In the Beginning, in His Image

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my joy and privilege to be able to bring God's word to you this Mother's Day.

As Brandy has already said, happy Mother's Day.

We're so thankful you're here to worship with us.

We're kicking off a new sermon series called Male and Female, He Created Them.

And so our hope for this series is to really engage the cultural moment.

I would imagine as I look at media and my own social uh media feeds and so forth, that this is a conversation happening ongoing every day within side of culture.

And what we tend to see is a lot of uh confusion.

We see a lot of chaos, and in that, what's happening is people are being swept away in the cultural tide of the conversations that are being uh uh happening around this issue.

And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take four weeks.

We we could take months on this topic, and trust me, I wish I had like two, three hours.

Maybe we could just cater in food and you know, the night.

But uh I I'm gonna I'm gonna try and be succinct this morning.

I'm gonna read more than I probably normally do because I want to make sure the words that I speak are clear.

But for this first sermon, our hope is to lay a theological groundwork uh for the necessity of the sexual binary, why there is in the sexes male and female.

And then over the next couple of other weeks, we're going to give a defense for the gender expression of those sexes, why it's necessary for men to act like men, for women to act like women, and how this points to something more glorious than just ourselves.

And so I hope that you stick with us uh throughout this series as we kind of unpack these truths of the scripture.

As we engage with this cultural conversation, at the very heart of it is the issue of worldview.

Uh, worldview is what's shaping every individual approach uh to the issue of gender and sex.

All of us have worldview.

We may not be able to articulate it, we may not be intentional about it, but we have a worldview, and in that worldview, we're coming to the table and we're presenting why we believe the way that we believe, or why we feel like this might be right and this might be wrong, or why we would say you have a moral obligation to this or that.

It is coming from the place of worldview.

And worldview is really answered in four distinct questions.

The first question that worldview answers is, Who am I?

I don't know about you, but I would imagine most of culture doesn't really wrestle with that.

Uh they kind of assume that more than they have been able to think through it and articulate it in a way that's going to then inform the other remaining questions.

But the first question of worldview is, who am I?

The second question is, why am I here?

Then the third question is, what's gone wrong with the world?

Here's what's fascinating about worldview.

It doesn't matter what worldview you are coming from, you always come from a place that something has gone wrong with the world.

Whether it be natural or supernatural, it doesn't matter.

We come from a place where we realize that all as is not as it should be.

And then the last question then we have to answer is how is it fixed?

How is this fixed?

So who am I?

Why am I here?

What's gone wrong with the world?

How is it fixed?

You see, the belief we hold to the answer of these four questions will frame and dictate the way we engage the culture and the conversations that they're continually having today.

We need to more articulate clearly and understand our worldview.

As Christians, it's imperative that our worldview is God-centered, though.

And so for us to have a God-centered worldview, we have to actually add a question to those four.

Who is God?

You see, it's necessary for us to start with God if he's going to be the center of our worldview.

It's never going to work out great if we start with just ourselves.

And so for us to try and come from a place where we believe the Bible and we believe that God exists, we should come from a starting point of answering the question, who is God, that our worldview might be centered around him.

You see, from that starting point, we're able to construct a worldview that puts God's revealed truth, his sovereign purpose, and his providential design as the foundation of how we see, understand, and engage with the world around us.

To start with, God would demand that we answer the question: Who is God?

At Sacred Mission, we have a place where we live in honor to the ancient church.

We actually look back through the corridors of history to understand what has the church confessed faithfully about God and how he's revealed himself to us as his people.

In a document called the Baptist Catechism, question three, they sought to answer this question, and I believe they do so faithfully.

Question, how may we know there is a God?

Answer, the light of nature in man and the works of God plainly declare there is a God, but his word and spirit only do it fully and effectually for the salvation of sinners.

Here's what they're trying to say.

We can look around and we can know there's a God.

We can look at creation and the expanse of the universe.

We can look at all of the evidence around us and come away with the conclusion that there must be a God.

We can also look at the morality in our own hearts.

There's a reality that we carry the law of God written on our hearts, which enables us to say, this is right, this is wrong.

We might not give God the credit and we might not understand it in relationship to his revealed truth, but morality is written on our hearts.

That's how we know murder is wrong.

Doesn't matter where you come from, we have that embedded within us.

But Romans helps us understand that those two things are both insufficient to know God fully in a saving way, and it's the pieces of information that we work to suppress so that we don't have to be held accountable.

What they're saying then is God's word, the Bible, and the Spirit of God is what is sufficient and necessary for us to come to a saving knowledge of God through Jesus.

So we can know there is a God, and we can know him most assuredly through his revealed truth found in the Bible.

So to begin with, God would demand that we actually begin with the beginning of his word.

The first three chapters of Genesis are indispensable to constructing a faithful, God-centered worldview.

Because as Genesis 1 through 3 goes, so goes the whole worldview of the believer.

If we don't get Genesis 1 through 3 right, we are in for a reckoning when it comes to our understanding of truth and our relationship that we have with God.

It's imperative that we go back to Genesis 1-3 to uncover and realize and understand what God has showing us through his word so that we might have right relationship faithfully with him.

So let's start there.

Genesis 1, 1.

We read this in the beginning, God.

Who is God?

Well, God is the eternal sovereign.

He has no beginning or end.

He is the self-existent one who is perfect in power, goodness, and wisdom.

What the opening verse of Genesis 1 shows us is that before there was, there was God.

He is without any need for existence or fulfillment.

The scriptures help us understand that theologically we call this the ex nihilio God created, that He created out of nothing.

He himself is creator.

Were you and I, if we attempted to build something like a shed in our backyard, we would have to start with some type of material, two by fours and screws and a blueprint to help us understand.

But God created out of nothing.

That's how sovereign he is, that's how omnipotent that he is, that he needed no material substance to create in and of himself.

And this is how God reveals himself first to us.

Not as father, not as friend, but as creator.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

You see, God is demonstrating, displaying himself as the source of all things that exist.

He is both the measure and the essence of beauty, of goodness, and of truth.

The very name God, Yahweh, can actually be interpreted as He causes to come into being.

As God, the sovereign creator, he deserves all glory.

And so, in a simplistic way, we could actually answer the question of who is God in this way: the deserver of all glory.

Who is God?

He is the deserver of all glory.

As omnipotent, sovereign creator, he deserves all glory.

Because he alone created all that is.

He created it with intentional design, and he created it with divine purpose.

Verse 26, it says, Then God said, Let us.

You see, what's fascinating about this verse is that in the creation of mankind, God actually permits us to see beyond his attributes and gives us an intimate revelation of his very nature.

Here's one thing we have to come to realization about.

God does not owe it to us to reveal himself to us.

He could have left us in the dark, he could have left us in speculation.

That would actually be his holy judgment against us as his image bearers.

But he's merciful and he's kind and he's loving.

And so what does he do?

Then God, singular, said, Let us plural.

There's this Hebrew prayer called the Shema.

And it's a prayer that all Jewish people quote, and it's derived the very beginning of it from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 4.

Deuteronomy 6:4

It says this: it says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

That word Lord is Yahweh.

We talked about that.

It could be translated as the one who creates.

But that word God is Elohim.

It's actually plural in the Hebrew text.

God is showing us that He is God in Trinity, one God existing in three persons of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit.

A perfect unity of oneness, but a perfect plurality also distinct in persons.

And what does God say?

Let us make man in our image after our likeness.

God in Trinity is now going to work in creation in a distinct and a unique way.

Apart from all other aspects of creation, they alone will be image bearers.

Mankind will be image bearers made in the likeness of their God.

Mankind will be brought forth out of the likeness of God, and because of that will stand apart from all other created things.

And here in the first part of Genesis 1, we're enabled to begin piecing together the answer to who is God.

He is the eternal sovereign creator of all things, deserver of all glory.

God created in order to put his glory on display for the goodness and the delight of his created beings, and that they might give him the glory that he deserves.

And so the intention and the purpose of creation, specifically in the creation of mankind, equips us with the ability to faithfully answer the next question: Who am I?

Verse 27.

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

Here we've got a very succinct statement about the creation of mankind that summarizes the greater story.

And as we go into the next couple of weeks and we look at Genesis 2 and 3, we're going to be able to see the more intimate details of the creation and formation of both male and female, of Adam and Eve.

But here in Genesis 1, we get this succinct statement.

Man, the Adam.

He was the fullness and representative of mankind.

The singular Adam was made in the image of God, but God then shows us male and female, he created them plural.

You see, mankind is first revealed to be made in the image and likeness of God through the oneness yet plurality of his own divine nature.

Mankind is one human nature existing in two distinct sexes.

You see, this isn't the only way that we are made in the image of God.

There are several, numerous ways in which we actually communicate and express that truth, but it is spirit-inspired for us to have this aspect be the very first way in which the Bible informs us we've been made in his image.

We have been made in his likeness, made as one in human nature, yet distinct in two sexes.

And reflecting on the Trinitarian nature of our God, we understand that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

Yet the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father.

So in the human creature, male is human and female is human, yet male is not female, and female is not male.

Neither can their persons be changed to create a fraudulent embodiment of their distinct complement.

Mankind alone bears the image of God in creation, because mankind is a sexual whole made by the union of the sexual halves, male and female.

Because mankind stands apart from all other created things and bearing in himself the very image of God, he is the crown glory of all creation.

Psalm 8, 4 through 6 shows us this truth.

What is man that you are mindful of him, and the Son of Man that you care for him, yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands.

You have put all things under his feet.

So we can answer the question of who am I?

Whether sitting here this morning, you are male or female as this.

God will speak to his image bearers to give them a creation mandate.

You see, we call this vice regency.

Vice Regency describes mankind's relation to creation as they act as representatives of the sovereign God.

The creator of mankind is actually investing his purpose to them.

Mankind not only bears the image of his creator, but he also bears a missional mandate from his creator.

And so, as image-bearers, we would express the image of God through our mandated purpose.

And we find it here in the text.

Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Right here is the purpose that God has for his image bears.

We understand it as fill and subdue.

To fill and to subdue.

Fill the earth.

Fill the earth with the very image of his likeness through being fruitful and multiplying.

We see at the very nature and essence of the mandate that procreation is an agent of our vice regency.

We are to fill this earth with the very image of God through being fruitful and multiplying.

But we're also to subdue, subdue the earth by the expression of his likeness through dominion.

Dominion means to bring creation into fruit bearing.

And so finding our purpose in this fill and subdue mandate is that we are to actually cultivate a garden temple out of creation so that the image of God may dwell there as it's multiplied from his image bears.

That's what we were called to do.

That was the mandate given to us.

Verses 29 through 30, we see where God actually gives over to man all that has been created so that mankind might fulfill that mandate.

You may have every plant with seed and its fruit.

Everything that I've created, I'm giving to you so that you can fulfill the mandate of which I have for you.

You see, creation's potential was massive.

And God gave mankind dominion over it to harness, to subdue that potential into being fruitful.

If any of you own property or you've worked in nature at any time, you realize the massive potential of creation.

And when that's not put under dominion, it destroys itself.

You can see places that have been abandoned and how nature has just crept over it.

Mankind was supposed to put that under its dominion, to subdue it, to foster and cultivate beauty and fruit bearing.

You see, what have propensity for chaos, mankind would bring into God-glorifying order.

Man would fill the earth with the image and likeness of their creator.

This is the reflection and extension of beauty.

Mankind is to reflect the image and likeness of God both in their essence and in their purpose.

It's this inseparable harmony of essence and purpose that we discover the beauty, goodness, and necessity of the two sexes.

Mankind in the singular Adam is unable to fulfill his purpose in his aloneness.

Therefore, God made them male and female, complementary sexual halves of the singular sexual whole, so that the mandate could be fulfilled.

So why, when we talk about the sexual binary, is it so critical for us to submit ourselves to the revealed truth of the scripture?

It's because at the heart of that is the purpose of us as God's image bearers.

You were made as male or as female so that you could fulfill the mandate given to you by your Maker.

As God's vice regent, mankind was to expand the boundaries of the garden and fill it with their creator's image by being fruitful and multiplying, exercising righteous dominion.

The male and the female would work in complement concert to turn the world into the garden temple full of righteous image bearers who would reflect the glory and image of God.

And the male and the female would fulfill their purpose through God glorifying obedience.

I want to submit something to you this morning.

Obedience is the primary way we glorify God.

Obedience is the primary way we glorify God.

And we don't have that in the church today.

We often think that it might be through the singing of songs that we glorify God.

Or we might think in the way that we pray or come to church and serve are the ways that we most glorify God.

Or maybe the way that we love one another and show kindness and mercy to our neighbor.

No.

The primary way, I'm not saying that those ways don't glorify God.

What I'm saying is the primary way we glorify God is through obedience to Him.

Obedience to Him.

And so if God is the deserver of all glory, and we are the crown glory of creation, then we exist to glorify our Creator.

This is why you're here.

To glorify my creator.

You see, mankind was made in the expression of the two sexes to glorify their creator through obedience to their mandated purpose.

Let me say that again.

It was very good.

The fullness of mankind's glory would be in both the very essence of his nature and the expression of his purpose.

In the synergistic working of these two truths, he would bring glory to his maker.

This is a reflection of God's righteous, glorious nature.

And it is indeed very good.

So what's wrong with the world?

Many of us are probably, I don't want to assume too much, but I would imagine many of us are probably familiar to some nature with the Genesis account where Eve took the fruit after being lied to by the serpent.

She ate.

She turned to her husband who was with her, and he ate also.

But there's a part of the serpent's dialogue with Eve that we can tend to overlook if we read it too fast, or we approach the text with too much familiarity.

And Genesis 3.5 helps us understand the root of this lie from the deceptive serpent.

Genesis 3.5.

Isn't that fascinating?

He's speaking to Eve, who was made in the image and likeness of God.

She was already like God in the way that her maker intended her to be.

But the serpent convinced her that there was something still being kept from her.

Mankind rebelled against their purpose in disobedience.

You see, instead of Adam and Eve working to glorify God through obedience to his mandate, they worked to glorify themselves in rebellion by striving to be like God, knowing good and evil.

The lie was simple.

Though they were already made in the likeness of God, the devil convinced them that God was withholding something from them to make them fully like Him.

Though they were the crowned glory of creation, they would be persuaded that there was glory still to be had.

Glory that was withheld from them.

And that they should just simply reach out and take it.

So mankind sinned and marred the image of God that they bore.

They would no longer be able to reflect him in righteousness because sin had crept into their very being.

We have to realize that Eve saw that the fruit was desirable before she ate it.

Her heart desired it before she physically plucked it to bite from it.

We see the same parallelism in the Gospels with Jesus and his teaching on sexual morality.

He raises the bar rather than lowers it.

And he says it's not about the physical act of adultery, it's about the man who desires the woman in his heart.

This is the pervasiveness of sin, that it affects us at our very core, and we sin in our desire before we ever sin in our action alone.

Sin is this.

Sin is anything God as sovereign creator deems contrary to the design and purpose of his image bearers.

Sin is anything God, as sovereign creator, deems contrary to the design and purpose of his image bearers.

They were to fill and subdue for his glory.

Instead, they reached and ate for their own.

So sin would mar their nature and affect their ability to fulfill their purpose and the complement of the two sexes, male and female.

This impairment came through the abdication of role and responsibility that they distinctly held.

We'll go over this in more detail over the next couple of weeks.

But what was supposed to be in the design of male and female, Adam leading Eve, and Eve receiving Adam's leading, we see right before the fall of man, Eve led Adam, and Adam received her leading.

And so what would happen now?

Now frustration, confusion, and the abdication of responsibility would be the hallmarks of mankind's striving.

You see, ultimately, in mankind would go from image bearers to image makers.

They would go from image bearers to image makers.

And we see this first in Genesis 5, 1 through 3.

The Bible says this.

This is the book of the generations of Adam.

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God, male and female, he created them, and he blessed them and named them man when they were created.

So God's reaffirming, right, the Genesis intent of creation.

But then verse 3, the language flips.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.

You see, Adam would bear sons in his own defaced image of God.

Adam would toil in frustrating labor for his own glory.

And so what's wrong with the world?

We glorify ourselves.

We glorify ourselves.

Or in a simplified one-word answer, sin.

And so let's have a worldview review as we move forward into how is it fixed?

Who is God?

We would submit that He is the deserver of all glory.

Who am I?

I am, whether male or female, the crowned glory of creation.

Why am I here?

I am here to glorify my creator.

What's wrong with the world?

We work to glorify ourselves.

So how is it fixed?

New creation through a new Adam.

New creation through a new Adam.

What we discover in the truth of the Gospels is that Jesus is the true and better Adam.

Jesus is the true and better Adam.

Romans 5.14, the Apostle Paul helps us understand this.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.

Who was what?

Adam was a type of the one who was to come.

Jesus was always the solution of mankind.

He was always our hope of what we were to put our faith into.

Adam was just to point us to one who was coming, a greater one who would fulfill everything that Adam in his own strivings failed to do.

And the New Testament just works to unpack this beautiful truth of the gospel.

If we look at the Old Testament as the promises of Christ given to us, we see the New Testament as the promise of Christ revealed to us that we might see him more clearly.

And we do so.

The New Testament shows Jesus is God in John 1.1.

Not only is Jesus God, but in his incarnation and taking on flesh, he is the exact and perfect image of God.

Where Adam failed, where he marred his image.

Jesus is the exact and perfect image of God.

Colossians 1.15, Hebrews 1.3.

We see that Jesus glorified God the Father through obedience to his purpose.

John 17, 4.

I want to show us this.

This is how Jesus, in his high priestly prayer, before he goes to the cross, communicates to his disciples that he glorified his father.

John 17, 4, it says this I glorified you on earth.

How?

Having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

How did Jesus most glorify his father?

And he glorified the Father in the fulfillment of it perfectly.

Though he was without sin, he was made to be sin, 2 Corinthians 5.21.

But we joyfully discovered death could not hold him, and he rose in glorious resurrection life, Romans 5.17.

And now Jesus is filling and subduing through new creation.

Jesus is the true and better Adam who both bears the consequence of mankind's sin, but also fulfills all that mankind was mandated.

So what does this all have to do with the two sexes of male and female?

They were always a lesser shadow of a greater thing to come.

They were always a lesser shadow of a greater thing to come.

Though they were a type and shadow, they would necessarily, they would surely and they would truly point us to Jesus.

And this, this purpose, this reason is why all sexual immorality is detested, hated, and abored by God.

Throughout the scriptures, we see all sexual immorality as an abomination to God.

Why?

It doesn't matter if it's fornication, adultery, transgenderism, homosexuality, bestiality, it all is an abomination because all sexual sin works to strip away the very gospel of God of the glory it justly deserves.

It's not an attack on an individual.

We have to stop thinking so lowly.

Every sexual sin is an attack on the gospel itself.

Christ would never know another lover but his bride.

Christ would fulfill the mandate that was given to him through his bride.

Christ would never take on a foreign partner but his bride.

We can go through sin after sin after sin and we see that every aspect of it is an attempt to strip away the power of the gospel.

Because our own sexual nature is not for our self-glorification, but for his.

And only in Christ are we able to find and be fulfilled in the ways that our soul longs for.

Because Christ restores the creation mandate through the new creation mandate.

You see, we sense something in our very being that the creation mandate we were given as image bearers of God, we have failed to accomplish.

We have failed to fulfill.

And what does the beauty of the gospel do?

It transfers us through the new birth into a new creation mandate.

And I want us for just a moment to look at the parallels of the Genesis 1 creation mandate set aside and next to the new creation church mandate in Matthew 28.

Genesis 1, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Matthew 28, New Creation Mandate says this all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Christ has been given dominion that he might subdue all creation under his power and authority.

Go therefore and what?

Be fruitful and multiply.

Make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Where we failed to execute and exercise the dominion that God had given to us, all authority and dominion was given to Christ, that he might put all things under subjection.

And then he brings us into that new creation mandate that we would also be fruitful and multiply through spiritual new birth, that we are working to fill this temple garden as marred as it is in this moment with the new image of God, birthed by the power of the Spirit.

And we see this in the fullness of new creation revealed.

We see image bearers filling the city of God, communion with their Creator restored, in the subjection of all things for his glory.

Revelation 21, one through three shows us this picture.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

This is the new creation mandate fulfilled and realized, and the new city that awaits us as his people.

It's in that time that it will be fulfilled, where all things will be put under subjection for his glory, and where that city will have residents who bear his image perfectly forever through the new birth of the Spirit.

And so, church, as we start this sermon series, I want us to think about something.

I want us to take hold of something as we walk out of these doors.

The sexual binary eternally matters.

It eternally matters.

Because it points us to the eternal glory of our God through Jesus his son.

Let's pray.