On July 14, 1789 the people of Paris stormed the Bastille and began to tear
down this hated symbol of tyranny. So many had been brutally tortured an
imprisoned there. No one seemed to know what happened to the stones until
Joseph Gies in doing research for his book Bridges And Men discovered that
the director of France's 18th century bridge and highway authority used the
stones from the Bastille to build a bridge across the Seine River. The very
same material used to build a prison to deprive people of freedom was used to
build a bridge to enlarge man's freedom.
This illustrates that good or evil is not in the material, but it is in the
manner in which it is used. The same knife that is used by a surgeon to save
life, can be used by the murderer to take life. The same pen can be used to
write the Gospel or a hate letter. The same tongue can be used to bless or to
curse. Unlike many religions and philosophies of the world, Christianity
believes that matter is good. When God finished the creation of the universe
He said it was very good. Matter is no accident. It is God's creation. God
used matter to communicate a message about His being and His love. All of
the material creation declares the glory and wisdom of God.
The very concept of beauty is meaningless without matter. Beauty is an
abstract concept, but matter is concrete, and if the abstract idea of beauty is to
have any meaning, it must be embodied in a concrete example. The beautiful
idea of any artist is impossible to see until he puts it onto canvas, or into some
material form. Matter is also God's means of communicating to man the
abstract message of love. God became flesh in Jesus Christ in order to
communicate in a concrete way the love He has for man. We use the matter of
bread and juice to convey the greatest spiritual truth in the universe, for they
represent the body and blood of Jesus. When we baptize we use physical
water to convey the message of being buried with Christ and resurrected to
new life. We use material means to express spiritual truth.
Every spiritual message in God's revelation is communicated through
matter. The Bible is written on matter. It uses paper, leather and ink, but
these material things convey the spiritual message of God command. God
spent the greatest part of the creative weak making matter, and all the things
that are without life. Even when He made life it was combined with matter.
When He comes to the climax of His creation He forms man from the dust of
ground. Man is made of matter. He is composed of the same elements as the
rest of creation. The atoms that God created were like the stones of the
Bastille. They could be used to make a mountain, a maple, a moose, or a man.
We want to look at the 3 phases we see here in the making of man.
I. GOD'S CONSULTATION ABOUT MAN. v. 26
God pauses before He creates man. All of the rest of creation He has
called into existence with no mention of reflection, but before man is created
He holds consultation with someone. The great debate through the centuries
has been over the question of whom it was with that He had this consultation.
Jewish scholars have felt He consulted with the angels, but the great Jewish
scholar Cassuto has rejected this, for there is no evidence that God created
with the help of angels. He feels, as many Christians do, that the plural is the
plural of majesty. A king often referred to himself in the plural. This has not
satisfied many who prefer to see this as a clear reference to the Trinity. This
might be a hint, but in itself there is nothing triune about plurality.
The best way to see it is that it does not teach that God is a Trinity, for a
plural can be two or four as well as three. On the other hand we see that the
New Testament does reveal God in 3 persons. We can look back and see that
in this text God was keeping open the possibility of reading the Trinity back
into the Old Testament. The New Testament makes it clear that Christ was
the Creator, and this plural in the Old Testament makes it possible to see how
that can be so. From the New Testament perspective this is a reference to God
the Father consulting with God the Son about the making of man.
The Trinity of God is not the main truth we want to see here, however,
for the unity of man is even more basic to a proper understanding of biblical
theology. Bernard Ramm in The Christian View Of Science And Scripture
writes, "The unity of the human race is one of the most important matters in
Christian theology." There have been man attempts to deny this in science
and theology. Some have felt that different races have had different origins,
but science has rejected this as being highly improbable. In theology there are
some who believe in a pre-adamite theory that says all of the fossils of cavemen
were before Adam, and they all died before Adam was created. Some like the
well known R. A. Torrey believed that some of these pre-adamite people were
still alive at the time of Adam. Some feel that it was from these people that
Cain took his wife.
Time does not permit to show that all of this is conjecture opposed to the
biblical picture. All we can do now is to point out that the whole redemptive
plan of the New Testament is built on the assumption that Adam was the first
man, and that all in him die, but all can be made alive in Christ. Paul calls
Adam the first man, and Gen. 3:20 calls Eve the mother of all living. This
makes it clear that no persons existed but those who were born from her.
Cain's wife was also then a child of Eve. The natural evidence of the unity of
man is vast, but if we believe the Word of God, we need no further evidence.
Paul in Acts 1:25-26 said, "..He gives to all life and breath, and all things, and
has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth."
God's consultation to make man then was a reference to Adam the first
man from whom the whole of human race came. Any speculation about
pre-adamites has no right to call itself biblical sense it is in direct conflict with
what the Bible teaches. Mankind has one origin, and is a unity.
II. GOD'S CREATION OF MAN. v. 27
There is no higher view of man in the world than the biblical view. David in
Psa. 8 says that man was made just a little lower than God Himself. Here God
declares without any vagueness that He made man in His own image. This
verse makes it clear that this honor holds true for all females as well as males.
Some women haters of the past, even in the church, have denied this and have
sought to defend that only men are made in the image of God. Christians in
general have recognized with Luther that women are equal in righteousness,
wisdom and eternal life. Luther said, "The women should not be excluded
from any honor which human beings enjoy, even though she is the weaker
vessel." This is not hard to swallow for most men because they like women.
The creation of man in two sexes allows man to share in God's power of
creation, but this is true of animals and plants as well. This is not a part of
what makes man uniquely created in the image of God. Some have tried to
defend the idea that the body of man is in someway in the image of God. The
Mormons hold this view, but this is rejected by most because God is Spirit and
does not have a bodily form. The body of man is just another evidence of the
marvelous wisdom of God. It use to be thought that the body was only worth
less than a dollar, but the DuPont Foundation has declared that man is worth
85 billion dollars in potential chemical energy. The human body can produce
100 thousand red cells in a fraction of a second. It has about 26 trillion cells
all under the central control of a 4 pound brain. We are fearfully and
wonderfully made, but this does not tell us what the image of God is.
The subject of the image of God in man is a vast literature. We cannot
begin to get into that issue. Our text tells us nothing about the image of God.
It only states the fact that man was made in God's image. We have to go to the
New Testament to get an idea of what it means by comparing the description
of the new man in Christ with what the first man must have been. In Col. 3:10
Paul says that in Christ we "..have put on the new nature, which is being
renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator." Adam then it is
assumed had full intellectual power, and the fact that he named all the animals
on the day he was created confirms this. Man's ability to think and have true
knowledge of reality is part of the image of God.
In Eph. 4:23-24 Paul says, "An be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and
put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness
and holiness." Calvin said on the basis of these verses: "We conclude that
before the fall the image of God consisted in the light that filled man's mind, in
the righteousness of his heart, and in the soundness of his faculties." This is
what man was, and this is what God is working toward again in renewing man
in Christ. Christians are to be growing into conformity with Christ, who is the
express image of God. Christians are to be the best examples in mind and
spirit of what man can be, and thereby bring glory to God. This ideal ought to
drive all of us to see our desperate need for the working of the Holy Spirit in
our lives. How can we dare neglect prayer and a search for God's wisdom in
His Word when we know what His goal is, and also see so clearly how far we
are from it?
God made Adam in His image, but he fell. Now in Christ we who are
redeemed are again objects of God's creative hand. He is seeking to restore
that marred image. Is our pattern of life helping, or is it digging deeper the
scars of sin? God is still creating man in His image in the lives of those who
have received Christ as Savior. The third step after God's consultation about
man, and God's creation of man is-
III. GOD'S COMMUNICATION TO MAN. v. 28
God's first words to his highest of creatures were similar to those He
spoke to lower creatures, for He said to be fruitful and multiply. The facts of
population explosion indicate that this is one command that men have obeyed
consistently. There have been those who taught that sex and reproduction
were the result of the fall, and that they were not a part of God's perfect
original creation. This is a flat denial of Gen. 1. Fertility in plants, animals
and man is directly ordained of God, and it is stamped with His approval
when He declares all to be very good.
God said man was to fill the earth and subdue it. Here is the great
commission of the Old Testament to go into all the world and gain control and
supremacy over all life. Man was made to be king of the beasts. The Great
Commission of the New Testament is to go into all the world and subdue men
to Christ, who is King of Kings. God's original desire to have godly men in
control of the world can only now be fulfilled as the church obeys the New
Testament commission. It is man himself that now needs to be subdued.
The second thing God communicates to man is in reference to his diet, and
it appears from the text that man as well as all animals was originally made to
be vegetarian. Many feel that eating of flesh came with the fall, and that
before this there was no killing for food. Luther felt this was the case, and also
the Hebrew scholar Delitzsch who wrote, "God did not originally will the
violent breaking up of the life of one living thing by another for the purpose of
enjoying its flesh..." Others, like Calvin, are equally convinced that flesh was
eaten. Dominion over animals implies the right to kill them for food, and it is
obvious that the flesh of sacrifices would be eaten. Arguments are good on
both sides, and it boils down to the reality that we don't know. We do not
know how many angels can stand on the head of a pin either, but we are no
worse for our ignorance. The basic idea is that God had provided for all life,
and from His perspective it was very good.
It was all good for its purpose. Everything God made is good in its place.
Dirt is good in the garden, but in a person eye it is not good. Because good
things can be out of place there was always the potential of what was bad even
in a perfect world. Adam stepped out of line and started a chain reaction of
disharmony that we feel yet today. If it was not for the good news of the
coming of the second Adam, the perfect Son of God, to restore what the first
Adam lost, we would have only a message of despair. But Christ has come,
and it is possible to get back in line with God's will and plan. In Christ it is
possible to be a part of the new creation wherein God is again in the process of
the making of man. We who have come to the cross need to be more grateful
and more dedicated to the task of becoming mature in Christ, for this is God's
goal in the making of the new man.
