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Are We Making God in Our Image and Likeness?
September 29, 2018

Last week we saw how we must count the cost in our relationship to God and how this teaching is linked to the first commandment to have no god before God. During this Feast of Tabernacles when first-century apostolic Christian like me look forward to the time when the Kingdom of God is established on earth, we have considerd how we live in this end time during and the evils that exist on earth. Even though we live in a time when many claim to be Christian, Timothy writes that in general society will be lovers of self and not God.

2 Timothy 3:1-5
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Timothy indicts our society on many charges, including the idea that we love God less than earthly passions. In the parable of counting the costs, Jesus told us to follow him, we had to love everyone and everything else less. It makes we wonder if our society is making God in our image and likeness. I once heard an angry discussion about a civil liberty, and in defending a particular viewpoint, one of the participants responded with, "My God would not do that..."almost as if they had made God after their image, likeness, and political persuasion. We also live in a society that ascribes human characteristics to animals, making animals after our image and likeness, too. A visitor to a zoo was once mauled by a polar bear while the animal was in its cage by getting too close. This zoo visitor, like too many people, had given human motherly characteristics to polar bears when the advice from locals is to keep tremendous distance between you and a polar bear. When it comes to God and man, the Bible is very clear that mankind was made after the image of God.

Genesis 1:26-28
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

My concern is during this endtime, that at many different levels people are making God after their image and likeness. In essence through a diety they call God, they are worshipping themeselves, loving themself more than loving God. The second commandment tells us to not make any graven, or carved image.

Exodus 20:4-6
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Before making a carved image to represent God, the artist must first have a thought, an idea that would begin with a thought of what does my God look like. We must take great care not to limit God by limiting God to the status of just another person. Instead, we should be considering what God would have us do by understanding what is actually written in the Bible, proving all things for ourselves, and fully understanding our subordinate position to the Almighty Creator remembering we are created in the image and likeness of God.

All verses are from the King James Version.
This site provided by Tom Laign. To all who may believe differently, I also extend peace and love.
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