has touched your lips.
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Your guilt has taken away.
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Your sin is atoned for.' And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send?' And I said, 'Here I am.
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Send me.'" And I just have to say, that's when you get it.
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I think when we see God as high and mighty, many of us say, "Holy mackerel, what's that about?" And we just observe, but we don't get it.
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We don't allow the revelation to come alive in our lives and for us to be changed.
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And isn't it interesting we see ourselves as high and mighty?
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I'm in control.
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I set the standard.
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I'm the captain of my own ship.
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until we fall before the Lord and allow Him to perfectly cleanse.
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We'll never get it.
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His image in us needs redeemed.
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Here's something James says in James 1.
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He says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows." God does not change.
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He never has.
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He never will.
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In Matthew 24, Jesus said this, "Heaven and earth will pass away." Meaning all the atmosphere, all that's above us, all of outer space and this earth will pass away.
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But He said, "My words will never pass away." God is the same.
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The Word is the same.
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Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever." And so, you see, here I am on my way home.
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I think I'm drifting backwards.
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I'm hitting the brake.
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I'm thinking I'm going to have a wreck.
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I'll have to call the insurance company.
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I'll have to call a tow truck.
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Why won't my car stop?
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And then I look to that building or that sign post or that tree and say, whew!
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I'm not moving.
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They are.
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And what I'm saying in this world when it doesn't look like it's adding up and you feel like where am I going?
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Am I going in circles?
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Don't be looking to other people.
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Don't be looking to new philosophies.
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Don't be looking for some combination of spirituality.
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You look to the one true God who never changes, and you'll get your spiritual bearing again.
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And you'll go, "Whew! I'm okay." So I have two words of advice.
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The first one is this - get over yourself.
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And the second one is, remember that worship travels in one direction.
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We are here to honor Him.
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He is not here to worship us.
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So thirdly, understand this, the image of God is perfected in the gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ.
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Listen, we are so egocentric.
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When we hear that we're created in the image of God, we naturally think this.
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That must mean then, when I look in the mirror, I see God.
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Because we're made in His image.
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So how am I going to know God?
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"Look, look, I'm made in His image.
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Look at me!" But that's not so in order to see God as He presents Himself.
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See, God made the universe to be Christocentric.
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We think it's about us.
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It's not about you.
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It's not about me.
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It's about Him.
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It's about Christ.
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In John chapter 14, Jesus said this.
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14, 8 and 9, it says, "Philip said, 'Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.' And Jesus said, 'Don't you know me, Philip?
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Even after I have been among you such a long time, anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.'" Do you want to know what God's really like?
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Look at the Son, because He said, "You'll not miss the Father if you see Me." In John 8, Scripture says, "Jesus answered, 'If I honor myself, my honor is nothing.
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It is my Father who honors me, of whom you say that He is your God.
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Yet you have not known Him, but I know Him.
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And if I say I do not know Him, I would be a liar like you.
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But I do know Him and keep His word.
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Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he sought and was glad.
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And the Jews said to him, 'You're not fifty years old yet, and you've seen Abraham?' And Jesus said to them, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.'" He didn't say, "Before Abraham was, I was." He was saying, "I'm God." That's the name of God.
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That's what God told Moses.
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They ask you, "Who sent you?" Tell them, "I am sent you." And now Jesus said, "You want to see the Father?
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Look at me, because I am, I am." And they took up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple going through the midst He passed by." Colossians 1, the Scripture says, "He is the image, He's the icon of the invisible God.
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He's the firstborn over all of creation.
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By Him all things were created in heaven and earth, visible, invisible, thrones, powers, rulers, authorities, they were created by Him and for Him.
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He's before all things and by Him all things hold together." In Him God was pleased to have the fullness dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross." And so what I want to tell you, when you feel like you're losing your way, when you're wondering when's our leader coming home, when you're thinking is God still able, focus on His Son because He is our everything.
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He is the stability that God has chosen.
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And then I would close, last point by saying this, how will the world know all of this?
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I want you to understand that God chose the church to portray Him as He is.
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We're not here to sharpen God's image.
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We're not here to dull God's image.
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We're not here to color God's image.
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We are here, you see, to reflect God's image.
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As the Ecclesia - that's the name of the church - we're the called out ones.
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We have a new citizenship.
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We live in the kingdom of heaven while we yet live in the kingdom of this earth.
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But we as the called out ones have the purpose of representing God as He represents Himself.
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We are the image bearers of Jesus Christ, the light of the world.
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Now I think if you look around, you would agree with me that we have many similarities to the Israelites.
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We desire the old life over the new.
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Remember they got out in the wilderness and they had to trust God for everything.
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And they wanted to go back.
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They said, "Yes, we were slaves in Egypt, but we knew where our murals were coming from, we had a bed to lay down in at night." It was hard.
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They were slaves for 430 years.
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And by the way, their slavery in Egypt represents for us our slavery to sin.
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And you see, sometimes we get free from sin and we look back and say, "Ah, I sort of liked it back then." And that's what they began to say.
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They complained about God's provision.
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See how would you like it if every day when you got up, you never had to go to the grocery store anymore, you never had to worry about cooking a meal, every day you got up there was some white stuff on the ground and you would pick it up and you would eat it every day.
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On the weekends you could pick up two days supply, if you took too much during the week it would rot, but you could pick enough for two days and it had every vitamin, every mineral it would sustain you.
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You never had to have a steak again, you never had to have tofu again, you never had to make a meal.
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Would you like that or not?
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Wouldn't that be great?
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Never had to spend another nickel on food.
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But see, we're torn.
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Don't take my steak away.
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Don't take my hand.
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Look at all the places that would shut down if that were true.
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You understand how much of our life revolves around our physical appetites.
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And God said to them, "I'll provide for you perfectly for 40 years." In fact, the Bible says their sandals didn't wear out, their clothes didn't wear out, their ankles didn't swear.
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God interrupted.
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He made a supernatural provision that's a miraculous deliverance into their lives.
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But that wasn't good enough.
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They said, "We like the leeks and the onions and the fish and the melons.
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We want to go back." And in the wilderness, they became known as stiff-necked and hard-hearted people.
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Stiff-necked.
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That doesn't mean they worked out too hard or were playing a sport and got a stiff neck.
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Neck means like a runaway horse.
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If you know much about horses, they can be trained to be ridden and you control a horse with a bit in its mouth.
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And when a horse is first trained, you have to pull on the bit this side to get them to turn right and this side to get them to turn left.
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But after a horse is trained and the nature of some horses, you can neck rein them.
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You don't even need to use the bit.
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You just lay the rein on their neck and they feel the rein on the right side of their neck on the left side of the neck, they'll turn right.
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But if a horse spooks, it stiffens up.
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And you can't control it.
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And that's how the Israelites were described.
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They got out there.
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They trusted God.
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They were under His control.
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And then they spooked and they just did what they wanted to do.
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Have you ever been like that?
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Where you went along for a while thinking God's in control, I can handle this, this is really good, this is better than I thought I could ever do.
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and then suddenly you take things back.
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And they were hard-hearted.
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They continued to repeat the same things over and over and over again.
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Now if you study that story of the Israelites, the whole oldest generation of people except for two men - Joshua and Caleb - were not usable to God.
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That's why they wandered for 40 years.
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It wasn't that long of a journey.
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It wasn't because they didn't have a GPS.
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They got out there and got close to entering the promised land, and because they're complaining, they're making of God's, their immorality - read 1 Corinthians 10, you'll see what they're accused of, five sins.
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God said to them, "I can't use you.
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I'll just wait you out.
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God is not bound by time.
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And so don't put God on a deadline, because He doesn't have to meet any deadlines.
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He can wait you out too." And so they got out there and they became known as stiff-necked and hard-hearted.
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They complained about God's provision.
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They wanted to go back.
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Please understand that we are not here to refine the image of God.
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We are here to magnify the image of God.
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Now when you do that, here's something I think needs to be well known.
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2 Corinthians 2, Paul says this, "Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal possession in Christ, and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge Here's what he says, "It's like we've been to war and we come back and there's a Roman triumph, a parade being put on to show the victory, and we smell like one thing.
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Victory." 2 Corinthians 2.15 says, "We are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing." Verse 16 says, "To one, you are the smell of death, and to the other, you're the fragrance of life." You're not going to smell good to everybody.
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Your commitment is not going to stand with everybody.
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Paul uses the olfactory senses and he says, "Whatever perfume you're wearing, some people really like it, and other people can't stand it." And he says, "When Christ is in you, and you're in Christ, to one, you smell like a dead dog alongside the road." I like to bicycle.
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I don't like to run.
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If you run or bike, or you get outdoors much, and you happen to be going down the road, your motorcycle, whatever it might be, and there's a dead deer, dead dog, and you get a good whiff of it, and it sticks up in there, and you can smell it a mile later, and it's almost like you swallowed it.
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You know what I mean?
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Paul says you Christian people, to the world who's perishing, you're going to leave that aroma behind.
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They're going to say, where's this guy coming from?
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What's he mean?
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But to those who are being saved, it's the finest, the sweetest, the best smell that there is.
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It's like the lilac bushes that are just ready to pop.
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You think, oh, is that nice.
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You've got to know, you know, everybody wasn't happy with God and not everybody was happy with Jesus and everybody's not going to be happy with you or me or the church.
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And so I would say this is a good day to call upon the name of the Lord.
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It might be for salvation for the first time that you might say, "You know what?
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I thought I knew God, but I really made my own image of God and I want to know the one true God through Jesus Christ as Savior." But I think for many of us, it might be agreeing to lay down our artwork and the ways we have shaped and reshaped God and added a little here and taken some away.
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And let's get back to simply the God of the Bible.
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And so my appeal is, shouldn't you turn from your homemade understanding of God and of the truth of God's Word which says, "If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, you shall be saved." Now when it says saved, of course it's speaking about your spiritual salvation, your eternal salvation once and for all, but I like to substitute the word delivered because I have to come back to God again and again, not for eternal salvation, but to get back to where I need to be.
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And He rescues me again, and it is through His Son that we turn and confess and call upon the name of the Lord.
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So as we close, we go back to where we started, a mago day.
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The image of God is a serious call and a serious mission.
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And I want to ask you then, so does God need a little help from his friends?
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The answer is no.
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He doesn't need us to remake him.
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He doesn't need us to tweak him.
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He needs us to obey.
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So as our worship folks come back forward, I want to share a closing Scripture and some imagery with you.
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A couple of weeks ago, I got onto a passage in the Word that I had read many times, but it just stuck.
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And all that week, I probably told 25, 30, 40 people, "Do you know what the Scripture says?" I painted a picture for them.
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By the way, there are two words for the Word in the Word.
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One is logos.
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That is the logic, the reasoning, the message of God.
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That's like in John 1 where it says, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, the Word became flesh." Jesus is God's logic to the world.
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But there's another word called rhema.
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A rhema isn't a supernatural deliverance of some word out of the sky.
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That's when the Word of the Bible becomes personal to you.
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And these are the phrases and the verses that stick in your heart.
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Well Jeremiah 2:13 became a rhema to me a couple of weeks ago.
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And here's what it says.
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It says that God says, "My people have committed two sins.
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They have forsaken Me, and they've dug their own cisterns - broken cisterns - which won't water.
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So the two sins were these.
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One they turned their back on God and secondly, they started digging to find the answers.
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And so I want you to picture this.
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Here you see we're out in the wilderness and we're terribly thirsty and out of this cliff over here there's this flowing fountain of water, pure and clean and life-giving and God says have at it, have all you want, drink of this and you'll never thirst again just Just like Jesus told the woman at the well.
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And we say, "No thanks, God.
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I like my way better than yours." And we get a shovel and we go over here and we start digging this well.
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And we dig and we dig and we dig and we start to see water.
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We walk away to get a bucket so that we can get a drink.
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We come back.
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All the water's gone.
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The well's dried up.
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And we look over there and that spring is still over there flowing.
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God says, "Have a drink.
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Have all you want." And we tell Him, "No thanks again." And we go and dig another hole.
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And another one and another one.
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We refuse to accept what God has offered, and we continue to do it our way.
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And when we're digging those holes, we try to improve ourselves.
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I've just got to get better so I can be pleasing.
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I've got to get better so I can feel better about going to church.
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I've got to get better.
51:20-51:22
And self-improvement's not going to get it.
51:22-51:24
And then we turn to our friends and our families.
51:24-51:29
Have you ever noticed when a couple gets married, that husband thinks, "She's going to complete me.
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We're going to be happy ever after.
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We'll never have a problem again." And he thinks that about her.
51:35-51:41
Go visit them in about two weeks, and you'll find out it didn't work because nobody can complete us.
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Nobody can fill what we're thirsting for.
51:45-51:47
And we try all the stuff of the world.
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If I could just get a better job.
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If I could just buy a bigger car.
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If I could just get shinier wheels for my Land Cruiser.
51:53-51:58
Whatever it is, we think, "Then I'll be happy." And we try that and it doesn't work.
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And then we get religious.
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Matt Chandler says when we do those things, he said the religion is just self-improvement with an "amen" on the end.
52:08-52:11
Because it's something we just do more of.
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We read the Bible more.
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We go to church more.
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We fill in the blanks more.
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We go to seminars and concerts.
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We listen to W.O.R.D.
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Everything we can do.
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But we find out, you see, that it's Jesus we need.
52:26-52:33
And if you think about it, a cistern, a hole, a well, with no water, it's a grave.
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And that's what we end up doing, is just digging our own hole over and over and over again.
52:42-52:46
And so God says, "Come home. Come to Me.
52:46-52:58
Take what I have to offer." When C.S. Lewis was asked by some scholars, "What's the difference between Christianity and all other religions?" He quickly answered and simply answered, He said that's easy.
52:59-53:02
The difference is grace, not appeasement.
53:03-53:04
It's a gift.
53:05-53:13
Take a deep spiritual breath and let God bring His perfect healing in your life today.
53:14-53:20
Isaiah 55:6-7 says, "Seek the Lord while He may be found.
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Call on Him while He is near.
53:24-53:38
Let the wicked forsake His way evil man his thoughts, let him turn to the Lord and he will have mercy on him, and to our God for he will freely pardon. Let's bow our heads.
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Almighty Father we come before you this day and we thank you that we are not confused, we thank you that we have not lost our way, we thank you Father that you are the same yesterday and forever. When I first started following you Lord I often would I think you need to catch up with the times.
53:56-54:03
You need to become more contemporary, and I'm sure glad you didn't hear my prayer and answer it, because I need you to be the same.
54:03-54:05
I need you to be that loving, protective Father.
54:06-54:14
And Lord, I just lift up every person in this room, and I pray that as the Word has been proclaimed, that You've come amongst us.
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And Lord, there has been a word or a phrase that has touched a life here or there that says you know what?
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I do need to turn around and get my eyes back on the one true God.
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I need to quit redefining Him in my life.
54:26-54:29
I need to quit trying to depend on everybody else to fulfill me.
54:30-54:33
And so as your word teaches, we are made in your image.
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In order to see that image, we look to your Son.
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And Father, that becomes the very mission of our lives, to share you with a lost and dying world that's looking in all the wrong places.
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But Father, we praise you for the cross of Christ.
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the cross of forgiveness and the cross of victory, the cross of crucifixion and the cross of resurrection, knowing that he is the way, the truth, and the life.
55:00-55:02
Glorify your name in us and through us.
55:03-55:05
Through Christ I pray, amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Imago Dei Small Group Discussion Starters:
Listen to the David Crowder Song PRAISE THE LORD.
Discuss: In what ways have you tried to shape God into the image you imagined/wanted Him to be? In what ways has God not met you expectations? In what ways has He proven Himself to be better than you imagined?Read Ecclesiastes 3:11. What does it mean that God has "put eternity on our hearts?"
Discuss: What are the ramifications of shaping your worldview BY OBSERVATION versus BY REVELATION?
Read Colossians 1:15-20. Find and discuss the various qualities, roles and positions attached to Jesus. What does He have to do with us understanding the image of God? See John 14:6-14.
What role does the church play in Imago Dei? "We are not here to refine the image of God, we are here to reflect the image of God." See 2 Corinthians 2:14-16.
In C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, Lucy (the youngest of the children) says to Aslan (the lion who is the Christ figure) upon seeing him after a period of absence:
Lucy to Aslan - "You're bigger."
He answers, "That is because you are older, little one."
"Not because you are?" she responds.
"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger." answers Aslan.
Discuss: Are you finding God to be bigger and more satisfying as you continue to grow in the faith?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another
