The Theology of Genesis - Humanity (S10, E02)

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast today, we are continuing a series on the theology of Genesis.

Genesis is a foundational piece in the Bible.

In the story of Genesis, we learn so much about God as he reveals himself to

us in the special revelation that is scripture.

Today, we will talk about humanity and look at how Genesis reveals how God views human beings.

Thanks for joining us as we dive into this discussion.

Thanks for being here, for joining us tonight. We're going to pray and then

we'll get into our lesson.

Lord, we come before you today and your beauty, your majesty,

your graciousness is seen throughout the world.

And so, Father, we just give you thanks and praise for your activity in our

lives and for your activity in our world.

And we ask, Father, that you will open our eyes To see you more clearly And

I pray that you will open up the entire world,

To see you, to hear you, and to know you In our hearts and in our minds better,

Give us a sense of your calling Pour out your spirit in abundance And draw us

into a closer relationship with you,

I pray for transformation for all of us In Jesus' name Amen.

As we continue on our journey through the theology of Genesis,

today we're going to focus on,

humanity and what specifically God says about humanity.

So theology is the study of God, and we can study human beings because we are in this world.

We can study cells, we know what organs are.

We can even kind of go through the process of what happens when we receive the,

visions from our eyes and how it goes into our brains. And then it is.

Transferred into something that we can readily see.

We can do things like that, but looking at what God says about humanity is something

that is important for us as followers of God to know who we are in his sight.

And in the broader scope of this world, I believe there's a real crisis going

on in the understanding of what it is to be human.

And I think this is a message to really try to understand, to comprehend what

God says so that we can get our,

value not from the things of the world, not even from our own minds, but from God himself.

And that is hopefully what we will see here tonight.

We're going to spend a majority, maybe a little bit more than half of our time,

in two verses, Genesis 1, 26, and 27.

We're going to dissect those two verses, and then we're going to look at how

that works its way out throughout the rest of the book of Genesis.

So Genesis 1, 26, and 27 says this.

Then God said, let us make human beings in our image to be like us.

They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky,

the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth and the small animals that

scurry along the ground.

So God created human beings in his own image.

In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them.

And I put that last verse in italics for a reason. we'll get to in a few moments.

That's not how it appears in your Bibles. That is what I did to help it stand out there.

But that is Genesis 127. But this is the emphasis of tonight because we need

to understand that God says, let us make human beings in our image to be like us.

This is the NLT, and there are other versions who will say, let us make human

beings in our image and in our likeness.

And so likeness is going to be used instead, as we go through this,

instead of to be like us. But you can see how it correlates and how it's the same thing there.

So this Bible passage describes how people were made in these two ways,

in the image of God and to be like God, in his likeness.

And so the question is, what do these mean in the ancient world?

As the Israelites, as Moses is writing down the book of Genesis,

what does this mean? How will they interpret it?

The NIV Cultural Background Study Bible has this to say about these two concepts.

The biblical view is similar as people were created in the image of God,

embodying his qualities and doing his work.

They are symbols of his presence and act on his behalf as his representatives.

The two words used in the text differ in nuance.

Image refers to something that contains the essence of something else,

while likeness is more connected to substance, expressing a resemblance at some level.

And so here it's important to

note that it talks about being in the image and likeness of God is to...

Act on behalf of the person that we are in the same image of.

And so we are God's representatives. When he created Adam and Eve,

they were his representatives to the world.

They had the command to tend to the garden. They had a command to be fruitful

and multiply and fill the earth, but they were his representatives.

They were supposed to do what God asked them to do.

And then it breaks down these two terms, image and likeness,

a little bit more, where it says here that image is the essence of something

and likeness is the substance.

So I threw together a kind of silly analogy, but to try to help us to understand this.

So according to this definition, well, we would see the pictures of George Washington.

On our money, and a statue of George Washington would be in the same likeness

or substance as the individual.

This is what they would call as likeness. So if you have an engraving of somebody,

it's in the likeness. If you have a painting of somebody, it's in their likeness.

If you have a photo of someone, it's not that actual person.

It is that likeness. So in this way, we somehow, when we look at each other,

we see certain things of God.

Now we know that God is a spirit, but we also know that God can communicate.

So we communicate just like God can communicate.

We know that God hears because we can pray.

And it says God will hear when we pray. And so we have that.

He may not have physical ears, but we have this as the same likeness.

These are characteristics that he has and we have. We have the same likeness here.

Image I see from this definition is a little bit different.

And I know a few people like this, but if you have a child who is in the same

manner as one of his parents or her parents.

So one of my kids is very much like Jillian.

I can see it in the way that she, in almost everything, like her sense of humor

is very much like Jillian's.

The things that she likes and how she likes to try different foods.

It's like she is in the image here of Jillian because they share these same similarities.

I think about someone like Zach and Waylon and how they are the spitting image

of each other just in how they act, not even taking into the looks that they

have, but just in how they act.

And this is what it means for image.

There may not be any physical similarities, but they have the essence of that person.

And in both of these ways, we are like God.

We are to act like him. Obviously, we have a disconnect when sin comes in,

but the goal and the objective

and what happens in Genesis 1 and 2 before sin enters the world is that they are like God

and that they are in his image.

So that's the concept here of Genesis being made in the image and likeness of

God from Genesis 1, 26 and 27.

The NIV Zondervan Study Bible describes it like this. It says,

image and likeness are synonyms.

Daniel 3.1 describes the statue of King Nebuchadnezzar with the same Hebrew term for image.

The statue represents the authority and power of the king and elicits obedience

and worship from the multitude.

If you're familiar with that story, it is where everyone except Shadrach,

Meshach, and Abednego bow down.

This is the decree, and it's like they were bowing down to the king,

even though it was this giant statue that they were bowing down.

It showed this reverence. It showed this worship. It showed obedience to this

king where this statue was.

Then it goes on to say, elsewhere in the ancient world, the same is true of

the word image, which appears alongside likeness.

A text from the ancient Gozen contain both words, image and likeness,

and translates them into Assyrian by using the same word that means statue or symbol of authority.

And so in a different language, in a similar language, but different language,

these two are very close together and are actually translated as the same word.

So by definition, the concepts, according to the NIV Zondervan Study Bible,

are overlapping, but they still relate to the idea.

That being made in God's image and likeness, we are representing the authority of God.

Wherever we go, whenever we interact with a human being, we are interacting

with someone who is made in the same likeness and in the same image of our creator.

We interact with him and we are his representatives on this planet.

The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible adds this to the conversation.

It says, Throughout the ancient Near East, an image was believed to contain

the essence of that which it represented.

That essence equipped the image to carry out its function.

An Egyptian literature, there is one occurrence of people in general having

been created in the image of a deity, but it is generally the king who is spoken of in such terms.

The image is the source of his power and prerogative. And this is a contrast between other ancient.

Creation accounts and what the Bible says.

It is where other people will just say that a king was made in the image and

likeness of God because the king issues decrees that they believed came from God.

And this would show us like a divine right to rule.

And so it would not be handed down. It would not be voted upon by the people.

It would just be handed down because the king here has the divine right to choose

his successor. Usually that was someone in his family, usually a son.

And this is what we have here.

Most of the time in the ancient world, they thought of only those in authority

as those who are in God's image and likeness.

And it wouldn't be the Yahweh God. It would be their own local deities that they would worship.

But in ancient Israel thought, we all are created in the image and likeness of God.

And this elevates humanity into something that is really much more valuable

than what other ancient cultures said.

This is a huge difference and something that the Bible really emphasizes in these words.

So these definitions show us that we are of, and we here is all human beings,

8 billion plus people on this planet right now,

all of us, we are all of the same substance and essence as God.

We resemble him as well as we carry his authority into this world as his representatives.

And that's a concept we're going to flesh out a little bit more.

What does being his representative mean?

So the HarperCollins Study Bible will say this.

The immediate implication of this concept being made in the image and likeness

of God in God's speech is that humans are appointed to rule over the earth and its creatures.

This ruling function is related to the ancient Near Eastern concept of the king

as the image of the high God on earth, a concept that is

democratized here, means it's spread to all the people here.

And going back into Genesis 1.26, it says you are to rule over the fish in the

sea, the birds of the air, the animals that scurry along the ground and the livestock.

And these are the three realms that God had created, the sky,

the air, we have the sea and those creatures and the land and those animals.

And this is what it says. You are made in the image and likeness of God and

you are to rule, you are to reign over these concepts.

Then we have from the, again, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible,

this quote, In Mesopotamia, there are three categories of significance.

As in Egypt, the king is occasionally described as being in the image of a deity,

and idol contained the image of the deity,

and monuments featuring the image of a king were set up in territories he had conquered.

In an image, it was not physical likeness that was important,

but a more abstract, idealized representation of the identity relating to the

office role and the value connected to the image.

When Assyrian king, Ezarhaddon, is referred to as the perfect likeness of the

god, it is his qualities and attributes that are under discussion.

The image of the god did the god's work on earth.

And so even outside of Israelite theology, outside of Israelite society,

this was a common theme in the ancient world.

But there are restrictions, as I mentioned, and this restriction here is specifically

talking about how it's only ascribed to certain individuals who are ruling.

The difference is staggering.

So, again, people believed in the divine right to rule because the king did

the deity's functions on this earth.

This is outside of Israel thought. This is outside of what the Bible teaches.

How God created us. Thank you.

Another quote from the NIV Zondervan Study Bible says, Thus,

in this context, to be made in the image of God means to rule over the life

in the three domains that God created.

This rulership is a stewardship. It is illustrated in chapter 2,

where the man takes care of the garden and names the animals.

In this context, God placed humanity on earth to continue his rulership after

he finished the work of creation.

With the coming of Christ as the perfect image of God, as told in Colossians

1.15, Christians are recreated, which is from 2 Corinthians 5.17,

and become conformed to Christ as an expression of his image,

which is from Romans 8.29.

With righteousness, holiness, and knowledge, Ephesians 4.24 and Colossians 3.10.

And there we have the idea of what it means to rule in God's place,

what it means to be his representatives here on this earth.

We are continuing to do what he started.

He was creative in his activities, and so he has given us, being in his image

and likeness, we take what he has given us and we can create things.

We can use the metal from the earth and from the rocks to create cars.

We can take the other elements and make them have an electric current to have batteries.

We can do these things. God created us in his image and likeness to do this,

but this rulership is not to be completely stripping the earth of its resources.

It is to be good stewards of that. So wherever we can, that's what we are designed

to do. This is how it is to come into living into our image and likeness of God.

Lastly, in this section from the ESV Study Bible, we read this quote,

As God's representatives, human beings are to rule over every living thing on the earth.

These commands are not, however, a mandate to exploit the earth and its creatures to satisfy human greed.

For the fact that Adam and Eve were in the image of God implies God's expectation

that human beings will use the earthly, the earth wisely,

and govern it with the same sense of responsibility and care that God has toward

the whole of his creation.

And so here, I think, is where a distinction needs to be made about what we

think about human beings today.

Like, human beings can be extinguishable.

They are commodities.

People think that human beings are just like refuse. You can throw them away.

But God here is saying that that is not accurate. It's not true.

When I think about what happened during the Holocaust, like this is how they

treated human beings, like refuse, like garbage.

When you think about atrocities that happen in this day where there are

tribes and religions that go into villages, they plunder, they take away women

and children, they do terrible things to those people, they kill the men and

leave them there, they are treating them as this

type of refuse that can just be thrown away.

And that's not the biblical mandate. The biblical mandate is that every single

person, it doesn't matter if you're in the womb, it doesn't matter if you're

110 years old, every person has value, every person matters.

And that's the biblical concept here.

When we understand this correctly, it changes our views.

We all sin and fall short of God's glorious standard. But if we have this as

the concept of who we are, we wouldn't bully people.

If we had this as the concept for how we thought of ourselves and how we thought

of other people, we wouldn't hurt people.

Again, we're fallible. There are going to be times where we do hurt people,

but then we need to own it and we need to say, I didn't treat you correctly.

I am sorry. And this, I think, is what our world needs. This is the message

that we need to understand as we.

As we go about our business, we need to see each other in the image and likeness of God.

Another aspect that this passage shares with us is that human beings are the

pinnacle of God's creation.

And this is why I had Genesis 127 italicized, because it's really important

to understand that there is a shift here in the language.

It goes from narrative, which are the first 26 verses and the rest of Genesis, outside of Genesis 127.

But in Genesis 127, it is a poetic style.

So the HarperCollins Study Bible will say this, humans are God's last and climactic work of creation.

The style of the text briefly verges on poetry, indicating a dramatic high point.

So when it says in the image of God, he created them male and female, he created them.

This is, if you look in your Bibles, more than likely it's going to be offset.

It's not going to be all the way to the margins because it's telling you this

is poetry and this matters because of the shift in the style.

And it points to this being a high point in the text.

Also, this is, this helps us, I think this is an important concept to know also,

that every time from in six times in Genesis 1, preceding the creation of human

beings, God looks at his creation and it's good.

This is in Genesis 1.4, 1.10, 1.12, 1.18, 1.21, and 1.25.

And the important thing to note here is at the end of 1.25, livestock,

animals that scurry along the ground, they have been created.

Then in Genesis 1.26 and 27, God makes this proclamation that human beings are there.

And then he says this, then God looked over all he had made and he saw that

it was not good, but very good.

And human beings made this planet very good in God's eyes.

We are the most important of his creation.

He makes us in his image and his likeness. This is critical.

One other thing, and I've touched on it briefly here, but an important distinction

to note between what the Bible says in the rest of the creation narratives.

The ESV study Bible says this image and this dignity apply to both male and female human beings.

This view is unique in the context of the ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, etc.

The gods created humans merely to carry out work for them.

At this stage, humanity as a species is set apart from all other creatures and

crowned with glory and honor as ruler of the earth.

So the idea, the concept here is clearly not just male, but male and female. He created them.

And both of us are made in the image and likeness of God.

And in a society where when you get to, I believe it's Genesis 4,

where men start collecting women like property

in a society that even for 2,000 years and more, women were thought of as negative

until Jesus came on the scene.

The Bible is very clear from the beginning. Everybody has value.

Everybody has worth. We might have different roles. We might have different

functions, but we are not to treat people differently based on their gender.

Everybody is created in the image and likeness of God.

And that is awesome news that sets the Bible apart from every other narrative

that there was in the ancient Near East.

One last point on the image and likeness of God says, Many scholars point out

the idea commonly used in the ancient Near East of the king who was the visible.

Representative of the deity.

Thus, the king rules on behalf of the God. Since verse 26 links the image of

God with the exercise of dominion over the,

other creatures of the seas, heavens, and earth, one can see that humanity is

endowed here with authority to rule the earth as God's representatives or vice regents.

Other scholars seeing the pattern of male and female have concluded that humanity

expresses God's image in relationship, particularly in well-functioning human

community, both in marriage and in wider society.

Traditionally, the image has been seen as the capacities that set man apart

from other animals, ways in which humans resemble God, such as characteristics

of reason, morality, language,

a capacity for relationships governed by love and commitment,

and creativity in all forms of art.

All these can be put together by observing that the resemblances

man is like God in a series of ways allow mankind to represent God in ruling

and to establish worthy relationships with God, with one another,

and with the rest of creation.

So what it's doing there is breaking down more than what we talked about,

and it's encompassing everything that is talking about being in his likeness

and in his image, being of the same

substance and of the same essence.

And so that is like God hears, we hear.

Obviously, other animals hear as well, but we have the ability to process what we hear.

We have the ability to communicate back what we hear in a much more substantial

way than other animals that God created.

We are unique in having a moral code. We are unique in having a capacity for

relationships governed by love and commitment.

If you put two animals out in the wilderness, they might be attracted to each

other. They might mate, and they might even stay together for a long period of time.

But they cannot communicate to us whether or not that is actual love or whether

or not that's just the DNA that has made them do that.

We can express we're together because of our love, because of our affection.

We can express these things and so much more.

And so being made in the image and likeness of God is much more than just being

able to rule like God, like God ruled over everything when he created it all

and he spoke it into existence.

It includes way more than that.

But this is the emphasis of how human beings, who human beings are to God.

We are his representatives, we are to rule this earth, and we are unique over all other creations.

Now we're going to take a few minutes and look to see how this works itself

out in the rest of Genesis.

And I want to start with a kind of difficult passage.

When we think about Genesis 3 and how sin enters the world,

sin grew and expanded exponentially to the point where we get to Genesis 6,

Genesis 6:6

verses 6 and 7 and read, So the Lord was sorry,

he had ever made them, that's human beings,

and put them on the earth.

It broke his heart. And the Lord said, I will wipe this human race I have created

from the face of the earth.

Yes, I will destroy every living thing, all the people, the large animals,

the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky.

I am sorry I ever made them.

And what we see here is a devastating verse about how the sin impacted God.

People can look at this and they can glean from this that.

God's view of humanity is now shifted, that they are no longer made in his image

and likeness, that they are no longer worthy of being his representatives on this planet.

And to try to explain this passage, I have two different views of this.

So the first one comes from the New International Commentary on the Old Testament.

And it says, viewing the debacle man has fomented, God is grieved,

even to the point of experiencing pain in his heart.

Note again here the echo of earlier language in Genesis.

Previously, Eve in Genesis 3.16 and Adam in Genesis 3.17 were the pain bearers.

Now Yahweh himself feels that stab. Eve's and Adam's pain, however,

is imposed due to their sin Yahweh's is not,

Rather, his pain finds its source in the depth of regret He experiences over

fallen humanity And in the fact that he must judge such fallenness,

It is easy, of course, to dismiss such.

Allusions as anthropophagic,

I don't know how to say that word, but it means humans putting a human characteristic

there or a human image there.

And to feel that they can tell us nothing about the essential nature of God.

But verses like this remind us that the God of the Old Testament is not beyond

the capability of feeling pain, chagrin, and remorse.

And instead of finding out that God's view of humanity changed,

I think in this passage, we find how much God loves us.

It is about how if you've ever had a broken relationship and the grieving that

you had with that, it is like that.

The author here talks about like it's being stabbed. It's a sharp pain in him when we fall short.

So instead of looking at this passage, I don't think we should look at this

passage as God throwing up his hands and saying, I'm done with humanity.

I think this passage shows us more and more that God really loves us in a dramatic, dramatic way.

The other concept is from the ESV study Bible.

It says, the Hebrew word rendered regretted is sometimes translated repent and

sometimes as feel sorrow or be grieved.

God is grieved over his creation, which he at first saw as very good,

which is Genesis 131, but which is now filled with sin.

And the idea here, especially if you look at the concept of repent,

repent just means to turn away.

Generally, we use this in terms of turning away from sin and turning towards God.

But when it's used here in the concept of God, I think it simply means that

he's changing direction.

And instead of focusing on the entirety of the world, instead of calling.

I don't want to go there. Let me take that back for a second.

So instead of the wide-scoping nature of what Genesis 1 through 11 is,

God is going to focus singularly on a,

family that starts with Noah.

So this passage shows that God needed to change his plans. That's where I see

repenting here and bring about a change of direction for humanity.

And he chose Noah, the one righteous man, and he built a family lineage through

him, showing that God still cares for people.

So I believe that God is still for people, even in spite of our sin and brokenness.

And I'm going to show it through three people here.

So in Genesis 7, 1, it says, when everything was ready,

the Lord said to Noah, go into the boat with all your family for among all the

people of the earth, I can see that you alone are righteous.

So he is not through with humanity at this point. He says, Noah,

I see in you characteristics that I want to expand, that I want to grow,

and I want to use you and your descendants to,

repopulate this world.

Noah was an imperfect man. A few chapters later, Noah is going to be,

he's going to be overcome with drunkenness and he's going to.

His son is going to stumble in and apparently see him naked and mock him and

make fun of him with his other brothers.

It's a whole chaotic scene, but it shows that Noah's not perfect.

So righteous here does not mean sinless.

Righteous here means that they are seeking after God and kind of putting this,

on with what we're going through in the book of James, Noah builds the ark.

Noah goes onto the ark. He puts his trust in God, and that trust leads to actions.

And that's what righteousness is called in Genesis 15.

So that's what righteousness means. Then we have Genesis 12 verses 1 and 3,

Genesis 12:1

which says, The Lord had said to Abram, leave your native country,

your relatives and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous,

and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse

those who treat you with contempt.

All the families on earth will be blessed through you.

And again, he is not done with humanity. He wants to bless the entirety of the

world through Abraham and his family.

He wants to shower Abraham with these blessings.

And what I see happening here is that God is carving out a place on earth,

a place that if you're trading from Europe and going down to Africa,

you have to go through the promised land.

If you're going from Africa to Asia, Asia to Europe, you have to go through

the promised land. And the goal here is that God is going to shower blessings

upon the Israelites, and people are going to ask, how do you have so much wealth?

How are you doing this? And they're going to say, let me tell you about Yahweh.

Let me show you how we are doing this, because the one true God is blessing us.

Then we have the story of Jacob and Jacob's ladder in Genesis 28, verses 13 and 15.

Genesis 28:13

And as we all know, Jacob is not the most moral human being.

He's cheated his brother out of his birthright. He's lied to his father to get

the blessing that Esau was due.

And so he's not the perfect person.

The poster boy of morality. But yet God says this to him.

So at the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, I am the Lord,

the God of your grandfather, Abraham, and the God of your father, Isaac.

The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I am giving it to you and your descendants.

Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth.

They will spread out in all directions, to the west and the east,

to the north and the south, and all the families of the earth will be blessed

through you and your descendants. What's more, I am with you and I will protect you wherever you go.

One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have

finished giving you everything I have promised.

And again, God's not done with humanity yet.

In spite of Jacob's failures here, God is going to give him the blessings of Abraham.

This land will be yours. I will bless the whole world through your descendants.

They will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

I am going to do this. So Genesis, back in the pre-days of Noah,

when back in Genesis 6, we saw that God was grieved.

It was not because humans had lost their rankings in this world.

God was still in love with them. It was just about how it was painful to God when humans sinned.

One last thing I want to go over tonight because I don't want us to think that

God was just for one people group.

He was not just for the descendants of Abraham, but he was still for the entirety of the world.

I have two examples in Genesis of God showering people who were outside of the

lineage of Abraham, showing how he was still pulling all people to himself.

It is not about one people group. It is about the entirety of this world. The first one is Hagar.

This is Abraham and Sarah's Egyptian slave.

And Hagar did not have an easy life after Hagar.

Sarah had the idea, and Abraham agreed to marry her and to have a son through her.

So she got impregnated, and she started treating Sarah badly, Scripture tells us.

And then Sarah was really harsh to her, and so she fled.

And in Genesis 16, 11 through 14, we read, And the angel also said,

You are now pregnant, and you will give birth to a son.

You are to name him Ishmael, which means God hears. For the Lord has heard your cry of distress.

The son of yours will be a wild man as untamed as a wild donkey.

He will raise his fist against everyone, and everyone will be against him.

Yes, he will live in open hostility against all his relatives.

Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her.

She said, You are the God who sees me.

She also said, have I truly seen the one who sees me?

So that well was named Bir Lahai Roy, which means well of the living one who

sees me. It can still be found between Kadesh and Berid.

And so Hagar, not from the family line of Abraham.

She is an Egyptian. She is an outcast at this moment because Sarah regrets what

she did, putting Hagar as her husband's second wife.

And she is all alone now, and God reaches out. God still sees her,

and God is going to bless her.

The child will not, will grow, will become, not everything here seems like a

good thing, but he will grow.

He will survive. He will thrive. And this is reiterated later on in this story

in Genesis 21 verses 14 to 21.

Genesis 21:14–21

So after Isaac is born, Sarah says, I can't have Ishmael. I can't have Hagar

here. You got to send them out.

And Abraham is grieved by this, but he, this is what happens.

So Abraham got up early the next morning, prepared food and a container of water

and strapped them on Hagar's shoulders.

Then he sent her away with their son and she wandered aimlessly in the wilderness of Beersheba.

When the water was gone, she put the boy in the shade of a bush.

Then she went and sat down by herself about a hundred yards away.

I don't want to watch the boy die, she said, as she burst into tears.

But God heard the boy crying and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven.

Hagar, what's wrong? Don't be afraid.

God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.

Go to him and comfort him, for I will make him make a great nation from his descendants.

Then God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well full of water.

She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a drink.

And God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness. He became a skillful

archer and he settled in the wilderness of Paran, his mother arranged for him

to marry a woman from the land of Egypt.

Again, the concept here is that she is not an Israelite and God is still caring for her.

God is still looking after her. He wants her to know he sees her. He wants her to know that.

He is with her in the wilderness, wherever she goes.

The last example we have is Tamar. Now, Tamar is a very fascinating story,

and it takes place with Jacob's son, Judah, and his family.

So in Genesis 38, 11, we read, then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law.

I guess I need to preface this.

So Tamar marries Judah's oldest son.

Judah's oldest son is a wicked man, and God takes his life, scripture says.

And so Judah does what their law requires, that Tamar will marry his second son.

And the second son does not want to raise up for his older brother a son.

He just doesn't want to do that. And so he makes sure that he doesn't do that.

And God sees his wickedness and takes his life. And Judah correlates his two

sons' death with Tamar. And so that's where we pick up in the story.

Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, go back to your parents' home

and remain a widow until my son, Shelah, is old enough to marry you.

But Judah didn't really intend to do this because he was afraid Shelah would

also die like his two brothers.

So Tamar went back to live in her father's home.

So as a widow, there were certain restrictions that came upon these individuals,

and they were struggling. This is not ideal for Tamar. Tamar,

again, is an outcast. She is not wanted by her father-in-law.

She is trying to wait and do her duty to marry the third son here,

Shelah, but Judah has no intention of doing that.

And so when and it became clear to Tamar that Judah was not going to give him, give her to Shelah.

She fashioned a plan and she seduced her father-in-law, got pregnant,

and was found out that Judah was actually the one who impregnated her.

And when he found this out, this is the response in verses 26 to 30 of Genesis 38.

Judah recognized them immediately and said, she is more righteous than I am,

because I didn't arrange for her to marry my son, Sheila.

And Judah never slept with Tamar again. When the time came for Tamar to give

birth, it was discovered that she was carrying twins.

While she was in labor, one of the babies reached out his hand.

The midwife grabbed it and tied a scarlet string around the child's wrist,

announcing this one came out first, but then he pulled back his hand and out

came his brother. What? The midwife exclaimed.

How did you break out first? So he was named Perez.

Then the baby with the scarlet string on his wrist was born, and he was named Zerah.

So again, someone from outside the family line of Abraham, someone that is considered

an outcast, someone that Judah didn't want, that Judah thought was like a curse upon his family.

God was always with her and God blesses her in this way.

And the reason we know that God blesses her is because of what happens in the

genealogy of Jesus, found in Matthew chapter 1, verse 3.

Matthew 1:3

It says, this Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar.

Perez was the father of Hezron. Hezron was the father of Ram.

And what this goes on to show is that Perez through Tamar is an ancestor to Jesus.

That's the line that Jesus is born in.

And so even though they didn't consummate the relationship again.

There is somehow Tamar, Perez, Zerah, they all lived with Judah,

and God took care of them.

Again, I said a little bit earlier something that I probably shouldn't have

said, the idea that it was through one family line and one family line only.

That's what God's plan was. That's what it worked out, but that doesn't mean

he stopped calling the rest of the world.

He was always intent on being a blessing for that entire world.

And that's what the book of Genesis teaches us about what God sees in us.

I watched a video today from a professor at Talbot School of Theology,

and going back on the idea of the image and likeness of God,

this is what Dr. Dominic Hernandez says.

One of the main things we end up seeing, let's say, through the creation of

human beings, is that in the Bible, human beings are created in the image of God, of their God.

That's totally unique. And the ancient Near East hearing someone say,

oh, you're in the image of God, like, no, that's never going to happen.

The God of Israel saying through the early chapters of Genesis,

I made human beings in my image, and that's why you are to honor human lives.

That's one of the main reasons you are to honor human life, because human beings are image bearers.

That's unique to the story of the Bible.

And when we really follow in that belief, when we live out that belief,

so many things can change for the better.

Okay, let me pray.

Gracious Heavenly Father, we come before you today and we thank you that we

are created in your image and in your likeness.

Father, it is a humbling thing that we are to be your representatives to everyone we encounter.

And it's humbling to think that when we curse someone.

We're cursing you because that person is your representative.

And when we praise someone, we're praising you because that person is made in

your image and likeness.

How amazing you are.

And I pray, Father, that the words from our mouths and the meditations of our

hearts will be honorable in your sight.

And I pray, Father, that we live into the reality that says we are made special

and that you love us so much.

And I pray that impacts us and.

How we interact with others. Jesus, I pray all of this in your name. Amen.

Thank you again for joining us in the discussion about God's view of humanity.

God is our creator and he has created us in his image and likeness.

We have the same essence and substance as God.

We are his special creation. We are the pinnacle of his created order.

This should affect what we think about ourselves and what we think about others.

If you would like more information about Faith Chapel and its ministries,

please visit the website gofaithchapel.org.

Next week, we will continue in this series as we study how Genesis reveals God's plan for marriage.