Genesis
1:26-2:3
1. You were created as an act of love
Look at Rublev’s icon of
the Trinity: Three persons in complete communion with each other.
I’d like to speak this
morning about you!
1. You were created as an act of love
‘God saw everything that
he had made, and indeed, it was very good’ (Genesis 1:31)
Forgive me for being a bit
philosophical.
We are created beings. We
can only love as a response.
I see you and I love you
I taste chocolate and I
love chocolate
Our love is always a
response to something that has been created, to something that is there.
But God’s love is
different. God creates what he loves
God does not see you and
love you. God loves you and so created you.
That is why, when God
looks at everything that he has created, it was good.
You are loved and therefore
you exist.
2. You were created in
the image of God
Genesis 1.26, ‘Then God
said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image’
Genesis 1.27, ‘So God
created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and
female he created them’
That does not mean that
the invisible eternal God, who is bigger than all our conceptions and ideas,
stands – for instance - on two legs. Although he did come and do that, when
Jesus came to us!
We talk about a painting
or a photo or an icon as being an image and a likeness of the person
represented. But it is only an image or likeness in a limited way.
There is a picture, an
image, of me
And here is me
There is a difference, I
hope!
So what does it mean when
it says that God makes us in his own image? Are we like a photo of God, that he
has a face like us?
I would suggest that to be
created in the image of God means that
a) We are created to
be in relationship with God
Most of the commentaries
speak of how to be created in the image of God means that there is something in
us – some identify it with consciousness – which means that God can have a
relationship with us.
We can know him; we can hear
him speaking to us and we can respond by calling to him and speaking with him.
To be made in the image of
God means that we can know God in a way that an ant, or even a dolphin – that most
amazing of creatures, cannot know God.
And in Genesis 3, in the
story of the fall, we are given a beautiful picture of what this relationship
could have looked like. We are told that Adam and Eve could have been walking in
the garden in the cool of the evening together with God.
b) We are created to
be in relationship with one another
There is something very
telling about the wording of verses 26 and 27
In verse 26, God says, ‘Let
us make humankind in our image’
In verse 27, ‘So God created
humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and
female he created them’.
There is a singular in God:
‘So God created humankind in his image’
But there is also a plurality:
‘God said ‘Let us make humankind in our image’
Christians have come to
understand that singular and plurality in terms of the Trinity – one being, three
persons. Three persons who are unique, but dependent on each other, in unity
with each other, part of each other.
Look at what we say in the
creed:
‘We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty
‘We believe in one Lord,
Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from
light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one Being with the Father’
‘We believe in the Holy
Spirit .. who proceeds from the Father (and the Son), who with the Father and
the Son is worshipped and glorified’
They are one, they have
the same face, but they are different, and they are in communion with each
other.
And so – this singular but
plural God – creates not just man, but man and woman, male and female.
He created two who were the
same but different, male and female, but he created us for communion, for union.
He created us for relationship, for intimacy.
And the human model for
that communion is marriage, two becoming one.
Now I am not saying that
if you are not married then you are not reflecting God.
Far from it. Jesus was not
married. Paul was not married. Mother Theresa was not married.
In marriage, and it is
intended for marriage alone, there is physical, sexual intimacy. Two become one
physically
But to be made in the image
of God, means that we were created for relationship with each other, for spiritual
intimacy with each other, that union of
soul with soul with soul: whereby two, three, four, who are similar but
different, become spiritually one.
So that when I say, ‘I desire
this and do this’, I can in all integrity also say, ‘We desire this and do this’.
We were created to be,
like the persons of the Trinity, in relationship with each other
c) We are created to
reflect the goodness of God
To be created in the image
of God is to be God’s representative on earth, to share his ‘dominion’, his
Lordship, over the creation
v26: ‘Let us make
humankind in our image .. and let hem have dominion over the fish ..’
v28: ‘God blessed them and
God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it;
and have dominion over the fish …”
Today there is concern about
the word ‘dominion’ and ‘subdue’. The argument is that these words have meant
that human beings have felt free to mercilessly exploit the creation – so that
we are in the mess that we are today.
But remember that this is dominion
God style.
This is dominion,
Lordship, which allows the other to flourish, to grow, to become what it should
be.
This is dominion that
brings order out of chaos.
This is servant Lordship –
the sort of Lordship that kneels at the others’ feet to wash them, so that they
might be clean before God; the sort of Lordship that is willing to die for
those over whom it has dominion.
We are, as it were, to be
estate managers – not estate exploiters. And as human beings who have been
given dominion over creation, we also have responsibility for creation. We are
accountable for creation. In the end, we are responsible if the dolphins go
extinct. They are not responsible if we go extinct.
The story is told of a
priest walking past a peasant’s garden. It was stunning and cared for with such
tenderness and attention. The flowers were beautiful; the vegetable patch immaculate.
It was a picture of harmony. The priest stopped and gazed, and said to the peasant,
who was digging over the potatoes, ‘Give glory to God. What an amazing creator
he is’. And the peasant replied, ‘Aye. That he is. But you should have seen
this place when it was just left to him’.
We have been created in
the image of God to work together with God in caring for this beautiful
creation that he has given us - not to
exploit it, not to ravish it, but to tend it as a gift of love so that it
becomes what it was meant to be.
And Genesis 1 is about
what this creation looked like, or would have looked like, if there had been no
fall. In verse 29-30 we see that all living creatures were vegetarian. There is
a beautiful harmony about Genesis 1. All things working together, with men and
women together caring and loving God’s creation.
[I know that there is an
elephant in the room! ‘Is it true? Did God create the world in 6 24-hour days?
Were dinosaurs only vegetarian before the fall? How do I explain the fact that
the sun and moon are only created on the third day – what was a day before the sun
and moon were created? Doesn’t the order of creation in Genesis 1 contradict
the order of creation in Genesis 2?
And this is not really the
place for me to explain how Christians, including eminent scientists, have
understood Genesis 1 - 3.
But my own thinking is
that those questions rather miss the point. We need to ask why was Genesis 1
written? What is God trying to tell us through this account of the creation?
And I do believe that this is the Word of God, and so when I get to heaven and
look back, and begin to see clearly, I will then say, ‘But of course Genesis 1
and Genesis 2 are absolutely true. They told us, in the best possible way that
they could have told us, in a way that speaks to every culture and every time, what God wanted us to know, and everything that we
needed to know, so that we might come to know him and love him, and love the
world that he put us in'.]
So you were created in
love, as an act of love.
You were created in the
image of God
3. You were created to
delight in God and in the creation of God
‘And on the seventh day
God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from
all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it
..’ (Genesis 2:2)
The seventh day, the
Sabbath, was not created by God for God (he didn’t really need a day of rest),
but for us. As Jesus said, ‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not
humankind for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27)
And the Old Testament speaks
of the Sabbath as a day of physical rest, not just for you, but for those who
work for you, and for the animals and for the land.
And the New Testament
speaks of the true Sabbath as the rest of the Kingdom of God, of heaven.
The Sabbath is the day of
completion, when everything is in its rightful place, a day of freedom, of delight
in creation, each other and God.
The Jews celebrated the
Sabbath on the seventh day
But the earliest Christians
realised that the logic of the Sabbath was fulfilled by the resurrection of
Jesus, when God opened the door for us into a new heaven and earth. So they
moved the special day from the Sabbath, the Saturday, to the Sunday – the day
of the resurrection (and, in so doing, they gave us one of the strongest arguments
for the historic reality of the resurrection).
And God has called us to enter
into his rest.
We enter into his rest
when we take a day out and stop from our work and have time to delight in God
and his world and each other. When we obey the fourth commandment.
We enter into his rest
when we stop relying on our works to save us, and trust him (Hebrews 4.3)
And we enter into his rest
when we die and ‘rest from our labours’ (Revelation 12:13)
We enter into his rest
when we stop trusting in ourselves, or in our works to save us, and we start to
trust him and his deep love for you.
We enter into his rest
when we lose ourselves in delight of his creation, of each other and of him.
So this is you!
Created in love
Created in the image of
God
Created to delight in God
and each other and his creation
Of course Genesis 1 is only
the beginning of the story.
In Genesis 3 we have the
fall. Sin and death come into the world.
And the rest of the Bible
is the story of how God rescues us and sets us free.
And because of Jesus, of
his death and resurrection, we look forward to the day when not only we are
saved and set free from the power of sin and death, when we enter into the
glory of the children of God, but creation itself is set free from, as Paul
writes in Romans 8.21, its ‘bondage to decay’.
So now is a time of
waiting, of longing, of groaning for that day.
But it is also a time of
hope.
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