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[ Silence ] [MUSIC] I know He cares for those who would be free. I know He cares for the earnest as you sleep.

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Oh, why don't you try Him for yourself? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is waiting, He's waiting for you and for me. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is waiting.

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He's waiting for you and for me. [music] Amen. What is man,

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that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of man, that thou visitest him? These words are recorded in Psalm 8,

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And the psalmist not only asks the question, "What is man?" But goes on to answer this question, "For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and has crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands and has put all things

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under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. "What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man that thou visitest him?"

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These words are a part of one of the most majestic hymns of the Bible. This song speaks of the greatness of God and the blessedness of man. It penetrates into the deep things of life and ponders the perplexing question, "What is man?"

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This is a question concerning which the prophets have spoken, poets have sung, and philosophers have reasoned. What is man? Alfred Lloyd Tennyson in the poem "Flower in the Cranted Wall" speaks of the mystery

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of God and man when he says, "Flower in the cranted wall, I pluck you out of the crannies. I hold you here, root and all, in my hand. Little flower, but if I could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all,

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I should know what God and man is. What is man? The Christian faith has much to say about the nature and destiny of man. In this particular passage of Scripture, we see man as he considers himself, as he considers

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his creator, as he considers the world. The psalmist here begins with God, God the Father, "Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth." He begins with God as creator, as ruler, and as sustainer.

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He begins with God as the creator of that which is beautiful. It's sort of like a symphony, you see. It begins with sweet and harmonious sounds. How excellent is thy name, O Lord.

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It's the opening of a great symphony. It's the first movement, the opening melody, and the first tune here, heard by eager listeners who sit in rapt attention, has to do with the song of creation. As the conductor lifts his baton, the music of many instruments is blended into one harmonious

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melody, "Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth." In other words, if we would really understand the question of man, we must begin at the right place. We must begin with God. We have selected as the theme for this particular observance ministering effectively now. And we cannot really

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relate to this theme, we cannot really understand who we are and what we are to do unless we understand the source of our beginnings. Unless we understand the one who has made us and the one who commissions and commands us. Oh Lord our Lord we must begin with God and it is only in our relationship to God that we

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come to understand who we are. We must start at the beginning, the source, we must start with the Creator, the pioneer of our faith and the bishop of our souls. what is man that God himself takes note of him and has made man the object of his affection. You see the psalmist is is dwarfed by the vastness of creation as

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he beholds the world around him the magnificent splendor of the heavens the dazzling planets, the twinkling stars, the sun, the moon, the work of the skillful fingers of the great architect of the universe, God himself. And he says as he beholds the vastness of the universe, the question comes to him, what is man? To put

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it another way, who am I? What is man? What place do I occupy in the scheme of things? Because when I look at the vastness of God's creation I seem so small, so insignificant, so meaningless. What is man? Who am I? Well the first thing that I should like to emphasize as we consider the answer

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to this question is that of the dignity of man. Thou has made him a little lower than the angels and has crowned him with wisdom and honor. Thou has put all things under his feet. Man is the climax of God's creation. Man is made in the image of his creator. And when we look at all of the creatures of the earth, that man

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somehow comes as the climax of it all after God had created the world, after God had fashioned the garden and made all of the creatures that were there, then he makes man and gives him dominion over all of the works of his hands. Man has dignity. Man is not a worm. He's made in the image of God, a little lower than the

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angels. That we have the resemblance of the Creator, that God put something of himself in us and we have dignity. There is the sacredness of human personality, all people made in the image of God. That's important. There's a story concerning a pastor who had the practice of making an annual visit to a Sunday

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school class. It was a children's class and so the teacher had prepared the students for the pastor's visit. One of the questions that the pastor was expected to ask was who made you? And there was a

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boy selected to answer that question. And so as planned the pastor did make the visit on that particular Sunday and

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when he came to the point in his visit where he asked a question, "Who made you?" There was silence. And finally one little boy spoke up and said, "The boy who God made isn't here today."

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He was absent, the one who was expected to answer that question. "The boy who God made isn't here today." Well the truth of the matter is that God made every one of us. No matter how strange and how peculiar one may look, he's still made in the image of

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God. That every person has dignity. There's something sacred there. There is something of the Spirit of God that has been put into every person.

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Every person is important because every person is made in the image of God. So there is a dignity of man a little lower than the angels thou hast made him. Another thing we need to consider however is the fact that man is a sinner made in the image of God but man has fallen.

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Man is a sinner. That something has gone wrong in the life of humankind. We have fallen from the high mark that God has set for us. We have not been faithful to his command.

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Something has gone wrong. And so man is a sinner. Not just some men, but all men. is a sinner. While he has dignity, while he is made in the image of God, that

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that image has been defaced. So we have missed a mark, we've fallen short. Man is a sinner but we must never lose sight of the fact that man has dignity because of the fact not only does he have dignity but that dignity is because of his divinity. It's because of the fact that he is made in the image of God. So

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the truth of the matter is that we are a marvelous mixture, a marvelous mixture of dust and divinity. What is man? Well you can answer this so many ways. If the scientists were to answer this question as to what is man, we would no doubt talk about the chemicals that make up the human body. And at one time when

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those were added up it would come to just about 98 cents. Well now with inflation as it is is possibly a little more than that as far as the chemicals are concerned. But you certainly can't answer that question that way. We're far more important than the chemicals that we have in our body as to how much they

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would come to on the marketplace. You don't answer the question according to that kind of scientific answer. Who am I? I have blood, so have you, sinews, bones, muscles, and all of those things.

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But that is not really what makes man. You can't judge people by those things. In fact, you just can't measure a person by these physical things, not by the scientific answer. You can't really measure Him by any of these things, we have to look deeper and we can only measure by considering that which is divine.

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Thou has made Him a little lower than the angels. So, man is man when his life reflects the image of God. And whenever our lives fail to reflect the image of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God, the justice of God, the love of God, and whenever our lives fail to reflect that

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image, then man is not really man. He's something less than man. Who am I? That's an existential question. Who am I? It's a question related to my existence. It's a question related to to your existence. I am made, and so are you, to reflect to others

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the image of God, the likeness of the Creator. For he hath made him. God has made us a little lower than angels and has crowned us with wisdom and honor. Not only does man have dignity, not only does man have divinity, but lastly, man has a duty.

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man has duty to perform. God didn't just make us, place us in the Garden of Eden just to look at the garden and to enjoy the beauty of the garden, but Adam is placed in that garden to dress it and to keep it. For thou hast made him a lord of the angels and has crowned him with wisdom and honor thou has put all things

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under his feet. So man is made to be master every human being is made to master God's creation not to be mastered by things but to be the master of the things that God has made. Thou has put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, and

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everything that passes through the paths of the seas." That's our ministry. Our ministry is somehow to be master, not to be a mouse, but to be master, to somehow do the work of God. We are little gods, so to speak, in the sense that we are made in the image of God, that we are to preside over God's

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God's creation as his representatives. Who am I anyway? We try to answer this question so many ways. Most of the time when people want to know who you are,

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they want some type of identification. And the first thing we do is we go in and we give them our driver's license. that's supposed to say who we are.

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It has a picture on it, and sometimes it looks like us. Sometimes we don't think it looks quite like us. Sometimes we think they do a rather poor job

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on us from our driver's license ticket pictures. But that's what we present. And just think, think really, when I present that little car,

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Does that really tell who I am and who you are? Yet we take that. Well, sometimes I say, well, do you have any other kind of identification?

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Who am I? Anyway. And what one may appear to be at one time is one thing. You may weigh a certain amount another time.

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And sometimes you may lose this and lose that, different parts of our body we lose. But are we any the less? Who am I?

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Am I to be measured? Am I to be understood just in terms of this body? Well, we can lose this, we can have this replaced, that replaced, we can even now have our heart replaced.

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Who am I? The answer to that question has to do with my response to the call of God, my response to the duty that God has assigned to me, and your response to the duty that God has assigned to you.

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God has given us duty to perform, and that duty has to do with doing the work of God in the garden of God. It's doing what God has assigned to us within the circle of His will. You want to dress that God of God's creation.

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That's our task. We are understood according to how we relate ourselves to one another as we move about how we take care of God's creation. So man becomes man as he responds to the creative work of God in his life.

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What is God doing in my life? What is he doing in your life? When God is at work in our lives, when God's spirit is at work in our lives,

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directing us in our daily work, whatever our task may be, if somehow we do it with the spirit of God guiding us so that whatever work we do,

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whether it's sweeping the street or whether it's emptying the garbage, whether it's serving as a professor, a lawyer, a businessman, whatever it is,

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that somehow what we do is God's work because God's spirit motivates us in that work. And whatever that is, the way our lives is directed, then we become the kind of self that God made us to be

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doing his work, his way, in his world. So, dignity, divinity, and duty. Think about it as you look at your own life. And the Psalmist puts it in a beautiful symphony.

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And he begins by saying, oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. In other words, really the answer to that question is, as to who I am and who you are,

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has to do with the foundation of our lives. It's when one considers God as the ground of being, that my being, that which sustains me, that which is the foundation of my life is God! What is the ground of being that I can't really be myself except my life is established on

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God, on his goodness. And then it closes with the same words, "Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth." That's why I call this a symphony.

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It's a grand symphony because the symphony begins with a certain movement, with a certain tune, and it ends with the same tune. Sometimes you really hear that melody going all the way through, but it ends as it begins. the foundation of life and God the goal of all our strivings. We say he's the

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beginning and the ending so we begin with him and we end with him because he is the goal of all of our striving. That what I strive to do is to be like God and God shows us his likeness in in Jesus Christ. Want to know what God is like?

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Well, He has showed us. He's given us a perfect revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. In Him we see

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what every person is designed to be. One who is the perfect image of the Father. Thanks be to God that he has given us this supreme revelation of himself. Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. He who is our

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beginning, He who is the goal of our striving goes with us. He is with us in all of our endeavors. No matter where we are in this particular junction of our lives, no matter where we are, God is with us. That's the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ that God is with us and that he sustains us and

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as we come now to this point in our service where we extend the invitation to accept Jesus Christ as Lord of your life. As you answer this existential question in your own life, "Who am I?" As you look at your own history, your own existence, and you ask, "Who am I?" You can only answer this, that I'm really made to

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reflect dignity and divinity and to do God's work. That's my duty. We invite you to accept Jesus Christ as Lord of your life as you answer this question through right relationship with Him, accepting Him as Lord and Savior, come home. If you have not that relationship with Him today, you're away from where you ought

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to be. You're really not being the person God made you to be, so come home, accept Him. So as we sing now, Hymn 150, we invite you to come. [MUSIC PLAYING] [CHOIR SINGING]

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♪ Jesus is calling ♪ ♪ Calling for you and for me ♪ ♪ See above, Lord knows it ♪ ♪ Waiting and watching ♪

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♪ Watching for you and for me ♪ ♪ Glory ♪ ♪ Come home ♪ ♪ Come home ♪

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♪ Ye who are with the Lord ♪ ♪ And the sweet deliverance ♪ ♪ Is rolling ♪ ♪ Hiding close ♪

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♪ In the night ♪ ♪ Come home ♪ ♪ Come home ♪ ♪ Ye young men ♪

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[Music] [ Music ] [BLANK_AUDIO]