WCOG: Let Us Make Man, Genesis 1:26

this particular week, I'm focusing on the plural references and let us make man in our image after our likeness. Of course, the question is, who is God talking to? And I think I would be remiss if we went through the creation account and didn't spend some time on this particular aspect. It's very important. Okay, the text says, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. Okay, so do notice that you do have plural references here in verse 26, us and our. But then look at verse 27. It's, there's no longer a plural reference. It's singular now. And what is created? Man and woman.

Alright, so something's happening here between verses 26 and 27, something that invites our curiosity, our, our study and our meditation. I want also to note, you to notice that the first thing that said after God says, let's make man in our image and after our likeness, notice how that is made manifest or it's applied in creation. Let them have dominion. Alright, so I would suggest that whatever it is, however we are made after the image of God, it's tied directly to dominion. That's how it's played out in creation. Alright, each day of creation has begun with the word let. Think back to the first moment of creation again. The foundations have been laid. There's just the sound of a roaring ocean, but total darkness. Then the command out of that darkness, let there be light. Now the waters are illuminated, blue and green and gray, white foam spreading in kaleidoscopic shapes upon the surface, shafts of light angle through the deep, still no

sound of seagulls, an empty sky and an empty ocean. The light increases in intensity from the red end of the light spectrum to yellow, white and the oceans prism the light and send back one narrow band of the spectrum into the empty sky and turn it blue. Hours later the light begins to fade back into the red spectrum and then once again there's the darkness but a moonless and starless night and the sound of an ocean that has known the light. The text of Genesis 1 says with the greatest salinity at the end of this and the evening and the morning were the first day. Side note, you might ask how could there be an evening and a morning when God has yet to create a sun that's created on day four. This is day one and we have an evening and a morning. But you do have to remember that this account of creation was written for us but not necessarily to

us. What I mean by that is it was written for the people of God throughout all of time, written for the people of God from the beginning to the end, but it was written directly to ancient pre-scientific readers. So the biblical text of Scripture communicates within the understanding of its originally intended audience. That's a really important point. For instance, do you remember the story about Joshua commanding that the sun stands still? That's written within an ancient understanding of the way the solar system works. It wouldn't be the sun that stands still. It would be the earth that stands still because it's the earth that's rotating around the sun, not the other way around. But Scripture is speaking to people of the time who would have understood that they would have thought that the earth was stationary and the sun was rotating. So Joshua commands that the sun stands still. Again, it's written from within the understanding and for the readers in their current

state of understanding of the universe, the way it works. Always have to keep that in mind. Don't assume that the things that you know and believe are the things that the ancients knew and believed. The ancient mind's understanding of the source of light was very different from ours. The ancients believed that light not only came from the sun, but that light also came from our eyes. Eyes were, as Jesus once said, the lamps of the body. They produced light, enabling us to see, again within the ancient mindset. In fact, some ancient philosophers thought the eyes themselves were made of fire. Angels around the throne are said in Isaiah chapter 6 to be fiery, and in Revelation chapter 4 the angels are said to be full of eyes, which amounts to pretty much the same thing. The pagans saw the stars as deities, fiery lamps ruling over the hearts and fortunes of men. And so, incidentally, light was not dependent upon the sun in

ancient understanding. Neither was darkness caused by its absence. The sun wasn't the sole cause of light, so much as it was the cause of warmth. And in the creation account, the sun and moon are created days after light was made. There can be an evening and a morning without a sun or moon or stars. Okay, again within the ancient framework. So always remember, Scripture was written for us, but not to us. The original or the human writer didn't have human beings three or four thousand years in the future in mind, necessarily, although the Spirit of God certainly did. They had their own audience in mind, their own, the people of their own time. Alright, so God's Word is spoken, and light and life begins. Underneath and behind and at the heart of everything that exists is the creative Word of God. John's Gospel, which is looking back upon this moment in creation, puts it this way. In the beginning was the Word, and

the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by the Word, and without that Word nothing was made. In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. What John was doing here was two things at once. He was reminding his reader that the world is made out of the Word of God, literally. And he was connecting this creative underlying Word to the identity of Jesus, the Son of God. And in some unfathomable and almost unspeakable way, Jesus was what God spoke. Jesus is who made the world, and ultimately it was for Jesus' sake that all things were made. If you can distinguish for a moment between a person speaking and what is being spoken. Again, just mentally distinguish between the person doing the speaking and what is being spoken as two distinct things. Then you're starting to approach a kind of mental model of what John was writing in John 1. The one speaking

and what is being said while two distinct things that we can imagine separately are not two separate persons. For example, the word I speak is not a different person from me. What I said is not the same thing as me, but it certainly is representative of me. My words contain all that is uniquely me. My words are an expression of my thoughts, my feelings, my understanding, my state of mind. You can't really know the real me unless you hear my words. My words are the most Jeremy painter thing about me. So when I speak, I am giving access to the deepest core of who I am. So while I and my words can be thought of separately as two distinct things, my words really are the truest expression of my being. So again, John says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. The word was with God. Note that here he's saying something like what I just said

about myself. The word was with God is a way of imagining God and his word as two distinct things. However, John then goes on to say, and the word was God, meaning that the word John is speaking of is the identity of God, the expression of God's truest self, his thoughts, his feelings, his knowledge. That's what Jesus is in relation to God. He's distinct from God in the same way that a word is distinct from the person speaking that word. But Jesus is also at the same time, the very identity of God, the truest expression of God's innermost thoughts and feelings and knowledge. You can't really know God if you don't know Jesus, for Jesus is God's words. You can't know God without knowing Jesus any more than you can say you know a man without ever hearing or seeing him communicate. This is why Jesus can say, no man cometh to the Father, but by me. I and my Father are one.

If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I say nothing except what my Father says. Okay, now that we've established from Scripture that Jesus is the Word of God that spoke all things into existence, that Jesus is the Word that gave life to the universe, I want to consider that first word that God spoke again. Each day of creation begins with the word let. The first day, God has nothing to talk to. He can say let, but who or what is supposed to let? So there's nothing here but a to be verb in a vacuum, let there be. Light is a creation so close to the nature of God and it issues directly from God's speech. But after the first day, God now has a world to say let too. Let the waters divide and dry land appear. Let the earth bring forth. But then when we come to day six, the creation of man, who or what does God speak to? Who

or what does he say let to? Let us. Who is the us God speaking of when he says let us make man in our image? This verse, it's generated quite a bit of speculation throughout the last few thousand years. Who's God talking to? And I do, I make some apologies that some of what I'm saying is a bit obscure. But do allow from time to time the pulpit, the word of God being preached and taught not only to challenge your spirit, not only to challenge you morally in terms of conviction, but also sometimes allow the word of God being preached or taught to challenge you mentally. All right, so think along with me and do pardon. I'm not trying to speak above your heads at all. I'm trying to make this communicable in the best way that I know how. I don't always succeed in that, but I'm trying. All right, we're talking about some really, really deep things here. Some have said

that God is simply using the royal we as a king or queen might refer to himself not as I or me when he's speaking to his court, but as we or us. A king might say, we have decided when he means I've decided, or as Queen Victoria famously replied to a man who told a dirty joke in her presence once, we are not amused. So maybe God is just speaking as the king of creation. Let us make man in our image. It's a royal we. I'm not exactly enthralled with that interpretation of Genesis 126. The royal we seems to be more of a sort of semi-modern rhetorical device used by royalty. It doesn't go all the way back into ancient times for one thing. All right, there's another theory for what third century after Christ. The Latin church father Turtulian seems to have been the first theologian to interpret the plural reference in Genesis 126 to the Trinity. Turtulian believed that this was

scriptures first explicit reference to the Trinity coming only 26 verses into the Bible. He believed that God's let us was God the Father speaking to God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and together they or he created mankind. Now there is in the Christian tradition, of course, there's the doctrine of the Trinity and this discussion is not going to be really about the doctrine of the Trinity, but let me say a word or two. There are different understandings of the doctrine of the Trinity. Some understandings of it is it's three distinct and separate persons, three persons, three thrones in heaven sort of a thing. Pray first to God the Father and then pray to God the Son and then pray to God the Holy Ghost and while they are one, they're one only in the sense that they're unified. They have the same mind, the same heart, the same desire, but their oneness is limited to the kind of oneness we might

have in believing the same kinds of things and having the same desires, the same goals. Then there are other understandings of the doctrine of the Trinity that are much closer to say a oneness doctrine where there's a distinction of persons, but it's only in language. It's a distinction in language, not an ontological or a real categorical distinction or separateness between the three. You have every variation in between those two extremes. I've heard, I remember hearing somebody, a devout Trinitarian tell me that he believes in only one God, but he also believes that God is three persons. The word persons implies a distinction of consciousness, three consciousnesses. But he didn't like that very much. He said, no, I don't think that's quite what we believe. I don't think that's what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches. We think that he is one, but he's somehow uniquely three persons. But it's mostly linguistic or language. It's semantics. But then in service, let's worship our God.

Then he refers to God as they. He's not being politically correct, they, them, that sort of thing. He doesn't mean that. He means literally they. He's thinking of the they in heaven. That's one way of interpreting Genesis 126 or one way that Genesis 126 has been interpreted by Christians going all the way back to Tertullian, some Christians anyway. But we should always insist on going through the practice of asking when we're studying scripture, what would this verse or this saying have meant to the original audience? What did the writer himself mean? It's true that biblical writers sometimes spoke of things that they themselves didn't quite understand. Sometimes they spoke in a spirit of prophecy. The book of Daniel gives us an instance of this. Daniel is given a prophecy of exactly when the Messiah was going to come. But he was told to write it down in a figure of speech he couldn't understand. Time and a time and half a time. He

didn't know what that meant. And when Daniel asked for understanding, what does that figure of speech mean? The voice in the vision said, go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. In other words, it's not going to be understood until the moment it arrives. But in most cases, the most responsible way of interpreting a passage of scripture is to ask, what did the writer originally mean for his audience to understand? Don't project your own understanding on the text or the culture's understanding on the text, your time's understanding on the text. Try to enter deeply into the time in which the text was written. Don't ask what would you have meant if you said something like this? Ask what did they mean if they said something like this? How would they have been understood? In the case of Genesis 126, Moses is said to be the writer. I use the term writer. I typically

don't use the term author when I'm referring to a human being in scripture. We're taught that the Holy Ghost is the author of scripture. This is certainly the way that the author of Hebrews understood, and I just said it, the author of Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews understood to be the relationship between the human being and the text that was written. The Holy Ghost is the author of the text, but the human being is the instrument or the writer. Okay, typically don't speak of a human being as being an author of a book of the Bible, but rather is the writer. Okay, he's been inspired by the Spirit in various ways. In the case of Genesis, Moses is said to be the writer and consider for a moment. Moses was raised in pagan Egypt where polytheism was practiced. Many gods were worshiped, but when he encountered Yahweh in the wilderness on the mountain, the God of the Bible, he was given the revelation

that there is only one God, not three gods, not many gods, one. And he would teach the children of Israel. It's really, it's maybe the second most famous verse in all of the Bible. Shema O Israel, hero Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And then he would go on to say, and you shall worship him alone. Wouldn't a Trinitarian interpretation of let us make man in our image in which God the Father is speaking to other equal members of the Godhead than be a contradiction of everything Moses taught Israel to believe? All right, so what did Moses understand by let us make man in our image? When I say that Moses taught that there was only one God though, I don't mean that Moses would have believed that there was only one heavenly being with divine and supernatural power. Moses like other biblical writers understood that there were other what were called Elohim or gods, lowercase g, that is other nonhuman

divine beings who ruled the cosmos with God. It's just that they understood these beings to be angels and angels are creations of God. Like us, they're created by God and therefore subordinate to God. This is why, for instance, Melchizedek in the book of Genesis referred to God as Yahweh, the most high God. Monotheism is the belief that there's only one God. But biblical monotheism is that God is higher and holier and mightier than all other beings. He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of lords. He is alone in the sense that there are no other beings, no other persons in his category of being. He is the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover, the first cause. Beside him, all other things were created, but he was the uncreated creator. He had no beginning, he has no end, he has no past. For things that are past are things that no longer exist. He has no future because things that are future

are things that do not yet exist. He never goes from one state of being to another state of being. He is perfectly himself all the time. He exists uniquely within an eternal now in which all things past, present, and future are eternally present. He didn't say to Moses that his name was I was or I will be. He is the I am. He rules over other Elohim. He created these beings in splendor and glory, these angels, but they are still subordinate to him. He gives them rule in principality and power, but it's a delegated rule, delegated principality, delegated rule. This leads us to the third interpretation of Genesis 1.26. This is the oldest and I believe to be the truest interpretation, the most responsible interpretation of Genesis 1.26. Let us make man in our image. The original reader of Genesis would have understood quite naturally that before the creation of man, God was the king of the angels, and some of these angels

were given staggering authority. In fact, there was a hierarchy within the angels, according to some. The highest angels, almost too awesome to describe, were the Seraphim. They were closest to the throne of God. Then there were the Cherry of them. Beneath them in the hierarchy were orders of angels called thrones, dominions, powers, and the lowest order of angels, different species of angels altogether, called the Melchim, or messengers. Moses would have understood that God had a divine counsel before he created mankind, a counsel of angels. He was already the king of kings and the Lord of lords before he ever made man. These were sometimes called, sometimes they're called in the Biblical text, Benayah Elohim, the sons of God. These sons of God were given authority to govern creation. You might imagine that one member of the divine counsel, one angel, whatever order he was, was given authority over some aspect of nature, maybe one over the wind, one over the seas, one over

the weather. The Scripture oftentimes connects, ties together, weather events with angelic activity. I could go through several examples of that. Eventually, though, after the world was created, God assigned individual nations, it seems, to the regency of some of these high angels. For instance, after the Tower of Babel incident, God put individual nations, according to some readings of the text, under the guardianship of certain angels. An angel called the Prince of Persia governed the Persian peoples. Michael seems to have been the one who was given guardianship of Israel. There's a good reason to believe that the distinct characteristics of individual nations are the result of the distinct characteristics of the angel assigned to a given nation. Deuteronomy 32 is one of the Scriptures that cited in support of this idea. Chinese is not something that just happened to people who migrated to China. Chinese language, Chinese architecture, Chinese music, Chinese wisdom are not so much a genetic trait and inheritance, but are instead a

reflection of the distinct characteristics of the angel given charge over the Chinese. They are Chinese because in some sense, their Chineseness came from him, whoever that was, whatever that was. Again, Deuteronomy 32, I know it sounds, oh, this is really strange stuff. But think about it. Think about the war between nations, how ethnicities don't seem to get along so well historically. Nation rising up against nation, the real enormous differences between nations. You step over the border and everything changes. All right. And again, the ancients, they don't think like modern mankind. They don't think of this as just habit as maybe the dictates of some very powerful person in the past at the origin of the nation or a family. They thought of it as angelic influence that God gave angels, certain angels rule over certain nations after they scattered with the tower or babble. All right. Now, why you might ask, would God need a counsel? We said that God was speaking to

a divine counsel, let us make man in our image. And that counsel consisted of powerful angels. Why would God need a counsel? Isn't he all-knowing and all-powerful? Why would he put angels in charge of different jurisdictions when he's all-powerful? He could govern creation perfectly well himself with just a thought. But I think this is a little bit of a misunderstanding of the character of God. God doesn't give authority to His creation like the divine counsel or authority to prophets, authority to apostles. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. He doesn't give that kind of authority because he needs help. He gives authority to His creation because He is in the business of and has always been in the business of making sons and daughters. He wants His sons to be like Him, to have His virtue, to have His glory, His holiness. Again, go into all the world and preach

the gospel. Baptize them, teach them, train them, disciple them. Go, he tells the disciples, but he could have done all of that without sending human beings. He didn't need us. He could have sent an angel down or he could have appeared simultaneously to all eight billion human beings alive today and given them the gospel straight from his own mouth, but he never does things that way. He sends His sons. He sends His daughters. Okay, it's not that he needs it. He needs this. It's that he's in the business of making sons. I've used this example before about my own children, but you know, I remember one time Morgan calling me while I was here at church in the office and saying, hey dad, can I go play with my friend out in the backyard? I'll stay in the backyard. Why don't you ask your mom? She's home, right? Yeah, but she's sleeping. I don't want to wake her up. Okay, yeah, that sounds

fine. Now, she did this when she was like seven or eight years old somewhere around there, but I'm mad. I just, what if she called me up today, like at 23 years old and said, hey dad, can I go out and play in the backyard? Or can I go out with my, what is the wrong? What is wrong with you? I don't, you can make up your own mind about that sort of thing. Because we're in the business of making adults. We don't want our sons and daughters completely dependent upon us as if the wisdom and the knowledge and the understanding and the affections are all in here and we have to spoon feed it to them every day of their lives for the rest of their lives. That's not even the way God does things. He wants us to have his wisdom, us to have it, us to have his affections, us to have knowledge. He's making sons. He's been doing this

before mankind was even created, it seems. This would be why he would have a divine counsel, not because he needs their advice, but because he's making sons and daughters. All right, let me give you an example of this. Some say, well, the Scripture, and let us make man in our image, must be a reference of God the Father to God the Son, speaking to God the Son, God's God's Spirit, and not a reference to speaking to a divine counsel. God wouldn't recruit the angels in the business of creating mankind. It doesn't need to go to that extravagance. Well, let's go forward in time a little bit. Go all the way to Genesis 18, 19, 20 right in there. You read this whole story about Abraham and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's about to rain fire down upon these cities and destroy them. You remember the story? But now Abraham has a nephew that lives in Sodom. And so God dispatches angels

down to Sodom and Gomorrah, but first he visits Abraham. And while he comes, he, God, and two angels appear in physical form, but they appear as strangers so journeying through the land. And the habit or the custom is you take care of people who are traveling through the land. Make sure you give them hospitality and then send them on their way. But make sure you take care of them, give them a meal, maybe give them a place to sleep and refresh themselves. Okay. So Abraham, he sees these three strangers, these three men sitting underneath an oak tree near his tent. And so he does the ancient thing to do, which is to go offer them hospitality. And he's very, very hospitable to them, which is the direct opposite of what's going to happen in Sodom and Gomorrah. Because remember, when the strangers walk in the angels, disguised as strangers, walk into Sodom and Gomorrah to rescue Lot, the people are not hospitable to

the angels. In fact, they're quite the opposite of it. All right. But Abraham's a godly man. He offers hospitality to these three men. He has no idea that he's talking to God and two angels, no idea that he's offering them hospitality. And he goes into the tent, it seems, to assist his wife, Sarah, in preparing a meal and bring it out to the angels. And God and his two angels have a discussion with each other underneath that oak tree. And what do you think God says? Shall we let Abraham know what we're about to do in Sodom? That's God consulting two angels on what to do about this man. All right. That I would suggest to you is an illustration in history of what was happening in Genesis 126. Let us make man in our image, God is speaking to his angelic counsel. He calls upon his angels and expresses his will that mankind would be made in the image of himself, God,

and in the image of his sons, the angels. All right. And you might say, well, you mean we're made in the image of God and the image of the angels? Yes. So I saw mate, which I read last week, says, what is man that you're mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him just a little lower than the heavenly angels. But you crowned him with glory and honor. You've given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet. All right. The reason that scripture teaches us that God was speaking to his counsel when he said, let us make man in our image is that we are to understand then that what God had intended for the angels, he was also intending for human beings to rule and reign with him, to have his heart, to have his mind, to have authority, to have dominion, to take care

of his creation, to super intend, to govern. In other words, God was creating beings in his own image, like himself, creating sons. All right. In the book of Job, you get a little bit of a glimpse behind the scenes. Do you remember that there's the frame of that story, the suffering of Job? It starts out in Job, a perfect man, but then the camera, if you will, pans up to heaven. And you're privy as a reader to the interior chambers of heaven, what's going on in the councils of God. Here's Job down here on earth. Everything's, he's perfect. He's good. But then we go over here to heaven. And the scripture says that all the Benecha Elim, the sons of God, came before, presented themselves before God, in his throne, to give an account. Okay. They seem to have, again, God delegates authority, and he wants to hear these delegates give an account of their leadership. And one of those angels, or sons

of God, seems to have been someone assigned to a role called HaSatan, or Satan. That is the adversary. He's like the prosecuting attorney. His job is to test to see if God's creations are true, true to God, if they're like him. And God asks this Satan, this prosecuting attorney, what have you been doing? Who have you been testing? And he gives the answer. Well, roaming to and fro. And, and God wants to know, have you tested Job? All right. So there's an image of something going on in heaven in the councils of God. In another place in scripture, there's another glimpse into the divine council. When God wants the King Ahab to finally meet the consequences for his sinfulness, he asks the question, who's going to go on this mission for me? I want you to go in and lead Ahab into battle. And one of the, one of the sons of God or one of the spirits stood up and said, I

will go, send me. Just the same words as Isaiah chapter six. Here am I, send me. So what we have is things going on down here on earth, but there's a behind the scenes in heavens. And where I'm going with all of this as I come to a close is, this gives us a little bit of an idea of what the apostle Paul is speaking of when he says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness and high places. And then he's going to go on to say, put on the whole armor of God that you can stand when you're tested. There's a spiritual battle going on all the time. You have almost no idea of what's going on behind the scenes. We're in the middle of a spiritual battle. We don't go through life casually. We need to stay in prayer, a state of prayer, praying always pray without ceasing. The apostle Paul said, that

is, you're staying connected spiritually, reading scripture. So you're getting the counsel of God. All right, there's a spiritual battle going on all the time. You're a part of a great big cosmic battle that one day is going to be completely wrapped up with the words, worthy is the Lamb. For he has overcome. He'll loose the seven, the seven sealed scroll. And that's, that's the end. But until then, we're in a pitched battle. Stay on your toes. Stay close. Make sure there's an altered home. Everything we're doing, it's a spiritual. There's a spiritual dimension to everything we're doing. We're going to do a baptism here after church. [name redacted]'s getting baptized. You know, baptism is a spiritual act. You know what you're, you're doing? When you're getting baptized, you are announcing to the world, the physical and the spiritual world, whose side you're on. You have changed sides. You have walked across the battlefield, and you're getting into another foxhole and you're fighting for

the Lord, your God on the side of light, children of the light against the darkness, spiritual battle. All right, God made you with that spiritual dimension in mind and let's fight the good fight. Finish the course. Amen. Let's stand.