The Story of Reality Part II
Notes
Transcript
Man
Man
If you remember last week we started by laying out these four questions that every worldview must answer.
They are:
Where did we come from? (origins)
What went wrong? (why is it broken)
How can it be fixed? (what is the solution)
How does it all end? (what’s the end result)
We talked about every single worldview has to address these questions one way or another. We looked at a couple examples last week of two worldviews that failed to answer these questions and in essence disqualified or eliminated them as worthwhile options.
If you remember we also laid out how the Christian worldview answers these questions the most fully and completely
Where did we come from---Creation
What went wrong---Fall
How can it be fixed---Redemption
What is the end result---Restoration
God created us, man sinned and the world was broken, Jesus came to save and will one day bring in the new heavens and the new earth.
If you look along this timeline of the biblical storyline we addressed this first one last week: creation. God created the heavens and the earth. We are his subjects along with everything else in all the universe. He is creator and sustainer, he is not creation or nature, he is creator.
We saw that it wasn’t done by mind only as mindism says or with matter only as matterism says. But rather there was a mind (God) who created all things (matter).
We saw the first puzzle piece—God
Today we are going to spend some time right between creation and fall and then eventually get into the fall.
This morning we are going to look to the most important character in the bible after God, man. We see the entire chapter of Genesis 1 is about the creation of the world—God, God, God, God.
Well in chapter 2 God created his crown jewel, he created man. All of chapter 2 is about the creation of man, out of the dust, he breathed life into him, it was not good for man to be alone so he created woman.
In Genesis chapter 2, look at verse 19 and 20
Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
This is not just a little footnote. This tell us two very important things. First of all man is over creation. Adam was placed in charge of naming every animal, God created them, man named them. But secondly we see that man is designed and worthy of companionship with only other men. Picture this not only is every animal brought to Adam and he names them, but they are all presented to him; what about this one, what about this?
The great beasts of the field and the fierce birds of the sky, they are all brought to Adam and none are worthy. Adam found no helper fit for him.
When we look at man we see two things: 1) we are so much like everything else in the world. 2) we are so much different from everything else in the world.
We are comprised of physical stuff just like every other thing in the visible universe. We have tangible bodies with skin and bones and molecules just like other things. We are dependent on other things for life, we cannot sustain without outside intervention, just like the plants and the animals. We need food, we need water, we need oxygen.
We are not God, he is self sustaining, we are not! We have never been supernatural beings and we will not end that way—Adam was given the garden to tend to it and for it to provide substance to him—that’s why he was given a command of what not to eat, clearly we was supposed to eat.
We are not God in physical bodies—we depend and owe our existence to God just like everything else.
Now this does not mean we are not special, but I say this so that we don’t overload one side of this teeter totter—man is not deserving of worship---you would be worshipping the creation and not the creator.
But there is something that makes us unlike anything else in the created world. We are made of non-physical stuff. We have an invisible soul. Matter-ism denies that we have souls by the way. But in the Story, the story of reality, man is not a machine that has been preprogrammed, we are human beings with a soul that gives life and motion to our physical bodies.
Now having a soul is not the specific thing that makes us different. One could argue that anything that has life and is conscious or aware or thinks or feels has a soul. But it’s the kind of soul we have that make’s us different.
And in order to understand this we have to consider a very important topic.
I’m going to quote directly from the book here,
“Man as man—man as he was from the beginning, man as he is in himself, man in his essential nature, is wonderful. There is certain beauty about being human that sets man apart from everything else.”
Beauty—this isn’t beauty like a sunset or a work of art or Tik Tok star. This isn’t good looks or even something on the inside.
This isn’t something models or Simone Biles or Caeleb Dressell or any Marvel character or anything has and no other human has.
No this is something at the core—this is something that regardless of how they look, what they do, what qualities they have.
“This is something true of all people who have every lived simply because they are humans and for no other reason, no matter how good or bad they are or how attractive or misshapen or small or smart or young or old—every so young or so old or so feeble or broken they are of no use to use or even to themselves. This isn’t anything applied or added, but this is the very vessel itself, not something attached to but build it. Humans are beautiful.”
This is a very limited example and I apologize don’t take this too far, because humans really are above every created thing so you can’t even come up with a good example but this is the best I got.
Consider Gold—gold has value everywhere it goes. The value of gold is the gold. It’s not the necklace or the ring or the earrings or the watch that makes is valuable. It can be shaped into anything, but the value is not the result but the gold itself.
There is a reason that no matter what the circumstances are or who the parents are or anything like that when a baby is born and you see this human life that can scream and breath and eat and cry all on its own—thats amazing. Thats beautiful. The beauty is not in anything the child has done or what has been added to it or how its dressed or how many youtube followers it has. It has done nothing but lay there and has been alive for a mere minutes, its probably naked and crying and it is beautiful—the value is in the life itself.
We do not gain value along the way. We also cannot lose value along the way. This is one of the biggest ways this Story, this worldview, is different than all others—our value is in the fact we are created by God in his image. We do not add to it or take away from it. And just like I talked about last week that not all people are equal from a worldly viewpoint—remember we all agree you would rather be a pastor than a criminal, all things considered even the secular world would want there kid’s to go down path A rather than path B.
However, man’s value is in being image bearers of the king—we do not add to that or take away from that. Meaning that the criminal, the Hitler, the Stalin, the democrat, the republican, they are beautiful creatures because they are image bearers of the king. Now there are consequences for sin and their will be judgement. But your value as a human being is not diminished because you are a thief.
God created one creature who was in a unique and important and almost indescribable way, bearing his own likeness, having a soul imprinted by his very image.
You bear the mark of God and that changes everything--
You are worth protecting. All human life is worth protecting. “Whether feeble, drooling, bedwetting, old people in the twilight of our years. Whether we are little babies hidden away in our mother’s wombs or the smallest embryonic human beings—you are valuable.” You are made in the image of God.
It is why our forefathers fought the American Revolution and the Civil War and in the bill of rights they put:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
They were not making this stuff up—its self evident, its right there. You are valuable because you are in the image of God!
2. God’s imprint makes it possible for us to have friendship with God. Wow—this is not a friendship of equals, much like a father and daughter are not peers but they are friends. But God is our friend, he is our Father and our King but also our friend, and this is only possible because we are made in his image with his divine imprint.
God gave us everything we needed to be happy—that is, fulfilled, satisfied. But the most important thing God gave us was himself, that we be continually filled with joy in his presence and find sweet contentment in his provision.
I would love to end the story there. What a sweet note to end on.
Man is beautiful.
But man is also broken. Man is beautiful but he is also broken. He is noble but is also cruel.
Many worldviews attempt to address this question. Have you ever heard this before—the real problem is actually that society has failed them. They are uneducated or even mistreated. If they just had more schooling or better resources then they would not be bad. Or the problem is poverty. People are poor and that causes crime and ultimately makes people bad. If you eliminate poverty you eliminate crime and people would be good.
This is dangerous because I myself have found myself drifting down this path. I mean we all agree we don’t want people to be poor, we don’t wish that upon people and if there are things we can do to help that we do—thats why we have the outreach dinner and the food pantry and things like that. But eliminating poverty will not make those people good people. They need the hope of the gospel, and thats why both those ministries I mentioned are centered around gospel presentations.
Listen the rich and the educated my not get caught as often, but they are no more noble than the ignorant and the poor. If money is the issue, than why do these billionaires have so much tragedy and failure in their life. If money was the issue then why so many broken marriages, depression and even crime. If money solved the problem then why did Bernie Madoff go to jail?
And if resources was the problem—what happened with Adam? He was given an entire garden with everything he would ever need. He was educated, no tough times—that didn’t stop him.
Man is beautiful but they are broken. We find ourselves here at the second question—what went wrong? Something has gone terrible wrong with us and the problem is not our education or pocketbooks or culture or our genes.
We know there is a problem—we have this sense of guilt when we have done wrong things. Thats why we attempt to hide it or do it in secret. We know its wrong. Its a very small step from feeling guilty to realizing that we feel guilty because we are guilty. We are not just broken machines that need a repair, we are transgressors who need to be forgiven. We have sinned—sin brings guilt---guilt brings punishment.
We try to make our selves feel better. Hey, at least I am not Hitler. Thats great—one was enough. But Hitler is not the standard. Jesus Christ is the standard. And you are more like Hitler then you are like Jesus Christ.
“Have you every placed anything before or above God in your life? Have you every disobeyed or otherwise dishonored your parents? Have you ever deceived someone or misrepresented the truth in any way? Have you ever taken something that was not yours or craved what belonged to another man even if you didn’t actually take it? Have you ever been sexually intimate with someone who was not, at the time, your spouse and if not, have you ever even toyed with the idea in your mind?”
Thats the standard. And that’s just part of the standard. And you are guilty. You and I have fallen short of that. You can look around and find someone worse then you, that’s true. But that’s not how you will be judged, you are not placed based on the rank of your sins. You are placed into the guilty category.
Laws are meant to be kept—a violation of just one means trouble. You don’t get to get pulled over for speeding and say officer, I have never murdered anyone so I am innocent. In the same light the murderer doesn’t get to stand before the judge and say your honor, I was going 35 in a 35 on the way to the killing. You broke the law. If anyone breaks that law in one point is guilty of all!
The thing wrong with man caused what went wrong with the world. The world is broken because we are broken. Our badness made the world go bad.
And so today we see this second puzzle piece—Man. We have now moved into this second question—what went wrong. Sin, sin made this whole thing fall apart.