Old Doxoblogy

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

God's Creation

The most elementary aspect of God's self-revelation is His self-revelation as Creator. This is how the Bible begins, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Gen 1:1)
The first thing that we learn about God is that He is the Creator. He is the Maker of Heaven and Earth. Everything that is named is His own handiwork. Anything that we can think of belongs to Him, because He has created it.
God is sovereign over all of His creation- upholding creation, giving it it's consistency, and ruling over it. There is not one molecule of this creation that is outside of His control.
God created in His creation human beings.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And 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 of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Gen 1:26-31)
These first words regarding humanity are very important. They tell us so many things about ourselves. Our design, purpose, sustenance, and wholeness are described for us.

First our design. On the sixth day of Creation, in the Council of Heaven, God declared with and to Himself, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." When God declared this, He did it for our benefit. He Himself knew what He was doing, and the purpose for which He would create us. But it is for us that the statement is made. It lets us know something about ourselves, and something about God, as well.
We have something that the rest of Creation does not have. We have the image of God imprinted on our being. This gives us the ability to reflect God and His works on earth. We are always closest to our original design as when we are modeling our lives after our Creator as He has revealed Himself through Scripture.

This leads into our purpose. Our purpose, as is evident from this design is to reflect God and His glory on earth. The way that God has revealed that we should do this is by, exercising dominion over the Earth and filling the Earth. These two mandates go hand in hand. By exercising dominion over the Earth, we will conquer it's mountains and oceans, as we multiply, the earth will be filled with a humanity that reflects God's glory back to Him. The purpose of God in all of this is a humanity that glorifies Him.

Third, God does not leave us to ourselves, but provides sustenance for us. "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food." All things that are necessary for life are provided for us, so that we can fulfill our purpose.

Finally, We see our wholeness, or, completeness, in these verses. As God is complete in Himself, we are complete when we are in Him. Not in ourselves, but in Him.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Gen 1:31- 2:3)
God is satisfied with the whole of His Creation, humanity included. He looks down from His throne at Creation and says, "It is good." And then as a testimony to His completion of and satisfaction in His work, He takes the Seventh day off. He rests. There is nothing more that can be added. One more variety of animal would ruin it. One less type of tree would destroy it's perfection. It is good, and God has rested.

7 comments:

Dave said...

Great thoughts, Jeremy. I believe the truths that erupt out of Gen 1-2 lay a foundation for our understanding the rest of revelation. That is, afterall, whjy it is at the beginning.

We must understand the nature of man - both original and fallen after Adam's rebellion. This helps us to understand that the rest of the redemption story is about restoring the image of God in fallen to man to the priase of the glory of God.

Thanks again, Jeremy!

Jeremy Weaver said...

Hey Ephraim,
I am sort of going for a view from the air, so to speak, rather than examining every square inch of the planet.
However, we'll just cut to the chase here and say I'm right and you-re wrong.
:-)
Seriously, if you would like to state your positions and see if anyone bites, be my guest.
I will just say this one comment to get you going, There is nothing in this text that says to Adam, Eve, you, or me that we should rest on the Seventh Day. There is no command associated with God's rest, therefore, there is no Creation Ordinance in this case.

Bhedr said...

Good post!

God's purpose for creating us was to commune with Him. His recreative work is to this end as well. This is the craving of God that was stolen from Him. He planned it though and in his re-creative work this cannot ever be stolen. He will not allow any life apart from His communion. Everything else will perish in his eternal judgement.

I can't wait till you get to the part about God putting an angel to gaurd the tree of life so that no life would exist or even be possible outside of this. Hint! Hint!

Joe said...

As always, great post.

We are truely unique, not for our glory, but for His.

Matthew Celestine said...

Sound thoughts.

Anonymous said...

Hey! Jeremy! Where are you?

Shawn said...

Awesome post