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Review: We are going back to Genesis to build a context to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The past two weeks we have taken in the incredible reality that God is pre-existent to time, and He is the source of all living things.  We can see in Genesis that God has ultimate power, impeccable order, matchless brilliance, and is faultlessly good.  Yet, the Creation story is not finished, and the climax of His Creation happens on Day 6 when he concludes by making man.

Read Genesis 1:26-31

We are made in the image of God—Imago Dei.  (26-27)

• 3x God states that mankind (adam) will be made in His image.
  
  
• There is a consulting moment before this moment happens in creating a creature like them. ARE WE GOING TO DO THIS?  WE KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN.
  
  
• We are uniquely created in all of Creation.
  
  
• We bear a “likeness” to God. We are not same, and He is other.
  • We know God feels and has hands. Ecclesiastes 9:1 All things are in God’s hands.
  • His body form is Spirit yet similar. Exodus 33:17-23 Moses was allowed to see God’s back not his face.
  • We know God sees. Genesis 16:13 God sees us in our need.
  • We know God hears. 1 John 5:14 God hears us when we pray in alignment with Him.
  • We know God smells. Revelation 8:3-5 Prayers of the saints.
  • We know God tastes at least enough to spit out something unpleasant. Revelation 3:16
  • We know God speaks. Genesis 1
  • We know that God sings. Zephaniah 3:17

We bear in us, like God, the ability to rule over Creation.  (26)    

• Rule over and care for the creatures of the earth.
  
  
• Rule over and care for the earth as it is to provide his food.

Humanity did not evolve but created on that day out of dust and a rib.

• He formed man out of dust and breathed on him. (2:7)
  
  
• He created animals also out of dust. (2:19)
  
  
• Eve is distinctively created out of the bone of a man. (2:21-22)

Male and female is fullest expression of the image of God. (27)

• A single gender would be a woefully incomplete likeness of God.

We are all 99.9 percent identical in our DNA.  That .1% is our uniqueness to each other. 

Only God can create such a massive amount of uniqueness out of .1%

God’s ongoing work in the .1%.  Psalm 139:1-16

• He knows our patterns and capacity.
  
  
• He knows our thoughts.
  
  
• He knows our daily activities.
  
  
• He knows our words before they are spoken.
  
  
• He knows us completely because He created took great care in that .1% to make you unique.
  • He made you in the secret place.
  • He knit you together in your mothers’ womb.
  • He knows your inner being—your heart and soul.
  • Your frame is and has been in His full view.
  • Your life story is already written in full.

God is at work in restoring us to His image through Jesus.

2 Corinthians 3:16-18  “But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. ¹⁷ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.¹⁸ And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate^[a] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

Colossians 3:9-10 “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices ¹⁰ and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”

Take Aways:

1. Study and model the life of Jesus—the new Adam, that we may yield to the Spirit’s work in transforming us into the Creator’s likeness.
   
   
2. As you are being renewed in mind shake off the old clothes of your former way of life so that we can increasingly reflect the image of our Creator.
   
   
3. Be prepared to answer those who question what it is that you are reflecting.