Anthropology 101

Anyway, let me invite you to, turning to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 5. Genesis chapter 5 for a time of study in the word, this morning. We're doing a verse by verse study through the book of, Genesis, and as we continue in our study of this book, we come this morning to Genesis 5:1, and my goal this morning is to look at verses 1 and 2, and we're gonna pull one thing out of verse 3 and we'll content ourselves with that, for today. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be Anthropology 101.

Anthropology 101. That's a big word, but basically anthropology is the study of man or the science of humanity. And we're gonna learn this morning some very basic, fundamental truths about humanity, about mankind. And if there ever was a day in which we need a reminder of these basic truths about humanity, it is today.

Back in May, I believe it was, Bill Nye, the Science Guy. delivered a commencement address to the graduating class at Rutgers University and in his speech, he challenged them all to do something about climate change, and he warned that if something is not done, we as human beings will find ourselves on an overheated, in an overheated, no way out world. And he talked at length about this with hope and with vision and with great concern. and much of what he said was wonderful.

Given his worldview though, a person might legitimately ask, what's the big deal about saving the human species? What is it about humans that makes them worthy of a future anyway? If someone believes that we as humans are the product of random evolutionary chance without a God who created us and made us special, then what is it about man that makes man special enough to be worth saving? Bill Nye actually in his address seems to anticipate.

This question. In fact, he gives evidence that he's actually asked himself this question and he provides this answer. He says, the joy of knowing, that's science. That's what drives us.

It brings out the best in us and makes our species worthy. Of the future. So there it is. Why does man deserve a future?

Because he can do science. There's a lot to love about what Bill Nye says, even about science here. Science is a wonderful gift and the ability to do science and to explore and to know things is awesome. But is there something deeper about man that makes him worthy of the future than simply his ability to do science and to know things?

What is man? What is it about man that makes mankind worthy of respect? Near the end of his speech, Bill Nye, says these words. He says, I am a speck.

On a speck, orbiting a speck in the middle of deep spacey specklessness. I don't matter at all. But then I think, wait. I have a brain, albeit only this big, and I can imagine all of this.

That is wonderful, that is remarkable, that is venerable, worthy of respect. If you came to Bill Nye and said, what is so special about us humans that makes us worthy of respect? Why are we entitled To a future on this planet, he would say, because we can do science and we can know things and because we have a brain and can think great thoughts. By way of contrast, consider how differently the psalmist thinks in Psalm 8.

He says in Psalm 8, when I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, when I consider the immensity. Of the universe, what is man? He asked, that you would take thought of him and care for him. The psalmist question in Psalm 8 is similar to the question that seems to underlie Bill Nye's statements.

What makes man worthy of respect, worthy of a future, worthy of anyone's consideration? And the psalmist in Psalm 8, if you read the Psalm, he goes, to a deeper place and answering his question. He doesn't answer the question by saying, I know how to answer this question. Man is worthy to be thought about and cared for because he has a brain, and can do science and can think great thoughts.

Instead, here's his answer, You, God, have made him. You, God, have made him a little lower than God. You, God, crowning him, mankind with glory and majesty. You, God, make him to rule over the works of your hands.

You, God, have put all things under his feet. The psalmist and Bill Nye asked similar questions about man, but they have two completely different answers. The psalmist goes to God. And Bill Nye goes to man's brain.

Bill Nye goes to what man can do. To explain man's worthiness, the psalmist goes to what God has done in creating man and giving to man a very special calling. Two different worldviews, two radically different outcomes that ultimately make all the difference. And that's just regarding one question, what is man?

Why is man worthy of anyone's consideration? If you ask Bill Nye and the psalmist to answer the question, how should man live? Or how can man determine the difference between right and wrong? Or what is the definition of marriage?

Their answers would be radically shaped by the starting point of their worldviews, and they would come up with answers that are radically different. This is why it's so timely that we as a church are studying the Book of Genesis at this point in history. We're essentially studying the starting point for all critical social issues that confront our society today. We're also today as we look around us and read the news, we're witnessing the danger of where people's thinking can end up when you skip the starting point of scripture, of the book of Genesis, as God reveals His truth here.

In our passage today, we're going to observe 6 fundamental truths about humanity. All 6 of these truths should factor heavily into everything that you think about yourself and everything that you think with regard to your fellow man. And these truths will even provide a good starting point for you in thinking your way through some of the social issues, the moral issues that are confronting our culture today. Let me read These verses to you, they're not on the slide, but you can look at your Bible.

Genesis 5:1. The writer says, this is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man. He made him in the likeness of God.

He created them, male and female, and he blessed them and named them man in the day when they were created. And when Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness according to his image, and he named Seth. This is God's word and may God help us to understand His word this morning. We're gonna observe 6 basic truths that are foundational to a right and a sound view of humanity.

Or of man. Truth number one, God created man. God created man. Again, this, this is anthropology 101.

All right? And you might hear this and go, I know that, I've known that for all of my life. But what, people in our culture don't know this. And even though you may know this to be true, is your thinking being informed by your knowledge of this reality?

That's what I want to put before us this morning. God created man. Verse one, this is the book of the generations of Adam in the day when God created man. The word that is translated book here could be anything from a short legal document to a written document of, of great length.

This word seems to indicate that what Moses is drawing from as he comes to this point of the book of Genesis was Some written source that was available to him in his day. Whatever this document was, it was written after the birth of Noah and his sons because their births and their life are included in the information that follows. This book, this document essentially goes from Genesis 5:1 to Genesis 6:8. And perhaps even further.

The text says that this is the book of the generations of Adam. Another way of saying this is this is the book of the family history of Adam. So whoever compiled this written source during the day of Noah and his children, it was probably Noah himself. goes all the way back to the very beginning when God created Adam and Eve.

This is over 1500 years after God's creation of Adam and Eve. And when whoever was putting this document together wanted to provide perspective for where they found themselves in their own day. In sight of their own present time in the days of Noah, they went all the way back to the very beginning to God's creation of Adam and Eve, which is exactly what we should do also. The phrase that we see here in the text in the day when God created man refers to the 6th day of creation.

We're told in chapter one that God created man on the 6th day of creation, so that we, so when we read Genesis 5:1, we can infer that he's talking about the 6th day. God created man on a particular day of creation, the 6th day. We have here a categorical assertion that God created man. Man did not create himself, man did not evolve by happenstance as a product of blind evolutionary chance.

Man was created by the willful and deliberate act of God on the 6th day of creation. And look at the text, man was not simply made by God. There's a Hebrew word for made that could be used of God making something or of you making something. But the text says that he was created, man was created by God.

The word translated created, we saw back in chapter one, it's the Hebrew word Bara, which speaks of the creation of something epoch-making, something novel, something unprecedented and unexampled. Throughout the Old Testament, God is the only one who has ever said to Baraa anything. So whenever you see the word Bara in the Old Testament, often translated as create, you can know two things. Number 1, that God is the one who's doing it.

And number 2, that what he is creating is something special, something that is epoch making. No one other than God could ever create something. As special as a human being. But the text here tells us more than simply that God created man.

We know from Genesis 1, God also created the animals. He created everything else. But there's something unique about what God has done in His creation of man, which brings us to our next point. And that is that God created man in the likeness of God.

That phrase in the likeness of God is not said about anything else that God ever creates or makes. The writer is telling us that man was created in the likeness of God. We're told back in chapter one. How that man was created in the image of God.

And then it also says in the likeness of God, clearly equating these two things together, to be made in the likeness of God is to be made in the image of God. Man is created. In the image of God with all of the significance and meaning that should be attached to this reality. When we study Genesis 1:26 and 27, we explored what it means for man to be made in the image of God.

So we're not gonna take a lot of time with this this morning. I just want to review, very quickly though, a few of the things that we learned. We learned that whatever it means for us to be made in the image of God, Whatever it means, it must be important. It's an important fact about men.

And we know this because of how often this fact is stated in the book of Genesis. If you look in Genesis 1:26 and 27, just in that passage alone, God says, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. And then in verse 27, God created man in His own image, and then says it again, in the image of God, He created him 3 times in these two verses. It is affirmed that God created man in His own image, and that tri-fold statement of God's creation of man in His image puts an exclamation point on this reality.

And if that's not enough, and Genesis 9:6, we're told again, that in the image of God, he made man. And in our passage today, we have this statement yet again, that he made him. He made man. In the likeness of God.

So clearly this is important. We also know that whatever it means to be created in the image of God, it must entail things that make man distinct from animals. We share a lot of features in common with animals, some of us more than others. but animals we know were not made in the image of God, but man was.

So whatever it means to be in the image of God, it must entail something that separates us, that distinguishes us from the animals. We also know that whatever it means to be created in the image of God, it involves an assertion of man as royalty. In ancient Egypt and in Babylon, only kings were ever said to be in the image of the gods. And yet Jewish and Christian commentators of Genesis 1 and here in Genesis 5 will tell you that in, in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, the image of God becomes democratized.

It's not just an elite few who are in the image of God. It's not just kings of nations and empires that are in the image of God. Everybody is royalty in the biblical view of men. And we should think this way.

The young and the old, male and female, the rich and the poor, people of all ethnicities, every human being is an image bearer of God and is worthy to be treated as such. We also saw that whatever it means to be created in the image of God, it involves man. As a communal being. It embodies relationality, just like God is a communal being existing as a trinity of beings in the Godhead.

That's why in Genesis 1:26, God says, let us plural, Make man in our plural image singular. Man is not simply created to be an I or a me, but man is created to be a we and an us, just like God is. Each person displays the image of God. Just that person himself or herself, and a married couple together in relationship with one another, display the image of God together.

In a way that is richer than they would have been able to do by themselves in isolation from one another, and communities of people like Cornerstone display the image of God better than any one of us people ever could by ourselves. The image of God embodies relationality. When we're living in relationship with other people and openness and love and transparency. We are displaying the image of God in beautiful ways.

There's more we can say, but we'll, we'll content ourselves with this much this morning. In the text here of Genesis 5, we see asserted that God created man and that he created man in his own likeness. Man was created to bear the image of God and to reflect God's glory. Throughout his life.

We learn in the New Testament that even though man is fallen, he still bears the image of God, even though in a marred and a diminished way. This should affect the way that we think about ourselves, this should affect the way that we treat other people, including those that are non-Christians. who don't believe in Jesus, those who disagree with us on social, moral issues, we should treat everybody with the dignity and the respect that is due them as image bearers of God. We also learned something else about how God created man.

In this passage, and that leads us to the next point, and that is that God created the first married couple, male and female. God created the first married couple, male and female. The text says verse two, he created them male and female. God created the human race to be two sexes, male and female.

Here we are told that on the 6th day of creation, when God created the first couple, he created them male and female. And ever since then, mankind has been male and female. This means that what We call the gender binary. You see that term thrown around nowadays, the gender binary is not some social construct that has been created by man and then foisted upon our culture today.

The gender binary, as it is called, is the way that God designed the human race from the very beginning. The text tells us that God created them. Male and female. Notice the word create.

That's the word Bara again. Which indicates the creation of something novel, something special. God is the one who thought of the idea of male and female. This construct of male and female is his intellectual property.

If you are biologically a male, or biologically a female, you are such by the intentional handiwork of an intentional God. And you should look to this God. To define for you what maleness and femaleness is all about. You don't look to the world, the world did not create you.

You look to God, who invented maleness and femaleness in order to understand what this means for you. We live in a society that takes just about anything that God has made. Just about everything we see in the book of Genesis. Anything that God has made, and says, who says it has to be this way?

And they do exactly that with even something as simple as maleness and femaleness. Some have rejected the idea of gender altogether. Some people say that there should be more gender options than male and female. And if you want a picture of this, go onto your Facebook account and click the option to edit your profile.

Look for the gender category and click that. And when you click that, some options will come up. There's the option of male and then female, and then there's a third option that says custom. Click custom, and then start typing anything in that blank, and a whole list of other options will appear for you other than male and female.

I think there's a total of 58 gender identifications for you to choose from as you edit your profile. These options are for those who are not content with the option of male and female. and here are some of them. Let me just read, these are not all of them.

Let me read some of them. a gender, androgyny, androgynous, bi-gender, cisgender, cis man, cis woman, cisgender male, cisgender female, female to male, FTM gender fluid, gender nonconforming, gender questioning, gender variant, gender queer, intersex. Neither neutroy, non-binary, pangender, trans, trans female, trans male, trans feminine, transgender man, transgender woman, trans masculine, transsexual, transsexual male, transsexual female, to spirit. And if you get through the whole list and you're like, none of those describe me, you can click other.

what guys, the ship has left the dock in our culture and the rope has been cut. Our culture has cut itself off from any sensibility that is derived from God's revelation in the Book of Genesis and elsewhere. Our culture has rejected The gender binary, which is as ancient as the 6th day of creation. And in so doing, our society is rejecting the creation order.

This is a satanic assault on something that is absolutely fundamental. And established by God about mankind. In Genesis 1:27, the text says male and female, he created them. Here in Genesis 5:2, the text says he created them, male and female.

And you might say, man, is that really binding on us today? Well, Jesus himself in Matthew 19:4, says, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning, made them male and female? You can't get more simple and clear than this. This is why we as Christians embrace maleness.

And femaleness. This is why we embrace what some call the gender binary because it's the way that God established the human race. And keep in mind, guys, that this passage is clearly talking about the creation of Adam and Eve, the first married couple as male and female, indicating that from the very beginning, marriage is a joining of a male and a female and covenantal lifelong union. The whole context here in Genesis 5 is pointing to what God did on the 6th day of creation.

He created Adam and Eve. He created them male and female, and he blessed them and named them man in the day, which is the 6th day when they were created. God is building the first marriage relationship on the 6th day. of creation, and he builds a male and a female and brings them together.

In fact, when Jesus refers to the gender binary, he does so in the context of a discussion on marriage in Matthew 19. People were talking about divorce and, and marriage and Jesus starts a lecture. On the topic of marriage by saying, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? Jesus is teaching them, and he's teaching us that if you want to have God's understanding of marriage, you need to start your train of thought with the fact that God made the first married couple, male and female.

And the very next verse, Jesus then quotes from Genesis 2:24 where the text says, for this cause, a man. Ish is the Hebrew word shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his Ishah. Many translations say wife, it's the Hebrew word for woman. A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his woman, and the two shall become one flesh.

This is Moses in Genesis 2:24. God creates Adam and Eve, and he creates them male and female, and then Moses turns to all of us. Of all times and ages and says for this cause, here's how things will be from here on out. A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his woman, and the two shall become one flesh.

Marriage by its very nature. is a heterosexual union. It entails an embrace, a loving embrace of the opposite sex in a lifelong union. Marriage is a person standing on one side of the gender divide and looking at those of the opposite gender and picking one of them.

And crossing that chasm of the gender divide and entering into a lifelong covenantal union with that other gendered person. This is marriage as God intended it to be. But again, as with everything else, there are those who say, why does marriage have to be this way? Why does it have to be male and female?

Why can't it be two males or two females? Such people may say, I don't want to embrace someone of the opposite gender. I only want to embrace in a covenantal union, someone of my own gender, and I want to be able to call that marriage, and I want you to call it marriage too. In the first place, we can't do that.

We can't do that. Marriage was invented by God, so it's his intellectual property. He owns the rights to it, so he's the only one who gets to define what marriage is and to make the rules that are governing marriage. Amen.

And so the idea of homosexual marriage, it doesn't, it's not God's definition. of marriage. God in scripture condemns all sexual activity between people outside of the covenantal bonds of a lifelong union between a man and a woman in the context of marriage. And that's the only thing that can be called biblically marriage.

And that's why even to say homosexual marriage is an oxymoron. I love what Doug Wilson does. He calls it homosexual mirage, and I think that's beautiful. homosexual mirage.

It's not marriage, and our Supreme Court and anyone else defining something like that as marriage, it's not, and it can never be. If the Supreme Court tomorrow outlawed the law of gravity and said it doesn't exist anymore, it would still Exist and remain unchanged. And marriage as God defines it is that firm and that solid. But think about what homosexual marriage is.

Homosexual marriage is a form of quote unquote marriage that institutionalizes a profound discrimination against the opposite sex. In fact, it's a wholesale rejection. of the opposite sex. A person wanting to go this way says there's not a single member of the opposite sex that I would want to enter into a lifelong covenantal union with.

Not a single one, and I will only enter into such a union with someone who is the same sex as I am. It's interesting to me that people who reject the other gender in this way and only want to covenantally embrace someone of their own sex, they try to represent their lifestyle with the colors of a rainbow. As if they're all about embracing people who are different than themselves. How did that happen?

They really should represent their lifestyle with a single colored monochrome rainbow because they only want to covenantally embrace someone of their own sex. They refuse to covenantally embrace someone of the opposite sex with all of the complexities and the differences and the frustrations and the flourishing that comes with that embrace. This is why marriage by its very definition is hetero, which means other. Marriage forces us to embrace someone for life who is truly different from us in profound and mysterious ways that go with being of the opposite gender.

It is those who embrace marriage as God designed it to be, who are the, they're the ones who are truly embracing a variety. As Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller beautifully state in their book entitled The Meaning of Marriage. Let me just read this to you. They say marriage in the biblical view addresses the chasm between the sexes.

Marriage is a full embrace of the other sex. We accept and yet struggle with the gendered otherness of our spouse, and in the process, we grow and flourish in ways otherwise impossible. Because as Genesis says, male and female are both like and opposite each other, both radically different and yet incomplete without the other. I have had homosexual friends, both men and women, tell me that one of the factors that made homosexual love attractive to them was how much easier it was than dealing with someone of the opposite sex.

I have no doubt this is true, he says. A person of one's own sex is not as likely to have as much otherness to embrace. But God's plan for married couples involves embracing the otherness. To make us unified and that can only happen between a man.

And a woman. Hetero. Other Heterosexual marriage is the way God designed marriage to be from the very beginning of creation. This is why when God created the first marriage, the text says he made them male and female.

Now God did not simply create Adam and Eve as male and female. He did something else that brings us to the next truth about mankind, and that is that God blessed the first couple with power to procreate. Or reproduce, whichever word you want to use. He blessed them with the power to procreate.

It says in verse 2, and he blessed them. And this statement hearkens us back to the statement of Genesis 1:28 about God blessing Adam and Eve with procreative powers, and then commanding them to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth. In Genesis 1:28, it says, God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Clearly, God's blessing of Adam and Eve involved blessing them with the power.

To reproduce. We see in Genesis 1 and 2, that God obviously had unique power to create, but here we see that God blesses the first married couple with the power to procreate. This is an amazing ability, the power to have children and to produce other human beings. On the day when God blessed them, Adam and Eve could not have imagined what all procreation would look like and entail in the days to, to come.

We know today the basics of how procreation happens, but imagine knowing nothing at all and seeing the process unfold for the first time in history. Think about it, when God told Adam and Eve to multiply and fill the earth, did they know? The details of what God meant by that command and how it was supposed to happen? Did they say to God, how do we do this?

You command us to multiply. How do we multiply? Perhaps God explained it to them, but even if he did explain to them how it was supposed to happen, imagine being them and seeing it actually happen for the very first time. What an astounding process and miracle it was and is.

Adam and Eve come together in an act of physical intimacy. In a moment of sexual pleasure in each other's love, an egg inside of Eve's womb becomes fertilized. In the weeks and months that follow, something begins to grow inside of her womb. She feels something alive and kicking in her, and then a day of extraordinary pain and wrenching comes and issuing forth from her womb.

As a fully formed human being. Who was a male. What a dazzling miracle it must have been. To Adam and Eve.

And it seemed to present Eve actually with a problem, and that is what do I call this little human being that just came forth from me. Eve didn't know, it seems like she and Adam did not have a word for baby. she simply looks at her firstborn and she literally in the Hebrews says, I've gotten a man with the help of Jehovah. Literally, many English translations have her saying manchild, but it's the Hebrew word ish.

This is the only time in scripture that this word is used to refer to an infant because I'm sure Adam and Eve figured out a word for an infant or a baby. Eve gave birth to Cain and said, basically, I just gave birth to a man, a mini man. And I just did this with the help of Jehovah, who has blessed us and made this amazing thing possible. The point of our passage today is that God blessed Adam and Eve with the power to procreate and multiply.

This procreative power is a gift from God. It's something he gets the credit for. We learn elsewhere in Scripture that it is the Lord who opens the womb and closes the womb. Every child is a blessing from the Lord.

So God creates man, he creates men in his likeness, he creates man, male and female, and he bestows upon Adam and Eve the powers of procreation. But he does something else which brings us to the 5th truth of this passage, and that is that God named the first couple man. This is interesting and it's something we have not seen. This is not recorded for us in chapter 1.

Or 2 But we learn it here that God named them man in the day when they were created. The word translated man is the Hebrew word Adam or Adam, which is Adam's name. God created Adam, and no doubt Adam, his name was Adam, and then God creates Eve, and God names both of them Adam. He names them both.

Adam or Adam kind. If you want to just make a note in your Bible, just by the word man in your text, you can put the word Adam or you can put Adam kind. or mankind. That's the idea here.

What does it mean that God would do this? Is this an example of male dominance? I will name you both, male and female, man. Not at all.

This is actually something that should be profoundly humbling and instructive to us as men. First and foremost, God naming Adam and Eve man. If anything, is a display of divine dominance. Because God is the one who's naming them.

Naming a person was an act of authority and ownership. God is clearly the one in charge of Adam and Eve and their relationship, that he would give them the name man means he owns the relationship. Also, in naming them both Adam or Adam, God is representing the profound unity between male and female. Yes, they are two separate sexes.

Yes, there are amazing differences between male and female, men and women, but they are united in their humanity. This fact is enshrined in the name that God gives to Adam and Eve when he names them Adam. God also named them both Adam because he wanted them both to think communally. Adam was not the only Adam.

Eve was an Adam too. And Adam needed to respect her as such. And notice that God named them Adam. The text is not simply saying that Adam is Adam and Eve is Adam too, in isolation from one another.

The text is telling us that together they are Adam kind. This means that Adam is no longer to think merely of himself. He is no longer an isolated entity. He is Adam, and they are Adam together.

Henceforth, Adam is to live as a communal man in relationship with his wife. From now on, taking care of Adam meant taking care of his wife. Who is one flesh with him. Adam could have looked at her and said, what, I'm just gonna look out for Adam for the rest of my life.

And that would have been a good statement if he rightly understood what God is doing here. Eve now is a part of his identity. They together are Adam kind. And Adam is always now to think of her together with him rather than himself in isolation.

And naming both of them, Adam, God is impressing upon Adam a sense of responsibility to lead and to love and to care for his wife even as himself. Even more broadly, Adam stands as a member of a community that would, would grow in the days to come as children would be born. Everyone issuing forth from Adam and Eve would be a member of Adam Kind, and together they would all be Adam, Kind. There would be individuality and each person would have their own individual name as we see in scripture.

And today, but they would all share the same nature, they would all be of the same race, together, they would all be Adam, kind, looking out for one another. According to the Bible, there is only one race. The human race, Adam Kind. We all trace our ancestry back to Adam and to Eve.

The white man and the black man and the Indian and the Asian, and the Native American can all trace their lineage back to this point and observe that we all share the name Adam Kind. We are one. When we come to this passage, we find actually what unites all of us. Adam and Eve are the father and mother that all of us share.

Every genealogical chart of every person comes back to this point. No matter what has happened since this point to divide us in terms of history and languages and hurts. And more recent ancestries, what outweighs them all is what unites us. The ultimate last name that we all have in common is the last name, Adam Kind.

Adam kind. Let's observe one more truth about man that is found in these verses and I'll just make reference to this and we'll pick up here next week and that is that God enabled his image in Adam to pass. To his child. It says in verse 3, when Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness.

That's all I want to do is lift that one statement out. Adam, we know was created in the likeness of God, so was Eve. But now they're giving birth to a son with the powers of procreation that God gave to them, and we're learning that the likeness of Adam was passed to His son. Commentators see great theological significance in this statement in verse 3, as one commentator says, this verse makes the point that the image and the likeness of God, which was given to Adam at creation was inherited by his sons.

It was not obliterated by the fall. That's really good news. Really good news. Adam was made in the image of God, and then we all know we've studied the fall in the sin.

That happened after their initial creation, and now they're giving birth to a son. Is the image of God obliterated? Does it stop with Adam and Eve? No, we learn here that the image of God continues.

So we're not surprised to read in passages like 1 Corinthians 11:7 that man is present tense, the image of God. Even in a fallen world, every human bears the image of God and should be treated with the dignity and the respect that they deserve as image bearers of God. This is why James, write down the reference James 3:9, criticizes his readers for using their tongues to bless God. But then with those same tongues, they curse people who were made in the image of God.

James is teaching us to look at every person as an image bearer of God, and to treat them accordingly. If you really love God, you will respect everyone who bears the image of God, and you will treat them accordingly. Even if they're an atheist. Even if they disagree with you on moral and social issues, even if they persecute you.

You will treat them with the respect that they deserve as an image bearer of God. Let us keep this in mind, guys, we're in for some crazy days to come. A lot of vitriol. Hate will be directed towards us.

We'll be accused of all sorts of things. Let us not respond in kind. Let us treat everybody with respect that they are entitled to as image bearers of God. Our theology teaches us that.

The world doesn't have that theology to teach them to treat people with this respect, but all men and women are in the image of God and deserve to be treated as such. So just in closing, this is anthropology 101. And now I'd like to give you a final exam. Who created man?

And whose image is man created? What two sexes did God create in the first marriage relationship? Very good. I could ask you more, but that's good enough, you passed.

If you got these questions right, you passed the course. these things that we've looked at today are not all that we need to know about humanity, about mankind, but I can tell you that whatever you do believe about mankind needs to be grounded here. In the truth of scripture. I feel this morning like Vince Lombardi, the former coach of the Green Bay Packers, who at least on, at the beginning of one season, he stood before the seasoned football players and delivered his opening speech at the beginning of the season, and he held up a football and he said to them, gentlemen, This is a football.

And then he began to speak to them from there. He was really committed to fundamentals and so is God as he speaks to us here. This is what we're doing today. God comes to us today in the midst of our cultural confusion, and he says, ladies and gentlemen, This is man I created man.

I created man in my image. I created man, male and female. I created the first marriage to be male and female and established that pattern. I blessed the first couple with the power to procreate in the context of covenantal marriage, and I named them Adam Kind.

And I enable it to be such that when parents give birth to their children, my image that is in the parents passes from them. To their children. And thus all people should be treated as such. Every one of these truths has profound implications.

I wish Bill Nye could experience the exaltation that comes from embracing these truths. Man is so much more than an evolved entity. A product of random chaotic chance. We're so much more than someone who can just think big thoughts with our little brains.

And our passage shows us this, man is a creature created by the special handiwork of God to bear the image of God with all the glories and all the responsibilities that go along with that. And this is why our fall into sin is so serious. This is why God sent His Son into the world. To die on the cross for the sins of Adam kind.

This is why God came into this world and became a man. The God man. He became a member of Adam Kind himself, and he lived amongst us and he died for our sins. This is why God raised Jesus, the God man, from the dead and ascended him to his own right hand at the right hand of God, the highest position of authority in all the universe.

Guys, that's amazing. There is now a man in the Trinity. At the highest position of authority. In all of existence.

And this is why Jesus is now giving out forgiveness and blessing and salvation and love to any member of Adam Kin, who sees their bankruptcy as a result of their sin, and puts their trust in the God man, Jesus Christ, and cries out to him to be their Lord and Savior. And if you have never cried out to him, The God man, to be your Lord and Savior, I urge you to do that today. Let's pray. Lord, our hearts are, are burdened, our hearts are heavy.

So many in our culture today have lost their way. There are people in the church who have lost their way, and it's not because truth is complicated. It's because truth is hated. Simple, basic, fundamental truth is hated.

And people professing themselves to be wise literally become fools. God give us hearts of humility and simplicity, hearts that come to your word like the Book of Genesis and just read it in all of its glory and see the exalted view of man that is actually presented here. There is nothing in all of the theory of evolution that can present so high of a view of man as what we find here. But this is actually hard to embrace, Lord, because with this exaltation as being image bearers of God comes huge responsibility.

Oh my goodness. Touch hearts, touch our hearts, Lord, that we would believe and embrace these things. Help us with grace and with truth to speak your truth to our culture, to people that are lost their way and they need to be grounded in your truth and help us to speak that truth with the love and the grace. of Jesus Christ.

Keep us tethered. To your truth, Lord, in the days to come. And help us to help one another to do that as well. We thank you for this opportunity to give up our offerings to you, receive these funds, do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus and the spread of the truth of your word.

We give ourselves to you in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said.