Made in His Image: Genesis 1:26-31 (Sermon)

 

WELCOME

Thank you, worship team. I hope you had a good Labor Day. We are in week three of our Genesis series. Today, we get to what I believe is the high point of Creation. I am going to have … read for us. Would you please stand with me in honor of God’s Word? 

TEXT

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 

            27       So God created man in his own image, 

      in the image of God he created him; 

      male and female he created them. 

28 And God blessed them. 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 living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:26–31, ESV)

PRAYER

Thanks, let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for life. You are amazing. We are grateful. We think of those who have gone before us. You sustain our days. We feel our mortality. God, use this Scripture and this time for your honor and glory. Teach us. Help us understand what it means to be made in the image of God. In Jesus’s name we pray, amen. You may be seated.

CONTEXT

So what just happened in Genesis? God made everything. He spoke it into existence. He created 

• The light and dark (vs. 1),

• The waters and the sky (vs. 2), 

• And the plants and the land (vs. 3).

He filled 

• The heavens with the Sun, moon, and stars. (vs. 4),

• The seas with the fish (vs. 5),

• And the sky with the birds and the land with the animals. (vs. 6)

Not only that, he pronounced that everything that he created was good. Now, at the end of day six, he finished his work. 

STRUCTURE 

The verses seem to have four parts. Here they are:  

26–27 God made humanity in his image 

28  God blessed humanity to multiply, fill, subdue, and rule

29–30 God provided food for people and animals

31 God approved of all his work 

MAIN IDEA 

The main point is that God finished his work by making people in his image, blessing them, providing for them, and approving of all that he did. But so what? What difference can these verses make? Before we answer that, let’s dig deeper into a more basic question. What do they say? 

MADE IN HIS IMAGE 

If you have a Bible, turn to Genesis 1:26: 

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26, ESV)

What does it mean that we are made in his image? No other animate or inanimate object has this attribute. So what is it? 

• Does being made in the image of God mean that God looks like a human, as the ancient Greeks and Romans believed? Is God just a giant with superpowers like Zeus or Jupiter? No. Genesis 1:2 tells us that he was the Spirit hovering over the face of the deep. 

• Does being made in the image of God mean that we too are gods? Are we demigods, or will we one day populate planets like God did, as one religion teaches? No. There is one God. There are no others. All idols are shams and demons. 

CO-OP

I participate in a homeschool co-op. Recently, I sat in on a class talking about being made in the image of God. We asked, “Does the image of God simply mean consciousness, emotion, cognition, reasoning, and communication?” I let the class know it cannot, because we can find such things in a squirrel, and squirrels are not made in the image of God.  

WHO IS GOD? 

Perhaps a way forward is to focus not on what we know about humans, but rather on what we know about God. Genesis 1 tells us that, 

• God is outside of time. He was before all things. Yet, we are not. We are finite. We have a starting point. So being in the image of God is not being outside of time. 

• He made all things. We did not. He has a power that we do not possess. So being in the image of God is not to be the maker of all things. 

• He made all things good. There were no mistakes or hint of evil. He is perfect. That is not our experience. Perhaps we had a type of perfected ability before the Fall in Chapter 3. But currently we don’t. And we still bear his image.  

So being in the image of God does not mean we are outside of time, can create everything, or are perfect. What else does God do? 

• He speaks. We speak. 

• He creates and makes. We create and make. 

• He fills and separates and orders. We fill, separate, and order. 

• He names and blesses, and we can do the same. 

• He has dominion and rule, and he gives that to us over the earth. 

Perhaps this likeness relates to these activities. Yet, he delegates ruling power to the Sun and the moon, and he blesses the fish and the birds to multiply and fill the earth. Animals seem to communicate with each other. They can organize themselves. How are we different? Is it just in our ability to bless? Or the unique role in ruling the earth? 

PLURALITY OF GOD 

Is being in the image of God related to the plurality we see in verse 26? It seems odd, especially since Judaism is a monotheistic religion. What was going on with the verse,  

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26, ESV). 

Is this a defining feature of being in the image of God? 

• One interpretation is that this plural refers to God speaking to his heavenly host, the angels. That is highly unlikely, because the image that humans bear is not in the likeness or image of the angelic realm. 

• Some have argued that this is a veiled reference to the Trinity. Likely it is. And God often has multiple purposes in Bible passages. That would not be the first time the initial audience interpreted one thing, but we can look back and see something else. At the same time, if we are going to build our core teaching on something in the Bible, it should be clear. Otherwise, we can make the Bible say anything we want it to say. 

• The most likely explanation is that this is common royal use of the Word God in the plural. If we studied Hebrew, we would see that every time we have seen the word God up to this point in the text, it is plural Gods. But the translators see that the verbs are in the singular and use the singular to make sense for us in English. Again, a few things can be going on here. 

So does understanding the plurality here help us understand what it means to be made in the image of God? Does it imply that we image God only as royalty or as a community? What does it mean to be in the image of God? 

POETIC FULFILMENT 

Let’s keep reading. Look at verse 27 with me: 

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27, ESV). 

Moses, the author, tells us what God did. He made men and women in his image. He repeated this a few chapters later in Genesis 5: 

“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” (Genesis 5:1–2, ESV).

FEMALE IMAGE OF GOD 

This tells us that not only men bear the image of God. Both sexes bear his image. Those with XX and XY chromosomes, male and female, bear God’s likeness. This is radical. Women in many cultures throughout history and even today have not been given the same worth and dignity. Back to our question: what is it to be made in the image of God? It is not solely male, nor is it a function of physical strength. As special as men and women are, what makes them unique is not them, but the one whose likeness they resemble. God’s the one who determines the value, not the person.

VALUE OF ACTION FIGURE

What is your most prized possession? When I was a teenager, I joined the bandwagon of collecting baseball cards. Here is one of my boxes. Most of them aren’t worth the cardboard they are printed on. This one, for example, is… You can look it up. It is probably worth next to nothing. But what if I pulled out a 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle card, which sold in 2022 for $12.6 million? Why are some cards worth so much? Where is their value? Is it the cardboard, the ink, the artwork? No, it is in the unique nature of the person whom it represents. 

• Mickey Mantle played for the Yankees from 1951–1968 in center field. 

• He was a switch-hitter and holds the record of being the only player to hit 150 home runs on both sides of the plate. 

• Over his career, he hit 536 home runs in total. 

• He was in sixteen All-Star games. 

• He went to twelve World Series, and his team won seven. 

• He “holds World Series records for the most home runs (18), RBIs (40), extra-base hits (26), runs (42), walks (43), and total bases (123), and he has the highest World Series on-base and slugging percentages.” 

• He is the 16th all-time in home runs per at-bat and 17th in on-base percentage. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mantle) 

Let’s say you never collected baseball cards like me or had this one. But what if you went to a yard sale this week and found one of these Mickey Mantle cards as a bookmark; it might make your day. You pick a book for a buck and find out that it is worth 13 million dollars. It is not the cardboard or the artistry, but what that unique image represents. 

MIRROR

But you know what? Take a look at this. [Mirror] Do you see the faces? They represent someone greater than Mickey Mantle, the face of God. He is ultimate. He is the reason you have worth and dignity. And He made you uniquely you. You are one of a kind. He gives your life and sustains it today. 

GENESIS 9

And because of that, you have worth and dignity, as do those around you. He commands us to value it. Genesis Chapter 9, verse 6: God said to Noah, 

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6, ESV).

God doesn’t demand a death penalty like this for harvesting a deer or eating a hamburger or chicken sandwich. Humans are uniquely made in his image, and he wants us to value it. Jesus’s half-brother, James, took this command to another level. He wrote,  

But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. (James 3:8–10, ESV)

James is saying we should not curse someone with words because people are made in the image of God. I believe James was thinking of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. He taught, 

You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, “You fool!” will be liable to the hell of fire. (Matthew 5:21–22, ESV)

So, let us value what God values. God values human life. He doesn’t want us killing each other with our words. Why? Because we are made in his image and likeness. We have worth and dignity. 

RESEMBLANCE 

The Bible says to us who believe that God is our heavenly Father. Here is a picture of four generations of Nash men. 

We bear some resemblance. If you talk to my brothers, we all have similar-sounding voices and have similar noses. We bear a likeness to our father and his father. In the same way, through our actions and words, we can mirror God or rebel. God, Jesus, and Peter gave us a calling: through the Holy Spirit’s power, grace, and work in us, we can be like our God. Moses quoted God, saying,  

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2 ESV).

The apostle Peter wrote,  

“As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct (1 Peter 1:15, ESV). 

And Jesus taught, 

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48, ESV). 

Let’s reflect our Father in how we live our lives, speak, and think.  

GOD BLESSING HUMANITY 

That is our longest point because it is the most consequential one. The rest will be quicker, as God blesses us, provides for us, and approves of all his work. 

26–27 God made humanity in his image 

28  God blessed humanity to multiply, fill, subdue, and rule

29–30 God provided food for people and animals

31 God approved of all his work 

Jump to verse 28: 

And God blessed them. 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 living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28, ESV) 

God blessed humans. Someone in Sunday school last week asked the question, “How is this a blessing? It seems like a command.” Let me turn that question on you: how could being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth be a blessing? [Pause] This is the first great commission. Go into all the earth and fill it. Sounds great. This is one command people have done a good job keeping, even as our population explodes.

EXCEPTIONS 

There are exceptions, 

• Murder, 

• War, 

• Selfishness driving people not to have kids,

• And mandated abortions. 

But multiplication and filling are only part of the blessing. God gives us the world to subdue and rule. 

DOMINION

How are we doing at that? The construction business seems to be booming these days. This is also a gift. God just finished making a masterpiece for us to enjoy. At the same time, this command implies stewardship. And humanity has perverted God’s blessings in many ways. For example, this is why Proverbs 12:10 demonstrates the wisdom of good animal care versus cruelty: 

“Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel” (Proverbs 12:10, ESV).

God wants us to enjoy creation well. It is a gift to us. Do we care for the gifts that God has given? Globally and historically, we can look at how people have failed and been foolish, cruel, selfish, and greedy. Sin distorts. God’s people are given this gift, and it is good and for our good. 

PROVIDING

Now we get to God’s providing: 

26–27 God made humanity in his image 

28  God blessed humanity to multiply, fill, subdue, and rule

29–30 God provided food for people and animals

31 God approved of all his work 

Jump to verse 29. What does it say? 

And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. (Genesis 1:26–30, ESV)

Vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, grains, and fungi were gifts of God to feed people and animals. No death was needed. This was a perfect biosphere of sustainable life. Things were set for flourishing and enjoyment. 

APPROVING 

How did God view his work? We come to the last verse of the chapter. 

26–27 God made humanity in his image 

28  God blessed humanity to multiply, fill, subdue, and rule

29–30 God provided food for people and animals

31 God approved of all his work 

Look at verse 31 with me: 

“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31, ESV). 

It wasn’t just “good” that God repeated over and over; this whole deal was very good. It was the end of the work for God, which wasn’t much work in terms of effort, but in terms of scope, it was incredible.  

APPLICATION 

How might God want us to respond to these verses? Here are three things to remember:

APPLICATION: WORTH

First, how we treat each other matters. How we speak to each other matters. People have unique worth and dignity. Even those who are of a different political persuasion than you are made in God’s image. Even felons and the most heinous unrepentant criminals bear a mark of God. They will face judgment, but that is not ours to dole out. That is God’s. He can use the justice system in part, but in the end they will get their comeuppance. Where our justice system fails, God’s will not. We can trust him. Let’s view those around us as bearing God’s image. Let’s remember whose image people bear. Let’s value people. 

APPLICATION: REPENTANCE 

A second response deals with the disconnect when we find that we have murdered people with our tongues. Turn from sin to the Savior. Repent. Consider these passages: 

“Put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10, ESV). 

“Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24, ESV).

God wants us to move into who we were made to be. We are his workmanship, made to do good works and be little Christs running around. We are ambassadors, the Bible says. We represent him. We are sons and daughters of God. Through faith we are adopted into his family. We are no longer enemies and traitors, but friends. More than that, we are brothers with Christ, sons and daughters of his Father, now our Father in heaven. Think of this: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16, ESV). He loved you that much. 

God didn’t incarnate the sun or moon, the plants, fish, birds, or animals. He became one of us to be the perfect substitute, the perfect for the imperfect, the unblemished for the tarnished. We have redemption through the crucifixion. 

BROKENNESS 

Look at this mirror again. Do you see God’s image? Look at your calendar, your browsing history, your texts; do you see God in you? Do others see God in you? Maybe you see a rebel. Maybe you struggle and find you have run counter to what God has called you to be for so long. Stop. Don’t keep going that way. There is mercy in the moment for you. Find your worth in your Creator. 

Zephaniah 3:17 states, 

            The LORD your God is in your midst, 

      a mighty one who will save; 

                  he will rejoice over you with gladness; 

      he will quiet you by his love; 

                  he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17, ESV)

How can God do that? He loves to redeem what is broken, heal the sick, and forgive the sinner. If you are broken, sick, and sinful, turn to God for mercy and help in your time of need. If anyone is in Christ, the Bible says, to be in Christ is to put your hope in him in the moment, to put your reliance on his substituting himself on the cross for you, to trust in his life to pay for your sin. If you are in Christ, God makes you born again, a new creation, alive in him. The old is gone, and the new has come. Romans 5:8 tells us, 

“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, ESV).

We may have these small voices in our heads telling us we are worthless, too far gone, unredeemable, damned, with no dignity. Combat that with the truth of God’s Word. Do you believe the Bible or not? Do you bank on Jesus’s work or not? 

YOU ARE MADE IN HIS IMAGE. 

HE  SAVES 

HE LOVES YOU. 

HE REJOICES OVER YOU 

HE WILL QUIET YOU

HE WILL EXULT OVER YOU WITH LOUD SINGNING 

APPLICATION: WORSHIP

Third, application is worship. Let this passage of a good God create a very good creation and make us in his image, blessing us and providing us with a reason to turn our hearts to praise him. That is exactly what David did in Psalm 8. Let’s read it together:

            O LORD, our Lord, 

      how majestic is your name in all the earth! 

                  You have set your glory above the heavens. 

            Out of the mouth of babies and infants, 

                  you have established strength because of your foes, 

      to still the enemy and the avenger. 

            When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, 

      the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 

            what is man that you are mindful of him, 

      and the son of man that you care for him? 

            Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings 

      and crowned him with glory and honor. 

            You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; 

      you have put all things under his feet, 

            all sheep and oxen, 

      and also the beasts of the field, 

            the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, 

      whatever passes along the paths of the seas. 

            O LORD, our Lord, 

      how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:1–9, ESV)

Let us worship God for making us in his image, even though he didn’t have to. Let us worship him now.

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