May 21, 2023

The Image of God (Imago Dei)

Confronting the Chaos Series 

Primary Text:  Genesis 1:26-28   

Last Teaching: The god of Today

1)  The Radical Self

Ezekiel 28:1-2: The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, say to the ruler of Tyre, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: In the pride of your heart you say, “I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god in the heart of the seas.” But you are a man and not a god, though you think you are as wise as a god.’”

DQ 1) How do human beings make gods of themselves?  Why?

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2)  The Therapeutic Self

Proverbs 23:6-7 (NASB): Do not eat the bread of a selfish man, Or desire his delicacies; For as he thinks within himself, so he is. 

DQ 2) What is the “modern therapeutic self”? 

DQ 3) Define your “identity”?

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3)  The Sexual Self

Galatians 5:16, 19-21: So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature….  The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.  I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. 

DQ 4) How can sexual activity become the “identity” of an individual?

DQ 5) Why does sexual sin have a powerful influence on people?

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This Week’s Teaching: 

1)  Image & Likeness

Genesis 1:26: Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

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

DQ 1) What does it mean that humans are created in the “image” and “likeness” of God?

DQ 2)  Did original sin (the fall of man) abolish the “image of God” in human beings?

DQ 3)  How do humans have dominion over the earth?

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2)  Male & Female

Genesis 1:27-28: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." 

Matthew 19:3-6: Some Pharisees came to him to test him.  They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"  "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'?  So they are no longer two, but one.  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." 

DQ 4) What are possible reasons why God created two human genders? 

DQ 5) What are the created distinctions between male and female?

DQ 6) What are the facets of a husband and wife becoming one?

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3)  Fruitfulness

Genesis 1:28:  God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." 

DQ 7) Define “fruitfulness” per the directive of Genesis 1:28.

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