Monday, January 24, 2011

Bearing Fruit From The Beginning

On a Sunday that has been designated as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday we are confronted with the following reality. This week in Philadelphia, a doctor was charged with the murder of one woman and seven babies in his medical practice known as the Women’s Medical Society. In the cases before the court, it is believed that the doctor induced labor and killed the live-born babies, severing their spines with scissors. The doctor did not seem to understand the charges as they were read at the arraignment on Thursday, stating that he understood one charge...that a woman had died as his patient, but he didn’t understand the other seven. And he’s not the only one trying to understand. I was asked by a child this week why would anyone want to kill seven babies? This child had heard the story too. My answer was a basic one. This was evil in action. Why did this doctor kill seven babies? He was acting on his evil desires.
This child does not understand the concept of what goes on in an abortion clinic. She doesn’t even know the meaning of an abortion. The Women’s Medical Society is an abortion clinic that the doctor has been operating there for four decades. In the City of Brotherly Love. But it is not a far away reality. We have several abortion clinics located in Raleigh, with names like A Preferred Women’s Health and A Woman’s Choice. When I heard this news report from the Associated Press this week, my first thought was if I am hearing about this on the news, then why is he only being charged with the murder of seven babies? It is bound to be much, much worse than that. The grand jury stated that “in order to constitute murder, the act must involve a baby who was born alive.” In other words, our laws do not see life as something sacred and ordained by God unless a child is born. This is my great dilemma. When this child discovers what an abortion really is, how then do I explain why we as a culture allow abortion to exist? The prosecutors said that uncounted hundreds of babies died there…so who’s counting? God is. Not everything legal is moral. Our lawmakers and cultural interpreters of man’s law have determined that a person is not a person unless that person is born. What would our judges, lawyers, lawmakers, and social justice engineers done with Adam and Eve? What most of them do now. Deemed them as irrelevant. And that is the case for most of our culture today. But let’s take a look into the God’s Word and see what Bearing Fruit From The Beginning is really all about. Hear now the Word of the LORD from Genesis 1:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was
formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind:
cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.


Up to this point, as we read the text, we can hear the order and rhythm to Creation. The last thing created on the sixth day of creation is man. We begin to perceive that there is a marked difference between how God deals with man, how He relates to them, in contrast to all the rest of the living creatures. The rhythm is broken. But not the order. Creation’s story is building to a crescendo. Man is unique in all of creation. There is greatness alluded to here. He has a greater potential in life but also has a greater need so that he may live that life achieving the purpose for which he was made.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the
surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.


I. GOD CREATED MAN TO RECEIVE HIS REVELATION.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Man is unique among creation in that he was not created “after its kind”. These creatures of the late sixth day were created in God’s image and God’s likeness. Something was radically different in their pattern. It wasn’t going to be human beings made with a cookie cutter concept. Humans are unique within the species…even identical twins are not really identical. What makes the human unique is the pattern…made in the image of God. Freely confessing that I don’t fully understand all that this entails, I believe it does mean that humanity was created to communicate with God. The first communication is one of reception. Humans were created to receive the revelation of God. If God ever talks animals, we can be sure that they never talk back to God. At least we never hear of it. The image of God at least means that we were created to hear the Word of God.
Man was created to hear the God’s word so he could live effectively in God’s world. All living creatures have an instinctive mode of living. You don’t have to teach them how to eat, how to avoid danger and what their purpose is. But man, though uniquely created to hear from God is amazingly helpless and dependent. They did not know about God’s world and their peculiar place and purpose in it until God told them. They were created utterly dependent. Without God’s revelation they would not survive and certainly not accomplish the purpose for which they were created.
Man’s unique status among the created order is because he was spiritually connected to God. His knowledge about what to do in the world came from his constant revelation from God. Day by day we are told that man enjoyed communion with God. Man needed God because there was a dependency upon being connected with Him. And this was not a spiritual defect…it is the way that he was created. God did not create woman because man was needy. God was there to supply every need. God created male and female to accomplish His purpose. Human beings had a need for God when they were uniquely and perfectly connected to Him.

II. GOD EMPOWERED MAN TO INTERPRET HIS WORD AND APPLY IT IN THE WORLD.

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Human beings are unique in creation because they are “meaning makers.” Dogs and cats don’t make meaning out of their life circumstance or how another animal reacts to their presence. They just do what dogs and cats do. They don’t ponder the meaning of the universe or their place in it. They just exist. But humanity is different. We are interpreters because the LORD God has given us the ability and the capacity to think and process information. We make meaning out of our world and make decisions according to our interpretation.
Human beings were to make meaning of the world according to God’s word. By the time humanity was created, the rest of the world was already manifested. It was here when the man began to process it, when he began to make meaning. One thing that resonated to him was he did not make this world. And it did not make itself. The same Maker that Adam knew made it all.
Because humans were created to be interpreters, this explains human behavior. Thinking always involves interpreting. People think and act according to their interpretations. Before the fall of man, man’s thinking always centered on the information that God supplied him about the world in which he lived. As the man began to spend more time with God, no doubt the dependency would grow until it was bringing him to a level of where he could trust God, no matter what. This is often missed by me when I study this chapter. Adam did not have the capacity to mistrust or disbelieve…for that is sin. Adam was learning that his behavior was motivated in large part by what he was thinking about God. As a man thinks rightly, he will act rightly. Or at least he can.

III. GOD ENABLED MAN TO BEAR THE FRUIT OF GODLY WORSHIP.

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Man was created so that everything in their lives drew meaning from the Person, Presence, and Purpose of God. This is the essence of true worship. It sets humanity apart from the rest of the created order. All humans are created to worship. So in this prefall state of humanity, no other worship was existent. There was only the worship of the One True God. And man worshipped God no matter what man was doing. This is the way it was in the beginning. The fruit bearing human was created to be a worshipper. He had a destiny and a legacy.
To bear fruit and multiply is to understand that worship is foundational to the process. This passage is not just about biological reproduction. It is about the “filling of the earth” with Godly worshipers. What would human beings need to do that? They would need God’s revelation and the ability to properly interpret the meaning. They not only would need His word…they would need His help to rightly interpret His word. They would need a passion to absolutely believe Him and radically live their lives in total dependence upon His counsel.
We are separated by a great distance, historically and spiritually, from Genesis 1. We are not living in a perfect world. On this side of the fall, we are often frustrated with expecting perfection in an imperfect reality. So what is the relevance of this passage for us as Kingdom Culture Disciples? Why is it important for us to know about the beginning of the fruit bearing process in relation to our human ancestors? Here’s our So What statement for today:
Adam and Eve were perfect people in perfect communion with God but could not figure out the meaning of life on their own without the Word of God explaining who they were and how they were to live. They needed help, before the fall, not because they were sinners, but because they were human.
How much more should we, tarnished by the stain of sin, be utterly dependent upon God for our very existence?

God is not some option that we choose to try…He is our Maker…of fruit bearing disciples…we can worship Him…and we will not bear fruit unless we do…

This Bible is not just a book…it is our life…the very word of God…

…It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD
THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.’” (Matthew 4:4)

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