Why Did God Create Humanity

One of the central questions that every human being faces at some point, and it's strange to me that many people don't ask this question until they're older, but it's basically, why am I here? What's my purpose? I mean, why am I alive?

Many times you have to face difficulties in life before you even ask that question. You know, people can go through life sometimes amazingly just living, happy, running from one thing to another, one excitement to another, and never ask, what is this all about? Now, when you ask the question, why am I here? Why do I exist? There's other questions that normally just have to come along with that.

Like, well, if why am I here? Did someone make me? Now, it's interesting to read how atheists and people believe in evolution really don't have any purpose in life except to have a good life now. The purpose of your life is to be nice to other people and have as much fun as you can, because this is all there is. If someone says there's more than this, then you have to believe that someone created this. So then the question comes up, is there a God?

You know, if I have a purpose, someone had to make a purpose. Purpose doesn't come out of nothing. So who created me and why am I here? Then, naturally, why does God allow suffering? I mean, if there's a God and He's good, why does He allow this mess? Why does He allow so much pain? Why do babies die? I mean, all these questions come up.

And then, okay, if there is a God and He made me, why do you do that? What's my purpose? Because why did He just make us immortal and we can live forever, where we never felt pain or nothing bad happened to us? Why did He make us this way?

I've been going through basic core doctrines. We started nine months ago. We finally got through a basic understanding of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. And, of course, we need to answer everything. We can't answer everything. But we did go through that basic doctrine. Now we're going to have to start to go into some other doctrines. One is humanity and the other is what is the Bible. So over the next few months, we'll be giving servants of Bible studies on those two subjects. What is humanity? What is our purpose? Why are we here? Now that's a personal question.

It is also a question for all humanity. Why does God trade everybody? Sometimes it's easy to get to the point where we see God's involvement in a very selfish way. I know what God made me. The rest of you, well, you're just scum. Now I can remember, how many of you are in the radio church of God? A few of you. Okay. I remember singing a song that came from either the Methodist church or the Baptist church.

So you might remember this. I walked through the garden alone. This was in the radio church of God. While the dew is still of the world and roses. The joy we share as we tarry there. The joy none other has ever known. That's one of the reasons why it was eventually removed from our songbook was way back. What we're saying is the joy I have with God. Nobody else has ever had this. This is just between me and God. All you other people never share but me and God share.

So there was a really strange flaw in the song. How many remember that song in the old gray hymnal? Remember that? Yes, the old gray hymnal. So yeah, it didn't last. Well, after a while we were told not to sing it. I mean, there were problems with the song. When we ask the question, why am I here? It's a bigger question. Why are all of us here?

It's interesting. A while back, one of the younger men that works at the home office came up to me and said, when you were my age, in your 20s, what were the three most important questions you asked about life? I said, is there a God? Why am I here? And what am I supposed to do? So he went around and he asked everybody that was over the age of 50 that question, and everybody that was under the age of 30. Now, he missed everybody in between that on the line, but he was comparing things. He came back and he said, what was amazing is almost everybody over the age of 50 said those were the three questions they asked when they were young.

He says, not one person under 30 lists those three questions as what they asked. I said, of course not. They're already in the church. You're comparing apples and oranges here. They're already here. That question was answered to them a long time ago. So this is important in terms of understanding God's purpose for us and God's purpose for humanity. So it's a very basic concept we're going to go through today.

You're not going to get anything new, but it is important that we go back and reevaluate core basic doctrine. What is humanity? Let's start at Genesis 1. Genesis 1, 27, because this really is the starting point. As we go through this subject over the next few months, we keep going back to Genesis 1 and these simple statements because they're the starting point for the whole discussion of what is humanity and what is our purpose, why there is suffering, what is our relationship with God, and even determining our relationships with each other.

1, verse 27.

Genesis 1, 27. So God created man in his own image. The image of God, he created the male and female, he created them. We are created in the image of God. And he makes the point, he says, male and female, because there are not just biological differences, there are certain differences in a general sense in some of the ways that men think and women think. So God being men in his image and women only partly in his image. That's not the point. We all contain different attributes of God, just slightly different, so there could be a relationship. We all contain attributes of God that is given to us in slightly different ways so that we can relate to each other, so we can have a relationship. So how are we made in the image of God? How are we made in the image of God? Well, here's just a few ways that human beings are made in the image of God. Reason. The ability for self-conscious thought. We think all the time. We're processing information all the time.

We are aware that we're alive, although it's a sort of a shame that a lot of people go through life with no real awareness that they're alive. They just sort of plug along, you know? But we are aware, and especially we're aware when some danger comes on us, but different than an animal. I mean, an animal can respond in a type of fear, self-preservation, but we respond at a lot of different levels, including self-sacrifice, emotions, the ability to experience joy, empathy, grief, and sorrow. Now, I don't want to get into this real deep, but some animals do have certain emotional responses. You know, a primate will pick up a baby primate and hug it. It may pick up another baby primate that's not theirs and kill it.

So there are certain levels, but not like human beings. Human beings are totally different in the way that we feel and express emotions. And this is one of the things the secular humanists are really pushing today, you know, the thing with the gorilla and the little kid. Somehow the gorilla was equal as the human being. Now, gorillas weren't made in the image of God. You and I were. That's a huge... this premise is huge. It changes the way we look at everything. Imagination and creativity. This is really where we make this jump. Over any other living thing on the earth, we can think in the abstract. Now, think about that a minute. You know, my daughter, my second daughter, she was here during the Passover season, and some of you couldn't figure out who she was. Where's your children? Now, that's the other daughter. Okay, this is the second daughter. She's an architect. She literally can sit down on the computer and draw up little lines on a piece of paper in the computer and print it out. Hand it to a builder. He can look at it little lines on a piece of paper. And he can build a building. That's exactly what was in her head, what she drew in her lines. As abstract thought, they've proven though Annabelle has the ability for abstract thought. We can create art, architecture, literature, music.

It's amazing, the different kinds of art, the different kinds of music. The creativity of human beings. Volition or will. We have the ability to make decisions.

And that includes moral decisions. And then the relationship. Human beings are created to interact and share life with God and other human beings at a God level, not a dog level, right? The relationship you have with your children, with your neighbor, with your friends, with your husband, with your wife, it's totally different than you do with your cow or your dog. We are designed to have relationships with other human beings at a God level, a conscious God level. This is where love comes in. Now at creation, we know this, Adam and Eve were totally dependent on God. They also had no sin and they lived in perfect harmony with God and each other. Adam and Eve had never had an argument. They had never experienced uncontrolled anger. Well, had experienced anger at all. They never experienced fear. They never experienced anxiety. They never experienced depression. The reason why is physically and mentally and spiritually they were okay. They had only experienced good and as long as they experienced good, good things happen. The problem when they decided God said, this is good and this is evil. Now you have volition. You have free will. So if you can, if you decide to do any evil, you change this whole thing. Not only will you deteriorate physically and die, you will deteriorate spiritually and we won't have a relationship anymore. So what happened? They experienced evil and immediately they hid from God and immediately they were ashamed of their own bodies with each other. Immediately they were experiencing things they never experienced before and none of it was good. He also said, you're going to die now. Physically you will deteriorate. So their very nature changed. Now every human being that's been born since except for Jesus, at some point Satan has got a hold of us and our nature was changed. Now you think about these areas that we've talked about. What happens in these areas where we are in the image of God? These are all aspects, by the way, of God. He is creative. He is a relationship being. He is self-conscious thought. He's not the force in Star Wars, okay? By the way, the force is... there's a lot of Hinduism in Star Wars, by the way. I'm not saying don't watch Star Wars. I've watched it. But if you begin to... if now we are in our made an image of God, but it's like someone took a hammer. You know, if you ever seen a beautiful statue, what if someone took a hammer and beat that statue so that you looked at it and said, well, I see a complete statue of you and me. I can't tell. We are all made in the image of God and Satan has taken a hammer and beat us to the point that we don't look like what we're supposed to look like. We don't think like we're supposed to think like. We don't act like we don't feel like we're supposed to... every part of our nature has been corrupted. Now, what happens when that happens? Okay, reason. God is perfect reason, perfect logic. Every human being... every human attempt to solve humanity's problems has failed. And here's the reason why. At the core of every human being is a faulty reasoning process. When our nature was corrupted and you and I were corrupted so early in our lives we don't even know when it happened. Original sin doesn't work. It wasn't passed on genetically. Although our deterioration physically and mentally was passed on genetically, we're not near the human beings and Adam and Eve were. But spiritually we were all affected by Satan at some point and we became very early, probably the first minute after birth. I'll tell you the truth, I've wondered sometimes that it doesn't start before. You know, there's all kind of brain activity in a baby in this that lasts a few weeks before it's born. I wonder if Satan doesn't get to us even then.

And so this whole reasoning process and you and I have to come to grips with in order to go back to what God wants us to be and that is human beings made in His image with this eternal potential and we'll get into at one point the soul will get into the spirit of man and we'll go through all those subjects. This faulty reasoning process that we trusted so much because it's what we think is normal. Let's go to Isaiah 55. Isaiah 55. I had the sermon all prepared to get up this morning and took out about 20% of it. There's still no way to get through it in time. Isaiah 55 or 6. It says, the prophet says, Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near, like the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man His thoughts. The unrighteous man, His thoughts.

One of the great oppositions anymore in sexual humanism too, Christianity is this. It's very interesting. Christianity teaches a good way to act, love your neighbor, but it is about mind control and that is evil. I've actually read that because you have to teach your thoughts. Your thoughts are your own. Nobody can tell you what to think. That's what God says. Let Him return to the Lord. He will have mercy on Him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon. And then God says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my way, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways higher than your ways of my thoughts than your thoughts. Made in the image of God. Made to learn to think like God. But we don't.

So our whole decision-making process is messed up. But we're so sure of it. It's normal. We've thought this way ever since. We can remember. So here we have a we're in a marred, corrupted image of God. Emotions. Here's where we really get messed up. Human beings are filled with all kinds of negative emotions that aren't aspects of God's nature. Destructive anger, hatred. See these are destructive anger, hatred. I know. Can you still hear me? Because I'm turning away from the mic, but you can still hear me in the back. Okay. I'm trying to stay close to it here. Edny, strife, arrogance, jealousy. Just a few. At the core. Remember, at the core of our reasoning, we're all messed up. At the core of every human being is a faulty emotional process that can't be trusted. But the one thing we all do is trust our emotions. It's how I feel. And emotions are hard to change. I mean, feelings are feelings, right? So it must be true. And I've had people say, I know the difference we could in evil by how I feel. I can't trust that in me. Because how I feel many times is not how the Bible says we're supposed to. So we have a faulty emotional process. Jeremiah 17, probably many of you know this scripture by memory. Jeremiah 17, verse 9. The heart, of course, in the scripture is a symbol for the very seat of motivation. It's the thoughts of emotions that motivate us, that drive us.

Here it says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?

Our emotional process is the most deceitful thing on the earth.

Sometimes Satan can't get to us, but we'll deceive ourselves with our own emotions. Now, God had emotions, so He gave us emotions. Emotions are powerful. They drive us more sometimes than thought. And they can't be trusted. But it's how I feel. And there's nothing more powerful than feelings. It's how I feel.

And so it's what drives us. But we're deceived by it. It takes a very, very mature, converted person to be able to analyze our own feelings and say, are those right? But see, our feelings aren't in the image of God anymore. He goes on, He says, God says in verse 10, I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind. See, the hearted mind are connected here together. Even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruits of his doings. Now, imagination and creativity, while sick about how creative we are, you, our beings, can create a chemical compound that erases malaria. And the same scientists can create a chemical compound that'll kill everybody on the earth for the purpose of a biological weapon. Our creative energies produce war, art of music that denigrates people's lives and philosophies that go against God. All this creativity God gave us.

At the core of every human being is a faulty system of imagination and creativity. Volition or free will. Human beings continue to make bad decisions in spite of destructive consequences. To put it bluntly, we're all the same. We keep thinking the same things will produce different effects. So generation after generation, we produce the exact same mistakes. And every generation says, I'm getting this right, boy, the old people don't know what they're doing. And then one day they're the old people, the young people are saying, I'm not going to be like you, I'm going to not make those mistakes. They produce the same mistakes.

Each generation just produces these consequences. At the core of every human being is a faulty system of decision-making based on wrong motivations and goals and reasoning.

And then last in this list, human beings are relationship beings. Yet we continue patterns of behavior that destroy our ability to have close intimate meaningful relationships.

I've never sat down with a two friends that can't get along. They didn't want to be friends. Right? Never sat down with a couple that were having marriage problems. They didn't want to be married. And yet many times they're fulfilling patterns that are destroying the relationship. We do it all the time. Because at the core of every human being are faulty concepts of how relationships work. I forgot the word work. So once we became corrupted images of God, all these ways in which God made us like Him, we're not like Him.

So we continue to produce the same patterns. Now there's reasons why, and I'm to bring this down into a simple, this is a little simplistic, but it helps us see it clearly, is that all of us are a mixture of good and evil. Right? All human beings are a mixture of good and evil. So we're capable of good and we're capable of evil at the same time. And so all these things are faulty. They're all messed up. Now we have three main driving forces in us. Now there's more than this, but these are core issues. Three needs that we have as human beings. We're designed that way. Of themselves they're not evil. But think about how flawed we are. Think about what we read in Isaiah. Now think about what we read in Jeremiah. How flawed we are. And now let's look at these needs.

We are relationship beings created in a meaningful interaction with God and other human beings. You were created with a need for God. You were created with a need and a desire to be loved and to love. That's part of our makeup. You know why? It's God's makeup. He's a relationship being. He wants to love. He wants to be loved back. The difference is God doesn't need love and be very, very thankful he doesn't. If God needed love the way we treat him, wow, we'd be doomed. But we're not. He desires love. He doesn't need it. But he desires. That's the core of his being to love others. It's who he is. So we're designed by God to give love and receive love. Designed to be relationship. Now that means at the core of every one of us. And it's hard for us to understand this. And I don't care whether you're 15 or 75, at the core of your being is this angst, this emptiness, because we need a relationship with God with other people. It's at the core of who we are. So here we have, now think about it, all the ways that we're flawed is just the five ways I mentioned how we're in the image of God. And yet we have this need. I need to have a relationship with God, but on my terms, by my will. I need to have other people relate to me, but it's in relationship to my emotional needs, which are all flawed. So here we have this core need, designed by God, and we are basically doomed to fail at all these without help. We're doomed to fail because our nature is all corrupted. Now that's why you'll see some human beings be very good at things. You'll see a human being that is just really good at relating to other people, or a human being that's really good in their relationship with God. But you'll also find that they're flawed in other ways. We were all flawed. But everybody's struggling because this is at the core of who we are. We have a hunger for God. David talks about it. Now, here's another problem we have because of our corrupted nature. We will do almost anything to exert independent self-determination. I am the master of my own faith. Why? Because we were given will. Why is it with free will? We're supposed to give it to God. We love God. We give our will to God. We trust Him. We do what He says. What happens with corrupted free will? No, it's going to be done the way I want it, by way, and that's all there is to it.

So get five people in a room that have to make a decision, and all five of them are equals, and they all have a different way of doing it. What's going to happen? You just have a big fight. It's going to be done my way, because I'm an independent-minded person. It's my way, my way's best. This drives us to protect ourselves at all costs.

You ever have someone do something to you that you think is a slight? Like they said something or did something, and it's like, boy, that was a put-down. Then later you think about it, you're mad. Later you're glad you didn't say anything to them because you think about it. They didn't mean it that way. We will protect ourselves. Now physically, we will protect ourselves at all costs. The problem is you and I will protect ourselves emotionally at all costs. Guys, sometimes we'll get in an argument with our wives, and they feel emotionally intimidated. At that point, they're going to protect their emotions at all costs, because that's what human beings do. If she doesn't, you have a very special converted person. Now, let's reverse it. Women, attack your husband emotionally, and he will protect himself at all costs.

That's what we do. Because we have a corrupted nature. At that point, he's not being logical, even though he says he is.

At the core of our being, every person is by nature hostile towards God. Why? Can he tell you what to do? I would do it my way. No, no, no, God. That's not the best way. I've asked people before, have you prayed about this? No. Why? Because I'm afraid God's answer will be different than what I want. I said, well, at least you're honest. I can deal with honesty. Okay, okay. That's been there, done that. Right? So, we have to understand that we have to understand that we have to understand that we have to understand that we have this incredible need to have a relationship with God. It's designed in us. Because we're flawed now, we're corrupted in all these ways that we're like God, we're now, we're in this... I'm going to do it my way. And you're going to do it my way, too.

Because if I lose control and have something done my way, well, we're so helpless. We live in such fear and anxiety, it's got to be done my way. So, then there's the third point. We will do... Now, once again, this is part of what we're designed to do. But since we're corrupted, this goes in a different direction. We will do almost anything to avoid emotional and physical pain and experience good feelings. God designed us to try to avoid emotional and physical pain. By the way, that's why. You know, one of the reasons He did that is we know the difference between good and evil. Evil produces negative... it produces physical pain, mental pain, and emotional pain. So, that's supposed to tell us something's wrong. But what do we think? Something's wrong, it's somebody else's fault. So, we find somebody else to blame.

So, once again, of itself, this isn't evil. But think about all the things we've gone through, how we are corrupted images of God. What does this produce?

It's independent selfishness, this intensity to motivate human beings towards malice and wickedness.

No wonder we're such a mess. But you and I will never move forward until we take the passage of Isaiah and the passage I just read in Jeremiah and understand that you and I have a corrupted human nature and because of this corrupted human nature. And Paul understood this... we'll read a little bit a little bit how Paul talks about it. Paul understood this deeply. That this isn't just about God. Here's my 10 sins that were the big ones of my life. I'm repented now. I'm converted.

This isn't about just keeping the Sabbath. No, keeping the Sabbath is part of it. This isn't about just, well, I stopped giving Christmas.

It's about a change in nature. It's about a change at the core. Conversion is about a change at the core of who we are. And when we go through the doctrine of conversion, we'll go through that.

So this is the problem. Human beings are made in the image of God. They have a relationship with God each other based upon the way God thinks. And we're doing this based on the way that we think and feel, and it will work. That's why God is giving us these thousands of years. Because just before we kill each other off, and there's nobody left, he says, okay, okay, you've figured it out. This is where you go, folks. This is where it takes you. You eventually kill each other off, and there's nobody left. You and I still, we have this walled nature. Why it takes God's Spirit, we'll talk about that at Pentecost, to change us.

And then we talk about, oh good, I have God's Spirit now. I won't have all this internal conflict. Oh, now you have two natures inside. You're corrupt human nature, the nature of God. Now you think we get real complicated.

So we have a longing for God, yet we want independence from Him. We wouldn't have to solve our problems, but we are immediately hostile towards these solutions. We need close relationships with others, but that means we have to be vulnerable. That means there's pain, and we will defend ourselves at all costs against that pain.

So you hurt my feelings? I punch you into the dust, right? We've launched back. You hurt my feelings? I hurt your feelings.

We're trapped. Without God, we're trapped in a corrupted human nature that leads us to, every once in a while, we'll get something right. And then we'll say, see, I know what I'm doing. Oh yeah, nine out of ten times we get it wrong, but the one time out of ten we get it right, we're neck and vincents say, I do know what I'm doing.

So we're just pretty doomed. Now, when Adam and Eve sinned, let's go back to Genesis. When Adam and Eve sinned, a number of things were put into motion right there that I want to talk about. Let's go back to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis 3. So you understand, you're getting this, you understand this corrupted human nature, right? If it made you feel uncomfortable, good. That means you get it. If it made you feel a little uncomfortable or a whole lot uncomfortable, that's good. Because it's like, oh yeah, that is me. That's us. If everybody said, that's not me, that's because you have corrupted human nature.

Genesis 3 verse 14. So the Lord said to the servant, so this is what God says to Satan, because you have done this, he had deceived Adam and Eve, although we know that especially Eve's emotions deceived her and Adam, though not deceived by the same emotional process because St. Nick directly to him, came in because he didn't have the will or the reasoning power to reason through what God had told him. So they both immediately began to deteriorate. Because you have done this, you are cursed more than the cattle, more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. You shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. The very first thing that God tells them, he tells Satan, okay, they get you as their God. That's why the New Testament, saying it's called the God of the world. But I will fix this. I will fix this, but I will send you a human being, not a complete human being. I'll say that there's a human being who's going to be different, but this human being will defeat you. Remember we went through the proto-evangelium here six months ago. We went through this as the first prophecy of the Bible. First prophecy because this is about Jesus Christ. So the very first thing he says is, okay, they chose you, they get you, but it will be forever. I will fix this. God knew what all the results would be. So he promises this solution to the problem. That's very encouraging. Remember, Adam and Eve didn't walk out of the Garden of Eden, head held high. We're doing it our way. They got kicked out wanting to go back. When they realized the price for this free will, it was like, uh, it's too late now. You chose the way you're going to live. You're going to live that way. Verse 19. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you returned to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for dust you are, dust you shall return. In other words, if you read through verse, uh, the whole 16 through 19, and I just picked 19, but you read that whole passage, he tells Eve and he tells Adam, life is going to be really hard. It wasn't that hard. It wasn't hard at all at Eden.

You pet lions. They didn't eat you.

There was no conflict. There was no violence.

They would watch their two oldest sons, one of them, kill the other one.

As humanity began to deteriorate, as each human being became corrupted by Satan, because Satan was the god of the world. Satan had an effect on human beings from the beginning, and so now they became corrupted.

He says, so it's going to be really hard, and you'll die. This is the whole reason for suffering, by the way, because we got kicked out of Eden, and it's going to be really hard, and you're going to die. Remember, the first thing he says, I'll fix this. But between now and then, this is what it's going to be.

The third thing he says is in verse 21. Now, this was very interesting.

Also for Anna Bay's wife, the Lord God made two nicks of skin and clothed them, and the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, to no good and evil. So one thing Satan told him that was true. If you disobey God and eat this piece of fruit, you will now know good and evil. He didn't say you'll be able to discern between them. You'll not have experienced it. God, on the other hand, doesn't experience evil. He just knows what's good and what's evil. Without the wisdom of God, may now have the experience of good and evil without the ability to discern it. It says, And now lest he put out his hand, and take also the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden, and eat until the ground for which he was taken. What does that mean? That means God said, I'm taking, not only will you die, I'm taking away from you eternal life. Eternal life has to be given to us. This is one of the scriptures from the very beginning that shows that one of Satan's great lies was, you shall not die. The immortal soul lie was one of the first lies ever told. You will not die. And God said, Guess what? You're getting kicked out of here and you don't have eternal life. If I don't send the one who will conquer Satan, you don't have eternal life. So I will send somebody to save this mess, that's the first point. But the second one is, you're going to suffer. Your life is going to be hard and you're going to die. And then eternal life is taking away from you. But we went back to that verse 15, the seed of a woman. And of course we know that that is Jesus Christ.

So here we have the three things that God said he's going to do right from the very beginning. Send somebody to save you of a being. But in the meantime, your life will be hard and you will die, and you don't have eternal life to hear it in you.

So how does this all come together now? You and beings remain in the image of God. Why? We're going to answer that in a minute. There's a reason why you and I are not like any other, you know, mammals. We're classified as mammals, but there's no mammal like us. There's reasons why we are unique on this earth. Because we're made in the image of God. Why did he make us in his image? Before I answer that, let's go back. Okay, we're made in the image of God. We're corrupted images of God. The very core of our nature is corrupted. Repenting of a couple sins doesn't change us. It may change a little behavior, but God wants more than a change of behavior. It has to be everything. It's the core of who we are. It has to be changed. So that we are reconstructed into the image of God.

Reconstructed into the image of God. Our original purpose. Why he made us to begin with.

Ephesians chapter 2. The apostle Paul, in the way that he can now, just takes this whole concept and brings it into a simple 10 verses. He's talking to the church here.

And you he made alive, this is verse 1 of Ephesians chapter 2, who were dead and trespasses and sins. He says, okay, you people who have repented and received God's Spirit, you were dead.

You were under the curses. You and I were under the curses of Genesis. The result of being kicked out of Eden was where we were going. Hard lives, death, and no eternal life. But, as we know, the seed of the woman, who is also the son of God, came. And so now we have this access to God. Access to God that allows forgiveness and for us to be reinstated into a relationship with God. The purpose of the relationship is to restore us back into His image.

It is to restore us back into His image.

Verse 2. He says, at which you once walked, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, whose spirit now works in the sons of disobedience. Humanity are the sons of Satan. He did create them, but they take it on His nature. Our corrupted human nature, we remain in the image of God. Our problem is, we still have some of the image of God in us, but we also have the image of Satan in us. We've taken on aspects of His nature. When Cain killed Abel, he had taken on one of the aspects of Satan's nature, because the Bible calls Satan a murderer.

When we lie, we take on some of the aspects of his nature, because he's called a liar. You see, so we're driven by this mixture, image of God. That's why you have a being who can do something so wonderful one moment, and so horrible, we're next.

Because we've absorbed a great amount of His nature into us, every one of us, just different degrees. Some people seem to be, you think, wow, that's the best person I ever met. That's a Hindu. Why didn't God call them? They still have corruption in human nature.

How much corruption does it take to kill you? A pound or a drop? He said, I mean, it kills us.

It kills us. No amount of good in a person can outweigh the corruption that's in their nature. It'd be like taking a cake. I bite a cake up here, and I said, one of these cakes, I put in six ounces of cyanide. And this one, I even put a drop. Which piece do you want?

Well, this cake's better than this cake. Yeah. This one will kill you in three seconds. This one will take at least 10 minutes. So which way you want to die? This one is more good, but the nature of it's corrupted, you see. If the nature of it's corrupted, you can't eat it. That's the problem with eternal life. We can't take into eternal life a corrupted nature.

We have to be changed. Now, you and I will still have some corrupted nature until the day we're changed. But understand what happens to us when we're changed. Because of the process we're going through, our nature is totally changed when we become spirit. We will no longer have a corrupt human nature. We can't. God is not going to let us take a corrupt human nature into eternity. Because when we become like Satan. So this is the process now of what God does. And the prince of the power, the heir, who works in his world. So all of us had a corrupted human nature that had absorbed part of Satan's nature. Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were, what to say, by nature, children of wrath, just as the others. You say, let's not forget where we've come from. Lest we forget, we're still struggling with a corrupted human nature.

It's not as corrupted as it used to be. But it's still corrupt. God still has work to do in everyone.

So by nature, we were this way. The children of wrath. You know, which is one of the primary aspects of Satan's nature. He's mad. He's angry. He's still with hatred. Verse 4, But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love, with which he loved us, he made us in his image, and he loves us. Why? Even when we were dead in trespasses, under those curses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved. The Lord's, he didn't say, oh wow, this cacony has a drop of strychnine, and this one has six ounces, so I picked this one to save.

In fact, let's face it, some of us were, yeah, some of us come from backgrounds, all of us are corrupted. So that's what grace is. And raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace, and his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. In other words, be fulfilled, Genesis 3.15. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. In other words, how did this process, where did it come from? Because God came to you and said, I call you, and you responded. And God granted you repentance, and you responded. And God gave you his Spirit. You didn't grab it, you didn't take it from him. And we didn't get God's Spirit because we were good. We got God's Spirit because it's the other way we can become good. And now we have to follow God. We still have to keep responding. We still have to obey. We still have to do what he says. But the point is, you don't, I don't have, we cannot change our nature on ourselves. I don't care how many self-help books you read. You can't change your nature to the nature of God. You can only make your nature a little better.

In the end, you die. In the end, none of us have eternal life unless God gives it to us.

So it always comes back to how are we responding to God because he's the one who's doing this. Our part is response to what he's doing.

He says, for a migration of it saved through faith that's not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should burst. Or burst, both. You might burst, too. Burst him. Now this is just, he now wraps this up. Oh, good. So God forgives me, I'd say, I don't have to do anything. No, no, no. If you have God's Spirit and you don't submit, and your nature isn't changed, he's not going to resurrect you into eternal life.

Here's why, verse 10. For we are his workmanship. God has to recreate us. Good salvation is recreation. I'll never forget the first time we read that, Herman Armstrong wrote that. Salvation is recreation. It's like, that's it. That's the whole concept. In three words, God has to recreate us. And you and I come into this world only half there. It takes God's Spirit to complete us. That's that emptiness. We come into this world knowing we're not complete. We spend our whole lives trying to complete it when the truth is only God's Spirit can complete us. So we come into this world only half done, and then we get corrupted. So now we're a corrupted, half-created being. Once again, no wonder we're such a mess. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before him that we should walk in them.

So now this process by which our nature, because we were by nature the children of wrath. How do you change your nature? God has to put his nature in you. That's why we have to have God's Spirit. God's nature comes into us. It works with us, and works with us, and prepares us. God prepares us, and then one day he comes and abides in us. He gives us his Spirit.

Now he starts this recreation process. Why then? Why does God recreate us back into his image? It's a very specific purpose, and it goes back to the simplest answer to why are we here? Let's go to the end of the book. We started at beginnings. We started in Genesis 1. We're going to go almost to the very end. Revelation 21. This is a prophecy about what happens after the Great White Throne Judgment. This is when this whole plan is being finished.

He says, let's go ahead and start in verse 1 to get the whole power of this passage. I saw a new heaven and a new earth, John said in this vision he sees, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. That's not the end of the Great White Throne Judgment. Like a fire has burned up all human beings who will not have their nature changed.

Satan is removed, and God brings his throne to this earth. Then I, John, saw, and the holy city knew Jerusalem coming down out of the heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adored for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. And he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he says to John, write, for these words are true and faithful. And he says to John, verse 6, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give the fountain of the water of life freely to him the thirst. Adam and Eve, when they were kicked out of Eden, were spiritually thirsty. You and I are spiritually thirsty. Eternal life is now given. You and beings were kicked out of Eden, so they couldn't have eternal life. Now you and beings receive eternal life. Nature has been changed, restored back into the image of God. But now the spirit beings. And verse 7 tells us why. It says in verse 7, He who overcomes shall inherit all things. Now what's left out of all, everything God has created is created for us. Corrupted, new beings that have to be recreated, and it changed. Why? And I will be his God, and he shall be my son. The simple truth is that we're here because God wanted children. That's who we are. We're God's children. He allowed us to be exposed to evil. Why?

If you have free will, you have to make a choice. Besides, love, it means a choice. To really love, you have to choose to love.

So he had to give it to us. Because then we'll be like him. He chooses to love us. When we just read in Ephesians, his love was shown in Jesus Christ. He chose to have Christ brutally killed that way. Christ chose to be killed that way. It was a choice to show us what love actually is. You want to know what love is? Here it is. You're not worth dying for, and I'll do it anyways. Because you are. Because I'll give you value. Why will God give us value? We're dirt. Why would God give us dirt value? Because we remain in his image. And because of that, we have the potential to be his children forever in his family. That's why.

That's why. He gives dirt value.

Why do I exist? Questions we asked at the beginning. You were created to be a child of God in a relationship with your Creator. Why does God allow suffering and evil?

Because we have free will. This is the result of our free will. Because we're all a mixture of good and evil. We all experience death. We have no inherent eternal life unless God changes us. Does God have a plan for your life, for humanity? Yes. He wants to save you and recreate you and bring you into his family.

You know, at the present time, the great majority of humanity is cut off from God. They don't know Him. They don't understand. When you look at even if everybody who called themselves a Christian was a true follower of God, and they're not, it'd still be a small minority in the world.

Still be a small minority.

God is working on a plan to reconcile humanity back to Him and to restore us to our original plan, to restore us to be at His image, because He wants sons and daughters like Him. He doesn't want pets.

This is the purpose for humanity. Through the struggles of life, remember, this is God's purpose for you.

Thank you, Mr.