New City Catechism IV
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Jigsaw puzzles - tactics? Edges first, having box helps to guide and clarify...
Genesis helps us to make sense of the whole.
Some would say that everything in the bible grows out of and in connection to the fact that:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Whilst some would have us answer the questions about life’s meaning and purpose without the existence of God, the Genesis account points to what God would have us know about Him, about Creation and the meaning and purpose of life.
The book of Genesis was never meant to provide a scientific explanation of our earth’s beginnings or our beginnings as a human race.
But as the inspired word of God, Genesis refutes the theory of evolution.
Despite the manner in which people like David Attenborough present what is a scientific theory, Genesis provides an alternative view.
To take God out of the picture, in very, very, basic language we need to accept:
that somehow the planet earth came to exist, at just the right distance from the sun, with just the right gravitational pull (which is a topic all in itself); with just the right environmental conditions to produce just the right chemical compounds that under just the right conditions produced living organisms - what we call microbes.
In very crude terms humans evolved from something like this:
Blue green algae (Lake Windermere)
Once you have accepted that, you then need to apply some other theories to explain how a living organism, or microbe, evolved to produce all the diverse life forms we have on our planet using the theories of natural selection and the nature of inheritance that focuses on how genes, DNA and molecular processes of life - work.
Great theories, that many scientists have spent their lives researching and promoting - but there are other scientists that believe our origins did not began by chance.
These scientists would not suggest that Genesis holds all the information we need - but as Christians, they would have to agree that as a very basic principle and starting point, Genesis 1 points to the alternative that God made humankind with a purpose in mind:
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
God didn’t make a mistake in creating us male and female and has a purpose behind this distinction:
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Everything in the bible unravels and loses its intended sense and purpose when we diminsh, water down, ignore or remove these foundational truths; or see them as disconnected stories from the whole story of God’s love that we find in the pages of the Old and New Testaments.
So our question today is:
How and why did God create us?
Let’s accept given our short time that the Genesis account is true -
that as it is written in Genesis 2:7
7 the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Why?
Again, we can’t know everything and we certainly can’t claim to know the entire mind of God. All we can go on, is what the bible says, not just in Genesis, but throughout all of its pages, from Genesis to Revelation.
And Genesis 1:27 gives us a great starting point:
Gods intention was to make humanity in His image.
Let’s not rush past this too quickly.
The account of Genesis would have initially been a series of events that were passed on verbally from generation to generation.
At around the time of writing Genesis down, many groups or tribes of people existed - all of the neighbouring people groups had developed a series of gods that they worshipped and for whom images had been drawn up.
Here are just a few:
Baal
Canaanite god - In the OT, we see worship of Baal is a constant temptation for Israelites. Numbers 25:3
3 So Israel joined in worshipping the Baal of Peor. And the Lord’s anger burned against them.
Marduk
The “chiefest among the Babylonian gods” Jeremiah 50:2
2 “Announce and proclaim among the nations, lift up a banner and proclaim it; keep nothing back, but say, ‘Babylon will be captured; Bel will be put to shame, Marduk filled with terror. Her images will be put to shame and her idols filled with terror.’
Isis
Egyptian goddess
Ishtar
Mesopotamian goddess - 1 Epitaph - “queen of the heaven and earth”.
It should be said that the images presented were just one of the many gods worshipped by the Canaanites, the Babylonians, Egyptians and Mesopatamians.
Yet, the accounts of our origins, as recorded in Genesis, present with an incredibly different take on the order of things.
Here, the Creator God is One God, who has no image, like the other gods being worshipped - except that of the humanity He created.
I should very quickly say that, contrary to some false teaching that seems to be in vogue today - this does not mean we are therefore ‘mini gods’, or somehow ‘supernatural’ creatures.
Anything spiritual about us,or miraculous that happens in and through us, is God at work in and through us.
Being made in the image of God does, however, mean that we are different to any other species that God as Creator has created.
We are not accidents, we did not just evolve from Blue Green algae, into sponges and then other sea creatures, on and through the evolutionary chain, to become the people we are today.
God didn’t make us because he was lonely or needed some sort of ‘help’, but because of His love and relational qualities.
Of course, after Adam and Eve the image of God in us has been marred or blurred if you like.
We are not God, we are not even all that God created us to be, and yet...unlike other creatures, we still have the capacity, even if imperfectly, to be like God in many ways - in character, rather than appearance.
It also means that we have the opportunity to represent God, to reflect His image in our lives.
Don’t you think that is amazing?
That rather than get us to come up with an image like Baal, Marduk, Isis or Ishtar, to name just a few, God choose US to reflect His image! And we do that by demonstrating some of those characteristics of God that are part of our make up:
Creative
Communicative
Relational
Loving
And as the bible unfolds we see that God’s purpose in creating us in His image is ultimately lived out in four ways:
To know Him
9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.
To love Him
5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
To live with Him
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
38 So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel during all their travels.
To glorify Him
8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
How might we glorify Him as image-bearers?
What do you think it means to glorify Him? Discuss
What difference do you think it makes to believe and understand the fullness of what our questions today encourages us to think about God and about ourselves?
We happened by chance v We were created as image bearers of a Loving Creator God
Here are just a few that I can think of...
For me, it sheds a completely different light on how I view other human beings:
It informs my view on Abortion, Sexuality, Conflict, War.
It makes sense of the fall and my need for Jesus.
It forms the basis of my hope for the future that God has promised and makes sense of why we shoudl hope for an alternative.
What about you? What difference does it make in your life? What difference does it make to your faith and hope?
Ultimately, when I truly understand the question before us today...
How and why did God create us?
I see that my existence is all about showing God’s existence and about giving Him glory.
To acknowledge Him as our loving Creator, as all powerful and perfect and to live a life of praise to Him.
To know Him
To love Him
To live with Him
To glorify Him
Which of God’s purposes for you is most developed in your life?
What more would you like God to do to help you fulfil His purpose?
How and Why did God create us?
God created us male and female
in His own image to glorify Him.