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Three Angels Fellowship SDA Church

Let Freedom Ring

Garhett Morgan

Let Freedom Ring Part 1

Let Freedom Ring Part 2

We'll see what the Lord has to say through His word.

Father, we are thankful that You have called us to be Your people.

You've called us all to be Your children.

As we spend just a few minutes this week corporately worshiping together, we ask that You be with us.

You know, I'm an American and I'm proud to be 1.

However, I'm proud to be an American by necessity.

And I'll tell you the reason for that, and I believe in America we have a certain kind of freedom that I am very thankful for, and I'm very thankful that I'm not born in other countries that don't enjoy the kind of freedom that we do in a democratic republic.

Praise the Lord for the freedom that we have here.

However, I will gladly trade in my American citizenship when Jesus comes.

In fact, even now, my citizenship should be in heaven, but the kind of freedom that America offers is 1 kind, but the kind of freedom that we will receive in heaven, I think I'll take that 1.

You know, there are a lot of things that we have to deal with on this earth, and things that we claim to enjoy and that we claim to love, that we will easily and quickly trade in when we get to heaven.

You might really like the car that you drive right now, but I bet you'll trade in your car when you're able to fly in heaven, right?

You know, you might even like your pastor a little bit, and you might even like his preaching, but I bet you'll trade me in when you get to talk to Jesus in heaven.

So there are things that we put up with, there's things that we deal with on this earth that we will happily trade in when Jesus comes, and he is coming very soon.

1 of those, well, has to do with the message that we're talking about this week.

I'm very thankful that I'm an American citizen.

I'm thankful for the freedoms that were fought by many of our ancestors, my grandfather and great-uncle included.

I'm thankful for all of the things that this nation has bestowed upon us, but of course I also recognize that these freedoms even here are extremely limited.

And we're going to be talking about this this morning in the light of Revelation 13.

A few weeks ago we took a look at Revelation 13, and 1 of the things that we find there is not only anti-Christ power, but we find something called the image of the beast.

And the image of the beast is where we get the mystical, in some people's mind, mark of the beast.

And 1 of the things that is mentioned with this image of the beast is the question, the devil always mimics what God has.

God is made up of 3 parts, 3 individual beings, but all the same, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

He tries to mimic that Trinity in the book of Revelation.

You know, the devil's not a very creative person because he always mimics something that God has already done.

So if there is an image of the beast, then there must be an image of God.

And a few weeks ago, we defined, according to Scripture, what the image of God is.

You will not find in the Old Testament God describing how he wants his picture to be painted.

You know, all throughout the book of Exodus and Leviticus you find painstaking details into how God wanted the temple to be built, right?

The metal that was to be used, the engraving that was to be done, the weight of how the altar was going to be, all of these things, down to the intricate detail.

But When it came to making a statue or a picture of God, silence, because God did not want His image to be limited to something made with human hands.

Of course, back then There were countless idols that were made by human hands that were worshipped by other religions, pagan gods that were made, but Christianity, well, not Christianity at that point, but Judaism at that point was different in that it worshipped a God that could not be defined by the making of human hand.

But according to the Bible, we find God defined His image a few different ways.

We won't look at this because we looked at it last week, this is just a review, but according to the Bible, the image of God is Jesus in human flesh.

So when Christ came to this earth in the form of a man, and dare I say the veil of a man, we as human beings were able to see God, the glory of God veiled in human existence.

That according to the book of Colossians is the image of God.

But beyond that, there's 1 other part to what or who the image of God is.

Genesis 1 defines male and female or humanity made in the image of God.

What does that mean, being made in God's image?

Now, Don't misunderstand, you are not God, but you are made in His image.

I wish I could succinctly answer for you that question, but I can't.

I'm still trying to understand myself what that means.

When Adam and Eve were created, I would say that when Adam and Eve were created before, thousands of years in sin, they probably represent a better image of God than you do.

Because they did not have to deal with thousands of years of sin.

We are still made in the image of God, don't get me wrong, but we are an incredibly marred version of that.

But yet, you are still made in God's image.

Jesus defines this when he's being tricked or trying to be tricked by some of his enemies, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and they say, Jesus, what is the greatest of the law?

And Jesus says the law really hangs on 2 commands, love God and love people.

On this hangs all the law and the prophets.

And when Jesus said, love God and love people, He is defining, again, what the image of God is.

And how we as a church uplift the image of God is not only by loving Him, but loving fellow people.

Loving people, which by the way, I believe it is much more simple to love God than people.

Because when you love God, you understand that He deserves it, right?

He died for you, He created you, He made you, He listens to you, He forgives you.

But to love people, that can be hard sometimes, can't it?

Especially the 1 that cuts you off in traffic.

Especially the 1 that voted differently than you do.

Especially the 1 that drives you crazy at work.

Especially the 1 that has owed you money for years and doesn't seem to remember.

Especially you can keep going down the list.

A few weeks ago, we took a look at how we as a church did in not only uplifting the image of God through professing the gospel, but also loving people, especially protecting those that were voiceless.

That's part of protecting the image of God.

We found that generally speaking, when this church was founded, when this country was still enslaving human beings, our church stood up for abolition and we believe that slaves should have been freed.

We as a church were founded and established on the understanding that all men were created equal, and men included not only men and women, but any ethnicity that there was, God had created.

And we believe that was true and we upheld that and we as a church passed the test of upholding the image of God when we first started.

However, we did not do so great when it came to a few other events in more recent history.

1 of which we looked at quite closely was our church in the Nazi state in the 1930s and the 1940s.

The question was asked, how do we make sure that we never drop the ball again on uplifting the image of God?

Because after all, we know that at some point there is a mark that is coming.

We find this in Revelation 13, 15, And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.

We know that there is a mark of the beast that is coming.

Series

Let Freedom Ring

Let Freedom Ring Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

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