Imago Dei | Crossroads Students

Hey, what is up everybody? My name is Rob. I am one of the pastors here at Crossroads Students, specifically at our Florence campus. And I'm really happy to be here. I'm really happy that we get to jump into something new together today. Whether you've been here for a while or this is your first week with us, I think you're exactly where you're supposed to be. One of the first things you need to know about me is that for a long time, for a big portion of my life, I was living a lie. I was living a lie. And here's what that lie was. And you need to understand my family a little bit to understand this lie I was living. My grandfather's name was Lewis Mitchell. My dad's name was John Mitchell. My brother's name is Harry or Harold Mitchell. And I, for a long time, just assumed that I was Robert Mitchell Bonenkamp. I thought that was who I was. Until I was 12 years old, I'm at the doctor's office and I'm sitting there and the nurse asks me, hey, Rob, what's your full name? I gotta write it down. And I was like, you want my middle name too? She's like, yeah, that's part of your full name. I said, great.

I said, confidently, boldly, I said, I'm Robert Mitchell Bonenkamp. And I'll never forget my mom's face. She looks at me and she goes, that is not your name. And I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, your middle name is William. And I'm like, who the heck is William? I looked, there's no William in my family anywhere. Nobody's had the middle name William. I thought I was Robert Mitchell Bonenkamp forever. And then at 12 years old, embarrassingly in front of a medical professional, I realized that my middle name is actually William. And I just assumed because my family was all a certain way, every man in my life that I was close to, their middle name was Mitchell. Why wouldn't I be a part of this generational tradition? And I really like, I mean, I thought my middle name was Mitchell. Like I was signing things, Robert M. Bonenkamp, when people would like play that stupid game where they guess your middle name and you would give them hints until they got it. I led them to the wrong name for years. Like I just was so sold out that I was a part of something when it actually wasn't who I was at all. And while it was funny, there was a real part of me that was upset, that was hurt. Because I really thought that I was a part of something based off of what everybody else in my life was a part of.

I think we do that in our lives all the time. Culture, popularity, social media, teachers, friends, professors, your parents, they all wanna try and tell you who you are. They all wanna try and tell me what my identity is. But the reality is identity, who we are, it's not something that we just pick up somewhere along the way. It's not something we get to wake up one day and change. Instead, identity is actually a gift that was given to you and me when we were created. There's these Latin words that are, they kind of sound weird, but you'll understand what they mean. The words are imago de. Imago is the Latin word for image and de means God. So when scripture talks about imago de, us being created in the image of God, it doesn't just mean we look like God, but it means that there are characteristics that you and I share that make us more like God and less like the world around us. Our image was given to us. And if we are truly in the image of God, that means a few things are different about us than the rest of creation, right? We are in the image of God, which means we are relational. God never intended for you and I to do life alone. That's one of the things I love about Crossroads students.

Because we're in the image of God, we know the difference between right and wrong. We have like a moral compass, and maybe you've never attributed that to God before, but I think it's something we were created with, knowing good from bad, making the right decisions instead of making the wrong decisions. That's something we were created with that was imprinted on us. It means that we are creative. And I don't know what creativity looks like for you, but we come from the image of a creator, God who created everything. And that's the reason that you and I are creative. Maybe it looks like music for you or art. Maybe you have a Minecraft realm that you were just super proud of. I don't know what it is for you, but you are creative because God was creative first and you were made in His image. This series is all about one of the major ways we're like God, is if we are truly imago Dei, if we are truly made in the image of God, that means that we are emotional. Here's something you need to know about God if you didn't know it before. God is not living this emotional flatlined life. God feels, God has emotions. All the emotions that you and I experience all of the time, God is an emotional being,

which means that God feels grief. God feels happiness and joy. God feels sadness. There are moments in Scripture where God feels anger. We see that. The difference between us and God when it comes to our emotions is that Jesus, man, that guy got everything right. We believe that Jesus was 100% man and 100% God, which is why if we're trying to learn how we are made in the image of God, I think the only appropriate place to look is in the person of Jesus. Jesus had a lot of people following him. He had a lot of people who were trying to understand who he was when they were really trying to understand who God was. And one time in Matthew 22, you have the story where Jesus is being surrounded by people and there were these people who were really, really smart. They were leaders and they were religious and they thought they knew it all. You probably have somebody in your life who you would consider a know-it-all. You guys, I'm like really smart now. You don't even know. That is kind of like what these religious leaders were like. And when they would talk to Jesus, when they would approach Jesus, they would try and get him into trouble. And they would do that by asking him questions that they knew would be really difficult for him to answer. So in Matthew 22, you have these religious leaders, know-it-alls, they come up to Jesus and they ask him a question. They say, is it right, is it lawful for us to give taxes to Caesar? And Caesar was the leader in Rome and paying Caesar your taxes was a part of living in that area. And they knew that if Jesus answered this wrong, that it would turn people against him, that it would make him look like he isn't trustworthy. But again, unlike you and me, Jesus always gets things right. So here's what Jesus does. He asks the religious leaders and the people around, he says, does anybody have a coin? The coin they would have used is called a denarius. But think about it like a quarter or maybe a penny. Like these are coins that actually would have the image of Caesar on them. Just like the quarter has George Washington on it. Just like the penny has Abraham Lincoln. Rest in peace to both Lincoln and the penny. I don't know exactly what these coins would have looked like, but they would have had an image of Caesar on them. So when Jesus says, who has a coin on them, he holds it up and he asks these leaders, he asks the people, he says, whose image is on this coin? And they respond to him, they say, Caesar's. So Jesus says famously, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, what his image is on, and give to God what is God's. And they were impressed by this question and they moved on. But it raises a question for you and me. Caesar's image was on a coin and that's why he got that coin returned to him. Which means if God's image is on something

and God deserves something from you and from me, the question remains, what is God's image on? And I think to understand that, we have to go all the way back to the very beginning of scripture. In Genesis chapter 1 verse 26, God says, let us create mankind in our own image. And then it says, in his own image, he created mankind. God created a lot of things at the beginning of the world. He created animals and mountains and oceans. He created the stars. He separated the heavens and the earth. But the only thing that God said, let's put my image on it, was you and me. And that means something. That means that even though you're going to see God's creation everywhere, you're not going to see the image of God everywhere. The image of God is specifically for you and for me and for all mankind. So the question now is, what does that look like for us? How does that make us look different? Again, I think you have to look at the person of Jesus. When it comes to our emotions and handling emotions, Jesus handled it perfectly. I'm sure when those guys showed up and started asking Jesus all these questions, that he would probably be frustrated. You and I would probably be annoyed too. But instead of lashing out in anger, God's emotion, Jesus's emotion, it always comes out in the form of truth. It never comes out in a way that is going to harm other people. And it always points people back to the character of God and who he is. Which means our emotions, we feel all the same things. We get angry. We get sad. We feel joy. We feel sorrow. We feel compassion and hurt for people. All those things don't make you crazy or bad or wrong. You were made in the image of God. And God created emotions because he knows that we can handle them. And God also gives you and I the ability to handle our emotions. So what makes us different from all the other things that don't bear God's image? One of the major ways that we're talking about this whole series... is that when we experience emotions, we get to decide how we respond. You don't always get to decide how you feel. When something good or bad happens to you, when you experience hardship or joy, when you experience life at its worst and at its best, our response is the only thing we have control over. And so if we are made in God's image, how does that change the way that you and I respond

to the feelings we experience in our lives? Over the next few weeks, we're gonna be diving into a lot of different emotions and ideas, but at the root of all of it, it's important that you remember you were made in the image of God and that makes you and I different. But there is this big question. You know, if everybody is made in the image of God, if all of mankind is supposed to look more like Jesus, then what makes me special? What makes you and I unique? You see, the other thing you need to know about God is emotionally and in every single way, God is not one dimensional. He's not one way. So when you see diversity, when you see differences, when we have things, there are things in your life that you are probably extremely passionate about. There are things that you could see or hear that would make you angry or sad that might affect me differently. For example, I cannot watch a movie if it is about a dog of any kind. I will cry. It doesn't matter if it's a sad movie. I can't watch Air Bud just in case he loses. I worry about that. That's something that I experienced that makes me unique and different than you.

And there are tons and tons of examples. So you being different doesn't make you worse. In fact, differences, they don't compete with the image of God. Instead, our differences actually paint a bigger picture and a better understanding of who God is. The truth is when you become exactly who God created you to be in his image with all of your specific emotions and feelings, hurts, hardships, wisdom, when we become more like that, we become more like who God created us to be. We walk in purpose and identity. So no, we don't get to just pick up identity from something else. My friends don't get to decide who I am. My family, even though their whole middle name is Mitchell and I'm a William, it doesn't mean that I'm any less a part of that family. It just means that I have a really funny story about how I didn't know my own name at age 12. Like it just changes the things in our lives in the best way possible. God wants you to be different, but he wants you to be the you that he created you to be. And over the next few weeks, you're gonna have the opportunity to talk through different emotions. And these emotions are spurred on by very different things that have happened in your life that have happened in mine. And yet, because Jesus is so good

and because we were made to look like God, you and I have a chance to be in his own image, better at handling our emotions than other people. We get to try and do it differently. We get to do it with excitement and we get to experience God on a true level about who he wants you to be and who he created me to be. So maybe today you have picked up an identity that doesn't belong to you. But if you look back at that story we read earlier out of Matthew, like give to God what is God's. You are an image bearer of God, of the creator. Maybe you don't know that yet. Maybe you don't know if you believe that yet, but I believe that because we are in God's image, our lives can look different than everybody else's. And your life can look different today than it looked like before you came here or before you listened to this. God wants more for you and he wants you to be exactly who you are. And in his image, you and I have the opportunity to change the world. So let's see what the next few weeks hold for us. And let's see if God can change our story to look more, not like who we wanna be, not like who we feel we should be, but who God wants us to be. And I think if we do that on the other side,

God's gonna have a really powerful story for you and for me.