The Bible in 16 Verses: 2. Human Beings Genesis 1:27-28

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Okay, so as you guys know, we're doing the series,

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The Bible in 16 Verses, and it's a book by Chris Bruno, and I'm using his book as an outline to go through the entire scripture.

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So it's not the only book that I used, but it is the one that has the structure of how we're going through with which verses that we're going to use.

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I also use other resources to fill in here and there. So in the Old Testament, okay,

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Testament as we actually learned yesterday in the men's breakfast, the word Testament is a Latin word that means covenant.

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So in the Old Covenant, God covenanted with the people of God, okay, and it's in anticipation of the coming

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Messiah. So we go through creation, humanity, the fall, redemption promised,

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Abraham, Judah the king, the Passover land, King David, the suffering servant, the resurrection promised, and then the new creation.

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These are all things that appear in the Old Testament and are preparing us for what's going to come in the

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New Testament, the new covenant. Today we're going to be going over the creation of humanity or human beings.

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There's going to come a point in time, once we get to session 12, where we're going to see the fulfillment, you know, the coming of Jesus, the coming of the

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Messiah. We're going to see the cross, the resurrection, the justification, and the glory of the entire story of God in the

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Old and New Testament. So last week, just to a real quick recap, we talked about God creating all things, the creation.

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He formed these spaces and filled them. So it's formation of the spaces and his filling them.

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And what did they represent? They represented the temple, the kingdom of God on earth.

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So Eden was really on a mountain, okay, and it was where Adam and Eve communed with God.

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And then God told Adam and Eve to go, right, multiply, be fruitful, which we're going to go into today.

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So the story so far is God created a kingdom. It's very good, and he's the king.

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We made a big point about saying that everything that God made was very good, because we have a tendency to look at a creation now with what's going on with humanity and say, oh, this is not so good.

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Remember, everything God created is good. It's up to us to bring God's kingdom into those areas that don't look so good, okay, and bring

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God's principles to make it better. All right, so let's, let's begin.

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So time is coming. God created human beings. We're going to, the text for today is

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Genesis 1, verses 27 and 28, and it reads, God created man in his own image.

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In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and 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.

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It's a big statement, okay. The quote for today's true wisdom consists entirely of two parts, knowledge of God and knowledge of self, and we'll visit that later.

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It's a lot in those, just those two verses. Okay, so first, there's our words, there we are.

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Despite his sovereign power and his absolute right to rule over his creation, God chose not to do it alone.

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Did it ever occur to you that God didn't need us to create anything and extend his kingdom?

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He could have did that all on his own. But he chose to invite human beings into the creation process.

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Very much like when a father gets his, you know, has a project to do at home and he wants his son to help to, not help actually do the project, although that's part of it, but it's a bond, all right.

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The father and son, the father's imparting knowledge to the son and building up the relationship, and that generally can happen very well when you have a project to do together.

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So this is God's way of saying, okay, I'm gonna invite my creatures, my children, into the creation process to be part of the project.

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So God creates Adam and Eve as the pinnacle of creation and includes his image bearers to help accomplish the task.

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So the very last thing that God created was humanity. Why? Because that was the crown of his creation.

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That was the pinnacle, the top. We are different than every other created thing on the face of the

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Earth. God gives them the creation mandate. Be fruitful, fill, subdue, and rule the

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Earth. And we're gonna get into that in a little bit. While lots of Christians disagree about the best understanding of Genesis 1 and 2, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that God created

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Adam and Eve for a very important role, different than anything else. We are to serve as his image bearers and his royal representatives to the rest of the world.

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A lot of reformed guys use the word vice regents. We are in his place, so to speak, as his ambassadors, which is what 1

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Corinthians chapter 6 talks about. We're ambassadors bringing the kingdom of God to the rest of the world.

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So we're his royal representatives. Okay, and yesterday I talked about in the presentation on covenant, we are a royal nation, a holy priesthood.

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Royalty requires loyalty, right? We have to be loyal to the king, and the king alone, not anyone else.

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When we're loyal to the king, we bring God's kingdom on Earth as it is in heaven. So we're royalty.

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Okay, next, man is the high point of God's creation.

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Remember when we went through biblical anthropology? This is why I said systematic theology and biblical theology need one another.

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They work best when they're done together. So biblical anthropology is the doctrine of mankind.

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So we see in the Bible, right in the first chapter, God creates human beings in his image.

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And this will lead to ultimate questions, such as who am I? Why am

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I here? What is my purpose in life? Where am I headed? Can you see how these questions are very pertinent to what's going on in our culture today?

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You see how many questions this will answer for people who are misguided?

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What am I? Am I a man? Am I a woman? Am I a Z? Am I a Pi? Am I a...

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No, he created them male and female. When we depart from God's order, it results in chaos.

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So like another biblical apologist and pastor we know, it's Christ or chaos.

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Those are the only two options. If we stick with God, Christ, and his rule, his mandate, his law, things are gonna work in much better order.

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Next, created on the sixth day of the creation week, man is unique, and as the high point of creation, he is crowned as king over the lower creation and given dominion over all the inferior creatures.

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So mankind, out of the entire creation, is unique, different than anything and anyone else that was made in creation.

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And what is kingdom a compound word for? King and domain, right?

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You have the king, that's the person. The domain is the area. So God's kingdom, when he says we're gonna build the kingdom, in other words, he's talking about the area in which the king is going to rule and reign.

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And we were given dominion as vice regents to subdue and take rule over the rest of creation.

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Again, this is part of anthropology, and this helps us to understand our relationship to God.

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Since man is a creature in God's image, we learn how man is supposed to act and relate towards God and also towards neighbor, right?

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Since God is the king, we recognize that we are not. True knowledge consists entirely of two parts, knowing who you are and knowing who

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God is, right? There are many people today who mistake the fact that God is king and they're not.

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They think they're on equal level, equal terms with God. They're not. God is transcendent, we are not.

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We're the creatures, he's the creator. That is a very big distinction that you have to keep in mind as we go through biblical theology.

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That's gonna be key, because God is the one who's going to make covenants with us. He's gonna be the one who commands us.

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He's gonna be the one who gives us life or death. Why? Because he's the king, he's the creator. He can do whatever he wants with his creation, right?

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Okay, God creates man and women at the climax of the six days of creation, and he creates them in his own image.

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In Hebrew, it's the word selem, and likeness, demut in Hebrew. Genesis 1, 26 and 27, that's our scripture verse today.

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In ancient Mesopotamia, it was often believed that kings were made in the image, the selem, and the likeness of the gods, specially chosen and adopted by a god, and thus considered a son.

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So how does that idea shape the way countries with a king back then thought?

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That's a, it's not a rhetorical question. That's a question I'm putting out to you. What did they think, right?

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So the king would live forever, right? And what else? He was a what? He was a deity, right?

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So in the ancient Near East, the king was considered deity. This led to emperor worship.

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They would worship him as a deity. That's a big difference than what the biblical narrative says.

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The biblical narrative says that we are mankind, created in his image, but we're not deity.

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There's only one deity. That's him, not us. So this is a slap in the face to the

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Mesopotamian culture and the ancient Near East at that time. Additionally, the

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Hebrew word selem also refers to a statue or carved image. Kings often put a statue or carved image of themselves in various locations in their kingdom as a reminder of their royal dominion.

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So you would walk around and you'd see a statue of the king. Oh yeah, he's the god that we worship.

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He's the one who set up this whole kingdom, and it's a counterfeit of the actual kingdom that God set up.

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So what did that look like? Right, you'd go around into these different kingdoms and they would have statues of the emperor or the pharaoh, right?

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That's a real common one, pharaoh. He was considered a deity. He was the one who stood on top of the mountain and connected with God and mankind.

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He was the mediator between God and man. You see the counterfeit, right?

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You see how this, it imitates what the biblical says, what the biblical narrative says, but takes it to an unhealthy level.

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Men are not gods and are not to be worshiped. Does this happen in today's society? Where? Ah, remember him?

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You know who that is? Anybody wanna guess? Saddam Hussein.

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Ah, remember Iraq? All right, he set up statues of himself throughout the land, why?

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Because he was the king. Royalty, he was deity.

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And obviously, we took that down, right? Unfortunately, we don't say it, right?

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But in America, there's a lot of little deities who walk around thinking they're God, and they're not.

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We're gonna move a little quicker, okay. So emperor worship is dangerous and a counterfeit.

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This insight reveals how biblical the Hebrew story is subtly subverting the classical story of Near Eastern kingship on two levels.

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First, the creation account differs from other myths saying that God alone is king. On all worldview, biblical worldview,

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God is the king, no one else. Jesus is Lord, Long Island is Christ Island. You hear that every once in a while, don't you?

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He's the king, we're not. Earthly kings may claim authority and set up their images in lifeless statues throughout their kingdoms, but the true

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Lord of the world has created men and women, living, breathing, loving beings in his image and sent them out as his ministers, representatives of his royal rule.

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So we don't worship humanity as king, we worship God as king, right?

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He alone is deity, and we are his vice regents. You see how this story is gonna differ from the stories of the ancient

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Near Eastern cultures back then? This is revolutionary, it gets better. In this way, the

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Hebrew story mocks the kings of this world and proclaims that humanity represents

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God and bears his blessing to the rest of creation. God is the one true king and man is not.

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We gotta get that straight. We are not kings, okay? We are his vice regents.

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We are the pinnacle of creation, but we are not God. Second, rather than reserving divine adoption and noble dignity of being the image and likeness of the gods to kings alone, the

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Hebrew God bestows this on the first man and woman and thus upon all humanity.

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So now, rather than have several classes within humanity, you have the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class, we are all image bearers of God, equal in the sense that we all have dignity and value in God's sight, because we're created in his image.

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No one human being is worth more than another. In fact, when you had to make a sacrifice and you went to pay the shekel, every single person, rich or poor, had to pay the same amount.

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Why? Because they were equally valuable in God's sight. No one is worth more than someone else.

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Again, this is a slap in the face to that culture at that time, and some cultures today, yes, isn't it?

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Yes, definitely. There's three groups of people who Jesus specifically went to and commands us to go to.

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The widow, the orphan, and the outcast. Those are the three people groups that we are told to minister to.

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And what's common about the widow, orphan, and the outcast? None of them have a father.

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They don't have a man in the house. Widows, man died, orphan, no father, outcast.

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They're out on their own. So, they are fatherless, and we are to bring them, connect them to the

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God of all comfort, who is the father of all of us. Yes, Pierre? Huge, good point.

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Every man and every woman is made in God's image and likeness, and thus shares in the dominion and dignity of the one true

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God and king. Do you see how this is gonna differ radically from what the other cultures at that time believed, how they believed and acted?

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This is revolutionary. And we share in the responsibility to be fruitful, multiply, subdue, and take dominion.

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We are responsible to do those things. So, yes, we have a greater value than the rest of creation, because we're the only part of creation that's created in God's image.

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So, what does that mean? Another one of the most astonishing elements of the story, God desires to relate to his creatures, not as a master to a slave, but as a father to his son, and as a father to his daughters, right?

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When we are born of God's spirit and adopted into God's family, God is our father, and we are his children.

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He does not treat us like slaves or employees. He treats us like his children.

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Again, these are revolutionary things that the biblical narrative is setting up against the culture of the time.

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This is why we start with Genesis, and we're gonna go the whole way through. If we don't lay this as the foundation, we may get off track, we may lose the plot, okay?

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Some argue the image of God has to do primarily with our ability to use reason and intellect, right?

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You ever ask yourself, well, what does it mean to be made in the image of God? That should've been answered when we did systematic theology, but that's a different topic, right?

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Our ability to use reason and intellect is one reason why we're the image of God. The image of God is tied to our ability to relate to God and to other people, right?

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Love God, love neighbor. The image of God encompasses the task or the commission that God gave to Adam and Eve, to subdue and take dominion.

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But most likely, it is most likely that the image of God is bound up both in the characteristics and the relational tendencies that we share with God.

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It's not good, oh, I'm sorry, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. So, the relational tendencies that God has with mankind is part of the image of God.

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Do you realize when, as God's making man on the sixth day, after he makes man, he says, it's not good for man to be alone.

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Did God make a mistake? What happened? Why did he say it's not good? Huh? He doesn't have to, at that point, he hasn't been commanded to multiply.

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Why is it not good for man to be alone? Yes? God is communal, he's triune.

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Creating man, singular, does not reflect the nature of God, which is a unity in community and a community in unity.

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That's a big deal for our worldview because now we can understand the difference between the universals and particulars.

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Like, if I said the word tree, right, all of you is picture in mind a tree, and you know what

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I'm talking about. But if you were all to draw them, each one of your pictures would be different. Not because you're bad artists, because you might be thinking of an apple tree, you might be thinking of a weeping willow, there's a whole bunch of different trees.

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Those are the universals, okay? The particular is tree -ness. When I say tree, you know what

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I mean, right? It's the same thing with God. He's the one who provides unity and diversity in unity.

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The nature of our cosmos is one and many.

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Tree, trees, right? You know what tree is, and you know that there are many of them.

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It's the same thing with God. He's one essence, three persons. So creating mankind alone, one man, does not reflect the nature of God.

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That's why he makes women, to be in unity with man, right? Our God is triune,

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Father, Son, and Spirit. God is love. This is a big deal, because when we're talking to Muslims, we tell them our

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God is love. Is your God love? Well, yes, he's love. Well, if you're alone in eternity, before you create anything, how can you be love?

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Love requires more than one person, unless it's self -love, and that's not good. That's ego. That's egotistical.

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So our God is love, because you have Father, Son, and Spirit. God is exercising love to each of the persons of the

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Trinity. God, in love, exercises power and decides to share that love with humanity.

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On Islam, since God is alone, he is not love, but he's powerful. So he exercises power in order to become loving.

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The basis for that worldview is power. That's why Islam means submit, right?

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It's a worldview based on power, where ours is a worldview based on, rooted in, and grounded in the nature of God, which is love.

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Our God says, I will sacrifice my son to save you. Allah says, you will sacrifice your sons to get to me.

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The flip opposite, okay? Again, this is, this, Genesis has immense ramifications for every other worldview, aside from our own.

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Obviously, ours is true, right? But the things that we're taught in Genesis form the foundation of everything else.

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It's very important that we get this right. So the image of God. There's a functional understanding, and this is part of when we went through systematic theology,

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I took one of the slides out. So the functional understanding is that we rule over the fish of the sea, subdue the world.

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In this sense, the image of God has something fundamentally to do with our being made able to represent

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God in carrying out our responsibilities here on earth on acting in God's place or on God's behalf.

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So we have a functional role in bringing the kingdom on earth.

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Then we have a relational understanding. What it means to be made in the image of God is for us to have a relationship with God and a relationship with the rest of humanity, and that's true.

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We are persons, like God is a person, and we can have friendship with him and friendship with others, right?

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We can be loving. And then the structural understanding, this view emphasizes particular attributes that reflect

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God's nature, such as rationality, the ability to freely act, and moral capacity, all things attributes of God that are communicated to us.

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These are the communicable attributes of God. We can rationalize, we have the ability to will and desire certain things, and the moral capacity to know right and wrong.

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So all of these things are attributes of being in the image of God, okay?

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Functional, relational, and structural. Those are the three predominant ones in the systematic theologies, okay?

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Some people hold that it's just functional or it's just relational or it's just structural. I believe it's all three.

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You can't exclude any one of these and say that, oh, it's not this. It's all three. So being made in the image of God also meant that Adam and Eve were able to do what

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God had called them to do. In other words, they were given the proper equipment up front in order to do it.

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They were his vice regents or royal representatives on earth and could carry that out. Now, obviously, you know, we haven't gotten to the point where they've fallen, they've sinned.

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So this is pre -fall. They have the ability and the capacity to do what

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God told them to do. The image of God was bound up in reflecting the wise stewardship of God to the world, right?

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We bear God's image. We bear his fingerprints in creation, on externally and internally, okay?

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Inside and outside, we represent God, all right? God doesn't have eyes, ears, nose, and a mouth, but he sees, he hears.

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The Bible says that our prayers are a fragrant aroma and then he speaks.

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These are anthropomorphic terms that were created in to reflect the God who created us, okay?

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He's not a physical being, but he has those attributes. Any questions up until this point?

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We're good, okay. Let's see. Also notice that both Adam and Eve were created in the image of God.

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It's important to see that the word translated man in verse 27 applies to both men and women. He created them in his image.

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He made them. And just in case we might misunderstand, God clarifies that both men and women are included in the group that he has made in his image.

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Later in Genesis 5 -2, the Bible says, male and female, he created them and he blessed them and named them man when they were created.

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Again, this is controversial to the culture around them that thought that men were up here and women were down here, right?

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Christianity is like, no, no, no, no, no. You are equal in value.

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Different functions, different responsibilities, but you're equal in value.

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And this carries through even into the church where some people are putting women in as pastors and that's not their function and role, okay?

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Very important we understand that. When we remember the common mistreatment of women in the ancient world, this becomes even more important because this is declaring and defining the value of a woman up front.

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It means that while men and women have specific roles, God has designed them for, we cannot say that only men or only women get to be called the image of God.

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Both were called to play a role in God's good creation. Eve is the suitable helpmate to Adam to bring the kingdom.

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Jesus is the second Adam. Who is the suitable helpmate? The church, the bride of Christ.

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We are the suitable helpmate to help our king, Jesus, the second Adam, the last

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Adam, to bring the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. So again, this is a slap in the face to the cultures at that time who were steaming men.

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Oh, the men, these are the valuable people in society. The women, eh, not so much, right?

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All right, so God calls Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it. While this command obviously included the expectation that Adam and Eve were to have children, there was more to it.

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If we look carefully at the parallel account of the creation in Genesis two, we see a little hint of what it means for Adam and Eve to subdue the earth.

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Genesis 2 .8, we haven't got there yet, but this is a little spoiler alert, right? Genesis 2 .8

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tells us that God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and God chose to make that garden a particular place, a temple, where he would meet with his people.

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The implication is that there was lots of room outside the garden of Eden and in the rest of the world where neither he nor his people lived.

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So God wanted to expand the temple to bring more people into that land so that he can have relationship with them as well.

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The primary emphasis of this commission, even here at the very beginning, was not on a place that would be expanding, but rather on the purpose of that place.

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It would be the place in which God would be able to commune with his people, dwell with them.

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Obviously, we know the end of the story in Revelation, the dwelling of God will be with man. It's when

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New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven and meets the earth, which is, we're in the process of that now, depending on what eschatological view you hold.

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We're in the process of that now. At the consummation of all things, he will be here. The kingdom will cover the entire earth, praise

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God. Okay, so does this command, all right, so we have a king, his vice regents, and a command.

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What does that sound like? A suzerain -vassal treaty. Now, I'm gonna explain to you what that is real quick.

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A king would make a promise to his subjects or a treaty between kings that depended on obedience to specific terms.

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The suzerain is the more powerful person in this agreement, in this treaty.

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He's the king. The vassal would be the subjects. A lot of times, a king would go in and conquer a certain area, okay, and he would tell the king of that particular area, look, this is what we're gonna do, and if you don't do these things,

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I'm gonna conquer you. I protected you. This is now what you're gonna owe me. You can think of this as a covenant and a conditional promise, like the

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Mosaic Covenant. God is the king over the Israelites. He gives them blessings or curses.

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There are no other options, and they can't get out of the covenant. You realize the difference between a covenant and a contract is that there are no exit clauses in the covenant.

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You're in it. You can't get out. I mean, you can get out, but you'll be dead. Some people say this isn't a covenant with Adam, when

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Adam and Eve were commissioned to go into the world and subdue the rest of it.

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However, we read in Hosea 6 -7 this. But like Adam, they transgressed the covenant.

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There they dealt faithlessly with me. So like Adam, Hosea is talking about the

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Israelites, they transgressed the covenant. Adam was in a covenant also. That's why he can say

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Israel was like Adam, because Adam transgressed the covenant. So there was a covenant between God and Adam.

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So God not only created Adam and Eve and commissioned them, in Genesis 1 -28, it says

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God blessed them. So it's not like he's just commissioning, go out and do it. He's like, go out and do it, but I'm gonna bless you as you do it.

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Again, revolutionary. God made the man and woman to be his image bearers, and as his image bearers, their job was to make his glory and his blessing known.

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So the blessing that which they received, they would bring that with them as they're expanding the kingdom and subduing it and taking dominion, blessing other people as well.

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So what we're actually seeing is that God has commissioned Adam and Eve to be the first missionaries, to be blessed and to be a blessing to the people around them.

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That's what our job as the church is. To be blessed by God, we have eternal life, we have Jesus as Lord, Savior.

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We bring that message to other people and bless them, and in doing so, proclaim the truth and take dominion over the situation.

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This also means that God was entering into a special kind of relationship with his people when he created them.

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He created Adam and Eve, gave them life, and placed them in the garden. He then called them to these important tasks.

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This special relationship is called a covenant. God deals covenantally with mankind from Adam all the way till now.

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God does not deal with mankind in any other way besides covenant. And I did a presentation on it yesterday at the

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Men's Breakfast, it's up on the YouTube channel. If you haven't watched it, watch it because it'll go through the covenants for you and explain it in a little bit better detail.

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So from the very first day of creation, God has been committed to his creation and has a covenantal love for mankind in particular.

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God works with people through covenant. Okay, and there's different kinds of love depending on what covenant you're in, right?

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God's, Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter six, love your wife like Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

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That's a covenantal marital love. The covenantal marital love that Christ has for us is different than the general love he has for all mankind.

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How do I know? As a husband, I'm to love my wife in such a way that is not the way

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I love every other woman. You don't want that. It's a special marital covenantal love that is for my wife only.

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The same way God's covenantal love through Jesus is for his people only.

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Yes, God loves the world in a general sense. He loves every human being and the world that he created it.

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But his wrath abides on those who reject his son. His wrath does not abide on us who've accepted his son and been redeemed by him.

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The big difference. Okay, so the concept of covenant and oath is foundational for understanding

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God's relationship with his people. A covenant was made by swearing an oath of fidelity which often includes an animal sacrifice as a witness to the fidelity sworn.

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Faithfulness to this oath brought blessings while infidelity brought curses upon the one who was unfaithful.

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Additionally, making a covenant could include the sharing of a covenant meal and a sign marking the covenant.

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To enter into a covenant is to enter into a family relationship. To enter into a covenant with God is to enter into the divine family of the most holy trinity.

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Caveat, this does not mean that we are God like God. We are adopted into his family.

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We bear his image and our image is being put together conformed to the image of Jesus. Now, the other covenants like the covenant with Abraham, even

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Adam, was ratified in blood. When God clothed Adam in the animal skins, the animal was dead.

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You realize that, right? He had to kill it first then to clothe him with the same. So there was a sacrifice before the clothing.

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With Abram, Abram cut the animals in half. The smoking pot and the flaming torch walked through those, right?

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It had to be a sacrifice first. This covenant meal here, having a meal with someone, what might this represent in our church?

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Communion, right? This is our covenant renewal meal every week, right? As pastor preaches the word, the word cuts us open, right?

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Like a sacrifice and then the gospel is proclaimed and we're put back together and we recognize it's not by our effort that we're saved, it's by the efforts and the works of Jesus when we covenant with him at the end of the service.

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It's the pinnacle of the service, I hope you know that. Okay. Adam and Eve had a covenantal command and responsibility.

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Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every other living thing that moves on the earth.

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This is known as the creation mandate. The divine injunction to which God, after having created the world and all that's in it, ascribes to mankind the task of filling, subduing and ruling over the earth.

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We have not just God's image, we have the responsibility to bear that image in the world around us.

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And since Adam and Eve had the power to do it, with great power comes great responsibility.

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That's a marvelous statement, isn't it? Yeah, some of that went right over your head,

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I know it. I know, that'll explain it. Talk to a little kid, it'll explain it to you a little later.

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Oh, we went a little too fast there. Okay, and what does God tell

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Adam and Eve to do? 128, God blessed them and he said to them, be fruitful, go, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

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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. Does God tell us anywhere else to do that?

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Yes, to Noah, and that came up first, right? Genesis 8, he tells Noah, go, go out from the ark, you and your wife, your sons, your wives, your daughters, bring with you every living thing that is with you, all the fish, birds, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth that they may swarm on the earth, be fruitful and multiply.

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So the same command that was given to Adam when God does the do -over, he floods the entire earth and saves just a remnant of people, he says, okay, now, that didn't work.

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The word, mankind fell into sin and became evil. All the intentions of man's heart was evil continually.

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We're gonna do this over. I'm gonna save Noah, he's now is gonna go out and repopulate the earth and bring the kingdom to the four corners of the earth.

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Okay, do we hear this anywhere else? Does this command still stand?

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Ooh, look at this. The Lord said to Abraham, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land

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I will show you and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you, make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you

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I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram turns into Abraham, gets a commission to go into the land that he's bringing him to be a blessing.

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Again, Exodus 33, the Lord says to Moses, depart, go up from here, you and your people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt to the land which

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I swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob saying to your offspring, I will give it. I will send an angel before you,

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I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Termites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey but I will not go among you lest I consume you on the way if you are stiff -necked people, right?

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So the command stands for Abram, the command stands for Moses to go into the world to bring the kingdom, take dominion, rule over it, subdue it.

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If you're a Christian, is this command still in effect? Go figure. Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

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How much authority? All, all authority. All authority means all authority.

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He's got all authority. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and behold, I am with you always even to the end of the age.

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That's a great promise. He has all authority, commands us to do something and says what?

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I'll be with you as you do it. Fear not, little flock.

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It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Fear is of the enemy. You have not been given a spirit of fear but of power, love, and a sound mind.

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Stop being afraid of the people who are out there preaching chaos to the world.

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Our job is to confront them. Guess what? If you die doing it, you'll end up in the presence of the

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Lord. If you don't, you'll bring the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It's a win -win.

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We belong to him. You've been bought with a price. Glorify God with your body. Be fruitful.

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Okay, this is also part of the promises in the new covenant because we now have the

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Holy Spirit living inside of us. Be fruitful, the fruit of the Spirit. Use your talents to till the soil.

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Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control. Multiply and fill.

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Procreate physically and spiritually. Share the gospel. This is what we do at Port Jeff. This is what we should be doing at our workplace with our family, friends, everyone we come in contact with.

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We should be preaching the gospel. Take dominion. Bring everything under God's rule.

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Start with your own life. Look at the things. Use garden imagery. Pretend you have a nice little field in front of you.

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What's the first thing you do? You weed it. You get, oh, there's a weed. Pull that out, pull that out, pull that out. That's what we have to do.

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We need to do internal gardening in our own heart. Pull out the weeds. We also have to subdue.

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Teach, train, and guide. Prune those areas in our lives, maybe our minds, wherever it may be.

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We need to prune those things and bring them under God's dominion, okay? So, the command to take dominion included

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Adam, that Adam and Eve were to rule over, not just over the garden, but over themselves.

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Self first, then their children, then the animals and the rest of Earth, in the way that God would rule over himself.

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So, it starts with self. You need to prune yourself, weed, right?

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Every time we do a, every time I do a wedding ceremony, I say faithful Christians produce faithful marriages, right?

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Faithful marriage is two Christians together. Faithful marriage. Faithful marriages produce faithful families.

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Faithful families produce faithful churches. Faithful churches produce faithful societies. But it starts with the individual.

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Then it becomes the marriage. Then it becomes the children. Then it becomes the church. And then it becomes society.

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That's one of the ways we take dominion, right? We teach our kids, we sow into the next generation, and keep perpetuating it this way.

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Adam and Eve were to care for them, to be good stewards over them, and to bring God glory in the way they ruled over them.

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In other words, their children and their family. So, how do we do this now?

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This is what mankind looks like, right? You have your finances, your relationships, God, health, work, marriage, your parents, your behavior, morality,

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Jesus, neighbor. You have all these things, and if you're anything like me, it's probably even more scattered and messy than that, right?

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It's like, oh my goodness, I got so many different responsibilities, so many different things to do. How am I gonna get all this together?

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What am I doing, right? This is what our life needs to look like, all right? We put

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God first, right? Underneath God is Jesus. He's the God -man, the mediator between God and man.

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We are below Jesus. Understand where God is and where we are. We are not God. We do not put ourselves over God.

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We're not Mormons, right? We are not gods. He's God, he sent Jesus. We're man.

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Under that, we put parents. I didn't put these in any particular order, just to let you know. We're to honor our parents, we're to be faithful.

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We need to know who we are. We do our work according to the

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Lord. Our marriages are to be a reflection of the gospel. Our health, even how we take care of our bodies.

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You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Glorify God with your body. Love your neighbor, bless your children.

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How do you walk? What is your behavior to the people around you? How do you manage your finances?

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Do you give to God faithfully? Your destiny, recognize your destiny is heaven, right?

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If you're a Christian, you have eternal life. Like, that should be a big deal.

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Like, somebody plans a trip to go to Hawaii. Oh, that's great. Ultimately, you're gonna be in heaven.

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That should be the goal, right? That should be what we're dreaming and excited about. Morality, how do you act in a way that's morally pleasing to God, and what do your relationships look like?

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So everything needs to be brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ, right?

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This is what it means to take dominion over yourself. You need to take the things that you're doing in life, bring them under the lordship of Jesus, and keep them that way.

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Don't have, you can't be a Christian on Sunday and Monday do something different. You're a

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Christian seven days a week. The Holy Spirit lives inside of you. You have to be acting and comporting yourself in a manner, worthy of the calling that you received.

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So when we start with taking dominion, it begins with self. If I can start bringing my actions into proper alignment with my wife, with my kid, and then it's a ripple effect.

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It goes outward, okay? So true wisdom consists entirely of two parts, knowledge of God and knowledge of self.

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Serious problems arise when you confuse who the creator is with who the creature is.

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This was the problem for Adam and Eve, and this would become the same problem for humanity today. Now some of you might be saying, wow,

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Anthony, we haven't even talked about the fall. You know why? I want you to understand, and the

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Bible wants you to understand what it means to be created in the image of God, and how special and unique and honorable a relationship that is.

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You need to know how magnificent that was in order to know and understand the devastation and the awfulness of the fall.

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Had we not gone through this, and you understand who God is and who you are in relationship to God, you might think the fall, eh, it was just a little mistake.

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The fall was devastating. That's why we concentrated on humanity, who humanity is, what commission they have, what's their constitution with regards to God, covenantally and as image bearers, what we have.

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To just let that go by biting a piece of fruit and listening to the woman who listened to the serpent, horrendous, bad, okay?

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That's why we spend so much time on humanity. Yes, Ted? No, no, no, listen, this is an excellent point, because a human being, to be a human being, is body and soul, it's both.

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It's not one or the other, because there are theologies out there today, hyper -preterism, that teaches that souls go to heaven.

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You will never be reunited with your body. That is not a person. A person is body and soul, both together.

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The way Jesus was resurrected, we're gonna receive bodies like him, Philippians 3 .21.

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We're awaiting our glorious resurrection, our glorious bodies, the same as Jesus's.

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Jesus is a human being, body and soul, okay? Humans, to be humans, are body and soul.

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We're not complete until that's together. Yes, Pierre? I wish we could get those comments, and Ted's comments on the recording, but suffice it to say, what

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Pierre was reiterating to us is the covenant with mankind still wasn't gonna get us eternal life, okay?

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Think about this. If Adam and Eve did not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the tree still existed and the fruit was always there, there would always have been the threat or the possibility that they go back to their fruit and touch it and die, eat it and die, okay?

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So Adam and Eve, had he not sinned, would have had perpetual life, not eternal life.

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Eternal life only comes through the covenant, like Pierre said, between Father, Son and Spirit, where Jesus now will give us his perfect righteousness and there will be no more threat of eating from the tree of the knowledge of the good or evil, okay?

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We will have eaten from the Holy Spirit, the tree, the cross, right?

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Jesus is the one hung on a tree. We eat from him. We eat his body and his blood, not literally, symbolically, because we are part with him.

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So it's only in the new covenant that we get eternal life, which is gonna be better. We're not gonna be restored back to the garden.

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We're gonna be restored better than the garden. It's going to be perfect, which would reflect the perfect nature of God, which humanity could never do in and of ourselves.

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Great, great comments, okay. So the key theological terms for this session are image bearers with a pinnacle, the highest point of creation, where royal representatives with a mandate, with a responsibility to bring this message to all mankind, to subdue the earth.

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So the story so far reads like this. God created a kingdom, he's the king, and he created human beings, his children, to represent him in that kingdom and are responsible to build it.

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See how we're just gonna continue to build on this statement and these theological terms till we get to the end of the story so that we can understand what the whole thing means, okay.

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All right, I'm not gonna ask any questions, but I don't think we have any time for questions.