BFM: Man
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
We live in a society of gender confusion and a world that genuinely believes that mankind was brought into existence by blind luck and evolved over billions of years. Our world will tell us that the idea of a Creator is “old news” and that “science” has answered the “God” question that our ancestors simply lacked the resources to answer. What we find in Scripture, though, is a completely different story, correct? We see that there are not dozens of genders and that mankind did not stumble out of some primordial soup from space. We see that there is a Creator who designed us intimately and created us in His image. We see that there is man and woman and both of these genders are created with different roles but equal respect. We see that mankind is the apex creation and the only created being created in the “Image of God”. With this in mind, let’s dive into what the BFM has to say about “Man”.
“Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God's creation. In the beginning man was innocent of sin and was endowed by his Creator with freedom of choice. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Through the temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. Therefore, as soon as they are capable of moral action, they become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.”
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.
Genesis 1:26-30
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”
26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ 29 “Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.
11 There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; 12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.”
12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—
19 For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
We see that there are not as many passages of Scripture associated with this article of the BFM when compared to other articles (especially God). With that said, there are wonderful truths that we need to examine here in order to get a correct idea of who mankind is in the grand scheme of things in Scripture. First,
God created humans
God created humans
For those of us who grew up going to church we all remember the creation story in Sunday school, right? We would spend time talking about what God created each and every day and what do we find at the end of each “day”? God said that “it was good”. We see in that God created mankind. Mankind did not evolve from another species nor did we form by random chance, no, we were designed by our Father! We see in this passage that mankind is tasked with ruling over the other created beings. This task is something that remains for humankind today. We are the greatest creation.
Think of all the wonderful and beautiful places that you have either traveled to or seen in a movie or picture. Think about how beautiful this place is and how special it is. Now meditate on the fact that you are infinitely more complex and beautiful than this location or geographical feature. shows us that God formed man out of dust and breathed into his nostrils and he became a living being.
Whenever we make a speech, where do we put the most important information? Obviously we want to capture the attention of the audience initially, however we typically put our “ace up our sleeves” at the end of our speech. We value last words in the lives of people as well, right? We remember the last thing that Jesus said on the cross, “It is Finished”. We remember what Jesus said as He ascended into heaven as shows us. We highlight the importance of last words now and this was especially common in Biblical times. The fact that mankind was created on the last day is not to say that we are less important than the rest of creation, in fact it is the opposite.
Whenever someone asks us how can we know that God exists, what are some things that we say? Many of us will say that we have “faith” or we will share our “testimony”. These are great things and they are true! We shouldn’t “not” do these things or share them, however being a very left-brained person, I cannot simply share my feelings without “hard evidence”. This leads me to immediately talk about the sun. The earth is 93 million miles away from the sun. If the earth were to move even a couple thousand miles away from the sun, our atmosphere would completely change as the temperature would drop by several degrees worldwide. On the converse, if the earth were a couple thousand miles closer to the sun, temperatures would rise and sea levels would rise and making life on earth significantly more difficult if not impossible altogether. We are 93 million miles away from the sun and a couple thousand miles potentially determines whether life on earth is sustainable or not. We are in a picture perfect place in the cosmos for life to not only exist but to thrive. You cannot chalk that up to “chance”. Moving this argument to mankind, let’s talk about the human eye. The human eye is so complex that Charles Darwin (the father of evolution) could not definitively state that the eye could have evolved due to its complexity. Evolutionary scholar Dr. Jastrow stated, “It is hard to accept the evolution of the human eye as a product of ‘chance’”. Of course the Christian knows this to be true! Mankind was created by God. There is no “chance” involved in this process.
Humans are created in the Image of God
Humans are created in the Image of God
One of the coolest parts of the creation account in is in verse 26 as the Bible states, “God said, “Let us create man in our image””. Who on earth could “God” be talking to in this passage? As we talked about last week, the trinity (Father, Son, Spirit) are 1 in nature and 3 in person. In this passage of Scripture, this is the trinity talking among themselves. Let “us” create man in our image. What an awesome truth this is! We are not created by blind luck and we are not evolved from something else, we are created in the very image of God Himself! We see in this one verse that there is community as well. There is also meant to be community as Christians and humans as well.
How often does our society try and tell us that we are supposed to be a “certain” way? Very often! The awesome reminder for us today is that we are created unique but we are all created in the image of God. We must remember this daily. Also, we see that, in the trinity, God is Spirit in addition to Father and Son. We too are more than merely matter and flesh/bones. Science tries to deny the supernatural by explaining things happen via natural events, and of course we know this to be true some of the times. In ancient times, a comet was often a symbol from a god about an upcoming war or prophecy. Nowadays, we know that meteors light up our sky often because there are billions of floating rocks in space. Science can answer some of these questions, especially ones that ancient cultures chalked up to being supernatural. However, what Science cannot do is completely deny the supernatural. We are created in the Image of God. We have a Spirit/soul in addition to our flesh and bones. Praise God for this fact because our flesh will one day pass away, but we know that our Spirit will live on for eternity!
God created 2 genders
God created 2 genders
Gender is a gift from God. Praise God that men and women are equally created in the Image of God. Man is not more like God than woman and women are not more created in God’s image than men are. With that said, just as is the case with the trinity, there are different persons or assignments within males and females. We see in Genesis that women are tasked with childbirth. Men, praise God for that fact, right? On the converse, men are tasked with leading the family unit. Does this mean that a woman cannot have a job or make money? No. Does this mean that the woman is lesser than the man or less intelligent? No. What it means is that, just as the Son subordinates to the Father, the woman submits to the husband as the husband submits to Christ. We are equally created in the image of God but there are different roles for both genders.
Our culture screams that we are “ignorant” or “close-minded” when it comes to the gender crisis. They say that we are not being tolerant of the views of others whenever we hold onto Biblical truths such as there only being 2 genders. The fact of the matter is that our society does not make the rules. God does and He did. He said there was man and woman. He gives us instruction throughout Scripture to help us in raising children and advancing His Kingdom in the way we live our lives. talks about how creation is without excuse because God’s power and nature has been seen by all. Paul goes on to say in verse 22-24
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
This sounds an awfully lot like what people are doing today, does it not? People have seen the power and splendour of the Creator, God, yet they give His glory up and fall down before idols. We make ourselves our own gods and think that we have all the answers when in actuality, as wise as mankind thinks we are, we are foolish.
Human life is Sacred
Human life is Sacred
The BFM states: “The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.”
Human life is sacred. Let’s begin looking at this statement from a non-Christian view, though. There is no God. Life is by chance. Mankind evolved. Human life is not special. Do as you please. Doesn’t this logically make sense if your starting point is that there isn’t a God? You can rationalize awful actions simply because you don’t believe that human life is sacred.
As Christians, we know that this is not the case! Every human being, from the womb to the tomb possesses dignity for at least 3 reasons: 1) Every individual is created in the image of God. 2) Christ’s death on the cross was for the human race. 3) All humans descend from a common ancestor. If we look back at evolution and see that man evolved, how is life sacred? It is simply a process of biology. Charles Darwin talked about “survival of the fittest”. This statement would imply things like racism, genderism and ageism by definition because some ethnicities are used to certain climates over others. One gender can be better suited for a task than the other. Some ages are better to do things like run a marathon than others. By definition, survival of the fittest beings about division. Scripture though, what does it have to say about such things? All are created in the image of God. It’s not a competition, it’s an anthem of praise to our creator!
I would be remiss to fail to mention abortion in this segment of our study on human life. Abortion has become something so common place that many states allow young women at the age of 15/16 to get an abortion. Our society promotes and celebrates “victories” in making abortion easier and more accessible. This is an open defiance to the living God. As Christians, we know life to be sacred. We know that every life has value. Therefore, abortion cannot be celebrated! With that said, though. We must make sure that abortion is not where we stop in celebrating the sacredness of human life. We must make sure that we continue to help out those who are in need in our communities and abroad. All life is valuable. One of the knocks on Christianity is that we are so much about the abortion issue and so little for the poor. I disagree with this, personally, but I understand where they are coming from. We hear messages about abortion on a weekly basis from preachers around the nation yet we rarely hear messages about helping out the poor and homeless. We must be consistent that all life is sacred from the womb to the tomb.
Sin corrupts man
Sin corrupts man
Mankind was originally created in innocence. Adam and Eve were without sin! and show us though that sin entered into the world and sin spread from Adam to all mankind. Because of this, mankind is corrupted. We have a sinful nature and sinful actions are the symptoms of our inner disease. This does not mean that we cannot do good, though! We can certainly do good whenever we put first the Kingdom of God! We know that we cannot heal ourselves and bring ourselves into salvation. Only Jesus Christ could do that. Praise God for grace. Praise God that something was done about the power and grip of sin! The BFM talks about sin a lot in this article. This is because sin is powerful and destructive for mankind! With that in mind, though, we know that where sin brought in corruption, Christ brings in restoration. Where sin spread to all mankind through the sin of Adam, grace spreads to many through the free gift of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Mankind is the greatest creation in the Genesis account. We see that man is created in the image of God and that there are clearly 2 genders created. With that said, these genders are equal yet they have different roles. Human life is sacred and we must value all humans because all are created in the Image of God. We see the power of sin over mankind but we also see that Christ has power over all things and has given us a way out. Because of His life, death and resurrection, mankind can be brought into right standing with the Father once again. What is our response to this message? We must know who we are. We are not here by accident or random chance. We are image bearers of God and we have a responsibility to live a godly life on this planet. We know that we are all a work in progress. We are not perfect and we don’t treat others perfectly either, however, praise God that we are being made more like Christ each and every day. As we have seen in , we have confidence that one day this work will be completed and our glorification and resurrection will transpire and we will see our Savior face to face.
What a day that will be, when my Jesus I shall see.
Let’s pray