Message this morning kind of
follows on some of the sermons that Brother Bill has had for
us in the weeks past about evolution. After listening to the sermons
and then watching Christian TV this past week, I don't know
why I do that, but sometimes I do and it's always upsetting. I heard a preacher on the TV
this week talking about the wonder of theistic evolution. And that is, I understand that
these preachers are trying to make a relevant message and in
their mind this uniting of evolution and creation in this theory of
theistic evolution is making the Bible palatable to the world. But it's sickening. The truth
is that we will never make the Bible and the account of God's
truth palatable to the world. We cannot. The natural man cannot
hear the truth. He will not receive the truth.
And when we try to make compromises with secular theory, and draw
away from our theology, we do nobody any favors. We certainly
disrespect our God in doing so. I listened to this man and I
realized that in the process of his preaching that God himself
was denigrated. To make the scientific theories
of evolution work, you have to dethrone God. You have to make
God less than the all-powerful, all-knowing, sovereign God of
the universe. You have to. You have to do that
to make room for man. That was an editorial comment. Take it for what you will. My
topic this morning is actually different than that and I hope
in the process more encouraging than that. My topic is mankind
as God's highest and greatest creation. As we discussed in weeks past,
evolution and the idea that man developed from the primordial
slime, the ooze, the muck pit of the oceans, we lose sight
of the fact, if we hold to that, that mankind was created by God
uniquely and that mankind is God's highest creation. That's where we'll start today,
and that's where we'll go. That will be our topic. The scriptures
I have, I've got a lot of long scripture from the book of Genesis,
but I will not read it all. I will read selected verses,
and later, as you meditate on these things, you might wanna
go back. The key passage is Genesis chapter one, verses one through
31. I will read only a few passages
here, beginning first with verse one. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. Then we'll skip a bunch of the
chapter. And I hate to do that because
I always feel improper breaking up the word of God that way,
but it's a necessity. The next passage begins in verse
26. Then God said, let us make man
in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and
over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping
thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own
image. In the image of God, he created
them, 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 have dominion over the fish of the sea and over
the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that
moves on the earth. And God said, behold, I have
given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the
earth and every tree with seed and its fruit. You shall have
them for food. And to every beast of the earth
and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps
on the earth, everything that has the breath of life in it,
I have given every green plant for food. And so it was. And
God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very
good. Skip to chapter two and let's
read a few verses there. Genesis chapter two, verse 15. The Lord God took the man and
put him in the garden of Eden for worship. Verse 18. Then the Lord God said, it is
not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper
fit for him. Verse 21 and following. So the
Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man And while
he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with
flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he
made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man
said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because
she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave
his father and mother, and hold fast to his wife and they shall
become one flesh. And the man and his wife were
both naked and were not ashamed. That covers the creation of mankind. We'll talk about man in the moments
to follow and we'll develop our thinking there. The place to
begin our theology, any person's theology, is in the book of Genesis. If you go wrong in the book of
Genesis, you will err to the very end of the scripture. There
are some basics set forth in the book of Genesis that we must
grasp. And if we're wrong there, we
will be wrong about so much of what we think, so much of what
we believe. This comes out of a series or
after a series on evolution and creation. And what we believe
about the first passage of the book of Genesis and about the
universe and about mankind, what we believe from the book of Genesis
will lead us in the rest of our thinking. It lays a foundation
and therefore we must talk about it. We must. And today we will
talk about it. It's not gonna be new. I present
no new information to you today. It's a reminder for each one
of us and I say that we bear, we need to be reminded often
because we're fallen creatures. And in our fallenness we can
forget, at times we can ignore, and other times we can be drawn
away from the truth. So we need to be reminded. Today
we will be reminded about God's creation of man. Let's make a few comments to
begin with before we get to the discussion of man, and these
are important. From the book of Genesis, the very first passage,
in the beginning, in the beginning. This is an important concept,
and it ties in again with the discussion of evolution. We must
realize that for us, for us as physical creatures, there was
a beginning. There was a beginning. Now in
the eternity of God, there never is a beginning. God, to keep
it in terms we can understand that we can feel because we're
finite. God was, is, and will always be. But for us, for our
world, there was a beginning. Time was created by God with
the universe in the beginning. That will be important in a few
minutes as we talk about some of the contrasting ideas of evolution. But God created in the beginning. There was a starting point. There
was a starting point. The next thing that we need to
grasp and hold to is that God created. God created. That seems pretty basic to us. We're steeped in Christian theology.
We've been in the church a long time. We don't think about that.
But it's important that we understand and really take to heart that
God created. Before there was a universe,
again, in terms we can understand, there was nothing. Now, I don't
mean to say there wasn't God. That's not what I'm saying. But
in terms of the physical world, things we can see, we can touch,
we can know, in our senses, there was nothing. The old Latin term
for that and you read it in your older books as ex nihilo, from
nothing. God created from nothing. From
nothing. He spoke and it was. It was. We're physical creatures. I, in my own mind, cannot imagine
nothing. If I try to imagine nothing,
I can't get there, but God created from nothing. There were no building
blocks. He didn't take things that were
and made new things. That's what we do. None of us,
in the true sense of the word, create anything. If I want to
create a new home for my family, I don't create it. I don't speak it into existence.
I build it from existing things. We don't create. God created. That's important. That's important. In evolutionary theory, as we
talked about in weeks past, all that we know evolved. But the evolutionary theory works
off of the notion that there was preexistent matter. that there never has been nothing. This matter was just floating
around in space and some force united matter. It started pulling
together, but the point in all that is it wasn't created from
nothing. There was this preexistent matter. So, we've got an instant theological
problem there. God is eternal and ever-existent. The theories say that matter
is eternal and ever-existent. For that to be true, then in
some capacity, in some way, God and matter are equal. God and matter are equal. And
this is the basis of pagan religion. That God exists in things. Evolution at its core is paganism. We call it scientific thought,
scientific theory. Evolution is religion. It is religion and it's paganism. It's paganism. If matter is pre-existent and
ever-existent, then matter is in some way God. That's the logical
conclusion that you must come to if you hold to it and think
to it. Think it through. As I said,
this is the beginning of paganism. Now you go to Romans chapter
one verses 18 through the end of the chapter where Paul discusses
how a society, how a people, how mankind plunges into paganism. And you can see and understand
how that takes place. If matter and God are equal,
then it is not so hard in the mind of fallen man to replace
God with matter. And that is exactly what Paul
tells us paganism does. It takes us away from the truth
of the living God and replaces it with things of the material
world. Paganism. Let's go back to Genesis and
some things we know. Now we're going to skip from
verse one and go cover broadly in concept a lot of the next
passages, but what I want you to notice is that God spoke all
things into existence. God did not labor to create the
universe. By his very will, God created. As I said earlier, you and I
do not create. We may build, we may manipulate,
we may form and fashion, but we do not create. God spoke. And then there was. Then there was. Something else
that is important to note is that God created in order. God created, there was an order
to his creation and it resulted in an order in the universe. We're told in Genesis that there
were then years and seasons and days and nights. Not created in order. God is
not one of disorder or chaos. Not created in order. He created all the physical world. He created the waters. He created
all the animals, the plants, all of that. We see that in the first chapter of Genesis. But he created an order. We can
count on God's order. I do not have to worry, fret
myself to sleep tonight, wondering if the sun is going to come up
tomorrow. We don't have to do that. God created
in order. There is a pattern to our lives
and that in itself should give us comfort. That life goes on
as God has created it and that is comforting. We listen on the
news often, we listen to the radio, to the TV, we watch The
media would read the papers and you would think, you would think
that the world is spinning, spinning, spinning out of control. That
everything is disorder and all is chaos. Brothers and sisters, that's
not so. That's not so. We have our chaotic moments.
We do. but the world is not spinning
out of control and chaos. The sun will come up tomorrow.
God has created in an orderly fashion and he has created an
orderly world and there is comfort in that. There is comfort in
that. There will be tomorrow. We move from the creation of
the world to focus in on the creation of man. And this is
where we'll like for the rest of the sermon. But notice the
detail of the creation of man. And I want you to notice first
off that the discussion of how God created changes the world
and all the animals. God spoke into existence. Spoke. But with the creation
of man, the language becomes more intimate, more personal,
more hands-on, if you can say hands-on about God doing things. But notice that God's creation
of man is hands-on. God forms man from the dust of
the ground. He spoke the world in existence,
but he formed man. Notice the change in the language.
We go from something that could be perceived as remote and distant
to something that is personal, hands-on. You take a bunch of
clay and you're going to mold it into something. You have to
touch it. You have to become involved in
it. You have to work it. That's the change in the language
we see here. God now comes close to create
man. He forms man from the dust of
the earth. Then he breathes life into the
nostrils of man. I'm up here at the pulpit right
now and I'm breathing, but none of you, none of you feel my breath. Now you feel it. But if I come
back and get close to you and we're talking, you feel my breath. The picture that comes to mind
here when I see that God has breathed life into the nostrils
of man, I think of CPR. You can't give CPR to somebody
unless you're in their face. in their mouth. And that is what
God has done. He is so intimately involved
with the creation of man that he is breathing life into the
nostrils of man. Now note God's concern for the
man. It's not good that this man should
be alone. Not good. Not good. God has formed man intimately,
personally, and now has a great concern for his wellbeing. He
will form a woman for the man, but notice what he does. It's
not the same process. It's even yet more personal than
it was with man. He doesn't just pick up another
bunch of clay and shape it. No, he reaches into the very
person of man He forms the woman. Again, the thing that I want
us to get a feel for, and oftentimes when we read the scripture, we're
very familiar with them and we can tend to read it as literature
and miss a great sum of the strength, the emotion, the intimacy that's
built into the scripture. And God in this point has been
very personal with man. Again, he spoke the world into
creation, but he formed man. And now he reaches within to
the very person of man to form woman. It's a special creation. He didn't
do that for any other part of creation. You don't find that. All of the creation is wonderful. All of it is magnificent. All
of it speaks of the incredible creative power of our God. The
creation of man speaks of an intimacy in creation far beyond
that that he displayed in creating the world. After man is created, God looks at what he's done and
he says, this is very good. Now, as God created the world,
he proclaimed, this is good. This is good. But with man in
place, created and now in place, suddenly the creation is very
good. Very good. Not just good, it's
very good. Important for us to grasp. It's
important for us to grasp to hear. to understand. But why? Why did the creation go from
good to very good? It's all contained within the
creation of man and the fact that God has created man in His
image. In His image. When God created
the earth and separated the dry ground from the water You don't
see the scripture telling us that God said, let us create
the dirt in our image. When he made the plants, it doesn't
say, let's create the trees in our image. When he created the
fish and the animals, it doesn't say, let us create the fish and
the animals in our image. It doesn't say that. But with
mankind, he said, let us create man. Mankind was the uniquest of all
creations because God invested himself in man. God created man and invested
himself in man. That is so important for us to
understand. All the rest of it, and I don't
mean to sound negative or demeaning in this, but all the rest of
the creation is just stuff. It's just stuff. And then there's
man, created in the image of God. I make the point so strongly,
I hope that's not bothersome but I make the point because
the thinking of the day even in some of the churches sadly
enough is that man is not the very pinnacle of the creation
of God. That man is not God's highest
and greatest creation. Those who are called Christians
who hold to theistic evolution, what have you, may voice that. But when you listen to what they
say, that's not what they're saying. They're not saying that
man is the greatest creation of God. They're not saying that
at all. They will be saying that man is part of the creation of
God and equal to the rest of the creation because it was all
part of a process. But that's not what the scripture
says. That's not what the scripture says. And there is no way to
reconcile the creative power, the unique created power of God. It was the theory of evolution.
There is no way to do that. If we do try to unite the two
into theistic evolution, if that's where we want to go, we want
to make that compromise because we think that somehow answers
the hard questions, what we do And we have to think it through.
Ideas do have real consequences. Words have meanings and ideas
do have consequences. So when we say these things,
we should stop. We should breathe deeply a couple
times and then think about what we're saying. Through the process
of theistic evolution, those who hold to it will tell you
that no, this magnifies God. What we've done, though, is that
God, rather than creating, as you say, in seven days and just
speaking as it is, God is still very active, but he's working
through process. He's molding and shaping through
process. But what that does, again, stop,
breathe a few times, and then think about what's being said.
What that does, is changes God from all-powerful and unique
creator to an ingenious manipulator of matter. And there is a difference. There is a difference. At the point that you're willing
to accept that God is no longer creator, He is a manipulator. He is a builder, not a creator. We look at the magnificent structures
of the world. Look at the pyramids in Egypt.
Magnificent. What a feat of human ingenuity. But not one of the pyramids was
created. They were all built. They were
all built. And when we hold to the idea
of theistic evolution, and say in our thinking, in our voicing,
speaking, that God has worked through the process, what we've
done is we've made God a builder, not a creator. And God is not a builder, he's
a creator. And he spoke in all ways. And then he went beyond speaking
and intimately created man in his image. Now this should overwhelm
us when we think about this. Man is created in the image of
God. I think about Psalm 8. And the psalmist there looks
at the magnificence of the world, all that there is, the great
expanse of the heavens and the mountains and the world as it
is. And he said, what is man that
you are mindful of? Because in size and ability and
strength, man is piddly. The mountains are huge. The sky,
the heavens are vast. The power of the earth is great. Man is tiny and insignificant
in comparison. What is man that you are mindful
of? But God has told us that we're
created in the image of God. As insignificant as we may appear
within the greater creation, man is created in the image of
God. Even in our fallen state, we bear the image of God. Now,
It is a broken image. It is as a shattered mirror,
but it is still in some way the image of God. And mankind is magnificent. Mankind is magnificent. Now,
I mentioned that we are falling. We are falling. The image that
God created is broken. And may I say that as far as
we know and as far as we can sense and understand that image
of God is irreparable. It cannot be fixed. It cannot
be put back together. This is the magnificence of our
God in creation again. that God gave His only Son to
restore man to his proper place. Just as God intimately created
man in the beginning at the proper time, Jesus Christ came to recover
His people and to restore the image. The scripture tells us
that we are recreated in Jesus Christ. We are told throughout
the New Testament, the writings of Paul in particular, that we
are being recreated, remade into the image, Jesus Christ, into the image
of the beloved son of God. We were formed originally in
the image of God. And now as God's people, we are
being recreated Remade, restored, this time in the image of the
Son of God, Jesus Christ. How wonderful is this? God is
recovering and restoring and recreating His people. This is
magnificent. This is hopeful. This is wonderful
news. The break, the shattering of
the image of God was irreconcilable in the world. God gave his only begotten son. Gave his son that we could indeed
be recreated in the image of God. Now, mankind is God's greatest
creation. It is important at this point
to bring home the truth that God saved men. He saved from a man amongst mankind. God did not send Christ to save angels. We know from the scripture that
there are an elect body of angels and there are those who are cast
off. God has made no effort to recover
the lost angels. God has made no effort to recover
the animals. Now this is offensive to some
people I know because we tend to personalize our animals. We
make them almost as people themselves. We assign a lot of characteristics
that people have to our animals, and we tend to elevate them,
so it's a little offensive to some to say that God did not
come to save the animals. But He didn't. Scripture doesn't
say that. He came to seek and save the
lost, and those are His people, not the animals. He didn't come
to save the forest. I'm a forester. That's what I
do. but God didn't come to save my
forest. He didn't. He entrusted mankind,
Adam in the garden, and then us as the generations passed
with the caretaking of the world, but he did not come, Christ did
not come to save the forest. He came to save those who were
created in his image. That's important for us to understand
because so much of the ideologies of the day, and it's all based
ultimately in evolution, the idea that the world is this self-creating
body. The idea of the day is that everything
in this world is of equal value. So, I, as a man, am no more important
than a plant, or a starfish, or an ape, or whatever we want
to assign from the created world. That I, as a man, am no more
important. I just am one more part of the
creation. That's not what the Scripture
says. God created all there is, but he created man in his image. I guess I probably should have
said this earlier, I'll say it now, but what does it mean to
be created in the image of God? God is not physical. Now the
scripture speaks of the hands of God and this and that. We personify God as we speak
about it because we are finite and we must somehow picture in
our mind things so that we can grasp the
truth. But God is not physical. He is spirit and truth. So the
image of God that is put forth in us must reside, must come
from spirit and truth. And we look in the scripture
and we understand that God has a will. We have a will as well. Therein
is part of the image of God in us. God thinks and God reasons. So do we. Therein is part of
the image of God within us. We have a conscience that directs
us and guides us, leads us into the understanding of what is
good or evil. God knows what good and evil
are. The fact that we do is part of
the image of God within us. And it is these things that make
us in the image of God. Animals are not created in the
image of God. No matter how much we love them,
they are not created in the image of God. off of instinct. They do what is natural to them
to survive. We personify that. We assign
them great thinking and reasoning abilities. We assign them love
and affection, saying that they have all these qualities about
them. But animals operate from instinct. They're not created in the image
of God. Animals do not have imaginations. That's another thing that marks
us as being created in the image of God. Mankind has an imagination. We can close our eyes and we
can think and we can see things far beyond what's right here
in this room. In our minds, in our imaginations,
we can picture buildings that reach all the way up to the clouds.
And then what do we do? We build them. Animals don't do that. They can't
do that. When was the last time you were
on a construction project somewhere and saw a bunch of dogs out there
pouring concrete or welding rebar? You don't see it. You don't see it. They're animals. They never could do it. They
never will do it. They are not created in the image
of God. Mankind is created in the image of God. And may I say
that this is hopeful. I understand that
mankind is falling. That we suffer the ravages of
depravity and man does horrible, horrible things to one another,
to the animal, to the environment. I understand that. But nonetheless,
mankind has created the angels of God and in that is hope because
we can do the right thing at times. And we do the right thing
at times. Sometimes, even by the, by the
problems of God, sometimes even bad people do the right thing. And it's because there is an
image of God that operates even in the worst of people. I can't
explain that to you necessarily. I can't say that is always going
to be that way, but at times that is indeed what happens.
The image of God operating in people even in the worst of people
sometimes brings about good things for the rest of us. All this needs to be said and
remembered because, again, the current thinking is that man
is at best just an equal part of the creation. And if you listen
to some of the environmentalists of the day, they will tell you
that mankind doesn't even deserve to live as part of the creation.
We are not just a part of the creation. We are the biggest
problem there ever was in the creation. If you listen to these
people. Mankind would, the whole creation
would be better if man just disappeared. Left, was gone, no more people. Because all we do according to
them is mess it up. Save the whales. Cry that out. Save the whales.
Save the whales. Save the seals. Save the trees. Save the forest. Abort the babies. You see the theologies that run
behind that? Mankind is not worthy of being
in the creation. We need to save whales, but let's
kill people. If we do not recognize mankind
for his unique place within the creation, we will go far afield
on what is right or wrong. We will find no problem killing
children, babies. We will find no problem with
killing the aged and the infirm. No basis to keep them, why? They're
not any more special than a dog or a horse. If we do not understand God,
man's God-ordained place within the creation, man's unique creation
and his unique place in the world, we will go so far afield of what
the truth is. And we will come up with all
kinds of weird ideas about what needs to happen to make the world
a better place. The problems of the world are
great. They're great. I can't deny that.
I wouldn't deny that. Turn on the news and you see
there's all kinds of problems. At this point in time, there
are wars. The Middle East is just tore up with bombs and bullets
and people being killed. I understand that. There's pollution
in places. There are all kinds of hatreds
and things going on. And those things, by the way,
are caused by mankind. I do not deny that. Fallen mankind
can and does do horrible things. But may I ask also, who will
solve those problems? Who will end the wars? Who will
clean up the pollution? Who will feed the hungry and
take care of the sick? It won't be dogs and cats. It won't be trees and flowers. It will be man. Yes man creates problems but
the only hope in this physical world for solving these problems
is man. God created man in his image
and it is men created in the image of God that can and do
solve the problems in this world. Now I don't want to exalt man
beyond his position, because as I have said over and over
again, that man is fallen. But let us understand that as
God operates in the hearts of men, and as God saves his people,
then we are the agents of change. God's people, recreated now in
the image of Jesus Christ, can solve problems in this world. And all of the real advances
in human history have been made by God's people. Because only God's people can
see the problems of the world and assess them correctly. And
then understand what the real solutions for those problems
are. Only God's people. Only God's people can understand
that. And those who were created in the image of God and then
recreated in the image of Jesus Christ can really understand
the problems and solve the problems. And it is there that I will end
today, but on a hopeful note, because we as God's people should
know this. We should feel it. We should
experience it. We are created. in the image
of God. Man is God's highest creation. We are created in the image of
God. And you and I, as brothers and sisters in Christ, go beyond
even the natural world in that God has reached down and touched
us as he formed Adam from the clay. He has come in through
the agency of the Holy Spirit, through salvation in Jesus Christ,
and he has touched us again. and now shapes us, reforms us
into the image of Jesus Christ. And therein, brothers and sisters,
is the hope that we all live in. Mankind is not the greatest
problem the world has ever faced. In mankind, operating with the
grace of God in our hearts, in fact, are all the answers to
all the problems that exist in this world. And let us hold to
that hope. Let us hold to that hope. God
has created man in his image. Jesus Christ is recreating his
people in the image of himself.