Significant portions of the church appear to have capitulated to modern theories of Scripture and secular science. The Christian doctrine of origins is one of the central battle-grounds within and without the Church of Christ. Genesis 1 contains the vital building blocks of life under God: the six days of creation, the pristine nature of life before the fall, the roll of male and female, the creation mandate and so forth. However, the grand subject of Genesis 1 (grammatically and theologically) is none of the above. The grand subject of Genesis 1 is the Triune God himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is the chief actor of Genesis 1, and it is to him, and his actions we must look if we are to firmly ground ourselves in the truth. Just as we see God acting in creation, so too we see him acting in salvation. Thus, a Trinitarian creation will lead us, inexorably, to a Trinitarian re-creation and a Trinitarian New Creation. God in creation provides us with a blueprint of life before him, and a pattern of how He, through Christ and the work of the Spirit, will re-make man for his eternal dwelling place in their midst.
Okay, well if you've got your scriptures, please turn to Genesis chapter 1. Because Pastor McCloud yesterday read the whole of Genesis chapter 1, I'm sure you're very familiar with it, I'm simply going to read the first five verses, which will really suffice for our purposes today. God is the grand subject of Genesis, and indeed the grand subject of all of scripture. And so I'll read and then we'll pray and then we'll dive in. Genesis chapter 1 in the first five verses, This is the word of God.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. And 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 the first day. Let's pray. We thank you, our great God, that you are the one who has made us and fashioned us out of nothing, and that you breathed life into us by your Spirit of truth and grace. And now, Lord, we pray that that same Spirit will work mightily in our midst, giving me words to speak and giving us all ears to hear what your spirit will say to us.
Lord, we desire that Christ, indeed we desire that you, Father, Son, and Spirit, might be exalted before our eyes this morning. And so we cry out to you, Father in heaven, be gracious unto us, Speak to us from young to old, that we might know you and know your great son Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Well, when we consider reading Genesis 1 and we work our way through Genesis 1 into Genesis 2, we deal with the doctrine of creation, issues of origins, I think it's easy to get lost in the details and the debates of Genesis 1. How long are the days of Genesis 1? Did God create in six days?
How old is the earth? By the way, I'm a young earth creationist, I take Genesis literally, but all those are questions which are rightly asked and rightly answered by Genesis 1, but if we get lost in those details, we are in danger of missing the great subject of creation. And those first five verses we just read now amply speak to us of the subject of creation. Grammatically a subject is who or what before a verb. Who or what before a verb.
And I think we just saw in those first five verses that God himself is the great subject of creation. God saw, God said, God separated, God made, God created. The list goes on. If we were to read all of Genesis 1, we'd see that God time and time again is the one who is acting. He is, in fact, the great subject of creation.
At least 32 times we'll read in Genesis 1 alone that God did something. God acted in a peculiar way. And what I want to do this morning is examine just some of those actions or the verbs of God, if you like, how God did things, what he did, and examine how God creates in creation is paralleled by what he does in salvation. In some way, as God creates, so also he saves. You've heard a lot about this this week, thankfully.
This address is really building on what we've heard, especially from Dr. Lawson in the Book of Revelation. The paradigm of creation to re-creation and to the new creation is very clear from all of scripture, and so that's this morning I hope we're going to see something of the glory of Christ yes But the glory of Christ is not the only glory we need to be concerning with Concerned with the glory of the Father and the glory of the Spirit, because the glory of Christ is in fact a triune glory. It is our triune God who creates, it is our triune God who saves. Six things this morning then we'll identify from Genesis 1 concerning the creation and then concerning salvation.
The first thing is pretty obvious. God is a creating God. God is a creating God. And we're going to spend most of our time or a good portion of our time on that today. Then secondly, we'll see that God is a speaking God, he speaks.
Thirdly, God is a seeing God, he sees. Fourth, God is a naming God. Fifth, he is a blessing God. And sixth, he is a resting God. First of all, God as a creative God.
God is a creator, and we see that from the very first words of Genesis 1 in the beginning God created God created excuse me that would create there's a very important word in Hebrew it's the Hebrew word Bara B-A-R-A God created that's one of the words the designations of creation. But there are other creating words in Genesis also. In verse 16 and in verse 26, we'll see the idea of God making, it's a different Hebrew verb. Assa, it's a different idea. Verse 24, we'll see another verb also translated bring forth or formed.
That's a different verb in the Hebrew altogether. There's at least three creative verbs in Genesis 1 used to describe the creating powers of our God. There's another word also importantly, we've heard it this week already, it's the word hovering or as you Americans would say hovering I think, is that right? Either way, hovering. Verse 2, the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Very important, very important idea that hovering. The Spirit of God is hovering over the face of the deep. We'll see that language picked up in the Old Testament when Israel's going through the wilderness and God is described as an eagle hovering over his people in the wilderness. It's the same idea of the Shekinah Glory Cloud descending and hovering over the tabernacle, God with his people, and it's a similar idea that we see in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit once again descends in tongues of flame upon the Apostles head. What is the Spirit doing there?
The Spirit is equipping. The Spirit is generating, not regenerating, we'll get there, but generating within the Apostles the capacity to speak to the nations in their own tongues. He's giving them something. He's adding to them an ability or a capacity. That's the language of creation in Genesis 1.
I also want to point out to you verse 16. There's what we might call the language of understatement. If we're looking at the language of creation, there is also the language of understatement, verse 16. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars. And the stars.
Rough calculations, of course. Rough calculations, there's about 10 billion galaxies so I'm told, each with an average of a hundred billion stars do the math, comes out at something like one billion trillion stars and all that we're told about the description of their making is in two words in Hebrew, three words in English, and the stars. It's the language of understatement. It describes to us the enormous power of our triune God in creation. I want to go back to the first word we've read of, the word create.
The word bara in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Very, very important word in Hebrew and also in English. The word in Hebrew, bara, is reserved for divine creation. Never in the Hebrew Scriptures will you find bara being what man does. Man is incapable of this kind of creation.
The verb bara is also what we call a telek verb. That means it has an end in sight. The creation of the heavens and the earth is, if you like, a completed action in and of itself, which rules out any translation or mistranslation of Genesis 1, which would read like this in the beginning, when God began to create. That idea of when God began to create is the idea that there's pre-existing matter of millions of years of age and God somehow begins to sculpt it. That's not what the text says.
The verb create, bara, here is a telegverb, It is a complete action in and of itself. That's to say God didn't take something else and begin to sculpt it and rely on matter in the first place. One theologian says of this verb and of our great God His creation reveals his immeasurable power and might, his bewildering imagination and wisdom, his immortality and transcendence ultimately leaving the finite mortal in mystery. That's our triune God. That's how great he is.
And you contrast the Genesis account of creation with the accounts of creation of the other religions of the ancient Near East and you will never see a God creating in their versions, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, Egyptian creation accounts, you will never see a god creating in the same way as Yahweh creates here. No other god creates by bara creation. And scripture builds on this idea by revealing to us in the rest of scripture just really the significance of this kind of creation. Revelation 4.11 reads thus, glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created. Creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing.
That's not to say bara means creation out of nothing, it suggests it, but bara is used in other forms as well, but scripture clearly tells us that God created out of nothing, that there was no pre-existing matter because God created all things by your will they existed and were created Hebrews 11 3 will tell us the same idea we read this by faith we understand the universe was created by the Word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. As I've mentioned, all the other religions of the ancient Near East have gods creating the world out of blood, or out of rivers, or out of something else. Our God does not need to create out of something else. He speaks and it comes into existence. That is to say, he creates out of nothing.
Remember, we're gonna draw spiritual parallels to the creation account. So perhaps your mind is already running to those places. Our God creates out of nothing. That's his glory, that's his power, That's his majesty. He has the capacity to do it.
He creates he creates without the assistance of others. He creates substance out of nothing. It tells us some marvelous truths about our glorious God. He is incomparably powerful incomparably wise and that's implied by his name El Shaddai the almighty And we learn much about this God through creation and the rest of scripture. When Melchizedek blesses Abraham, he describes God in Genesis 14 as the possessor of heaven and earth.
Nehemiah 9, 6, he's called the sustainer of the heavens and the earth. And we read that creation is for Almighty God, as we consider in Romans 11 36, for from him and to him and through him are all things, to him be glory forever. Amen. That's to say creation is bound up with God, he has made it, it exists for him. And it is this El Shaddai, the Almighty, who not only creates, but also saves, and also sustains, and preserves his children, and brings them unto glory.
He's the one who numbers the hair on your head. He's the one who put the stars in the sky and he will bring us unto completion. The triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit involved in creation intimately. Scripture attests that the Father is the principal agent of creation, the principal worker of creation. But Scripture also attests, does it not, John 1 or Colossians 1, all things were made through the Word, through Christ.
Christ is the agent of creation also. And we've already seen how the Spirit hovering, sustaining, giving life, is also present and active in creation. Interestingly, you can trace the Spirit's work of life-giving all through creation, from Genesis with the rivers all the way through to Revelation 22 with the river of water of life. That's to say, creation is a Trinitarian act. It's a Trinitarian act.
It's the act of our triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, intimately involved in creation. It is uniquely divine. It is the bara creation. What man cannot do, even though man is attempting to do it, to bring life out of nothing, he cannot do. To bring life out of nothing, remember that.
Man cannot do that. Only our great God can do that! Creation is not replicable by man! But I think there's an emphasis, a spiritual emphasis, which we'll see throughout scripture, a spiritual parallel. I want you to consider for one moment, consider for one moment the reality of the wonderful complexity of creation, the marvel of creation down to the cellular level and compare that also to the the wonder of the creation of the mountains and the glory as we look out in this beautiful area we see the wonder of creation and we look up and we see the trillion billion stars or at least some of them.
The wonder of creation that God made and yet we read this in Ephesians 1 4. Even as God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. The decree of election predates the marvelous creation of the heavens and the earth. We learn by this verse that Christ, before the world was formed, was willing to be aligned with sinners. More than just to be aligned was willing to be united with and to sinners.
He chose us in him. That's the language of union with Christ. That before the world was made, Christ Jesus agreed to receive us into his own existence. People who he knew would be wretched in their sin. You and me, full of sin, full of rebellion, while we were still children of wrath.
What a wonder this is, is it not? Before the foundation of the world, we should be found in Christ, that eternal decree of Almighty God. And moreover, we understand that election was fulfilled in time by virtue of Christ being incarnated, being born of a woman, born under the law, that he might become a curse, that he might become sin, 2 Corinthians 5 21, so that he might redeem us from the curse of the law. There's the glory of Christ seen all the way back to creation. The seeds of redemption are sowed even in the creative acts of Almighty God.
Furthermore, we read in 2 Corinthians 5, 517, the Father and the Son send the Spirit unto us. And we read these words, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is what? A new creation. From creation to new creation. The language continues, the old has passed away behold the new has come.
All this is from God. The God who creates out of nothing brings spiritual life out of nothing. What did we bring to our salvation? Nought but the sin. Could we save ourselves?
The God who created out of nothing, saved also out of nothing, with no help from us. Brethren, do we not see the glory of our triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit? Preeminently we see Christ, of course, that he was the one who was incarnate, he was the one who died on the cross, he was the one who was raised from the dead. The God that creates brethren is the God that also saves. Salvation, the seeds of it are found in creation.
But our God is also a speaking God. If you turn back to Genesis 1, you'll see that God speaks many times over. Verse 3, verse 6, verse 9, verse 11, and so on. God speaks in creation. And that's the idea here of a creative fiat.
Fiat is the Latin for let it be done. A fiat is an authoritative decision or declaration with an absolute sanction or guarantee of action. What is said is done, which pretty much sums up God. When he speaks, it comes to pass. And we see that very clearly here in verse 3 with the first fiat.
We could replicate this many times over with each fiat, but verse 3, let there be light and there was light. That's remarkable isn't it? Let there be light and there was light. Now you'll know from the rest of scripture there are of course spiritual overtones to light and darkness, And they really begin here, not that the darkness here is evil and the light is good, this is just the creation of light out of darkness, but we understand, do we not, there is a spiritual parallel, light and darkness. Here we read, there was darkness over the face of the deep, verse 2, and God said, let there be light, and there was.
Light comes out of darkness by the command of God. The light, in a sense, overcame the darkness. Two words in the Hebrew, Yahí or, and there was light. God didn't even need to use words, did he? But he did.
God could have just created light without any verbal command, but he did use a verbal command. He did speak to us. He did speak to the creation. By two words, a Sunless and a moonless light is created. Don't worry about the fact there's no sun yet or no moon to give light.
So we get to the new heavens and the new earth and there's no sun there and there's light again. God spoke and light appeared. God spoke. God spoke. And there's two spiritual parallels of great import here.
Not only does God speak to creation, But he speaks to us in creation. Psalm 19, the heavens declare, declare God's glory and the firmament his handiwork. Day after day, night after night, the heavens declare the glory of God. But that's not enough for your salvation. We read in Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 2, long ago, verse 1 actually, many times in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.
God did not just speak creation into being. He does not just speak to us through creation, but he speaks to us through his Son. That is to say, the Son is the revealer of the triune God. God's speech to us in Christ Jesus is of preeminent worth, preeminent value, and preeminent glory. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And we have seen his glory full of grace and full of truth. That is to say Christ as the Word of God is the very embodiment of God's speech to us. In fact we cannot conceive of the Word of God without conceiving of Christ. And it's in Christ and in the Word preached and read that we hear of salvation, and we hear of a Savior, and we hear of sin, that which we do not see in the creation, we receive from God via the Word. Via the Word.
God continues to speak, and he speaks through his word. What you have in your hand is The same word with the same authority and the same power as that which brought light out of darkness. I want to ask you friends, have you heard the word of Christ? Children, have you heard the word of Christ Jesus, the Lord of the universe, the King of Kings, saying, come unto me, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, Have faith, he says, repent of your sins, flee from wickedness and come to him for life. Have you heard his word, brethren, for your preservation, that he will keep you, that he will never leave you or forsake you?
Have you heard his word for your sanctification? This is the will of God, your sanctification, 1 Thessalonians 4. Have you heard the law of God, which tells you how you are to live and reveals your failure, which again drives you to the word Christ himself as your savior. The word is there for each one of us. Have we heard it?
But we can also think about another parallel between light, the creation of light, and the spoken word of God. We read in 2 Corinthians 4 and verse 6, Paul speaking with obvious creation themes and overtones. For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We who dwelt in darkness have seen a great light and it's the light of the glory of God as beheld in the face of his son Jesus Christ. I wonder if we took a show of hands today, how many of you believe that God created the light that you can see outside.
Who believes that God created light? Of course, all of you do. Not one of you would ever dream to believe, you call yourself a serious Christian, that God didn't create the light. I mean, we're told he creates the light. How many of you doubt your salvation and doubt your assurance and doubt your forgiveness of sins?
Perhaps old sins have come back to haunt you time and time again and you begin to question, has God really saved me? Has God brought me out of darkness into the glorious light of his son? It's the same God who made the light in Genesis 1 as the same God who brought you out of darkness. It's the same word, it's the same power, it's the same authority, it's the same God who has breathed life into our dead souls. It's the same God!
You may no sooner doubt your salvation or the assurance of such, than you may doubt whether God created the light. It's the same God, for God who said, let light shine out of darkness. It's the same Christ present at creation who is part now of our new creation. It's the same Christ through whom the worlds were made. It's the same Christ by which we receive perfect righteousness.
It's the same Christ by which we will be raised from the dead. You believe in the doctrine of creation. You have no grounds to question your salvation or your own assurance. Yes, our God is a speaking God. He is also a seeing God, a seeing God.
Eight times in Genesis 1, we are told that God sees. There's four, verse 10, verse 12, and so on throughout the whole chapter, God is a seeing God. And what we note is when we read that in Genesis 1 that his sight is accompanied then by a subsequent judgment. His sight is accompanied by a judgment. Is accompanied by a judgment.
Look at the end of Genesis chapter 1 verse 31 and God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good, sight accompanied by a judgment upon that sight. God examines his work day by day and sees each day that his work is good. And he gets to the end of the sixth day and sees his whole creation and sees that it was very good. John Owen is a remarkable passage on the goodness of creation, and he speaks about God is reveling in his moral perfection as he sees it in the created order. That's the goodness of creation.
Some theologians today want to say no goodness is defined by purpose, which leaves them open to a manner of weird theologies. Yes, of course the purpose of creation is good, it's fit for what it's meant to do. But the goodness of creation comes from God Himself. God, we are told in scripture, is good. This is vitally important for us to understand.
Everything we have, everything we are, every blessedness, goodness, light, anything, is of God himself. He has not then in the creation created something which is outside of himself. Everything we have is derived from Almighty God. Keep that thought, we're going to come back to it. The goodness then of creation is that it reflects and is derived from God's own moral beauty and perfection.
Thus he looks on his work and he is satisfied by it. He sees his creation and lo, it's very good. The created order lacked nothing, no chaos, no dysfunction, no disorder. Brethren, no death, no death before the fall. Contrary to what some are saying today.
God is good. And the creation was good because God communicated himself to that creation. Brethren, that's a far cry from what we'll read in Revelation 20 in verse 11. It's the scene of judgment. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it.
From his presence the earth and sky fled away and no place was found for them. The old heavens, this present heaven and earth, will appear before the great white throne of judgment before Almighty God and will flee from before his presence because it's not fit to be found before God. It's not fit to be found before Almighty God in his righteousness and his holiness. Why? Because the earth has been thoroughly marred by Adam's sin.
When Adam sinned, the earth fell as well. When Adam was cursed, the earth was cursed as well. And scripture tells us that the earth, the creation, is longing and groaning to be released from sin. The world, much like the Christian, in our present form, is not fit to be the eternal dwelling place of Almighty God. Right now, we're not fit.
Right now, the earth is not fit. That's why we need perfecting. That's why we need complete glorification and salvation. That's why the earth needs perfecting as well. Revelation 21, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.
It goes through the refiner's fire and is perfected and is made new. Dear friends, as it was for the old heaven and the old earth, this heaven and earth, so it will be for all men. All men must stand before the judgment seat of Almighty God and he will render scripture says to each man according to his deeds. Dear friend if you're without Christ here today, If you're without Christ as Lord and Savior, that is the last place you want to be found before the judgment seat of Almighty God without a Savior. It will be appallingly terrifying.
Your deeds, your words, and worse, your thoughts will be manifested before you, before God, before all men, and you will hear the horrifying news and the horrifying declaration, depart from me, you cursed. Oh dear friends, if you're without Christ here today, embrace him now. Do not wait another minute before you flee to Christ as Lord and your Savior. For those of you who have received Jesus Christ, who do know him as Lord and Savior, you will stand before that same throne and you will not flee from before it. Not because of any righteousness you have of your own, but because you'll be clothed with the righteous robes of Christ Jesus.
The righteous robes of Christ Jesus. That's a staggering thought that sinners like you and me, with all our present pollution, will be righteous. Indeed, no less righteous than Jesus Christ, to whom faith unites us. Well done, thou good and faithful servant, is the word we will hear. Fourth, God is a naming God.
God is a naming God. That is to say, he names his creation. Verse five, he names day and night. Verse eight, he calls the expanse heaven. Verse ten, the land is called earth and the waters are named sea.
Naming you see is an act of dominion. If you have children you get to name your children, nobody else does, you get to name your children because they your children and you have authority over them it reveals your control it reveals that they belong to you in a sense when God reveals and names parts of the creation it also reveals their function that is to say God naming the creation reveals to us his sovereign power and authority over them. They function as he determines, not we determine. They function according to his design, not our design. Naming in scripture is a profoundly blessed thing.
Adam in just a few chapters on will call his wife Eve, because she's the mother of all living which reminds us of several themes and matters which span both Old and New Testament the names of God are many they reveal a multifaceted a glorious God they reveal the the glorious character and work of Almighty God. So his name becomes associated with his deeds. His name becomes associated with his deeds. Consider for example the Aaronic blessing of Numbers chapter 6. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. You know what's said next? So shall they put my name upon them, and I will bless them. So too it is with our Savior.
Acts 4 verse 12, verse 11, this Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders which has become the cornerstone, and there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we may be saved. No other name, no other savior, No other power, no other righteousness, no other resurrection save in Christ Jesus. Which is why Philippians 2 verse 10 tells us at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. As Dr. Lawson mentioned last night, or the night before, the theme of naming comes to its fruition in the new heavens and the new earth.
No longer will there be anything accursed, Revelation 22-3, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him, they will see his face and their name will be on, his name will be on their foreheads. The stamp, the royal divine imprimatur of almighty God, put upon your forehead, by which he says, eternally mine, eternally mine. That's why we read in the previous chapter, nothing unclean will ever enter the new Jerusalem, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. The name of Yahweh, stamped upon us, eternally to be with our God. God is a blessing God.
God is a blessing God, fifthly. Three times we're told God blesses his creation, he blesses the animals, he blesses man, and then he blesses the seventh day, the only day of creation to be blessed. Think on that for a moment. What is blessing? What is blessing?
I'm a Presbyterian, but the 1689 London Baptist Confession, which mirrors the Westminster Confession, chapter 2 paragraph 2 says this, God having all life, glory and blessedness in and of himself. What is it to be blessed? It's to have God. That God himself communicates himself to the Christian. It's the same with life, same with glory.
When we're glorified, what's happening? God is communicating himself to us. Think on that! And the pinnacle of this self-communication, at least in time, perhaps not in glory, the pinnacle of this self-communication is of course who? It's Jesus Christ.
It's the Incarnation. What a staggering thought this is, that God would go so far to communicate himself to us that he would become like us. Born of a woman, born under the law that he might redeem those under the curse of the law. 1 Corinthians 1 30 tells us this, that Jesus Christ has become unto us wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption. It's been said this week already, Jesus doesn't secure us a package of good things, Jesus is the package of good things.
He gives himself to the Christian. I am his and he is mine. That's what union with Christ is all about. The apostle John says, I don't know what we're gonna be like in heaven. He says he knows we shall be like him.
Indeed we shall. The glory of the eternal Son manifest in the flesh in some way, not univocally of course, but in some way becomes the Christian's glory also. Finally, God is a resting God. Chapter 2 verse 3, we didn't read it, God rested from all his work, that's all his creative work. Nehemiah again tells us that he continues his work of sustaining the creation and preserving the creation, but he sanctified and set apart the seventh day that Christians might also sanctify and rest.
He declares that on that day we are to find our rest in him, that we're to set aside all worldly cares, all worldly employments, all worldly recreations, and devote ourselves morning until evening unto enjoying his moral perfection which is seen on the Sabbath day. We are to rest on that day. Long before the fall of Adam ever happened, God appointed a day of rest whereby we might enjoy his glory. But actually the Sabbath contains that kernel also of Christological rest, of rest in Christ. The Sabbath principle throughout scripture is fulfilled by our Savior, therein is the glory of Christ again, once again found in creation, that we see as we read the creation account these little seeds of salvation and redemption planted verse by verse, that we find our rest in Jesus Christ.
Rest in Christ means stop working for salvation now. Stop working for justification now. Rid yourselves of the foolish idea that some way you can make yourself right with God. The Sabbath tells us no, you can't, that we rest in Christ and his work by which he declares it is finished. One writer says this as I close, it is often said that the Bible represents God anthropomorphically, that is to say God is represented as having eyes and hands and so on.
More accurately a human being is theomorphic, God-centered, God-shaped, made like God so that God can communicate himself to his people. Listen to this, I think it's wonderful. He gave people ears to show that he hears the cry of the afflicted, and eyes to show that he sees the plight of the pitiful. We might add he gave us eyes to teach us that he sees all. He gave us mouths to know that he is a God who speaks.
He allows us to procreate because it teaches that he is a creating God and he gave us affections that we might know his love for his people is from everlasting to everlasting. But above all, he gave us affections that we might love his Son, and glory in his Son, whom to know is life eternal. Praise our almighty God. Let's pray. Father, you are glorious in all your ways, matchless, there is none like you.
We bless you and we magnify you and we worship you. Help us, Lord, to love you more. Help us to delight in you more. May you receive all glory from these days of conference. May Christ be exalted in our eyes.
May we decrease each one of us. May Christ our Savior increase. We bless and we magnify you, thanking you for your word, thanking you for your son, and through Christ we pray. Amen.