The Crown of Creation

The date was July, 1925. The place—a crowded, sweltering courtroom in the little town of Dayton, Tennessee. The defendant was John T. Scopes, a former substitute teacher who had been charged with violating the laws of Tennessee by presenting the theory of evolution in a public school classroom.

The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, a well-known lawyer who had served as Secretary of State and been a three-time presidential candidate. The prosecution team included various religious fundamentalists of the day who supported Biblical creation.

The attorney for the defense was a famous criminal lawyer—Clarence Darrow of the ACLU. Newspaper reporters packed the courtroom and breathlessly reported each day’s proceedings to the American public. They dubbed it the Scopes Monkey Trial, because it revolved around the assertion of evolutionists that man had descended from apes. The most sarcastic and widely-read journalist was H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore , who painted Bryan and the creationists as a bunch of fanatical, ignorant hillbillies.

During the trial, Clarence Darrow maneuvered William Jennings Bryan into taking the stand as a supposed expert in biblical creation. In his ruthless questioning, Darrow succeeded in completely humiliating Bryan. In fact, Bryan died just a few days after the trial was over—many thought from shame.

But what is not often remembered today is that Darrow and the evolutionists actually lost the trial. The jury convicted John Scopes, although the conviction was later overturned on a technicality.

But it didn’t matter—the Scopes Monkey Trial was a public relations triumph for the theory of evolution. And it marked a real turning point in the way that the American people thought about human origins and the first few chapters of the Bible.

A good measure of how far we’ve come is to consider the fact that while seventy-two years ago, you weren’t allowed to teach evolution in the public schools, today in 1997, you aren’t allowed to teach biblical creation. Things have certainly changed!

The Bible’s view of human origins—the view that Adam and Eve were real people, the parents of the human race is now forbidden by law to be taught in the public schools.

Instead what is being taught is that man has evolved upward from lower life forms over a period of millions of years. We are supposed to be able to trace our family tree back through the monkeys and the mammals and the reptiles and the fish to the simple one-celled amoebas, which themselves sprang to life from inanimate matter.

And part of the evolutionary theory is to understand that man is still in the process of evolving, still getting better, and smarter, and more noble. Someday in the future, we will be much higher and more sophisticated beings than we are today. This is the politically correct view of human origins today.

But this is not what the Bible teaches us. The Bible tells us that man did not evolve—he was specially created by God—particularly and carefully formed as a complete individual. The Bible teaches us that there was a first man and a first woman, and that we all descended from these original parents.

Let’s look at how the Bible presents this information to us. I would invite you to turn to Genesis 1:26…

Genesis 1:26 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.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Now last week, we saw that the whole creation account of Genesis 1 moves to a climax on Day 6. And there is even more indication of that in the text. Notice that God speaks differently here. On the other days, when God brings things into being, He says “Let there be…” and there was. But here, when he comes to make man, he says “Let us make man in our image”. (And notice the plural “us”—we see the first indication of the Trinity here.)

And we talked about the Hebrew word “bara”—a very special word that means to make something out of nothing. The word “bara” is used five times in Genesis 1. First, it appears in Genesis 1:1 where God creates the heavens and the earth. It appears a second time in verse 21, where God creates animal life—the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.

And then it appears three times in one verse, Genesis 1:27, where God creates man. This is obviously an important clue—man is the greatest of all God’s creative works. He is literally the crown of creation.

And then in Genesis 2:7 we read that “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.” And this introduces a new name for God into the creation account.

All the way through chapter 1 God is just plain God—“Elohim” in Hebrew. But here, in connection with his creation of man, God reveals to us a new name—“Yahweh Elohim”—the Lord God. Yahweh is God’s covenant name—it’s the name he uses in all his dealings with us. It’s the name that means he’s the Promise Keeper. It’s the name that the Jewish people regard to be so sacred that they won’t even say it.

So the fact that God reveals himself by a new name indicates just how important human beings are in God’s creation.

Now when God made man, He gave him four things: Personhood; a Position; a Posterity; and a Possession. Let’s look at each of these things.

1. Our Personhood

Look at verse 26 - Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness. God made us in his image and likeness. This means that man is fundamentally different from all the other creatures he has created.

When God created the plants, the fish, the birds, and the animals, he created them “according to their kinds”. But when he created man, he doesn’t say that. He says “I am creating you in my image; in my likeness. I am creating you to resemble me.”

The evolutionist says that we supposedly resemble our animal ancestors. We came from the apes—we are just naked apes; apes with no hair; apes that walk upright and make tools, and talk, etc.

But the Bible says that we are fundamentally different from the animals in that we resemble God. God made us to be like him. In what way?

Well certainly not physically. God is a spirit and we are physical beings. But we are physical beings with a spiritual component. There is an immaterial part of our being that you cannot explain on the basis of anatomy.

We share many physical features with the animals. But there’s something more to us. What animal ever learned to read and write? What animal ever passed on its accumulated learning to the next generation? What animal possesses a real sense of right and wrong? What animal shows any desire to worship? What animal has a hope of immortality that reaches beyond the grave?

When did you ever see a dog admiring a sunset, or a horse standing amazed before a majestic mountain range? Did a chimpanzee ever compose a symphony? Did a dolphin ever write poetry? Do lions laugh? Do cows cry?

No, these are things that only a person can do—a self-conscious, self-aware person. God has an intellect—so he has given us one too. God has a will—so he has given us one too. God has emotions—he has given us emotions too. He has a moral component—He knows right from wrong, and he has given us that capacity too. God is love, so he has given us the capacity to experience love also.

God has made us in his image and likeness, and that makes us unique in all creation. Apparently, not even the angels share in the image of God. But one of the angels—Lucifer—wanted to be like God. He rebelled against God’s perfect plan for him and became the devil. And that may explain why Satan is so hostile to the human race. Because he sees man possessing something that he wanted to have but was denied.

But in spite of the fact that man is created in the image of God, we are still lowly creatures. Look again at Genesis 2:7.

Genesis 2:7 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.

Gen. 2:7 says that God “formed” the physical part of man from the dust of the ground, and in that respect, we are like the animals, because God formed them from the ground too, according to Gen. 2:19. The word “formed” is the word “yasa” and it is the word from which the Hebrews took their word “yoser”—potter, one who works with clay.

So man is an interesting combination. He’s high and he’s low. He is a spiritual being—he is made in the image and likeness of God, but he is also a physical being—he, like the animals, is made from the dust. And dust is a humble substance.

The old Bible commentator Matthew Henry said that man was not made from gold dust, or powder of pearl, or diamond dust, just ordinary old dust. Someone calculated that if you were able to reduce a human body down to its basic elements it would only be worth about $10.

You have probably heard the story about the little boy who asked his mother “Is it true that the Bible says that man was made from the dust and that he’ll one day return to dust?” His mother said “Yes dear, that’s what the Bible says.”

The little boy replied “Well, I don’t know if he’s coming or going, but there’s definitely somebody under my bed.”

Man is a creature who carries the image of God in a house made of dust. In fact, that’s where Adam got his name. The Hebrew word for dust is “ha adama”. I guess if the Bible had been written in English, Adam’s name might have been Dusty.

But there is something even more amazing about how God created us. It says in Genesis 2:7: “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

The word for breath in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin is identical with the word for spirit in those languages. For instance, in Latin, the word for spirit is “spiritus”. But that is also the word for “breath”.

We can see this in a lot of English words that have been derived from Latin. When people “aspire” they take a deep breath and try harder. When they “conspire”, they put their heads together and breathe in and out with each another. A man is “inspired” when someone else blows some breath into him. We “perspire” by breathing out through our skin. When we “expire”, we breathe out for the last time. We die.

In Greek, the word for spirit is “pneuma”, and that is also the word for “breath”. We’ve got some English words that reflect this, too. A tool that is pneumatic - like a pneumatic drill - runs on air. When we get pneumonia, our ability to breathe is impaired.

The Hebrew word is the word “ruach”, and you have to breathe out to even say it properly. The Bible is telling us that when God breathed into man the breath of life, He imparted to Adam a spirit. He gave him an invisible component that would make him much more than just a pile of dust, but a living, breathing, eternal being.

How long can you hold your breath? None of us can go more than about 2 minutes without breathing. I believe that God made it necessary for us to breathe to remind us of our dependency on Him. He could have created us like the plants, which simply absorb air through the skin of their leaves. But he made us breathe to remind us that we owe to him the breath of life. We’re not self-sufficient.

God formed us from dust and breathed into us the breath of life. He made us living beings. He gave us personhood—and because of that personhood, we are unique and valuable. There is a sanctity to human life that is not true of animal life. There is a sacred value to each and every human being, from the unborn baby in a mother’s womb to an elderly Alzheimer’s patient who can no longer communicate. We bear the image of the Creator.

Genesis 1:27 tells us that God created us male and female, and I want to say more about the issue of gender—of maleness and femaleness, but we’ll do that in a couple of weeks when we consider the creation of woman.

2. God gave man a Position.

Genesis 1:26 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 gave us dominion over creation. He created man to rule over all the earth. Martin Luther was of the opinion that when Adam was created, he was actually the most powerful of all God’s creatures—the fastest runner, the highest jumper, the best swimmer, and so on. Luther said that before the Fall, Adam could outwrestle a bear, outrun a cheetah, and outjump a kangaroo. He had a natural dominance over the other creatures.

God confirmed Adam’s role as lord over creation by bringing all the animals to him to name, as we see in chapter 2. And remember in the Bible, the person who named something had power and authority over that which he had named.

We live in an age of environmental activism. Many people reject this biblical idea that man is lord over creation. They want to say that creation ought to be lord over man—that we ought to virtually bow down and worship the environment—keep it pristine and undeveloped. Some even go as far as to speak of the earth as a goddess—Gaia.

Now if we had taken that approach all through history, most of our amazing discoveries and technological advances would not have happened. We probably would not be living in houses with electricity and running water, traveling in cars and airplanes, enjoying instant global communication, and the like. These things have happened because man has succeeded in harnessing nature.

Because of the Fall, man’s dominion has not always been beneficial, or good for the earth, but one day all that will change. The Bible has something to say about this in Heb. 2:7. Speaking of God’s creation of man, it says…

You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet.” In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus…

And in Jesus, we see the kind of dominion and sovereignty over nature that Adam was supposed to exercise. Remember, Jesus had dominion over the fish of the sea, when he said to his disciples “Put down your nets on the other side” and they emerged bulging with fish. He had dominion over the birds of the air, when he told Peter that a rooster would crow at the precise moment when Peter denied his Lord.

He had dominion over the animals, when he rode an unbroken donkey colt into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

He had dominion over the sky above when he stilled the storm and the sea below when he calmed the waves. He had dominion over the plants when multiplied a little boy’s barley loaves into a banquet for five thousand, and when he turned ordinary rainwater into sweet wine without the benefit of a vineyard.

Jesus shows us what Adam could have been, and thanks to Jesus one day that position will be restored.

3. God gave us a posterity

God told us to be fruitful and multiply…

Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.

This verse is often thought of as a command, but it is actually a statement of blessing. God is pronouncing a blessing on Adam and Eve when he tells them to be fruitful and multiply.

God blessed us by granting us the privilege of being involved in creating future human beings—a posterity. If you have ever had children you know that to be involved in the mystery of conceiving and giving birth to a baby—a unique new person who also bears the image of God—is to participate with God in a miracle. And God gave Adam and Eve, and all of us, that remarkable privilege.

The Bible says that Adam and Eve were our ultimate parents, and in so doing it goes against the doctrine of evolution, which says that there was no real “beginning” to the human race—we simply evolved gradually from lower life forms.

Many people today reject the idea that Adam and Eve were real people. They like to think of them as mythical characters who never really lived, but whose story is included in the Bible to teach us some lessons about ourselves.

Well, if you take that view, then you have to throw out much of the New Testament. To begin with, Jesus believed that Adam and Eve were real people. He refers to them numerous times in his teaching. Now if Jesus was mistaken, then I guess he couldn’t have been the Son of God.

And the Apostle Paul believed that Adam and Eve were real. He told the Athenian philosophers that “From one man God made every nation of men.”

But if he was wrong, then we’ve got to throw out much of Paul’s teaching. For example, the central part of the book of Romans teaches us that sin entered the world through Adam, and death passed to all of us because of Adam’s sin, but Jesus came to undo what Adam had done. But if Adam wasn’t real, then that cannot be true.

You see, there is an unbreakable link between Genesis 1 and Romans 5. If you throw out one, you have to throw out the other. If Adam wasn’t a real man, then Jesus couldn’t have been a real Savior. The historical reality of Adam and Eve is vitally important to many other Bible doctrines. We’ll see more of this later when we get to Genesis 3.

4. God gave us a possession

Genesis 1:29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

God gave us the whole earth and its provision. From the moment he created man, God has been concerned about our welfare, and our needs. He’s always giving.

Paul said in Acts 14:17:

Acts 14:17 He has shown kindness by giving us rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides us with plenty of food and fills our hearts with joy.

Incidentally, Gen. 1:29 gives us reason to believe that Adam was a vegetarian. Because only later in Genesis 9, does God say to Noah “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”

What have we learned today?

God has given us a possession—the earth and all its bounty. He has blessed us with a posterity—the ability to work with him in bringing other human beings into existence. He has placed us in a position—we are part of nature, but we are also over nature.

And he has blessed us with personhood. We resemble God in certain spiritual ways, and in that respect we are unique in all of His creation. Yet that resemblance has been marred and distorted and almost lost because of something terrible which happened in Genesis 3.

And the result is that man is now far from what God intended him to be. But the rest of the Bible tells us that God did something about that. He found a way to give us back what we lost—and a whole lot more besides!