Genesis 1:26 Explained: The Trinity & The Creation of Man

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has taught home-style Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting, people say, the time seems to fly by. And now, here's Les Feldick. Well, we're going to continue right on where we left off last week. So if you will turn with me to Genesis chapter 1, we're going to pick right up at verse 6. For those of you who have been with us on television, we trust that you'll be able to take the time to find a Bible, pick up a pen and pencil, and do as our class people do. Just make some notes and study these things with us, because the only reason we teach is that people might understand what the Bible says, how it says it, and make it clear. So if you'll turn with me now then to Genesis chapter 1, and let's just come right down to verse 6. And you remember when I left you last week, I encouraged you to read these next few verses from 6 all the way down through verse 23, and take note of the fact that there is not a single word that indicates creation as such, but rather the language is that God has taken that which we have found in the previous verses, that was under water, was under darkness as a result of a previous judgment, that now God is just simply restoring everything to a functional operation. And then when we get down to verse 20, then we'll see that God reinstitutes an act of creation in the animal kingdom, and then in verse 24 to the end, the creation of mankind. But in these intervening verses now from 6 through 19, it's merely a restoration process. Look at verse 6, and God said, "...let there be a firmament in the midst, or in the middle, or between the waters, and let it," the firmament, "...divide the waters from the waters." Now all you have to do is just very carefully analyze the wording, and it becomes evident then. Now the word firmament is what we would normally refer to as our atmosphere. The firmament is our sky. It may involve a certain portion of what we would call space, the closer planets, whatever, but for the most part I like to look at firmament as our atmosphere. Now if you'll pick that apart carefully, it says that God is going to divide the water that is presently covering the planet as a result of that earlier judgment, and it's in a flood. I referred to it earlier as the first flood. But now the Scripture says that God is going to divide this water. He's going to take half of it, and He's going to move it out here above the atmosphere. And I just like to picture it, if I may, as a vapor belt out here in space. And sooner or later, of course, we're going to see that same vapor belt come back on the earth, and you already know when that was, and be it Noah's flood. But for now let's just picture this vapor belt out here in space, and half the water has been left on the planet. All right, now let's read on and see what happens next. Verse 7, He made the firmament, the atmosphere, divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above. Now see, that's just plain English. He takes half the water, and He lifts it up above the atmosphere, but He leaves half of the water on the earth. Now then, you go on into verse 8, and He called the firmament heaven. And remember I said in an earlier class that there are three heavens mentioned in Scripture. You've got the first heaven, which we realize is the atmosphere, the heaven that the birds fly in, and the Scripture uses that terminology, the birds of the heaven. We've also got the second heaven, which we now understand as space. But then the third heaven is mentioned particularly in Corinthians when Paul speaks of his own experience, having entered into the third heaven, which was the very abode of God, or heaven as we normally think of it. So those are the three terms of heaven in Scripture. So what we have now then is that the earth's water has been divided, half of it up here in this vapor belt above the atmosphere, up in what we would call the first, or even into the second heaven, and the rest of the water He has left on the earth. And then we'll find that in verse 9 and 10, He now separates the water left on the earth, and makes dry land appear, and the rest He calls seas. Now to come back to this vapor belt, and I like to spend a little time on that, because this gives rise, theoretically, now those of you who have heard me teach longer, you know that I don't get dogmatic on a lot of these things, and I don't just say, this is the way it was. If you don't agree with me, you're wrong, because I'm right. Not at all. But theoretically it would seem that this vapor belt, much to the consternation of science today, talking about a greenhouse effect, and that's exactly what they had. I think this vapor belt was such that it shielded the earth at that time from the damaging part of the sun rays, but now with that moisture in place, these sunlight rays would all be bent, as you see the spoon in a glass of water. They're diffused, is the word. And so consequently there was no direct sunbeam hitting the planet, but it's all diffused, and consequently the planet was tropical from pole to pole. Now archaeological evidence shows that at one time that had to be the case, because we found clear up in northern Siberia, frozen in the deep ice of the far north, tropical vegetation and tropical animals. So we know that at one time this old planet had a constant tropical temperature, and I think the best way to explain it is that this vapor belt just sort of created a greenhouse effect, and the world as we understand it was of one temperature, and that explains then, as the Scripture does, that it never rained. It was watered from beneath. There was no opportunity for weather, because again with the sunlight diffused all around the globe, rather than hitting it directly as it does now, there was no shift in temperatures, there was no increase in what we call atmospheric pressures. Everything was pretty much constant, and that gave rise then to the beautiful, calm, constant weather in that pre-flood experience. Remember too that not only was there never a rain, but rather it was watered from beneath, and all things were just perfect. It was beautiful. It was just beyond our comprehension. Now then as you come down to verse 9 and 10, as we've all referred to it, God separates the waters that are left on the earth, and He calls the dry land, verse 10, and the gathering together of the waters He calls the seas. And then in verse 10, the following statement says God saw that it was what? Good. It was perfect. When God calls something good, there was just absolutely nothing amiss. Now with the dry land in place, the sunlight is able to come through, albeit it was diffused, yet now we see that the natural order once again comes on the scene, and the earth, verse 11, brings forth grass, the herb yielding its seed, the fruit tree yielding fruit after His kind. Now see there isn't a word in there of creation, is there? All these things have been here before, and now with the earth brought back to a place of production, it just naturally came back on the scene. And you know, we've had something happen in our own recent days that make this so believable. See, I like to make Scripture, even though we take these things by faith and a lot of things are beyond logic and beyond comprehension, yet I think it is certainly appropriate that we can always look for the logical aspect of God's dealing with mankind and with His creation. Logically, we've got the beautiful example now of Mount St. Helens. When was it? About ten years ago when Mount St. Helens just literally blew its top and just devastated that area all around it, and here we are only a few hours later and they're already starting to write about it, how beautiful the new growth and the new vegetation and the wildlife is all coming back, even better than it was before. And so I think this is so logical that when God restored the productivity to the earth, it just naturally came back into existence. There wasn't any need for creation, it was already there, and all it needed was the condition. All right, now then in verse 12, it's a repetition of verse 11, "...and the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed after his kind, the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind, and God thought it was good." Now, of course, this all flies in the face of evolution, doesn't it? And that's why there's that constant argument between the adherents of the Genesis account and the evolutionists, because God emphasizes over and over in these early verses of Genesis that everything was created in its own kind. And we know that even today, with all of our knowledge of biology and everything else, you still cannot take something from one species and cross it with something totally different. Now, I know there are times when seemingly they can take cells from one species and they will survive for a little while, but never for long, because God has said everything after its own kind, and there is no room for such a thing as evolutionary process that these all came from one original germ cell. Now, it's also interesting that we can see even in human biology and physiology that we can take cells. You remember here a few years ago there was quite a furore that for burn patients the best therapy they had was to cover that burn with pigskin. I know how many of you ever read about it, but I read more than one article where they could actually take thin layers of pigskin and put it on a human burn patient, because the pigskin would breathe and would react so well with the human physiology that it just enhanced the healing process, but not for long. After just a few days those cells died and they would slough off. Now, the evolutionist says, see, everything came from the same place. But we who are creationists, we say, it just shows that there was one master mind in creation. Everything that God has created has come from that one master mind, and so even though there may be similarities, and there are things that seem analogous, yet that does not tell us that they came by way of evolution, but rather the same creator is the instigator of all of it. Well, then in verse 13, now we've come to the evening and the morning, which are the third day. And again, as I said earlier, I have no problem with a 24-hour day, because we're not talking about things just suddenly being created as we saw in verse 1, but rather they're coming back on the scene quite naturally. Then verse 14, now God said, "...let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night." Now again, it doesn't say that He created them. They've already been there, and we don't know for how long, but He merely makes them functional. Whatever He had placed over the earth in that first catastrophe, between verse 1 and 2, and made darkness cover the earth, and water, and had blotted out the sun and the moon and the stars, whatever it was, God simply removed it, and now all these things are in view, and are able to do what they're supposed to do. Then for verse 15, "...let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth." And it was so, just a statement of fact, and we believe it. When God said it was done, we can trust that He knew what He was talking about. All right, let's go on to verse 16, "...God made two great lights." Now the word made there, if you'll look up in a good Hebrew dictionary, is not even close to the word creation. It's a word that more or less, again, just uses that word that He made it operational. It doesn't say that He brought it out of nothing, as the word barah does in verse 1. And so even the word made here does not indicate a creative act. And then He has the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light, or the moon, to rule the night. And He made the stars also. He brought them into operation. Then verse 17, "...God set them in the firmament of the heaven." Now there you have heaven referring to the objects out in space, the sun, and the moon, and the stars. They're out there in the second heaven. And so, "...He set them in the firmament of heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day, and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good." Now remember, He's getting everything ready for the appearance of the human race. The earth, as I mentioned earlier, was created to be inhabited. And this is the process of getting it all ready. Now then you come down to verse 19, "...the evening and the morning were the fourth day." And remember, we're always starting as the first day of what we know as Sunday. So we've come through Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. All right, now then on the Thursday of that first week, we come to verse 20, "...And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl, or birds that may fly above the earth, in the open firmament of heaven." Now there are birds in heaven, see? That's the first heaven, in the area of our atmosphere. So He began with marine life, and that's all it says about it. Then you come into verse 21, "...He created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. And God saw that it was good." Now again we have to remember He did not create every single subspecies within a species. Now we know from our study again of the various life sciences that we can have mutations within various species. And so consequently we can start with a head species, and then we can have all kinds of subspecies that would come on the scene after a long period of time. In fact, there are still mutations taking place. And so we can readily understand that God didn't have to create 15, 20, 25 different types of horses, and that many different kinds of all the other animals and birds, but those would come on the scene as time would go by. Now after the creation of the birds, the marine life, and all these things in verses 20 and 21, again verse 22 it says, "...God blessed them, and He said, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl or birds multiply in the earth in the evening and the morning for the fifth day." Now we're through Thursday. Now then in verse 24, it's just simply again a review of the previous verses where God said, "...let the earth bring forth the living creature after His kind, cattle, creeping things, beasts of the earth after His kind, and it was so." Now do you see that constant repetition of, after His kind, after His kind. And I always try to emphasize as I teach that whenever the Bible repeats something rather often within a short period of time, whether it's even in a chapter or two, it's there for emphasis. And God wants us to take note. And here we have it over and over that God created everything, whether it was the plant life, whether it was bird life, marine life, or animal life, everything was created within its own kind, and nothing has ever been able to break away from that one fact. Alright now then, we'll go on to verse 26. And we're not going to have time within this first half hour segment to even get close to exhausting it, but I think it behooves us to just move on and take as much of it as we can. In verse 26 now, this is the sixth day of that first week of creation, and remember this will finalize it, because the seventh day, our Saturday, God is going to take that day for rest. Now in verse 26 God says, "...let us, let us make man in our image." Now the Scripture is always so accurate, and isn't it unique that the plural pronoun is used here referring to God? God said look at it all through the verse. God said, "...let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion," and so on and so forth. But let's stop and just analyze this. Why the plural pronoun? Well if you remember when we first started back in Genesis 1, verse 1, we spent a good bit of time emphasizing that God is a Trinity. It's God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Now that's a plurality of personalities, and yet each one of these are a distinct personality within themselves. So what we've really got here now is that the Triune God, the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is saying, "...let us make man in our image." Now you want to remember that I pointed out that the God of verse 1 was Elohim, and it too was referring to the Triune God, the Trinity. But if you'll remember when we went into the New Testament in John's Gospel, and in the book of Ephesians, and Colossians, and Hebrews, it emphasizes the fact that even though the Triune God was involved in creation of the earth, and now these five days that have been elapsing, and now we're coming into the creation of man himself, even though the whole Trinity was concerned, yet the New Testament tells us that God the Son is the One who spoke the Word that caused creation to become a viable act. And so I always like to emphasize the fact that as soon as we get to any of the acts of creation, we're dealing with God the Son, Jesus the Christ. He is the One who actually spoke the Word, and things happened. That's why in John's Gospel you remember the verse opens up that, "...in the beginning was the Word." And I always like to emphasize that the word, Word, denotes communication. You cannot communicate anything. You can't describe anything. You can't accomplish anything without putting it into words. And so God the Son was the One who by the spoken Word created everything that's ever been created, including man himself. But we can't leave out the other two, God the Father and God the Spirit, because they're all three involved. So now then the pronouns are referring to the Trinity, but it's the Lord Jesus as we know Him back here in the Old Testament as God the Son, is the One who actually calls this human being into reality. Now let's finish the verse 26, "...let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them," that is mankind, "...have dominion." Now as I teach I like to emphasize certain words from time to time, and here is an important word. Man is to have dominion. Do you know what that word means? He is to have absolute control over everything that God is going to put under him. And look what it is. He's to have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, not just the Garden of Eden. He is going to be the prime ruler, overseer you might say, of all that's been created on the earth. Everything is going to come under mankind's dominion. And so reading on then to verse 7, "...so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." Now there's an awful lot in that verse that we certainly don't have time now in this particular segment to get into, so we're going to hold that off for just a little bit, and we'll come back to it in our next half hour program. But this mankind, this epitome of God's creation, is going to be the crowning act of creation, and that's why God left it until the sixth day. Everything else has been coming on the scene for man's benefit, but now it comes. And consequently, since God created man in his own image, since he is the crowning act of creation, this is why God has put such an emphasis on the sanctity of human life. Now in many areas of the world life is cheap, isn't it? But that is not the way God intended it. God has intended the human race to be head and shoulders above anything else of His creation. Man is unique because nothing else was created in the image of God, only man. And for that reason God had to finally in the law say, "...thou shalt not kill." God mandated that man was special, and since he was special, life was not to be taken cheaply, but he was to be protected. And for this reason, of course, when the law came on the scene, God made provision for capital punishment and all these things to protect the sanctity of life. Now we also have to realize that for these first 1,600 years approximately of the human experience from Adam until the flood, there was no written law. Man simply had it on his conscience of what was right and wrong, but there was no written law. Neither was there any formal system of worship. Now all this, I think, is for a purpose, because as we come on through the Scripture and as we come up through the human experience, and we'll use the word quite often, the unfolding of God's program, you'll notice that man moves from one set of circumstances to another, and it isn't that God had to change. He never changes, but to show us how man just step by step has to be somehow shown, he has to be taught the various aspects of human behavior. And this is what takes, I think, some time as we come through. But here for 1,600 years now, man is without a formal worship, he is without a written law, and what did he prove? He couldn't exist that way, because by the time you get to the end of this period of human experience, what's the picture? Violence is filling the earth, it's corrupt. They have completely turned against God, and it's a flop. Man made a mess of the whole thing. And so God is going to destroy them with the waters of the flood, and then He's going to come up with something totally different. Now we'll be looking at that somewhere down the road, but for tonight now, we'll just have to call it quits. We'll see you next week. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like to be part of our studio audience, call 1-800-369-7856. That's 1-800-369-7856. Or if you would like a copy of today's Bible study on tape, send your gift of $5 or more to Les Feldick Ministries, Kinta, OK 74552.