Sermon Cloud

I have 2 brothers who don’t know who they are.  Of course they know their names – and they could tell you all about their jobs.  My bachelor brother hates his job and can’t wait till he retires. My married brother loves his work; but neither of them want to be indentified by their jobs – not by their family relationship. They both could tell you their family history – but this doesn’t define them.  One brother told me that cos our parents were Jewish and were brought up being told we were C of E – he doesn’t know who he is.

Gen 1-3 are basic for our understanding of life; they are as relevant today as when first written. They speak of God the Creator, of people made like him and of their dis-graceful fall from perfection. Without them we would have no idea of WHY the world was made, and WHY we are as we are today. Yet Gen 1-3 have given rise to fierce disagreements amongst Christian and non-Christian people. They have been explored as if they were modern science or a psychological text book. What we have in Genesis is a piece of brilliant ancient literature; describing the world coming into being, God making people to live on earth and the consequences of those people deciding to live in contradiction of their Creator.

These 3 chapters are some of the most helpful in this world, and demand our close scrutiny. You’ll never find truth like this anywhere else; you may find a few myths about creation, but nothing so profound, so true, that rings with reality as we know it.  This is the basis for both Jewish and Christian beliefs – and read correctly set us on a course to know the Creator God for ourselves.

In Gen 1 God makes this world – we see this through a broad lens; with big brush-strokes.

Gen 2 God makes people – the lens zooms in on human-kind.  We see the foundation of marriage.

Gen 3 Everything goes wrong. Humans and all creation - plunged into darkness, with the judgment of God now on all things.

God is plural

Genesis is a book of beginnings = what the word means. We have seen the beginning of creation as it is formed and filled. And we have heard the refrain .. God saw that it was good.  But there was something that was not good – and that is the male man all alone.  We’ll see in ch 2 how God produces a “mate” for him, but here is the overview.

Although the ultimate objective is rest; the secondary objective is to make people; Human beings are the pinnacle of God’s creative activity; they are made for the world, and the world is made for them.  They are made to live in this world, and to rule over it; and they are made to rest with their Maker.

God will make human beings of both genders – male and female and say the is very good, 1:31

Look how God goes about it.  Genesis records a discussion he has with himself. 26 The God said, “Let US make man in our image, in OUR likeness. Isn’t that striking.  God is plural – he is a relational God and he talks amongst himself – Father to Son to Spirit.  Collectively as one God in three persons, they decide to make images of themselves, which they call “man” – that’s shorthand for human beings, what we used to call mankind.  It is not gender biased here – its not male only, cos 27 says male and female, he created them.

Now do you see the logic here.  To image God as male and female, there must be more than one person in the Godhead.  Male and female together are in the image of God – as the poetry of 27 shows and as is picked up later in 5:1-2.  The image of God is male and female together; that’s why the feminists have overstepped themselves – but so too have the male chauvinists.  There is a mutuality here.  And it is a togetherness of relationship.

Years ago St Augustine defended the doctrine of the plurality of the Godhead (= the Trinity) by suggesting that if God was love then he must have had someone to love – namely he is a God of interpersonal relationship within himself.  We will see this demonstrated in marriage in ch 2. Love doesn’t exist on its own – it is a relational term.  God is love, cos he is a relational God – a Trinity of relationships.  We love cos we are made by God.

Humans in God’s image

Ah but what does it mean to be made in his image?

Reasoning

In the past people have said that it is our “reasoning” that so marks us out. We are “higher” than the animals; we have cognitive skills.  But some animals can be trained, can’t they?

Love

Others say that humans can love – as God can; whereas animals merely mate. Animals only have instinct, not love.  A friend of mine insists that his dog has personality.

Spiritual

Some say that we humans have a spiritual dimension to us – not found in the rest of creation and this marks us out as uniquely created in the image of God. Others feel that our self-awareness; being able to reflect self-consciously on issues is our distinguishing mark.

But all these approaches focus strongly on us. Two better approaches focus more on God

Relational

People develop friendship, not merely due to similarity, or sexual preference, but cos we LIKE another person, cos we discover a heart-felt connection with them. We can talk to each other in ways we can’t talk to animals or plants. Humans beings relate to each other, and this is because God relates to himself

Since God is relational within himself, we too are relational beings.  We get to “know” another person – yes, sexually, yes, in our thinking and reasoning, and yes in our love. The full maturity of a relationship is marriage – which is why we reserve sexual activity for marriage as it produces security.

Nonetheless long before marriage we develop friendships; we grow in our likes and dislikes; we blossom in our personality.  Indeed we learn a great deal about life through relationship. That, it seems to me, the fact we are relational beings, is what separates us out from all other creatures God made.  Only people were made in the image of God.

Ruling

A key part of being in the image of God is the fact that God entrusts us humans to rule the earth, 26 & 28. Humans, made in God’s image, is sandwiched between rule.  God is the ruler of the universe, and from the beginning he delegated this responsibility to us humans; humans are told to take care of the garden – ie to work it, to get on top of it, to keep it neat. Adam was asked to name the animals

Jesus came as Lord, ie the One who Rules, and one day believers will reign with him. 2 Tim 2:12 if we endure, we will also reign with him.

However rulership has been badly damaged by the fall; men now dominate women, ruling over them, 3:16

So what we see today is a distortion of what God originally intended, but we can still see his intention. We see exploitation – over fishing the seas – stripping the rain-forests making more agricultural land and causing dust-bowls.  We see domination in the world – men over women; or bosses over workers.

Remember we are in Gen 1 so that our ruling derives its make-up from God’s creative & ruling hands. Whilst we see distorted rule wherever we look, there is one place we should stare. The biblical understanding of rule is seen in Jesus and his Lordship; it is a responsible stewardship, what one writer calls, “a facilitating servanthood”. Jesus is the one to whom we look; who’s very heart we need to exercise the kingly rule of God which is concerned for others good.

Interestingly when talking about the image, Jesus the one the NT takes us to.  Although we humans are meant to mirror the image of God – and we are poor at it; Jesus does so perfectly.  The writer to Hebrews Heb 1:3 calls Jesus the exact representation of his being. And Paul says Jesus is the image of the invisible God, Col 1:15.  

So if we want to know what the image of God is like – whereas Adam failed, Jesus succeeded – he’s the one to look at.

Think how he reasons so brilliantly; how he demonstrates such brilliant love; think how he develops such wholesome relationships and gathers people – men and women around him; how he invites them to follow him and trust him. Think how he shows what it means that he is Lord. He isn’t bossy or overbearing. Neither is he soft and sentimental.  He is the robust Lord of history and of mankind; one day we will all bow to him – and then we will see him in his perfection.  At present we see him through the perfect lens of Scripture.

Gen 1 helps us answer the Question “who am I?” See Schaeffer P 46

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Pray:  Dear Creator God, thank you for drawing back the curtain and showing us how it all started; not in scientific detail as we might prefer, but in beautiful poetic, literary structure that makes us marvel at your outstanding ability. You stand above your creation, and yet in Jesus have entered right into it alongside us. We are truly thankful to be here. This evening we pledge our loyalty to you once again; you are worthy of all our worship. Forgive us for failing to see your distinctiveness; forgive us for worshipping created things; forgive us for thinking you are not here and forgive us for not trusting you sufficiently. For we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen