Male and Female Created He Them

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 1.

Find your place at verse 27.

Christianity in its most basic and truest sense has always been counter cultural because the culture follows the direction of the world.

And Jesus said that if we follow him we will love not the world neither the things therein.

This morning's message is one that would easily be identified as counter cultural.

Things that are going to be said may be and would be offensive were it not were it said in any other context.

And yet they need to be said not for the sake of offense but for the sake of truth.

We have been parked at Genesis 1 and 27 for the last four weeks.

We've been going verse by verse through Genesis since September of last year so we've parked at a few places.

But this one in particular because we have examined at length the idea of what it means to be made in the image of God.

We have compared the biblical record of man's creation with the cultural perspective of man's evolution.

We have compared Darwin with Moses and found Darwin to be wanting.

We have found that neither the Bible nor even science truly supports man as an evolved creature.

Well today we're going to look one more time at Genesis 1 and 27 and we're going to examine one final essential truth regarding the image of God and that is on the subject of man and woman.

And I have titled today's message as it is quoted in the King James Bible even though we read from the ESV male and female created he then.

So with that in mind I'd like for you to stand.

We're going to read we'll read verse 26 and 27 but we're going to focus on the third clause of Genesis 1 and 27.

Then God said let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God he created him.

Male and female he created them.

Father in heaven I thank you for your word and now as I seek to preach it I pray that you would keep me from error.

I pray that you would open the hearts of your people to the truth.

I pray that you would save those who do not know Christ and for those who do know Christ that this message would be to them a call to repentance, a call to good works, a call to righteousness and a call to a recognition that we as believers in Christ are not called to go with the flow of culture but to stand on the foundation of truth and your word is truth.

In Christ's name, Amen.

In the declaration regarding the image of God we have three distinct statements given by Moses under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

These come to us in verse 27.

The first two statements are in a sense repetitious and synonymous.

It says in verse 27 in the first line, so God created man in his own image.

And then the next line says in the image of God he created him.

Now this is not Moses having a lisp.

This is not Moses simply repeating for the sense of the need for repetition.

But what we have here is we have the reminder that in the Hebrew way of speaking when something is important it is often repeated.

And oftentimes what we see if we go through the Psalms or through the Proverbs we have something called the parallelism.

A parallelism is when something is stated and then it's stated again in a slightly different way but to make the same point a second time.

You all know that when you read through the Psalms you see a statement then the next statement sounds just like the one before it but it's slightly different.

And that's what we have here in Genesis 127.

We have the parallelism.

It's intended to emphasize something.

And when we want to emphasize something in the Hebrew language we do it by repeating it.

But when we want to emphasize something to the nth degree, when we want to give something a superlative emphasis, we state it three times.

Think about God seated on His throne in Isaiah chapter 6.

What was said by the seraphim that surrounded the throne when God was seated on His throne? Holy, holy, holy.

It's the only time God has ever given three times in any of His attributes.

God has never called love, love, love.

He's never called mercy, mercy, mercy.

He's never called justice, justice, justice.

But He is called holy, holy, holy because it is in that attribute that defines all of His attributes.

His love is a holy love.

His mercy is a holy mercy.

His justice a holy justice.

So when we see something that is to the third degree we know this is a sense in which this is a emphasis in the superlative.

So we come to Genesis 1 and 27 and we see three times the same statement about the image of God.

But in the third clause there is an insertion and a clarification.

It says, so God created man in His own image.

In the image of God He created him male and female.

He created them.

Not only is Adam created in the image of God but Adam and Eve, man and woman, male and female are both created in the image of God.

One commentator recognized that what we have in here in a sense is two stages in man's creation.

The general fact being stated in this first clause is the triumphal song and the two particulars.

First is his relationship to God.

He's made in the image of God and then since his relationship to the woman so is she made in the image of God.

So there is two-fold relationship for the man.

From God he is in his image and to the woman she also is in the image of God.

Luther stated this in his commentary on Genesis 1 and 27.

He says that what we have here is the intimation that the woman was also created by God and made a partaker of the divine image and of the dominion over all.

Now several weeks ago when we were looking at the image of God we noted something.

We said that in the ancient world it wasn't common that everyone would be understood as being made in the image of God but only the king.

The pharaoh was the image of God.

He was the divine representative of the gods in the world.

Only the pharaoh was considered to have that divine imprint.

But when Moses comes along he says no all men are made in the image of God but he doesn't stop there.

He doesn't stop and say it's only men that are made in the image of God and then women no not so much but he says it's male and female who are both created in the image of God.

And what I want to show today my three-fold outline as I often have is I want to show three inferences which are drawn from that statement.

Male and female created he them.

I want to show three things that we that we learn from this if not by explicit statement we learn it by what is known as the necessary inference.

You see not everything in the bible is explicitly stated.

Some things are taught to us by what we call the inference.

Things that we infer from the text because it has to be that way because this is what the text is saying.

And so today we're going to look at three necessary inferences that are drawn from Genesis 1 and if you want to make it very specific Genesis 1 27 c because there's three clauses in Genesis 1 27 and this is the third clause.

So we're not even looking at a whole verse today.

We're looking at one-third of this verse the last part male and female created he them and I want us to see three inferences that are drawn from the text.

I'll give you the first one I don't know if you're taking notes but if you are this is number one.

The distinction between male and female was created or excuse me rather was formed at creation.

The distinction between male and female was formed at creation.

It is a sad reality yet a really an overwhelming reality that we have come to a place in our culture where stating that there are differences between men and women that are real and are recognizable has become so far out of the mainstream that if I were to say that on a news program I'd be shouted down as a bigot to simply state that there are differences between men and women that are recognizable and quantifiable.

We have reached a place in our culture where we don't recognize the simple truth that we can all see with our eyes.

Imagine if you will just a generation ago some of you are a little older than me imagine in your youth would you have ever believed that you would see biological males dominating female sports simply because they identify themselves as female.

Could you have imagined a generation ago that you would see males dressing in flamboyant dress reading to children in public libraries.

Would you have imagined a generation ago a man would be running for president who is legally married to another man and the two of them were kissing on public television and yet none of these things I am mentioning are exaggerations.

In fact if anything I'm being somewhat reserved in how I'm describing the situation.

We live in a culture that has gone absolutely mad and when it comes to the recognition of men and women we have truly lost our minds.

And what's interesting is this is one of the times and places where the Bible and science do not contradict.

I've said over the last few months there are times where science and the Bible modern science tend to disagree because modern scientists are looking at things through the lens of naturalism and the Bible is looking through a lens of supernaturalism and so sometimes there's competition even though I don't believe there's ever any real true time where there's contradiction.

I do think there are times when it can appear to contradict but on this particular issue science and the Bible both agree because science has shown that not only are men and women different in relation to our reproductive organs but we are also different in an array of other areas.

Did you know that when archaeologists go and find skeletons in the ground that are thousands of years old and they unearth those skeletons that they can tell just by the skeleton whether it's a man or a woman.

They can tell by the structure of the upper body and torso.

They can tell by the shape of the hips even the orbital ridge around the eyes and the shape of the face.

They can tell that this is a man or this no flesh no muscles no organs no reproductive parts have survived their bones and dust and yet we can tell even from the very structure of the bones this is a man and that is a woman.