Genesis 1:27-28 NIV Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:7-8 and 15

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 

What does it mean that we’re made in the image of God? 

Ruling and reigning God’ worlds which they’ve been given authority and the way that they do that the way that they rule points back to God, it glorifies the one who made them because  it looks like God it reflects His heart and and it displays God’s character and identity to the world around them. 

And Genesis tells us in direct contrast to this ancient ideology that all people- men, women, and child are image bearers of God. No matter our status, income, or job title all of us are royalty in God’s kingdom.

Pay attention to the thematic stories that we tell in our culture again and again.

What movies did you watch multiple times when you were young? 

Genesis 2:15 NIV The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.  Work it and take care of it. 

“Re-arranging the raw materials in a particular domain to draw out it’s potential for the flourishing of everyone” - Tim Keller on work

And this is what it looks like to rule in God’s kingdom, to be the image of God. In both our paid and unpaid work.

If work is something that God blessed why is there so much disfunction and distress around our work? Why do I identify my work with who I am and it pulls me away from my true identity in Christ? Or why has my work become a source of shame because it tells me all that I’m not?

Genesis 3:17 NIV To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 

Psalm 127:1-2 NIV Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.2 In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves. 

Work becomes toil when the labors work in vain. Work becomes toil when we forget our place in God’s kingdom and try to do it all on our own. When we choose our plan not God’s plan. Our glory not God’s glory.

1. Have To -> Get To

NIV 1 Cor 10:31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

And verse 33: For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved

1. From focusing on Success to focusing on Service

I serve at the pleasure of the King.

Luke 17:10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty. 

Story of Jeremiah Evarts