God’s Masterpieces: Made in His Image

Let’s get up and dance with your kids in praise! Play some worship music in your home, have fun with it! Raise your hands, jump, close your eyes – enjoy a time of worship as a family. To get you into a groove, here are some songs to choose from:

Trust In You https://youtu.be/vEpAeqqSURI
This Is What You Do - by Bethel Kids https://youtu.be/eXhMfGK00ZA

God’s Masterpieces: Made In His Image

Lesson: God made people to reflect Him
Memory Verse: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17

Game: Start imitating or mirroring the next kid or person in your group. After playing for a while, just hang out with the group and chat about the previous week all the while imitating the one group member. Continue until that kid notices that people are copying him. Then, have the kids pair up and face their partner...one should do something and the other will mirror them.

SAY: “This morning in large group we’ll be talking about mirroring or imitating someone and who we were created to mirror.”

“If you remember, I started off this morning talking about looking in the mirror, which may have seemed a little odd and random to you this morning, but I promise I had a point and it’ll all become clear in a few minutes. When you look in a mirror, what do you see? Right, you see yourself. But, is that you in the mirror? No, it’s your reflection, or an image of you.

Have any of you watched a baby sitting in front of a mirror? They smile at the other baby and the other baby smiles back. They reach out to touch the other baby and the other baby reaches out for them. Babies can sit for a long time fascinated by a mirror and the other baby inside the mirror. Now that we’ve all grown up, we’ve looked in mirrors enough to know that the image is just a reflection. No one in this room would be fooled into thinking that the image in a mirror was another person, would you? But, let’s think about the image that we see when we look in a mirror. When I look in this mirror (hold up mirror) I see myself... my eyes and nose and hair and what clothes I’m wearing today. I see an image of myself...an image of what I look like on the outside.

This morning we’re only going to talk about 2 verses right in the beginning of the Old Testament. We’re looking in the first book of the Bible, which is called? Right, Genesis. Just so you know where we’re headed, let me review a bit. The verse we’re going to read happens on the 6th day of creation. In the other days of creation, when God made the plants and the fish and the birds and the land animals, the Bible says that He made each of those things according to their kind...example... all trees are alike as trees, but there are different kinds- orange, mango, palm, fir, oak, etc.

Now that we’re caught up, I need a boy to stand up and read Genesis 1:26-27. So, according to those verses, whose image are we made in? Right, God’s... (have the boy who read the verse come up and look in the mirror).... So, according to those verses, God must be a.... (8 year old boy with brown hair and brown eyes and a big smile).... If you are those things then stand up- you guys must look like God.

Wait a second, that can’t be what those verses mean. Those verses can’t be saying that we are made to have the same outside image as God- or else we’d all look alike. And, we know from other verses, like John 4:24 that God is spirit- He doesn’t have a body. So, what could these verses mean? Well, those verses mean that God made people to be like Him, to look like Him on the inside, to do the things He does, think the things He thinks, love people the way He loves people, and live the way He lives. Most importantly, God made us to be perfect just like He is perfect. And at the very beginning, people were a very good reflection or image of God, but then something happened that kept people from being able to perfectly reflect God. People sinned. Adam and Eve used the brains and ability to make choices that God had given them to choose to disobey God. And Romans 3:10-12 tells us that every single person since Adam and Eve has made the same choice- the choice to turn away from God and sin.

If you’re like me at all, this has got you thinking and asking yourselves some tough questions. If we’re supposed to be images of God, but we’ve all sinned, how can we ever really reflect God to people around us? Well, we can’t do it by ourselves, but because Jesus died on the cross and came back to life 3 days later, we can be made perfect reflections of God once again. You may also be wondering, how do we know what God is like? We can read about God in the Bible and we can read about His perfect image, Jesus, in the Bible as well. Listen to these verses that talk about Jesus being the perfect image of God....

• 2 Corinthians 4:4- Christ, who is the image of God

• Colossians 1:15- He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

• Hebrews 1:3- The Son is the radiance of God’s glory, and the exact representation of His being.

That helps to clear things up a little bit, but obviously Jesus would be a perfect reflection of God, Jesus is God’s Son and is God Himself- He is perfect, so it makes sense that He would be a perfect image. But what about you and me; people who have all sinned and messed up and disobeyed God? Well, the Bible tells us that even though we can’t be perfect on our own no matter how hard we try, that God provided a way for us to be perfect and holy, by sending Jesus to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven of our sin. And, the Bible tells us that when we believe in Jesus and ask Him to be in charge of our lives and live our lives so that we are following Him, that He will transform (or change) our hearts so that we’ll become more like Him and become the images or reflections of God that we were made to be. Listen to these verse that talk about God transforming His people to be like Jesus....

• 2 Corinthians 3:18- And we, who... all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness.

• Colossians 3:10- put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of the creator.

That’s the good news. God made us to be His reflection. He wants us to reflect Him to the world, so that when people see us they see Him. And, He is the one who transforms our hearts so that we can be true reflectors of Him. There is absolutely nothing we can do on our own to be true and perfect images or reflections of God, but when Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life, died and rose again three days later He provided the one and only way for us to be forgiven of all our sins and for God to transform His people into the perfect reflections we were created to be in the first place.

Prayer:
Dear God, thank you for making people in your image. Help us to see how we’ve messed up and gone against your plan. Teach us what it means to be your follower. Help each of us to learn to trust you and follow you and believe in you. Thank you that when we are following you that you do the work of transforming us into images of you. Help us to reflect you to the world around us, so that when people see us they see you. In your name I pray, Amen.