I'm glad to be here with you guys today as as we're getting into this stuff.
I think that what we're going to be probing into what we're gonna be kind
of mining out of scripture is something that is incredibly profound about about
who God is and and really how this affects your life and and and as we say
this is the beginning of a series and the series is talking about God as a
designer and God as someone who has created order in in the universe and
order in our lives and this is something that is beginning to get some
traction. I read an article at the end of last year by a guy named Eric Metaxas
in the Wall Street Journal and he's talking about how how God's design is
beginning beginning to to kind of overwhelm us with this reality and he
began to talk about how in the 1960s as people began to kind of study beyond
just earth they begin to say is there an opportunity is there something that we
can see beyond earth when it comes to extraterrestrial intelligence and so
and so the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or or SETI for short began
to be a really big thing and one of the guys that was kind of connected that with
that was a guy named Carl Sagan and Carl Sagan basically said that there are two
conditions for us to find life on on other planets that for us to find life
outside of earth two things have to be possible one is the right kind of star
and the second thing is that and there needs to be a planet that is the right
distance from the right kind of star and as they begin to measure all the
possibilities throughout the universe one of the things they found was that
they believe that 24 septillion planets fit this kind of context for them to be
able to in our universe be able to to have these two factors that might
enable them to bear life and so in this what began to happen in the 1960s is
that there began to be an incredible push towards finding life outside of our
universe and so Congress funded SETI and there's all these magnetic telescopes
and and all these things that were peering deep inside the universe to try
to find out whether or not there was some sort of life outside of outside of
this this outside of earth and so they began to have a great enthusiasm
towards this and what we began to see is is over the last 50 years this
enthusiasm has has waned and this enthusiasm for finding things outside
of earth in terms of extraterrestrial intelligence has really dwindled and
it's been defunded by Congress and the reason is we have not found any kind of
life there's been nothing that we've found in the last 50 years from 1960 to
2015 that if we have been able to say this is something that helps us to see
that we are not alone in the universe and the two factors that Carl Sagan
created that says this is that these are two things that are crucial for us to be
able to know whether or not we can if there's life beyond earth went to 10
factors and then to to 20 factors and then to 50 factors and what began to
happen is this the amount of planets that fit that begin to dwindle and dwindle
begin to go into the thousands and then the few hundreds and at this point what
we begin to understand what we know is that there is there is over 200 factors
that are that have to be present for our first for a place to to bear life in
fact there's so many factors that there's actually zero when they begin to
look that there's zero planets that can fit into this category that we that we
know of and even our earth there's some things in this that we don't understand
exactly how this happened let me read you just a little bit in this so these
200 parameters that must be present to support life must be perfectly met or
else the whole thing starts to fall apart and for us without a massive planet
like Jupiter which has this gravitational force that begins to pull
asteroids away from earth there's there's all kinds of things that would be
pummeling our atmosphere it says the odds against life in the universe are
simply astonishing and yet here we are not only existing but talking about
existing how can every one of these parameters have been perfect by accident
at what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the
result of random forces doesn't in assuming that intelligent intelligence
created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a
life-sustaining earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds that come
into being and there's even more than that when they begin to press this
further says this the fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet
is nothing compared to the fine-tuning that was required for the universe to
exist at all astrophysicists now know that the value for the four fundamental
for the values of the four fundamental forces gravity electromagnetic force
strong and weak nuclear forces were determined all less than one millionth
of a second after the Big Bang and any altar of any one of those values in the
universe could not if any one of those would be altered the universe could not
exist if the ratio between nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force
had been off by the threat tiniest fraction even one part of this then no
stars could have ever been formed at all he compared it to taking out a coin and
flipping this four quadrillion times and it always landing on heads and this is
what we have this is the reality that we have present here now with us it is so
heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all just happened defies
common sense in fact the guy who came up with the whole Big Bang theory the guy
who put it that all together he began to as he began to put all these odds
together he began to have a significant change in the very core of who he is and
he says this quote he says the common sense interpretation of the facts
suggests that a super intellect has monkey with the physics as well as with
chemistry and biology the numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so
overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question what we're
beginning to see is that when people begin to understand how all of this
happens the more in-depth we get into science the more we begin to realize
that there's not just a pot there's not a mathematical possibility that this all
just happened that this all just kind of formed out of a lot of lucky chances in
all of this that this Big Bang that began this all that maybe there was
something behind that that was igniting the Big Bang and this is what we begin
to see through astrophysicists and and through astronomers and they're
beginning to see if you pick up your head and begin to look at things beyond
just biology begin to realize that this might have something more than just an
accident that this might be something that is a design in fact there's not
any really other way for us to to to really significantly mathematically
prove this and so I want to to think through this and for us to say could it
be possible that you and I are here in this moment not by accident but but
there's something behind it an intelligent design a fingerprint of
something that is greater than us and and for a moment let's just call that
something God and let's just say for a moment that God just didn't set this
universe into motion and put it on autopilot let's say that God wanted to
design more than just the laws of physics and if you can follow me to this
point and if you can follow me to this let's take just one tiny step further
just like the the theorist of the Big Bang says could you believe that God's
fingerprint wasn't just upon the laws of physics themselves but that God placed
his creative intelligent design into humanity itself that you and I aren't
cosmic accidents but we actually bear the fingerprint of God and that God
designed this intentionally and that when we begin to look at this what we
bear is the fingerprint of a God who had intelligent intentionality behind the
way that he created us in fact the Bible God's revelation to us begins to speak
to this in Genesis 1 verse 27 it says this so God created man in his own image
in the image of God he created them male and female he created them and God
blessed him in verse 28 and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill
the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over
the birds of the heavens and over every little thing a living thing that moves
on earth what we begin to see that if we begin to see the heavens declare the
glory of God and we begin to see that all of this may not just be happenstance
in fact mathematically it seems like that would be the most faith that we
could have us to somehow believe that this all just kind of happened but maybe
there's something behind this that God put his design on everything that
everything bears his fingerprint and so you and I when we begin to look at that
we bear the image of God the fingerprint of God and that in the way that God made
it all that male and female they're not accidents they bear his fingerprint his
intentional design and so there's something about masculinity that is of
God's design there's something about femininity that is about God's design
there's something even about the purpose that God has given you and I that is
about God's design and what I want to do is over the next four weeks break this
down and help us to understand how a designer may have designed us and if we
can believe this and we can understand that there's intentionality to all of
the Bible and how it affects you and me is enormous it gives us clarity in our
worldview it gives us clarity by which we are to see ourselves and you who are
male and you who are female and we're gonna break that down we're gonna say
what does it mean to be biblically masculine what does it mean to be
biblically designed on purpose to be feminine what does it mean to have the
design of you who are supposed to be more than just someone who is in
survival mode but there's a purpose behind your life and how has God
uniquely created you with a fingerprint that creates a purpose for your life
designed intentionally by your Heavenly Father and so I think this is going to be
a mind-blowing journey for us over the next few weeks and hopefully I hope that
we emerge on the other side of this incredibly just incredibly confident in
who we are and I want to start with this today because when we begin to
understand before we get into masculinity femininity and the purpose of work and
the purpose that we have for our lives what we need to understand is that the
very core there's a question that needs to be answered there's a question that
you and I intrinsically ask every single day and the question is this what
gives me worth what gives me value and you might say Keith that's that's a
little esoteric that's kind of out there I don't know if I actually asked that
question but I promise you you do every single day there's something that goes
on in your brain something subconscious that is aligning your decisions to find
your worth and your value and what we need to say is what is the thing that
determines that what is it that you are aligning your value and your worth on
because in the Bible it says this for us as we begin to answer that question the
Bible says this in verse 27 of chapter 1 in Genesis so God created man in his own
image in the image of God he created them see there's a thing there's a Latin
phrase that begins to capture the essence of this and it and it's the phrase
in mago day that you and I created intentionally designed by God in his
image in the image of God and the reason why that is important is because it gives
context for all of our life and when we begin to say what does it mean for us to
bear the image of God I want you to see three different ways that we can look at
this three different ways that it really when we begin to say what does it look
like for us to be people who are created intentionally designed by God to bear
his image the first thing is we begin to this is going to get kind of deep real
quick but I want you to get a solid understanding for this so that it affects
your worldview okay and just doesn't inspire you the first thing I want you
to understand is that when we begin to see this idea of image of God the in
mago day the first thing that we begin to see is one way to define it is in the
view of the substance substantive view of this and so the substantive view of
this says it holds to the idea that there is some substantial characteristic of
the human race that is like God that there's something that we are that we
are created with that in the substance that we bear is the image of God or the
likeness of God and this is what we would call the spiritual receptacle of
the soul that you are born more than just flesh and blood you're more born more
than just as a rational being but you were born with a soul and this soul is
the spiritual receptacle in you by which you can understand and relate to your
creator and that God creates you in his image as a spiritual being and you bear
the weight of this or you bear the reality of this in the fact that you
have the substance of a soul in your life okay this is what it means to be man
this is what it means to be woman this is what it means for us to bear the weight
or barely bear the image of God number two relational the relational view says
that there must be in relationship with God in order to possess the image of God
or to go beyond that is for us to be able to say because he has created us as as
man and woman there's a relationship and the connectivity between these two the
way that we connect on more than just biology reveals to us something that
says there's a great something greater than just physicality there's something
greater than just the fact that we're beyond animals right and so there's
something that shows us what does it mean for masculinity and femininity and
the way that we describe ourselves to each other in the way that we relate to
each other so this is this beautiful moment of saying the fact that we relate
to each other we relate to God reveals his image in us number three this
functional view and this argues that the image of God imprinted on us resides
in function rather than in form in relationship so it is something to do
with the fact that we have a reality that goes beyond the animals and the
rest of the world in terms of just the goal to survive there's something that
is within us that makes us want to have purpose outside of merely survival and
this is something that bears the fingerprint of God in our life that
there's something that is we bear as a creator we bear the mark of our creator
so so the image of God this is pervasive throughout of the out all of this and so
you have a desire intrinsically to create and not just to survive and that
is the mark of your heavenly father upon you and all of these things
when you kind of put them together I want you to know that you bear the image
of God the Imago day is the soul created within you that has the
understanding of God that creates your value so this is this is what this
looks like there's truth in all of these things but what I want to get into day
is this substantive view because when we begin to understand the substantive
view of this there's two kind of competing ideas that we need to kind
of dissect so that you begin to understand where my value comes through
where's my worth coming from and so when we begin to get into this the first
thing that comes into play the first thing that defines our worth and this
is the overwhelming reality for the world that we live in is that your worth
the world says to you is primarily determined by other humans so so here's
the thing that humans give worth to humans that that this is called humanism
and humanism is this that there is a reality that that we are the most
significant aspect of all of creation and everything is pointed to to being
human and so this humanism that the top of everything else there's nothing above
us we are the we're the the the top of all of the world around us and the thing
that sets us apart is rational thought rational thought and where it begins to
trip us up is when we begin to think about when humans give worth to humans
and we rely upon rational thought to do this what we can believe in this is when
we we understand this this worldview of humans giving worth to humans
rational thought this idea of this is who we are it can be in our heads like
well we're all equal right because when we begin to say we're rational people
that that means that all humans are simply equal and we're and we're all
alike and that's the the best part of rational thought in our in our minds and
in our heads but the reality is is when we begin to take humanism what it does
is it elevates humanism to actually a godlike status and we begin to think
that humans can do no wrong that that rational thought will always win the day
but the problem is that is not reality when we begin to look at history what
you begin to see is rational thought always breaks down when pressed into and
we call this sinful human nature that we are depraved people and so what we would
think would be human rational thought would be able to give us equality leads
to things like Nazi Germany where we begin to slip into a comparative view
of humanity and so when we begin to slip into a comparative youth of humanity
we have the Holocaust when we slip into a comparative view of humanity we have
slavery when we have only slip into a comparative view of of humanity we have
racism it goes even farther when we slip into a comparative view of human
in that humanity, we have economic disparity.
So we even go back to the great recession that happened
just a few years ago.
What happened there?
There was a belief that not all humanity has created equal
but that rich people can exploit poor people.
So when rich people exploit poor people,
they begin to say your value is lower than my value
so I will exploit you.
And so we see this breakdown in equality.
Now, we can talk about this in the big scale
but this happens also in your life that humanist theology
so to speak, humanist philosophy begins
to take root in your heart as well.
Humanist philosophy has this kind of effects.
Humanist philosophy is that twinge of self-doubt
that you have.
It's that feeling of inferiority.
It's the assumption of judgment from someone else.
It's the self-condemnation based upon what you think
that they think of you.
It's the subtle averted glances, the avoided conversations.
The look into the mirror that says,
I wish that I could be someone else.
What you're doing is engaging in humanist philosophy
that ultimately that you are compared to someone else
and that is what gives you value.
This idea of humans give worth to humans.
Now, the other side of that is this reality
that God gives worth to humans.
And when we begin to explore that,
when we begin to unpack that, what we begin to see
is something radically different
because humans are made in the image of God
that we bear the Imago day that there's something in us
that other humans cannot judge or compare us to.
Our value, our worth comes from something outside of humanity.
And what I want to do is I want to take you
to a place in the Bible and unpack this a little bit.
There's a book called Philemon.
And Philemon is one of the shortest books of the Bible.
And to be honest, when I was studying the Bible,
I had this significant problem with the book of Philemon
because I just didn't understand why it was there.
It's got one chapter.
It's really short.
It's just a simple letter from Paul to a guy named Philemon
about a slave that escaped from Philemon
and ran to Paul named Onissimus.
So Onissimus was a slave of Philemon.
He escapes from his master.
He goes to Paul to find refuge.
And Paul says, you know what?
I'm gonna send you back to Philemon,
but I'm gonna send you back with a letter.
And in that letter, what we have in our Bible
is this incredible exposition,
this incredible, brilliant argument against slavery
given to a slave owner.
It's a beautiful piece of literature
that helps us to understand exactly why
the image of God affects all of society.
And in this, I wanna look at it
because he is talking to a society that was full of slaves
that approximately 30% of the Roman Empire
was people who were slaves.
So what do you say when 30% of the people are slaves?
Do you just say, out, it's absolutely wrong?
Is this something that we should all abandon?
Or do you begin to bring in subtly
a new way of seeing humanity?
And I want you to see this.
And so if you have your Bible
or if you have your app,
you can turn there to Philemon.
No chapter, just starting in verse 12.
We're gonna go into it.
If you don't look carefully at this,
you might miss what Paul is doing.
It says this, Paul is writing to Philemon.
He says, I am sending him, meaning Onissimus,
who is my very heart.
He's talking about how connected he is.
He's valuing Philemon back to you.
I'm sending him back to you.
I would have liked to keep him with me
so that he could take your place in helping me
while I'm in chains for the gospel.
Now what Paul's doing there is brilliant.
What he has just done very subtly,
he is giving value to Onissimus, the slave,
and he's doing this in a very functional way.
What he's saying to Philemon is this,
he's saying the function of Onissimus
is the same function as you, Philemon.
There is no functional difference.
I have him there, I'm sending him back.
I wish that he could take your place in this
and helping me while I'm in chains for the gospel, right?
So he's saying in terms of this Onissimus,
sorry, Philemon, what you've done is you've assigned value,
you've let a human assign value to a human
and said this is my slave.
And so this is my slave.
What I need to do is I need to reassign that value
and I need to start off with the functional reality
that Onissimus is as functionally possible
to have a purpose in his life
other than to be owned by you, Philemon,
that Onissimus can accomplish something.
He can be a creator, not just someone
who is in servitude to you.
This is a brilliant thing.
He's attacking this argument against the function.
Now he's not necessarily talking about capacity.
Maybe Philemon was much more talented than Onissimus,
but he can do something other than just be your slave.
There's a function that he's been given
to have a purpose in his life.
And this purpose is to help him
in the chains of the gospel, right?
Something incredibly noble in this moment.
Verse 14, he goes on and says this,
but I did not want to do anything without your consent.
Again, we see a gospel orientation to community here.
So that any favor that you would do would not seem forced,
but would be voluntary.
I'm fighting for your heart, not giving you a mandate.
I want you to change your view
of the Imago dei of Onissimus on your own.
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you
for a little while was that you might have him back forever.
No longer as a slave, but better than a slave
as a dear brother.
Again, this is the reassignment of intrinsic value.
He said, this is who he was, he was a slave to you,
but I need you to understand
there is something greater,
that there is a relational component.
And we're gonna call that brother
because under God, everyone is the same.
And so the relationship that you have,
I'm gonna choose a word that has no authority.
Brother is not an authoritative word.
So it's better than a slave.
A slave is one who is under authority, right?
I'm gonna choose to say this is your brother.
You are under Christ.
Let me help you to see, Philemon,
that Onissimus is someone who bears the same fingerprint
of God as you.
You are both people who have been created by God.
This is a brilliant view, right?
He begins to help him understand.
And then the last part of this, he is very dear to me,
but even dear to you, both as a fellow man,
and as a brother in the Lord.
So he's used this brother in the Lord again,
but this is the first time he is stripped away everything
else, but the fact that he is just a fellow man.
And here Paul's talking about,
there's something in Onissimus
that has been designed intentionally by his creator
that makes him have value equivalent to yours, Philemon.
In the Amago day, he has a soul.
And you don't get to say that your soul
is any more worthy than his soul.
That his worth under God is not any less
than your worth, Philemon.
In this little bitty book,
it helps us to see something fundamental to us.
It helps us to get this grasp of what it means
for us to see ourselves and to see humanity
as people who have that fingerprint,
the intentional design of who God is.
And so what we begin to see is that
Onissimus isn't less than human.
He isn't someone who's inferior.
He reassigns his value from slave
to fellow man to brother in Christ.
You see, at the very core of this,
when we begin to see our world,
what we have to look for is violations
of the image of God.
That slavery is a violation
at its very core of the image of God.
That when we begin to, on the TV,
see all these people who are being taken advantage of
and when we begin to see things
that people are enslaved and sex slave
or they're being completely taken advantage of,
what we look at that and saying,
that's just not that fair, right?
Fairness is not our thing.
That they're compared to how I live,
they shouldn't live that way, right?
That is an argument that leads us nowhere.
For us to say those kind of moments
are moments where the image of God is being violated.
That is clarity in the world view.
And when we begin to understand
that God has created all of this,
we begin to understand that this is why we get angry in this.
This is why if you believe in a heavenly Father,
if you are someone who falls after Jesus,
this is why racism is abhorrent to God.
This is why slavery is abhorrent to God
because what it does is it takes and devalues God.
It devalues the image that he's placed
and the people that he's created.
See, men and women, when they begin to understand who God is,
when they begin to really understand this concept,
it begins to change them.
It begins to change society.
There's a guy named William Wilberforce
that was one of these guys.
William Wilberforce was born into a wealthy family
and at age nine, his dad dies
and he gets this significant inheritance.
And basically this brings him into a place.
He gets into college and by all accounts,
he's kind of a playboy in college.
He parties, he doesn't really apply himself at all.
He lives at the very end of the 1700s in England
and at age 21, after the prompting of a friend,
he decides that he wants to run for office in parliament.
And so he leverages the great amount of money he has.
He spends about what would be equivalent for us
about half a million dollars to acquire the necessary votes
for him to be voted into one of the houses of parliament.
While he's in there, he basically says
that his first term as someone who's in parliament
was basically spent on his most dear affection, his self.
The object of his whole point
was to make himself look good.
And then at age 26, William Wilberforce goes on a vacation
and he invites a guy named Isaac Milner.
So former school master and a grammar school friend
and he finds out that actually Isaac Milner
was a convinced Christian and he begins to tell him
about what that means and it begins to break down
all the stereotypes about what it means
to be a convinced Christian that Wilberforce
had built up in his mind and it began to wreck his life.
And he said he came back from that vacation,
February of 1785 and he had arrived at a biblical worldview
of man, of Jesus and of God.
By December of that year, December 1785,
Wilberforce had had a complete transformation as a person.
In fact, he'd been so complete
that he went to a guy named John Newton
and says, and he had to sneak in, it was a secret meeting
because people in parliament,
it wouldn't been good for them to be seen with pastors,
but John Newton was a pastor and he went to meet
with John Newton and said, you know what,
I think that I should be a preacher, I should be a pastor.
And John Newton began to encourage him
that the nation and the church needed him to be in his place
and as someone who began to understand what it means
to bear the image of God,
that he had something that God had called him to do.
And as he interacted with John Newton,
he began to be overwhelmed by what that meant.
And in this moment, this is the John Newton
that in that era, penned one of the greatest songs
that the church has ever seen.
John Newton was the author of the song Amazing Grace.
And as Wilberforce began to probe into this,
he began to be encouraged by what he was called to do,
by what John Newton said, this is what your view of grace,
your view of humanity has to be brought into a place
where it begins to change the very culture.
And so he goes from there, age 26,
and he says, the focus of my life
is to bring the image of God into legislation.
And what he does over the next few years
was he begins to lead the crusade
to abolish slavery in England.
And from that moment until 1807, 11 times,
he brings legislation into the parliament.
And 11 times, it's voted down.
But in 1807, there's a vote for the same issue, a 12th time.
And in that vote, it all changed.
You see, in that vote, 283 people said yes
to the abolishment of slave trade to 16 noes.
And it was said that as men in this chamber
began to stand up and set their eye to the motion
over and over and over, 283 of them stand up
what happened to William Force
is that he came crashing down in his chair,
tear streaming down his face.
Because finally, the idea of the image of God
being implanted into the culture there was taking shape.
And yet only what that did,
that only created a ceasing of slave trade.
It was still legal to own slaves.
And so for the next few years,
Wilbur Force set out to not only make slave trade illegal,
but to make slavery illegal in England
and all of the colonies that England controlled.
And in 1833, after 46 years of fighting this fight,
word got to William Wilbur Force
that the votes had been procured
and the vote for ending slavery was going to happen.
Three days after that,
William Wilbur Force died
and stood face to face with this heavenly Father.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
It saved a wretch like me.
I once was blind, but now I see was lost,
but now I'm found.
You see, this man understood something
beyond the economics of slavery,
something beyond just whether or not humans
should be the judging entity for other humans.
He understood that God and the image of God
imprinted onto the souls of all men
were the things that gave them intrinsic worth
and nothing else.
And he began to change the world because of this.
One man in parliament said,
one man with conviction equals a majority
because of the force that Wilbur Force understood
because the way that he carried it,
because the way that he believed this.
And see, I just want you to get this.
I want you to understand what William Wilbur Force understood
that there's a lie that humans give worth to humans.
And that the truth is that God alone gives worth
or that your worth comes from God alone.
And when you begin to see this,
it begins to change the way that you see the world around you.
When you begin to see that God alone gives worth,
there's no way that you can stand by
and let slavery exist among you.
There's no way that one person can own another person,
but it goes even deeper than that.
Because when we begin to understand who do we believe
is not fully human among us,
we begin to have a differing view of society.
We cannot let racism have any foothold in our world.
We cannot let any capabilities of someone,
anything that is debilitating about them,
say this is them having some less worth.
It even gets to this reality for us understanding
that when we look at anything else,
we have to understand it is made at God's image,
that when we look at the unborn,
that that is a person that God has designed.
It's not something that can be discarded
if that person with power finds them inconvenient.
You see, when we view human life
as something that can be aborted,
that at the very core,
we are using that same view of human life
that led us to atrocities like the Holocaust,
the same things that lead us to slavery.
We use those same philosophies,
but for us to say that is something
that bears the imprint of God,
there's a sanctity in that life.
It is pervasive across everything.
We cannot be hypocrites in this.
And too often, we are.
The surprising thing might be that we're often hypocrites
and saying, I abhor slavery,
but I look into the mirror and place myself in slavery.
That it's not something at all okay for one person
to own another person,
but I am owned by someone else.
You see, in our church,
there's many of you who are just beautiful people, right?
But I think that we can say,
we begin to see this as what gives us worth, right?
You're beautiful people.
And University of Idaho,
I think that you're beautiful people too.
And for you at Central Washington,
those who are sitting on this side,
man, you guys are beautiful people too, right?
I'm just kidding, all of you.
But still, all of this, right?
We can get stuck in our intellect
that how smart I am is what gives me worth, right?
That somehow my studies,
this is what assigns me worth, you know?
And this is what, this is the grades that I get.
And this assigns me worth.
And some of you really fall into that, you know?
And then there's the calm majors, you know?
And you don't have necessarily that struggle, right?
I was a calm major, but here's the thing,
like there's all these things.
Is it the relationship that assigns you worth?
Is it the fact that you're that person's girlfriend
or boyfriend or that you have something like that?
Is that the fact that you are a mom or a dad,
like what relationships assign you worth?
What are you allowing to be the thing
that points to your identity?
What is that thing that points to your worth
and your value?
Is it God alone?
Or is there something else that you're saying?
I'm voluntarily allowing this to enslave me.
And so I walk in insecurity.
I walk in self-doubt.
It is pervasive.
And what you're saying is I'm a humanist
and not someone who believes that I bear
the fingerprint of God.
I'm not someone who, I don't believe
that God has designed me intrinsically with value.
So I have to go to something else to get value.
And ladies, that's not the guy.
It's not what you choose to produce.
It's not how you look.
It's not any of those things.
And over and over, just what I wanna say to you
is believe who God is.
Walk in the same realities as William Wilberforce.
So that you might see this society
as something that bears the fingerprint of God,
but you would also see yourself.
Is that, it bears the fingerprint of God.
Here's what I believe.
If we get this, that we begin to be
what changes our universities, changes our communities,
because it's radically different.
It may look a little bit the same,
but when we begin to press on it,
it's radically different.
Because here's the thing,
God has not just created you to be in his image
so that you might understand that value.
But here's the thing,
when we begin to understand that we walk in God's image,
that we bear his image,
that this is what gives us value,
we also understand that when we look at God
and we begin to see how we compare to God,
that we don't measure up and that's called sin.
And in 1 Corinthians,
we begin to see this reality in 3, verse 3,
or sorry, chapter 3, verse 16.
It says, do you not know that you are God's temple
and that God's spirit dwells within you?
That God doesn't want you just to understand
that you are his creation,
that you are his beautiful picture
of who he is, his Imago day,
but also that you are separated from him.
And instead of that leading us to this place of doubt
for us to embrace his son that he sent to us,
that he brought into humanity to die for us,
to bear the weight of our sins
so that we might not find just our value
in what God says is our value,
but we might find redemption,
we might find his pleasure,
we might be able to find his love and acceptance
in that as well.
And that's why he sins his son to this earth,
so that we might be both found in deep within this,
value that he has given us,
but also that we might be connected to that relationship.
And when you just know that you're valued by God,
but don't experience his love, it doesn't work.
You always go back to humans,
you always go back to other people assigning you worth.
But when you say it's Jesus Christ
who reveals the desire of God to have a relationship with me,
it all comes together.
And I want this to land for us,
that we might be people who understand
that God alone gives us worth,
that God alone gives us worth,
that you've been designed intentionally
by your heavenly father.
And as we talk about femininity
and talk about masculinity and talk about your purpose,
it starts with you understanding his design
at the very core speaks something to your worth.
Do not be enslaved, resonate.
Do not let yourself become a slave
to what other humans think about you.
Reject insecurity, self doubt, walking confidence.
Every morning when I take my kids to school,
I pray for them and I pray that they would know
that God's made them just the way that they are on purpose
because they're heading into an environment of comparison.
They're going to be mocked, they're gonna be make fun of,
they're not gonna get 100% on their test
and every one of those has a moment
to be able to peel back and say, what do I believe?
Do I believe humans give me worth
or do I believe that my heavenly father gives me worth?
I don't wanna fight for you the same way
that you would believe that and walk within that.
So I wanna ask you to stand with me as we close out.
Just stand up real quick.
I want us to say this out loud
because it's one thing to hear this.
But I want you just to say it out loud with me.
I want us to repeat this.
I want us to simply say, God alone gives me worth.
As a band comes up here, I wanna pray for you after this
but I just want us to just say this, God alone gives me worth
and I want for that to mean something in your heart today.
So I'm gonna say one, two, three
and then let's say God alone gives me worth ready.
One, two, three, God alone gives me worth.
Let me pray for us.
God, I just ask that that would land deeply
on our heart today, God,
that you would help us to see
that this is an overwhelming reality,
that you would help us to understand
that we are people who there's no room in our lives
to allow the lie that humans define us
and the fact and the reality that you have designed us
and this overwhelming reality that your fingerprint
is on everything, Lord.
I pray that that would just hit us today, God,
that would overwhelm us
and what it means for us to be people
whose worth is only found in you.
So let us sing this amazing reality, Lord.
Let us proclaim that this grace that overwhelms us
is incredible.
It is overwhelming that we were a wretch
and yet we are found here, that we are sinner,
we were lost and yet your grace covers us, Lord.
We pray that that is the truth.
You ask all this in your holy name. Amen.
