Man Series

MAN (BFM pt.4)

Text: Genesis 1:27

By: Ken McKinley

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Well so far we’ve looked at the first two points of the BFM, The Scriptures and God, today we’re going to be looking at article #3 – Man. The doctrine (or teaching) of man is called anthropology, and there is a whole secular field that deals with this, but the problem with secular anthropology is that they have removed God’s truth from the field, and if you eliminate the truth of God from something then you have a faulty foundation that you are building on; and if you build on a faulty foundation the whole structure is faulty.

It’s important for us to realize that the Bible is Theocentric not Anthrocentric… that means that it is God centered not man centered (Read Isaiah 43:7, 1st Cor. 10:31).

I’m sure that you all have heard that acronym for the Bible – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, but if that’s all you think the Bible is then you’ve made a mistake. The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to mankind. John tells us that “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and the Same was in the beginning with God… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus came to reveal God to man, He is Emmanuel – God with us. Jesus said, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father… the Father and I are one.” Jesus revealed God to man, and now the Word… the Bible continues to reveal God to man.

People say, “I don’t know God’s will.” Read the Bible. It reveals God’s will to us. We cannot truly understand ourselves until we first understand what God has revealed about Himself in the Bible.

Here’s what the BFM says about man (Read Article III).

Now I want to focus on 3 parts of that statement. I want to look at mans origin, mans fallen state, and the solution to our fallen state. First; lets look at mans origin, how did we get here?

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his book titled The Origin of Species, and in that book he offered a hypothesis as to how man came to exist. Now I’ve actually read that book, and Darwin actually never gives an explanation about the origin of anything, instead he offers a hypothesis – a guess, about how creatures might evolve.

Does anyone know what the scientific method is? The scientific method is a process scientists use to determine cause and effect and thus create theories and proclaim scientific laws. It goes like this:

1st Ask a question

2nd Do background research

3rd Construct a hypothesis (offer a best guess as to what is the cause)

4th Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment with observation

5th Analyze the data and draw a conclusion

6th Communicate your results where the data can be retested and compared

So let’s say that you are Isaac Newton and you saw an apple fall from a tree and you wondered why? You would do background research, you would form an idea (maybe the idea of gravity) and then you would test it over and over again taking note of your results.

Now let’s go back to Charles Darwin. Darwin saw different type of finches on the Galapagos Islands and started the process of the scientific method. He asked a question, “I wonder why there are so many varieties of finches here?” He then created a hypothesis, “They must have evolved.” But the problem with evolution is that it can’t be tested with observation, and so to call the hypothesis of evolution a theory is wrong. We could look at other things like the lack of transitional fossils, we could look at how evolution cannot explain how we developed our minds, our wills, or our emotions.

There are a lot of other problems with evolution, and I don’t have time to get to them today, but the thing is; since evolutionists and creationists both have the same evidence what it comes down to is how we interpret that evidence. And neither evolutionists or creationists are neutral when it comes to interpreting that evidence.

As Christians we believe that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. John 1:3 says this about Jesus, “All things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made.” In Genesis we are told that God created man, that He created them male and female, that He took from Adam and gave back to Adam in order to complete Adam and make Him one with his wife. And Romans 1:20 tells us that all of creation declares the glory of God. Every time we look at a sunset, a bird flying in the sky, purple mountains majesty or amber waves of grain we can know that there is a God and that He loves us.