Creation Day 6, Part 2

The image of God indicates the ability of God. In our study of Genesis, we have come now to day six in God's creation, the pinnacle of God's creative work, creation of man in spite of the clear teaching of the Bible, the clear teaching of Genesis and other passages of Scripture. Evolutionists, some of them calling themselves Christians and therefore theistic evolutionists, that is that God caused evolution to bring man into existence. These evolutionists have tried against the clear testimony of Scripture that God created all these things in a day, tried to prove that man evolved, that everything evolved from a one-celled creature through water animals, amphibians, apes to finally the erect man who is then the pinnacle of creation. But scientists, though they deny the Bible, have found it impossible to find proof for the evolution of anything, including the evolution of man. The reason they can't find proof for it is because there isn't any. You can't find proof for something that didn't happen and evolution never happened, and that's why they can't find any proof for it.

In six twenty-four hour or solar days, God made the entire universe, the earth and all its living creatures, and as we've been saying, He did it about six or seven thousand years ago. Now that does bring up the issue of fossils, and I have to address this. I know many of your students, and even in elementary school and the later grades, certainly in junior high and high school and on into college, you're faced with a supposed fossil record that proves that man evolved from some kind of a four-legged ape-like creature. How do we deal with the supposed fossil testimony that is used to prove evolution? Don't scientists actually have missing links? It seems like every few years or every few months some scientists claim to have found some transitional ape-man form.

Do they have missing links? The answer? Absolutely not.

Absolutely not. A most interesting scientific book called In the Beginning is written by Walter Brown, who is a Ph.D. from MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For twenty-one years, Walt Brown was the chief of science and technology studies at the Air War College and professor at the Air Force Academy, a very fine scientist. He has exposed, as have many others, the lies of evolutionists trying to make their case. He writes that stories claiming that fossils of primitive ape-like men have been found are grossly overstated.

For example, it is now universally acknowledged that Piltdown Man was a total hoax, and yet it exists and has existed in textbooks for more than forty years. Prior to 1978, the evidence for Ramapithecus consisted of a mere handful of teeth and jaw fragments. Ramapithecus was one of the largest categories of transitional ape-man.

We now know that it came simply out of some teeth and jaw fragments. It is now known that Ramapithecus was just an ape. The dethroning of Ramapithecus, supposedly the first human, the dethroning has been a serious blow. We now believe, scientists believe, that Ramapithecus was probably the extinct relative of orangutan, nothing more. One of the other supposed transitional forms is called Nebraska Man. The only evidence, by the way, for Nebraska Man turns out to be a pig's tooth.

Quite a leap. The skulls of the famous Peking Man are considered by many experts to be the remains of apes that were systematically decapitated and exploited for food by man. The classification Homo erectus is considered by most experts to be a category that should never have been created with regard to them. The first confirmed limb bones of Homo habilis have recently been discovered. They show that this animal clearly had ape-like proportions and should never have been classified as Homo or man-like. And then Australopithecans, as I mentioned last time, which were made famous by Lewis and Mary Leakey, found most in South Africa, are quite distinct from humans. Several detailed computer studies of the Australopithecans have shown that their bodily proportions were not intermediate between man and living apes at all. Further study of their inner ear bones that were used to maintain balance show a striking similarity with those of chimpanzees and gorillas, but a complete difference with those of humans. One of the fossils, a three and a half foot tall, long-armed, 60-pound adult called Lucy, you remember the discovery of Lucy, was initially presented as evidence that the Australopithecans walked upright in a human manner. However, studies of Lucy's entire anatomy, not just a knee joint, now show this is not true.

Lucy, hate to tell you, swung from trees. For about a hundred years, the world was led to believe that Neanderthal man was stooped and ape-like. Recent studies show that this erroneous belief was based upon some Neanderthals who were crippled with bone disease such as arthritis and rickets. Neanderthal man, Heidelberg man and Cro-Magnon man were completely human. Artist depictions of them, especially of their fleshy portions, are quite imaginative and not at all supported by the evidence.

And so it goes. And furthermore, as we've been saying all along, the dating methods of evolutionists are grossly in error as well. So bottom line, they don't have any transitional forms. They don't have any proof for the evolution of anything, certainly no proof for the evolution of man.

And the reason they're having a hard time proving it is because it didn't happen and therefore it can't be proven. What did happen is recorded for us in the Bible. Let's go back to Genesis chapter 1. On the first day, according to verses 24 and...on the sixth day, I should say, according to verses 24 and 25, day six featured the creation of land animals. Cattle, I mentioned this last time, would be domestic and tame, creeping things all the creatures low to the ground, beasts four-legged, non-domesticated animals.

Having done that, we then come to verses 26 and 27. And here we find the creation of man. Now there are four features here discussed about man. Four features.

The first feature is obvious. Man is made in the image of God. It says it repeatedly. Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Image and likeness are synonyms.

There is no distinction in the Hebrew language between those two terms as to meaning. They are just repeated for emphasis, which is very typical of the use of the Hebrew language. In our image, according to our likeness, the same thing. Verse 27, in His own image, in the image of God, He created Him.

Repeat it again. Four different times we have been created in the image of God. Now what does it mean?

Well, whatever it means is really important because whatever it means, it's different. It's what identifies the difference between us and every other created thing, even the highest of created things, conscious animals. The answer to this is critical. And the answer again tells us that man cannot evolve. That is impossible. You can't evolve into the image of God. That is not something that shows up in genetics. That's not something you find in a chromosome.

That's not something that appears in DNA. What is the image of God? The root of the Hebrew word for image, selem, appears to mean to carve or to cut off. In other words, man was sort of a chip off God, in a sense. He was sort of shaped and formed like God. He was created in an exalted fashion. You could even say He was carved, He was whittled, as it were.

He was shaped like God. That means that we are created on a heavenly pattern, folks. That means we are created on a divine pattern.

Let me take it a step further. That means we are created on an eternal pattern, which is not true of anything else that was created, nothing else in the time-space universe. We do share biological features with the rest of the creatures. We are all designed by God to live together in a common environment. We have to share biological features because we say we share the biological environment. We have a certain biological reciprocity with plants, don't we?

We create carbon dioxide and they create what? Oxygen, which we need. We have a reciprocity with the plants because we eat them. We have a reciprocity with the animals. We have a reciprocity with the water. We have a reciprocity with the sun and the moon and all the other features of our world. And so, we must fit into the biological environment and therefore we are made out of the same stuff physically. But we are not highly evolved apes.

We are transcendent in our significance because we have been literally cut off and carved as in the image of God. Now, this must describe some aspects of human nature which are not shared by animals, such as self-consciousness. Animals are conscious, they're not self-conscious.

That is, they're conscious, they react to their environment, but they don't know they do, such as reason, the ability to think abstractly, which animals cannot do, and that has been proven repeatedly. Such as appreciation for beauty and aesthetics. Such as feeling emotion. Such as being morally sensitive and morally aware and morally conscious. And here it is above everything else.

Get this one. Above all, the image of God indicates the ability to personally relate to someone else, especially to God Himself. Being able to know Him, being able to love Him, being able to obey Him, being able to worship Him.

Let me say it to you. The core of the image of God can be summed up by the word personal. We are persons. We are persons. We live and move on the basis of relationships.

Relationships. We understand fellowship. We understand love. We understand communion. We understand conversation. We understand sharing thoughts and sharing attitudes and sharing ideas and sharing experiences with others. And that is why when God created man, He immediately said, it is not good for man to be alone.

Why? Because the image of God is personhood, and personhood can only function in relationship. The image of God, folks, is the capacity for personal relationships.

And most importantly, for a personal relationship with God. And isn't it then important to understand that when God said, let us make man in our image, He introduces to us at that point the concept that He is a God of relationship. And then creates us in that image so that we are creatures of relationship.

That's the issue. The image of God is the capacity for personal relationship. God Himself has never existed as a single, lonely, solitary, isolated individual. He has always existed in a family. He is the Father. The second member is the Son.

The third member is the Spirit. As the great Saint Athanasius used to say in the fourth century, the Father has never been without His Son. The amazing mystery of the origin of personhood, of the origin of personality, is that the one God exists as three persons in one being or substance or essence or reality. And the one substance, the one essence, the one being of God involves personhood. And when God made us in His image, He made us as persons.

And that is He made us for relationship. Now being persons, self-conscious, therefore capable of relationships, if I'm an animal, I'm not even conscious that I exist, how can I be conscious that anybody else does? But I am a person and I know I exist and I know you exist and I know God exists. God is a plurality.

God exists in Trinitarian relationship and I have been made for relationships. That is the ontological aspect or the aspect of nature which is the image of God, personhood and relationship. There are also some ethical things and I've already hinted at them. As a person who is self-conscious, there are ethical features. I know right from wrong. I understand virtue. I understand morality. I understand righteousness. I understand sin. I understand holiness.

I understand disobedience and rebellion. I have the capacity to do what is right. I have the capacity to do what is wrong. I have a capacity for holy and loving fellowship with my heavenly Father. I have a capacity to know God, to know Christ, to know the Holy Spirit.

I also have a capacity as a person in the image of God to know what's right, to know what's wrong, to know what's good, to know what's bad. It is true that as a human being, I resemble the creatures in my physical corporeal form. I am made up of flesh. I am made up of the same components.

I am made up of the same atomic material, the same raw elements. But what makes me distinct is my invisible part. It's the part that you can't find in my DNA.

It's the part that's not in the chromosomes. It's that invisible self. It's that true person that makes me like God that is capable of relationship with you and with God. And the question has been asked through the centuries, does the body of man bear the image of God?

No, not in the purest and truest sense. I don't want to get into splitting philosophical hairs here, but we are dust to dust and that's not like God. The personhood is eternal and that's like God. And we are capable and shall enjoy personal relationships forever with one another in the kingdom of God and with God Himself. But while the body is not so much the expression of the image of God, the body does serve as a vehicle through which the image of God is manifest. Now let's look back at the text and we'll wrap this up.

There's so much to cover here. When God created man, the reason He can save them is at the end of verse 27 because it says He created him and then it says male and female He created them. Male and female He created them. That takes us to the second point and I think probably it's better to wait to develop that next time.

It's fascinating. But let me just tell you what the four things are that are distinct about man's creation. First of all, he was made in the image of God.

That's the first thing. He was made for personality and relationship. Second thing, he was made as king of the earth to rule and subdue creation. Third, he was made as propagator of the human race to populate the earth.

And fourth, he was made to be the recipient of rich and plentiful bounty all around him, far above the animals. One last distinguishing characteristic, if you're going to talk about personality, if you're going to talk about relationship, listen carefully, you have to talk about language, right? How much of a relationship can you have if all you can do is grunt? You say, well, I'm working on it with my husband, that's about it.

Well, and that's right. Relationship comes down to communication, doesn't it? Animals can't relate. They don't have self-consciousness. They don't have personhood.

They don't have relationships. They do whatever they need to do instinctively to achieve one end in life and that is food and preservation. But when you come to mankind, you come to the ability to speak language.

This is remarkable. There was a whole article in Newsweek magazine, scientists trying desperately to figure out unsuccessfully how man evolved the ability to speak languages, to speak abstractly, to reason abstractly. Linguistic studies demonstrate, as Ahler and Amdahl, two linguists, have stated that, quote, apparently human beings and only human beings are specifically designed to acquire just the range of language systems that we see manifested in the world's 5,000 plus languages.

Interesting. There are about 5,000 languages in the world and only human beings can acquire those languages. You say, what about a dolphin? When you say jump, don't they jump? They don't jump because you said jump and they abstractly understand that those letters form a word that means to go into the air.

There's a certain sound that results in a fish going in their mouth. They learned that. Ahler and Amdahl have said, the rate of vocabulary acquisition is so high at certain stages of life and the precision and delicacy of the concepts acquired so remarkable that it seems necessary to conclude that in some manner the conceptual system with which lexical items are connected is already substantially in place.

Wow! That's technical language to say there's something going on in the abstract reasoning capability of a human brain that demands the acquisition of language to satisfy it. And we all begin to see that with the children, don't we? They begin to speak and they begin to acquire the complexity of communication in language. Chomsky, who is a great Jewish linguist, has shown that the ability to learn language is a given in being human. He demonstrates that even the higher apes are unable to deal with the number system or with any abstract properties of space or in general with any abstract system of expressions. Chomsky speaks elsewhere of initially given structures of mind and deep structures in humans which give rise to universal grammar. Listen, invariant among humans. It's true. You can take any language that exists and translate it into any other language that exists because the structural components of language are identical. They're literally part of the fabric of the image of God so that we who are relational beings with personhood can connect.

All the hard wiring is there. His research on the uniqueness of the human species as regards language is so convincing that he is not welcome in evolutionist circles. They have labeled him as a creationist, which he denies. Unlike apes and other living creatures, human capacity for language is a door into the eternal realm. It's a door into the presence of God. It demands the recognition that we have been created on a heavenly pattern for communication with one another and communication with our Creator who made us in His image. Haller and Amdahl write, quote, Our capacity for language cannot have originated within the narrow confines of any finite duration of experience. If all the eons of the space time world could be multiplied clear to infinity, the material world would still fail to account for the abstract conceptions that any human being can easily conceive of through the gift of language, end quote.

Amazing. Only a speaking God could have made speaking persons, right? God communicates, and so do we. So we are made thusly in His image. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, continuing his study titled, The Battle for the Beginning, here on Grace to You.

Well, John, in this series, you don't concern yourself so much with what science or what non-believing sources say about the beginning of the world, but you have focused on one thing, and that's what the Bible says. That's a hallmark of your ministry. You focus on one thing and try to answer the question, What does Scripture mean by what it says? And I know there are some who would call that an antiquated, out-of-date style of ministry. They say people want to know more than the plain meaning of Scripture, but that actually isn't what you found, is it? Well, people have downloaded 200 million sermons from the Grace to You website. Somebody wants to know what the Bible says, and they're doing it at 65,000 sermons a day, even today.

So there is no shortage of people who want to know what the Bible says, and they want to know what the Bible says and what the Bible means, and rightly so, because that is where the truth lies, and that is where the message of salvation and redemption is to be found and nowhere else. Now, when we're talking about creation, again, there is no reason to listen to science when the conversation is about creation, because science wasn't there. There was no science in creation. When nothing exists but God, you have nothing. That is absolutely nothing.

Ex nihilo. Out of nothing, God creates an entire universe from the massive macrocosm to the microcosm and everything in between with all of its staggering complexity, and he does it in six days. And I believe that because that's what God's Word says, that God said, I did this in six days. There is no scientific explanation for that. Science can't weigh in on that any more than science can explain Jesus' resurrection. There will be no scientific explanation for the end of human history when Peter says the elements will melt with fervent heat, and the entire existing universe as we know it today will go out of existence in this massive atomic implosion of everything, and in its place, God will immediately create a new heaven and a new earth. You can't explain that.

So go to the book of Revelation and read about the miraculous things that are happening in the book of Revelation, miraculous judgments that are coming down on the world. They're not explicable scientifically. Nobody tries to explain away the judgments and then the creation of the new heaven and the new earth. Nobody tries to explain that away scientifically. We all understand that is miraculous.

So why would we try to explain away the original creation with science when it is also a miracle and a miracle of inexplicable proportions? So we believe the Bible, and we leave it at that. Yes, we do, and thank you, Jon, for that. Friend, because we believe the Bible is completely accurate and has the power to change lives, we really only want to do one thing, and that is get the gospel and the clear teaching of God's Word, the truth of Scripture, to as many people as we can. If that kind of ministry resonates with you, express your support today. To partner with us, go to gty.org or call our toll-free number, 800-55-GRACE. If you prefer regular mail, you can write to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 70412. However you contact us, thank you for helping us strengthen churches and individual believers around the world. Again, to make a donation, you can call us, talk to us personally at 800-55-GRACE, or you can go to the website gty.org. Also, when you visit our website, gty.org, let me encourage you to read the Grace To You blog. There we have Jon and the staff helping you discern truth from error. And if you have an iPhone or an Android device, you can download the free Grace To You Sermons app and our Study Bible app, and both of those apps give you access to all of Jon's teaching wherever you go. To read the blog and to download the apps, go to gty.org. Now for Jon McArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace To You television on Sundays, check your local listing for Channel and Times, and make sure you're here tomorrow when Jon looks at God's plan for mankind and how he equipped us to accomplish it. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.