The puzzle of humanity has a moral dimension. We are capable of acts of great compassion and even heroic virtue. Some even sacrifice their lives to rescue others in peril. Yet some deep stain of corruption still plagues human life. The evidences of the darkness of the human heart are pervasive in human history, yet such darkness still surprises us. Something seems to have gone dreadfully wrong.
Where can we go for help as we wrestle with this riddle? We must go to God if we are to find the answer to this most baffling riddle. For God our creator has spoken to us through his Word and has revealed his answer to the human dilemma. He spoke both of our dignity and our depravity. And, as importantly, he also revealed the one way that human depravity can be destroyed and human dignity established through divine redemption.
In the second sermon in the "Human" series, we turn to the first chapter of Genesis to understand what it means to be created in God's image. The Bible declares that every human being is worthy of dignity and respect by virtue of their being image-bearers of the Creator God. This means that we practice no violence of curse none of God's image-bearers. Our bearing of God's image points us ultimately to Christ who is the very Image of God. As Christians, Christ is transforming us into His image through the work of the Holy Spirit within us.
In this introduction to our new series, "Humanity: Divinely Designed; Divinely Defined" Pastor Dan asks the question, "Who Tells You Who You Are?". It is argued from Genesis 3, that only God has the authority to define us, for He is the One who has designed us.
Heb. 13:17 Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.
The Spirit directed the author of Hebrews in chapter 13 to say some things regarding our worship. This makes sense because he has argued in the book that the Old Covenant and its outward forms has been fulfilled in Christ and set outside, so how do we worship now? In verses 7-16, we in fact find some words to us regarding our corporate worship.
What transfers? Contentment. The command to find our security and satisfaction in the Lord rather than in our possessions or our pocketbook. We are content with what we have and what can never be taken from us: God's covenantal presence. That’s what carries over from the Old Covenant to the New. Just as God was with his covenant people then, He is with his covenant people now. Just as he promised to be with them in the face of opposition then, he promises to be with us in our pocketbook persecution now.
Why join a church? The Book of Hebrews draws to a close with a description of the New Covenant Community, and a prescription that those who are called by the Lord be in community with one another in local churches.
See that’s the irony. We find it so difficult to share our thoughts from the pits of life with one another, yet we have an entire book of the Bible - the longest book of the Bible - filled with these prayers from the pit. This summer we’re going to be working through some of these psalms, hopefully praying and memorizing some of these psalms, for they are our prayer book, given to us by God. One commentator writes: “The Psalms show us how to pray out in words (spoken or written) our deepest hurts and longings, our struggles that leave us anxious or angry, our confessions of guilt, and our joyful thanks and praise so that we share all of our life experiences with our God who listens and responds. We lay out whatever it is that we feel and then we put our confidence in God.”
This brings us to today’s question. Do we have now what they wrote then? This is one of the most common objections raised to the bible, particularly by Muslims and skeptics. And the idea is this, that Peter or the other Biblical authors may indeed have written something, yet over the centuries, and indeed very early on, the scriptures were copied, and then they were copied again, and then copied some more, and as they were copied they were corrupted, altered, changed, edited, revised, added to, etc, so the bottom line is that the Bible cannot be trusted as the Word of God. So the question is this, when i hold up the Bible and say, the word of God says, or the apostle Peter wrote … is what we have in our hands really what was written thousands of years ago.
J. Warner Wallace is a cold-case homicide detective. That means he investigates murders that were never solved but are then re-opened at a later time. Cold-cases have little or no hard forensic evidence, and so eyewitness statements are particularly important. Whether re-interviewing previous witnesses or identifying and interviewing new witnesses, the analysis of their testimony is critical to the possible closure of the case. Consequently, Jim Wallace was trained in ‘Forensic Statement Analysis’ – that is the scientific analysis of witness statements to determine their truth and reliability. He was used to analysing evidence and in particular knew what to look for in a reliable eyewitness statement.
