Creation and Anthropology

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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January 28, 2021

00:04: Coffee's being made right now.
00:06: Feel free if you would like, whenever it is finished, to get up and get you a cup.
00:12: But before we go any further, everyone needs to take out a piece of paper and a pen and we are going to have our pop quiz.
00:21: Each of these classes is beginning with a pop quiz for this reason.
00:26: I really believe that doctrine is one of the areas where many people today are very weak because they have not considered the importance of it, especially in their understanding of language and categories and being able to properly categorize what they understand.
00:48: And so, I'm just going to give you a little quiz to make sure you understood what we did last time.
00:53: That's what we're going to try to do each time.
00:55: I'm not doing it to be exceptionally mean.
00:57: And for those of us, for those who are joining us on live stream, feel free to follow along.
01:02: This is Sovereign Grace Academy.
01:04: This is week three.
01:05: We are tonight looking at anthropology and creation in our survey of Bible doctrines.
01:11: But before we do that, we're going to take a quiz on last week.
01:14: And here are the three quiz questions.
01:17: Number one.
01:18: Yes, Brian.
01:21: Somebody can give you one.
01:22: I'm sure somebody's got a pen for you.
01:24: Feel like we're back in high school.
01:30: You could have done it.
01:31: You could do it on your computer if you want, Brian.
01:34: You want to put your answers on your computer.
01:39: That works.
01:41: All right.
01:42: Number one.
01:44: What are the three affirmations of Trinitarian monotheism? Think of it a different way.
01:51: What three things are true which make the Trinity true? God is one.
01:58: God is three.
01:59: These three are.
02:00: Think of it that way.
02:02: What are the three affirmations of Trinitarian monotheism? All right.
02:24: That's the first question on our pop quiz.
02:27: What are the three affirmations of Trinitarian monotheism? Number two.
02:31: What are the two categories of God's attributes? What are the two categories of God's attributes? We put God's attributes into two different classes or categories.
02:47: Third, and finally, what two ways is God's will revealed? What two ways is God's will revealed? Two ways is his will revealed? I'll give you a few seconds to work on that.
03:23: And are we ready? It's okay if you need an extra minute.
03:47: I just want to move on if we're ready.
03:49: I don't want to waste time.
03:53: We good? All right.
03:55: Number one.
03:56: What are the three affirmations of Trinitarian monotheism? That's the three persons, but that's not the three affirmations.
04:04: What are the three affirmations? God is one in essence.
04:11: God is three in person.
04:16: Yep.
04:16: The three persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and distinct.
04:20: That's the, yeah, and co-equal, co-eternal.
04:22: I like to add the word distinct so that people understand the three persons are not the same person.
04:28: All right.
04:29: And so, yes, the three affirmations are God is one in essence.
04:33: God is three in person.
04:35: Those three persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and distinct.
04:41: Number two.
04:42: What are the two categories of God's attributes? Yes, Brian.
04:46: Communicable and incommunicable.
04:47: Communicable and incommunicable.
04:49: Meaning what? Some of his attributes we share and some of his attributes we do not.
04:55: Very good.
04:57: All right.
04:58: In what two ways is God's will revealed? Yes.
05:04: Yes.
05:05: That's basically the answer I was looking for.
05:08: Yeah.
05:10: It's his prescriptive will is revealed in the Bible.
05:15: His purposeful will is revealed in what actually happens in history.
05:21: But like Bobby said, it's the prescriptive will of God and the purposeful will of God, and how those wills revealed the scripture and history.
05:34: What's that, brother? I didn't know if it was confusing.
05:38: I wasn't trying to be— Way off.
05:39: Oh, okay.
05:39: We're a little way off.
05:40: Yep.
05:40: All right.
05:41: All right.
05:41: Well, tonight we are going to move on into Lesson 3, Anthropology and Creation.
05:51: We are going to follow the course of our textbook.
05:54: If you have been reading, hopefully you have kept up with the reading, and we are going to move into God's creation of man, man's fall into sin, and God's covenantal relationship with his people.
06:09: So that's really the heart of tonight, the outline of tonight.
06:13: God's creation of man, man's fall into sin, and God's covenantal relationship with his elect people.
06:21: So here's our outline for tonight.
06:25: Number one, we're going to look at the doctrine of creation.
06:29: Number two, we're going to look at the nature and transmission of sin.
06:35: And number three, we're going to look at the covenants, the nature and transmission of sin.
06:45: If you do have your syllabus, this is in your syllabus.
06:48: Every week, the three parts of the lesson are given to you in the syllabus.
06:55: Now, there's more than this in the book, but these are the three parts of the book that we're going to focus on.
07:02: If you have questions about what's in the book, you can feel free to ask at any time, or you can wait until the end.
07:12: I'll be happy to entertain any questions you have at that point.
07:17: You guys look a little...
07:19: Did I hit you hard with the pop quiz? Y'all look a little sad now.
07:22: Everybody looks a little down.
07:24: Buck up.
07:24: It only gets better from here.
07:27: Let's look first at the doctrine of creation.
07:29: Take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 1.
07:48: Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 provide for us the biblical account of creation, and I would say provide for us the most accurate understanding of where our world came from, and ultimately where we came from.
08:12: So, when we talk about creation, when we talk about the first two chapters of Genesis being the creation narrative, there are more passages of Scripture which talk about creation.
08:23: There are some references to creation in the Psalms.
08:26: There are some references to creation in the Prophets and the book of Job.
08:30: There are several references to creation even in the New Testament Scriptures, but the most explicit narrative of creation is found in the first two chapters of Genesis.
08:41: Therefore, as you can imagine, these two chapters of Scripture tend to be some of the most hotly debated passages in all the Bible.
08:51: Thank you so much.
08:53: We have in Genesis chapter 1 and in Genesis chapter 2 an entire library of arguments that people have about what they mean and what they are trying to convey about the nature of God, about the nature of creation, and about the nature of man.
09:19: But very quickly, I want to read the first three verses of Genesis 1 and just express a few thoughts just from these few verses.
09:30: In Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, it says, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
09:40: The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
09:55: One that's beautiful, but it's also majestic and powerful.
10:04: And I want to ask you a question.
10:05: What are some things that we can glean just from the first three verses of Genesis 1? What are some things that we can immediately confess? Ed had his hand up.
10:17: We'll start with Ed.
10:19: Okay.
10:29: While I would agree that the Trinity is present, I wouldn't say we glean that from this text.
10:35: And that's all I'm saying.
10:37: I don't disagree.
10:38: When I preached in Genesis 1, I talked about the Trinity being present.
10:41: Later, when it says, Let us make man in our image, there's some reference, I think, there to the Trinity.
10:46: And the Spirit certainly makes an appearance here.
10:48: So I'm not necessarily saying you're 100% wrong.
10:51: But I'm saying, what are some things that we glean immediately just from the text? Just from what we just read, these three verses? Yeah.
11:00: One is that this world and the universe was created, that it had a divine origin.
11:10: All right.
11:11: What's another thing we can glean just from this passage? There was darkness.
11:18: That's true.
11:19: You know what I always found interesting was the water was present.
11:23: He brings creation out of a watery chaos, because it speaks of the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters.
11:34: I'm just now, in my preaching in Genesis, I'm going into chapter 6, I'm ending chapter 6, going into chapter 7, looking at the flood.
11:42: And what's interesting is God brings creation out of the watery chaos, and he destroys creation in a watery chaos, only to give rebirth after the flood out of watery chaos again.
11:55: So this seems to have a significance here in this text, that the water is significant.
12:02: But what else? The universe had a beginning.
12:11: Yeah, it's not scientific.
12:12: The universe is not eternal.
12:14: R.C.
12:14: talks about that in the book.
12:15: To say that the universe is eternal is really to speak irrationally.
12:23: Yes.
12:30: Okay, without form and void is speaking of the sense that the earth itself is still in a situation of chaos.
12:39: It has not yet been formed into its final state.
12:43: He has brought the elements together.
12:46: He has brought the elements to be ready for the forming.
12:51: And what we see in Genesis 1 is we see three days of forming and three days of filling.
12:58: On day 1, he forms the heavens and the earth.
13:00: On day 2, he forms the sky and the sea.
13:04: And on day 3, he forms the dry ground.
13:06: On day 4, he forms the stars, sun, moon, and stars that go in the heavens.
13:13: On day 5, he forms the birds which go in the sky and the fish that go in the sea, which corresponds to day 2 when he made the sky and the sea.
13:22: And on day 6, he creates the beasts of the field and man who live on the world, which corresponds to day 3 where he separated that.
13:31: So what we see is we see a chaotic world, the elements of the world brought together in a watery chaos.
13:37: I imagine it wasn't quite like the H2O that we now have today, but it was the elemental parts of the world brought together in a watery chaos that are then formed into what we now know as the world.
13:52: I don't know.
14:00: Other than the fact that it was brought together as a— I do believe it was a globe, and therefore, it would have been formed into a globe.
14:10: But as far as the depth, I don't— Yeah.
14:14: In the face of the deep.
14:14: In the face of the deep.
14:15: Yes.
14:16: Yes.
14:18: I don't understand the question.
14:20: How do— God brings together the— God brings all of the elements together, and it is in a watery chaos, as I said, but it's still formed.
14:36: He's bringing it into form.
14:38: There is no land yet, so it's just water.
14:41: It's just water.
14:42: All of the elements that are— All of the elements that are going to be used to bring everything together are present.
14:50: That's the key, is you have— Elementally, everything is present, but not everything is formed.
14:59: Form comes later.
15:05: Or, again, it hadn't been formed.
15:08: It's not like it's hidden.
15:10: It's just— Yeah, again.
15:12: Again, I think we're— The point that I'm trying to get us to see in this is not that we go too far into trying to consider what it looked like or what it felt like or what it tasted like, but I think the point that I'm trying to make is when we read Genesis 1, 2, and 3, one of the first assertions is that God was there, and he did it, that the Bible assumes the existence of God.
15:40: It doesn't prove it.
15:43: It doesn't argue it.
15:45: It just assumes it.
15:46: And that also goes contrary to the Big Bang Theory, where they thought the Earth was just a molten ball of fire that slowly cooled down.
15:55: Yes, this would be— This would not— This would not— It would not comport with the modern scientific theory of the world being essentially established first through fire rather than through water.
16:13: But the elements coming together— I think the water reference here is a chaotic bringing together of the elements.
16:21: But again, my purpose is simply to point out God was there.
16:29: He created everything.
16:30: In the beginning, God.
16:33: It also tells us something else.
16:35: It tells us the universe had a beginning.
16:36: One of you mentioned that.
16:37: It tells us the universe had a beginning, and it tells us that in the beginning, God created.
16:43: It's God who is doing it.
16:45: God didn't come to an already established set of elements and reform them.
16:52: God created them, and that is an important distinction.
16:57: God is not like us in that we have to take what is and make it different.
17:05: Like if I wanted to make a statue of a man, I would have to find some medium out of which to make that statue.
17:14: I would have to form it out of a piece of clay or out of a piece of marble or a piece of wood.
17:21: I would have to have a medium for creation.
17:25: But God does not pick out elements through which he uses to create.
17:31: God creates the elements.
17:34: God is not forming elements or forming from already existing elements.
17:40: God is creating the elements themselves.
17:42: Therefore, we come to this concept.
17:44: This is drawing us into this.
17:47: The concept of ex nihilo.
17:52: The term ex nihilo, Greek, or excuse me, Latin, the term ex means out of, and nihilo means nothing.
18:05: So, the Bible says God spoke and it was.
18:11: God spoke and it was.
18:13: And we see this over and over and over again.
18:17: God did not use pre-existing materials.
18:19: That would be creatio ex materia, meaning creation out of pre-existing materials.
18:26: This is not creatio ex materia.
18:29: This is creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing.
18:34: See, the thing is we don't understand nothing.
18:38: To us, even nothing is something because it's nothing.
18:44: And not to get too flippant about it, but if you take a jar and you fill it with nothing and you cap it off at the top and you put it in a shelf somewhere, well, it's not filled with nothing.
18:59: It's filled with space.
19:03: There is space there.
19:07: Because if you take and fill, and it's filled with air, but even if you vacuum out the air, there's still space there.
19:14: In the beginning, God created the heavens.
19:18: That's the space.
19:19: There wasn't even space.
19:22: There wasn't even a place to put it.
19:27: That's another thing that we have to remind ourselves from this, is in the beginning, God creates the space in which he puts the earth.
19:36: That's amazing.
19:38: Because there was nothing.
19:39: We can't form our minds around nothing.
19:42: We think of nothing as like, well, the universe is so big, it's got places where there's nothing.
19:47: No, there's something, space.
19:50: But it has space in it.
19:53: We can't wrap our minds around the nothing.
19:57: And you see, if you ask modern scientists, where did our universe come from or out of what did it come, Big Bang or whatever, they'll say, well, it came out of nothing.
20:08: You say, it couldn't have.
20:10: It couldn't have come out of nothing.
20:12: Because if there was ever a time when there was absolutely nothing, there would still be nothing.
20:20: Because nothing produces nothing.
20:24: But we can't even wrap our minds around nothing.
20:28: Have I lost everybody? Because creation ex nihilo says, in fact, it did come out of nothing, but God was the one who brought it out of nothing.
20:38: God creates it out of nothing.
20:40: Because God has the power of creation in himself.
20:48: Last week we talked about his aseity.
20:51: Remember that? A-S-E-I-T-Y, aseity.
20:55: That is his self-existence and his independence.
20:59: It also relates to his power of being.
21:03: The power of being is in himself.
21:07: He can give life.
21:11: And life exists because of him.
21:16: So when we talk about creation ex nihilo or creation ex nihilo, we are, speaking of God, creating everything out of nothing.
21:28: And he did so by what we would refer to as the divine fiat.
21:35: And no, that's not a German sports car.
21:39: What is a fiat? Not even German.
21:40: What is it? An Italian car.
21:47: Still junk.
21:48: Fix it again, Tony.
21:49: Fix it again, Tony? Oh, okay, okay.
21:54: Fiat is the word for a declaration, or specifically it means let it be.
22:02: When God says, let there be light, the Latin is fiat.
22:08: He spoke and it was.
22:12: We see this in Genesis 1-3, Genesis 1-6, when God spoke the world into existence.
22:19: Ex nihilo states that he didn't take from existing materials.
22:23: Fiat states that the newly created materials came solely by command.
22:30: God didn't have to go down to the Celestial Home Depot and purchase some tuba force.
22:40: God simply spoke and it was.
22:42: This is beyond comprehension for us, in a way, because we can get caught up in the Trinity like we did last week.
22:52: You get talking about the Trinity and we say, oh, it's so hard to understand.
22:55: This, too, is difficult.
23:04: There's no light except God himself.
23:07: But God himself is light.
23:09: And that's another thing, too.
23:10: You have to remember there was day and night before there was sun and moon.
23:16: No, this is not referring to wickedness.
23:21: Yes, I believe that day and night, which existed prior to day four, because we have day and night spoken of prior to day four, is the only light that would have been present would be God's majesty.
23:37: Because it says that, you know, well, actually, he says, let there be light.
23:42: There's light, but it's light that it's coming from him in the sense that he has not formed it into the sun and the moon and the stars.
23:52: That doesn't come until day four.
23:54: Now, some people want to argue all of this is poetic.
23:58: And this is not the order that these things happened.
24:01: But if we take it in a strictly chronological order, day one, God creates the heavens and the earth.
24:08: And he says, let there be light.
24:10: And now he separates the light from the darkness.
24:12: Darkness is over the face of the water.
24:13: He separates light from the darkness.
24:14: Then on day two, he creates the waters above and the waters below.
24:21: And I believe that specifically refers to the atmosphere.
24:26: Yeah, the atmosphere around us, which is essentially the waters above and the waters below.
24:32: And then, of course, day three creates the earth, the physical land and vegetation and all of those things.
24:41: If you follow the pattern, there is a pattern of the six days of creation.
24:56: On day one, he creates light and dark.
24:59: On day four, he creates sun and moon and stars.
25:03: On day two, he creates sky and sea.
25:08: On day five, he creates birds and fish.
25:11: On day three, he creates the earth or the land.
25:17: And on day six, he creates the land-dwelling beasts.
25:20: And so there is a pattern.
25:22: He forms and then he fills.
25:25: And if he hadn't created the atmosphere and stuff, if he had created the sun for the atmosphere, the radiation would have kind of killed everything off, wouldn't it? Again, though, what radiation? There is no sun.
25:37: I'm saying that he created the earth before he had put the atmosphere in place and the firmament and all that, because our ozone is what blocks the radiation from killing us.
25:46: I think we're getting a little beyond what the text tells us at that point.
25:52: I think we're assuming some things that were present or were working in the way they do now that we don't necessarily know that they were working the way they do now in the same way.
26:01: Again, the sun didn't even exist for the first three days.
26:04: So the idea of nuclear or rays and things like that are a little different.
26:10: I don't know that we can make that statement, Ed, is all I'm saying.
26:13: I don't know that we can assume that.
26:14: We can have a conversation about it, but I don't know that we can assert it.
26:18: Yes, Michael? With the forming in the head.
26:35: Yeah, not right off the top of my head.
26:37: I can't think of anything.
26:37: I will say this.
26:39: Patterns in Scripture are easy to find.
26:41: There are chiasms in Scripture, which are patterns of literature.
26:46: There are chiasms even in this.
26:49: A chiasm is where something builds up to a point, and then it builds back off that point, and it makes what looks like an X.
26:56: If you look at it from a literary perspective, that's why they call it a chiasm.
26:59: It's based on the Greek letter chi or the X letter, what we would have as the X.
27:03: So there's a lot of patterns, but you have to be careful.
27:06: You don't want to follow things too far and end up in the weeds.
27:08: Yes, sir? I think it's interesting, though.
27:17: I think it was in this class.
27:19: It was in the New Testament class.
27:20: Yes.
27:21: And how change at the end creates something new in it.
27:25: That's right.
27:25: There's elements in wine that's not in water.
27:27: That's right.
27:28: But you have to start using water.
27:29: And there were six water pots.
27:31: Yeah.
27:31: There were six creation days.
27:33: I do think that Jesus' first miracle was to make something out of nothing because the elements in wine are not present in water, so he has to create that, and he does it in six water pots.
27:46: Six creation days.
27:47: I think there's a major connection there.
27:49: Demonstrating himself to be divine.
27:51: Absolutely.
27:52: But he started with water first.
27:53: Yeah.
27:54: Yeah.
27:54: Yeah.
27:55: So, yes, of course, there are.
27:58: We just have to be careful not to end up as.
28:01: Yeah, I've always thought this is very interesting.
28:04: If you follow the pattern down, God makes something, and then he makes that which goes with it, and he does it in a pattern.
28:13: All right.
28:13: So when we think about the creation by divine fiat, I want to read to you a quote.
28:21: This is from James Harvey.
28:22: He wrote in 1789.
28:25: So this quote is old.
28:27: I'm going to try to do the math.
28:29: It's older.
28:32: He said this.
28:34: Who that looks upward to the midnight sky and with an eye of reason beholds its rolling wonders? Who can forbear inquiring of what were their mighty orbs formed? Amazing to relate they were produced without materials.
28:48: They sprung from emptiness itself.
28:51: The stately fabric of universal nature emerged out of nothing.
28:56: What instruments were used by the supreme architect to fashion the parts with such exquisite niceness and give so beautiful a polish to the whole? How was it all connected into one finely proportioned and nobly finished structure? A bare fiat accomplished it all.
29:12: Let them be, God said.
29:14: He added no more, and at once the marvelous edifice arose, adorned with every beauty, displaying innumerable perfections and declaring amidst enraptured seraphs its great creator's praise.
29:27: By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and all of the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth.
29:35: Psalm 33, verse 6.
29:40: Men don't write that way much anymore.
29:43: Men don't speak that way much anymore.
29:46: But hear what he was saying.
29:48: God's speaking the world into existence out of nothing simply by his own command or divine fiat is by itself miraculous and amazing and enough that we should all fall down in awe.
30:06: Just the fact that we are here by his command.
30:10: And we continue to exist by his command.
30:12: In him we live and move and have our being.
30:18: Now, when we continue for a moment on the subject of creation I just want to make a few little side notes.
30:26: One, there are people who differ on the interpretation of the creation days.
30:31: There are four different schools of thought.
30:36: The first is called the gap theory.
30:37: The gap theory says there is a gap between Genesis 1 and 2 and the rest of the Bible.
30:45: Basically that there was a gap of time.
30:48: And this gap theory, I did a whole sermon about it about two or three years ago talking about some of the theories behind it.
30:55: The idea is that God created a race of people.
30:58: He was unhappy with them so he destroyed them and started over.
31:04: And the idea is in the beginning God recreated the heavens and the earth.
31:08: Not that he created, but that he recreated.
31:11: And it's a...
31:13: There's a lot of strangeness that comes to it.
31:16: But it's one of the ways that people satisfy the earth seeming to be as old as it is.
31:21: Because the earth has the appearance, according to modern scientists, of being about four and a half billion years old.
31:28: And yet if you take the biblical days as seven 24-hour periods of time, then we're looking at a period of not billions, not millions, but only a few thousand years before Christ that the earth was created.
31:42: And so the gap theory would allow for a longer period of time that existed between Genesis 1 and 2 and the rest of creation.
31:51: I don't think it's viable, but I do think it's worthy of noting.
31:56: So I wanted you to know it.
31:57: And this may appear on a quiz.
32:00: You may want to just keep these.
32:02: So the first is the gap theory.
32:05: The second is known as the framework hypothesis.
32:08: The framework hypothesis.
32:12: The framework hypothesis was popularized by some good men.
32:18: I don't think that we should automatically say these men were awful or heretical or something.
32:26: I think they were wrong.
32:29: Meredith Klein is one who took this position.
32:33: And the framework hypothesis basically says that Genesis is not intending to give us a chronology of creation, but rather is intending to give us an analogy of creation.
32:44: This is what it would look like from our perspective, almost an anthropomorphic view, God doing these things, but it's not how it actually happened.
32:52: And if we want to know how it actually happened, that's where science comes in.
32:55: Science tells us how it actually happened, and it was a long process.
32:59: But the framework hypothesis provides for us God is creator, we are his creation, we're responsible to him, and that's the main focus.
33:09: It's not so much how, but who.
33:14: Again, I disagree, but it's certainly one that's been written on a lot.
33:19: It's basically saying it's literary and it is figurative, and they really make an issue with this.
33:26: The framework hypothesis argues that the reason why there's a pattern of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and the 1 matches the 4 and the 3 matches the 5 and the 4 matches the 6, the reason for that is because it's not describing what really happened.
33:43: It's giving a poetic description in a human way, and therefore it gives us a sense of symmetry.
33:54: I don't agree.
33:56: The argument is that's why it comes across as poetry rather than as narrative.
34:03: They would say it's not narrative, it's poetic.
34:05: Does the Bible contain poetry? Yes, so that's their argument.
34:10: The Bible has poetry in the Psalms, the Bible has poetry in Job, it has poetry throughout, so why not have poetry here? What would be the problem? I know what I think it is, but that would be their argument.
34:23: Again, look up framework hypothesis.
34:26: It's worth your time.
34:28: The third is known as progressive creationism.
34:33: Progressive creationism is the idea that there are seven epochs of time, but they are not literal days, they are seven periods.
34:47: Sometimes this is called old earth creationism.
34:52: And the fourth is that the days are 24-hour periods of time, and we typically call that young earth creationism because that would indicate that the earth is young.
35:08: Seven to 10,000 years old is still pretty old, but from the perspective of comparing that to billions of years, it's not even to be compared.
35:23: The fourth one is young earth creationism.
35:26: There are seven days or seven 24-hour literal periods of time, and what they describe as happening is what happened.
35:36: Even though some poetic language may be used, it was describing what actually took place.
35:46: Now, the high point of creation comes in verse 26 and 27.
35:51: The high point of creation is God's image bearers.
35:57: Genesis 1.26 says, and let me look and make sure I get this correct.
36:03: It says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.
36:08: Let him 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.
36:16: So God created man in his own image.
36:18: In the image of God, he created him.
36:21: Male and female, he created them.
36:25: That is known as the imago dei.
36:29: The imago dei is just simply Latin for the image of God.
36:41: The Bible says when God made man, he made man in his image.
36:45: Some people take that literally, and they say God has hands, eyes, feet, hair like us, and that's what it means to be made in God's image.
36:53: That is similar to what the Mormons would argue, that God was a man.
37:01: We're a man, made in his image.
37:03: We look like him.
37:04: God was a man.
37:10: But defining the image of God can be somewhat difficult because when we talk about the image of God, first and foremost, what we are saying, more so is what God was intended to do, or excuse me, what man was intended to do, than what he was given.
37:28: We were given the image of God, but we were also given the responsibility to image God.
37:33: And in that sense, it was not only an inherent thing that we're given, but it's a responsibility and role.
37:40: What was Adam's role? To be God's vice regent over the world, to literally be the king of the world, and to represent God to the world, and rule the world, and to subdue it, and be the king of the world.
37:56: You know, that's Adam's role, right? What was he told to do? To subdue the earth.
38:01: To take dominion.
38:03: What does God have? Dominion.
38:05: So what does Adam do? He, in that sense, has the responsibility to bear God's image in the world.
38:12: And he blew it.
38:13: Absolutely.
38:14: So not only is the image of God something that is inherent in man, but it's also a responsibility which was failed by man.
38:21: It is to image God and to bear his image.
38:28: But if we talk about what does the image of God include, I would say here are some thoughts.
38:32: The image of God would include, of course, personality.
38:35: Every person is, like God, a person.
38:39: We all have intellect, emotion, will.
38:41: We all have the ability to relate to one another and to rationalize.
38:46: These are all things that make us different than all the other creatures of the world.
38:50: The image of God is what separates us from all of the rest of creation.
38:55: Nothing else is made in the image of God.
38:58: Even the animals that might look like us, such as the apes or the monkeys, they may have certain features, facial features.
39:09: They may have even certain emotions that seem to be humanistic in their ability to feel and behave.
39:21: They are not like us.
39:25: I've heard people say, well, apes use tools, and therefore that's demonstrating their ability to be like man.
39:33: I say, yes, but apes pick up a stick and throw it or pick up a stick and hit something with it or move something with it.
39:42: We went to the moon.
39:43: It's not the same.
39:45: It's just not the same.
39:49: We, even in our, I don't believe man was ever truly primitive.
39:54: I want to throw that out there.
39:56: The very first generation of men built a city.
39:59: Cain's descendants built a city.
40:01: So I don't believe in the idea of primitive man in the sense, I believe there are primitive cultures because there are still primitive cultures today.
40:10: There are still people today living in caves, y'all.
40:13: People talk about the caveman days.
40:14: We're still there.
40:16: There are still people who live in caves today.
40:19: There are still cannibals today because there have always been men who were willing to live outside of society.
40:28: There have always been men who have been behind in advancements.
40:33: It's always been that way.
40:49: That's a very good question, Ed.
40:51: No, no, I'm glad you asked that because I've never addressed this.
40:59: I've never said this publicly, so get ready.
41:04: This could be dangerous.
41:06: But I've had this thought many times because what you just asked is actually answered for us in Genesis 4.
41:13: Because it said the descendants of Cain made instruments.
41:17: They made weapons.
41:18: They were forgers of metal.
41:20: And this is the first of the generations following Adam.
41:23: This is all before the flood.
41:25: So, yes, men were able to do those things.
41:28: But how did they know? That's the question that you're asking, and it's a question that I ask.
41:33: Because here's the thing I want to know, and don't think less of me, please.
41:37: I want to know how men realized that if you take the skin of an animal or the meat of an animal and you heat it to 350 degrees, it's delicious.
41:46: I just don't know how they got there without some preconceived knowledge that that makes it taste better.
41:53: Because what would make you think burning something at 350 degrees would make it better? But it do.
42:01: It do so good.
42:04: You understand what I'm saying? There seems to be something inherent that God put a knowledge that was just amazing.
42:12: The idea of cooking.
42:14: The idea of artistry.
42:16: The idea of metallurgy.
42:18: All of these things seem to be a part of the Imago Dei.
42:22: God put something within us that understood the world around us.
42:26: We make medicine out of plants and out of seeds and out of elements that are in the earth that are able to do amazing things.
42:43: Yes, I think that's a gift from God.
42:45: I think that's part of the image of God.
42:47: I think every time an atheist paints a painting or writes a song or does something else that demonstrates their creativity, all they are doing is demonstrating the image of God that still exists within them even though they deny his existence.
43:05: They are testifying to the image of God even though they don't believe he is there.
43:11: Yes, Michael.
43:13: Go ahead.
43:25: Oh, I know there's probably an answer.
43:27: I don't know, but please.
43:36: Animals were sacrificed during the time of Cain and Abel, but they were not eaten.
43:41: Animals were eaten after the time of Noah.
43:44: Now, I guess I have to go back and look at the text.
43:47: I guess there could be an argument that the evil prior to...
43:50: They were allowed to be eaten after they came off the ark.
43:53: But it could be that men ate animals prior to the ark.
43:57: Yes, because men were evil, right? They weren't following any standards.
44:01: But God allows for animals to be eaten after the ark.
44:06: Praise God for it, right? That we are able to enjoy what those animals taste like.
44:19: No, no, it's fine.
44:20: I just wonder where the concept of cooking comes from or the concept of metallurgy.
44:24: All this is God's image, right? There's no way two guys with a stick, ooga-booga, just came up with this.
44:32: You understand? This is a miracle.
44:37: And so that's what I meant when I said this is an example of the image of God.
44:43: And some people believe the image of God was lost when man sinned.
44:49: I do not believe that is true, and I'll give you two verses.
44:53: One is Genesis 9, 6.
44:55: This, of course, is after the fall.
44:57: It's after the flood.
44:58: Genesis 9, it says this.
45:06: Why is it wrong to murder? Because you're attacking an image-bearer of God.
45:12: Therefore, all men bear God's image.
45:14: The other one is in James, New Testament text, James 3, verse 9.
45:20: It says, speaking about our tongues, I mean, if that verse doesn't prove that we still bear God's image, what could prove it? It literally says, don't speak evil about your neighbor because you're speaking about somebody who's made in the image of God.
45:41: It's James' point.
45:43: So we have to, because there are some people who will go to the mat and say that Adam was the only one made in the image of God, and the rest of us are in the image of Adam.
45:53: Now, we are in the image of Adam in the sense that we bear the sin nature of Adam.
45:57: But to say that we do not bear God's image anymore is, I think, a misunderstanding.
46:05: But there are some who believe that.
46:08: This is the way I describe it.
46:09: I say, when I was a kid, I used to love to draw.
46:14: Drawing was one of my favorite activities.
46:17: My dad took me to Ready Arts one time, which is an art store downtown, and he bought me a set of charcoal pencils.
46:24: And I was so excited because charcoal allows you to shade differently than a standard pencil.
46:31: Because you can draw your lines, then you can go back with your finger, and you can shade in the lines and make a very simple piece of art look much more, give it much more depth and all of that.
46:44: And I remember I had never drawn with a charcoal pencil before.
46:48: So I did like I always do.
46:50: I laid my chubby arm on the paper, and I began to draw.
46:54: And I drew this very beautiful picture, only to lift my hand and realize that half of it had been marred by my arm, which had rubbed the picture and smeared the picture.
47:09: And so when I tell people, I think that you are made in the image of God, I do believe the image of God is marred in us through sin, but not removed.
47:20: We no longer perfectly image God as we are supposed to.
47:24: Remember image in that sense being a verb.
47:27: We no longer perfectly image God as we should because of sin.
47:31: And this leads to the second part, the nature of sin, nature and transmission of sin.
47:36: We go from creation of man almost immediately.
47:39: Scripture takes us into chapter 3 with the fall.
47:42: We have Genesis 1 and 2, which tell us about the creation of the world, the creation of man, and then the fall of man.
47:51: And man falls by what? By breaking one command of God, which was do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
48:03: But I want to ask you this question.
48:05: How do you define sin? OK.
48:17: All three of you are right.
48:24: And you're right.
48:25: You're getting more close to the.
48:28: Well, what we would say is the confessional definition.
48:32: Right.
48:33: The confessions say sin is any one of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.
48:41: And so who said law? Is that you? Sin.
48:47: Is first.
48:49: Related to a standard.
48:52: For there to be sin, there must be a standard.
48:56: And the standard is the law of God.
48:59: The Bible tells us in 1 John 3 for whoever makes a practice of sinning practices lawlessness because sin is lawlessness.
49:08: That's the definition the Bible gives us.
49:10: Sin is lawlessness.
49:12: And so the confession again, what Michael just was referring to, the Westminster Shorter Catechism says sin is any one of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.
49:25: One of conformity means you've you fail to conform or you have transgressed it.
49:30: And so in that sense, you have the sense of the the negative and the positive, not doing what you're supposed to do or doing something you're not supposed to do.
49:41: And so we have typically when I was a kid, you would hear the term sin of omission and sin of commission to sin.
49:50: The commission was to do something that you shouldn't do.
49:54: And the omission was to fail to do that, which you should do.
49:57: What is the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart.
50:02: That is the greatest sin of omission in the world, because none of us do it.
50:06: Not perfectly.
50:07: None of us love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
50:11: And none of us love our neighbor as ourself.
50:13: And therefore the the greatest sin that we all fail is the sin of omission.
50:17: We omit loving God as we should and loving our neighbor as we should.
50:21: Just like that man who was here that night many years ago told me he wasn't a sinner.
50:26: He said he was saved.
50:28: So he was no longer a sinner.
50:29: And I said to him, I said, Sir, have you loved the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind all day long to this point? And he goes, Well, I didn't say I was perfect.
50:42: I said, Yeah, that's sort of you sort of did.
50:58: That's right.
50:59: They often think of the thou shalt nots rather than the positives.
51:04: Yeah, absolutely.
51:06: So sin is first to be defined and how it relates to the law of God and what we fail to do and what we do.
51:14: And sometimes what you mentioned, Ed, the archery term sin does refer to missing the mark.
51:21: In that sense, it is falling short of something.
51:24: That's we all have sin and fall short of God.
51:27: Romans 323.
51:27: That is a term that when the arrow would fall short, they would say, how Martia, the Greek word, how Martia to fall short.
51:37: But we also have the concept of the trespass.
51:42: How many of you guys say the Lord's Prayer and you say, forgive us our trespasses? You know, the old way they would say, forgive us our debts.
51:52: Right.
51:53: But in Luke's gospel, it says, forgive us our sins.
51:59: But most of us who grew up in modern language, we used to use the word trespass.
52:05: And I like I like to think of it.
52:07: I like to point people back to the mountain Mount Sinai.
52:11: When Moses was called up to Mount Sinai, he said, do not let anyone up this mountain, not even the animals.
52:18: No one comes.
52:20: No one goes past this line.
52:22: I'm going up there and everybody says down here, nobody goes past this line.
52:25: Right.
52:28: We've all ever since we've been trying to move that line.
52:32: We just want to go.
52:33: We want it.
52:33: We want to jump the fence.
52:34: We want to scale.
52:35: We want to go past.
52:36: And that's the idea of trespass.
52:38: So it's not just falling short.
52:40: It's going further than God allows.
52:42: That's what the eating on the tree.
52:45: You can have everything, but that.
52:48: Well, then that's what I want.
52:52: You can.
52:53: Here's the thing that you got to remember about Adam and Eve.
52:56: They didn't eat because they were hungry.
53:00: Well, I wouldn't go that.
53:02: Just think of what I just said.
53:03: They weren't hungry because they had every other tree from which to eat.
53:08: So it was not a choice made of necessity.
53:12: It was a choice made of rebellion.
53:15: It was a choice made because they wanted to go beyond the command of God who said, don't do that.
53:23: And so sin begins with going beyond the command of God, failing to conform to the command of God.
53:34: Now, when we think of sin, we can also think of sin as a principle as well as an action, because all that we've been talking about so far is an action.
53:48: You commit or you omit.
53:50: Right.
53:50: That's actionable.
53:51: But the Bible also talks about sin as principle as well as actual.
53:57: And you say, what do you mean by that? I want to I want you to to think of it like this.
54:02: Turn in your Bibles to Romans seven.
54:05: And I do not want to debate whether or not this is Paul prior to salvation or after salvation, because that's not my point.
54:11: That's a huge debate in Romans seven.
54:14: But that's not the point for tonight.
54:15: So if you're going to ask me, my answer will be yes.
54:20: Meaning I'm not going to answer.
54:22: It's just going to be.
54:22: Yep.
54:23: Whatever you ask.
54:24: Yep.
54:25: Romans seven, because some people want to argue that this is Paul speaking of himself prior to salvation.
54:30: Some people want to argue that this is Paul speaking of himself after salvation.
54:34: And I think both of them, in a sense, sort of missed the point, because what Paul is doing is he's showing that sin is more than just action.
54:42: Sin is something within us.
54:44: Sin is a principle within us that has been passed down to us by our first father who gave to us a sin nature.
54:53: Listen to this and understand what I'm saying.
54:55: Seven.
54:55: Romans seven, verse 13.
55:00: Excuse me.
55:06: Did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means.
55:09: It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
55:17: For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin.
55:22: For I do not understand my own actions.
55:24: I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.
55:27: Now, if I do what I want, I agree with the law that it's good.
55:30: So now it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
55:34: For I know that nothing good dwells in me.
55:36: That is within my flesh.
55:37: For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
55:41: For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep doing.
55:45: Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.
55:52: So, Paul at this point is not talking about sin in the sense of what he does, but the motivation behind what he does.
56:01: The principle or nature.
56:04: You see, man's nature was changed when he sinned.
56:08: He became sinner.
56:10: Let me ask you this question.
56:12: Do you sin because you're a sinner? Or are you a sinner because you sinned? You sin because you are a sinner.
56:20: It's like the old saying, nobody has to teach a kid how to lie.
56:23: That's right.
56:23: They already know, it's in them already.
56:27: That's right.
56:28: Your sin reflects who you are.
56:31: What does Jesus tell us in the scripture? He says, out of what? Out of the man comes his evil deeds.
56:38: It's from within.
56:39: Right? It's like my old professor used to say, what's in the well comes up in the bucket.
56:45: If you've got a nice spring, you pull nice spring water out of the well.
56:49: But if you've got a septic tank at the bottom of that bucket, you're going to pull up some bad water.
56:56: Right? And that's what we have.
57:00: We have a sin nature.
57:02: And therefore, sin is more than just our actions, but it's our nature.
57:08: It's within us.
57:10: And Paul says it's powerful and controlling.
57:14: But what's great about Romans 7 is it's not the end of the book.
57:19: Romans 7 is followed by Romans 8, which says if you are in Christ, the spirit of God dwells within you.
57:25: And now you do have a combative edge over that nature, the spirit of God who lives within you.
57:31: You have an ability to fight.
57:33: And what is 1 Corinthians 10 tell us? That there's no temptation that's overtaken us.
57:38: That's not common to all men.
57:39: But God will provide for us a way out, a way of escape.
57:44: What is that way? Through the power of the Holy Spirit of God.
57:47: Right? So so there is a nature of sin as well as a definition.
57:51: Sin by definition is anything that does not conform to God.
57:55: And we are by nature sinners.
57:58: And we are by nature sinners.
57:59: I hope you all read this in your book.
58:01: We are by nature sinners because it has been passed down to us from our forefather Adam.
58:08: I wish I had time to really go into the doctrine of federal headship.
58:14: But the book, I will tell you this if you didn't read it.
58:17: The past, the chapter on headship explaining the difference between realism and federalism.
58:24: Because I think both of them are intriguing.
58:28: But federalism is, I think, accurate.
58:30: Here's why.
58:31: Here's why I would, if you know what I'm talking about, I don't have time to define it.
58:34: But the difference between realism and federalism is because realism could apply Adam to us.
58:39: But it couldn't apply Christ to us.
58:42: Because while we could be said to have been an Adam seminally or really in him, we were never seminally or really in Christ.
58:52: So federalism is necessary for Christ to be the second Adam.
58:56: And while realism could apply to Adam, could not apply to Christ, therefore, it's not how headship is to be understood.
59:03: Headship is federal representative.
59:07: Christ and Adam operate as federal heads.
59:11: There's only two.
59:12: There is Adam, who is the federal head of all the world, and Christ, who is the federal head of all believers.
59:20: In Adam, all die.
59:21: In Christ, all are made alive.
59:24: All right, we're going to take five minutes, come back, and talk about covenants.