God Creates and Commissions Humankind

Yeah, great to see you all, here this morning and just to reiterate the announcement that was just made, we, we're, we don't do, worship songs and stuff at the beginning of, like the program tonight, so you don't want to be trailing in at 6:15 or 6:20, which may be your custom. But they try to get started right away, so try to be here tonight at the latest by 6 and ideally, 15 or so minutes early so that you're in your seat and others can be seated and we're ready for the program to get started at 6 o'clock.

also, there's an insert that's in your bulletin. regarding our gifts for Jesus offering next Sunday, if you wanna pull that out, something will be said about this at the end of the, the message also, but, Next Sunday is our special, Christmas, service, so we would encourage you to be here for, that service and also invite, family and friends.

the gospel is going to be preached. It's the type of service where I, I think you'd be blessed to have your non-believing, friends, loved ones, with you during the service, next Sunday, we're gonna be taking up our, annual gifts for Jesus offering which we do in our Christmas service every year, and there'll be the normal offering, but in addition, To that above and beyond your normal giving to the Lord, we're asking you to, give something extra and the proceeds of this gifts for Jesus offering will go to Sean Ransom and his family who are serving the Lord as missionaries in the Philippines.

They're serving alongside of, Vincent and Kimberly Green in the Philippines. They have some needs right now.

They're seeking to get their support. From 90% up close to 100%. They also have some other needs that are identified on this insert. We would encourage you to read that.

Sean Ransom has preached here a few times and we're gonna have him with us in a couple of weeks, speaking during the Sunday school hour and also in our morning service, I believe the last Sunday of December. so, we wanna really be able to encourage the Ransom family, with this gift. So pray about what the Lord would have you to give, bring that offering, next Sunday, wrap it like you would a normal birthday or Christmas present or put it in a card or a little gift bag, and we'll have a special time in our service for you and your children to bring your gifts for Jesus up to, the front.

We do this as a reminder to ourselves.

At Christmas, we give gifts to everybody else and, this is Jesus' birthday and this is just a tangible reminder to ourselves that it's Christ's birthday and we're giving these gifts to Him. Christ says to us, and as much as you do anything like this for the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me, and he receives that as a personal gift, to him. So we hope you'll participate in the special offering next Sunday in our Christmas service. Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles, this morning to Genesis.

chapter one. Genesis chapter one, as we continue in our study of the book of Genesis, we come this morning to Genesis, chapter one, verse 27, and my goal, this morning is to cover verses 27 through, 31. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be A Perfect Picture, A Perfect Picture, God's creation and commissioning of humankind that we witness in These verses. let me start off with this.

How many of what a selfie is? Raise your hand. OK. a selfie is basically a picture that someone takes of himself or herself.

Others can be in it. they could be in various situations or have varying backgrounds, but a selfie is basically a photo that someone takes of himself on his smartphone. This is a picture of someone taking a selfie, after they were pulled over by a police officer. and so a question for you, how many of you have ever taken a selfie?

Raise your hand, and not to be ashamed of. OK. you might be interested to know that last year, 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary, announced that selfie was their word of the year. because the usage of that word had increased by, they said 17,000% over the course of the preceding, 12 months.

Samsung has done a survey and, discovered that 30% of all pictures that people take on their smartphones, 30% are selfies. So we live in a selfie world. Because of smartphones, everyone has become their own professional photographer. And some people take several selfies a day and they post them online and they do so in a variety of locations and in different poses.

And often what drives them, not always, by any stretch of the imagination, but often what drives some people to take so many pictures of themselves is they are looking for the perfect photo of themselves. One guy, Joe Martino, writing for the CE website says this, that people will pick out details about their eyebrows, skin, noses, smiles, teeth, hair, and so forth, all in an attempt to find the perfect angle to make the perfect picture. I've actually been walking through parking lots and seeing people in their cars, just No one else is in their car and they're just posing and taking a ton of pictures of themselves.

I was reading sadly just yesterday about a 19-year-old young man in Britain who took up to 200 selfies a day.

It was an addiction, in search of the perfect picture for himself. For a 2-year period, he was literally addicted to selfies. It was not unusual for him to take 30 selfies. Before he went off to school in the morning and he just got to a point where he could not stop.

And he says this, he says, I was constantly in search of taking the perfect selfie, and when I realized I couldn't, I wanted to die. I lost my friends, my education, my health, and almost my life. He goes on to talk about how he was spiraling out of control and how he would study pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio and then try to look like him. In his selfies, but he never could.

And in December of 2012, he had taken over 200 pictures on one particular day, and he says this, listen to this, I had looked at them over and over and I couldn't see any. That I liked. I couldn't take anymore and I just started popping the pills and literally he tried to overdose and kill himself and would have succeeded if his mom did not find him and rescue him. How deep is the longing in the human heart for beauty?

I know the example that I'm citing here is indeed extreme, but it helps us this morning as we come to Genesis chapter 1 verses 27 through 31. There is a sense in which this passage here at the end of Genesis 1 is the ultimate selfie of humankind taken by Moses. It is the picture of man from the perfect angle in his perfect state before the fall. It is a picture that man has been trying to live up to ever since but can't.

But it is a picture that Christ can and will restore us back to eventually and we're gonna see by the time we're done this morning how Christ will do all of this. Let me just begin by reading the passage to you, Genesis chapter 1 beginning in verse 27. The text says God created man in his own image. In the image of God, He created him, male and female, he created them.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Then God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth and every tree which has fruit yielding seed, and it shall be food for you. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky, and everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so, and God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good, and there was evening and there was morning, the 6th day.

This is the word of God and may God help us to understand.

His words this morning. The way we're gonna frame our study of this passage today is we're gonna observe 7 developments in this picture, in this perfect picture wherein God is creating and commissioning mankind here on the 6th day of the creation week. 7 developments that we'll see and some of these will take more time with than others, but Lord willing, we'll get through all of these, today. The first development And this picks us up where we left off last Sunday, is that God creates humankind in His own image.

God creates humankind in His own image. It says in verse 27, and God created man in His own image, and the image of God, He created him. Whatever it means to be created in God's image, we know from verse 26 that it means to bear something of his likeness. We saw that last Sunday.

we are not gods. God is not a man. We are not exact replicas of God who bear His likeness in every way, but we do by divine design bear. Something of his likeness in a powerful way, in a variety of ways, and we saw some of these ways, last week.

By way of quick review, we saw that whatever it means to be created in God's image, it's a pretty big deal. We learned that whatever it means, it must represent features about us that distinguish us from the animal creation. we also learned that at least in part, the image of God in us survived the fall. We find later passages in scripture where we are spoken of as humans as bearing the image of God.

We also learned that being created in the image of God entails being a relational being. Just like God is a relational being. It means being built to live life not simply as a me, but also as an us in community with other people. We also learned last week that being made in the image of God entails royalty.

God is crowning us with royalty and creating us in His image and then speaking of us. In this way, the language that is used here in Genesis to describe essentially all men. is language that back in this day was reserved only for kings. So we are royalty with a royalty beyond what any human could ever bestow upon us.

We had to skip over just two quick items by way of thinking about the image of God last week, so I wanna hit those today. and that is this, that being created in the image of God, entails sonship. It speaks not only of similarity and likeness, but also it entails sonship. In other words, being in God's image indicates God's fatherhood of us and our family-like relationship with Him.

who created us. God created us as image bearers. Part of what that means is we are His sons and daughters who are designed to live in relationship with Him as our Father. In Genesis 5:3, there's an interesting passage.

Look at what it says. When Adam had lived 100. And 30 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness according to his image. And he named him Seth.

Notice that you see the word likeness and the word image in Genesis 5:3, the same two words that we find in Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 and also verse 27. Adam, no doubt had built many things throughout his lifetime with his hands, but nothing bore his image inwardly and outwardly. In such a living way as the sun. Who had been his very own offspring.

And so we can say there's a real sense in which for man to be created by God in the image and the likeness of God means in part that we are the offspring of God and have the ability to relate to Him. As our father. This is why in the genealogy that you see in Luke chapter 3, it's chronicling the lineage of the Messiah, and it talks about Eish, who was the son, someone who was the son of Enni, someone who was the son, or Enish was the son of Seth, the son of Adam, and then look at how Adam is described.

Adam, the son.

Of God, not just the creation of God, like everything else was, but Adam, the son of God. God created Adam and Eve to be his son and his daughter as it were, who could relate to him. As their father. Because of their sin, mankind lost this status, this ability to relate to God as sons and daughters would relate to a father.

And so we would say it this way, and we got to be careful in our theological terminology, you hear people say, we're all God's children. You ever heard that? in terms of our origins, all men and women are the offspring or the children of God. We see this language in Acts 17 where Paul speaks of us as his offspring in terms of where we came from.

We were created by him, received our life from him. But in terms of actual relationship with him, We lost that at the fall and that aspect of the image of God can only be restored to those who have put their trust in Jesus and through him, we experience a restoration to a relationship with God that is a father-child relationship that man was initially created to enjoy. Does that make sense? OK, one other thing about the image of God and man, there's so much we can say, but let's just, content ourselves with this, that the image of God, Involves our physicality.

whatever it means to be made in the image of God, it does have something to do with our physicality. Listen to what John MacArthur says. He says the seat of God's image is found in our immaterial beings, our spiritual beings, but that is not to suggest that our bodily form is utterly devoid of anything relevant to the divine. Image.

It does have something to do with our physicality. There's a reason God made us physical beings rather than merely spiritual beings without bodies. There's a reason that God did not make us to look like the seals or the monkeys or the hideous anglerfish. God did not make us physically to look like anything other than what we look like as humans.

There's a reason he made us to walk upright and to have a countenance. That can show facial expressions and us having a capacity for speech and for language with our brains and with our tongues. God Himself does not have a physical form, but he can see. He can hear, he can reason, he can communicate, and he created us with the physical capacities that enable us to do the same things that he is able to do.

And so we, even through our physical beings. can display the image of God through what we do with our bodies. Does that make sense? In summary, being made in the image of God means probably hundreds of things about us.

We've looked at a few. I like what one writer says. The divine image may be defined as the totality of man's higher powers that distinguish him from the brute. Or the animal creation.

It's all of the things that we have seen, and it is so much more as it is revealed in the rest of scripture. But here in the text of Genesis 1:27, we learned that God creates man in his image, but that's not all. Notice the second development in the text. For us to be a full reflection of his image, a second thing must be true, and that is that God creates humankind, male and female.

Male and female. Verse 27, male and female, he created them. God created man in His image, in the image of God, He created him. Male and female, he created them.

Our maleness, our femaleness have something to do with our ability to display the image of God. If on planet Earth, like there's 7 billion people on the planet, if, if on planet Earth right now, If it was only populated with 3.5 billion males. Imagine a world like, it'd be a terrible place to be, honestly. if, if that were the case, something of the image of God.

would be lost and not made manifest through simply a world of males only. If planet Earth was populated by only females, something of the image of God would not be manifested the way that God intended. So God created man, male and female. Look at the language here.

the word that is translated man, God created man. is the Hebrew word Adam. This is where Adam gets his name, Adama is the Hebrew word for ground, speaking of the fact that we have come from the, the earth, from the soil of the ground. But that word man, where it says God created man, it's, that's not the Hebrew word for male as opposed to female or man as opposed to woman, it's the word Adam.

It can be, I think, very accurately translated mankind or humankind. So we can translate that expression in this way, God created the humankind. In his image is literally the idea of what is being conveyed here at the beginning of verse 27. God made man, Adam.

In his image, male and female. By way of explaining what he means by making humankind, in his image, Moses says male and female, he created them. And now here we have the Hebrew word for male and the Hebrew word for the female gender. And Moses is telling us that God created humankind to be both male and female.

Obviously indicating that both male and female are the product of God's creative design and handiwork. It's significant that Moses uses the Hebrew word Bara that we saw last week that is translated create, that speaks of creating something. That is wonderful, that is novel, that is, epic-making, that is unexampled. It tells us something about the wonderfulness of what it is that God is creating, and we see that God created.

He barra male, and he barra female. Both male and female are amazing. Manifestations of the power and the wisdom and the imagination of God. This is actually, an amazing assertion by Moses that is, that's actually far ahead of his time.

If you ever have time, we don't have time to get into this this morning, but just research like ancient creation accounts and how various worldviews account for the arrival of woman on the scene. What is being asserted here is, is precedent-setting and it is way ahead of its time. In fact, about 1000 years after the Book of Genesis was written by Moses, Plato, the Greek philosopher, said this, this is how he accounts for the arrival of woman. He says it is only males who are created directly by the gods.

and are given souls. He goes on to say those men who are cowards or lead unjust lives may with good reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the 2nd generation or the 2nd reincarnation. This downward progress may continue through successive reincarnations unless reversed. In this situation, obviously, it is only men.

Who are complete human beings and can hope for ultimate fulfillment. The best that a woman can hope for is to become a man. At some point in a future reincarnation. This is awful.

what he's saying is, if you're a woman, then what that probably means is that you were a man in a past life and you failed to be just, you failed to be brave. But good news, ladies, if you're really good and you're just and you're brave, you might get to be a man. In a future life. That's the best gospel.

That the Greeks could come up with for women. Moses shows us a better way and gives us a very highly exalted view of humankind, of male and of female. The text of the Bible says God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female. At the very beginning, even before the fall, God designed and created mankind to be male and female.

Moses states this again actually in Genesis 5:2, as if it's not clear enough. He says in that verse, God created them, male and female, and he blessed them and named them man or Adam in the day when they were created. This is the clear teaching of scripture. What this passage makes clear, and we need to hear this message today is that the gender binary is God's creation.

How many of you have heard that expression, gender binary? Raise your hand. Few of you, it's, it's the hip thing to say nowadays, when, which I want to be hip and that's why I'm saying it. But when people are talking about all the gender issues and confusion that abounds today, they'll use this expression talking about the gender binary and usually when, and binary means too, OK?

usually when they're mentioning it, it's derogatory. They, they speak of the gender binary as passe. And archaic It's outdated. It doesn't fit with the modern situation like it may have in the past.

They would see the gender binary as a social construct that people in the past came up with and they're trying to foist that on people of this generation, but our generation today is enlightened and we are casting off this social construct. And looking for different alternatives. nowadays, I've, I've actually read literature like this. If you say to someone, are you male or female, they'll look at you in a condescending way, like, you are so small-minded.

To ask me such a question and to box me in. In this way, how small of you. But we see here in Genesis that this was not made up by some past generation. God established it this way.

At the very beginning, male and female, he created them. We'll be talking more about this in the coming weeks as we get into Genesis 2, but I just want to say today, if you are a biological, physical male, embrace that. That doesn't mean that you have to be like every other male and like to play sports and lift weights and work on cars. God has made you unique even from other males.

But embrace your maleness as God's design for you. If you are biologically a female, respect. The body that God has given to you, embrace that. You're not less than a man.

Before God. You are an image bearer of God. Embracing your femaleness does not mean that you have to wear pink dresses or play with dolls, or paint your fingernails different colors. I've noticed ladies now don't just paint their nails all one color, they'll mix it up and one finger will be a different color.

and I've had to inquire from some of our sisters even here at Cornerstone, what are you doing? But being a, a female doesn't mean that you have to be like every other female in these ways. But you are a female by divine design and you wanna embrace that. To deny your gender is to deny something deep and ancient.

About the basic structure of how God has designed you to be and all of us to be as human beings. Do not buy into the Gnostic idea that what you are physically is unimportant, and it doesn't matter. God created the physical world. He created your body, Christ purchased your body.

At the cross. God wants you to glorify Him with your body, not just apart from your body, and God will raise your body in a future day. Your body matters to Him. And it should matter to you.

Embrace. Who God has made you to be. As a male or as a female? Looking at this passage, we see that God did not just create males in His image, he also created females in His image.

And there's a way in which male and female together, Adam and Eve together, us today, male and female together in the context of a marriage relationship, bear and display the image of God in beautiful ways and we'll get to unpack some of this when we get into chapter two. Let's move to a 3rd development in God's creation. And commissioning of mankind that we see in this perfect picture in these verses, and that is number 3, God blesses humankind. He blesses humankind.

It's already wonderful enough, but on top of creating them in his image, male and female. We learn in verse 28, the text says, and God blessed them. He blessed them. The language here of blessing is slightly different than what we saw back where it says God blessed the animals after creating them.

Earlier the text says, and God bless them, the animals, comma, saying, Here, literally, the text says, God blessed them. And God said to them, so the blessing is stands out more to the animals. God blessed them and what he said to them. Here, God blessed Adam and Eve, and he then said something to them.

His blessing included what he said to them, but it went beyond that in some special way, he blessed them. And then after blessing them, he spoke to them and gave them a commission. So what is the nature of this blessing? We don't know entirely, but as one writer says, at its highest, this blessing is God turning full face to the recipients in self-giving.

The ultimate blessing would be for him to give himself to them. John MacArthur says, God in blessing them is conferring well-being upon them and causing them to prosper and making them happy. God is just loving on them and blessing them in some mysterious way that we can't really capture today and know exactly what he did, but he didn't just create them, he then blessed them in a special way before he delivered his commission. To them.

This is the pattern of God, by the way, he blesses and then he commands, and he's done that to us. Read the book of Ephesians. Paul begins by saying, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Let me take 3 chapters to tell you all the ways he's done that, and it's not until chapter 4 that he delivers the first command.

God blesses us, then he commissions us. Same here. With Adam and Eve. There's a 4th development.

In the passage, and that is that God gives to humankind a threefold mandate. He gives to humankind a threefold mandate. and what is the mandate? It says, and God bless them, and God said to them, here's the first mandate, be fruitful and multiply.

Be fruitful and multiply. God bless them. And he said to them, who is to them? It's Adam and Eve whom he created on the 6th day of creation.

And he said to them, Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply. This command to be fruitful and multiply is a mandate, not simply to have children, but he's commanding them to create a social world. of human beings in which there will be children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and cousins and aunts and uncles and tribes and friends and towns and nations and then delegations of responsibility to various people and all the relationships that go with that. This is a commission to create a social world.

God is saying, I don't want it to just be you, Adam and Eve on this planet. I want you to multiply and create a social world. Earlier we learned that when God created the animals, he created the world already populated with a ton and a whole variety and the seas with a whole variety of animal. life, he created them after their kind, and then they began reproducing even beyond that after their kind.

And so the animals that you see today, a lion and a zebra and a dog, they didn't all descend from one animal ancestor. but God created many animals, on the first or during the week of creation. But God did not structure it this way with human beings. He didn't create 1000 human couples and then say be fruitful and multiply.

He could have done that and none of us would have thought anything about it, if that's how our creation account read. But instead, God created one couple. And told that one couple to be fruitful and to multiply. This means that all of us in this room and every human being the world over has descended from Adam and Eve.

We have a common ancestry, which means we are all one race, the human race. Amen. nowadays, we, we tend to just in modern day language, we talk about the different races and racial division, but the Bible actually knows nothing of that. There is one race in Acts 17:26, Paul says that God made from one man, every nation of mankind.

Many of the people of Athens that he's talking to felt that they descended from some other source. that the population of other peoples did not descend from and they were arrogant and full of themselves, but Paul is lowering them and saying, no, we all descended, Jews and Gentiles, Athenians. And people the world over have all descended from one man, from one couple. In scripture we see different tribes and languages and nations, but there is one race.

According to the Bible, it doesn't matter what color our skin is, or what language we speak. Or what our geography is or where we come from, what our history might be. We came from Adam and Eve and thus we all bear the image of God. And with this theological grounding, guys, we as Christians of all peoples are the ones who should be the most theologically equipped.

To show powerful respect. To all of our fellow human beings, regardless of their economics, their skin color, or their history. May racism find no resting place here at Cornerstone. Only brotherhood.

And our humanity as descendants of Adam and Eve and then especially the brotherhood. The twofold brotherhood that we now have in Christ as believers in Him. But back to the text. Moses is telling us that God is telling Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, and I think all of us in this room can be glad that they did that because otherwise we would not be here talking about them.

Let me take a moment. To get into a little bit of trouble. speaking about being fruitful and multiplying, I just wanna speak a word in defense of parents that choose to multiply and have many or multiple children. This command to be fruitful and multiply gives parents the right to actually be fruitful and to multiply and to have as many children as they want to have.

I'm not among those. who look at this command and take it to mean that contraception in any form is automatically wrong. Any more than I think that God's command to animals to multiply and fill the earth would therefore mean that neutering one's pets is automatically wrong. But I do believe that such a blessing and command as God is giving here to Adam and Eve gives parents the right to have as many children as they want.

And having children should be celebrated rather than frowned upon, as it often is in our culture today. The culture we live in today, there are many people, not everybody, but there are many people who look down. On those who choose to have a number of children and choose to actually multiply. In fact, back in May of 2007, in the Australian news, listen to this, there was an article in their newspaper which said the following.

Listen to this, quote, having large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanor in the same way as frequent long haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags. Unquote. The article goes on to say, quote, if couples had 2 children instead of 3, they could cut their family's carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York, unquote. I know you moms and dads, bless your hearts, you're sitting down and planning your family, should we have another child, and I know many of you are just thinking about carbon dioxide and what's the output gonna be, but what they're suggesting is you, you better think about that and shame on you if you don't.

In the article, John Gillibad, who is the co-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, says this, and I think I have this on the screen. The effect on the planet of having one childless. Is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.

This mindset. Is Prominent in some circles today to such a degree to where if you're seen in public with a number of children, you just might get scolded by somebody and that's actually happened from time to time with people in our church family. But to the world today, I would say children are a blessing from the Lord. And such parents are choosing to multiply in obedience to this commission that God gives to us.

As his creation. And we should let them give heed to what God says here. Let us be a people here at Cornerstone who do not criticize those who have multiple children, but who celebrate together with these couples, and let us also be a people. Who, if we do have many children, we do not pridefully vaunt ourselves over others.

Because we have more children than others do, as if that means somehow we're better than others, because it doesn't mean that. God is speaking to Adam and Eve, and he's saying, be fruitful and multiply. He gives them this mandate, and then he gives them a second mandate, and that is fill the earth and subdue it. Be fruitful and multiply and now regarding the earth, here's what I want you to do with the planet.

I want you to fill the planet. I want you to fill the earth, and I want you to subdue the earth. He's saying, fill the earth. I want the earth to be swarming with humankind.

I want you to fill it. And I want you to subdue the earth. That word that is translated subdue. is actually the language of conquest.

It's really interesting. It does not by any means mean to abuse the planet and the resources of the planet, but to subdue them. God is saying there are amazing forces of nature that are at work. In the world that I have created, and I'm giving you, man, the mandate of discovering these forces and subduing them and harnessing them and putting them to work for the benefit of man, for the glory of God, and for the benefit of the animal creation.

There are things like the law of gravity, aerodynamics, there are winds, there are fossil fuels, there is inertia, there is friction. There are nutrients in the soil that at this point, Adam and Eve know nothing about and they're going to discover in the days to come. There are uses for the substances found in leaves and in trees. There are hundreds of uses for what is found in a simple peanut.

As George Washington Carver discovered, there are animals who possess strength and abilities that can be harnessed and used by man for the good of mankind and the good of the animal creation and for the glory of God. Additionally, there's an invisible world of atoms. And molecules that can be harnessed and put to work for the benefit of man and of God's creation and God is saying subdue and harness. All these things for the good of man, for the glory of God, and for the good of the earth and the animal creation.

And what, even though man has fallen, he's been doing that ever since, albeit imperfectly. A lot of our modern technologies are the product of some really smart people. who have discovered this invisible world of atoms and molecules, and they know how to harness them and get them to do work for us, where we just walk into a room and flip a switch and a light turns on. That's subduing atoms and molecules and getting them to work on our behalf.

John MacArthur says technology has permitted us to travel to the moon, develop amazing communication networks, travel across vast continents by air in a few hours, build dams. To create large reservoirs, devise power systems that harness the energy of the universe and put it to humanity's benefit and develop medical technology that prolongs life. Even in his fallen state, the human being is a wonderful creature still endued with the image of his Maker as he is in a lot of ways still fulfilling this mandate that God gave to Adam.

And Eve, when you look at things this way, subdue the earth, be a student of what I have created and learn how it works and how to make use of these forces and to harness them for the good of mankind and the glory of God.

When you look at things in this way, you realize that there's really no distinction and occupations between the sacred and the secular. A person working as an engineer, a scientist, or an auto mechanic or a doctor or a farmer is fulfilling this very mandate. That God gives to Adam and Eve, harnessing the stuff of nature for the benefit of human society. Everyone's work in such fields is as sacred as that of a pastor.

There is no distinction. When we go back to creation and see the mandate, by doing your work for the benefit of mankind and the glory of God, you are obeying this commission that God has given to Adam and to Eve and to us by extension. There's a third commission or mandate that Or aspect of the threefold mandate that God gives to Adam and Eve, and that is to rule over the animal creation. He says, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

We saw last week how being created in the image of God entails being royalty, and here, part of that rule is over the animal. Creation. We realize looking at the language here that God in creating man is not forgetting about the animals and moving on to bigger and better things. Now he's doing something for the animals and creating their king and their queen who will rule over them with a good rule if Adam and Eve had never fallen.

And so he gives them this threefold mandate be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the animal creation. There's a 5th development in this passage, and I love this one. God directs them where to get their food. God directs humankind as to where to get his food.

Then God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth and every tree which has fruit yielding seed and it shall be food for you, he says. I love this. If Adam and Eve were anything like us, the first thing they would want to know is what are we supposed to eat? Where are we supposed to get our food?

And God didn't wait a few days to tell them. He tells them on the day he creates them, here's where to get your food. God is an exceptional host who immediately wants man, points their attention, behold, look, he's saying. And all that I have provided you, the fruits and the vegetables that I have provided for you, and he tells Adam and Eve where to get their food.

Notice the language of verse 29, I have given you. I have given you. All that we eat has been given to us by God, given to us by Him. In 1 Timothy 4:3, Paul tells us that God has given to us all things in the way of food, so that we might enjoy them and receive them and partake of them with thanksgiving to Him.

This is why we say thank you. Before our meals. Thank you, Lord, for this that you have given to me. God says, behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed and every tree which has fruit yielding seed, it'll be food for you.

God is pointing them to a dazzling variety, saying it's all yours to eat, to dine upon, and to enjoy. And you just think, guys, about the amazing variety of what God has given to us on this planet to eat. It's pretty neat, huh? I, I, I'm reminded of something that Greg Harris, said at a conference a few years ago on training your children to do hard things, and he made a, a statement to this effect.

He says, I know that God is good. Because of strawberries. And he then went on to unpack what he meant by, by that. He, he went on to explain how God could have just created one bland food product that has all the nutrition that we need.

And it doesn't really taste very good, and he just brings that to Adam and Eve and to us and says, here, this is all you need to eat. It has all the nutrition you, that you will ever need. I know it doesn't taste very good, but hey, it's good for you, eat it. It's the best I could do.

Don't complain about it. And so we're doomed 3 times a day to eat this bland product that, yeah, it's good for us. It keeps us healthy, but there's really no enjoyment in the eating. But God does not do this.

In his creation. God created the banana, and the strawberry, and the mango, and the apple, and the orange, and the kiwi and the tomato and green beans and on and on and on the list can go. It's amazing for the nourishment and the enjoyment of mankind. Our foods come in many colors and shapes and sizes and smells and flavors and even textures.

This is not simply a God who wanted us to have nourishment. This is a God who wants to delight us in the nourishment that he provides. He created us to be hungry for food. He then created food to meet that need in an enjoyable way.

This is God. In Genesis 1. He wants What we eat, not just to bring us nourishment to our bodies, but to bring gladness to our hearts and to delight us. This is why Paul tells the people of Lystra in Acts 14 that God gives us rain and fruitful seasons so that he can satisfy our hearts.

With food And with gladness. God says to Adam and Eve, behold, look at the feast that I have prepared for you. Enjoy, this will be food for you. Now, based on this passage, we know that man was a vegetarian at this point of creation.

you might want to write down the reference Genesis 9:2 and 3. It's not till after the flood in Genesis 9 that God literally says to, to Noah and his descendants, he basically says, the way I once gave you plants for food, I'm now giving you the flesh of animals for food. And so there's a change that takes place there that we'll look at when we get to that passage about 3 years from now. But there's a 6th, a 6th development, just kinda hastening on here, and that is that God directs humankind as to where animals are to get their food.

He says, and every beast of the earth, and every bird of the sky, and every living thing that moves on the earth which has life, I've given every green plant for food, and it was so. Now, why would God tell Adam and Eve that? Well, they're the rulers. Over the animal creation.

So he's telling the king and queen over the animal creation where those animals are to get their food. And so probably even Adam and Eve would tend to, and as the human race would develop and grow that there would be attending to these varieties of foods, not just for the sake of mankind but also for the good of the animal creation. And he's telling Adam and Eve, this is where they get their food. I've given every green plant for food.

We talked about this a few weeks ago that if we take this passage at face value, it just seems like we would want to understand it to mean that animals at this point in history would have been vegetarian. one writer says at no point, at this point of creation, at no point is anything human beings, animals, birds allowed to take the life of another living being and consume it for food. And so God says, and to the animals, I give them plant life as well for them to eat and to enjoy.

And it seems that the animals and Adam and Eve gave heed to what was said because the text says, and it was.

So, Some are uncomfortable with that notion that humans and animals were vegetarians at this point, and to them I would just point them to this passage and say this has to mean something. And if it doesn't mean that, then what does it, what does it mean? And you want to wrestle with this first and trying to grapple and understand that. There's a 7th development.

In God's creation and commissioning of mankind, and that is that he sees his creation with humankind in it. That it's very good. And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the 6th day.

Just quick things that stand out here. First of all, God looks upon what he had made. I know as a guy, when I do a project around the house, and I really like what I've done for about a week or two after that project is done, I like to just go to where that project is and just stare at it. I, I enjoy looking upon it and getting satisfaction from it.

This is what God does throughout the days of creation. He creates and now that he's done, he looks at the whole thing and he admires it and it says, and behold, this is startling. It wasn't just good which we see in the previous days of creation, but it was very good. All that God had done prior to this point was good, but it wasn't good in the sense of being totally complete.

But now that everything is done, it is all completed, and God is saying, this is Tov meod is the Hebrew. It is very good, very beautiful. God is saying. And the text says, and there was evening and there was morning, the 6th day, and if you don't mind marking your Bible, underline the word the.

The 6th day. Up to this point of the creation account, the text has simply said a 1st day, a 2nd day, a 3rd day, a 4th day, a 5th day, and now, The 6th day. This is the big day, the day that all the other days have been leading up to. This is the day, the ultimate day, the culmination of God's creative handiwork as he creates man, Adam and Eve, and then delivers to them this commission to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth that he has created and subdue it.

And to rule. In a good movie. Just in closing, let me show you a pattern that we see in this passage. We see creation, we see, God created man image in his image, relationship, male and female in relationship together.

God created them. God blessed them, so we see blessing, we then see a commission, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and rule, and then commendation. God sees. That it is very good.

This is what man was intended to be. This is the photo. This is the selfie. This is the perfect picture that represents the heights from which we fell.

We have failed to keep the fullness of the image of God and to display God's likeness as we should have. We still bear his image to a degree, but as one writer says, listen to this, we, man is but a grizzly shadow of himself. You might look at yourself in the mirror or look at other people and be impressed by what you see, but honestly, if you could see what we were intended to be, you would realize. That we are but grizzly shadows.

Of ourselves I was thinking this week I want to get a t-shirt that says I am a grizzly shadow. Of myself And getting one for my wife that says my husband is a grizzly shadow. Of himself But we are compared to what we were intended to be. There's 7 billion people on the planet today who bear something of the image of God, but because of sin, not a one of us bears a perfect likeness to God as we were created to bear.

But there is one image bearer. In human history. who displayed the image of God in a perfect way. And we know from the New Testament that it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn, the preeminent one of all creation, The writer of Hebrews says he is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of God's nature.

Christ is the only perfect image bearer of God who ever lived and who never defiled that image with a single sin. We are failed image bearers of God. Who are but shadows of our former selves. But when we look at Christ and we see the beauty of his person, We see a sinless perfection and his relationship with the Father and the life of love that he led when he was on earth.

Suddenly we see how far we have fallen and there's a stirring, a deep and ancient stirring within us as we are awakened to see in him what we were meant to be. And what God desires to restore us to being in so many ways. And here's the good news, when, if, if you're here today and you've never believed in Jesus, if you believe in Jesus, who is the perfect image of God, who perfectly fulfilled his commission, that we failed in. You will begin a journey in which God will transform you into the image of His Son.

We as believers are experiencing transformation day by day. We're not staring at. Images of DiCaprio. But staring at The Christ, day by day, and little by little, we're being transformed into the very image of Jesus Christ from one level of glory to another.

If we could take a spiritual selfie. Day by day, we would see, man, there's so far to go, but every day God is making me more and more like the Christ as I keep staring at him. He's conforming me to his image and one day I will be perfectly restored to the full image of Christ. As Paul says in First Corinthians, just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Jesus Christ. That's our destiny. So what, I read this at the end of Genesis one, and I, my heart soars. And then it sinks.

Because we've fallen short of this, but then I turned to Christ and my heart soars again. Because I know that we have been created in Christ Jesus. We're a new creation. We are created to be in his image.

And God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, and he's commissioned us to be fruitful and to multiply and to go into all the world and preach. The gospel to every creature and to reign in life through the grace and the righteousness that Christ gives to us. And on the day that God saved us, and we put our trust in Him before we had done a single thing in fulfillment of the commission that God gives to us. God looked upon us and he said, behold, You are very righteous with the very righteousness of my son.

And that's how the journey begins when we believe in Christ and it ends in a wonderful place of unimaginable splendor. Glory in Him. Let's bow our heads together. If you're here today and you've never put your trust in Christ, man, I, we're inviting you today into something really phenomenal, really great.

Search the world over, study other religions, I dare you to find any faith, any religion that presents a vision for mankind that is as beautiful and exalting as this. Come to Christ today, believe in Him. And be saved. And begin the journey of being transformed into the image of the perfect image bearer of God.

Lord, we just come to you. Just in awe over your greatness, over your splendor, over your majesty. Passages like this, Lord, they're, they're wonderful, they're beautiful, but there's a crushing weight that one feels. And seeing what we, what we were created to be and then how far short we have fallen from that.

But then when we go to the depths, that's where we, we meet Christ and We know that there is a hope of not just restoration but recreation into something even far beyond what Adam and Eve. Ever would have known You're a good God. We see your goodness everywhere, Lord, we thank you for your word and for all that it teaches us, even in a passage such as we have looked at today. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to give up our offerings to you, receive these offerings.

And do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus. And we give ourselves to you. In his name, and all God's people said. men.