What is Man?

As we continue this short series on the Psalms in Pastor Brian's absence, it is a delight to be with you folks here today. And we're going to be looking at Psalm 8. We have another Psalm we'll be looking at next Lord's Day, but this morning it's Psalm 8. A Psalm that you noticed was quoted in that Hebrews text that John read earlier today, and so we will make a connection between that particular use of that Psalm in the book of Hebrews. But this morning, the Word of God from Psalm 8. And we will sing this at the conclusion of our sermon this morning, too, to reinforce that.

Psalm 8, let's hear the word of God. 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 babes and infants. You have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at the 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 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. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Father, if this is your word, it speaks to us what it means to be a human being created in your image. We pray that we would be guided, instructed, challenged, comforted by your word, that we would remember it is your word and we are under its authority, not over it, that you would give me words to say that are the words you want us to hear today, that it would be your word that would be in the forefront of our thinking. We thank you for giving it to us today, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.

Sermon

We live in a culture that is constantly challenging us and the long-held assumptions of our culture and its basis in a Judeo-Christian perspective. It's really become a rage among those who hold traditional Christian assumptions to be challenged. If you don't think that, just think of just a couple of months ago when it's been all over the media, and you certainly have heard about this, about Charlie Kirk, the young Christian man who not only was involved in political things, but he clearly had a Christian testimony, and there was a strong Christian component to what he was doing. And someone didn't like that, so they snuffed out his life. If that doesn't remind you that there are people who just absolutely can't stand in every way a traditional Christian understanding, we need to be shaken out of our complacency.

And among the most pressing ones today that people will bring up are things like environmental issues, pro-life issues, gender issues. And what's significant is we think of those issues in particular In all three of those particular issues, a biblical understanding of what it means to be made in the image of God is the foundation of our opposition to much of what our culture says. And what much of which our culture is loudly screaming at us, they don't want to believe. And yet, if we understand that we are creatures made in the image of God, or as this Psalm says, what in the world is man? that you set your heart upon him. This is clearly a crucial issue today and sometimes can catch us off guard. Just a few years ago already, there was a British physician who was dismissed from his position because he was committed to the biblical truth that Genesis 127 being made in male and female and the image of God was incompatible with transgenderism. And you know what, they dismissed him on what grounds? His beliefs were incompatible with human dignity. That's what they said. His beliefs were incompatible with human dignity. And I'm going to argue today on the basis of the Psalm, it's just the opposite. It's those who would challenge the biblical Christian view of what a human being is, who are incompatible with true human dignity.

And helping to putting that truth about what it means to be made as a creature in the image of God, is crucial because unbelievers may try to deny it, but intuitively I believe they understand that they are creatures made in the image of God. Why? It's part of what the late Francis Schaeffer used to call the manishness of man. Now that's kind of a silly sounding phrase until you understand. He's saying people understand that they are creatures made in the image of God. It's part of what is intuitively in their DNA. And in spite of the opposition of this ramrod of assaults from our culture, which seems to some ways oscillate back and forth between, they will talk about, well, we're just the high most evolved being, we're just products of time, space and chance, which basically means we aren't really worth that much. They'll oscillate to the other extreme and said, we're captains of our own fate. We can be what we want to be. Have you ever noticed that? They go back and forth, back and forth when it happens to be convenient. Even atheists understand this.

150 years ago, the prominent atheist German philosopher who still has an impact today, Friedrich Nietzsche, said very clearly that there was little notion of human dignity if you got rid of the notion that we were made in the image of God. But he dismissed it. And he said, therefore, there's really nothing dignified about human beings. All there is is raw power. That's what he said, all there is is raw power, and we seek to impose that raw power on others.

Well, the biblical pattern is this, we are created in the image of God, but fallen creatures. And if we get that right, if we understand that, it goes a long way to giving us that foundation to live as Christian believers in this culture. And I don't know of any other passage that deals with it in such an interesting way as this Psalm 8. which is really a commentary on the creation account that we are made in the image of God. There are three truths we're going to focus on this morning found in this passage that'll help us understand what does it mean that we are creatures made in the image of God.

First Point

The first truth is that God's majesty is the standard of comparison. Did you notice how this Psalm Begins and ends. Oh Lord our Lord How majestic is your name and all the earth you have set your glory above the heavens and it ends How Oh Lord our Lord how majestic is your name and all the earth in other words all the content of this is like a sandwich the middle of a sandwich and And those statements are the bread at the end of the sandwich that holds it together. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Or as one translation puts it, how magnificent is your name. I like that. How magnificent is your name. Now David begins using, he says, oh Lord, our Lord. You've probably noticed that it's first Lord has capital letters, the second Lord has smaller letters. That's because David is using two different words here. The first one in the capital letters is that divine name, Yahweh. Or the old translations were Jehovah, which was both are guesses because the Jewish people stopped saying it because they didn't wanna take the Lord's name in vain. But that was the name that was revealed to Moses in the burning bush, Yahweh, the four-lettered name. Yahweh, God's covenant name.

But he goes on to say, our Lord. That's a word that means master or sovereign. Yahweh, the personal God, but also the sovereign God. And that's gonna be important as he unfolds because the Lord is personal with a name, just like we are creatures made in the image of God and we are distinct and we each have a name. There's something each distinct about each of us, but God has also given us mastery. over this creation, set us a little lower than the angels and given us dominion. We reflect the image of God.

First Point

But the main point of this text then about humanity of this first point is sandwiched between statements about the splendor of God, and that runs throughout the whole psalm. God's glory, the visible manifestation of the one who is even greater than the heavens. He compares these, he says, verse three, when I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, what is man that you are mindful of? What the psalmist here is saying is go look out, look at the heavens, look at the stars, the sun, the moon, compare yourself to them. Other psalms will talk about the grandeur of creation. You know? Even out in rural Iowa here, you still got the farm lights, you got little things that can dim that, but pretend like you're out in the Rocky Mountains someplace, and you're at a high elevation, and you look up, and you see on a clear night, and it's like thousands of stars out there, and you see the sun and the moon, and in the daytime, you've seen the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. That's what the psalmist is saying. That is part of what God has made. This God that we are compared to he asked the question of what in the world are What is man that you were mindful to this creator God?

But the glory of God that is the foundation Why is humanity then so significant We have to remember we are compared to a powerful sovereign God. Now that should remind us, of course, of that text that most of us have memorized in Sunday school or if we took a class on personal evangelism, Romans 3.23. For all have sinned and what? Fallen short of the glory of God. But that's speaking about the glory, how we fall in short because of sin.

But even apart from human sin, we have fallen short of the glory of God. And there's a foundational truth that runs through the Christian religion that we need to remember. There's a God, it's not us. There's a God and it's not us. I can go down each one of you, and I could point my finger at each one of you and say, remember, there's a God, it's not you, and you, or you, or you, or you, or you. The psalmist begins and ends with this. Oh Lord, oh Lord, how majestic is your name. in all the earth.

Our self-perception must always begin with God as the majestic sovereign creator. And whenever we lose sight of that, we are sure to become confused and misunderstand. Now, biblical characters had to discover this. The Book of Job is a classic example of this. Remember Job, the guy whose bottom fell out of his world? Everything that could go wrong went wrong and he's sitting there scraping the Sores off of him himself and then he's got a wife at first tells him curse God and die Not too much help there and then he has these friends these comforters who come and they come and they tell him, you know, Job I I think the problem is, is you're a bad sinner. Because bad things always happen to bad people. That's their thinking. Bad things always happen to bad people. And you've had the bottom drop out, so you must be really a rotten guy, Job. Repent.

And Job goes and he says, you know, well, I'm not sure I did all that many rotten things that all of this should have happened to me. And he cries out to God and he says, I want to have an accounting with you, Lord. I wonder where all these bad things happened to me. And there's a fourth comfort that comes. He's a little bit better, but he's not too good either. And then the Lord appears and he talks to Job. And he tells him, sort of pull up your pants, Job, and listen to me. I got some words for you. And he doesn't ever answer Job's complaint. What does he say? Where were you when I made this? He gives him a National Geographic travel log. Where were you when I made this? Where were you when I made this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this? And he just goes through the whole of creation, and he says, Job, remember, I'm God, you're not. You don't call me out and say, why in the world is this happening to me? You don't say, I need an answer from you, Lord, because he never gives Job an answer. He says, remember, I'm God, you're not.

We will never, when we are faced with struggles in this world, ever be able to answer them completely because God has never, if he didn't answer Job, I don't think he'd believe he's gonna answer us. We trust the Lord, but we recognize like Job when he says, I have to repent. I didn't know in the world I was talking about. We start with this sovereign, glorious majesty of God.

Now, You know, there's some people who, some of the, especially many people, I mean, especially the extremes in the environmental movement will all talk about the fact that we're going to save the earth. You hear that kind of language? We're gonna save the earth sometimes. Well, we are not going to save the earth because we ourselves need saving. We are his vice regents, very important. but we are not going to save the earth. We are made in the image of God, but we are not God. And the Psalm reminds us of that. The fact of sin only heightens that truth. We fall short of the glory of God. And coming back to that basic foundation is crucial for us. We need a savior just as this earth does.

Now we are to take care of this earth. Absolutely. We are to be people that recognize that we are stewards over this creation. We are not its saviors. Now we can get cynical about that sometimes because sometimes there are people who will look and point at the hypocrisy of some people that they'll talk about they're gonna save the earth and then as, you know, somebody called them the white wine and cheese crowd, they get in their fancy private jet and fly all over the place and we get cynical about that. But we are called to take care of this earth. No doubt about that. The late Francis Schaeffer, the reformed thinker who of an earlier generation said, we ought to expect some substantial healing because that's what we are to do. We are to take care of this earth. But we are not its saviors. We ourselves need saviors. And we recognize that God is the sovereign.

Second Point

But the second point we want to see is that humanity is the high point in God's creation. The main focus of this text is on the fact that we are made in the image of God and crowned with glory and honor and a little lower than the heavenly beings or a little lower than the angels, the text can be translated both ways.

Now, the image of God, which is what this is talking about here, is a notoriously difficult doctrine of the Bible to nail down because the Bible doesn't give us a specific definition It just gives us little snippets of what it means to be made in the image of God. Now, a lot of people have suggested some things, but some of these are biblically problematic. One of the most common ones that you'll hear from lots of people is, we're image of God because we have a soul. The problem with that is, is that the Hebrew word for soul basically means life, and the animals are described as having a soul as well. That's true. The animals are described, it just simply means the life force that's within you. If you're going to say we're different because we have a soul, the Bible also says the animals have souls because they have a life force within them. So that's not particularly helpful.

Others have said, well, it's because we are rational creatures. That's what, as opposed to just the instinct that the other animals do or Some false cults like the Mormons have said, it's because we have a body. And they developed a whole false doctrine off the fact that we have a body. And they believe God is a body. And they've developed the idea that we all can become God someday and reproduce and have spirit children. It's a bizarre set of beliefs. But it starts with the foundationally wrong principle that being made in the image of God means we have a body.

Well, how do we take these snippets of biblical truth and integrate them together in what the image of God? Well, a better understanding would be relational capacity. When you look at Genesis 1, what does it say? He made them male and female. What do males and females do? God intended them to relate. to relate together, the relational capacity. How does that reflect the image of God? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally relating. You ever thought about this? The Trinity is really an eternal love triangle between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Eternally, Father loves the Son, Son loves the Spirit, Spirit loves the Father, eternal love relations. That's why theologians, famous theologians as early as Augustine argued that Love is at the center of the Christian faith because the Trinity is an eternal loving being. Our God is an eternal loving being. So when scripture says God is love, only a Trinitarian theology can say God is love. You know, Muslims can't really say God is love. Why? Because who in the world before he created man did God have to love? Nobody. He was there a solitary being by himself, one person. But our triune God eternally loving within the Trinity.

Dominion has been suggested, and this text picks up on that. This is one of the aspects of the image of God. He created us to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth.

That's in the first chapter and second chapters of Genesis. Dominion, that means taking care and being fruitful and multiplying. Somebody said that part of it is we've carried out. We've been fruitful and multiply, but we haven't always taken care of the earth. Sometimes people have raped and pillaged the earth.

bringing the earth under cultivation. Some of you work in agriculture. You are making the earth fruitful and seeing it multiply in its produce. Dominion is obviously highlighted in this passage here. He says, what is man that you were mindful him, yet you've made him a little lower than the angels and you've given him dominion over the works of your hands.

Yet I think we need to go back even a little further and say, at the root of what it means to be made in the image of God is that God simply says, we are special. We are special. I think that gets at the very bottom of it. God has said, we, as a human being, are created distinct and special from all the rest of the creation. And all those other capacities that come in are there.

Now, if you look in the New Testament, for example, in Ephesians 4.24 and Colossians 3.10, it will say that we are being renewed in knowledge and righteousness in the image of God. And you say, okay, well, how do we integrate that in? Well, we were created in true knowledge. and true righteousness. Adam and Eve weren't confirmed in it. They had a test and they flunked the test to be confirmed into that. But they were created sinless. And redemption is the restoration of that aspect of the image of God.

Now, what most reformed theologians have done then is to distinguish between what they call the narrow definition of the image of God and the broader definition of the image of God. The broader definition aspect, rather, are those moral characters, true righteousness and true holiness. Those have been lost, but that very core that we are special, and that we are given dominion and given glory and honor, those haven't been lost.

Some Christian traditions have said we've lost the image of God. Our Lutheran brethren, for example, say the image of God is gone in us and God has to totally restore it because it's gone. Well, how do you, the passages in Colossians and Ephesians talks about restoring, not making it all new. Others have said, Well, it's all here, and so they've argued that because we're made in the image of God, we're fully capable to respond without much grace to the call of the gospel. Both of those are flawed, I believe. If we've lost the image of God, how can we have dominion? But if the image of God hasn't at least been lost partially, why in the world do we need grace to restore it?

However, as I said, this text here particularly talks about the dominion because we are made in the image of God. And the word that's used here for dominion has the idea that the creation is going to push back at us and it's going to resist our efforts. The fall has made that so much worse. But we looked at, we read actually, John read Hebrews chapter two. And Hebrews two is a beautiful text that is a commentary on this text. And when you think about it, did you listen, hear when John read that passage? I love the way the author of Hebrews says, he doesn't explicitly say Psalm 8. He says, somewhere it is written. I love the way he does that. Somewhere it is written. And he knew good and well that it was Psalm 8. I'm sure he was absolutely aware of that, but he uses this interesting language. Somewhere it is written, what is man, that you are mindful of him, and the son of man, that you could care for him, yet you've crowned him with glory and honor. And then the psalmist says, but I look around and I say, I don't see man crowned with glory and honor. I see a bent and broken world. How in the world can this Psalm be true? What's going on?

That's what the author of the book of Hebrews is saying. And then he has this interesting little turn. He says, but I see Jesus crowned with glory and honor. I see Jesus who came and entered into this bent and broken world. He tasted death for us. He lived, he says, but he conquered death. He rose again. He's seated at the right hand of the Father. And therefore this psalm can be fulfilled because Jesus came into our bent and broken existence.

An existence in which we were given dominion. We were supposed to be God's agents on earth and we botched it up big time. But in the midst of that, Jesus comes in, pays the penalty for all the ways we botched it up, and triumphed over the evil one, and has now ascended and seated at the right hand of the Father, and one day will come back and make all things new. He's saying, that is how this text can get fulfilled. That's how we as creatures made in the image of God, we're supposed to have dominion in this world. but have botched it so badly, we look to Jesus, the one who makes dominion possible.

Paul alludes to this same text in 1 Corinthians 15. He assures us that all the moral qualities to restore the image of God will be restored to us. Colossians 1 talks about the fact that Jesus is exalted and ruling and restoring all things in the creation. That's why, as Reformed Christians, when we talk about the five solas of the Reformation, we talk about solus Christus, Christ alone, because we're saying it's in Christ that all these things are restored.

Now, the world seems to mock our rightful attempts to bring this world under dominion. Those of you who farm know that every spring, You put that herbicide down. You spend a lot of money putting herbicide down. Why in the world do you put the herbicide down? Because you're in a battle with the weeds. Where did the weeds come in? Because the fall says that we will fight against weeds. Adam was told, you're gonna fight against the weeds. That should be a reminder to you that this world is bent and broken.

But the fact that Jesus is victor, that Jesus is exalted, should give you hope. And even if this creation is groaning, as Romans 8 says, one day it will stop groaning, and the cultural mandate will be complete under Christ.

There's an old hymn that's called In My Father's World, and it has this phrase, that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. If the Christian view of dominion is lost, we will continue to see humble perversions. What kind of perversions? Well, there was a Princeton University professor who said, literally, you know what? Human beings are worth nothing more than a cockroach. He called it speciesism. And so we shouldn't be worried. We shouldn't be putting people on a pedestal. I guarantee you though that Mr. Singer, that was his name, if he was walking and he had a choice between a little baby that was going to get hit by a car or the cockroach was going to get smashed, I guarantee you I know what he would do. He would grab the little baby and let the cockroach get smashed. Because I think intuitively he understood, yes, human beings have value. Whether then it's under, care for the earth, or exaggerated notions of saving the earth, or speciesism, or all of these other perversions, understanding that we are made in the image of God, fallen, given a task, but going to be redeemed. That's important. It's this promise of the ultimate victory in Christ that ought to be the main encouragement to keep on attempting to carry out the cultural mandate.

Now, I want to just talk for a couple of minutes of how this relates to a particularly important thing in our culture, the transgender issue. Because there are some people who say, well, if we're given this task of being rulers over the earth, and someone comes to me and says, I'm in the wrong body. I'm a boy, I was born a boy, but I think I'm a girl. Isn't that dominion over the creation and to say, let's convert you from a boy into a girl, and I would argue that's an absolute perversion of the creation mandate.

Because maleness and femaleness are part of the relational aspect of the image of God, and attempts to defy the way God made us is not dominion in the biblical sense. You can't play one aspect of the image of God off of the other, and I believe that that is what that would be trying to do. Transgenderism seeks to make who we essentially are as something optional that we can manipulate at will for our own pleasure. And it really has what I would call, to use the technical terms, a utilitarian and hedonistic ethic.

Well, you might say, what does that mean? Utilitarian says whatever works is right. Hedonistic says whatever makes me feel good is what is right. And it overlooks the fact that this maleness and femaleness are part of the givenness of the created order. God has designed maleness and femaleness into us. Yes, both male and female each reflects, those of us who are male or female reflect the image of God, each one of us. But we were made to reflect it in a complementary sort of way. As image bearers created to procreate and make under, with God's, mysterious way of life, more image bearers, which the transgender movement really at its heart denies.

We shouldn't see our sexuality as something to be manipulated for our pleasure. Ultimately, as we're finding out, such attempts at manipulating really don't bring pleasure at all, but they bring despair. Now, you're going to hear people say things like this, I'm trapped in the wrong body. And if you don't help these people out, they'll get suicidal or they'll be full of despair. This is spoken all the time. I guarantee you that it's out there in the culture. And if you're thinking, I'm here in Southeast Iowa, rural community, maybe I homeschool or send my kids to Christian schools so they don't even go to the public school, they're not gonna run into that. They will. Because not far away from here, it's in the public schools, not far away from here. It's here. The kids see it online.

One of the things I do in my retirement, periodically I score some test essays for the ACT exam. And I can guarantee you, The teenagers of this world, a high percentage of them really talk about it's oppressive if you don't buy into this transgender movement. And they say so in their essays. They write it in ways that you don't even realize. It just pops up. Today's teenagers are buying heavily into this idea. I'm convinced going against God's created order will only bring more despair.

I saw a little podcast recently by someone who was what they call a de-transitioner. You say, what in the world is that? That's someone, a young man who was a college student who started to transition to, he started taking hormones to being a female. Now, fortunately, his parents would not go along with surgery because he wanted it. And he all of a sudden had an awakening moment and is de-transitioning away from that. But he tells his story, and it's a very interesting story.

He says most of those in his school and community did nothing but encourage him and tell him, rah, rah, go ahead. Be who you can want to be. If you think you're a girl, be a girl. It wasn't until he finally accidentally said something in one of his college classes as a college freshman that wasn't woke or politically correct, whatever term you want to be, and everyone turned against him in the class that he realized how socially conditioned All of this was. He said it was like being in a cult, where all he heard was reinforcement from everyone around him. He said when he was in suburban Boston, he said every place he went, he would see little posters everywhere encouraging all of this. So it's out there in the culture.

He said that among this movement, there's almost like an evangelistic zeal, he didn't use that term, but that's what he described, to, the phrase they used was crack the egg. That's a way of saying that there are all sorts of people out there who really at heart are trans and you just have to crack the egg and help them come out and understand who they really are. And he said in his high school after he came out, by the time he graduated, one sixth of his high school class all identified that they were trans. That's hard for us to imagine, but that was the case.

What does this mean is that we need to clearly teach that God made us male and female to reflect the image of God, and that culturally driven attempts to defy that are rebellion against God, even when pleasure is promised, because that at its root is what it's saying. You'll feel better. If you think you're really a girl, even though you were created a male, if you transition to take hormones and eventually surgery so you can become a girl. The evil one promises all sorts of pleasures for sin, doesn't he? He promises pleasure for sin all the time. And what is the end result? Despair. Despair. This is what these kids eventually get. And when you talk to detransitioners, they will say that. I was promised that my life would be good, and he said, all I did was mess up my life big time. And yet the culture is constantly reinforcing this.

So this is a wrong application of dominion, to say we can manipulate our bodies and do whatever we want by taking hormones or doing surgery. That's not what in the world dominion meant. It means that this world is to be taken care of, it's to be cultivated, but not that we should be able to bend it in any way that we want. Now, we're always gonna be frustrated in this, there's always gonna be sin, but the final consummation is coming and we can rejoice in that.

But the last point this passage is to teach us about is that even the lowest human beings silence God's opponents. Did you read what it says here? Out of the mouth of babes and infants, you've established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger. This is an oftentimes overlooked portion of this psalm, the lips of infants and children. Infants, what in the world can infants say? They say goo-goo or something like that. Isn't that true? What in the world does an infant say? Goo-goo. They're cute, but they say goo-goo. And the psalmist says that's going to silence the lips of God's enemies. Calvin makes a comment in this, and he says, the babes and sucklings are advocates powerful enough to vindicate the providence of God.

Now, this has some very important implications. Because those of us who are tempted to define the image of God in terms of rationality, or being rational creatures, if one thing you notice about little infants, not only do they just say goo-goo, they aren't particularly rational to discuss with.

Now, if you've got a little baby, and you came up to him, and then you say, now, little Susie, I just want to let you know, mama is really busy right now, and in about five minutes, I will come and take care of your needs. What does little Susie say? She yells and screams all the louder, I want you to take care of my need now, right now, not wait. Right now and mommy says just a little Susie. Just wait a second You know that the dinner is gonna get burned if I don't take care of it first and turn it up What does little Susie go? Wow louder

There's it's so you can't define the image of God in terms of rational memories have been driven to this if you're from my generation you remember Walt Disney had that little Jiminy Cricket character and Some of you, I think, remember that. And what did Jiminy Cricket sing? You are a human animal. You are a very special breed. You are a human animal. You can what? Think, you can reason, you can read. That's a way of saying what makes us distinct as human beings is because we got a brain. We can use that brain.

There was one really well-known evangelical theologian. He even became his visiting professor when I was in seminary. Brilliant man. He defined the image of God in terms of rationality And you know what? One of the implications of that for him is that he was willing to abort children that had certain kinds of things where their brains didn't function well, because he said, well, they aren't really human. If you can't think, you aren't really human. That shows the error of that thinking.

The text says, these little humans who can only say goo-goo and demand instant gratification are bearing the image of God in such a glorious way, a powerful way, that they can shut down God's opponents. The Bible regularly shows respect for embryos, for example. Psalm 139, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. We laugh about that in our family because if I'm in the other room and walk in and my dear wife Jenny is on her laptop computer and she's laughing, I will say to her, you're watching videos of the babies again, aren't you? She said, yeah, I like the babies. And she does, she likes to watch these little, and the babies do the cutest little things. But those little creatures are made in the image of God, and they're silencing.

Jesus even quotes that in the triumphal entry. He quotes this psalm. And you remember, what was the event there? Jesus was coming in, marching in, and the children were singing, Hosanna, Hosanna to the son of David. And his opponents came to him and, do you hear what these kids are saying? Shut them up. Shut them up, they said to Jesus. And what did Jesus say? If the little kids don't cry out, the rocks are gonna cry out. The little kids understood, Jesus is saying. At the root then, this is saying, little children as much as brilliant adults. Because if you think about it, if the image of God is primarily in rationality, then Einstein probably bore the image of God more than you or I. But Einstein did not bear the image of God any more than a little tiny child. All of us are image bearers of God.

The very existence of these little human beings and the fact that they demonstrate the image of God is such a wonderful thing. It shows that God is wonderful and powerful enough to have made such delightful creatures. That has implications for pro-life things such as abortion.

Why in the world do Christians oppose abortion? At its root, it's because we recognize they are creatures made in the image of God. At the root of all cheapening of respect for human life is an attack on these little creatures. as made in the image of God. Attack on the truth that God says we are special apart from any utilitarian value.

You might say, what in the world are you talking about? What's a utilitarian value? It's saying that a creature only has value if it can do something that's of value to other people. And you might say, what in the world can a little baby who can just sit there and to make demands and go goo-goo, what value does that baby have? Well, it has value because God says that baby has value and it's made in the image of God.

All rationalizations for abortion, let alone euthanasia and infanticide are utilitarian. Euthanasia is the same thing. My ancestors came from the Netherlands and unfortunately, a large percentage of the devout Christians left that country and it became very secularized. And one of the things that reports keep coming back is that elderly people are afraid to go to the hospital if they're really sick.

Why? Because the They've overheard doctors saying to the nurses, well, the hospital is filled up. We don't have any beds. Give that patient an overdose of morphine so we can have an extra bed. That's the truth. There have been reports, clear reports of that.

Why? Because they're forgetting that whether it's an infant or an elderly person that is barely functioning, they are still made, creatures made in the image of God.

Yes? Death is a reality in this bent and broken world. And we don't want to prolong suffering for those whom God is calling home. But there's a difference between not giving the, every here, let me give you an example. If someone is clearly in the last days of their life, and they have a broken bone, and you could do surgery to heal the broken bone, but it's clear that they're dying, you don't put them through the extra pain and misery of a surgery to heal a broken bone when they're dying. That's called prolonging suffering.

But you don't go give them a shot of an overdose of morphine to, quote, put them out of their misery. You say God is in control of what is going on. They are creatures made in the image of God. You don't apply a utilitarian ethic that says someone is only valuable when they can do something for society that makes them valuable.

Human beings have value, even if they can't, quote, do anything. And that's what this psalm is saying. Even the little infants who go goo-goo are giving praise to God. Virtually every evolutionary view of humanity falls prey to this functional view of humanity, that people are only valuable if they can do something.

So we must say as loudly as we can that we care for human life in all of its forms. We have to expose some of this rhetoric. Now, I know there may be somebody here who say, well, I had an abortion or I have a good friend or a relative that had one. Does that mean that there's no grace for them? No, there's grace. The gospel is still there. The gospel says you can be forgiven, but that doesn't downplay the fact that it is sin and that we need to recognize that.

We must expose, just as we expose these wrong views on other areas, we must expose the rhetoric for what it is that personal and political expediency hides under euphemisms that are really cowardly, and says, well, we're trying to help somebody. I mean, this poor young lady had a baby out of wedlock, and it would be a burden on her life. Well, what about the little child that she's carrying? Is it or is it not a creature made in the image of God? That needs to trump all questions about a burden that it would put on somebody because the society can help somebody who has difficulties and you don't put a little one to death simply because it's going to put a burden, quote, on somebody else.

We need to encourage respect for life by supporting people in authority and those involved on the front lines of trying to help those who are tempted to fall for this false rhetoric against the image of God.

To summarize then what this text is teaching us is this. We are made in the image of God. God reminds us that God's majesty is the standard of comparison, but we are still the high points of creation. Even the youngest and lowest human beings shout out God's glory, even in this bent and fallen world. Let's take this truth seriously and allow it to color everything we do.

And remember, you and I and the little babies and the elderly people who have dementia, can't carry on a conversation with you, and everything else in between, each one of them are a creature made in the image of God. And God says they are special, just like he says you are special, and that should drive and color everything we do.

Closing Prayer

Well, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it speaks so clearly that we are creatures made in the image of God. And we ask and pray that we would live out of that reality, that we would not let our culture squeeze us into a mold that is wrong and sinful, but stand firm on the truth that we are valuable creatures made in the image of God, but we're not free to manipulate who we are. so that we deny how you have made us, Lord. We thank you for this truth from your word, in Jesus' name, amen.