Sermon Tone Analysis

Creation and Re-Creation

Genesis 1

Genesis 1

God created the earth and man’s body as material entities, and all “very good”.

He has a plan for the physical world, not just a spiritual destiny.

Colossians 1:15-

Reconcile to himself what things?

All things.

Salvation and redemption are more than just personal, they are also cosmic, universal.

There is an aspect to Christ’s redemptive purposes that encompasses the entire created order.

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Creation also be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

I want to drill this into your heads, because for so long the Christian church in America has been largely ignoring these passages.

They have given us an eschatology that says the material world is evil and is destined to fail.

Only a complete destruction of the cosmos can lead to a New Heavens and New Earth.

But that’s not how redemption works.

Think about it this way: If the redemption of the world that Paul describes in is paralelled with our own salvation, why would it work differently?

Does God redeem a people for himself by just getting rid of all of the sinful people and then starting over with completely new people?

No, thank the Lord!

Otherwise you and I would all be doomed.

Rather, God takes things that are stained, broken, and marred by sin, in bondage to corruption, and he makes them new, not by building something different, but by restoring the old into something new.

In the same way that we will be ourselves when we have our glorified bodies, just better, holy, free from sin, so the world will be redeemed in the same way.

It will still be same world, but it will be better, new, holier, free from sin and death.

The material world has a purpose, and that purpose does not end in destruction, but redemption.

Ephesians 1:

The Image of God

Man is not a random collection of molecules, a made-over fish, or an advanced ape who arrived on earth after long eons of chance events.

God made him in His image.

This distinguishes him from and elevates him above the animal kingdom which is to be in submission to him.

This was the original plan for creation and humanity.

Let’s do a brief study on the image of God in man throughout the Genesis account.

This should give us a better idea of man’s role in the created order.

Six features define man as God’s image with a view to his reflecting God in these dimensions.

The Personality of God

Ten times in God speaks.

In his speaking he communicates himself and converses with man who is to respond.

Genesis

The Rationality of God

Not only does God speak, but he speaks rationally, with structure and purpose.

“Let there be…and there was.”

Genesis

He blesses man and reasons within himself.

He communicates with man, expecting man to rationally respond.

The Creativity of God

Over and over again we see God creating, for he “made” and commands “let there be”.

Then he puts man in Eden to creatively cultivate it so that he can create human culture.

Genesis

The Authority of God

Things are what they are because God sovereignly calls them thus.

God teaches man to exercise a creaturely authority and dominion.

In fact, he declares man as his image.

God commands “Let them have dominion.”

The Morality of God

God’s creation is beautiful, harmonious and righteous in the beginning.

God sees that all that he creates is good, and he tests man to promote moral goodness.

The Society of God

As the Triune God, the Lord speaks in the plural.

Then he declares that man should compose a society.

The Creation Mandate

All of this leads us to what is called the Creation Mandate.

Each of the features we discussed above culminate in the Creation Mandate.

Because we are delegated authority from God as humanity in Genesis:

We have a responsibility to take dominion over the earth and its creatures.

How do we do this?

Be employing the other features!

Because we have Personality, Rationality, Creativity, Morality, and Society, we can work together to take dominion and authority over the created order.

Or at least, that was the idea before the Fall.

Let’s check out a quote from Sung Wook Chung, who is a premillenialist, but still has a good handle on what the Creation Mandate means in this passage:

God’s action of creating man and woman in his own image and likeness means that God wants to have his representatives in physical form.

The image is a physical manifestation of divine (or royal) essence that bears the function of that which it represents; this gives the image-bearer the capacity to reflect the attributes of the one represented and act on his behalf.

The major task of these representatives is to rule over the whole creation as God’s vice-regents.

Lordship and dominion over the entire creation are given to man and woman unconditionally on the basis of God’s sovereign grace.

Man lives up to his creational purpose when he multiplies and acts as a social creature exercising righteous dominion in the earth.

This Creation/Dominion Mandate remains in effect after the fall, and we see in the early parts of Genesis humanity fulfilling this mandate…that is, until they don’t.

Because now sin has entered the world, and so we cannot fulfill it in the way that we should.

We no longer have the moral capacity to have righteous dominion over God’s Creation, and so we are destined to fail at this task.

That’s why we see God have to intervene at the Flood and the Tower of Babel to still accomplish His purpose of having humanity subdue the earth.

But even that doesn’t work, and God knew it wouldn’t, because man is fallen.

So we see God’s purpose for humanity in this world (bringing glory to God by bearing his image into the world) but they cannot fulfill it on their own.

This is where many Christian theologians stop.

They say that the Creation Mandate had to be abandoned because it was impossible to fulfill.

But this seriously brings into question the fact that God accomplishes His purposes.

So what had to happen?

Jesus had to be the man that Adam couldn’t and fulfill all of God’s redemptive and salvific purposes on Earth, including the restoration and dominion of the created order.

How does this work?

We’ll get to it.

Dominion of the Earth

One important aspect of the implications of the Creation Mandate and the Fall that I wanted to make sure to clarify and explain is that of the delegation of authority and how the Fall affects that delegation.

You see, one of the other reasons that man can’t fulfill his dominion mandate is because he no longer has delegated authority over it in the same way that he did.

Why?

Because the fall gave Satan authority over the earth.

How do we know this?

I think there are plenty of places we could go to find prooftexts or clarifying passages that would imply this fact, but I think the best and easiest place to go is to , with the temptation of Christ by Satan in the wilderness.

Matthew 4:7

What is Satan offering Christ?

The world, and all the kingdoms in it.

Because man no longer had any moral authority, Satan had become defacto ruler.

Satan can’t promise to give away something that he doesn’t own.

Why wouldn’t Jesus just say: You can’t give me that, I already own it, or humans own it?

Because Satan was being truthful.

If Jesus would have worshipped him, he would have given him the kingdoms of the world.