Day 6, pt. 2 – Creation of Man

Genesis 1-2

Adam was made from dust, and so are you and I. And to dust we will return. For six literal 24 hour days God created every aspect of the Earth for the purpose of making it a home for man, who was then created different from the rest of His creation…for man alone was created in God’s image.

Man was made in the image of God

In verse 26 we are introduced to the crown of creation. Then it is said in another way; “after our likeness”. Then in verse 27 it’s repeated two more times if we might somehow miss the point and possibly think we came from some other likeness, such as that of a primate.  It’s repeated again in

Genesis 5:1

^… In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

Now what does it mean to be made in the image of God? It means you’re not just some higher animal. Man is the only living thing in the universe made with a divine pattern. The truest part of man cannot be reduced to any chemical formula. Real humanity cannot be seen in DNA, nor can it be found in the chromosomes.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

¹¹ He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world [eternity] in their [man’s] heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

What a great statement. That’s true only of man.

Ecclesiastes 3:21

²¹ Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

Down, or back to the earth, out of existence.

But as for man, you can take away our body and we will live forever, somewhere. Unlike animals, man has ‘reason’ rather than just instinct. Man has the capability to think abstractly. Man has the ability to appreciate beauty, to feel emotion, to be morally conscious, and to personally relate to others, and to God. The Godhead is plural here in v. 26 [let us], for they exist in relationship with one another, and we are made in that same image. That’s personhood. Man has the ability to love, to fellowship, and to converse with a language.

The ethical essence of man shows that he has the capacity for moral behavior, to be holy and righteous, to be sanctified, to obey God, and to receive eternal salvation.

Man was to be the king of the earth

v. 26 says we have dominion over: and then He went on to describe everything He had already made.

v. 28 adds the word ‘subdue’. Man was designed by God to be the sovereign of the planet, to be the king of the earth.

Genesis 2:19

¹⁹ And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

Now that was the first thing that man had to do. If he was going to be the sovereign over creation he had to identify creation. He had to classify creation and he did that, he had the capability to look at the characteristics of a given creature and give it a fitting name which he did. We use 10% of our brain power today. Adam had all the marbles!

Genesis 2:15

¹⁵ And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

Now remember there’s no curse yet, there’s no sin, there’s no fall, there’s no death, but there was some way in which there was a tending to the garden of God.

Genesis 2:9,16,17 [turn]

⁹ And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. ¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: ¹⁷ But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

What’s that? That was the one warning.  You’ve got one job. Choose to obey me. God gave man a choice. He didn’t force him to obey, like a robot. He gets more glory when we choose to follow Him.

Today we should do all we can to tend to our world, but we cannot subdue the garden of God as we would like. It’s a wild world and we hear all about the death that occurs in our world. We even have plants that are deadly. There are plants that are drugs, and we have living bacteria and things like that which can kill, that have created plagues that have literally resulted in the death of millions of people. We have animals that are killers. It’s not the garden it was originally because of the fall and curse.

Hebrews 2:7-8

Thou madest him [Christ] a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: ⁸ Thou hast put all things in subjection [dominion] under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.

Christ is the true king of the earth. He came down and became one of us, and so he took on the dominion mandate. But we don’t yet see all things subjected to him. We don’t see the animal kingdom under control, docile and passive. We don’t see plant life just growing and flourishing without any care and tending. We don’t see the world free from war and hatred and disease and illness. So we don’t yet see all things subjected to him, but we will. Someday he will reverse the curse, he will be king of the earth.

Hebrews 2:10

For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

Through his death he gained the right to be the sovereign of the earth and he will take that right, and he will bring us along with him bringing many sons to glory. So we could say this - that there was before the fall of man a dominion mandate given to him which he could exercise, but he lost that in the fall and it will only be regained when Jesus returns and sets up His kingdom, the restored earth, and it’s Eden again. Isaiah says the desert will blossom like a rose, the lion will lie down with the lamb, a child will play in a snake pit, and if somebody dies at a 100 years they die a baby.

So in the beginning God made man in His image, to be king of the earth. But the fall made that image incomplete; a body and soul, but with a dead spirit.

Man was made to propagate human life

vv. 27-28a               God designed marriage and procreation.

Genesis 2:18

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

Now I know what most people think ‘help’ means; somebody to do the dishes, somebody to clean, somebody to make the bed. But that’s not the kind of helper He meant; he needed help in one main thing and that was procreation, propagation of the human race. He needs a helper, he needs a partner, he needs a perfect match.

Genesis 2:21-24 [turn]

²¹ And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; ²² And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. ²³ And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. ²⁴ Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Now this is important; the male is made first and this is necessary in creation. It shows the amazing accuracy of the book of Genesis. Genetics confirms this, for the male has both X and Y chromosomes. X engender females, and Y engender males. Males are X and Y, females are not. If the female had been created first and the male taken out of her body then reproduction would have been impossible for there would have been nothing but X chromosomes. In which case only females could have been reproduced, because females don’t have a Y chromosome. Man had to be created first because he has an X and a Y chromosome.

God knew exactly what he was doing, and so he reached in and took a bone and that bone had the encoded DNA in the cell structure which could create a female partner for Adam and together they could produce both more males and females.

So the male and female design were to allow mankind to procreate, which would allow us the wonderful responsibility and privilege of producing others in the image of God. What an incredible blessing. You bring a little baby into the world and that’s an eternal person made in the image of God. There’s absolutely nothing like it. Therefore, God is saying you can extend your dominion over the face of the earth. The same is said to Noah when he got off the ark.

What does it mean to be one flesh? One flesh could of course mean you have intimacy. That’s obvious. But I believe one flesh is best understood in the little newborn flesh-covered life that comes from them. I know for my wife and me one flesh means that you think alike and you do things together. We really feel like we are in a very real sense the same person. We were two but were made one and when separated we really feel it. And some of you know just how true that is to no longer have your help meet and to be incomplete. But the truest and purest expression of one flesh is when both of you come together and produce a new little life.

That was man’s mandate, because in so doing man multiplies the image of God. That’s why we talk so strongly to Christian parents who have little children that they understand the stewardship you have from God to bring that little one, made in the image of God, back to the knowledge of God through faith in Jesus Christ. We have baby dedications, but they really are parent dedications!

Evolutionists have no explanation for why humans usually end up in pairs, unlike most animals. But the Bible explains that’s how God made us.

Man was made to enjoy the creation

v. 28        He blessed them. How did he bless them? He blessed them with dominion, he blessed them with the divine image, and eternal being. He blessed them with the ability to have relationships, he blessed them with personhood, he blessed them with the ability to understand his creation, he blessed them with the capability to know him as well as to know each other. He blessed them with the ability to reproduce themselves and fill the earth with others made in the image of God. He blessed them to have dominion, and he blessed them in one other way.

v. 29        Why did God fill this world with such a variety of food just from the plant side alone? Just fruits and vegetables; nevermind the animals because there’s no death at this point so man was a vegetarian when he was originally created. But there seems to be absolutely no end to all the vegetation, all that grows, that hangs on trees for the joy of man. God could have made a brown sky and brown water and a colorless world, and rice, and we could still survive. Why did God fill this world with such a vast array of plants which just abound? Every time I go to another culture, another place in the world I’m introduced to another thing that people get out of the ground and eat. It’s pretty astonishing, some of them I don’t want a second helping of, like the ‘chicken fingers’ I had in South America, which were literally their feet.

God has blessed us with another amazing human ability, and that is the ability to taste. You take that for granted. You primarily think you taste, but you really smell it as much as taste. Some foods you taste again later after swallowing, and some you smell later…but enough about that. But God has given us the capability to taste certain things. What a blessing so that we can literally just enjoy the immense bounty that God has provided for us.

So Adam and Eve first were vegetarian, they could eat every plant, and animals were also vegetarian back then. Why? Because there was no death, nothing died. There was just that one exception: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They could eat from the tree of life all they wanted, but they couldn’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It’s a sad story isn’t it? That’s exactly what they did. And we’ll talk more about that later.

But for now, let’s celebrate life. Not only did God make me, but He made me in His image, to glorify Him, serve Him, worship Him, have dominion, and expand that dominion until the day we enter His kingdom, hopefully, bringing many others with us!

Gospel