Discussion Questions
- Why is it important to first understand who God is before we understand who we are?
- Why did David find God’s love for him to be so incredible? So hard to fathom?
- What does it mean to be “made in the image of God?”
- What effect did sin have on the image of God in men and women?
- How does Jesus restore the image of God in those who trust in him?
- How should the doctrine of the image of God influence the way we think about moral and societal issues (murder, abuse, poverty, slavery, etc.)?
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What is a life worth?
In 2001, in the aftermath of the greatest terrorist attack to ever hit U.S. soil, a committee was formed to answer that exact question—what is a life worth?
The committee oversaw the Victim Compensation Fund (or ‘VCF’) fund which was established to provide financial compensation to the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, as well as to those who were injured or became ill as a result of the attacks.
Working in two phases over the course of 10 years, the committee paid out over $14.6 billion dollars to around 37,000 people with awards ranging widely depending on a number of factors.
What were those factors that this committee considered before assigning a value to each life lost in 9/11? The VCF created an algorithm that accounted for several factors, like:
1. The victim's age, occupation, and income.
2. Their number of dependents.
3. Other financial losses suffered by the family, such as medical expenses, funeral costs, and other related expenses.
4. The circumstances of the victim's death and what trauma this caused for the families of the victims.
Based on these various factors, the committee ended up compensating the families of these victims within a range of $250,000-$1,800,000. Of course, we recognize that what this committee was commissioned to do was an impossible task. How could any of us assign a monetary value to any human life? But aren’t we still left wholly unsatisfied by the solution? That someone could shove in the raw data of your life into a computer that would then spit out an arbitrary number estimating the value of your life? Is the life of a man or woman worth more than their age and health? How many children they can produce? Their intellect? Their income? Their societal contributions?
What is a human life worth?
Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 8.
We come this morning to the second sermon in our 6-week mini-series entitled, What is Christianity?, where we are exploring the six pillars of Christian faith: God, Man, Sin, Christ, Cross, Response. Last week we examined who God is—both his transcendence (his “otherness” from us and his holiness) and his imminence (his nearness toward those who trust in Him). At the beginning of his sermon last week, Marc lamented the impossible task of trying to communicate in a 45-minute sermons who God is. In a lot of ways, I have a much easier task this week, but I feel the same burden—how can you adequately distill the essence of what it means to be a human being in a short sermon? Lord, help us!
Read with me: Psalm, chapter 8.
"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!"
So what is a human life worth, according to the Bible? Psalm 8 provides us with three keys to help us understand this question:
1. God is Big
2. Man is Small
3. God Has Given Man a Glorious Identity And Calling.
1. GOD IS BIG
1“O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
The Psalm begins and ends with the same refrain—“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” This instructs us on Who this Psalm is primarily about—God. And Who this life is about—God. David’s bookending reminds us that all of creation, and especially the creation of human beings, points not to itself, but to the majesty and glory of the Creator.
And this is instructive for us. Before we can understand who we are, we must understand who God is. Why is this important? It’s important because it turns on its head the modern idea that human value, identity, and purpose starts from within. When René Descartes uttered the infamous words, “I think, therefore I am,” he ushered in a new philosophy of personhood. Instead of understanding our existence from the top-down, that we are creatures whose existence and value is derived from the God who created us, we began to work from the bottom-up—believing that we in ourselves have the power and authority to determine what is true and to command our own lives.
But this is not the reality the Bible presents. Your existence, your worth, and your purpose flows down from the God Who created you.
You’ll notice here in verse 1, like Marc pointed out last week in Deuteronomy 6, that God is called LORD (all capital letters)—the Hebrew word, YHWH: the self-existent, eternal, personal God. Some Jews considered this name—YHWH—to be so holy that it was forbidden to even speak it.
1“how majestic is your name in all the earth”
What is the first location David lists where the majesty of God’s name is present? In all the earth. YHWH is not a regional God like Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, or Baal, the god of the Canaanites. He is the LORD over all the earth. There isn’t a square inch above, in, or under the earth where God’s reign does not extend. From the 29,000-foot peak of Mt. Everest to the 35,000-foot depth of the Pacific Ocean, God created it all, and governs it all. All of earthly creation sings the same resounding song—God is majestic. God is glorious.
1“you have set your glory above the heavens”
God’s glory is so infinite, so vast, and so out of our reach that it extends not only to what we can see and observe, but even to what we can’t. When David speaks of “the heavens,” he’s not necessarily referring to the “heaven” Christians immediately think of—the spiritual dwelling place of God, and the place believers go upon death. For ancient Jews, the “heavens” referred simply to everything that exists outside of the earth: stars, planets, galaxies, and everything else that is outside of human comprehension. Thus the glory of God and the majesty of his name pulsates and emanates throughout all of creation—both in the earth and throughout the heavens.
2“out of the mouth of babies and infants you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and avenger.”
This is kind of a weird phrase, isn’t it? I think the dilemma David has in mind here is this: what happens when this palpable display of the glory of God in the heavens and on earth is rejected by men? What happens when men and women who see the glory of God in creation choose rebellion instead of submission? Contempt instead of worship? I think the purpose here is to establish that God, whose glory fills all of creation, is not like Santa Clause in the movie, Elf, whose sleigh won’t fly unless enough people sing to him and declare their belief in him. God’s glory does not diminish even when humanity’s belief in him does. God is able to receive praise from all of creation, whether planets and galaxies or the tiniest, weakest of living things: Babbling, drooling infants. All of creation is quaking—it’s jittery—waiting to explode with praise for God, so that even if men and women were silent, as Jesus said, “the very stones would cry out!
What’s the point of verses 1-2?
God is infinitely big and infinitely glorious. And God is not dependent on us. His glory does not diminish if we fail to see it. His name is no less praise-worthy if we neglect to offer him praise. His enemies, though they think themselves formidable, can be dispatched by the gurgle of the smallest child.
AW Tozer, who we also heard from last week, says this: “God does not depend on our belief in him any more than the sun depends on our recognition of it for its warmth and light.”
God is big. He is independent of us. But our existence, our identity, and our worth is utterly contingent upon him.
2. MAN IS SMALL
4When 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?
“God cares for you.” Does that sentence strike you as odd? For many of us, the idea that God loves us is no more radical than believing that the sky is blue, or water is wet. But what is the Psalmist’s response? Who am I that the God who dug out the Grand Canyon, and sculpted mountains, and fashioned elephants, and spun out stars and galaxies from his fingertips would give little me a second thought! But more than that, would care for me! The greater miracle in David’s eyes is not the creation of the heavens and the earth, but that of all this creation, God would choose to focus his special attention on human beings.
John Calvin, commenting on this verse puts it pretty bluntly: “Whoever, therefore, is not astonished and deeply affected at this miracle, is more than ungrateful and stupid.”
If you are not struck and humbled by God’s recognition of you, and care for you, you think too highly of yourself. Imagine you were in attendance at the presidential inauguration, along with 1 million other people. Would you be offended if the newly sworn in president didn’t make a bee-line through the masses to shake your hand? Of course not. Why? Because you recognize the vast disparity between his exalted office and yours. You know that you are just 1 in a 1 million attending the event, and just 1 in 333-million citizens populating the United States. This is easy for us to understand. Yet how much greater is the disparity between us and God! The United States president, honored and revered as his station may be, is just a man. He needs to sleep and eat like we do. He can make mistakes. He may govern the country for 4, maybe 8 years, but then that’s it—he’s done.
But not God. This is the God:
1. Whose thoughts and intentions are as high above ours as the “heavens are higher than the earth” (Isa 55:8-9)
2. The God who “neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Ps 121:4)
3. The God who never lies, never changes his mind, and never makes a promise that he doesn’t keep (Numbers 23:19).
4. Who by a single word created the heavens, and by the breath of his mouth, all the stars, planets, and galaxies (Ps 33:6).
5. The God to Whom “the nations are like a drop from a bucket…like finest dust on the scales” (Isa 40:15).
6. The God who holds the hearts of kings in his hand like streams of water, turning it to do whatever he pleases (Proverbs 21:1).
This is God. But who are we?! “What is your life,” James writes, “For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). You can’t even outlive whales and turtles! You are one in approximately 8 billion people alive today, not to mention the billions who lived before you, and, if the Lord tarries, the billions that will come after you. Who am I—who are you—that God would stoop down to acknowledge your existence? And care for you? And yet, miracle of all miracles, wonder of all wonders, God cares for you.
3. GOD HAS GIVEN MAN A GLORIOUS IDENTITY AND CALLING
5Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
There are so many other created things that would seem to make more sense at the top of the created order, but we are told here that God made men and women a little lower than the heavenly beings. There is some debate as to how to interpret the phrase “heavenly beings” in Hebrew. The Hebrew here for “heavenly beings” is the word, Elohim, a word often used to describe God. In fact, there are a few Bible translations that actually render this verse, “You have made him a little lower than God” (CSB, NASB)! Other translations, like the ESV that I’m reading from, translate Elohim here as “heavenly beings” or “angels.” Regardless which translation we follow, whether “heavenly beings” or “God,” the message is the same—God has bestowed on man a glory and honor that is unsurpassed by any other created thing.
Look at Genesis 1:26-28
To help us understand this a bit more, let’s move our gaze for a moment back to the very beginning—the story of creation in Genesis chapter 1.
[Turn with me there if you have your Bible].
One theologian has said that Psalm 8 functions like a “lyric echo” of Genesis 1. Look at the very first verse of Genesis 1: “In the beginning, God created”…what? The heavens and the earth. What did we see in Psalm 8 proclaims the glory of God? The heavens and the earth. As we continue moving through Genesis 1, we see God creating light and darkness, land and water, plants and trees, the sun and moon, and the fish of the sea and animals of the land. But look at what God says of man and woman:
Verse 26: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (This plural pronoun here, “our,” reminds us, like we heard last week, that God is one, but exists in three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit).
And then verse 27: “So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
In the next verse, verse 28, we read, “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.’ ”
What does it mean to be made “in the image of God?” Genesis 1 teaches us that being made in the image of God involves two dimensions: 1) Identity and 2) Calling
1. Our Identity
Look with me at Genesis 1:24 where God creates the animals—“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” Contrast that with Verse 26: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” In effect God said, “animals will look like animals, but man and woman will look like me.”
But what does it mean practically that our identity is “image bearer of God?” Is it our inner moral compass? Our ability to think critically? Or our inherent sense of justice and hatred of injustice? Or our ability to relate to God? Or even our creativity? I think that we can safely say that all of these things are true, and more. John Piper, commenting on this, says that while these things might be technically true, it’s difficult to see what practical effect that would have on our lives. The reason for this is that “image of God” is not just something that we are, it’s something that we do. We are the image of God and share many of his attributes, but we are also called to image God. “Images are created to image.” Think about this, Piper says, “If you create an image, if you make a sculpture of someone, you do it to display something about that someone. You put it in the square in the middle of town, and you want people to look at it, notice it, think about that person, think something about them — that they were noble or strong or wise or courageous.”
Piper continues, “Now what would it mean if you created seven billion statues of yourself and put them all over the world? It would mean you would want people to notice you. God created us in his image so that we would display or reflect or communicate who he is, how great he is, and what he is like.” So that when one human looks at another they could say, “That is what God is like.”
Piper gives one more illustration. You were created like a mirror. “And a mirror that was supposed to be at a 45° angle, with the clear reflective side pointing upward so that as God shone on it at the 45° angle, it would bounce off, and it would make a 90 degree turn and be reflected out into the world.”
By stamping his seal on your soul God declared that you are more valuable and more precious than any other creature he made. To return to the words of Psalm 8, “you have made [man] a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” This doctrine is the foundation for how Christians throughout history have thought about human dignity, the sanctity of life, equality and freedom, and care for the poor and needy. The Bible teaches that each human life is so precious that the appropriate punishment for murder, according to Genesis 9, is death: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” Your identity is one who has been made in the image of God. But what is your calling?
2. Our Calling
In one sense, we’ve already seen that our identity as made in the image of God inherently includes a calling—images image. But amazingly, God not only shares his image with mankind; he shares his rule. The command given to Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” has an easy-to-understand application: have a lot of babies—create more “mirrors” to reflect the glory of God on the earth. But God also gave men and women dominion over the rest of creation. Let’s return to the last section of Psalm 8, starting in verse 6. “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.”
There were animals to be named, trees to be planted, and rivers to be dug out. But even looking past the agricultural work of Eden, all human labor undertaken with the goal of human and earthly flourishing is an exercise in godly dominion. Whether you are shaping young minds in the classroom, constructing beautiful buildings, or preparing food in a restaurant, your work is an extension of God’s royal rule.
What’s a quick application here? The work you do really matters. It isn’t meaningless. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
CONCLUSION
So, God is big, and Man is Small, and yet God in his love, crowned man with the glory and honor of bearing his name and sharing his rule. But what happens when Point 1 and Point 2 get switched? What happens when Man becomes big, and God becomes small? What happens when sin enters the world? Think back with me again to the Piper’s reflecting mirror analogy from before. When I believe the lie that I am big, and God is small, I flip the mirror over. Instead of reflecting God’s glory, I turn the back side of the mirror toward God. “It doesn’t reflect anything. Instead, the mirror casts a shadow in the shape of itself on the ground, and I fell in love with the shadow. That is what happened. And we have been loving ourselves ever since.” This is what happened in the garden of Eden with the first man and woman. They believed Satan’s lies that God didn’t know best, and that they could become like God through an act of disobedience.
Another theologian, Anthony Hoekema, says that the true heinousness of sin is revealed when we “realize that it is committed with the very faculties that were given to us to enable us to worship and serve God. Our intellect, by which we are able to know God; our emotions, by which we are able to love God; our will, by which we are able to choose to obey God - all these have been twisted and perverted by sin."
And is it no surprise, then, that man’s hatred for God has led to the abusing, exploiting, and annihilating of those made in his image? The first murder in the Bible takes place only one chapter after sin entered the world. And Cain’s murdering of Abel is soon followed by the sexual exploitation of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is followed by the enslaving of an entire people group by the Egyptians, which is followed by more murder, more abuse, and more exploitation, and the cycle just continued on, and on, and on, and on, and on—until it seemed like the image of God in man, and thus man’s relationship with God, was corrupted beyond repair.
But then, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). And those who were walking in the shadow of their “turned-around mirrors” saw a “great light.” Yet friends, this Jesus Christ, the “true and better Adam,” was not simply an image bearer of God, reflecting the glory of God like the moon reflects the sun. No, in Jesus Christ the blazing sun itself collided with earth! “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). If there was any human who was worthy to be treated with “glory and honor,” it was Jesus. If there was any man whose life should have been counted as infinitely precious, it was Jesus.
But what did Jesus come to do? He came to die. He took on the indignity of the cross, so that your dignity could be restored. On the cross, Jesus took the punishment you and I deserved for our sins. And when he rose from the dead, he not only secured eternal life for all who believe—he also restored the image of God in man. When you place your faith in Jesus, your “turned-around mirror” gets turned “right-side-up.” And as you behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus, the gunk and grime that was smeared on your mirror through sin gets slowly washed away, and God’s reflection shines brighter, and brighter, and brighter. “And we all,” Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”
You are unfathomably precious in God’s eyes. So much so that God made you in His image and then sent His Son to die to restore it. That is what your life is worth.
