Summer Session (7) Sunday School July 16

Coming back to our study about creation family being greater than chaos family. And let's go ahead and begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your love for us.

We thank you for your son, Jesus Christ. And I pray that as we read your word today and think about your truth, that you would give us the grace to have a hearty amen in our hearts, that we would fully agree and eagerly comply with your word and follow Christ, loving him as you have loved us.

We pray these things in Jesus name.

Amen.

Creation Family, Sin, and the Image of God

So we are talking about creation family versus chaos family. We live in a cultural moment where this is one of the hot topics of our day, one of the controversies of our day. What is a family? What is a marriage?

What is male and female? And when Jesus was confronted with the controversies in his day about marriage, about family, he simply said, have you not read? And he directed his audience to Genesis 1 .27, Genesis 2 .24.

He said, go back to the beginning. Think about the way that God created the family. How did God design the family? That's where we should go for our answers. Rather than looking at the debate today, here's side A and side B, and let's pick the most conservative side, just say no to the whole thing and say, how did God design it from the beginning?

Don't allow the controversy in the culture to hand you the categories that you have to deal with. Go grab your categories from the scripture and then bring the debate to bear there. So when we think about why there's chaos in the family, we studied through Genesis 3, very obviously it's because of sin.

It's because of sin, and sin brings death. The biblical idea of death is not non-existent, such as the pagans teach. It is separation. God said, in the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die, and they surely did.

There was a separation in the relationship between Adam and Eve and their creator, a separation between Adam and Eve's relationships with each other, a separation between their relationships to the created order around them.

Separation upon separation upon separation, and indeed, isn't that what death is, a separation of the soul from the body? And so, the issues that need to be addressed in family, God knows best how to address those, and he says, go back to the way that it was all designed.

Go back to the original image of God, as we see in Genesis 1, 27. Now, in studying the family, Jesus puts us on the scent of what good family is by beginning with the image of God. What does it mean to be made in God's image?

Well, in Genesis chapter 1, in verse 27, let's read verses 26 through 28 in Genesis 1 to remind ourselves, Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 through 28. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, right?

So, everything that follows kind of gives us an understanding of what that means. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the.

Earth, right?

So, it sounds like mankind, they're going to have this relationship to the created order, they're in charge, right? They're going to have dominion over everything. There's going to be an expansive relationship to the created order.

They're going to be in charge of it. They're going to have to responsibly steward it, verse 27. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

So, he created them in relationship and we see in chapter 2 that he immediately made Adam and Eve together in a marriage, the primary human relationship from which every other human relationship is derived.

All of society is based upon that relationship being clear and understood. Verse 28, then God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.

So, God's in charge, God makes them in his image, he blesses them. Everything depends on Adam and Eve loving God, knowing him, living for him, following his word. We've been made and that God's image means that we've been made to love God supremely, to love each other rightly, steward the creation responsibly.

No other creature was made that way, not even the angels, not the apes, only those who are made in God's image, male and female, man and woman, you and I. With that in mind, that's the beginning point to begin to try to understand what is a good family, what is a creation family, what is a biblical family, what is a right family?

We have to begin with the image of God. The image of God, though, is tarnished by sin, ruined by sin. Separation comes in our relationships between God, each other, and the created order. So, God, in his mercy and his long-suffering, according to his eternal plan, begins to deal with humanity by means of covenants, and covenants that we find in the Bible, where it says, hey, this is a covenant, and they happen in history, right?

They really did happen. These were extremely important historical moments, and these were moments in which God was setting about doing things to help restore and to bring hope to those who've been afflicted by sin.

So, God sets about making restoring and revealing relationships with man. He formalizes with them as their creator. And the storyline of Scripture takes us from the first Adam, who fell in sin, to the last Adam, who, of course, is Christ.

And the way that the story progresses is by ways of covenants. And we began to talk about this last week with the covenant that God made with Noah, and we began to talk about the covenant that God made with Abraham, and we're going to see how it flows into Israel, into David, all the way to the new covenant.

Now, this is a study about family. So, what is this? Why are we talking about covenants if we're going to... Because if we want to know what the Bible has to say about family, Jesus says, start with the image of God.

And every single one of these covenants is formed in the shape of the image of God. How God deals with Noah is in the shape of the imago dei, the shape of the image of God. God says, here's how you're going to relate to me, relate to one another, and relate to the world around you.

Abraham, here's how you're going to relate to me, relate to one another, relate to the world around you. Same with Israel, same with David. And as we move forward through the Old Testament, every covenant that God makes, the picture just gets clearer and clearer and clearer that it's all heading somewhere to someone, right?

And all of it is heading straight to the last Adam, who is Jesus Christ, who is described for us as the image of the invisible God. He is the image of God in perfection, and he brings about a new covenant, a new creation, and everything is restored ultimately in him.

So, we are in the process of thinking, what does the Bible have to say about the family? And as we move through how God deals with those made in his image, those he created in his image, we're looking at these covenants, and unsurprisingly, these covenants have a lot to do with family.

Now, I put it on the board like this because it's not simply a situation where you go into your Bible and you say, well, let's see, let's look at family in Genesis, and how did Jacob do? Oh, he married four wives.

Hold up.

Okay.

No, that's descriptive of what went on. That's not prescriptive of how you ought to live, right? But it's important, isn't it? It's God's word. It's God-breathed. It is profitable for our doctrine, for our reproof, and our correction, and our instruction that we may be adequately equipped for every good work.

But how are we to interpret it? How are we to understand it? Obviously, we're not going to model our families off the way that David ran his family. That would be bad.

Okay?

But how God deals with David has something to say about family in light of the image of God, ruined in Adam, risen in Christ. So that's how we're trying to read the storyline of Scripture so that we can glean all that we can about family from the word of God in light of Jesus for our good.

Now I've drawn it up in this way. We've talked about our metaphor of the parade floats along the main street of history. And we have Noah's parade float, then Abraham's, then Israel's, and then David's.

And it's important that we see that each one builds upon the previous and is inseparable from the others, right? We're not going to grab one. Sometimes, it's a very common way of interpreting the Bible to hijack the Israel float, steer it out of the parade grounds, and take it someplace else and enshrine it.

You could do that as well with Abraham. You could do that as well with possibly Noah and so on, but they all hang together. They all hang together, and they're all pointed in a particular direction to Christ.

They only have their significance and their meaning in Him. So that's what we need to keep in mind as we move forward. We left off talking about Abraham, and so let's turn over to Genesis 12, and we're going to move through some of the key passages with Abraham and think about God's covenant with Abraham, how He made a covenant with him, and what it has to do with family.

We'll do the same thing with Israel and David as we have the time. So in Genesis 12, we read verse 1, "...the Lord had said to Abraham, get out of your country, from your family, and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you.

I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.".

And this is how God speaks to Abraham. And you can hear in just that language, Abraham, here's how you can relate to me, here's how you can relate to others, and I'm going to give you a land for you to possess.

Here's how you relate to the world around you. So all three facets of the image of God. But we read about families, don't we? Here in chapter 12, we read about families. Now, Abraham, get away from your family.

You're going to be a family and a nation unto your own self. And through your seed, through your offspring, through your inheritance, there's going to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. Now, if we want to know who those families are, who are the families of the earth, you just read Genesis 10, lists all the different families of the earth.

And then, why are they all so different from each other? You know, why isn't it just one big family out there? Well, that's Genesis 11, tells you the story of the Tower of Babel. So in light of all the families of the earth, chapter 10, and in light of them all being separated and at odds with each other in their sin, chapter 11, here's God's dealings with Abraham.

And through your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Pretty big. Now, the full force of that blessing and cursing, it says, you know, those who bless you will be blessed, those who curse you will be cursed.

Now, we could, of course, grab hold of the steering wheel of the Israel float, take it out of the parade, and make a political statement on it, right? You know, whatever modern political nation today allies itself with the nation of Israel will have prosperity in their world.

But how does Paul preach this passage?

Right?

That's a little more close to home for us, right? How does Paul preach this passage? Galatians 3, verse 8, and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles, the nations, the goyim in the Hebrew, the ethnoi, the peoples, the nations, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel.

Good news of Jesus. The scripture preached the gospel to Abraham. Isn't that interesting? Now, preachers are prone to say, that'll preach. But you know, my Bible's never stood up on two legs, pointed the finger at me, and says, thus saith the Lord.

Never vocalize it. So when you go back and you read in Genesis 15, who showed up to preach the gospel to Abraham? The word of the Lord came to him in a vision. Jesus Christ showed up and preached the gospel to Abraham and said, and you all the nations shall be blessed.

So when we read in chapter 12 of Genesis, the Lord says to Abraham, and you all the nations shall be blessed. All the families of the earth shall be blessed. Who was telling him that? Well, it was the word.

It was the word, who is Christ. And he came and he preached to Abraham and said, and you all the nations shall be blessed. So the scripture preached the gospel to Abraham. Now, verse 16 in Galatians 3, now to Abraham and his seed, now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made.

Now, God made a lot of promises to Abraham and he kept on repeating them and they got bigger and they got better every time that God was dealing with Abraham. The promises, Paul says, was to Abraham and to his seed.

Now, Paul says, he does not say and to seeds as of many. Now, father Abraham had many sons. Boy, did he have a lot of them.

Okay.

But the promises were not directly, ultimately concerning them. Not seeds, plural, seed, singular, who is Christ, Paul says, and to your seed, who is Christ. See, Paul, he takes up the word of God and he looks at the words and he says, hmm, that's a singular there, not a plural.

You see how precise he is with God's word? And so that's why we're looking at this and it's like, well, all the promises God made to Abraham, surely they have to deal with Israel, but ultimately they also deal with David and ultimately it's about the seed, who is Christ.

The promises as, you know, 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 20, as many as are the promises of God in Christ, they are yes. All right, so go find them, whatever they are, they are yes in Christ. So, Abraham obeys the Lord and he travels to Canaan where God promises to give this land to his descendants.

And when you read the chapter 12, he doesn't stop, he just keeps on traveling south, more and more south, and he heads on down to Egypt because there was a famine in the land, which is a whole another really interesting thing.

In chapters 13 and 14 of Genesis, Abram proves himself worthy in dealing with wealth, in his wandering, in his warfare, in his worship, but then he's left wondering about God's promise. And so, the word of the Lord comes to Abraham in a vision at night, comes into his tent, speaks with him.

Abraham doubts, he's like, man, my only heir is one born in my house, Eleazar of Damascus. You know, how am I going to be a great nation? The Lord takes him outside the tent, points up at the stars, so shall your descendants be.

So shall your seed be. And Abraham believed and it was accounted to him for righteousness. He believed in the promise of the seed. He was given a view of the shadow of Christ himself and Abraham laid hold of that shadow by faith and the righteousness of Christ himself was imputed to Abraham.

Well, then God made a covenant with Abram in Genesis 15. Let's look at that briefly, Genesis 15 verses 9 through 10, and then we'll read verses 17 through 18. Abram asked, how can I be certain that my descendants will, in fact, inherit this land?

Can you give me a sign? Can you assure me that, you know, my descendants will come back 400 and some years later and inherit this land? So God makes a covenant with Abraham, Genesis 15 verses 9 through 10.

So he said to him, bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. Abraham had all that because, well, Abraham was pretty wealthy.

He had a lot. So he grabs it all. And what do they do? Then he brought all these to him and cut them in two. Abraham cut them in two down the middle. That's the hard way of cutting an animal. Very messy.

And placed each piece opposite the other. But he did not cut the birds in two. So he takes these animals, he cuts them in half, the most bloody way possible, and then puts half a carcass over here and half a carcass over here.

You can just drag it over here. Anybody ever butcher an animal, you know how messy this is. And then all of a sudden, you have a path going down the middle, and it's just covered in blood. Half an animal here, half an animal here, half an animal here, half an animal here.

And the idea of cutting a covenant in the ancient Near East was that you would cut these animals, slice them in half, put them on either side, and you would walk together with your covenant partner down the middle.

And you would say, for either of us to be unfaithful to the other, for either of us to break our promises to the other, it would be as to be parted like these animals. All right, it's pretty significant, pretty strong.

But Abraham does not walk down that path. He was overcome by a deep sleep, horror and great darkness overcame him, and God gave a sign and showed Abraham himself walking down that path. And then God said in verse 17 and 18, you see this walking down the path, God going down the path and then his promise, verse 17 and 18.

And it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. On the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, to your descendants, I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.

So that's a whole lot of territory. That's not just on the west side of the Jordan, that's west side of the Jordan and a bunch on the east side of the Jordan too. Now, this is a great promise, but there was great impatience.

And Sarah and Abraham looked at their situation and said, hmm, still don't have an heir. So Sarah took what was forbidden and she offered it to her husband. Sound familiar? And what was forbidden was procreation outside of God's design for marriage, right, which was the issue of the flood, right, the polygamy before the flood.

So Abraham heeds the voice of his wife, sound familiar? And takes Hagar as a concubine so that she will have a son in Sarah's honor. And then, of course, there's a bunch of conflict and shame. Relationships got worse, not better.

And then God comes back to Abraham in chapter 17. What he does, he clarifies to Abram, no, no, no, no, it's not going to be Ishmael. It's going to be one from you and Sarah, okay? That's going to be the promised heir.

It won't be by your works of the flesh, it'll be by my power, by my miracle. And he gives a sign to them, a sign that every son, every generation, all the male children will be circumcised on the eighth day.

And God says this sign is an everlasting covenant, an everlasting covenant, okay? And the idea is, as we've already looked at, the sign of circumcision, separation and succession, separation and succession.

There is an isolation of the promise of the seed that will be sure to come. So Abraham listens to the Lord, believes the Lord, God gives them a son. Hagar and Ishmael are sent away. And in chapter 22, God comes to Abraham just like he did in chapter 12 and said, go to a place that I will show you.

Straight up the same language. And Abraham says, okay, and he grabs Isaac, and he heads off, and he's led to Mount Moriah where he's instructed to offer Isaac up on the altar. And Hebrews tells us that Abraham did so with the faith that God would raise the dead.

Like, well, God's going to keep all his promises to me through my seed, so if I kill him in obedience to God, God will just simply raise him back up from the dead, right? That's the kind of faith Abraham had.

And in chapter 22, verses 16 through 18, in response to Abraham's faithfulness and Abraham's obedience, God responds and says, by myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore.

And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. Something that we need to hone in on with these covenants is that although God makes promises that are in some fashion unconditional, he's going to always keep his promises no matter what.

He also makes them conditional, right? He picked Noah and Noah did what he was supposed to. Noah obeyed and God blessed him for it. Abraham obeyed, says because you have obeyed my voice, here I'm going to bless you.

What did he demand of Israel? You better keep covenant. You better keep my covenant from generation to generation and if you don't, then all the curses of the covenant are going to come upon you, didn't he?

And what about David? What did he say to David about his son? If your son, we're going to probably be singing that psalm this morning in church, Psalm 89, reminded that if your son disobeys, then all kinds of chastisements are going to come upon him.

So what does God want with those with whom he is making covenant? What does he want from these servants with whom he is making covenant? He wants them to exhibit a faithful representation of what it means to be made in his image.

He wants them to love him supremely, love each other rightly, steward the creation responsibly, and when they do, he blesses them, when he doesn't, then he brings curses and all kinds of problems happen, right?

That's important to keep in mind. God, time and again, emphasizes from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Israel to David that he is looking for a servant who will be obedient and faithful and righteous and please him.

Has he found such a man? Has he found such a servant? Indeed, he has. It's our Savior, Jesus Christ. So when we think about the progression, just a little bit of a note of how it all kind of flows together, remember that when we read about the image of God, that not only is there this three-way relationship, God, one another, and he created order, but there was a creation mandate given with that description.

The creation mandate, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and exercise dominion. That's the creation mandate. That comes in part and parcel with what it means to be made in the image of God.

That naturally flows from being made in God's image. If you go off to an island with an isolated tribe, what are you going to find? You're going to find male and female. You're going to find generations.

You're going to find some semblance of a family. You're going to find all kinds of sin. But you're also going to find them trying to work the plants and animals around them to try to master them for their benefit.

You can find it in even more terrible, awful places like New York City. The same thing happens there. People are still trying to live in a particular relationship, and people have a concept and an idea about a higher being or God or something greater than themselves.

When we're made in God's image, we wear the uniform. You can never take it off, and you're either going to be wearing the righteousness of God himself or you're going to be constantly in rebellion against that uniform code.

There's no way out of it. When we keep that in mind, let's think about the creation mandate. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and exercise dominion. When God dealt with Noah, Noah comes out of the ark.

What's the first thing Noah does after he gets out of the ark? He does the sacrifices and so on. What does he do? He plants a vineyard. Why would he plant a vineyard? He's made in God's image. Just like in Genesis 2, there was no man to till the ground.

It's his job to be fruitful. The first thing he does is, I've got to be fruitful. What's Abraham's concern? What's his issue? What's he always on about? Chapters 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. You're calling me father of a multitude of nations, and I've got no kids.

Now I've got one kid, but you don't like him, and now I've only got one more, and now you want me to kill him. That's his issue, right? But you track with the story of Abraham. Read past Genesis. Read past Genesis.

Yes, yes, his grandson Jacob, named Israel, came down to Egypt, 70 persons. But keep on reading because God, in the first 18 chapters of Exodus, are about Abraham. Time and again, God keeps on saying, because of my promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I'm going to deal with Israel in this way.

It was because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, his covenant with Abraham, that God multiplied Israel in the land of Egypt. He states it again and again. It was because of his covenant with Abraham that God sent all those plagues upon Egypt.

It was because of his covenant with Abraham that he redeemed the people of Israel up out of Egypt with all those mighty signs, including Passover, and brought them out into the wilderness, and there let them be hungry, let them be thirsty, then fed them with manna from heaven and water from a rock.

That all happened before he ever even said one word about making a covenant with Israel at Sinai in chapter 19. So what do we find at the end of it? Was Noah fruitful? He was fruitful. What about Abraham?

Did he multiply? Boy, did he ever multiply. Millions came up out of Egypt. Millions. So be fruitful, multiply. What did God tell Israel? God made this covenant with Israel, and he epitomizes his covenant with Israel in the law.

Read that in Deuteronomy chapter 4. God says, write down my covenant with you. It's the Ten Commandments. He gives his commandments in Deuteronomy 5, and it's a summary of the story in Exodus 19 and 20 and so on.

So God says, here's the epitomization of God's covenant with Israel is the Ten Commandments. This is my covenant with you. There's a lot more to the covenant, but that's an excellent summary of how God was dealing with Israel.

And God said things to them like, you need to put guardrails around the top of your house. You need to let your fields rest every seven years. He gave them all kinds of instructions, and you know where Israel was when they received those instructions?

In the desert in tents. They don't have houses. They don't have fields. Now remember, on the year of Jubilee, all that land needs to go back to whoever owned it in the first place.

Land?

We're wandering around in the wilderness.

What are you talking about, God? But you see that the covenant that God made with Israel had everything to do about how they were going to live in the land. What did he tell them about that land when they got there?

What were they supposed to do when they got to the Promised Land? They were supposed to conquer it? How much of it were they supposed to conquer? All of it. What about all those Canaanite tribes that God had been patient with for 430 years, giving them the witness of Mechizodek and Abraham, and was patient with their transgressions?

What about them now? Well, Israel is God's instrument of judgment to completely take them out. So what was he telling them to do with the land in the Hebrew, Eretz? Same word as in the creation mandate.

Fill the land and subdue it.

Right?

Fill the land and subdue it. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the land and subdue it. And what do you think David's supposed to do? What's the deal with the king? Maybe to exercise dominion? Do you remember King David?

Bear slaying, lion killing, Goliath felling David? He was exercising dominion. And God dealt with David. And in each one of these covenants, God is dealing with the image of God. In each one of these covenants, God is dealing with the creation mandate.

It's all heading somewhere, though, and it's all progressing somewhere. And that, of course, is to the last Adam, who is Christ. And because it's progressing and it's in the shape of the image of God, it's always dealing with family.

So Noah and his wife and his three sons and each one of their wives. Family, family, family. Abraham, Abram and Sarai, now Abraham and Sarah. Here is your son and the promises from your son to your son, ultimately to your seed.

Israel, God makes a covenant with Israel and gives them a sign. And the sign is that of the Sabbath. What are you supposed to do on the Sabbath? You and your household go sit in your tent and do nothing.

Rest. You and your household. Your whole household depends upon the Lord, depends upon God. That was the fourth commandment. The fifth commandment is right after it. What is that? Children, honor your father and your mother.

Why?

So that your days will be what? Long in the land. Long in the land. This is where we have to read the Bible the way it was written. So there have been many, and in God's wisdom I don't know why, but there have been sons and daughters who honor their father and mother and love their father and mother who die young.

And then the God-fearing parents look at that promise and say, but my son, my daughter, they were a good child. They honored their father and mother, and yet they did not live long. What about this promise?

God was making a covenant with Israel. His promise in the fifth commandment, which is a good thing for children to obey their parents, obey their parents in the Lord, in Christ, for this is right. That's still a good thing to do.

But his specific promise in the fifth commandment was children, honor your father and mother that your days will be long in the land, in the Eretz, in the land.

Why?

Well, right after you read about that in Deuteronomy 5, Deuteronomy 6 says talk about this word to your children when you rise up, when you lie down, when you go out, when you come in. Write it on your hand, on your forehead, on the doorpost of your house.

Why?

Otherwise you're going to forget God. Just read all of Deuteronomy 6. You're going to forget God when you get to the land, and you're going to worship the false idols. And then what was one of the covenant curses?

If the generations of Israel kept on disobeying God and rebelling against him and going after idols, God says, I'm going to kick you out of your land. So it was dependent in the old covenant for each one to teach their neighbor and each one to teach the next generation, know the Lord, know the Lord, know the Lord, know the Lord.

And if they failed in doing that, then they would lose the land, be kicked out. So that's why. Okay, so the progression is through family, and family is very important. We get to covenant God made with David.

The Davidic Covenant and the King as Humanity's Charter

In 2 Samuel 7, and it's repeated in Psalm 89, God tells David, my covenant is with you, and when you enter into your rest, your son will build me a house, but I'm going to build you a house. I'm going to build you a house with an eternal throne, an everlasting throne, and your descendants.

If your son disobeys me, then I'm going to correct him and chastise him. And he did, didn't he? We had good kings and bad kings, didn't we? There were some really good kings, and there were some really bad kings.

And ultimately, I think it's very important to notice is that one thing in 2 Samuel 7, let's look at verse 19. David is now responding to the Lord after the promise. Remember, David had said, look, I'm sitting in a house of cedar, and the Ark of the Covenant is in a tent.

How can this be? I want to build you a house. And then God says, no, no, I'm going to build you a house. Your son, the son of David, would build the temple, and he did, and he is. But here in 2 Samuel 7, 19, as David is responding to the generosity of God, to the grace of God and his promises to him, David says, and yet this was a small thing in your sight, O Lord God.

And you have also spoken of your servant's house for a great while to come. And notice there's maybe a question, maybe you have a different translation. Is this the manner of man, O Lord God? Does anybody else have something different in their translation?