Week 2 - The Purpose and Direction of Humanity
Why do we exist?
On Sunday I began by asking our students a question every person has asked since the beginning of time. Why do we exist?
In the ancient near east region of Mesopotamia the Akkadians believed that people existed to do the horrible work the gods did not want to do themselves. Humanity’s existence was pointless and consisted of frivolous, difficult, pain-inducing tasks that the gods hated doing so much they created people to do instead.
The Israelites, however, had a much different experience with the Divine and they recorded it in Genesis 1:26-31. There we see that the One God, Yahweh, revealed himself to the Israelites as the sole Creator of all things, both seen and unseen, and created people because it pleased him to do so. Furthermore, God made people as his image bearers to represent Him to the rest of creation.
Unlike their contemporaries, the Israelites understood that they were made by the One True God to bear His image to the rest of the world. Whereas the Akkadians lived a purposeless existence, the Israelites lived as God’s representatives to the world.
As Christians who believe in the One True God, Yahweh, this is our purpose too. We—like all people—are made in God’s image to represent him to the rest of creation. Unfortunately, because sin entered the world (as we see in Genesis 3) our ability to represent God rightly has been corrupted. Therefore, the question for us today, which is the same question being asked behind the scenes throughout the rest of the Old Testament, is: How are we to represent God well in a sinful, fallen world?
If we skip ahead in the story to Philippians 2:5-9, we see that Jesus perfectly bore God’s image by sinlessly representing God to creation despite sin’s corruption of all things. Jesus—God incarnate—emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant and humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. In our sinful world this is how we represent God well: through humbly emptying ourselves for the sake of those around us.
As people we are created to bear God’s image. As Christians we are responsible for representing God to the rest of the world, and we do this well by humbly emptying ourselves for the benefit of those around us.
Therefore, the question we need to be regularly asking ourselves is, “How can we represent God well this week?” When we are at school, or work, or home—wherever we are—we are God’s representative and we are responsible to bear his image rightly by humbly giving of ourselves for the benefit of those around us.
Continuing the Conversation at Home
Ask your kids what they learned at group on Sunday. Tell them that you read what we talked about. Ask them how they feel about being God’s representative to their friends and classmates, and encourage them to press on when it is hard. Be open to sharing your own struggles of representing God well to them (we ALL struggle with this) and invite them to dialogue with you about this.
This Sunday we are going to dedicate the entire teaching time to answering questions that students have. Students can drop their questions off in person in the “Questions Box” in the Rec Room, or they can email their questions to ask@redemptionbiblechurch.org. Ask your kids if they have any questions about God, the Bible, or life in general that they would like to talk about at Youth. Encourage them to email their questions this week. Please feel free to email questions that you hear your kids asking. We have already received some great questions and would love to get more!