Who You Came From, Pt. 1
Think about the people who shaped who you are––the way you laugh, the way you work, the things you care about. Most people can point to someone whose fingerprints are all over their lives. Pastor Nick Gatzke reveals that who you are goes deeper than your family tree.
Please pray with me. Father, we wanna be hearers of the word and doers of the word. So we pray now that you would help us to engage with what you would have for us this morning. That our minds would be ever transformed, that our hearts would be formed more and more with affections and desires for you and for the things of you. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Many children have close resemblance to their parents. We know that to be true. Many children follow their parents’ career paths, not just in professional athletics or in Hollywood and theater, but even in the normal jobs that most of us do every day and day in and day out basis.
Many sons follow their dads in marrying women like their mothers and many daughters follow their in and marrying men like their dads. And skills and abilities and giftings are imparted from one generation on down to the next. Many natural propensities we have are propensity that came from our very parents in a very real way we resemble our parents, don’t we? Who you come from informs who you are. Who you come from informs at least in some ways who you will become. Now some of you say I don’t want to be like my parents. Or I don’t want my children to be like me. I want something more, I want something different, I want something better.
And this is where some of the good news of Genesis chapter one is found. Because even though children resemble their earthly parents, there’s a greater resemblance that all of us have. And that is a resemblance to the person of God himself. We began this new sermon series called Beyond Repair. We’re looking at Genesis chapter one through 11, and in it, we saw the creation of God through seven days as he made all the different parts and pieces of this world as we know it, and behold, it was good.
We stepped back and we looked at his majestic power, his creative ability, his ability to take absolutely nothing and to form something. And at the end of that, we really just have one response as a people. Wow God, in his magnificent power, is amazing. And when he reaches the pinnacle of his creation, the crowning glory of his creation comes in the form of human beings. And they are not like the other parts of his creation. In fact, they are completely unique. And that’s where we pick up this account. So I want to ask you to look at Genesis chapter 1 with me. Today we are going to read Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. And then we’re going to skip forward to chapter 2, verses 4 through 17. This is what it says.
“So God created man in his image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Looking forward to chapter 2, verse 4. It says, These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth. When no bush of the field was yet on land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east. And there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight, good for food. And the tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden and there it divided and became four rivers. The first name is Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of the land is good. Delium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Kush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth is the river Euphrates.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
So God comes to the pinnacle of his creation. And as we see in chapter 1 verses 26 and 27, he creates man in his image. In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. You are created in the image of God.
And in case that sounds trite or a good theological cliche, pause for a moment and just consider what kind of image we are talking about. We are talking about an image of the most powerful, of the King of Kings, of the Lord of Lords. We’re talking about the image of one who represents all love, purity, faithfulness. We’re talking about the image of one who is completely upright and true in his nature. We’re talking about one in which all of earth will eventually submit itself to him and all creatures on heaven and on earth bow down before him.
We’re talking about an image of God that is shown throughout the course of the Bible, that when people encounter Him, they fall on their faces before Him, because so great is this God, that He is worthy of full and utter submission. And He imprints some of that image and that likeness upon you. Verse 26 and 27, two specific words, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. Scholars have tried to narrow down for centuries what these words precisely mean in this case. We have a variety of ideas and we see that this expression is not unique to this one place in the Bible. In fact, just a few chapters down in Genesis chapter five, verses one to three, it says “this, this is the book of generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, he created them and he blessed them and named them man when they were created. And then when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his own image, and he named him Seth.”
And so we see that the way that children are made in the likeness of their parents, this informs us or gives us a glimpse of what it means for all of us to be made after the image and likeness of God. You look at your own children, you see glimpses of yourself. It makes sense that Shakir O’Neal reflects Shaquille O’Neal in certain ways. It makes sense that Karsten Gatzke reflects Nick Gatzke in certain ways that are unique to that image. We might say it this way. To be made in God’s image means that humans are like God and that they represent God. You’re like God and that you represent him. And there’s an internal sort of substantive component to this, as well as an external component as well. Internally, we are made up of an eternal soul. We have a conscience. We have the ability to reason. These things are unique to the whole created order. If you were to pick out all of the animals of creation and one person and put them in a big football stadium today at one o ‘clock, you could identify the person very, very quickly, couldn’t you? He is unique in this creation internally and externally. In the original state, humans had a moral purity and they were inclined toward and had an appetite for things that were good, right and godly.
If God is holy and we are made in his image, then it stands to reason that before sin entered the world that people too were holy. No faults, no stains, no blemishes of character, no ill motives. Externally, to be like God is to reflect how he is a God who relates to others and we hence relate to others in the world around us. Most specifically, we see that God functions in a trinity, which is a relational being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and externally, humans then function in a level of relationality with one another. And furthermore, we see in verse 27 that part of this role is to take dominion.
God has created us with superior abilities to the animals and to the land and that reflects his superior abilities found in this creation. We might take a step back and say the whole summary of this creation as it relates to humans is this God’s image in you points to your worth and to your purpose in life. God’s image in you points to your worth and it points to your purpose in life. Now we could go to great lengths to try to flesh out all the different possibilities of what this means to be like God and to represent him, but I want to focus on major implications for us this morning. What does it mean? What’s the big deal that we’re made in God’s image? How does that inform how we live daily?
Implication number one. Because you are made in God’s image, this informs your idea of self-worth. Some of us are here today, and when we really stop to think about this, we say, wow, well, the apple has fallen pretty far away from the tree, especially in my own life. We look at our life history, we recount the mistakes that we’ve made, both the little ones and the big ones, and we say, there’s no possible way that I reflect the image of that holy, just, loving, incredible God that you just described. I’ve been through a divorce. I view pornography. I, in the deepest recesses of my thoughts and mind, think wicked things.
I’ve been ungrateful toward my parents. I’ve slept with my boyfriend before marriage. I’ve had an abortion. I’ve had an addiction. I’ve been abused by somebody and I am damaged goods. There’s no possible way that I can reflect that type of image of glory that you’re talking about. When I really look at who I am, my thoughts or my motives or my sinful propensities, I’m not like that person. I do not reflect that God. I think some of us think that and all of us probably think that sometime or another. I have here in my wallet a $20 bill that I would like to give to somebody this morning.
Would anybody like $20? Anybody? All right, you, young man, come on up. Would you like this $20 bill? Yes. Yes, sir. I might give you $40. Well, let me ask you this. If I do this and crumple up this $20 bill, would you still like it? Yeah? All right. Well, there you go. Take a seat. Of course he still would like it. Why does he still like it? Because no matter what I did to the money, it is still worth $20. It did not decrease in value. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, we’re crumpled, we’re dirtied, we’re stepped on, and the decisions that we make, the sinful choices or the circumstances that come our way lead us to those types of situations. And we feel as though we are worthless.
But no matter what has happened to you and no matter what will happen to you, you have value in God’s eyes. He looks at you, whether dirty or clean, whether crumpled or finely creased. He looks at you as priceless to Him. Why? Because you are made in His image and you have inherent value because of that image.
Implication number two, if we’re made in God’s image, then this puts into perspective the giving of life and the taking away of life. Think about it. If it’s true that all of us have inherent value because of this image, then when we have children, they too are infinitely valuable because they are image bearers, not just of us, but they are image bearers of God himself. Life giving is a wonderful thing. Conversely, when we indiscriminately take innocent life, we remove one of God’s representatives, one of his image bearers, and the results are significant. God is sacred, and therefore, people who are made in his image are sacred. And when we take life indiscriminately, the consequences are severe.
So early on, we see in the Bible that after sin entered the world, people began to take the lives of other people. And God sets the severity of this action in its proper light. Genesis 9 -6 says, Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. He sees the ground of the argument is that man is an image bearer. And this is the foundation of what we would consider legal precedent of why murder is one of the most severe crimes in our society. Because it’s taking of life. It’s taking an image bearer.
Implication number three, of course, this means that abortion is wrong, because even in the most complicated cases, we still have to reckon with the reality of killing an image bearer of God. Implication number four, if all people have inherent value, then the idea of how we relate to people in life and death extends to how we relate to people in just our everyday types of interactions, doesn’t it? The most basic form of human decency is founded in the fact that we are relating as Christians with other image bearers of God. And this has all kinds of trickle -down effects into how we treat people. Here are a couple of the big ones. This means that people of the opposite sex are no longer to be considered as mere sexual pursuits like our society might tell us. This means that other people around us shouldn’t be looked at as a means to simply gain more for myself, because they too are of great value. This means that the way I talk to people and the way I talk about people should be intentional in its nature.
James warns us about this in James chapter three and the power of the tongue and all the habit and the pattern that we all form in our speech. He says in James chapter three, but he grounds in the image of God, “no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.”
So God’s image in you points to your worth. And it points to the worth of the other people around you. You are of incredible value to him. No matter what you’ve done, no matter where you’ve come from, no matter what earthly family you’ve been a part of the greater source of your identity in this life is found, it’s rooted, it’s grounded in the person of God himself.
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** This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
