R.C. Sproul: The Glory of God Through Man

would you turn in your Bibles please to page one in the first chapter of beginning at verse 26 we read these words and then God said let us make man in our image according to our likeness let them have dominion over the fish of the sea there were the birds of the air and over the cattle over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth and so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them and then God blessed them and said to them be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth God said see I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of the earth and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you it shall be for food and also to every beasts of the earth through every bird of the air to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life I have given every green herb for food and it was so and then God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good so the evening and the morning were the sick today now that ends the first chapter of Genesis but it does not end the account of creation we need to press on into chapter 2 which we read these words thus the heavens and the earth and all of the hosts of them were finished and on the seventh day from all his work which he had done he rested and then God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made this is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created he is ears to hear let him hear once a business man said to me or see what's the big idea see what do you mean he said well every business has to define its mission in some succinct statement that crystallizes the essence of what they're about and he said what's the big idea of the Reformed faith and I said the big idea is coram Deo and we are called to live all of life before the face of God in the presence of God beneath the authority of God to the glory of God in the Westminster Confession in the Westminster Shorter Catechism the question goes this way what is man's chief end that is what's the purpose of human existence and the short answer is man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever a few years ago when my granddaughter Darby was learning the children's catechism and she could barely speak at the time I would ask her the questions you know who made you should say God made me what else did God make God made all things and then I would say okay Darby why did God make all things she would smile and say for his glory and I said to myself itself I can study theology until I pass into glory and can never learn anything more profound than what I've just heard from the lips of this child that God creates all things for his glory now I think one of the things that we miss when we read the creation account is the significance of the structure of creation we see that the framework don't take care too much the use of that word but the framework here of the structure of creation is that creation takes place on a day-by-day basis and after God creates something the first day as there was morning and evening the first day and then the second day the third day the fourth day fifth day and so on and we see a rising crescendo it seems of significance meaning that is being revealed here on the days of creation until we reach the sixth day where we hear of the crowning act of God's creation the creation of human beings in his likeness and in his image and so then we think that the zenith of creation is reached on the sixth day but if we know of anything of the significance of Hebrew numerology we know that number six is not the ultimate level of divine glory or of significance in fact the number six marks imperfection that which falls short of perfection and if you want to get the multi maximal concept of imperfection you take that 6 - the superlative level triple it make it 6 6 6 and you got the number that equates with the fullness of evil know the perfect number for the Hebrew is 7 not 6 so if you want to understand the goal and the significance of creation you have to go past chapter 1 you have to go past the sixth day and understand that the sixth day is the penultimate day in this order of creation not the ultimate day the ultimate day is on the seventh day which the Scriptures tell us indicates two very significant things the first thing is it is the day on which God rests not that he does nothing that he's idle because he still has to sustain everything that he's made over the first six days but he's arrests now from the labor of creation and the second thing that he does on the Sabbath day that arrests our attention is that he takes this day not the sixth day and he Hallows it he makes it holy now what do I take from that I see a hint here of the goal of creation I say a hint here that is unraveled gradually and progressively through all of redemptive history and that hint points to this that the purpose of our existence ultimately is Sabbath holiness we were made for holiness we were made in His image we were made uniquely among all of the preachers that he fashioned with the capacity and the faculty to mirror and to reflect the very character of God as he said to his creatures you shall be holy even as I am holy well there's been much speculation and inquiry as to the meaning of the terms likeness and image of God what the imago Dei encompasses and historically people talk about those attributes of humanity that we share with God that we have a mind and that we have wills and God is a being who has a will and he said he's a volitional being but he's also an intelligent being he has a mind and insofar as we can think and insofar as we can will in that sense we reflect with God but you see we couldn't possibly reflect this all unless we had minds and unless we had wills if we were not moral agents if we were not volitional creatures it would be impossible for us to glorify God by obeying him but I noticed in the text is that we are told not only that God creates us in His image for his glory but there are other things that are added to that immediately in the text but before I look at that I want to jump ahead for a second fast forward if you will with me to the New Testament to Paul's letter to the Romans to the 8th chapter of Romans - one of the most well known that favorite verses of the Christian community romans 8:28 and following listen to these words again and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God to those who are the called according to his purpose now we like the first part that all things work together for good to those who love God and then we get in the furious debates about what the second part of the verse means about to those who are called according to his purpose but what does Paul say in the very next verse verse 29 for whom he foreknew he also predestined predestined to what to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren and now in verse 30 we have what is called popularly in the realm of theology the golden chain which is an abbreviated description of what we call technically the Ordo salutis or the order of salvation listen carefully to this order moreover whom he predestined these he also called whom he called these he also justified and whom he justified these he also glorified not every element that we include in the complex order of salvation as the Ordo salutis is mentioned specifically here one of the things that's conspicuously absent from this list is sanctification but I think there's a reason for that because sanctification is that process that begins instantly with our justification that lasts throughout our whole life but doesn't reach its completion point until we cross into glory and to which we enter into the final state of our redemption which is called interestingly enough glorification so the chain begins in eternity and goes towards the consummation of our redemption which is in our glorification so two things we see here in the first place as we've already heard so brilliantly from dr. Mohler that the goal and the purpose of creation is for God's own glory and yet God himself is glorified in his marvelous work of redemption by which he redeems his people and brings them to their glorification so then when our purpose is fulfilled to mirror and to reflect the glory of God we enter into our glorification in which God Himself is glorified in us now back to the ranch page to page one let's go back to page one so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created a male female he created them and excuse me back verse 26 let us make me in our image according to our likeness let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over the cattle over all the earth and so in addition to giving us the capacity to mirror and reflect the holiness of God God adds to the to the task that he gives to us that we are not only to reflect his holiness but we are to reflect his sovereignty he makes man and woman his visarjan s' his vice Regents to rule over the created order to have dominion over the earth we live in a topsy-turvy world we heard about the eco philosopher a few moments ago that Al met in this television debate who was weeping over the screams of the sheaves of wheat she must have been influenced by the philosopher Leibniz who believed that there were petite consciousness in even inanimate things in this world if you can believe it and this woman's a late convert of Leibniz I'm afraid but in any case we live in a topsy-turvy world a world in which fish eggs are protected by federal law and human embryos are not where we can go to jail if we accidentally kill a turtle we can earn a fee for intentionally slaughtering a human being that's madness that is the complete distortion of the Dominion mandate that God has given to us as his creatures who are to mirror and reflect his character that is to have dominion over the earth does not give us a license to exploit nature to abuse the realm over which we have Dominion we're not called to tyrannize our kingdom but we are called to have the Dominion and to display the rule of God over creation to rule over nature the way God would rule over the nature and so God sets Adam and Eve in this magnificent lush paradise achill Garden not into a jungle and tells them to enjoy the fruits of this garden and yet at the same time he put us to work to reflect that he is a God of labor and so are we and he gives us the joyous task of tending the garden of keeping the garden of making the garden of this world fruitful and so we participate in the productive activity of God we reflect his righteousness by being made in His image we reflect his sovereignty by exercising Dominion we reflect his labor by tendering tending the garden and subduing the earth and then we see that Adam and Eve has given the task of naming the animals now that could be but looked at in a very simplistic manner you can see Adam and Eve there the garden they go out and they see all of these manifestations of the zoological kingdom and Adam says look a duck-billed platypus and Eve says I can do you one better there's a kangaroo over there and so they play the game where all these animals pass by and each one is given a name and what happens in this enterprise is the beginning of science everyone in this room who has gone as far as ninth grade in your education is familiar with the term taxonomy that's not what happens on April of 15th that's another manner taxonomy how many of you remember that word you learned it in ninth grade biology how many of you remember taxonomy how many don't okay it's in there the gray cells it's in there you learned it because when you learn biology in the very beginning you learned that there were different kingdoms there's an animal kingdom and there's a plant kingdom and you had different geniuses and species and phyla and all of that and you learn to distinguish between mammals and reptiles right and arachnids do you remember what a right needs are being sea being sea spider that's an arachnid you know somehow it gives me a sense of Dominion when I see those scary spiders if I can call it what it is you're just a little arachnid that's all you are I don't have to be afraid you so we learn all of those different things and then we look at at cold-blooded animals warm-blooded animals vertebrates invertebrates and all these distinctions are given in biology so that we can distinguish one animal from another and beloved in one sense that's all science is is taxonomy where you group things according to their similarities and then distinguish them according to their dissimilarities a great doctor and diagnostician who note is one who can distinguish between indigestion and stomach cancer they have similarities but they also have differences and so in the taxonomy of medicine the physician specifies his knowledge that's the scientific enterprise to study the whole cosmos and understand it as the way Newton did thinking God's thoughts after him and so the pursuit of knowledge the pursuit of nature the pursuit of biology the pursuit of physics the fruit of astronomy all these things are part of what it means to glorify God this divorce in our day between theology and a study of nature is is a false antithesis according to creation but Adam and Eve were given the task not only to hear the Word of God and to obey the Word of God but to study the work of God in the enterprise of science but there's an element that I think in this pursuit of the glory of God that is most neglected in the church today I thought RC jr. when he was given that sweet blessed and unforgivable history of his father I thought sure he would recall one of his most tender childhood memories one of his real heroes one of his favorite persons that used to grace our home in western Pennsylvania was what our kids called a man that our kids both or see jr. and his sister called the funny little man in the knickers remember him francis schaeffer so my kids golfer into shape the funny little guy in the knickers come to the house and to the study center there in stalls town and bless us with his insights and with his wisdom Schafer had a passion to understand art to understand contemporary culture from a theological and Biblical perspective and he was deeply concerned about the war that he saw in the church against art and he made this complaint he said that when the church revolts against art the church revolts against God because one of the great tasks that God gives his people in creation is not only to mirror and reflect his holiness his righteousness his dominion his labor his knowledge his science but also to mirror and to reflect his beauty have you ever seen a two legged stool the only two legged stools I've seen are ones that have third leg broken and you don't want to sit on a two legged stool but that's what the church has been doing we look at two legs we say the church is concerned about truth because God in His glory is the author and Fountainhead of all truth and we understand that that's one leg on the stool the second leg on the stool is goodness we say that God is the author and the norm of all goodness his righteous character defines what goodness is in the final analysis and we are to mirror and reflect his truth we are to mirror and reflect his goodness but the third leg of the stool that's been cut off in the life of the church today is the leg of beauty the God in his being God in His character is the source the fountain hood the Fountainhead and the norm of all that is beautiful in our pre conference seminar we talked about issues of beauty in the realm of music and architecture in the life of the church and we recognize that we're living in an age of complete relativism where the secular culture is saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder beauty is simply a matter of preference this is the kind of thing that rook marker saw as illustrative of the death of a culture only when a culture is godless can people talk about art as being something purely subjective reduced to a matter of preference reduced to a matter of taste but if we are Christians we understand that there really is such a thing transcendently as the beautiful and that which is beautiful is rooted and grounded in the objective character of God Schaffer looked at our culture look at the church and said the church hasn't got past the second commandment where God in the Decalogue prohibits the making of graven images of things in heaven things on earth and so on and bowing down and worshiping them and they say we've take that we've taken it and understood it politically as if in the second commandment there is a divine prohibition against godly people's being involved in art read the next page read the page after that what happens when God designs worship when God teaches his people how he wants to be glorified he is known in the Old Testament as the God who dwells between the cherubim isn't that an interesting descriptive term to describe the Living God the one who dwells between the cherubim what does that refer to it refers to the most sacred vessel in Israel's history the Ark of the Covenant the throne of God which is guarded by the figures of angels why because some pagan artists decided to desecrate the name of God by fashioning golden angels now the first people who were filled by the holy ghost according to the Old Testament narratives were the artisans and the artisans in the craftsmen whom God called out for his service to construct the vessels for the tabernacle and later for the temple God gave detailed instructions for his house he was the great architect who insisted that the place in which his people would assemble to worship him would be a place that manifested his beauty with the finest art that the Holy Spirit himself could inspire Schaffer talked about the difference between heavenly art and representational art the representational art that we experience where people paint and sculpt things of this world well maybe one thing to adorn the the temple or the tabernacle and the Holy of Holies with images of angels but we shouldn't use terrestial objects earthly things in the house of God like candlesticks and Lavers and tables of showbread and then he goes on to describe the way in which God ordained the adorning of the robes of Aaron and the priests and if you notice that the artwork in the design of these garments included the appearance of pomegranates in art is there anything more earthly than pomegranates but guess what imagine this that in the use of pomegranates in the embroidering of the robes of the priests what color were the pomegranates blue have you ever seen a blue palm green maybe on Easter Sunday when somebody ran out of eggs to die and they decided to dye a pomegranate that's the only time you ever see a blue palm granite but rather in the art that was used by gods authorization there was freedom and liberty to color to use color in ways that was not simply a repetition of what we found in nature you might even say it was the advent of Impressionism when you found blue pomegranates but why was this done we don't have to guess because the Scriptures tell us that these things were done for glory and for beauty and the psalmist tells us to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness these are just a few things that we see in God's work of creation that God calls thus those of us who bear His image to mirror and reflect holiness not unholiness the mirror and to reflect his Dominion not slavery to mirror and to reflect labor not Slaven leanness or slothfulness to mirror and reflect the godly pursuit of knowledge to think god's thoughts after him in the pursuit of science not an arrogant revolt against God through embracing naturalism and through the mirroring and the reflecting of his beauty not his ugliness because all these things redound to his glory and that is what we were made for we were made for glory for the glory of God let's pray my father and our God we've chosen the ugly over the beautiful slavery over Dominion idleness over labor ignorant over knowledge and sin over holiness restore to us the image that was fulfilled in our Savior that indeed he may be the firstborn of many brethren for we ask it in his name Amen

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Length: 35min 41sec (2141 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2015