Genesis (4) (On the Sixth Day)
Text: Genesis 1:24-31
By: Ken McKinley
(Read Text)
Now if you’ve been with us so far in our study of Genesis, you’ll remember that I said that Genesis lays the foundation for all of Scripture, and we’ve talked about how the first two verses show us that God is the sovereign Creator of all that is, and that He has shown to us His might and power, His faithfulness and provision, His order and justice and mercy, all through His creation. And we’ve talked about how He brought form to formlessness, fullness from emptiness, and light to darkness.
Then we looked at the 6 days of creation and talked about how those were literal days, not eons or ages, but 24 hour time periods. And we talked about how as Christians, we shouldn’t attempt to harmonize Scripture with science, but rather, we should attempt to harmonize science with Scripture. The Bible is the bar; it is the standard that all other accounts must come up to. Then we talked about how Eve was created on that 6th day shortly after Adam. And I just want to touch on that one more time before we go on much further. And I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, because I think ya’ll will see it once you look at it.
We read about the creation of man on the 6th day and that’s in chapter 1:27-31. Then we get to chapter 2 verse 3 and it says, God rested on the 7th day. But when we get down to verse 7 of chapter 2 it starts talking about how He formed man again. Then in verses 15-25 we read about the creation of Eve. So what’s happening here? Well all this is… its a literary technique called a flashback… its God going back and giving Moses more detail about what He did on the 6th day. I don’t know where or when, or even how we got the idea that Eve came along after the 6 days of creation, but when we use proper hermeneutics and we read what’s in the text instead of what we want to be in the text, it’s pretty plain.
Now if you’re sitting here today and you’re saying to yourself, “I still can’t wrap my mind around this creation account given to us in Genesis.” Maybe the so called scientific evidences are just too strong of a pull on you, or the culture, or whatever. If so, then let me ask you one question. How does science explain the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
It can’t. It can try to explain it away, but it can’t explain it. The resurrection is beyond the scope of science. Science can’t deal with the matter of the miraculous. You see; to reject the miraculous completely, lies outside the realm of rational argument. Let me try to explain this. The person who rejects the miraculous says, “I don’t believe that miracles happen, therefore miracles do not happen.” Now that kind of statement is based on faith, it’s not based on science, because science has nothing to say about miracles or the miraculous, science deals in the realm of repetitive activity; science can ultimately only comment on that which can be put in a lab and produced, and reproduced, again and again and again. Scientific deduction is then made on the basis of the fact that this thing happens again and again and again. But by their very definition, miraculous events are not like that. Therefore it takes it beyond the realm and scope of science. When you or I as a believer say that we accept the miraculous; what are we actually saying? We’re saying, “That by an act of faith, we believe that God’s Word is true.” When an atheist or agnostic says that he or she rejects the miraculous, they’re saying the same thing –
By an act of faith, they do not believe that God’s Word is true. For the atheist or agnostic; faith then is grounded in the notion that such things couldn’t possibly be true and they say to themselves, “no sensible person would believe those things, and being that I’m a sensible person, I don’t believe them.” The Christian on the other hand; comes to the miraculous, via the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s the cornerstone of Christianity itself. So once you settle the matter of the resurrection, then God creating the heavens and the earth as described in Genesis simply falls into line.
Now the point I’m trying to get across is that if science doesn’t line up with the Bible, then either science or God, or the Bible is wrong. IF scientists are wrong, then we can trust God and the Bible. If God is wrong then we can’t trust the Bible because that’s where we learn of God and we should probably devote our worship to science or nothing. If the Bible is wrong then we have to consider God’s ability to preserve His Word, and we should throw it out and seek our answers elsewhere. Doesn’t give us a lot of options if you want to be a person of religion does it?
Now this doesn’t only go for science. We can use the same standard for laws. People ask, “If same sex marriage was made legal, would you accept it?” Or, “If abortion or euthanasia are legally mandated, would you obey the laws?” And the answer is, “NO.” Again because it is contrary to Scripture; and we ought to obey God rather than man. In-other-words, those things are hills that I will fight and; if necessary, die on!
Now before I get too far off track on this, let’s look again at our text. And from this text I really want to concentrate on just one main thing (I know, that’s a tall order).
But what I want us to look at this morning is; what it means to be made in the image of God. If you ask Christians, most of them would tell you that it’s important that Genesis tells us that we are created in the image of God, but if you ask them to explain what that means, you might get all kinds of answers, so today I hope we’re able to answer that question.
So what does it mean to be made in the image of God? Well I think the first thing is right there in verses 24 & 25. All of these “living things” are brought forth “according to its kind”; cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, each “according to their kind,” But then we come to man in verse 25 and God says, “Let US (that’s the Trinity) make man in OUR image…” And I think what that’s saying to us is that man is a unique creation of God. We are not just another animal. We are not even a “higher animal,” we are of another kind. Animals are each according to their kind… man is of the image of God. We are distinct from the animal kingdom! We are God’s special creation, His crowning achievement so to speak. And that’s why we’re told in verse 26 that man is to have dominion. Remember last Sunday, when we talked about the 6 days of creation – how God gave a command, the command was fulfilled and then God asserted His dominion and rule over it. Here; God is now saying man is to rule as His steward. And what this is telling us is that man has the capacity to think, to reason, to make decisions, to learn… and sometimes people will say something like, “Don’t you know that dolphins are just as smart as men are.” And my answer to that is, “Then why in the world do we have these campaigns to save the dolphins from tuna fishing nets?” If they were so smart, you’d think that they would learn to stay out of those things…
That might sound like a silly argument, or maybe too simplistic; but I’ve never seen dolphins in an effort to save humanity from anything. I’ve never seen dolphins exercise dominion and authority over man.
Yes dolphins are smart, but they don’t have the capacity to rule like men and that comes not only from our ability to think and reason and make decisions and learn, but also, our ability to do all of those things morally and with justice and uprightness.
King David touches on this in Psalm 8. Let’s turn their and read that; Pslam 8:1-9 (Read). You see what David’s saying here? In verses 3-5 he’s saying, “When I look up and I see the vastness of this universe, when I look at just the vastness of the earth, what is man in the context of all of this?” But then in verse 5 – I can imagine David pausing and taking a deep breath, because from verse 5 until the end of the Psalm, David realizes what God has done. It’s amazing that God has created all of this, and then in His divine providence and wisdom, His one creation, that He made a little lower than the angels, is the one thing that God has chosen to have dominion and rule as stewards of this amazing creation.
Now it’s important for us to understand that we are merely ruling as stewards. We can’t simply destroy the earth, and creation, we can’t simply exploit creation, and the reason for that is because it’s not really ours… its God’s, and we are accountable to Him. You see; as a Christian I am not against protecting the environment and creation, what I have problems with are the radicals who are involved in that sort of thing. On one hand we have the radical tree huggers who have elevated the creation above the Creator, they want to worship “mother earth” and nature above God. And they’ve elevated the lower forms of creation above the pinnacle of creation. In other words to those people, saving a tree is more important to them than saving a human life. They will cry out, “Save the whales” and then turn around and advocate aborting babies. That’s one group. On the other hand, you have these radical environmentalists, who are using things like global warming to manipulate and control people, and make millions of dollars off of that control. Their goal isn’t really to save the planet or the environment, their goal is gain power and authority over their fellow man. As Christians, we shouldn’t have anything to do with either group. We should look at it from a Biblical perspective and act as good stewards over the creation that God has placed us over.
Ok… Stay on track McKinley. I’ll try to hurry and hit my other points.
To be created in the image of God means to be distinct from the rest of creation. It means that we are a special creation of God, and even though we were created “a little lower than the angels” the angels weren’t created in the image of God. But it also means that we bear certain of God’s attributes. Now if you remember when we were looking at the verses before these in our text, and we were discussing the 6 days of creation, and I told you all that God is a God of order, that He is not the author of confusion. And we see from the creation account that God is a rational Being, that He has intelligence, that He is able to formulate plans and execute them. Well mankind is also endowed with these things. I would even say that the more mankind and society as a whole rejects God, the less rational they become, but that’s for another sermon on another day.
We also saw from creation that God is a personal God, that He has personhood, but also that He is personally involved in His creation. We are too. Again, you never see animals organizing to take care of the environment. You never see the zebra’s getting together to protest the elephants overuse of water at the watering hole. But its like its inherent within man to protect creation.
We see that God is moral, and man is a moral creature as well. Man has a conscience we have this innate sense of what’s right and wrong. And again I would say that the more secular society becomes the less moral it becomes.
Anthropologists tell us that we’re just breaking free of societal taboos, but I don’t think so. History on the other hand gives us example after example of how when a society becomes less and less moral and more and more corrupt their downfall is forthcoming. It’s Biblical Anthropology that ties those two together. The Bible teaches us that we are all totally depraved due to sin, and that its God’s restraining grace that keeps us from being as bad as we could be… but as much as we do not like to retain God in our knowledge, God in turn turns us over. In-other-words, He begins to pull those restraints back and allows sin to run its course. So basically; the more sinful a person becomes, the less they reflect that image of God.
There’s one other thing I want to show you and then we’ll close.
The image of God means that we are endowed with an immortal, spiritual aspect to our being. Genesis 2:7 says, “… the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” This “breath of life” is reference to our being a living soul… a living spirit. We have an aspect to our being that is personal, spiritual and immortal. It’s talking about something that goes on and on, and is personal, and self-conscious in knowledge and thought, and awareness. People wonder why we as Christians are so concerned with evangelism and missions and the Great Commission; it’s because we believe that man is an immortal soul and that he is going to exist for all eternity somewhere. It may be in heaven… or it may not be. And if we truly love people, and we truly believe God’s Word, then we need to be doing all that we can to make sure it’s the former place, and not the latter, that they spend eternity.
Let’s Pray
