Sermon 1 - 15th Annual Bible Conference

It was about this time, 35 years ago, it was about this time of year, 35 years ago, that I was sitting in a room on the campus of Cedarville College. I was a freshman, and I was about to take a course called Intro to Philosophy. The teacher was Professor James Greer. Little did I know that from that point on, my life, really, my life would never be the same again.

Professor Greer taught us much more than philosophy. We got lots of philosophy, but he taught us of a philosophy that serves our faith. and for the first time I was taught how to think as a Christian that is to say how to understand the world and interpret reality from a distinctly Christian world and life view next to my father no one has had as much influence on me as Dr. Greer but I'm not the only one whom Dr.

Greer has influenced because of his faithful service to Christ and his kingdom, he has shaped the ministry and lives of hundreds of others. So my prayer has been that God will bless his ministry to us in these ensuing days, and really, that in a special way, God will use his word to mold our thinking and to accomplish change in us. So, Dr. Greer. Now you know why James said, don't many of you desire to be teachers?

For the greater will be your judgment. And when I listen to Tim comment on the influence of a class, I mean, I'm just amazed at how God has brought those kind of men into my life. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth had no boundaries and it was empty. And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

And God said, let there be light. And it was so. And God called the light day and the darkness he called night. God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters to divide the waters above the firmament from the waters under the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven.

And God said, let the waters be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God said, let the earth bring forth grass and herbs and fruit trees after their kind. And it was so. And God said, I will place luminaries in the heavens. And he made the great light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars.

And God said, let the water swarm with living creatures and let the birds fly in the open atmosphere of heaven. And God blessed them and said that they should be fruitful and fill the sea and fill the air. And God said, let the earth bring forth cattle, beasts of the field, creeping things after their kind. And it was so. And God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. and let them have dominion.

So God said, let them be blessed. Let them be those who will multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it. And on the seventh day, God rested from all of his work. And he blessed the seventh day. And he made it distinct among all the other days. Because on that day, he rested from all of his work.

The Bible starts with something that is so simple and yet so majestic. It is dignified. you can't help but be impressed, even in the English language, with the quality of the content and the literary style of Genesis 1. So it is dignified, and yet it is not affected. It isn't phony in any way. You also find that it is something that is profound, and yet it is clear.

It's very hard to make a mistake in Genesis 1-1 through Genesis 2-4. When you read it and you know all of the issues that exist in our culture over the origin of things, how do you explain the beginning of the solar system, all the conflict between science and the Bible, all of the theories that have been proposed to reconcile them? And when you come back and read the text, all of that just kind of washes away.

Because you come to grasp in the beauty of this prose that Moses wrote by the Spirit, something that is so majestic something that catches you and no matter how often you read it it is that which is characterized by majesty And all of a sudden you come to understand that here at the beginning we are introduced to the two main people about which this whole book is directed. We are introduced to the living God, and we are introduced to man, the image of God. And this book is the story of God and man.

But the introduction to it is in a literary form that is so beautiful. I recite it to you in Hebrew, except you'd probably think I was talking in tongues. And that would not be a good thing to have put on my resume at this point in life. But in the Hebrew language, which is so different than ours, there's an assonance, the sounds that sound the same. And its beauty is even here in our English translation.

Now what you find is in this majestic introduction to the Hebrew Bible and to the Christian scriptures, you learn right away that God is without peer or rival. In the beginning, what? God. You say, where was he? Nowhere. Space hadn't been created.

Can you think that thought? Who was he with? Father, Son, and Spirit, three persons who share a common essence. Mutual love between them. Community, communication, delight and joy. He wasn't some lonely being who needed help in order to fulfill himself.

He was a perfect being with perfect interpersonal communication within his own essence. So you ask the question, why did he create? and there is no answer. The only answer is that by the wisdom of his will he chose to create. Now what we have created here is handled in a seven-day pattern. If you go to Exodus and the giving of the Ten Commandments and you come to the commandment that says, remember the Sabbath to keep it holy, number four, because in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them is.

And on the seventh day he rested and he hallowed that day. He set it apart. Isn't it amazing? You contemplate the majesty of the power of God who by the fiat of the words out of his mouth simply said, let there be light. and there was light. He said, let there be a firmament and you come to grasp that this God has the kind of power that can speak out of nothing and bring into existence the heavens and the earth.

And as soon as you contemplate that, you wonder, why did Moses ever choose by the Spirit to put this majestic work of God into the seven-day week of a craftsman. Six days he worked, one day he rested. Isn't it amazing that the very characteristics of our own lives in six days of one kind of activity and a seventh day of another kind of activity is put into the very structure of creation. now when you think about it he has no peer or rival so there's no one who can thwart his will everything else is created it is dependent upon him for his being so when you read Genesis 1-1 you have the foundation of the sovereignty of the living God there's only two kinds of reality we'll work on that some tonight There's the uncreated reality, the eternal reality, and there's only one being who belongs to that domain.

And that's the triune God. Everything else is created. Is that true? Now you're all shaking your heads very nicely, but you're not going to like what I'm going to say next. In the beginning, God created the what? The heavens and the earth.

You mean heaven's not eternal? Yes, absolutely, heaven is not eternal. Heaven, my friends, is as created as the earth. When you die and go to heaven, you don't go to eternity. When you die and go to heaven, you go from one created reality to another created reality. What did he create? the heavens and the earth.

Now he doesn't go on and tell us the kinds of beings he created to live in the heavens. All the focus is on the earth. Because on the earth there's going to come a being who is the distinct being that is going to be an image of what God is like. Image is never used of angels, never used of cherubim, never used of seraphim. We do know that he created angelic beings for heaven.

We do know he created Satan and the fallen angels, that they were all created they were created perfect they inhabited the created heavens with God and he created the earth All the focus in this account is on the earth Now as you look at the account, and I know what you're thinking, what does this have to do with worldview? Well let me tell it to you right up front. If you don't get creation right, you won't get anything else right.

If we don't understand the nature of creation, we won't understand the present situation or what's coming. So we've got to get this correct. And I'm not implying that I have it correct and everybody else has it wrong. I'm just implying that we need to think carefully about creation. When you read it, on the first day, he created the heavens and the earth, and when he created them, they didn't have any boundaries, and they didn't have any inhabitants.

And from that moment now, the boundaries are going to come, and the inhabitants are going to come. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth had no boundaries and it was empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And we read these words. The Spirit of God hovered. It's a bird word. Like a bird hovering over its nest.

The Spirit was an active agent in creation. John tells us in John 1.1 that in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.

Now who is the Word? Christ. Jesus Christ is the creator in the primary sense. The Holy Spirit is the person who is the executive that brings it all to consummation. And the Father is the planner and he too is engaged in the entire activity. And therefore we have the triune God involved in creation. the heavens and the earth they need boundaries you know it always fascinates me that when you come to the incarnation of Christ you remember that the angel had come to Mary and said Mary you are highly favored God has graced you and when she said how can these things be because I have never known a man.

You remember what the answer was? The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will hover over you. You can't grasp the last Adam and the work of the Spirit if you don't grasp the work of the Spirit in the first Adam. That's an echo. They go together. In the darkness of the womb of Mary, the new creation begins as God the Holy Spirit forms the humanness of the second member of the triune Godhead out of the stuff of Mary's body, preserving it from sin, Because may I assure you, Mary was a sinner.

Is that correct? So that we end up then understanding that we're going to have new creation. There's going to be darkness. There's going to be the hovering of the Spirit, the empowerment of the Spirit, the coming upon, out of which the new creation in Jesus Christ, the last Adam, has come. See, if you don't get this one right, you tend not to get that one right.

Genesis permeates all of the Bible. First three days, right? Boundaries come. The first boundary is the boundary between light and darkness. Do you ever ask yourself, why did God give names to the light and the darkness? Why did he call the day the light, Yom?

Do you ever ask yourself this question, who taught Adam to speak? Did God preform some vocabulary words so that Adam could give right significance to the environment he was living in? Isn't that amazing to think? God named things. He called the firmament heaven. He did that so that the man who would be his image would have symbols that he could use to interpret and to understand the reality that God had created in which he had placed him and over which he was to be the vice-regent.

So we have the symbols developed. First day we have heaven and earth in the first boundary, light-darkness. Second day we have division between waters. Apparently the earth was covered with water and it was in an atmosphere of water and there was a division. There was water above the firmament and now the water on the firmament, or on the earth rather.

Third day it marked out as different because it has two creative fields Third day let the waters be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear How many places were the waters gathered together into You suppose that earth, when it came from the hand of God, like our earth, is 69% drowned under water? suppose the continents existed or was the water all in one place and was there one large contiguous land mass isn't that a fascinating question you get to Revelation 21 and John sees the new earth and the first thing he says no more sea just a river one contiguous landmass for the redeemed of all ages to live together on the new earth. Creation as it came from the hand of God is very much different than creation as we experience it today. There's been changes.

We have so much water covering this earth. We have these continents. What we face then is that in that third day, we now have dry land, and now God speaks to the dry land, and the first inhabitants come, and it is the vegetable kingdom. Let the earth bring forth grass, herbs, and fruit trees after their kind. So it's almost as if Moses is emphasizing day three with two feats, and then he's going to emphasize day six because it also has two fields.

And we'll see that. When we come to day four, the luminaries are placed in the heavens and they are only discussed in relationship to the light-darkness cycle on earth, seasons and times and things of that character. Day five, the birds fly in the open atmosphere of heaven and the waters swarm with living creatures. And for some reason on day five God blessed the birds and the sea life.

It's kind of fascinating just to read this account and see what God blesses. He blesses this, these fowl and sea life. Now on day six, we come to the apex. Everything's moving toward the consummation of the creation event. On day six, God speaks again to the ground. And in speaking to the ground, he says, Let the earth bring forth cattle, beasts of the field, and creeping things after their kind. and it was so.

But then all of a sudden in this chapter, we hear God say something and nothing happens. He says, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. Get the break. Here's an inter-triune counsel and communication. it breaks the entire pattern of everything we've been listening to. And God said, and it was so. And God said, and it was so.

And God blessed. And God saw that what he did was very good. And God said, and it was so. And God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. and let them have dominion. Then we read, So God created man in his image. In the image of God created he him.

Male and female created he them. And he blessed them by saying unto them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. What marks man out as distinct is that man and man alone is the image of God. That means that Calvin was right. The proper study of man begins with the study of God because man is made in the image of God. What does it mean to be the image of God?

Now I suggest to you this morning, ladies and gentlemen, that not one of you have looked up here and seen anything but an older fellow, his hair is leaving him. He's overweight. None of you have looked up here and said, why, there's the image of God. Have you? Because although we would believe that, that's not how we give meaning to people, is it? We don't see each other as the image of God, do we? because we get the significance we give to people from our culture, not from the Bible.

You have been renewed in the image of God through faith in Jesus Christ. If that's not what we see, no wonder we have such difficulty treating each other appropriately, because we don't see ourselves in those categories. Now the word image and likeness, in Hebrew it's tzelem and demut. They are synonyms, they mean the same thing. They mean this, that man has an antecedent to his being.

Now kids, this could be a little fun for you. You suppose there's eternal elephants in heaven of which earth elephants are copies? or eternal chimps of which earth chimps are copies. There's only one being who's a copy. There's no other being in creation who at his level of existence is supposed to be a being that resembles and copies what God is like at his level of existence.

Can you begin to grasp that we were created in the image of God, we have been renewed in the image of God, and that gives us certain capacities and certain aspects to our being that are not shared in any other aspect of creation? Does God speak? is man created in the image of God and therefore man speaks? Do you understand the value of the gift of language?

Not only do we speak in language, but we think in language. Language and rules. Now you may think your dog speaks. We won't go down that road. because what Sharon gave me as to where I'm going for meals, everybody in this church has a dog. Okay? But when he looks and goes, whoop, whoop, whoop, sorry, they cannot manipulate symbols and rules.

The chimps don't either. They can condition a chimp to push a certain button to a certain sound, but they don't talk. Man has capacities. He has the speech capacity. He has the reasoning capacity. He has the volitional capacity.

He has all of these capacities because he is the image of God. May I ask you, at his level of existence, does God rule? Is he the sovereign ruler? Should we be surprised when he creates his image that he creates his image to rule? And what are we to rule over? The animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the earth.

God never intended man to rule over man. Man ruling over man is only here because of sin. In the garden, there was no need for government. Because there was no sin. And Adam was to have dominion. He was to develop all of creation. so it would express in new ways the glory and the transcendence and the praise and the majesty of the Creator.

Can you imagine? God planted a garden eastward in the area of Eden. And in this garden there was a river. And at the end of the river it came out to a delta in five branches. In the midst of the garden there was a tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he had man name all the animals on the sixth day.

Isn't that interesting? God named and gave vocabulary words for certain aspects of creation, but he had man develop the appropriate words to give meaning to the animal kingdom. But he learned something in doing that. He learned that there was nothing in the animal kingdom that was like him. And God said something that we don't expect in Genesis 2. He said, it is not good for man to be alone.

Everything else has been good, but here's one not good. So remember what he did. He caused a deep sleep to come upon the man. and he took bone and flesh and he built the woman. It doesn't say he created or made the woman. It uses a completely different Hebrew verb. He built her from the bone and flesh of the man.

She came out of him. Okay? And when Adam woke up God brought the woman to the man And he looked at her and said wow That's kind of a loose translation of the text that really isn't there. But what did he say? She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. and I'm going to give her a name. I'm going to call her Esha for she came out of Esh, man.

What did God say, Genesis 1? Male and female created he them. So we're going to have image as a duality with a unity. There's going to be image male and image female. Now your culture tells you that maleness is a role you play and femaleness is a role you play. I want to tell you it defines the essence of your being.

There is no priority image male over image female. They are both image. God created them and they would participate in a unity that on earth would reflect the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. because when they came together, for this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and be glued unto his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.

In that oneness of marriage, image male and image female participate in a union and a unity that is manifest as a manifestation of the unity of the triune God. Isn't that amazing? Marriage is founded in the being of God, not just the will of God. Would it be possible for the father to leave the son and the spirit and attach himself to another union? It's blasphemous even to say it.

Is it possible for a man to detach himself from his wife and attach himself to another woman? You know why God hates sexual sin? Because it violates his character. It violates his very being. This chapter is so important. what we have is the understanding that the unique person image is going to be a unity with a difference. And we're told that the two of them were in the garden, the special garden that God had planted, and yet they were to have dominion.

If I had planted a special garden, I would have put up signs and said, keep off the grass and don't touch the flowers. Right? I mean, that's what we do, don't we? Well, this is a garden that God wants the man and the woman to put their mark on it. There's something here we need to contemplate. This is a time period of perfection.

There is no sin. There is no death. And even in a period of perfection, there is still room for change and development. Perfection does not mean static. You ever think that thought? We're going to have tasks on the new earth.

Did you know that? We're not going to be tourists forever. In fact, you can leave your camera here. You won't need it. What we have is the understanding that in the garden as well as out of the garden, they were to cut the flowers. Each flower had its beauty and reflected the glory of God.

But I can see Esha out there clipping the flowers. and putting them in a vase and arranging them differently than just single plants here, there, and everywhere. And in the beauty of that arrangement, the glory of God is extended. I could see that perhaps with the writing of a poem. Or perhaps in a particular way the fruit was prepared for dinner that day So they were to have tasks.

They were to put their mark in the garden and out. They were, as God's vice-regent, to procreate and to fill the earth with the image of God because the image of God is the agent to reflect the glory of God in creation. they couldn't fulfill God's mandate as just one couple. They had to procreate. They're commanded to procreate. Be fruitful, multiply is a command.

Now, have you thought about this? In the state of perfection, when there was no sin in death, God gave to them his commandments. You ever go back and read this and just mark the commandments? They are amazing. Not only that, but even in a state of perfection, they wouldn't know what to do or how to live if it hadn't been that God communicated to them how to use their sexual capacity.

He didn't say watch the animals and figure it out for yourself. He said your sexual capacity is for the procreation of my image. It's to be done consciously with purpose. Are you getting the notion things were a little different back there? Getting the notion you've never seen creation as God created it? You've never seen his image as he created it?

Key factors we need to grasp out of this majestic statement. Genesis 1 through 2, 3 belong together. God blessed a particular day. I'll comment on that as we close. Now, the heavens, when they were finished, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth. Chapter 2, verse 4, we get the account.

And there they are in the garden. and we are told that they were both naked and they knew no shame. Let me just tell you what all of that means. It means that there were no barriers between husband and wife. There was no barrier between image of God and the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the earth. What was man made from? dirt you're dirt, I'm dirt dirt you are and to dirt you will return isn't that strange? what did God call the man?

Adam you know what that word is? it's a word that's built on a Hebrew verbal root that's a color word it's the word to be reddish that was the color of the soil out of which he was formed so here's image big red and here's image Esha you know bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh no barriers between them no barriers between them and the animal kingdom plant kingdom and the very earth no barriers between them and their creator. Because in Genesis 3, we read that in the breeze of the day, that God would come into the garden and commune with his creatures. No doubt, this is Christ.

This is probably a Christophany. Can you imagine what life must have been like no scarcity, no credit cards everything you need is there wow no barriers, no conflict no laws of thermodynamics no aging, no death and then at the breeze of each day here comes Christ, probably in man form, into the garden to commune, to communicate with his image. Can you imagine the excitement there must have been when the breeze of the day would come and they would be expecting Christ?

See, I don't think we've grasped the theological significance of the early chapters of Genesis because quite frankly on the new earth it exactly what we going to have So that when we contemplate creation and the purpose of God and the majesty of it all and then after those six days of activity it says that he blessed the seventh day and he hallowed it. Now to us, hallow means to set apart. And if I set my Bible apart, I would put it over here, right?

Well, in Hebrew, to set apart doesn't mean to put to the periphery. It means to put right in the center. So the seventh day was going to be the central day. It was almost like God said, in your six days of labor, you will encounter me and you can live for my glory. But on the seventh day, I have reserved things for you that you can't get through your tasks.

There's something here that's beyond. And unfortunately, the word Shabbat does not mean cessation of activity. It means activity of a different kind than the other six days. So you don't fulfill Shabbat with your Sunday afternoon we lie down. Now, I'm going to pastor's home, but I want to assure everyone I'll have a we lie down this afternoon before I have to preach tonight.

See? So when you contemplate it, what he is saying is, here's six days of one kind of activity. and then there's another day of a different kind of activity and this is the central day because what I give you on this day will enable you to do the other six days appropriately. Isn't that amazing? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

It had no boundaries and it was empty and it was dark. But the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and God said, Father, the word is so clear. It seems like all of the conflicts that we have listened to about evolution, and everything else all just evaporate when we hold in our lap and we read with our eyes the majesty of what you gave to Moses to write so that when we start, we start with a triune creator God without peer or rival in the fullness of his triune essence.

And for reasons only known to him, he chose to create the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. We probably haven't thought the thought this morning that we are your creatures. that you sustain our life. Not only do you sustain us, but in Christ the last Adam, you have redeemed us to yourself and recreated us in your image. And therefore are we not only your creatures, but now we are your children. members of your family, adopted, having the spirit of sonship so that we, the people of God this morning, can cry out together, Father, Father, and you answer, my children.

We love you. we thank you for the grace that has redeemed us and for the majesty of your word and for what we have learned this morning may we as your people begin to think and interpret reality in these categories and may we with grand hope and anticipation look forward to new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Grant these mercies in Christ's name.