Lakewood Bible Study | Erik Luchetta and Jeremy Marrone

((music playing)) Hey man, how you doing? I'm doing well. Good to be back. Yes, good to be here. Well, I have a quick question tonight that I would love for us to talk about. Yes. What does image of God mean? Great question. Image of God. Um, we we can see as early as Genesis 1, God made mankind in his image and likeness.

And actually this idea of image is very important for understanding what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be a human being. But basically this God we would start with this. If we're going to answer the question of what does image of God mean?

We would first ask the question why did God make human beings in the first place? And the answer is that God made human beings so that they would live and work in the world in such a way where creation itself would flourish, where there would be abundance. And now you might ask, okay, why does God want the earth to flourish?

And we might say, well, of course he wants the earth to flour flourish. He he wants to bless it. That's the way he is. Well, that's true. But there's actually a bigger why as to why he wants the earth to flourish. And this bigger why is really important to know because it helps give us direction and guidance in life.

And here it is. Here's why God created human beings in his image is because heaven and earth are meant to reflect one another. In other words, God designed creation. He designed the earth that when you looked at the earth, you would know exactly what heaven is like. And if you looked at heaven, you would know what the earth is like.

Heaven and earth are meant to reflect one another. And flourishing is one of the ways in which we get to see what heaven is truly like. But to be made in God's image is to live and work in the world. To order it in such a way where it reflects heaven itself.

So to be made in the image of God is to be given the job to order the world and to live in it in such a way where everything in creation can say I know exactly what heaven looks like just by looking around here in the earth. That's good.

It makes me think of uh in Matthew 6 where Jesus is talking to his disciples and there they said, "Hey, teach us to pray." And he said, "Hey, may may God's kingdom come." This is the prayer. May God's kingdom come. May his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Yeah. That's the will of God. Yeah. Yeah. Is that heaven and earth would align? Yeah. That's really not when when Jesus said, "Thy kingdom come," that we should pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven." That goes back to Genesis. Yeah. This is the original plan for humanity.

And so if human beings are the creatures that live in the world in such a way where heaven and earth can reflect one another, we can see what happened when sin entered the world. Heaven and earth became disjointed. They were no longer aligned with sin and death and evil.

The earth didn't reflect heaven. But when in the garden, heaven and earth did reflect each other, God called it very good. Yeah. human beings working in the world where heaven and earth reflect one another bearing God's image God calls very good. So when Jesus in Matthew says your kingdom come your will be done on earth just like it is in heaven he's basically going back to the garden and saying God's will still stands.

He wants his will to be done on earth and his will on earth just just so we're defining this. You're you're saying that God's will on earth is the flourishing of his creation ultimately so that heaven and earth reflect one another. Got it. It's the it's the coming together of heaven and earth.

And that idea the coming together of heaven and earth where they perfectly reflect one another is how the Bible ends. That's the last two chapters of the book of Revelation where earth is finally set forever in perfect alignment with heaven and heaven and earth come together as a bride and groom and they are married forever.

Yeah, this is and and this is a lot of the marriage language in the scriptures. Yeah. Paul the Apostle especially uses a lot of marriage language not just to talk about marriage which is good but he's actually talking using the marriage analogy to talk about the coming together of heaven and earth because Jesus is actually referred to in John the book of John as the bridegroom.

Yeah. That's the whole point. And when John chapter 3 when the bridegroom comes they said we will know his voice. And so this is that this is that marriage of heaven and earth but it's really in alignment. Yeah. And and I think we talk about this a lot about how uh practical everything everyday things that we do in the world are alignment actions.

Yeah. Yeah. Individual actions and decisions we make and things that we do uh things like forgiveness. This is an aligning action that we do in our everyday lives that we don't think about or let me say like this. For a long time I didn't think about it in these terms.

I thought okay I need to follow Jesus. So Jesus forgave so I need to forgive. But why? Because when we forgive, it aligns heaven and earth. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that. Yeah. So, what are I was going to ask you, what are some practical things that uh that show that we bear the image of God?

Yeah. Great question. What are some practical day-to-day things that we do that cause us to bear the image of God? Well, one, let me ask you this question. Is anybody starving in heaven? Is anybody [clears throat] going hungry right now? No. Okay. Every time we feed somebody who's hungry, heaven and earth align.

Heaven and earth reflect one another. It might just last a moment in time, but in that one moment, heaven and earth are aligned. Let me ask you this. Is anybody discouraged? Is anybody dis in despair in heaven right now? Nope. No. Okay. Every time we encourage somebody, when we lift them up, heaven and earth are aligning with one another.

And again, that's ultimately God's will. Heaven and earth reflect one another. You said it just a minute ago, forgiveness. Is there any strife in heaven? No. Is there any unforgiveness, any rudess, no discord? That's right. So every time you forgive somebody or you accept somebody's forgiveness, heaven and earth are aligning with one another.

So we have to see that our way of life, our imagebearing way of life could start with this. What is going on in heaven right now? That is my job here on the earth. And it's not just what we do, it's also what we say. So the words we use, the words that not just the words we use, but the tone in which we speak, we should ask ourselves, is this going on in heaven right now?

Are people speaking this way in heaven? Are they using these words in heaven? If the answer is no, we wouldn't use them in the earth. Our job is to live, to work, and to speak in such a way where heaven and earth reflect one another. I think this is I think this is Paul's language in 1 Corinthians 1:10.

He says, "Have a common language between you as believers." And it's not and and he's talking in there about the language of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. True. But also that language is common because that is that is the language of heaven.

That is the language of alignment with heaven. And Paul is exhorting the people, the young church there in Corenth to be aligned in the way that you are communicating back and forth on a daily basis. Yeah. with one another. And it makes me think of of my own relationships, you know, like what are some of the most basic relationships?

My marriage. What are some of the most basic things that I can practice using language that heaven would be using to talk about my wife, to talk about my children, to talk about my home, to express the person of Jesus and who God is. And so, um, I, you know, it's interesting when I, when I see it from that perspective, I go, man, every single thing I do matters to God.

Every single thing I do matters. Not in a pressure sense, but just in a it's all purpose, right? So, as I'm going throughout my day, how am I making decisions? What are the words I'm using with other people? And does it align with the will of heaven? Yeah.

Because the the kingdom of of heaven or the kingdom of God is the rule of God and the will of God is that in that rule that heaven and earth would align. Yeah. So, um I mean there's golly there's so many examples that we could use and stories that we could use.

But I I go back to times when um a buddy of mine was here in in Houston in 2005. He was working he had a company and he and his business partner who were working out of their apartment um didn't have a lot of money. And one Sunday they found themselves short on cash right before they got paid for a big project they were doing.

Well, they weren't going to get paid for another day or two, but they didn't have any food on Sunday. And a buddy, a mutual friend of ours showed up at their door on Sunday afternoon at 1:00 after church and brought them two large brown bag paper bags u full of groceries.

And Stephen, my brother-in-law, he goes, "What are you doing? Who told you?" He said, "Nobody told me. I just felt it down here like I was supposed to bring you food. And he tells that story and they ate like kings for the next two weeks. Uh cuz our our buddy had a lot of money and he could afford it and so he brought them all these groceries.

And it was just this moment where Steven said, "God works it in and through other human beings to bless us." And he's like, I've been a recipient of of moments where the Holy Spirit speaks to somebody uh you know, compels somebody to love uh their friend or a family member or something like that in that way.

And in that moment, my buddy, his name is Dallas. In that moment, Dallas was aligning heaven and earth together because he was showing this is the abundance of heaven being manifested in somebody's life in a moment where they need it. Yeah. And that's a revolutionary way of thinking.

But remember like when we first started uh this teaching I said that this shapes the way we think. It gives us direction and guidance for life. And understanding what it means to be made in the image of God that we live and work and speak in the world in such a way where heaven and earth reflect one another is kind of like a guiding light for us.

I know I know it is for me and I know we're teaching our children that. Right. Um, last week, uh, I I picked up my daughter from school. She's in fourth grade. She's nine years old. And I could tell something was bothering her. You know, she was just a little more quiet than usual.

And so, in a little bit of time, I found out what was going on. And basically, there was this classmate who was being rude to her. And it wasn't quite bull uh bullying, but it was borderline bullying. And so, I my my daughter was really, you know, just kind of disappointed in all this. and her feelings were hurt.

And she said, you know, Dad, what can we do about this? And so my first thought was, you know, let's get the teachers involved and just, you know, explain what's going on. You know, she's at a Christian school and they'll understand about how, you know, these kids need to work it out.

But then I thought, well, how about I help Olivia navigate this herself? Maybe she can go to the classmate. And so I said, "Well, Olivia, why don't you talk to to your classmate and just say,"Hey, look, when you speak to me that way, that's hurtful. That's a bit rude.

Can you please not speak to me like that?" I said, "Just tell her that. Just be kind to her and just let her know how you feel." And she said, "Okay, Dad. I'll do it." So the next day, this classmate said something rude to Olivia. And Olivia responded with, "That's hurtful when you talk to me like that.

Please, please don't speak to me like that." and the classmate basically ignored her. Later on in the day, this classmate said something rude again. Olivia said, "Please don't talk to me like that. That's rude. That's hurtful." Classmate didn't say anything. But at the end of the day, in the last few minutes of the day, this classmate came up to Olivia and said, "I am so sorry for how I've been treating you.

Please forgive me." And Olivia forgave her. And I thought to myself, right there is heaven and earth coming together. There's no strife. There's no rudeness. And there's no unforgiveness in heaven. And when my daughter and her classmate came together and forgave one another, it's a glimmer of heaven on earth.

And here's the thing that excited me the most. After my daughter got done telling me this story, she said, "Dad, you know, I was thinking about what happened and I was thinking about how in that moment, heaven and earth reflected one another." And I think about all the times I've talked to my daughter about these things.

And now in She's clearly been watching these teachings. Yeah, she must be watching these teachings. She must be listening. Thank God. [laughter] But she caught it on her own in that moment. And she said, "Heaven and earth reflecting each other." And I said, "Yes, Olivia." And here's my point.

If a 9-year-old can think that way, if a nine-year-old understands that that's what forgiveness is about, certainly we as adults can can think that way, too. Yes. And when we do that, we should be mindful. Literally mindful like Olivia was mindful. This forgiveness represented a reflection of heaven on earth.

We can do the same thing. Yes. And so sometimes we have to ask ourselves, who do we need to forgive? Or who do we need to go to and ask for forgiveness? Yeah. Or who can we encourage? Is there somebody's financial need that we can help meet? And when we do, we can be mindful and say, "Yes, I just bore God's image in the world because heaven and earth reflected one another in what I said and what I did."

I love that. Romans 12 actually says that. It says, "Don't repay evil for evil, but repay evil with good." Yeah. And you know, sometimes sometimes it's easy to get into the idea that we as Christians, this is a moral religion that we follow Jesus because we want to be good, moral, upstanding, ethical people.

Ethics matter, of course, and morals matter. Of course, Paul essentially, I mean, basically invented Christian ethics. But here's what I'll say. it it's for a larger purpose. The morals and ethics, it's not just be good for goodness sake. It's when we replace uh evil with good, we are aligning the will of heaven on the earth.

We are aligning heaven and earth together. And this is what Adam and Eve would were doing in the garden, should have kept doing in the garden um until Genesis 3, but they should have kept heaven and earth aligned. And so yes, do we, you know, when we say, you know, we want to do, we want to be moral, we want to be ethical.

Yeah. But why? Why do we want to be moral? Why does it matter following Jesus? Because this is the nature of reality. That's what the word truth means. Jesus used the Aramaic word for truth is reality. This is what reality is. There is a heaven. There is an earth.

And God wants them both aligned. there is a true and living God uh that we can't see physically but he he has given us this vocation and this purpose on the earth and so because we act in moral and ethical ways um which is replacing evil with good um we are able to align heaven and earth only by the spirit only by the power of the spirit through the life of Jesus Christ um Jesus didn't come to just give us a good moral example.

He gave us a very the very substance of his spirit to walk in his ways, to walk with him in that in shaping the earth. Yeah. And that's and I know, you know, we say this so often, but this lens cannot be overstated that this isn't just a moral thing we're trying to do.

It is aligning heaven and earth, which is the purpose of humanity. That's why we've been created. And when we do that, we are participating in the image of God. Yeah. I And I think that's the highest honor God could have given any creature. Yes. And he gave it to us that we would be the agents by which we live and order the world so that heaven and earth reflect one another and aligned with one another.

And I think that when those moments happen, when you see two people reconcile or where you see somebody's need being met or somebody encouraged when they've been discouraged, it should be celebrated. And why why should we celebrate these moments? That's what Olivia and I did. We celebrated the fact that they came together and it was resolved.

Yes. Why should we celebrate when we bear the image of God? Why should we celebrate when heaven and earth are aligned? because that is the ultimate worship to God. Yes, that's good. That's good. From God's perspective, when when a human being works and lives in the world where heaven is reflected, that's the highest praise and worship we can give God.

Yes. In our service to bear his image is worship. In fact, when we look in the scripture, the in the original language, both in the Hebrew and the Old Testament and the Greek and the New, the word worship is also the word service. Yeah, it's really saying the exact same thing.

To make my point, let's look at Romans 12:1. Romans 12 verse one. Now, this is at the NIV, and I want to show you what the NIV and what the King James version does with this verse. Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

This is your true and proper worship. But now listen to how it how it's read in the King James. These are the last few words of Romans 12:1 in the King James. He it says, "Which is your reasonable service." Mhm. NIV says worship, King James says service. Which one is it?

It's either one because the translation of that original word can be translated as worship or service. Yep. So what's the point? The point is this. Every time we bear image, it is a service and a worship to God. Yes, it is. that when heaven and earth align in that moment, it's the highest praise we could give God.

Now, of course, it's true that worship is also raising our hands and singing songs to God. That's that's worship. But the Bible actually says a lot, maybe even more about this type of worship where your whole life is a worship to God because you're living in the world in such a way where earth creation itself can see the God of heaven.

Yes. In and through your life. So when we see like my daughter and her classmate reconcile, we actually see the two of them worshiping God together. Yeah. And that's how we should see when we forgive somebody, that is a praise going up. When we ask for forgiveness, that is a praise going up.

That's good. I have a friend of mine who owns a transmission company and they work on cars and one of the I mean the the great thing that they do is they serve other human beings in a way that helps them get to work every day. Mhm. Mhm.

And we were talking about that and we were talking about Yes. the the the worship and praise of reading the Bible, the worship and praise of singing songs, the worship and praise of prayer, the worship and praise of meditation before the Lord, worship and praise of of memorizing scripture, using our mind to love God.

I'm a big fan. Also, um the the idea that that uh they would do a great job on cars. Also the idea that somebody who made this table would make it for the glory of God, right? That is aligning heaven and earth. The person who made this table um was acting as a human being was acting as the agent of order in God's world.

Now whether they know know that or not, that's why they were created. But when we to the glory of God in our hearts, when we understand that we are doing these things, if I were to make this table and I'm doing it because because of the kingdom, because um I want to honor the Lord Jesus Christ, I am aligning heaven and earth.

Why? Because I'm allowing this table to either be for a teaching podcast or at Lakewood Church or to help a family eat dinner together. And that is a worship and service to God. It all matters. And so I I love that. I I really like talking about that particular word in Romans 12:1.

I like talking about in the Old Testament and the New Testament, the the Hebrew and the Greek comparative words because it is and it shows us that um worship is being done in all facets of our life throughout the day. And it is a it is a praise to God.

Yeah, it is a praise to God. And we are many times and let's go back to what we were talking about earlier. The words we use the words [clears throat] we use. No other creature uh in the earth uses words. We're the ones who sum up all of creation. My dog doesn't talk to me.

She thinks she does, but she doesn't talk to me. Um that that is a uniquely human thing to take these sounds and put them in order with these alphabet letters and we create ways to communicate with each other in different languages. And and so anyway, I I just think it's interesting that um that everything we do matters like that.

But but small little things that we do every day that we don't realize is aligning heaven and earth. But I will say this, have you ever had that moment? I just want to ask anybody watching, have you ever had that moment where you're sitting at a dinner with with a friend you haven't talked to in years.

And maybe you have this back and forth moment and they they open up their heart and you open up your heart and you have this connection and you talk about old stories and you reminisce and you reflect and you do all of these things and you share a meal together and then you encourage one another.

You edify one another and then you walk away and you go, [gasps] [sighs] I felt the presence of God. Mhm. Well, you weren't in church. We weren't singing songs. We weren't preaching the word. We weren't praying. All of those really important. Why? Because in that moment, in a very real downto- earthth way, you were bringing heaven and earth together as a human being with another human being.

And that's that's worship to God. It's service unto him to to edify, to build up, to encourage one another even through a meal with our words, with our presence. And you walk away from that feeling the presence of God. And it's because it's because in that moment heaven and earth was being aligned.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think so. So when we talk about what is the image of God, the image of God is basically we as human beings are in Christ. We might say it's a restored image of God. And our job is to live and to work and to speak in the world in such a way where heaven and earth align.

And when we do that, it is a praise going up to God. And so I just would encourage in in closing for our listeners is who can you forgive or who could you ask forgiveness for? Is there somebody's need that you could meet? Is there somebody you can encourage?

And when you do it, you're bearing God's image and a worship is going up to him. And here's what I would encourage everybody. Anytime we do something along those lines where heaven and earth align, we should mark it in our minds and say, "Yes, this is exactly why God put me here."

And to live out that larger vision is true life. That's where we find the meaning of life in the small day-to-day things. What we and what we realize is there's really no such thing as mundane. You can express your image, your the the image of God, of who you are in the smallest of things.

And every small thing is actually a large worship going up to God. Yes, it is. That's good. So there you go. That's good. Thank you. Awesome. Appreciate it, man.