Anthropology - Unity of Man

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:00
As the handouts are going around, you can open up your Bibles with me and go ahead and go to the first verse that we're going to look at, which is in Genesis chapter 3.
00:12
It's so interesting because I'm preaching on Genesis on Sunday mornings and almost everything that I'm saying in this study of anthropology is coming out of Genesis.
00:25
So there's a good chance that you're going to hear some of this that I'm saying on Wednesday nights again on Sunday morning.
00:33
And I want to add a disclaimer.
00:35
There is certainly going to be things that I say tonight that you're going to hear again.
00:42
Because what I'm going to talk about tonight, I truly believe, is something that we all need to hear more than once.
00:52
So tonight is...
00:54
I'm just warning you.
00:55
If you hear it in a few weeks when I get to Genesis later in Genesis and then on to Genesis 2 and 3, and you say, hey, I've already heard that, just say amen.
01:06
Because it needs to be said and sometimes it needs to be said multiple times.
01:11
As you know, we are in our study of anthropology.
01:14
We have already looked at the first two parts of anthropology.
01:19
We've looked at the origin of man.
01:22
Where did he come from? We studied in that lesson the subject of creation of man that we are created.
01:32
We did not evolve from a lesser being, but we were brought from the dust of the ground by the hand of God who made the first man and then out of His side took the rib and created the first woman.
01:45
And that's the origin of man from a biblical and, might I say, a truthful perspective.
01:52
In the second week, last week, we looked at the nature of man.
01:56
What are we? And why are we different or unique among all of the other creatures of the world? And hopefully you'll remember what makes man unique is the imago dei or the image of God.
02:10
That's what separates man.
02:12
That nothing else in all the universe bears the image of God like man and woman, mankind.
02:26
So today we are going to move on.
02:28
We've seen the origin of man.
02:30
We've seen the nature of man.
02:31
Today we are going to move to the unity of man and we're going to ask this simple question.
02:37
How different are we? It's amazing when we look out over the globe to see the tremendous diversity which exists on our planet.
02:52
Among living things on the earth, there seems to be an infinite amount of variation.
03:01
In fact, they range from giant animals that tower over human beings all the way down to microscopic organisms that you can't even see with the naked eye.
03:12
And yet they're still alive.
03:14
Every year my wife renews our annual pass to the Jacksonville Zoo.
03:21
It just so happens to be five minutes from our house.
03:24
So she gets to use that nice park to go have lunch and take the kids.
03:28
And our kids just love the zoo.
03:31
We want to eventually move to the metropolis of Callahan, but that's one of the sad things.
03:35
If we move to that grand metropolis of Callahan, we're going to be 30 minutes from the zoo.
03:40
I'm not sure our kids are going to be able to live.
03:43
But they go there and they see the skyscrapers, the living skyscrapers, the giraffes.
03:50
They see the living torpedoes, the penguins.
03:53
They see the king of the jungle, the lions.
03:58
And evolutionists would argue that all of that diversity is the result of billions of years of mutation which have brought forth all of the variations of species in the world from a single cell.
04:13
As I said on Sunday, it's almost like magic.
04:16
You get all of this variation of life from a single cell.
04:21
Creationists, and by the way, that's what we would be if we believed the Bible.
04:25
We're not evolutionists, we are creationists.
04:29
And biblical creationists are convinced that that diversity is not found as a result of random change over billions of years, but rather it is the result of the creative genius of God Himself who has created all kinds of beings.
04:48
And when we get to Genesis 1 later in the chapter, we're going to see where He talks about creating all kinds of beings and that word kinds is actually a very important word.
05:00
And we know God created all kinds of beings and He is creative and He is genius in His creativity.
05:09
Such diversity not only exists among animals, but it also exists within men and women.
05:18
There is tremendous diversity among people.
05:24
Cultures vary all around the world in how they dress, how they eat, and how they behave.
05:34
But there is an even more obvious diversity among people and that is the diversity of appearance.
05:43
People look different based on where they are from.
05:49
Often times the diversity distinctions are described as racial distinctions.
05:57
And I want to engage in a conversation that I hope isn't uncomfortable, but if it does discomfort you for a second, I'm not going to apologize because I'm right, but I'll still say it and we'll hope that you can be mature enough to hang with me for a moment.
06:14
Because anytime you talk about race, there is often a lot of emotion and baggage which people bring into that conversation which makes it difficult to talk about.
06:28
And race is usually the term which is used to denote how people appear.
06:34
If somebody looks different, if they have a little more melanin in their skin, then they're a different race.
06:41
Or if they have different facial features, maybe their nose is a little wider or a little longer or a little more pointed or maybe their eye sockets seem to be more elongated, wider or rounder, we would say those are different races.
06:57
That's a common term.
06:59
I'm going to show later it's not the correct term.
07:01
It's not a different race, but we'll get to that in a moment.
07:04
For now we're just going to discuss the difference.
07:06
Because in anthropology, there are actually recognized three basic divisions of appearance among human beings.
07:16
The three basic appearance differences recognized by anthropologists are the Caucasoid, the Mongoloid, and the Negoroid.
07:25
Caucasoid being those normally European, white, narrow-faced, narrow-nosed, long-faced, that's typical of your European look.
07:39
You have the Mongoloid or the Asian look, rounder face, typically wider, shorter, and the eyes look different.
07:48
And typically we understand the difference if we talk about Asians, their eyes look a little different than the Caucasoid.
07:56
And the Negoroid is typically from the African region, has wider nose, nostrils, in general, not always, but this is the typical thing that we would see.
08:05
And there are those distinctions that are made, and they can be further divided into about 30 subcategories.
08:13
Aryan, Hamite, Semite, Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian, Eskimo, Native American, Melanesian, Papuan, Aborigine, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
08:21
Just keep going.
08:22
Every time they find a difference they say it's a new race.
08:26
But it's actually not.
08:27
Because it's important to know that these groups and subgroups are based primarily on appearances and cultural differences, but there is almost no DNA difference.
08:44
It's all in what we look like.
08:48
It almost has nothing about how we're made.
08:52
And that's why I want to say to you there are not different races.
08:58
There is only one race, and it's the human race.
09:04
So when you hear people talk about different races that's actually not scientifically accurate.
09:10
There's one human race that can be broken into different categories, but the categories are all appearance.
09:18
Below the skin we're almost exactly the same.
09:21
In fact, I'm going to jump ahead in my notes for a second because this is important.
09:25
Between you and the person next to you there are three million differences in your DNA.
09:33
But you and the person next to you are 99.9% the same in your DNA.
09:42
So let me say that again just to make sure you're understanding the math.
09:45
No matter if the person next to you is a man or a woman, no matter whether the person next to you is white or black, no matter whether the person next to you is old or young, your DNA is 99.9% the same.
10:00
And yet there's three million differences which means that one point of a percent is still pretty vast.
10:06
But my point is simply to say this.
10:08
To say that you're a different race often times makes people think that they're a different quality of being.
10:16
And that's a problem.
10:19
A major problem.
10:22
Racism is the belief that a group is somehow superior to another group based only upon the outward physical appearance.
10:36
I want you to think about that for a moment.
10:38
Think for a moment what racism is.
10:43
It is the belief that some groups are better than other groups because one-tenth of a percentage DNA point.
10:53
And not even that.
10:57
Because I said that was how you're all divided from each other.
11:01
That's not even what gives you the extra melanin or takes it away.
11:09
Often racism is demonstrated in prejudice, discrimination, antagonism directed against someone of a different race and while it is certainly not the only thing to blame I do want to bring up a good point.
11:21
The theory of evolution has aided in the perpetuation of racism.
11:30
Now, I say that, I want to clarify real quick.
11:33
I am not saying everybody who believes in evolution is a racist.
11:37
What I am saying is the theory of evolution has helped in the perpetuation of racism because the idea is certain physical distinctions demonstrate higher evolution.
11:51
I'll give you an example.
11:52
This is a book called Aborigines in White Australia.
11:57
This is a quote.
11:58
It says in 1859 Charles Darwin's book on the origin of species popularized the notion of biological and social evolution.
12:08
Scholars began to discuss civilization as a unilinear process with races able to ascend and descend at graduated scale.
12:16
The European remember the white was the fittest to survive.
12:21
The aboriginal black Australian was doomed to die out according to natural law like the dodo and the dinosaur.
12:32
That's from the book.
12:35
The book basically says the European was going to succeed because of his European-ness and the aborigine was going to go the way of the dodo or the dinosaur simply because of their aborigine-ly-ness.
12:58
I don't know how to say it.
13:01
That was bad English but you understand what I'm saying.
13:06
Again, I'm not saying everybody who believes in evolution is racist.
13:10
I'm saying that evolution feeds this idea that part of the evolutionary process is the development of races which again is wrong because we're all one race, but the idea that it develops these different character physical traits and these traits somehow make some more fit than others.
13:26
Remember what is evolution based on? Survival of the fittest and therefore your look, your appearance somehow makes you more fit to survive than others.
13:42
Now we realize that our own country has a history that is steeped in racial division which unfortunately continues to this very day and I want to say it ain't Darwin's fault because racism was around a lot longer, a long time before Charles Darwin came on the scene.
14:02
Agreed? So I'm not blaming racism on Darwin.
14:06
What I'm saying is it feeds it.
14:08
It's just another theory that helps people who want a reason to divide who want a reason to rise themselves up, who want a reason to separate it gives them another reason.
14:18
And what I want us to see in our lesson today is while there is a great deal of diversity among all of us, every one of us every human being on earth no matter what they look like is an image bearer of God.
14:38
Our division shows the great complexity and creativity in God's design but our division should never be used as an excuse to perpetuate hatred or bigotry because there is more about us that is the same than is different.
14:59
The Bible makes it clear there is only one race.
15:01
And now I want to read our verse.
15:02
That was all introduction, now let's read our verse.
15:05
This is the naming of the first woman.
15:10
Her name was Eve.
15:11
Why was she called Eve? Verse 20 tells us.
15:14
Genesis 3 says, The man called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living.
15:27
And by that it means all living persons, all living people.
15:33
There is a false belief that certain races come from Adam and Eve and other races come from other people.
15:42
That's foolish because this passage clearly tells us Eve is the mother of all living and it's referring to all human beings.
15:52
So on your sheet, you have blanks this week, right? I don't always give you blanks, but I did give you blanks this week because I want to make sure you hung with me.
15:58
Number one, all mankind are descended from a single pair of human parents.
16:07
All mankind are descended from a single pair of human parents.
16:16
The word Eve means living.
16:19
That's what Eve means.
16:21
Therefore when she was called Eve, because she's the mother of all living.
16:28
The Bible clearly states Adam is the physical ancestor of all men.
16:33
Paul uses this to prove to us that all men are in sin.
16:37
If you go to Romans 12, you don't have to do it right now, but if you study Romans 12, he clearly teaches that sin entered the world through one man and that sin spread to all men.
16:45
Why? Because they're all related to Adam.
16:48
We carry within us something called the Adamic nature.
16:52
You ever heard me say that? Maybe you've heard other people say that? The Adamic nature or the Adamic nature.
16:58
I'm staccatoing it.
16:59
I don't know why.
17:01
The Adamic nature, meaning the nature of Adam.
17:04
We bear that nature because we're related to him, physically.
17:11
Every one of us has the same original ancestor.
17:15
Same mother, same father.
17:18
This is why 1 Corinthians 15, 22, Paul can say and Adam all die.
17:24
What does that statement mean? It means that because of our relationship to Adam and the Adamic nature that we carry, we all die physically because we're all descended from the one who brought sin into the world and sin spread to everyone.
17:40
We're all born with the capacity to die.
17:45
I don't want to take a left turn too hard on this, but do you know why babies die? Because they have the Adamic nature.
17:55
Because that sin nature is still there.
18:00
That's the only reason why anyone dies.
18:04
Because if you didn't have a sin nature, you would live.
18:08
The wages of sin is death.
18:16
We all have the Adamic nature.
18:19
We all have the same two parents.
18:24
That way we're all related and that can get a little weird but we'll talk about that later.
18:27
But for now we all have the same set of parents.
18:32
Now let's go to the second thing.
18:33
I want you to turn to Genesis 9 and to clarify what I said about the babies.
18:45
I'm not saying the baby himself is sinful.
18:48
I'm saying they bear the sin nature.
18:50
And if you don't believe children have a sin nature, come keep my two year old for an hour.
18:56
We call her TD.
18:58
Total depravity.
18:59
She proves it every day.
19:05
So Genesis 9.1 Now we're getting the next blank.
19:09
We can go ahead and fill in the next blank.
19:10
Because the first blank is all men are descended from a single pair of human parents.
19:15
The second, all mankind are descended from a trio of brothers.
19:19
A trio of brothers.
19:21
This is where we're going to start understanding more about anthropology because we start wondering why do we look different? Well we see diversity in our look because after the flood we start seeing a diversity of family lines.
19:38
And it's interesting that science says there's basically three distinct types of look.
19:44
Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negaroid.
19:46
Those three looks.
19:48
And there's three brothers that we can look back to and we can see Shem, Ham, and Japheth the ancestor of everyone.
20:00
It's just interesting that we see that correlation.
20:03
The three and the three.
20:05
So let's look at Genesis 9.1 It says, And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
20:12
That's a repeat of the command God gave to Adam and Eve.
20:15
Now jump down in chapter 9 to verse 18.
20:19
The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
20:25
Ham was the father of Canaan.
20:27
When we study Genesis we'll talk about why they bring that up and mention that, but for now I want you to look at verse 19.
20:33
These three were the sons of Noah and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.
20:41
Now, that word dispersed, if you look at the number one if it's in ESV and you follow it down to the bottom, you'll see that there's another way to translate that word dispersed.
20:51
Populated.
20:53
I think that's the better, that's the idea.
20:55
From these three guys the whole earth is populated.
21:02
Now, just for a second, jump over to chapter 10 verse 1.
21:07
It says in chapter 10 verse 1, These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
21:15
Sons were born to them after the flood.
21:19
Note, there is no indication that Noah had any more children.
21:25
Therefore, therefore, all people would either be Shemite, Hamite, or Japhethite.
21:38
And if you go to chapter 10, you'll see there's genealogies for them.
21:43
Why the genealogies? Because it's showing who's of whom.
21:50
Who is the Shemites? And by the way, you ever heard of the phrase antisemitism? That's Shemite.
21:59
The Jewish people would trace themselves back to Shem, therefore they say when you're opposed to a Jewish person based on their Jewishness, you're an antisemite.
22:13
That's the idea here in the Shemites.
22:16
And you have the Japhethites and the Hamites.
22:22
Okay, so, now, some argue that all humanity could not have been destroyed in the flood and that some must have survived to create all the diversity in human beings.
22:37
However, the Bible indicates every person outside of the ark, every person outside of the eight on the ark, that's Noah, his wife, Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their three wives.
22:49
Everyone else died.
22:51
Now, when we get there, I'm looking forward to Genesis.
22:53
I can't wait.
22:54
We're getting to verse 2 this week.
22:55
If you're excited, I'm excited.
22:56
Because we're going to talk about the Trinity.
22:58
We see the Holy Spirit and we see God there and the Spirit is brooding over the water, just getting ready to, boom, bring everything to life.
23:05
So we get to verse 2.
23:07
We're excited.
23:07
But just think how many years it's going to take for us to get to the flood.
23:12
No, probably not.
23:13
But when we get to the flood, we're going to talk about this.
23:16
Because there's only eight people.
23:18
Some people believe the flood was local.
23:20
I don't believe that.
23:22
I believe the flood is universal.
23:25
In fact, I posted something this week I thought was funny.
23:28
You know, the modern big climate change argument is we have to be careful because if the polar ice caps melt, it's going to flood the earth.
23:36
I say, wait a minute, you don't believe the earth flooded in Noah's day, but you believe it can flood today? So there's a little hypocrisy there.
23:43
But anyhow, getting back to the idea of the flood, everybody died, except for eight people.
23:52
You've got these eight people become the families from which we all come from.
23:58
Now I want to, just for a second, go back to chapter 7.
24:03
I'm just showing you some verses to help affirm what I'm saying is correct.
24:07
In chapter 7, verse 23, it says this, He, that is God, blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens.
24:20
They were blotted out from the earth.
24:22
Only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark.
24:26
That's it.
24:27
That's all that survived.
24:30
Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their wives.
24:34
I want to quote from Creation Ministries.
24:40
It comes as a surprise to most people to hear that there is an abundant evidence, there is abundant evidence, that the entire human race came from two people just a few thousand years ago, Adam and Eve.
24:53
That there was a serious population crash or bottleneck in the recent past, which would have happened at the flood, and that there is a single dispersal of people across the world which happened at the Tower of Babel.
25:08
It surprises them even more to learn that much of this evidence comes from evolutionary scientists.
25:14
In fact, an abundant testimony to biblical history has been uncovered by modern genetics.
25:19
It's there for anyone to see if they know where to look.
25:24
We all come from the same family.
25:27
Even the geneticists agree.
25:32
So this is my third point.
25:34
We've seen that all mankind have a common mother and father.
25:38
All mankind come from a trio of brothers.
25:40
Third thing and last thing, all mankind share a common physiology and psychology.
25:47
Physiology and psychology.
25:50
If you have trouble spelling those, I do too.
25:54
So don't worry about it.
25:56
I can write them on the board if you want.
26:03
I always forget sometimes that I have the miracle of whiteboards.
26:07
Alright, so physiology and psychology So all mankind share a common physiology and psychology.
26:33
How many races are there? One.
26:37
What race is it? Human race.
26:39
Thank you.
26:40
Within the human race, there is great diversity but there is more commonality than there is diversity.
26:48
No matter one's outward appearance Think about this what I'm about to say because I'm going to list a few things here.
26:54
No matter what someone looks like on the outside blood can be transfused.
27:01
No matter what someone looks like on the outside organs can be transplanted.
27:09
No matter what someone looks like on the outside children can be produced.
27:15
No matter what someone looks like on the outside Inside, our body temperatures all have to stay about the same.
27:22
No matter what someone looks like on the outside, our pulse rates all have to stay about the same.
27:28
Our blood pressures all fall within the same limits.
27:33
We are liable to the same disease and we are healed with the same medicines.
27:40
There are only a few diseases which tend to find their place in certain regions or types of looks of people, but those are very few and far between.
27:50
In general, if you get the flu, it doesn't matter what you look like, you got the flu and the medicine that they give you is going to be the same that they give anyone else.
27:59
This is the physiology of man and it's universal among men and women, no matter what they look like.
28:09
But there is also a shared psychology.
28:13
All people have common mental characteristics.
28:18
We all think.
28:21
Some don't think as much, but that ain't got nothing to do with what they look like.
28:28
Some people just don't think very much.
28:37
You understand what I'm saying though.
28:38
We all have, there are geniuses of every look.
28:43
There are people who look much different than me and they're much smarter than me.
28:48
And it doesn't matter.
28:50
So we all think.
28:51
You know what we also do as humans? As that one race? We all emote.
29:00
We all have emotions.
29:04
Much different than animals, much different than any other creature, we share the ability to hurt and cry and weep and laugh and experience joy and pain and sorrow and gladness.
29:23
We all reason.
29:28
This is what makes that word, that Latin phrase we've all heard.
29:41
Homo sapiens is not a race.
29:44
It's a type of being.
29:48
What I mean is it's not distinguished by color.
29:51
It's not distinguished by what you look like.
29:53
And what does it mean? The wise or thinking being.
30:01
The ability to think, emote, rationalize and reason.
30:05
It's part of the image of God.
30:07
And it's in every person.
30:10
And we see this also in morality.
30:12
We talked about this on the image of God.
30:15
Morality is found in every man under the sun because every man and woman has been given God's law in his heart.
30:23
And this is what Romans 2 says.
30:25
It says when a man who doesn't have the written law of God does what the law demands, he shows that he has a law unto himself, that God's law is written on his heart.
30:35
That's why you have no excuse when you face God because no one can face God and say I didn't know what was right and wrong because God has given them that.
30:44
And they know it.
30:47
One last verse and then we're going to close.
30:50
And I will be on time for the first time in ever.
30:54
Acts 17.
30:55
One of my favorite passages.
30:57
I need to go preach Acts 17 one day just because I love it.
31:01
Acts 17 is Paul facing the Athenians at Mars Hill.
31:09
And this is what he says.
31:10
In case you think something I said tonight disagrees with the Scripture, I want you to hear what Paul says in Acts 17 verse 26.
31:21
And if you need to underline it, mark it, photocopy it, put it on your refrigerator.
31:27
This is important.
31:29
Speaking of God, the Apostle Paul says this.
31:32
And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their allotted periods and their boundaries of their dwelling place.
31:45
God made from one man every nation that is on the earth.
31:54
Mankind is, it seems, inseparably divided by race, by culture, by national boundaries, by ethnic distinctions.
32:04
But in reality, there is an inherent unity that exists among us because we are all descended from the same parents.
32:13
One of the great things the Gospel does, or it should do, is the Gospel breaks down the dividing wall, the imaginary wall that we put up among us.
32:27
Because in Galatians 3.28 it says this.
32:30
In Christ there is no Jew or Greek.
32:34
There is no male or female.
32:37
There is no slave or free.
32:40
You are all one in Christ Jesus.
32:45
What mankind divides is united in Jesus Christ.
32:52
Let's pray.
32:54
Father, I thank you for this time to study.
32:56
I pray that this would be, as it were, a wake-up call for all of us to remind us of the importance of the unity that we have.
33:04
And while the diversity can be beautiful and like colors on a palette, Lord, we see the great diversity around the world, Lord, let us never think that our differences define us.
33:16
Let it be that we understand that in Christ we are made one.
33:20
That in Christ there is no Jew or Greek.
33:23
There is no slave or free.
33:25
There is no male or female.
33:26
But we are one in Him.
33:29
All equal at the foot of the cross.
33:32
And it's in Christ's name we pray.
33:35
Amen.