Thank you for coming everybody. I know it's hard to have something right after the holidays and I always really appreciate it when the first Friday of January is like four or five days away from the first, but it was not that the way this year. So anyway, but I can't be sorry that this is how we're starting the new year. So that's good. 

Okay, so for the next few months until our break, we're going to be doing something a little bit different. We're going to have a study in practical theology. At least that's my goal, that it will be practical. Theology is important for all of us. I'm sure that you would all agree with that. We should know what we believe and we should know why we believe it, but it's equally important for us to practice our theology and not for it just to be something that we know. but for it to be something that actually makes a difference in how we live our lives. 

But it's one of those things we don't always know how to make that transition, how to take what we believe and make it practical. So my goal is to make this study applicable for us, including myself. All that to say, I'm really winging it here. So please be gracious. I'm not going to speak from my heart. I am not going to speak my truth. I hope I will speak God's truth. But hopefully, hopefully. This is all being recorded. 

Okay. So what are we actually going to be studying? And this was a topic that was suggested by Susan, so credit to her for coming up with it. And that is that we're going to focus on our purpose or why we're here, why we were created. Why are we here? Why are we still here? All of those sort of questions will be wrapped up into this, I hope. 

So the Westminster catechism, the shorter catechism at least, begins with this same question of what is our purpose? Only they phrase it slightly differently. They say, what is the chief end of man? And the answer is, of course, that man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And they pull that from three passages specifically when I look up the catechism. They had all the verses listed out, which I appreciated. Saved me the legwork. 

So 1 Corinthians 10.31. Whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. They also referenced Romans 11, 36. Another verse that was probably very familiar to you. For from him and through him and to him are all things to him be the glory forever. Amen. And then finally, Psalm 73. Huh? Psalm 73 verses 25 through 28 says, 

Whom have I in heaven but you? 
And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. 
My flesh and my heart may fail, 
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 
For behold, those who are far from you will perish. 
You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you. 
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good. 
I have made the Lord God my refuge, 
that I may tell of all your works. 

That's the, I think the key phrase there, that I may tell of all your works. 

So, the chief end of man, in sort of the most broad terms, is to glorify God, it is to bring glory to Him, and it is to tell of His works, to bring Him glory in that way. But as you sort of go through Scripture, as you read through Scripture, I think you find that there are two things that Scripture highlights as bringing God glory. And the first is that He is glorified as Creator. So God deserves and receives glory because he's the creator. The whole of creation, even just by its very existence, brings glory to God and declares his glory. We know that from Psalm 19. We're going to be doing a lot of flipping around tonight. So Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4. The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor their words. Their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their utterance is to the end of the world. In them he has placed a tent for the sun."

So the heavens. sort of the universe above our earth are declaring the glory of God. So the sky, but also literally heaven declares the glory of God.

Revelation 4, 11. I'll start in verse 10. Well, maybe in verse 9. Revelation 4, 9. And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, to him who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders will fall down before him who sits on the throne and will worship him who lives forever and ever and will cast their crowns before the throne saying, worthy are you, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power. Why? For you created all things and because of your will they existed and were created.

So creation brings glory to God. And it does so in two ways that scripture highlights. I think it Scripture talks about other ways too, but I think the two big ones are that God is glorified as creator by his power and by his providence. So we're going to look at a bunch of passages that talk about that.

So God is glorified in creation by his power. Psalm 29. I'm just gonna read the whole Psalm. A Psalm of David. Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the mighty, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name. Worship the Lord in holy array. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters. The God of glory thunders. The Lord is over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. Yes, the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Syrian like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord hues out flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the dearest calve and strips the forest bare. And in his temple, everything says glory. The Lord sat as king at the flood. Yes, the Lord sits as king forever. The Lord will give strength to his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace.

The picture of his great power over creation. For a very extended section, I won't read. I'll just read selected bits from this section. Job 38 through 41 highlights God's power in creation. So I'll start Job 38 in verse 4. The Lord says to Job and his friends, Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who set its measurements, since you know? Or who stretched the line on it? Or what words? or on what where its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning star sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy, or who enclosed the sea with doors when bursting forth it went out from the womb, when I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it and set a bolt in doors, and I said, thus far you shall come but no further, and here your proud wave shall stop. 

Have you ever in your life commanded the morning and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it? Or dropping down to verse 31 in that same chapter. Can you bind the chains of Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth a constellation in its season and guide the bear with her satellites? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens or fix their rule over the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that an abundance of water will cover you? Can you send forth lightnings that they may go and say to you, here we are? 

Or chapter 40, verse 9. Do you have an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like His? Dropping down to verses 15 through 19. Behold now behemoth, which I made as well as you. He eats grass like an ox. Behold now. His strength is in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly. He bends his tail like a cedar. The sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze. His limbs are like bars of iron. He is the first of the ways of God. Let his maker bring near his sword." 

So again, just these overwhelming power are pictures of God's power in his creation. It brings him glory. 

Isaiah chapter 40. One of my favorite chapters in the Bible. Isaiah 40 verses 21 through 26. Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but he merely blows on them and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble. To whom then will you liken me that I would be his equal, says the Holy One? Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars. The one who leads forth their host by number. He calls them all by name because of the greatness of his might and the strength of his power. Not one of them is missing." 

Romans 1.20, probably one of the clearest expressions that we have. that God as creator is glorified because of his power, Romans 1.20. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, having been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse. 

So creation glorifies God by his power. But it also glorifies him by his providence. In his providence, there's a lot of things we could talk about with God's providence. We had a whole study on it, actually. But the two sort of aspects of God's providence that bring him glory, as highlighted in scripture, are his faithfulness, that is his sort of sustaining work of creation, and then his goodness. 

So for his faithfulness, we get a picture of that all the way back in Genesis chapter eight. Verses 21 and 22. This is as Noah has just exited the ark and has built an altar for the Lord. It says, the Lord smelled the soothing aroma, and the Lord said to himself, I will never again curse the ground on account of man. For the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease. That describes God's sustaining work in his providence, keeping his creation going.

back to Job 38 through 41 again. I'll just highlight selected sections from there. Job 38, starting in verse 25. Who has cleft a channel for the flood or a way for the thunderbolt to bring rain on a land without people, on a desert without a man in it, to satisfy the waste and desolate land and to make the seeds of grass to sprout? 

And then 38, 39. Oh, that's not right. 38, 39. Can you hunt the prey for the lion or satisfy the appetite of the young lions when they crouch in their dens and lie in wait in their lair? Who prepares for the raven its nourishment when its young cry to God and wander about with food? Do you know the time the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the deer? Can you count the months they fulfill or do you know the time they give birth? They kneel down, they bring forth their young, they get rid of their labor pains. Their offspring become strong, they grow up in the open fields, they leave and do not return to them. 

So God is sustaining even the wildernesses where nobody dwells. He is faithful to make the plants grow. He's faithful to the wild animals to make sure that they're fed and that they have offspring. So he sustains his creation. 

Colossians 1.17, He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. speaking specifically of Christ, but in Him all things hold together. I feel like the more scientists learn about creation, the more they can't explain it. They can explain how it works maybe, they can explain what it does, but they can't explain why. But we know from Scripture why. It's because Christ is holding all things together. 

Hebrews 1.3, just the very first part of that verse, Hebrews 1.3, and he is the radiance of his glory, speaking again of Christ, he is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power. So he is the one who sustains all of creation, keeps it going so that we can do things like have microphones and sit in chairs and know that we can drive here. 

All right. But God isn't just sort of like making sure everything sticks together. And that's just sort of it. He's good. He's good in doing that. And we know that from Christ himself, Matthew 5, 45. starting sort of in the middle of that verse. For he causes his son, the father, causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. So that God is good to his creation. He doesn't just sort of keep it going out of a sense of obligation. He's good to it. He does what benefits it. He shows favor to it on both the evil and the good and the righteous and the unrighteous. 

So God receives glory because he's the creator. Because the creation shows his power and because creation shows his providence. His providence in his faithfulness to his creation and his providence in his goodness to his creation. 

But God is also glorified specifically as man's creator. So everything that we've already talked about, we can say, we can apply to humanity, that the existence of humanity brings glory to God, that the existence of humanity shows God's faithfulness in His sustaining work in providence, and it shows His goodness in His providence. But it also, Scripture says specifically that God is glorified by by humanity. So Isaiah chapter 43 in verse 7 says, everyone who is called by my name and whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made. So God is glorified specifically by man, by creating man. 

And The reason that he is glorified by the creation of man is because man is created in his image. So Genesis 1, 26 and 27. Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. 

So we've been created in God's image and that brings God's glory. There's a lot of discussion. You may have heard discussion or participated in discussion about what it means that we're made in the image of God. And I think those are helpful things to think about. 

I'm going to read a selection from Wayne Grudem's systematic theology, because I really liked what he had to say about the image of God. And I think it's helpful for us as we're going to be thinking about this a little bit further tonight and then going forward. 

So, man in the image of God. The meaning of, this is going to be a little bit long, I'm sorry. So you have to bear with me. The meaning of image of God. Out of all the creatures God made, only one creature, man, is said to be made in the image of God. What does that mean? 

We may use the following definition. The fact that man is in the image of God means that man is like God and represents God. When God says, let us make man in our image after our likeness, Genesis 126, the meaning is that God plans to make a creature similar to himself. 

Both the Hebrew word for image, to Salem, and the Hebrew word for likeness, demut, refer to something that is similar but not identical to the thing it represents or is an image of it. The word image can also be used of something that represents something else. 

Theologians have spent much time attempting to specify one characteristic of man, or a very few, in which the image of God is primarily seen. Some have thought that the image of God consists in man's intellectual ability, others in his power to make moral decisions and willing choices. Others have thought that the image of God referred to man's original moral purity, or his creation as male and female, or his dominion over the earth. 

In this discussion, it would be best to focus attention primarily on the meanings of the words image and likeness. As we have seen, these terms had quite clear meanings to the original readers. When we realize that the Hebrew words for image and likeness simply informed the original readers that man was like God and would in many ways represent God, much of the controversy over the meaning of image of God is seen to be a search for too narrow and too specific a meaning. 

When scripture reports that God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, it simply would have meant to the original readers, let us make man to be like us and to represent us. Because image and likeness have these meanings, scripture does not need to say something like, the fact that man is in the image of God means that man is like God in the following ways, intellectual ability, moral purity, spiritual nature, dominion over the earth, creativity, ability to make ethical choices, and immortality, or some similar statement. Such an explanation is unnecessary, not only because the terms had clear meanings, but also because no such list could do justice to the subject. The text only needs to affirm that man is like God, and the rest of scripture fills in more details to explain this. 

In fact, as we read the rest of scripture, we realize that a full understanding of man's likeness to God would require a full understanding of who God is in his being and in his actions, and a full understanding of who man is and what he does. The more we know about God and man, the more similarities we will recognize, and the more fully we will understand what scripture means when it says that man is in the image of God. The expression refers to every way in which man is like God." 

So I found that kind of helpful. It's the rest of scripture that tells us what it means that man is made in the image of God. Of course, we know that after the fall, that image has been marred by sin. And so, we are not, let's see, the creation of man not only glorifies God because we're made in God's image, but it also, the recreation of man into God's image brings glory to God, and that brings the most glory to God, because it's through his son that we are made like him, through Jesus Christ. We are made again, made anew in the image of God in Christ. 

2 Corinthians 5, 17. Oh, went too far. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come. 

or Romans 8, 28 and 29. We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. 

That one I think will be very helpful for us to keep in mind because it combines together God's providence with his purpose, which is to conform us to the image of Christ. 

John 17. Verses 20 and 23. Christ prayed about this. He said, I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, just as we are one. It's reflecting his image again. I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me and love them, even as you have loved me." 

1 Peter 1, 13 through 16. Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in ignorance. But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior, because it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy." 

2 Peter, also chapter 1, verses 2 through 4 say, Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his defined power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. For by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. partakers in the divine nature. I've always been taken by that phrase. It's an amazing thing to think about that we become partakers of the divine nature. And you may think, well, how do we do that? We can't become omniscient or omnipotent or anything like that. And no, we can't, but Galatians tells us how. So Galatians chapter five, verses 22 through 23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law." So that's how we become partakers of the divine nature, by being given the fruit of the Spirit, by that growing in us. 

So God is glorified by us as image bearers. in our natural state, in our fleshly state, and then he is even more glorified by us as image bearers as we become like Christ. So the more we know about God, the more that we know God himself, that we know His character and His ways, the more truly we're able to be like Him. So God is glorified by displaying or revealing Himself to us. He does that in creation, and He does it in Christ. And we glorify Him not only by our words, by offering praise to Him, although that's important and we should never neglect that, but we glorify Him by being like Him, by being like Him. more like his son by being an image bearer of God. 

So practically as we get to our discussion questions, I want us to be thinking about and be mindful of the fact that God in his providence, in one of the ways in which he is glorified in his providence, has placed you exactly where you are so that you glorify him to the fullest extent, so that that you are where you are because that is what brings him the most glory. And you bring him the most glory not just by his being your creator, but because you are being remade in the image of Christ. And providentially, he has put each one of us where we are so that we become the most like Christ that we can be, the site of our glorification. And that is, sometimes scary to think about, especially if we're not content with our lives or if we're going through a hard time, that God has put me here for a purpose, and the purpose is that I might glorify Him in this circumstance, and that this circumstance, putting me in this circumstance is the thing that enables me to bring Him the most glory. 

So this sort of kickoff to this study is the big picture. As we go, probably not in February when we're doing our Ladies Retreat, we'll do something separate for that, but for the remainder of the Ladies Bible Study this year, We're going to focus on what it means for us as individuals specifically to bring God glory where he's put us, and then sort of collectively as Trinity Bible Church, how do we bring God glory? What is our purpose? in that, and then sort of maybe more universally, the last one will be more universal, the little seat Catholic church, the universal church. How do we bring God glory? What is our purpose? Why are we still here and not in heaven with the Lord? So that's where we're going. I hope that it will be a useful study. That's my aim. We do have discussion questions, so maybe we'll just split up into the two tables and go through the questions, and then maybe at the end, as a group, talk about questions five and six together and sort of hear what everybody's thoughts were on those. 

So I will close in prayer, and then we'll get to discussion. 

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you that we can be together tonight, that we can start off the new year with one another, learning from your word. Lord, I just ask that it would be... be on all of our hearts to be glorifying to you, God, that we would seek to become more like your son, Jesus Christ, that we would reflect his character and do the things that he would have us to do in order to bring you the most glory. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.