Summer Session (1) Sunday School June 4

after 945, right, but I know that as we mix things up in summer session and we come together from other classes who are used to starting on time, we'll try to find a nice compromise.

Yes, Ryan is very elderly, very nice, nice elders and we're going to compromise on this.

We'll try to start somewhere in the middle there. So, welcome to our first class.

We are going to be talking about family. We've had a lot of new families in our church and we have also, we're in a cultural moment where family is something of a hot topic.

I've seen a lot of funny memes lately, counterculture in the 80s, you know, punk rock hair, so on and so forth, you know, tats and they look like they just rolled out of a dumpster that morning and that was counterculture, brace yourself, 40 years ago.

Counterculture today is young man, young woman, married, expecting a child. So, we're going to not so much talk a lot about why that has changed, which is a good study in and of itself.

We will have to deal with the contrast at some level, but our goal is going to be to try to study the authentic deal and therefore, no matter what counterfeit is proposed, we'll know the genuine article.

It was something my pastor when I was in college recommended to me, he showed me his bookshelves and on one shelf he had all kinds of books about the cults.

He said he used to be very interested in those things so he could, you know, rebut the cults and be against false teaching and so on, but he said it was exhausting.

He just never run out of something else that you have to learn and fight and he said, you know, what he recommended to me is what you should do is study the genuine article and that way you can spot the counterfeits because you can't fight it by simply going from one apologetic to the next.

You have to know what the true thing is. So, that's going to be our goal.

We're going to talk about family and I've titled it Creation Families Greater Than, Better Than Triumphs Over Chaos Family.

And the reason, we understand why the chaos is there, we can observe the chaos very easily in our day and age, but I want to stress creation as what we're going to have to pay attention to very carefully if we're going to understand what family is.

If we're going to go to a dictionary to find out what family is, what dictionary are we going to use, right?

As it has been said here in America in the 2020s, we're all using the same vocabulary.

Well, some of us are using the same vocabulary, but we're generally using the same vocabulary but we have different dictionaries, right?

So, when somebody says family, I wonder what dictionary they're using and which one are we going to use?

The old standby question, by what standard are we going to define family? What is good family, what is bad family and so on?

Obviously, we need to be using the scriptures and we need to start at the beginning to find our definitions.

And it's important that we do that because we can't live from moment to moment and be tossed to and fro by every new wind of doctrine.

Every time there's a new definition of what family is, we don't need to be tossed to and fro by that. Every time there's a new standard of righteousness and a new standard of what's acceptable and those things change, they change very quickly in the midst of a cultural revolution in which we are now engaged.

So, what we need is some sort of standard by which to understand and to define and we need that from the scriptures.

Now, our cultural moment of summer 2023, like all moments, is going to soon pass away.

Okay, it's going to pass away very soon. Right now, righteous indignation runs hot against corporations and school boards who promote sexual deviance and abominations to children, right now.

Okay, but I do not think that the deviance demons are scared. They're not shaking in their boots, okay.

They're not scared of temporary righteous indignation. They just have to wait a little bit and then their plan will continue unabated.

Why is that? Let's draw some pictures. These are going to be bad pictures,

I warn you up front, okay. So, we can think of a strong tower, very fortified, okay.

And we can think of a wide plain out in the middle of everywhere, okay.

And this is a castle. This is out in front of everybody.

This is very fortified. This is very much not. There is a logical fallacy called the motte and bailey.

The motte, the moat, the castle, the defensible place, the bailey where you go about and parade all of your armies and say, we now own this land until somebody says different.

And the way in which the cultural revolution moves forward is that people come out here and parade on the bailey, right.

Things like parents have no business knowing what is taught in the schools and we're going to teach them what justice is by normalizing all manner of sexual deviance to them from age five.

That's the bailey. And they're going to parade that until somebody complains.

And you get a lot of complaints and you get a lot of rage. And all of a sudden, you know,

Bud Light's losing money and Target's losing money and school boards are getting overturned or getting scared.

And there's a lot of pressure. So what do you do when you're parading on the bailey begins to attract unwanted negative attention?

You run back to your motte. And what do you say? We're just trying to protect people who are under attack, right.

In America, we want to be able to, you know, to live and let live and nobody should be telling somebody else that you can't raise your children the way you want to.

How are you going to argue against that, right? We just, we want to uphold the rights of everybody. So you run back to the motte, to the castle.

That's all we were doing. I don't know why you were mad at us. That's the bailey, the motte and bailey fallacy.

And the goal is not simply to have a static back and forth all the time. But what's interesting is that the motte moves and the bailey moves, okay, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and keeps inching this way, this way, this way.

This is why the deviance demons are not scared, okay.

So there's a lot of arbitrary emotional lines being drawn right now. What's being said? Stop targeting our children.

And the pun is in there, you know, target, all that. Do you think that's appropriate to show children and the parents are reading the books and stuff in front of the school boards making a lot of, you know, they have a right to be upset.

However, have you noticed the argument? As soon as somebody turns 18 years of age, then they can engage in the full alphabet super perversions without any problem at all.

It's just the children we're concerned about. That is the conservative argument.

That's blaze media, right? That is what's being said by, that's

Jordan Peterson. All right. That's Tim Pool.

That's Ron DeSantis. We're going to protect the children. But when you turn 18, you can just do whatever you want.

Welcome to America. That's the conservative argument. So you see how it's been moving, moving, moving, being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

Now, yeah, this is funny, isn't it?

Traditional. Yeah, people talk about traditional. Traditional's on the move too. So that's why we need to go to the scriptures, go back to Genesis and try to get our definitions from that dictionary rather than from what is now considered to be traditional.

I'm just trying to put the relevance to the issue, okay? Venting righteous indignation at Pride Month's child -friendly marketing campaigns is understandable.

But don't we realize it has a normalizing effect on everything else that is now no longer the target of righteous indignation?

Right? It used to be people were really upset about gay men in a mirage pretending to be married adopting children.

Now, that's traditional. Now, that is squarely in the red and the right in the conservative defense.

Interesting, isn't it? So chaos family has been enshrined as normal.

In the alphabet soup, the LGB are now the right -wing conservatives being canceled by the

TQIAA2+. Gay and lesbian mirages with children are celebrated as good solid families.

Fornication is celebrated. Adultery is allowable. Divorce is expected. When Beck and I were in the process of planning our wedding, we were told by our fellow church members not to spend too much on the first wedding.

Divorce is expected, right? Which means we have to realize that children have been indoctrinated and groomed for generations to accept all manner of deviance, but we are suddenly having massive cultural heartburn.

Why? Too much spicy chili too fast. That's all.

Just too much spicy chili too fast. And adjustments to our medications are currently being made. And soon, it will go down smoothly without any discomfort at all.

Now, rebelling against Christ has consequences. Sowing the wind reaps the whirlwind.

Chaos family being seen as normal, it's being seen as something to be defended rather than as sin to be repented.

The debate about family right now is side A and side B. Bud Light, Target, Disney, and the government schools are side

A. Blaze Media, Tim Pool, Ron DeSantis, Grassroots Army are all side B.

Jesus looks at both options and says, no. You give

Jesus side A and side B of a cultural issue, and he's going to say, no. Neither one.

You're both wrong. And we're going to look at that in Matthew today. Chick -fil -A just wants to serve chicken sandwiches to everybody.

So, we, I think, will be very blessed to pay attention to what the scripture has to say about family.

And so, we are going to be starting with Matthew 19. So, if you want to go ahead and flip over there to Matthew 19, we're going to take a look at what

Jesus has to say about a hot topic in his day, the great controversial issue in his day.

But at this point, as you're finding that, I just want to give you an overview of the whole class, and we have nine weeks to get through five parts, and they're not going to be equally looked at, just depending on what is most significant and needful.

But right now, I just want to kind of walk through the overview, so you kind of know what to expect. Jesus of Nazareth is the

Christ, the son of the living God. He is the eternal word, became flesh.

He is the light of the world, born of a virgin, righteous in his life before the face of God, anointed by the

Holy Spirit. For us and for our salvation, he died upon the cross as the Lamb of God and took away the sins of the world.

He rose from the dead the third day for our justification and ascended to the right hand of the father where he reigns as king of kings and lord of lords.

And he has sent forth his Holy Spirit and makes all things new by the preaching of the gospel of his kingdom. And as the light of the world, he is the light of God's word.

In his light, we see light. And if we're going to repent and be saved from chaos family, we've got to turn to our creator, to our king, to our deliverer.

And in the light of Christ, we're going to consider what God has to say concerning family. And we're going to begin by considering family at the beginning.

Pretty good place to start, as they say. Family was brought about through God's very good creation, not by messy evolution.

Don't lose the significance of that. Family was brought about by God's good design, not by some tragic accident.

Deviation from God's design has often been described as just part of evolutionary chaos of our species.

Any kind of sexual immorality or aberrant family structure today or even any kind of redefinition of the family is excused and justified by Darwin's myth, by his story that he tells.

Darwin's story is fertile ground for sin. All lies are.

When examining the first few chapters of Genesis for a definition of the family, we're led by Jesus to embrace something very orderly, very beautiful, and very good.

And so, we're going to break up that into four parts. Our very first section, looking in Genesis, we're going to think about the image of God.

We're going to talk about marriage, the gift of children, and how family relates to the whole human society.

The second part of our study is we're going to examine the impact of sin on the family, what has been lost, what has been retained in God's good design for the family.

And a lot of Christians today, a lot of people within the churches are suspicious, suspicious of God's design for the family.

How can it be good when there's so much sin? You know? Questions come up.

Do we need a thorough uprooting of the family design due to the fall? Start over, do something new, something different.

Is it true that Jesus does away with the older designs for something different? And we've got to answer those questions from the

Bible. Third part of our study follows the theme of family throughout the major story cycles of the

Old Testament. As God made covenants with Noah and Abraham and Israel and David, how does family show up in these covenants that God makes with his creature?

Man. How is family featured in the covenant dealings of God? Any Presbyterians will definitely have heartburn in this section, as I take it from a very

Baptist point of view. The last, I would say the fourth part of our study concentrates on how we are to live as families under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

Okay? He is king. He's got a name which is above every name. He is king even now. So how do we do family?

What does our king want us to do as families? What are his expectations of us?

God has a very good agenda for the family, and we're going to examine how to situate ourselves in agreement with his will.

And then the last part of our study is going to take up the metaphor of the family that is revealed in the new covenant, how

Jesus uses family to describe his kingdom, how he begins to describe brother, sister, and mother in terms of those who are

Christians. And he uses family as a metaphor to describe

God's very good kingdom in Christ. And we're going to think about Christ's teaching concerning the new covenant family and eternity with God.

And I think if we pay very close attention to what the scripture says about family, we're going to be diverted from the chaos, and we're going to embrace the good.

All right. So we're going to start with family through creation. So in terms of an outline, family through creation.

Any questions so far? And I'll do my best to repeat it for the audio. No questions.

This is good. Good start. Nothing too crazy yet? Yeah, that's good.

So the question is, how do we push the mott back? How do we? So the

Mott and Bailey fallacy, simply what you need to do is while they're parading on the Bailey, go take their mott.

They're not there. Right? So you see the attempts to do that, okay?

So while people are parading on the Bailey about, you know, celebrating the whole alphabet soup of disaster, okay,

Pride Month, when you engage in those situations and you want to defend the truth of the scriptures, then you go take over their mott and you say, you know, actually

I'm really concerned about loving people. You know, Jesus wanted us to love one another, and that's why

I'm against the alphabet soup. You know, Jesus didn't want to see people die and be destroyed and have horrible things happen to them and to live a life full of hatred and envy and disaster, you know.

This is a faithful saying, Jesus Christ was sent into the world to save sinners. You see what you just did?

You went and took over their mott. They're out there saying they're saving people, but they're not. They're destroying people. So you go take over their mott, and while they're out there parading, you say actually

Jesus wants to save people. He loves sinners. He wants to give them new life. Right? Now, that's nothing new.

Jesus did that to the Pharisees all the time. They didn't really like it when he did. But, so that's basically what we're called to do, and that's not a situation of even, and it's an inadequate metaphor example because even the mott that they would run back to is inadequate.

You know, you might as well bulldoze it on your way out. There's a great story in the Old Testament about the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and Israel had spent, the northern kingdom had spent a lot of effort building a fortified city on the border between them and Judah.

Well, their attention got diverted to the north, and they sent everybody north to go defend themselves, like I guess it's Assyria or something like that.

And the king of Judah said, all right, boys, let's go, and they went north, and they grabbed every last stone of that fortified city and brought it south and built their own fortified city.

That's an even better metaphor for the bailey and the mott. Don't take over their mott. It stinks. You know, take up all the stones of their mott and go build your own.

No, build it on the scriptures, right, to properly handle it.

There's a lot of fictional origin stories for the family, a lot of fictional origin stories for the family.

The pagan myths, Darwin's is included, are all full of chaos and violence and disaster and exploitation and sorrow.

If you read the creation myths of the ancient Near East, including, you know, Egypt and the

Epic of Gilgamesh and all those other ancient Near East creation myths, it's always violence.

It's always disaster. It's destruction on a grandiose scale, sorrow, deception, and so on.

And that's how evolution comes about. That's how all the pagan myths come about.

They're all very much the same. And the commentary on the family by a pagan cult is reflected in a pagan culture.

The most popular movies and shows and plays and novels are full of anything but the biblical pattern for the family.

If you do happen across, you trip across a straight family depicted in the pagan art form, it's hell on earth, right.

And it falls into, and the family falls ultimately through the course of the movie or the show or something into some kind of culturally approved and liberating disarray.

The villains and the losers in this are always those who hold fast to some kind of traditional model.

There's a great study, was it the cartoon movie a while back called

Ferdinand, the cartoon bull running around. I've got an article on my blog about that.

It's a fascinating study what they're trying to do with their message. The story arc is as expected.

The destruction of the family, the disaster of it, the horrible nature of what it means to be a family in the traditional model, okay.

That story arc is as expected as the evangelistic appeal of a Kendrick Brothers movie, right.

You're being invited to convert, right. There is an evangelistic appeal, right.

And if they don't have the family in there watching it degrade, then the movie or the show just never even talks about it, you know.

What is it? It's just a bunch of single people running around doing whatever they want. You never, you know how you see families, right.

You never really see any true marriage or family. And the idea is as the family breaks down, we break free.

That's the promise of Marxism. That as the traditional structures break down, we all break free.

If there's any traditional structure anywhere, it's a form of oppression. As soon as it goes away, then we will be free.

We'll be free to do whatever we want. Just ask the French revolutionaries and the ones who still have their heads.

Died in their sins. Everyone, the idea in family is everyone is equally miserable seeking their own desires.

It gives us kind of a jaded camaraderie. Hey, we're all miserable. It reminds me of the

Texas Aggie who returned the chainsaw to the hardware store, complaining that it did not, in fact, cut down trees.

The clerk gassed it, oiled it, started it up, and the Aggie said, what's that noise?

All right. Everybody who is bailing on the so -called traditional family, everybody who's bailing on the biblical model for family, they don't actually know how it works.

All right. They're ignorant of the definition, the design, and the goodness of it. All right.

So, we're going to have to start by talking about the image of God. How are we going to understand marriage and family if we don't understand what a man or a woman is?

Seems rather a tall task, right? If we don't, if we look in somebody's dictionary, they have the vocabulary of man and woman.

They have the vocabulary of male and female. They have the vocabulary of family, but if you go read their dictionary and they don't know what man or woman is, you can guarantee they don't know what family is.

So, we have to start with the image of God. This will be some heavy lifting for us, but it's important. Jesus, Matthew 19, was challenged with a hot topic on family, and the debate basically came down to, all right, so, can you divorce your wife for any reason?

You know, she burned the hummus, or a very significant reason, she was unfaithful to me.

Okay. So, there's this raging debate going on between the teachers in Judaism of the day.

Made all the more pertinent because of Herod, who had divorced his wife and married his brother's wife.

So, there's all kinds of controversy going around about this topic. So, Matthew 19, verses 1 through 6.

Now, it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings, that he departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the

Jordan. And great multitudes followed him, and he healed them there. The Pharisees also came to him, testing him and saying to him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

And he answered and said to them, have you not read, my favorite question, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female?

And said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

So then they are no longer two, but one flesh, therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.

So what was the question? Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?

That was the extreme, that was side A, any reason. Side B was a handful of reasons, or maybe just one.

So you had side A, and you had side B, and Jesus says no. In fact, he says no.

Notice what he says. Have you not read? And he says this to the Pharisees. What authorities were they basing their current debate upon?

Well, this rabbi said about this rabbi said about this rabbi said about this rabbi. And we're having to update our understanding of everything due to our cultural moment.

You know, in the Roman Empire, it's pretty progressive, you know. Even Roman citizens, women who were

Roman citizens, they could divorce their husbands. And that was some splendid progress for the health of humanity.

We'll talk more about the Roman family or the Hellenistic family later. You talk about chaos family.

But here is the hot topic amongst the Jews. And Jesus says, no, didn't you read

Genesis? He quotes from Genesis 127. Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female?

Genesis 127. And for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

Genesis 224. So he quotes Genesis 1 and 2 and says, you should have read this first.

And so, hey, let's follow Jesus. Do we have hot topics concerning the family? Do we have a lot of controversy going on about what constitutes a family and so on and so forth?

You better believe it. And what does Jesus do? He says, go read Genesis. And so let's go read Genesis. Let's go read

Genesis and do what he says. We have to follow him.

Okay, so we begin with Jesus' first quote. There in Matthew 19 .4,

he quotes Genesis 1 .27. And I want to read that quote in context. So let's read Genesis 1 beginning in verse 26 and read it through verse 28.

By the way, Jesus knew the context. Jesus does not take the Bible out of context. The Holy Spirit does not take the

Bible out of context. Isn't that great? Even if there is a half a quote of a half a verse, even an allusion or a paraphrase, when you find the

Bible quoted in the Bible, you know it isn't out of context. So that helps. All right, so Genesis 1 verse 26.

Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

Then God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it.

Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

So, Jesus addresses the confusion in his day by quoting, first of all, Genesis 1, and then he gets to Genesis 2 as well to talk about marriage.

But we start with Genesis 1. Jesus, if he's going to talk about the family, we've got to start with who we are as human beings.

There was more confusion, more confusion about family in the

Greek culture, the Hellenistic culture that reigns supreme throughout the Roman Empire. There was more confusion there than there was back at home amongst the

Jews. There's still confusion on both sides. But even the apostle

Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, when he was dealing with the chaos family out there in the

Hellenistic culture, do you know what he did in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Timothy 2? He quoted

Genesis. Genesis is good for the Jews first and also for the Gentile, right?

So, the Bible is not just for religious folks, not just for those who have a cultural background in spiritual matters, religious matters, the

Christianity or Judaism or so on. The Bible is even for those who have no idea what the Bible was ever written.

The Bible is for everybody. Why is the Word of God for all humanity? Because we're all made in the image of God.

We're all made in the image of God and thus we're all made for the Word of God. So, Genesis 1 applies,

Genesis 2 applies to everybody, not just to the religious who have a background in it. None of the other creatures that we read about in Genesis 1 are so described as male and female, mankind here.

None of them are described in such wondrous, beautiful detail.

Only man and woman, male and female, are made in God's image according to his likeness.

All the rest of the creation testifies to the various qualities of the creator, but only mankind manifests the glory of God fully.

There was an ancient practice where kings, who had trouble getting around to the breadth of their kingdom, they would have a likeness made of them, a sculpted bust of their head, or something like that, and they would have it placed in all the major cities and trading posts of their kingdom.

And their whole idea was, wherever my image is, there is my glory, there is my authority, this is my realm.

Now, they got that idea from somebody else. And that idea is here in Genesis 1.

God makes man in his own image and tells him, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

What's the idea? That the whole earth would be full of his glory.

Hey, I've heard that somewhere. Okay, yes. Oh, do the birds glorify him?

Oh, yes. Do the dolphins glorify him?

Yes. But do you know who really, really glorifies him? Those he made in his image.

Those whom he put his personal stamp on, to live out the full expression of who

God is. Adam and Eve, male and female. So, God makes them special.

Isaiah 45 says that God formed the earth and made it.

He did not create it in vain. He formed it to be inhabited. Tell that to Greta. Okay.

The earth is formed to be inhabited and filled up with who? Those who are made in his image.

To fill the earth with his glory. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the

Lord as the waters cover the sea, Habakkuk 2 says. That's a promise. So, mankind is uniquely made for God's glory.

How is it that mankind, that Adam and Eve, man and woman, how is it that they are made uniquely in God's image in a way that is not true of the animals, not true of the angels?

How is that? Well, when we read Genesis 1, keep your eyes on Genesis 1, 20, 60, 28.

We see that man is in a unique three -way intersection of relationships.

And we discern his relational role as one of a mediator. And we find his design as a cherished and high servant of God.

So, we're going to start. We're going to understand the image of God, first of all. I'll keep the same color marker here.

First of all, foremost, it means that we are relational. So, let's see that.

There are three relationships we can observe in Genesis 1, 26 -28.

In the passage that says, God made us in his own image and according to his likeness, that's probably where we're going to go to find out what that means.

In that passage. So, first thing we notice is that God creates and designs and blesses and speaks to man.

That is not true of how he made the trees. And he did not say to the seals,

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. He just didn't. And he didn't tell the angels to multiply, for they are not married nor given in marriage.

So, God said something very particular, very high, very beautiful to man.

There is a primary relationship between God and man and we might call that the vertical relationship. That's been called that before.

He's in charge, he's the creator, we're the creation. He tells us, he blesses us, he designs us and we say,

Amen. That's pretty much standard wherever you read in the Bible. And where those created in his image don't say

Amen, they have a really hard time. It's disastrous. Now, look at 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, man is not simply an individual before God, but in relationship to one another.

We might call that the horizontal relationship as it has been called.

Male and female, God created them.

So, as we go through verse 28, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. What is required? What is required?

Male and female have to labor together to partner together in God's creation mandate. Only together will they honor

God in being fruitful and multiplying. Notice in Genesis 1 and 2 that the very, very, very first human relationship was a man and his wife.

The very first human relationship was marriage. Together they fill the earth.

Together they exercise dominion over the creatures and the creation. Now, we might call that an expansive relationship.

We get our little human stick figure with all the relationships going on. But together they are to exercise dominion over and to spread out and to fill.

For men and women to be made in God's image first and foremost means to be made in a particular relationship to God, one another, and the created order.

The whales were not so described. Nor the trees. Nor the slugs.

Just the man and his wife. Now, God is our good and gracious creator.

He has made us in his image to glorify him. Everything about our life begins and ends with him. We must love

God supremely. That's what this is all about here. Is to love

God supremely. This is expressed in a variety of ways throughout the

Bible. It's also expressed in the fear of God, fearing God, where we think of him first and we think of him most.

That's what it means to fear the Lord. Think of him first, think of him most. Because each one of us is made in God's image according to his likeness.

We cannot love God supremely if we don't love each other rightly. If you mistreat

God's image, are you loving God supremely? We love one another rightly, not supremely.

If man is the end all, then love is love is love is love.

I affirm whatever you want to believe. But if God is the end all, then there's a way we love one another and it's going to be in agreement with him.

Because as our creator, he knows best. So mistreating

God's image is not coherent with loving God. Thus, we don't celebrate Pride Month. Not because we're eager to find people to hate.

No. But there's a way to love people rightly. Doesn't glorify

God, so how is it loving them? So we're anchored in the primary relationship.

We can't have the secondary relationship unless we have the primary one. Now, if we privilege creatures and creation over the creator.

If we say, forget God, forget human beings. The first is a myth and the second is a parasite.

What we really need to do is get rid of all these humans on planet Earth and depopulate the world so that Mother Gaia won't be so angry at us anymore.

You know, the World Economic Forum. Sorry, I just summed it up really fast. You can watch it for yourself. If we become idolaters, then we actually become worse than fools.

And loving one another rightly is necessary to the proper stewardship of the creation. If I look at my neighbor and say, the ants are more important than you.

That's responsibility, by the way. People talk about responsible stewardship of the

Earth. Who are we responsible to? Mother Gaia? Are we responsible to our great -grandchildren?

Is that who we're responsible to? We're responsible to God. We're responsible to God.

And everything was given to Christ. He's the heir of all things. Believe it. He's the heir of all things.

It's his turf. It's his stuff. How are you using it? I'm responsible to Christ, my king, not to these other so -called authorities.

Now, here's the good news. If these two are in order, like if you love God supremely, then everything else will follow. If these two are in order, definitely your trajectory is going to be fine on the last one.

That's just how it's going to work. That's how God designed us in his image.

This is the three -way intersection of relationships that the angels and the animals don't have, only those who are made in God's image, male and female.

That's it. Nobody else. And that's all just by looking at Genesis 1, 26 to 28 and reflecting upon those relationships as they are described in the rest of Scripture.

All right, so it's relational, and it is mediating.

I'm not trying to say the same thing twice, but the fact that we're in relationship, how do we know if we're loving

God supremely? It's not just loving God. It's loving God supremely. It's not just loving one another, but loving one another rightly.

It's not just stewarding creation. It's stewarding creation responsibly. How do we know? And how can we even achieve that?

Well, Adam and Eve had marching orders. They had some things to do. They were accountable to God for these responsibilities, but they were actually dependent upon God to accomplish them.

It wasn't like God was the deist who wound up the clock and let it go and say, do a good job.

If you figure out my design, things will go well. See ya. But an active dependence upon God.

So God made Adam first and placed him in the garden, and God gave instructions to Adam on what to do, what not to do.

And notice that the last act of God on day six was making Eve. So who is responsible for telling

Eve all about the world, how God made it, who God is, and what he commanded and what he prohibited?

Who told Eve? Because God didn't tell her that. Who did he tell? Adam. So what's

Adam going to say? Well, there was an instruction manual, but I threw it away. I don't need that.

It's his responsibility before God to mediate the truth of God to Eve, not give her, well, here's my truth.

And you can come up with yours if you like, but here's my truth. No, what was his job? Here's God's truth.

All the trees of the garden are for eating, except for one, and we're not going to eat that tree. And we're here in the

Garden of Eden to tend and to keep it, and you're my helpmate, and you're perfect for me. Hallelujah. And we're going to be fruitful and multiply.

We're going to fill this earth all through the glory of God. That was Adam's job to tell Eve the truth of God.

He was supposed to mediate that truth. Not his truth, but God's truth. And as Adam's helpmate,

Eve was there to remind the man. Wasn't God's plan this?

Wasn't God's plan this? Right, because it's not good for the man to be alone, so here's Eve. And, of course, they were responsible to tell their children.

That's just a given. So, truth, mediating truth.

Also, God set apart Adam and Eve as uniquely made in his image. God set apart the seventh day to rest.

He set apart the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and said, don't eat from it. What's going on here?

God is setting things apart, saying, holy, holy, holy, for my purposes. So Adam was instructed to mediate

God's holiness. He was instructed to keep the garden. Genesis 2, early in the chapter,

God says to the man to keep the garden. Same instructions to the Levite, to keep the tabernacle.

Adam was not to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam named all the animals, but you notice how he specially treasured

Eve as his own. So, as Adam sets things apart as sacred and holy and special, and not for common use, okay, what is he doing?

He is not making up his own standards of holiness. He's not coming up with his own ideas of what is sacred and what is common, but he's mediating

God's holiness. Now, further,

Adam was in charge, right? Adam was in charge. Adam and Eve were vice regents upon the earth.

They were to exercise dominion, notice, exercise dominion over the earth. And so Adam gets to name the animals.

You know, you get to name things when you own them, when you're in charge of them. You buy a boat, you get to name it.

You get a dog. What do you do when you get a new dog? You name it.

My dog, I name you Spot, right? Or I name you

Dog. James, you had a dog named Dog. Hebrew word for dog, right?

It's good. You get to name your pet animal, okay, because you own it. So Adam had authority.

The authority, however, is granted by God. It is derived from God's good gift. So what's going on here?

In matters of truth and holiness and authority, the first Adam served as a type of him who was to come,

Romans 5. He was a prophet. He was a priest. He was a king, mediating God's truth,

God's holiness, God's authority. Now, when we think of Christ, the anointed one, the

Messiah, there were three kinds of people who got anointed in the Old Testament. Prophets got anointed. Priests got anointed.

Kings got anointed. But when the anointed one comes, the Messiah himself, Christ, Christos, anointed one, he is what?

The great prophet that Moses promised. He is the great high priest from Melchizedek, not Levi. And he is the king of kings and the

Lord of lords whose kingdom will never end. And the weightiness and the brightness of Christ is not static.

His authority and his beauty are in motion. He's the one mediator.

He is the anointed one. He's the second

Adam. Do we want to have a good definition of what humanity is when we look at Christ? So, when you think about the

Old Testament, think about the stories. Kings were not supposed to rule by their own authority, meaning rather than storing up for themselves warriors, weapons, wives, and wealth, they were to store up wisdom and rule by God's authority, not their own.

Prophets were to mediate God's truth. They were to say, Thus saith the Lord, and the

Lord had better hath saith it, or they're going to get killed if they spoke falsely.

Priests were to mediate God's holiness. They didn't sanctify persons, times, and spaces, and objects on their own merits, but they mediated

God's holiness. So, that whole arrangement in God's covenant with Israel looks back, looks forward to the

Messiah, for sure, but also looks back at the garden to the mediating nature of man made in God's image. So, in our relationships, we have to mediate the truth of God, not our own, the holiness of God, not our own, and the authority of God, not our own.

And you're already thinking about the instructions in the New Testament about wives, submit to your husbands as unto the

Lord, because the authority of the husband is from God. Children, obey your parents, honoring the

Lord, because it's the authority from God. So, we're going to leave it here, thinking about man, what does it mean to be made in the image of God, that he's relational and he's mediating, and to make room in your notes for next week to be ready.

We're going to put servant. The image of God is a relational, mediating servant.

It's important that what we say about what it means to be made in the image of God is both true of Adam and the second

Adam, and that we understand who we are through that trajectory. All right, so, we've already had the avalanche of happiness, which is our signal that we're basically done.

And I can take maybe one or two questions before we close. Bailey, so, yeah.

Martin Bailey, attorneys at law. Yeah, you're sending him a message from a different galaxy at that point.

But it'd be a great start. All right, let's close the word of prayer.

Father, I thank you for the time you've given to us. I pray that you bless our study as we submit to the truths of your word. Help us to rejoice in what you have to say to us about who we are and your desires for the family.