WEEKLY
SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON
An
international Sunday school lesson commentary
For
Sunday September 16, 2018
Over
173,000 readers worldwide
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GOD
CREATES MANKIND
(We
are created in GOD’s OWN spiritual image)
(Genesis
1:26-2:7)
On the sixth day of creation, after
GOD had “spoken into existence” all of the universe and the earth, and
fashioned from the soil, all types of animal life, bird life, and marine life,
which were to dwell upon the dry land of the earth, in the air, and in the sea,
in dramatic fashion, HE suddenly changed HIS “creation method” when HE created
man.
Here in this passage, instead of speaking
man into existence, like HE had done with all the other animal, bird, and
marine life which HE created, GOD decided to form physical man from the dust of
the earth, and then, place within him “a human spirit”. GOD decided to “pattern”
(v.27) (“dmuwth”-which is pronounced “dem-ooth” and means “mannerism”) that human
spirit to reflect HIS OWN spiritual image, or “nature” here on earth.
Our spiritual make-up consists, first of
all, of a “heart” (“kardia”), not the physical organ in our chest, but rather, “the
center of our thoughts” where GOD must be kept). Then there is the “soul” (the human
spirit), which embodies GOD’s “nature”, a set of “communicable attributes”, which
include Life, Personality, Love, Truth, Justice, Wisdom, and Holiness. And finally
there is the “mind”, where we are free to make choices and decisions in life
regarding all things. In other words, GOD did not make us into robots, but
rather, HE gives us “wills that are free”
And so, the word “image” (v.26 and v.27), “tselem”
in the Hebrew, is in reality, a “spiritual image”, not a physical one. We don’t
look like GOD, but rather, “we are what GOD wants us to look like” physically. GOD
placed within our “human spirit”, or “soul”, a set of “communicable
attributes”, or qualities, that would make man compatible with HIM, and desire
to obey, worship, and have an experiential, personal relationship with HIM.
And
so GOD breathed into man, the breath of life, and from that day forward, man became
a living person and began to embody the elements, or attributes of “GOD’s OWN
Nature”. Mankind became “personally” related to GOD through HIS nature which
includes those attributes I just mentioned. Man became a living “person”,
having a “personality” just as GOD does. Without these qualities we would be
just another animal, like wildlife, livestock, and all the other domesticated
animal life forms.
When GOD said “let us make man in our own
image”, HE, being an invisible Spiritual GOD, was not talking about a “physical
image”. “We do not look like GOD”, because “GOD doesn’t have a physical image”.
JESUS tells us in John 4:24 that “GOD is SPIRIT” and so, the only way that we
can resemble GOD is to act like HIM by incorporating HIS spiritual attributes
into our everyday behavior and existence. We must resemble HIM spiritually,
through our behavior.
We are required by GOD to use those
communicable attributes of HIS to reflect HIS “image” to others through our
behavior, the same way the coming CHRIST would do during HIS first advent. These
attributes also equip us with the capacity to care for ourselves and GOD’s
other creation, similarly to the way that GOD cares for us.
After perfecting man for HIS service, GOD
then blessed us and instructed us to multiply ourselves and “replenish” (“male”
– pronounced “maw-lay” in the Hebrew, and it means “to fill again”, or
“refill”) the earth (v.28). That command from GOD suggests that there was
something here before mankind, and the earth we now know. In fact, it is true
that many archeological finds have been discovered to show that human, animal,
and plant life, and even the universe can go back millions of years.
The phrase “in the beginning” suggests just
that, “that GOD was already here in the beginning”, or, in fact, before the
beginning was, there had to be GOD. HE’s the ONE WHO got the ball rolling, and
so, HE had to be already here before the beginning. This is too great for us to
understand because we can only think in “linear time”, however, by telling Adam
and Eve to “replenish the earth”, that tells us that GOD probably already had
put something here before HE decided to start all over again with the creation
of earth and mankind as we see it today. It suggests that everything began with
GOD, and not that, everything began with us.
In addition to providing us with the
wonderful reproduction system that HE fully intended for us to take advantage
of, GOD also commanded us to subdue all of HIS creation, and to maintain full
responsibility and dominion over it (Vs.26-28). GOD then set up all of HIS
human and animal creation with an almost unlimited vegetarian diet (Vs.29-30),
with one distinction or restriction of course, and that is that we not eat of
“the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, which was planted in the center
of “The Garden of Eden” along with “the tree of life”.
GOD evaluated each of the first five days
of HIS creative work that HE had spoken into existence, and at the end of each
day HE called HIS work “good”. However, near the end of the sixth day, HE
physically created and formed man from the dust of the earth, and when HE had
finished making man, HE called HIS work, “very good”.
GOD, our CREATOR, seems to have invested
much more time into the creation of man than HE did in all of HIS other
creations, and as a result, HE expects much more from us than the rest. The
intricate details that GOD embodies into every living thing clearly suggests
that HE deliberately and strategically placed each and everything here on
earth, and, in the heavens above, with great vision, and, with great purpose.
And man, and everything else, was made specifically to serve GOD in a
predetermined special way, according to “a superiorly wise plan” that we need
not fully understand or comprehend, but rather, must go forward with it, by
faith.
A Sunday school lesson
by,
Larry D. Alexander
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