Sermon on Genesis 1:26

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them (Gen 1:24-27).

So we find, now, the crowning act of God's creation. Having created the world with its many life forms, He now wants one to rule over these life forms. So God said, "let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

The tri-unity of God is found in the first verse of the Bible, "in the beginning God," the word in Hebrew is "Elohim". Elohim is a plural word. Other places in the Old Testament it is translated Gods. "El" is God in Hebrew, singular. In Hebrew there is a dual tense, two, and the Hebrew "Elah" is God in a dual tense. But "Elohim" is the plural tense for God. And so, even the tri-unity of God is expressed in the first verse, "in the beginning God," Elohim. Not "El", but "Elohim" created the heavens and the earth.

And the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, moved over the face of the waters. "And God said". The moment God spoke, you have the Word of God. "And in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And the same was in the beginning with God, and all things were made by Him"(John 1:1).

Now you have God saying "let us make man in our image after our likeness". Who was God talking to? God after the counsel of His own will, in the triunity of the Godhead which we, in our feeble, finite minds cannot comprehend. But in that trinity of His nature, He said "let us make man after our image" and thus he made man after His image, a trinity of nature. So God is a superior trinity. Man, made in the image of God is an inferior trinity. The superior trinity being Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the inferior trinity of man being body, soul and spirit.

"After His likeness". The chief governing characteristic of God is His self-determination, His will, His ability to choose and to determine His own destiny or His own mind. Man, being created in the image of God was created a self-determinant being. Being created after the image of God, God created me with a capacity to choose. I have the power of self-determination. I can choose what I want. I have that power, that capacity. I'm made in the image of God, who is a self-determinant being.

Now, if God created me with a capacity of choice, it would be totally meaningless unless He gave me a choice. What value would it be for me to have the capacity to choose if there was nothing to choose? Not only giving me the capacity of choice, He also respects the choice that I make. Again, what value would it be for God to give me the freedom of choice but then not respect the choice? I say, "well I want to do this". He says bloop, "you can't do that." Then that isn't' free choice. He has, He does not respect my choice, and thus it isn't really the freedom of choice. So having given me the capacity of choice, making me in His image, He has to then offer me an alternative, give me a choice to make; but then, He has to respect that choice that I have made.

Part of the intricacy of self-determination; that image of God in which man was created. That is why, when God created man and He created the garden for man to dwell in, that He put in that Garden a tree of knowledge of good and evil and said to man, "Don't eat that". Therein is the choice that man was given, because having been created with the capacity of choice, it is no value unless there is something to choose.

But again, in honoring and respecting my choice, if I choose that I don't want to know God, I don't want to serve God, I don't want to love God, then it would be manifestly wrong for Him to force me to go to heaven where I would have to love Him, and have to be with Him, and have to serve Him. "I don't want God in my life! I don't want God around me! I don't, I want God to leave me alone!" All right, if He then doesn't leave me alone, He's not respecting my choice. What value is it then for me to have a choice if He doesn't respect it? It is an awesome thing to realize that God does respect my choice.

Now, He does speak to influence my choice because He loves me, and He knows what is best for me. And knowing me and loving me, and knowing what is best, He seeks to influence my choice and to direct my choice, but I always have the right to say, "bug off, God, I don't want to follow you." And He will not force His choice upon me, because that would not be free choice.

The chief emotional attribute of God is love. God making me in His image has made me with this beautiful capacity to love. I am capable of loving, of giving and receiving love, and to know the meaningfulness of giving and receiving love, because I am created in the image of God and that's His chief emotional characteristic; is to love. Now God is honored when I follow Him, and I love as He loves. But I don't have to, again I have a choice, and I can choose to hate if I want. But I have the capacity to love.

So man was made in the image of God and in the likeness of God. Now, that does not necessarily mean a physical likeness of God. What God looks like; none of us know. God constantly refused that man should make any kind of a likeness of Him. Thus, as God appeared to man in the Old Testament, there was no form, so that man would not think of God in the terms of a form and try to carve out a form that would represent God.

The likeness of God we see in Jesus Christ; the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Christ. Now, when God created our bodies, He created ears so that we could hear, designed them so that they would pick up sound vibrations that would bounce or vibrate the little incus stapes, and bones in there and send these vibrations into the brain that my brain would interpret as words and sounds and make it intelligible to me. So, I think of my ears when I think of hearing.

Now, I know that God can hear, but it doesn't necessarily follow that God has ears. I need ears to hear, but God wouldn't necessarily need ears to hear. I make sounds by the use of the throat and the tongue and the teeth, and the roof of the mouth and so forth. I form the sounds by the expelling of air and the movement of all of these things in coordination, so that the sounds come forth in a way, that because we have agreed that particular sounds mean particular things, I'm able to communicate intelligibly to you through sounds that I can form in my mouth. I can speak to you.

Back to CHAPTER 1: CREATION