In the beginning, God. And so we have the first verse of the first chapter of the Book of Beginnings. And the first verse says, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And within that chapter, we find down in verse 26, Genesis chapter one, verse 26, And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them, so it was make man, that's a singular word, let them, that's a plural word, have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Verse 27, so God created man in his own image, In the image of God, created he him, male and female, created he them. It's interesting, there's such talk today, discussions, all kinds of committee meetings, and all kinds of board meetings, and over this thing about gender. And there's all kinds of aspects. Today we're just gonna talk about what the Bible says. And next week we may explore a couple ideas as to why these contradictions to the Scriptures are growing in such popularity. And a little more contemporary questions, but I think the best thing to do is start with what does the Bible say? If we can accept that, if we can accept what the Bible says, then when we find the falsehoods that cross our path, It becomes obvious, becomes obvious. They say one of the illustrations used many years ago, again, when I was a new Christian, one of the illustrations that stood with me was the illustration of counterfeit money. You don't train to seek counterfeit money to be able to detect it by checking all the ways and all the inks and all the paper to be a counterfeit. You don't do that. You just get used to handling over and over and over, hours at a time, good money, and when a counterfeit bill comes by, at least in the old pre-digital times, when a counterfeit bill came by, it just stood out. Well, if you know the Bible and what it says about a topic pretty thoroughly, you've studied it, you know what it says, and this isn't an overnight process. This is as you grow as a Christian. And then someone comes along and says something else. You say, whoa, that's wrong. I was sent a book this week as someone in the academic realm, someone in a college, we get sent books by authors and they say, I've just written this book, and it's available with this publisher, and we sure would like to have you consider using this as a textbook in such and such a class. And that happens probably three or four times a year. Well, it happened last week. So I got this book, I didn't know the name, I wasn't familiar with the author, but I noted something that was unusual. there were no commendations on the back of the cover. You know how that goes. They always tell you, ooh, this famous person likes this book. And this other famous person says it's full of great stuff. And this other famous person knew me since I was a little kid and says I'm really good at ping pong. They say all kinds of stuff on the back of books to sell their book. And that's okay. I assume they're true. It's okay. There was nothing on the back of the book of commending the author, or telling where the author ministered. He had an R.E.V. in front of his name, but I'd never heard of him. So I just thumbed through the book, just randomly thumbed through and looked at something, and the page I opened to had a one-paragraph denial that Jesus was divine, that he was God, a one-paragraph denial on that particular page of the Trinity. You know, the Trinity is a pretty basic Christian doctrine that we believe as Baptists, because God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. So right there, I put a post-it tag on the cover, and I said, this is heresy, and I tossed it out. Now why did I say put the Post-it on if I'm tossing it out? Because we have very resourceful students, and they see things in the garbage and they say, ooh, that's a new book, I wonder what that is. And hopefully, if anybody tried to pull that out of the garbage, they'd say, oh, there's a note here, this is heresy, slash Dr. Brown. Maybe they'd trust me enough to put it back in the garbage, I don't know. But, you know, we, We detect things that are wrong when we're familiar with what's right. Well, when it comes to the identity of gender and sexuality and other things, we're gonna be very appropriate in this class, but when we detect those things in the world and culture around us, that's because we start with a clear Bible understanding of who we are as human beings. Anthropology is the study of man, and Bible anthropology says a few things about human beings, says we're sinners, for example. Well, how do we get that way? Well, you know, chapter three of the Bible tells us. We have two genders, male and female. Well, what about all the others? I don't find them. So here we are, we have a basis of saying there are men and there are women, and we're both human. What's our relationship like? Well, chapter one and chapter two and chapter three of the Bible already set the basis of our relationship. And there are plenty of other places in the scripture. So we're gonna start at the book of beginnings, Genesis, and look at this idea of kinds and gender. Kind, have you ever heard the word mankind? So the Bible and the verses that I read said man, man. That's mankind, that's as a whole. And then specifically used the term male and female. The titles are going to be after the creation of Eve from Adam's side, he called Eve wo-man, woman, because she came from man. We've got men and we've got women. What's wrong with those titles? Oh, you know, the modern world says, oh, wait a minute, that's a horrible way to look at life, that's misogynist, that's, we ought to make up words. And they do, they make up words. So we're just gonna look at the scripture. So first of all, Genesis is a book of beginnings. We find the beginning of the human race and God's plan for gender. God consistently created moving life, moving life, capable of reproducing itself after its own kind. If we read the entire first chapter, we would discover several kinds of moving life. and each one is described as capable of reproducing itself. Now I use the term moving life because there are differences in definitions between the Bible's description of several aspects of life and modern day culture or modern day science. Science has created a good systematic look, excuse me, of how we can categorize different living things. And in the scientific 21st century view, there are some definitions. And if we said, well, tell me, give me some illustrations of things that are alive. And I asked that of a fifth grader. They're gonna tell me giraffes are alive, and they're gonna tell me that people are alive. and they're gonna tell me that dandelions are alive, and they're gonna tell me that chrysanthemums are alive, and because science defines both vegetation and moving things, yes, I know sunflowers move, but they don't get up and walk somewhere else, okay? So just as a simple definition, I said I'm gonna use this because in the scriptures, have you thought of this? In the scriptures, Adam and Eve were to eat vegetation. Seeds, fruit, plants, okay. Now later, our bodies were built to be able to digest meats as well. But there they were restricted to that. Later it would be acceptable and God says it's okay not to limit yourself to plants. You can if you'd like to, that's fine. And that's the way Adam and Eve started. But there was no death in the garden but they were eating plants. No death. That says that God's definition of life isn't like modern science. that God's definition of life is about creatures that we can call animal life, I suppose, but I just chose the word moving because that concept. So God consistently created moving life capable of reproducing itself. He created plant life to do that too. But again, no death in the garden, but they could eat plants. So God said, God divided moving creatures, my phrase to say animals, moving creatures into three categories. If we were to read Genesis 1, verse 20, Genesis 1, verse 20, and God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and foul, that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God 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. Continuing a couple verses, and God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the waters of the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the earth, and the evening and the morning were the fifth day. So we've finished the fifth day, and now we've entered the sixth day. And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after their kind, and it was so. So looking at our outline, God divided moving creatures into three categories. First, we found the ones that live in the water. We use the word marine for that, so that's marine life. God also used definitions in other places where he called marine life fish. That wasn't a specific name for things that have scales. That came into the dietary laws later. But that wasn't a specific name, fish, that was anything that lived in the oceans and the rivers, which is why God could record accurately that it created a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jesus could say more specifically it was a whale. Modern science says no, whales are mammals, they're not fish. See, that's wrong, that's a contradiction. God's dictionary definitions are different. So is a whale marine, does it live in the ocean? Yes, then it's okay in the Bible terms to call it a fish. So you have marine animals. And then you have aviary life, that means life that flies. Life that flies. Now I know that bats are not birds. But God didn't say birds, he said fowl. So it's the same thing. In Webster's Collegiate Dictionary of 2021, it might be. But in God's dictionary that unfolds through 66 books, it's not. So we've got aviary life, things that fly. And then we've got terrestrial life. Let's see, terrestrial life, that's things that live on the Earth. Now, I know that human beings can put on scuba tanks and swim in the oceans. I know they can board an airplane and fly in the sky. There have been lots of attempts for different things that can be strapped on a back and fly as well, but I really wouldn't want to try any of those. But we're still land-bound creatures. We're terrestrial. We're grouped with terrestrial creations. So number two, all the species were created in a mature state. All the species were created, and species is a term that science uses, but all the species were created in a mature state. That means that they were in an adult capacity of whatever their development, whether that's a worm or a cow, they were capable of reproducing. That was true of the plant life as well. But all the moving creatures were created in a mature state, were capable of reproduction after their kind, that's the word used in the scripture, in a very general sense. It's not as limited as the word species where we had, it's been cold and our neighbor has, we're in a condo so it's townhouses, our neighboring townhouse, the owner Val put up a suet outside for the birds, and there were juncos and woodpeckers and all kinds of stuff out there. Now, what were their kinds? Bird. Yeah, but there's a woodpecker, two different species. One had a red blaze on it and the other didn't, just one kind. Just, God used a big word, a short word, to describe a big category after their kind. They can reproduce like their kind reproduces. Now, we know that when juncos reproduce, they're juncos. We know when robins reproduce, they're robins. The Lord in his Bible doesn't contradict that at all, but he's just describing in a very brief, in a very structured, in a very accurate way how he created things. And when he created Adam, and just a bit later, Eve, he created them as mature adults, able to reproduce after their kind. Like other earthbound kinds, mankind was created in a mature state, capable of, here's a good word, procreation. Procreation. The scripture doesn't use the word, it's a dictionary word. But it means the advancement, that's the pro part, the advancement or forward projection of the original creation. Procreation, we advance mankind, we advance them forward in time but they're just like the original creation, physically. So, yes, because of sin, has the health of mankind deteriorated? As far as we know, yes. Illnesses, disease, can we be injured? Yes. Because of sin, is it possible that the mental abilities of mankind has deteriorated? I think that's very I think that's true, that over the generations and centuries, that Adam was likely to be the smartest fellow that ever lived, other than God. But this advancement, when a baby's born today, the baby still is a human baby, after the humankind, or the word the Bible uses, mankind, after the humankind. And so, when they were created, they were created in a full state of maturity, capable of having children, Adam and Eve. Now, that was true of other animals, but Adam and Eve were not animals. Science says our species is homo sapien, we're a primate, We're the same species, I think, of lemurs, and the same species, the same category, the same group of primates. And we've got chimpanzees, and orangutans, and gorillas, and all sorts of things that are primates. And so we're of that kind. No, we're a unique kind. And it spells it out right here. We're a unique kind because in verse 26, the Lord said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. That's the only living terrestrial aviary or marine creation that's made after the likeness of God. What's that mean? But the Lord created the human species with distinctions, the blank is distinctions, separating us from all other living creatures. Mankind was made in the image and likeness of God. I told you this is simple. I told you there's nothing really that you're gonna hear today that's a radical in some way that you're gonna say, wow, how did he ever figure that out? Sometimes you hear a preacher, I have over my years, heard a message and said, whoa, I've never seen that before, that's fantastic. It would be a shock to me if somebody this morning said, that's fantastic, I've never heard, I've never thought, I've never, pretty, Pretty straightforward. Mankind was made in the image and likeness of God. Now I am gonna say some things that my college students are very often confused of. Look to your left at the one down the pew from you or across the aisle, look to your left, is that a person? Yeah, folks on the aisle, you're having a struggle with that. There's nobody over there. Okay, you can look to your right, it'll be okay. Is that a person? And I think we generally, well, yeah, what's the point? Well, we just, and if I said describe a person, many of my college freshmen would describe the physical appearance. Well, a person's got like two arms and two legs and, you know, they're not, I mean, they're not like a spider with, eight legs or some kind of an insect with six legs and they don't have all those eyes like a fly. No, no, no, no, no. That's all the physical parts of the body. That does not make one a person. Personhood is not physical. It would not, if you just thought for a moment, you would realize that you have heard thousands of times likely that God is a trinity who exists in three, what's the next word? Persons. You see, personhood isn't, I've got a human body. Now the second person of the trinity, because someone here is thinking that right now, the second person of the trinity did take upon himself the form of a man. Did and does possess now a glorified body, yes. But did Jesus exist before he was birthed or conceived even in the womb of Mary? Yes. He had no human body. But he was a person. Personhood is not the physical part. And it's so, we grow up just thinking person means that's a human body. But I would suggest a different way to look at it. A, God is a person and mankind was created as persons. Well, what was it about God that mankind has that your favorite puppy doesn't? I once asked in a test, I gave some illustrations or some options, and one of the things in the test was a puppy. And someone said, yes, puppies are persons. Well, they show affection. They enjoy being with their master. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they lack some things of personhood. So let's think, here are some things that make up personhood. why we call God a person, why we call God the Father a person, God the Son a person, God the Holy Spirit a person, because each operates or communicates with mankind in specific and different ways. So, first of all, a person, personhood says you're capable of reason. You're capable of reason. You can think things through. There's a certain amount of logic. Recognition. Recognition. Again, the puppy looks in the mirror and after a while figures out that's me. We don't know how the puppy figures it out, but I don't think the puppy's capable of the same reason that human beings are, right? There are thresholds there. Recognition. Relationship, a different relationship. A different relationship. Our relationship shares. Our relationship is aware of the other person. Our relationship protects. Our relationship enjoys. Our relationship teaches. Relationships have all kinds of aspects, but a person is capable of relationships, as opposed to just capable of survival. capable of knowing through instinct how I can break that seed open and eat what's in the middle, thinking of those birds out in the snow. So that's a capability, but that's not reason and it's not relationship. God has a will. We can have a will. It can correspond with God's will or it can actually confront or fight or resist God's will, but we have a will. I want to do this. I desire this. I think in those ways. I plan in those ways. Having awareness, another aspect is the spiritual part of personhood, having an awareness of God and his identity. Say, well, lost people don't have that. Romans 1 says they have an awareness of God. They haven't trusted him. They've rejected much of what they hear about him, but they've had an awareness of God and now have replaced him with four-footed beasts and idols. But a person is capable of an awareness of God. And there seems to be a universal, mankind-wide understanding that there's some creator, even if a person isn't saved yet, they haven't been exposed to the Bible, they don't know the details of creation that we're even talking about here, cultures universally have some concept of accountability to some authority, and somewhere, even if it's a fable of creation, Even if the earth is carried on a turtle's back or whatever, they have myths and fables and ideas as to how creation came about and how it's sustained. They have ideas about gods. Having awareness of God and his identity, that's part of personhood. The capability of being aware of God and who he is. Ability to communicate, there's a blank there, ideas. Ideas. We can communicate basic things without language, we can communicate it. I mean, if your cat wants to be fed, can she communicate that to you? Yes. In horrible sounding meows, okay? Is she speaking? Are those ideas? Is she telling you which of the canned foods she'd prefer to have that night? Or that she'd like you to try a new brand because she doesn't like this? Well, actually, she probably can tell you that when she just won't eat it. But it's not a thought-out process. Communication, yes, we can communicate things, but not ideas. Can you imagine trying to teach a parrot trigonometry? I don't know why I chose parrot, I could have chosen anything, but sometimes my mind just grabs something. Ideas. I'm trying to communicate with you right now some ideas. Nobody thinks twice about, nobody says, this is so wild, what's he trying to do? Why he's, what is he saying? I don't get it. No, we're capable of communicating ideas. That's part of personhood. The ability to communicate ideas with each other, but wait a minute, and with God. He can speak to the lost. They can declare they're speaking to him, and God knows everything, so he knows what a lost person's thinking or saying. He isn't compelled to act on it in the same way that he has made promises to save people, but he communicates with the lost. He can communicate with the saved. We can communicate with him. Communications, all that is part of personhood, and more, and more. So would you say that God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, were persons before they made Adam and just a bit Eve. Yes. So I would urge you to think this way. Because God exists in three persons, he's created us in his image. He's created us to have personhood. He did not create other beings, terrestrial beings, marine beings, aviary beings from having personhood. Spot quiz. Are there any other beings that do have personhood? Raise your hand if you got an answer to this spot quiz. Right there. Angelic beings. Both the good ones and the evil ones. Now, they don't have the same history with sin, they don't have the same, I'm just saying, they weren't in Adam, but yes, so we have angelic beings, we have human beings, or mankind, and we have divine beings, that's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, personhood. God is a triune God, another aspect of likeness that some remind us of. I don't think it's nearly so important as personhood, but we are created according to 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, that's on your sheet. We are created as a tri-part, that's the blank, tri-part, as a tri-part creation. 1 Thessalonians 5.23, and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body. Notice that order. God talks about his most important part, spirit. Next most important, soul. Least important, because it's temporary, body. We usually talk about it the other way, don't we? It's just almost natural for us to talk about body, soul, and spirit. We start with the least important, because it's very important to us. Our body is very important to us. And we should be aware of it, and we should be healthy, and we should want to avoid injuries, and we should want to use the tool that God has given us in the wisest and most optimum way, and that's our body. But God talks about spirit and soul and body. That's the whole person, three parts. Mankind was assigned responsible dominion. That's in the verse 28. We had stopped reading in verse 27. But in verse 28, and God blessed them and God said unto them, oh, I'm sorry, verse 26, we did read it. Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion, dominion, over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle and over all the earth. So that's the three different kinds of moving animals and the earth itself. The resources of the earth itself. Whether that's the vegetation, the forest, whether that's the oceans, whether that's the minerals, whether that's the oils, whether, to have dominion. Dominion doesn't mean that we are granted absolute leeway to do anything we want. But we're to have dominion. That is to be able to organize, to be able to direct, to be able to make choices as to how to use those resources. Mankind was responsible for dominion over the realm of God's creation. Letter C. Mankind was intended from the beginning to have two genders. They were physically, They were physically distinguishable as male and female. Before the Lord even gives us the record as to how Adam was made from the dust of the earth and how Eve was made from his side, he already says in general, now I made mankind. So God created man, mankind in his own image. In the image of God created he them, male and female created he them. male and female, physically distinguishable. They were to act in harmony, in harmony as one flesh. Verse 27, male and female, that's mankind. No distinguishing, no male and female, that's the harmony. But we also find in verse 28, and God blessed them, And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the rest of creation. Who's to do this? Male and female. Well, yeah, but we know from the New Testament, oh, let's start with the basic. No sin is entered. God did not speak to Adam alone. According to these verses, he spoke to them. So at the beginning, the Lord did not distinguish spiritually between the man and woman. And until the curse that came from sin, disobedience, he did not choose man, male, to be a dominant leader, to be the leader in the home and the wife to support him and give her will toward him. That hasn't happened yet. He's speaking to them. Male and female, created he them. Why? So they could reproduce. So they could replenish the earth. So they could create a world of human beings who in perfection would honor him. would worship him, would obey him, but they didn't obey him. They were to act in harmony as one flesh. Genesis 2.24 talks about, and more specifically, Eve's creation, and then says, therefore shall a man, verse 2.24, leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife. and they shall be one flesh. One of the illustrations of cleave is plywood. You've probably heard this, but plywood. You take thin layers of wood, which can easily be cracked or easily be damaged, and you glue them together. And if you have a 3 1⁄4 inch birch plywood, that 3 1⁄4 inch birch plywood is stronger than 3 1⁄4 of an inch of solid birch. Plywood is actually stronger than the components. It's been fused together by glue and heat, but it's been fused together, cleaved. Adam and Eve cleaved together, stronger than either one. They're to be treated as one flesh. God's instructions are to a one flesh relationship. Now, if you're here and you're not married, it's understandable. You are giving your allegiance, your attention to God, you're following his word and his instructions, and that's fine. Paul said to remain unmarried took a special kind of attitude and meant that you're available to serve the Lord in ways that married people don't. But as a married person, God treats me as one flesh. He didn't call my wife to go to the Congo as a nurse and me to go to Kansas City as a football player. Well, I think you'd realize he'd never call me to be a football, anyway. What I'm saying is God's will is for the husband-wife relationship, and it does mean that, for example, I have a family member in the military, and it means that there are times when he is posted away from home, outside the country, and that's part of his position, and he and his wife have agreed to that, agreed to that. So it doesn't mean that physically you can never be separate, but the will of God is for the union, who are working in harmony with him, God created him, referring to the unity of mankind. God created them, both of those used in verse 27, referring to two genders of mankind. God's plan included mutual obedience to His will. It's God's plan that husband and wife both obey His will. That's His desire, that's His plan, that's His perfect working. They were equally instructed to be stewards of creation. That means together they would have dominion. If there was going to be rules about how they harvested, together they would decide on those rules. If there were gonna be rules about child rearing, together they would decide on those rules. Oh, and then something happened. Eve and then Adam sinned. that changed things. We'll talk more about the change next week. They were to bear children as their fruit. Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb, that's a child, is his reward. They didn't bear seeds, they didn't bear apples, they bore children as their fruit, the product of husband and wife. They were created with the ability to hear and know God. We know that because after sin entered, after Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she handed it to her husband, he had to be within an arm's length, she handed it to her husband and he ate, the consequences of that were the following day, Adam and Eve hid themselves. They had been used to walking with God in the cool of the day and communicating with Him. Communicating with Him. They heard and they knew God personally. That was His plan. They messed it up, but that was His plan. God spoke to both male and female. Husbands, God speaks to your wives as well. It's a wise husband that listens to what his wife's opinion is and what she has to offer. And yes, he may have to make a decision that she disagrees with. And a godly wife then yields and works to make that decision work best she can. but both were capable of listening and hearing and communicating with God. And God gave to or blessed both male and female. I'm not sure why I phrased it that way. It was somewhere in my mind, my grammar went berserk. But God blessed gave to a blessing, God blessed both male and female. Not just one was blessed. Now, in chapter number one, verse 31, after all this is done, creation, before sin is set in, Adam and Eve have been created, after all this is done, God looked upon all that he had made and it was very good. Now, we haven't talked at all about, well, what are the ideas about more genders? What are the ideas about transgenders? We're going to open that next week and chat a little bit more about that, have some ideas that I think are biblical. But we live in a world that's very confused. It's that simple. It's very confused. So we need to start with the basic. There are men and there are women, and there's a role for each. God loves each one, each gender, but there are no more than men and women. And we'll pick that up next week.