Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Reading: Gen. 2:7

When I was eleven, my family went to Canada for a holiday.

As many of us know, Canada is well frequented by skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts.

My sister and I got on the slopes with a skiing instructor, and we had the time of our lives.

But the fun came to a halt when I fell and twisted my left knee.

I was hospitalized, but my knee has never been the same.

I can’t walk or run at a certain angle anymore.

And I know that my knee has never fully healed because healing has to do with restoration, and restoration has to do with the difference between how things were, and how things are.

I remember how things were with my knee before the fall, and things are not the same.

And while I had a physical fall that left me with a physical brokenness, all of humanity had a spiritual fall that left us with a spiritual brokenness.

I told this story because the doctrine of salvation must always begin with a doctrine of creation, and Rev. Abraham Park begins the fifth installment of his History of Redemption series with a rehearsal through the doctrine of creation.

Chapter 1: The creation of the honorable man

Chapter 2: The tragic fall

Chapter 3: Salvation and covenant

This morning’s message is a summary of chapter 1: the creation of the honorable man.

God who created the heavens and the earth in the beginning

This verse is the most compressed summary of the entire Bible.

It is the very bedrock of history itself, because it says that God created.

That’s the very first verb in the entire Bible: God created.

And this verb in Hebrew is the qal stem of bara (ברא): through God’s command something comes into being that had not existed before

And this word bara is unique in that it only occurs with God as the subject performing the action: no one else can do the action of bara, because God is unique in His ability to create without prior materials.

Only God can initiate something without being initiated upon.

And so Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century called God the “Unmoved Mover” who basically kickstarted the universe into motion.

In other words, the first verse of the Bible must erase the imprint of materialism that our society has inherited from Darwin, Hawkings, and Dawkins.

There is a Creator, an Unmoved Mover, and the dimensions of time, space, and matter belong to Him. Gen. 1:1 ‘In the beginning (time), God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter).’

And the third verse of Genesis 1 tells us how He created.

We see here that God spoke creation into existence.

His Word possesses His sovereign authority to control and shape reality.

And, having created the light, God calls the light ‘good.’

God then enforces order upon creation by separating the light from darkness.

And He goes on to create an expanse, separating the waters above and the waters below.

He separates the waters from the dry land, and so on.

So what this tells us is that creation follows a certain order, and it’s not just a ‘that’s the way things are’ kind of neutral order.

It’s an order imposed by God upon creation.

It’s His order, and His design, and so this means that not only is materialism a lie, but also the idea of morality apart from God, otherwise known as moral relativism.

The idea of God’s good design erases the chant of relativism, that is, ‘I can do what I want, so long as I don’t hurt anybody.’

To live in a way that contradicts the Word of God is thus to sin against the Creator because it goes against His design.

Furthermore, the fact that God goes on to say that ‘it is good,’ must also erase the philosophical imprint of gnosticism that says that the material things are evil, that the flesh is evil, and that the human body is wicked and salvation consists of freedom from our fleshly bodies.

A biblical doctrine of creation exposes materialism, relativism, and gnosticism as false worldviews.

The Tri-personal act of creation

Many of us call English speakers call God either ‘God’ or ‘Lord.’

And this is also often the case in the Hebrew Old Testament.

There is Elohim, which appears here in Gen. 1:1 and means ‘God,’ and there is YHWH, the very name of God, which translates as ‘The Lord.’

But this elohim noun is grammatically not in the singular form, but the plural.

So instead of ‘God,’ it literally reads as ‘Gods.’

However, the plural elohim noun is paired with a verb in singular form.

So instead of ‘The Gods are creating,’ it literally reads as ‘The Gods is creating.’

Instead of ‘Gods create,’ it’s ‘Gods creates.’

What this implies is that the Hebrew word for God has some measure of plurality within its monotheism.

For us Christians, we believe this hints at the Triune nature of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There’s a three-fold structure in almost everything about God.

And this carries on into the New Testament.

All creation exists from the Father through the Son

My Greek professor back in London once said something that stuck in my head.

He said that theology comes from grammar.

And here we see why.

The prepositions ‘from’ and ‘through’ give us the primary idea of the role of God the Father and God the Son in the act of creation.

All things exist from the Father.

The Greek word here is ek, meaning ‘from’ or ‘out from,’ and in this case refers to the Father as the source or origin of all things.

And whereas all things exist from the Father, the exist through the Son, Jesus Christ.

The Greek word here is dia, meaning ‘by’ or ‘through,’ and refers to God the Son as the means through which all things exist.

And so what about the Holy Spirit?

He is the completer or effector of the work of creation.

If the Word of God specifies the will of the Father, the Spirit of God empowers that will into reality.

The word for Spirit is Ruah (רוּחַ): wind, breath, or life force.

He is the breath that carries the Word of God, the power of the Word itself.

And so we can say that creation is a tri-personal action in that all three persons of the Triune Godhead participated by fulfilling different functions in one act: The Father wills, the Son executes the Father’s will, and the Spirit completes the Son’s work.

And we see such tri-personal actions of God in His work of salvation as well.

1 Peter 1:2 (ESV)

according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

The creation of man

On the sixth day, God creates man in the image and likeness of God.

Tselem (צֶלֶם): to symbolize, to define a contour, a replica, a representation

Demut (דְּמוּת): to be like, to resemble

In what ways do human beings image or resemble God?

To answer this question is like looking in a mirror and asking, which part of this mirror image resembles me?

And the answer is everything.

Every single thing about us human beings images God.

But we can divide them into four categories, namely, the moral, rational, spiritual, and physical image of God.

The moral image of God

The moral image of God here is described as the true righteousness and holiness.

This is the image of God that was broken when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden, seeking instead a false righteousness instead of the true righteousness.

They ate the fruit, seeking to be less dependent on God, seeking to undo the created order God had enforced upon the world.

On the contrary, true righteousness only comes from knowing the Word of God that created the world.

And so the Apostle Paul says that this new self can only come about through knowledge.

Knowledge of what?

Knowledge of the Word of God.

The rational/intellectual image of God

Human beings also image God in their intellectual capacity, especially when compared with other animals.

We don’t have sharp claws, fangs, exceptional speed, or a body built for hunting.

We don’t even have night vision.

And yet we have so far outstripped the other animals and have risen to the top of the food chain through the use of our intellect.

However, sin also affects our intellect and subdues our intellect to our carnal instincts and appetites.

In our thirst for pleasure, we become like irrational animals.

The philosophical sins we spoke about earlier, of materalism, relativism, and gnosticism manifest from the corruption of this rational image of God.

How do we know?

Because such false worldviews make it easy for people to satisfy their sinful carnal desires.

It is a case of believing something because you want it to be true, not because you know it to be true.

The Apostle Paul calls this the suppression of the truth.

The spiritual image of God