Anyway, it's good to see you guys.
If you have your Bible, you can open the Genesis Chapter One.
I suspect you're familiar where with where it is, but if you're
not, it's the very beginning and all right, the very beginning of
your Bible. Genesis chapter one is where
we'll we'll get started today and we'll actually hang out in
Genesis 1-2 and three for the next several weeks as we begin
this new series. Sorry, I forgot to introduce
myself. I'm Kyle.
So if you're visiting with us, thank you for visiting serve as
lead pastor. Here want to welcome you Today
we are beginning a new series that we're calling Happy the
Home God's Design for Family. So Happy the Home God's Design
for Families. This series title I stole from a
song and old hymn. The hymn is is titled Happy the
home when God is there. Happy the Home when God is
there. And so didn't completely rob it,
but certainly rob the most of it.
Happy the home when God is there.
And that's that's really the essence of the series.
I mean that's the essence of what we're trying to do is we
think about God's design for families.
There's a lot we have to confess on the front end of this about
who God is, who we are and who we are not.
And and what God has said goes right.
And so we have to dive into those things before we can ever
really begin to answer the questions that come to us about
what is what is a man and what are his responsibilities, what
are what is a woman, what are her responsibilities, How do
these things come together? How do these two come together
to build homes and societies and that sort of thing?
But we want to get into those questions.
We want to be able to answer those things.
We want to be able to figure those things out from God's
work. And so I just sat down during
the Sunday school hour with a group of families and a young
lady who are joining, looking to join the church.
They're they're exploring that. And one of the things we say at
in the very first week of what we call membership Matters is we
say that we are committed to God's word.
Now that sounds like something every church says, right?
And in theory, every church probably says something to that
effect. But what commitment to God's
Word looks like varies from place to place.
It it varies from person to person, or from Christian to
Christian. But here we are, deeply
convinced, deeply convicted, that it does not matter what man
says. It does not matter what man says
about the home, or what man says about the family, or what man
says about society, or what man says even about God's Word.
God dictates in that he has spoken already, in that he has
revealed Himself through nature one.
But through his Word 2nd and more fully, we can know who God
is, we can know what he commands, we can know what he
desires, we can know all that we need to know for life.
And Godless God's Word is sufficient for everything
pertaining to life. And Godless God's Word is
infallible. It is without error.
God's word is complete. We don't need new revelation
from the Lord. We don't get new revelation from
God. That is extra biblical.
Any revelation that comes to us from God by His Spirit now must
line up with His word. And so we are deeply convicted
that God's Word gives us our marching orders.
So to. But the Creator has told
creation how it works. Not only has he said this is how
it works, He has set it into motion so that it works that
way. It's not just that Creation has
to figure it out after God has spoken, it's that God makes it
work that way also. So we know and then we live it
out and things are blessed. Happy is the home when God is
there. Amen.
So if you would, would you stand
to your feet? We're going to read Genesis 1.
Admittedly, I'm going to read a lengthy passage today, so if
you're unable to stand right now, that's fine.
I recognize we stood for several minutes singing Genesis One.
I'm going to go through 2/3 just so we get all seven days of
creation. You were attending a church
today that believes in a literal 7 day creation.
All right. And so we want to read that
Genesis chapter one. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and
void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the
waters. And God said, let there be
light. And there was light.
And God saw that the light was good.
And God separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.
And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the
waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.
And God made the expanse, and separated the waters that were
under the expanse from the waters that were above the
expanse. And it was so.
And God called the expanse heaven.
And there was evening, and there was morning, the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered
together into one place, and let the dry land appear.
And it was so God called the dry land earth, And the waters that
were gathered together he called sees.
And God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth
sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit, trees
bearing fruit, And which is it? And which is their seed?
Each according to its kind on the earth.
And it was so the earth brought forth vegetation, plants
yielding seed according to their own ties, and trees bearing
fruit, and which is their seed, each according to its kind.
And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there
was morning, the third day. And God said, Let there be
lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from
the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for
days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the
heavens, to give light upon the earth.
And it was so. And God made the two great
lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser
light to rule the night and the stars.
And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on
the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to
separate the light from the darkness.
And God saw that it was good. And there was the evening, and
there was morning, the 4th day. And God said, let the waters
swarm, let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures, and
let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the
heavens. So God created the great sea
creatures, and every living creature that moves with which
the water swarm according to their kinds, and every winged
bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
And God bless them, saying, be fruitful and multiply, and fill
the waters and the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.
And there was evening, and there was morning the 5th day.
And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures
according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things,
and beast of the earth according to their kinds.
And it was so. And God made the beast of the
earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to
their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according
to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
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, and the image of God he
created him male and female. He created them.
And God bless them. And God said to them, be
fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and
have the minion 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 with sorry, with seed and its
fruits you shall have them for food.
And to every beast of the earth and every bird of the heavens,
that 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 this evening, and there was morning the 6th day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host
of them. And on the 7th day God finished
his work that he had done and he.
Rested on the 7th day from all his work that he had done.
So God bless the 7th day and made it holy, because on it God
rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, you may be
seated as I pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for today. We thank you, Lord, for your
word and for your kindness and giving it, or may it be
instructive, to our hearts and minds today.
May it call us out of darkness and into marvelous light as it
pertains to. Especially our salvation, but
also Lord, as it pertains to our understanding of who you are and
what you have designed us for. The Lord, we love you.
We ask for your help. Now We pray, Lord, that your
spirits would speak to us, that He would reveal your words to
us, that we might understand it and live it.
It's in the name of Christ, I pray.
Amen. Amen.
So from this passage there, there's a few things I think
that we must take special notice of, all right?
The first of which is that God is our creator, God our creator.
If you're taking notes, you can write these things down, but you
have to start here. You have to start with who is
doing the creating, who, who is at work here?
Who is doing the speaking, Who is doing the molding?
Who's who's doing the shaping? Who's doing the calling out of
nothing? That which is now something
right there. There's one who is active here,
and there are many who are passive here.
There are many who are being acted upon by God.
God is the Creator. And so God's Word opens with
this book, Genesis. Genesis is as the Word explains
it's it's describes the beginning of something.
It describes here the beginning of all things.
It's a magnificent of count of all that God has done in
creation. It's a magnificent account of of
how God first created the heavens, how He created the
heavens and the earth, and then how He ordered all of it so that
it would become His dwelling place.
And the opening chapter of this great book, right.
This is the God breathes word. All right, This this is, these
are His holy scriptures. These are what he means for us
to read and to understand so that we might know him and
worship him. And in the very first book and
the very first line of the very first book, we read that in the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
We learn who God is in the very beginning as we open this book
up. All right.
And so if your practice is to just kind of flip open your
Bible and to read something and then to say the Lord has spoken
today, like, it's not a terrible practice, but it's not the best
practice. The best practice is to open up.
And if you've never read the beginning, it's to read the
beginning of a book. Or how many of you have read Tom
Sawyer. Would it have been beneficial to
you to open up Tom Sawyer to the middle and begin reading there?
No, you don't start any other books that way.
So start God's book with what he says first about him.
It's ordered in a specific way. It's not ordered in a way that
you just flip around. It's ordered in a way that you
read it from beginning to end so that you might know who God is
and worship Him. So God first created the heavens
and the earth. We read this here and in this
opening chapter we meet the all powerful, the all knowing,
transcendent God who sets everything in place by His own
wise, wonderful design. He sets it in place according to
his own will. It's it's for his own purpose.
And so rightly, the emphasis of this chapter as we were reading,
is that everything, the emphasis for everything, is on God
himself. Now we might read it as
creation, right? And we might say, well, he here
in verse 26 and 27 and 28, and look how he created me.
He created us and get really excited about that.
And it's good and right to do so.
But you can't start there. Who created you?
You have to decide. You have to know who has
designed you in order to know what your design even is, what
its purpose is, how you might fulfill it, How you might live a
life that is truly blessed. Because not only did He create,
but He blessed the the first man and woman and gave them a
command to to be fruitful and multiply, right?
And so to know how to do that, we must know who God is.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
We will must know who. He is.
The emphasis here is on how God orders and structures
everything. He's behind it all.
Even today, even post fall, God orders and structures and things
are still designed in such a way that they must operate according
to His plan in order for them to best operate.
And so how he speaks, how things come into being, all of that
matters. If we're to understand the
purpose of man, of the man and the woman who were created.
If we're to understand the purpose of the the man and the
woman, the boys and the girls who are sitting here today for
to understand the purpose of the household, for to understand the
purpose of the church, for to understand the purpose of all
things, then we must see that at its beginning is God.
At its genesis, we find a father.
Who speaks? We find God.
He is our creator. He created everything, and he
structured his creation in such a way that it's ordered
according to his design. And on day six, after reading
all that we had read up to verse 26, we read that God finally
creates humans. He creates the first man and the
first woman. He gives them authority to be
his vice Regents, if you will, right to to carry out the things
that he's ordered and designed under his rule.
They are not rulers. In and of themselves they are.
Rulers. Lights, if you will There.
It's a rule. According to his rule.
They only reign because he reigns.
They're there to govern all these living things that God has
created. And so this opening chapter not
only establishes who God is, it establishes A hierarchy there.
There's a hierarchy of authority that takes place.
Here God commissions the man and the woman to govern.
You see, the man and the woman do not dictate to God what he is
to govern. They do not tell him what he is
to do, how he is to March on or to March forward.
God tells them be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth,
exercise dominion. God gives them their orders.
And we'll see in the coming weeks that in the way that a man
is designed and the way that a woman is designed, he can carry
out, by the redemption of Christ.
We can carry out the work that God has given us.
We can do the things that the Lord has laid before us.
And so this opening chapter establishes these things for us.
God has made man and woman. I'll use the word vice Regents
again. But He's done this so that the
whole earth should become the temple of God, so that the the
place in which He dealt dwells with His people.
That He intends to dwell eternity and eternally with his
people should display His glory, but the whole earth might be
full of His. Glory, as one prophet wrote.
So God, I'd like for you to write this down.
God created man and woman in his own image to glorify himself.
That's kind of the bottom line of what we're reading here in
Genesis. Chapter one is that God created
man and woman in his own image to glorify himself.
Now, this is not the working of a madman.
This is not the workings of an egotistical dictator.
All right, it if the Creator and I've made this point before, but
it's worth making again. If the Creator did not create in
such a way that He receives the glory, whatever He creates to
receive glory is worthy of our worship.
And He is not right, because He would be saying that those
things are worthy of worship. Well, what He has done is He has
revealed His glory to us in His creation.
This is what Psalm 19 and Romans chapter one.
These are the points they're making that God has set into
motion, if you will, the praise of His glorious grace in the
things that He's created, just in the fact that He's laid out
for us. A sun and a moon and stars and
days and weeks and months and years, seasons.
All of this points. To a creator, This is why you
end up with so many gods around the world as people look at
those things and their worship falls short of the Creator and
lands on the creation. They worship the sun because the
sun can be harsh sometimes, and if we don't pay the sun His
proper due, then the sun may cause a drought.
We may not receive any rain, right?
Our crops won't grow, or people won't flourish.
Or you worship a river by which you live.
Or you might worship birds. But all of this is misplaced
worship, according to Romans one they are worshiping the creation
rather than the Creator. Claiming themselves to be wise.
They became fools, Paul writes. And so we must understand that
you and I exist as men and women, boys and girls, to
worship the Creator. We exist for the glory of the
Lord alone. We do not exist for our own
glory. We are not as redeemed people to
be glory seekers. We are to seek the glory of.
Christ alone let's him alone. But naturally, as we'll come to
see in the coming weeks, we are bent towards seeking our own
glory. Sin has broken us.
Sin makes us desire the establishing of our own
kingdoms, of our own places, of carrying out our own will for
our own glory. And this is a problem, and it's
a major problem in households. It's a problem in the way people
attack households because people are convinced that the household
is an old thing that is to be pushed aside for new and better
things like. Longterm singleness, like the
lack of marriage, the lack of children.
We should abort more babies, not save them.
We should have less homes, not more homes.
We should have later and later marriages, not marriage early in
life where you can produce a home together, right?
I mean, these things are out there.
We'll get into a more specifically, I'm not
intentionally being vague, but just for time's sake.
So God created man and woman in this only image to glorify
himself. This is the the bottom line of
what we're looking at today. We have to establish this before
we can deal with these other things in the coming weeks.
The second thing we need to observe here, one is that God is
the creator, right? The second thing is that mankind
is the crown, not the cause of creation.
We are not the cause of creation.
We are not even the purpose of creation.
But we are a crown of creation, and I'll explain in verse 26.
And 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 and the image of God He
created him, male and female. He created them.
And God bless 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. So mankind is the crown, not the
cause of creation. Let me deal with this.
Mankind not being the cause of creation, one mankind was
created. Last, so it's an easy one to
figure out pretty quickly. Mankind is not the cause of
creation. Mankind has sought in many ways
to become the cause of creation through all of our theorizing
and all of our scientific studies and and what have yous
to try to figure out what caused things to come into being other
than a creator. But we have selled miserably.
None of those are viable theories.
God is the Creator. Mankind is not the cause of
creation, nor with the cause of some theory about creation that
would be more right than what scripture says.
So mankind was created last. I suspect one of the reasons
mankind was created last is so that it might not be thought
about him in any way that he was a helper to God in the creation
of the world. It has a way of humbling you,
right? We are his design, He is our
creator. He is the Potter.
We are the clay. And we must not malign that holy
truth in any kind of way. I didn't mean to rhyme.
There, I pulled. This, but to believe that, to
believe that he's the Potter you're the clay, breeds
humility. You understand, as Paul writes
about the gospel, we hold this treasure that we've received in
Christ in jars of clay. I mean the the treasure is
unfathomably great and grand and huge, and it's transforming.
I mean, he literally writes there a few verses later that we
have become new creations in Christ Jesus.
And so there is all these things that are new about us, but we
hold them in a jar of clay. We've been molded together by
the Potter, and so we cannot malign that truth there.
There's humility here. We are prideful people.
Naturally. This is, again, this is the
temptation that Satan brings to Eve, of which Adam and Eve
succumb to, is that they would become their own God.
That is the essence of pride. But when we understand that God
created all things and that we are a part of his creation, that
breeds humility and it breeds reverence.
If you think about God's conversation with Job as he
answers his accusations, Job in the beginning had not sinned
against God. In the beginning.
He he confesses that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away,
blessed be the name of the Lord. He tells his wife who was
saying, just curse God and die. He tells her no.
Shall we only receive good from God and not bad also, right?
So he in the beginning is up. He's an upright man.
But as he sits in his boils and he sits in his loss and he sits
with his friends who are bringing these accusations
against him, he begins to become an embittered man and he begins
to question God. And God finally comes to him in
his questions and he says job dress for.
Action like a man, the brothers. It's not a conversation we are
ready for, but one of his opening questions to Job is a
genesis. One question.
He takes him all the way back to the creation and he says, Where
were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me if you have understanding.
That's what it means to dress for action.
Like a man. And we're not ready for it.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
This has a way of humbling a man who is ready to pridefully
assault the Lord with his accusations.
And then you come to see that you do not even understand the
foundations of the earth, let alone the plans of Providence.
And so it is also an honor, though it's humbling, to be made
last. But here we see that it's an
honor that we are made. Last, by God, the creation order
advances from that which was less perfect to that which is
more so. God got prepared the home.
First. He prepared the earth 1st, and
then He creates man out of the dust of the ground, the same
dust that he creates the beast from, and the same dust to which
will go. But he creates a man from the
dust of the ground. He creates the woman from his
side, and he he's giving them a home.
When he first breathed life into him, and Adam opens his eyes to
see, he doesn't see a nothingness.
He he sees a world perfect. He sees a world complete, a
world that lacks nothing in many ways.
When Adam opened his eyes to see the world that he saw, it's the
same experience you and I'll have when we pass from death
into eternal life. We'll open our eyes and see
perfection. A world that lacks nothing.
A world where there's no sin and no pain and no hurt and no
tears. Amen.
As soon as the man opened his eyes, he had the whole of
creation before him, and it was for him to see and to savor.
It was for her, for him to admire and to praise God for it
was for him to look at his creator and to think, wow,
amazing. And much the same way your heart
can be enraptured these days by a sunrise or a sunset that hits
the sky just right, it's it's more than the best painter.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing to say, but it's more than
God being the best painter. It's that God is the creator of
all things, and it is perfect. It's worthy of admiration and
praise, but it wasn't just for Adam to look at and take, to see
and to savor and to praise the Lord.
That's part of it. But the other part of it is that
it's built for his comfort. It's it's built for him to to to
build a home in. God creates and gives the man
all that he needs. So mankind is not the cause of
creation, but he's certainly a benefactor.
Of it he he he has much to gain. From all that God has given,
mankind is the crown of creation.
And we see this and that. The text is different as it
describes the creation of the man and the woman.
You may have noticed it as we were reading all that long
portion right here we have a more clear act of divine wisdom
and power than we did with the other creatures in the previous
sections. We just read Let there be and
there was. Right.
Let there be. God said let there be lied And
there was lie. Let there be ground.
And there was ground. And He called the ground earth,
Right. There's a lot of commanding
going on. Let there be this out of
nothing, and it comes to be out of nothing.
But then when he says let us make man well, it goes from
commanding to consultation. He begins to speak inwardly.
Matthew Henry notes this. He says, formerly God speaks as
one having authority. Now he speaks as one having
affection. I love that there there's a love
for man. When God creates man, there's
affection for him. And so we read similar thought
and Proverbs 831 The Wisdom chapter.
There we read this. It says, rejoicing in his
inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.
God delights in His children. The creation of mankind is the
crown of His creation, and in a sense He settled all the
preliminary creatures, and now He applies Himself to the
business of making a creature who is altogether different from
the rest, and who will act as His vice Regents.
In the world and mankind. There is flesh and spirits.
There is heaven and earth. Those things must be put
together in him. He must be allied to both
worlds. And so God is pleased to make
the man. But the Trinity, our triune God
the Father, the Son, and the Spirit confer together because
because man, when he was made, was to be dedicated and devoted
to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
And that is why when we are baptized even today, we are
baptized into that great name, the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Because to this triune God we
owe all of our being, especially in our new creation.
We owe it all to God, Matthew Henry said.
Let him rule man. Who said, let us make man?
He rules us. It's good and right for God to
rule creation and it's good and right for us as His subjects to
submit ourselves to Him. God created man and woman in His
own image to glorify himself. The third observation we need to
make here is that mankind is made in the image and likeness
of God. Mankind is made in the image and
likeness of God. God said, Let us make man in our
image after our likeness. So God created man in his own
image and the image of God He created him male and female, He
created them. Mankind made in the image and.
Likeness of God. These two words, image and
likeness express the same thing. We don't need to get this
twisted, but what it's doing is compiling one on top of the
other so that it becomes a more expressive phrase.
We get greater understanding when we read that something is
made in the image and likeness versus if we just said it's made
in the image or it's made in the likeness.
It's compiling the two. And in essence, what he's saying
is that let's make man in the likest image of ourselves.
Let's make man in the likest image of God, meaning we bear
the nearest resemblance out of all of those visible creatures.
At creation we have the nearest resemblance to God.
We were not made in the image of beast, though Progressives want
to reduce humanity to such. We are made in the image of God,
our Creator. There is an integral value to
humanity because of this. Yet it is highly important to
note that between man and God there is still an infinite
distance. We are nothing like him and yet
we are like him all the same. We will never be God.
Jesus Christ however is the only express image of God's person as
the Son of the Father having the same nature.
And Hebrews chapter one, verse three, we read He is the
radiance talking about Christ Jesus.
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of
his nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His
power. You see, we only bear some of
God's. Honor, not the entire thing we
are made in. God's image as a King's impress
is upon a coin. It might look like him, but it
is not the key. His image upon us consists of
three things. One is that his nature and
constitution, not those of a body, because God does not have
a body, but those of his soul. The body does receive honor from
God in this way, though, and that the Word made flesh became
like us. The Son of God was clothed in a
body like ours, and he will shortly clothe ours with a glory
like his. So he designed the body as a
place for himself to dwell in the fullness of time.
But it is the soul of man that does especially bear the image
of God. It's the soul is a spirit.
It's an intelligent, immortal spirit.
It never and neither it does not die right.
It lives on an influencing act of spirit, and so therefore it
resembles God, who is the Father of spirits, the soul of man, and
its three faculties, or perhaps the clearest, brightest looking
glass in nature, in which we see God Almighty, the Creator.
You can look at the human body and the soul and the way that a
man is designed and say there was well.
The scientists who do not deny what's call it intelligent
design, but you can look. At it and say there is a creator
behind that we're we're not, we're not like some
supercomputer, as again, people want to reduce the brain to.
It's not some supercomputer. It's intelligently, infinitely
intelligently designed by God, and it may never be fully
understood. Second, we see that we have His
place and authority. We we are God's representatives
in the government of creation. We are meant to subdue and to
exercise dominion over creation. Creation is not capable because
it has not a soul, is not made like man, so it is not capable
of serving and fearing God. So God appointed man to serve,
so God appoints creation those. To serve and fear man.
Third thing we see here is in the way that we bear God's
images through impurity and integrity, or through through
purity and morality. God's image upon man consists of
knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness.
Now all of this gets affected by the fall, but in the new
creation, these are some of the things that are restored to
mankind. And so we we can say that our
first parents, Adam and Eve, were happy, holy creatures.
They were happy and holy. They had the image of God upon
them perfectly and we can also say, looking at their state.
How fallen are we? How fallen are we?
You and I have defaced, just as Adam and Eve did, the image of
God in our sinfulness. Though the remains are a remnant
of his image, the ruins of it are great.
May the Lord then renew his image upon us by his sanctifying
grace. Amen.
This is part of what we understand 2nd Corinthians 3 to
be talking about it as it says that we behold that we've had a
veil removed from our face so that we might behold the glory
of God and be transformed from 1 degree of glory into the next.
You, you can now behold as an image bear the glory of God.
You can now reflect as an image bear the glory of God as a
Christian, as one who has been saved, one who submitted himself
or herself to Christ with repentance and faith.
God is then, as He has saved you and justified you freely by His
grace. He is sanctifying you freely by
His grace. He's working in you by His
spirits to produce the things of God within you and without you,
right outside of you as well. You are a new creation in Christ
Jesus. You are saved by grace through
faith in Christ alone, and this is not of yourselves.
It's the gift of God so that no one may boast.
And you are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.
For good works which God prepared beforehand.
God is himself working these things in you.
Paul confesses to the Philippians that he who began a
good work in you is faithful to bring it to completion.
You can trust that though I'm not where I want to be as a man
or a woman of the Lord of I'm not where I need to be, right as
we often say. I know I don't pray as much as I
need to, and I don't read as much as I need to.
Though you are not yet where you ought to be.
Praise God you're not. Yet you're not.
Where you once were, either he saved you.
He's working his spirit in you. He's growing you up, maturing
you so that you might love him more faithfully.
God created the man and the woman in his own image to
glorify himself. The fourth thing we read here
that we must observe is that mankind was blessed by God to be
fruitful and multiply after God created the man and the woman,
he says. To them it says we read, God
bless them. 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.
So mankind, blessed by God, is to be fruitful and multiply.
This is why God created the man and the woman is to be fruitful
and multiply. God created the first man and
the woman. He created Adam first out of the
ground. He created the woman second out
of man's side. He created them to be fruitful,
multiply, to carry out his glory on the earth.
Angels were not even made male and female, for they are not to
procreate. But man was made so that his
nature may be spread and his race continued out of 1 male and
out of one female. All the nations of man are made
of 1 blood. Amen.
So God blesses them. Be fruitful multiple.
I feel the earth, but that fruitfulness and that increase
depends upon the blessing of God.
We are, as men and women, submitted to the Lord because of
God's blessing. Mankind then continues to exist
on the earth. It's not accidental that there
are 8 billion people on the earth.
This was God's good design. Mankind has been being fruitful
and multiply. Now there's a common grace and
fruitful and multiplication, right?
And that all people can be fruitful and multiply.
They can procreate and were created to do so.
That's common grace. But there's a good there's a
special grace, There's a good godly nature to being fruitful
and multiplying that Christians must commit themselves to, and
that's to be fruitful and multiplying the ways that God
has. Commanded us to, which is not
merely procreation, but doesn't. It doesn't get rid of it, It
just means that we fruit we are. Fruitful And we multiply,
especially so spiritually. And that we proclaim the gospel
of Christ. We make disciples.
We baptize them. We teach them to follow the
things that God has commanded, just as Christ has said to do.
So with God's honor put on us in creation, created in the image
and likeness of God, he's put His honor on us.
All of that honors so that we would give more honor to God.
It enables us to bring honor to the Lord, our Creator.
And though we forfeited much of this and sin, God has given a
new and better title to us than that which we had before.
And that is that everything is ours.
In Christ Jesus and 1st Corinthians 3/23/22 through 23
Paul right series says whether Paul or Apollo's or Cephas or
the word or life or death or the present or the future.
All are yours, and you are Christ, and Christ is God's.
And so in Christ we have all things because Christ is Lord of
all things. God created man and woman in his
own image to glorify himself. Much of that is to be fruitful
and multiplied. Circling back to the household
for just a moment, kind of pre helping us get.
Into where we're headed. One of the things, if we're
going to say happy, is the home when God is there.
We have to recognize, we have to be honest, that there are homes
where God is not there are home. Not that God is not everywhere.
I don't mean that there are homes where God is not
worshiped, their homes where we are not submitting ourselves to
the lordship of Christ and the way that we live as men and
women, as boys and girls. And so next week we'll get into
God's prefall creation of man and what he told him to do the
week after. We'll get into God's prefall
creation of woman and what he told her to do and how these two
things work together. We'll look at the prefall
purpose of marriage the week after that and then we'll begin
to examine the things that have taken place in the fall.
So those things are coming. But what we can't do when we
read a text like this and we understand that God is the
Creator and we are creation and our hearts are prone to worship
things that are not God. We are prone to break the first
commandment and we're prone to break the 2nd commandment,
right? We're prone to worship things
that are not God, and we're prone to create other things to
worship. When we understand that, we need
to recognize that our home. Often becomes a place where
idolatry exists the most, and you can feel the tugs on it in
your own heart and your own mind.
Whether it's your work, whether it's sports for your children,
whether it's activities that you're involved in, whether it's
your ideal of marriage or your wife's ideal of marriage,
whether it's whatever, all these things can begin to pull in
different directions. And then the way we course
correct typically is by trying to get the other person or the
other people to pull towards our idol instead.
Does that make sense? So if I have a view of marriage
and I want to go this direction, but that view of marriage really
is selfseeking, right? It just helps Kyle pray Scott.
But Patricia has a view of marriage, and she's like, no, we
need to. We need to go this way and that
view is self seeking For Patricia.
It helps her only. And then our children naturally
have views of how we should order our marriage around them,
right? Like they should be the center
of attention. And they don't do this on
purpose. Often time they're discipled to
think this way because it's how parents live, but they'll pull
in this direction. So everybody's pulling in
different directions and the way we course correct is by thinking
that there's some. Neutral place we can all rest
where everybody kind of gets their way and that's typically
what we try to naturally work towards in our home is like
what's what's the compromise that gets us on the same page,
brothers and sisters, that is more idolatry.
That's what I'm trying to show you that you're creating.
Now what's the new idol? That we're all going to run
towards that thing. And typically it's just comfort.
It's peace of foe. Peace, but peace.
And so here's what I'm showing you.
I need to repent of my idol seeking and my false worship.
Patricia needs to repent of her idol seeking and her false
worship. And our sons need to repent of
their idol seeking and their false worship.
And we all need to surrender ourselves to Christ our Lord.
Does that make sense? And so now, under the lordship
of Christ, we're all running towards what he says is good and
right and holy. Well, the way he has designed a
home to work, which means we all have to give up false worship.
We all have to acknowledge that God has created, and therefore
God the designer gets to dictate what creation must be doing.
And creation must not be selfseeking.
Ever. Ever.
I can ask all of you, probably when's a moment in your life
that you were selfseeking and how did that go for you?
And all of you would be able to give some answer, right?
Maybe it's in your marriage, maybe it's in your home, maybe
it's at work. Wherever she'd be able to say I
made an absolute train wreck of my life when I was selfseeking.
And So what I'm laying before you today.
God has created you and He created you, male and female,
and He has blessed you and said be fruitful and multiply.
There is a real purpose to what God has called you to do, but
you will never find that purpose until you submit yourself to the
Lordship of Christ Jesus. Because we're falling.
Man and woman didn't obey God. Man and woman sinned against
God. They disobeyed him.
They're kicked out of the garden.
We'll get into it. And so Christ comes.
Christ takes on flesh. Christ lives a perfect life.
Christ dies. The only death that's ever truly
innocent. He takes on the sins of his
people so that they might be saved, and in salvation they
receive the Spirit of God to dwell inside of them, to make
them become Christlike, to sanctify them.
Jesus said the the presence of the Spirit is so much greater
than him being physically present.
He told physically present with his disciples.
He told his disciples, It's good that I go from you, so that the
helper might come. And yet even we will quench the
Spirit by thinking that what we have is not even as good as what
the disciples. But may we surrender.
May you and I surrender ourselves to our one true God,
the God who created the heavens and the earth, the God who calls
us into fellowship with him. Finish by reading this, and
maybe I can coerce the worship team into singing it at some
point. It might be worth doing it.
I don't know. We'll have to actually hear it.
But these are the words to the the hymn happy the whole when
God is there. Happy the home when God is
there. And love fills every breast When
one their wish and one their prayer and one their heavenly
rest. Happy the home where Jesus's
name is sweet to every ear. Where children early speak his
fame and parents hold him dear Happy The home where prayer is
heard and praise is won't arise. Where parents love the sacred
word and all its wisdom prize. Lord, let us and our homes agree
this blessed peace to gain. Unite our hearts and love to
thee. And love to all will ride.
Amen. Would you bow your head?
Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
Thank you for your word, Lord. It's it's it's an exposing word.
It it exposes, Lord today so much about the home and there's
so much to get into. And it's hard to, it's hard
honestly to stay focused on on what we need because we're so
bad. I'm so bad especially about
wanting to deal with symptoms, symptoms of the cancer of sin
and not the cancer of sin itself.
And so, Lord, today we must first deal with Lordship.
Have we submitted ourselves to God?
That's our question today, Father.
Lord, we know that the answer to that question cannot be rightly
stated, cannot be fully comprehended.
Unless your spirit move upon our hearts and minds, Lord, we will
continue to deceive ourselves. Jeremiah, your prophet rights at
the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all
things. Who can know it?
And so, Lord, if we just look introspectively and we think, Oh
yeah, of course the Lord is my Lord, we may miss what's truly
going on in our hearts. And so, Lord, I pray for your
help Today in Romans 12. You encourage us to be honest in
our evaluation of ourselves, to be forthright, Lord and Proverbs
5. And in other places we read that
there are no sins hidden from your sight, that there is no
heart that is aligned to something else that you do not
see. And so, Lord, we stand here
bear, we stand naked, and our sins naked, and our and
ourselves before you. And we ask Lord for you to
evaluate every area of our hearts.
Is Christ our Lord? Is he Lord of our home?
Is he Lord of my heart? Is he Lord of my mind?
Is he Lord of my soul? Is he Lord of my efforts?
Is he Lord of my mouth? The things that I say?
Is he Lord of my thoughts? Is Christ Lord.
So, Lord, we pray that you would help us answer that truthfully
today. We thank you, Father, that we
don't rest in bad news, which is the outright sinfulness of
mankind. But we have the good news of
Christ the Savior, your Son, whom you sent to Donna Cross
because you so love the world, and you saw fit to do it, so
that all who would believe in Him might not perish into
everlasting hell, but would have eternal life with you.
And so, Lord, I pray for you to save hearts and souls today.
Grant new creation, Enable people to live by the Spirit of
God, not by the Spirit of the flesh and Lord.
For those of us who have called on your name and truthfulness
and uprightness, who have surrendered ourselves to your
Lordship, would you expose our sinfulness today that we might
walk safefully and upright before you today?
We praise you for it, Lord. It's in the name of Christ, I
pray. Amen.