Devotion on Notable 1st’s of the Bible (God’s 1st Commandment to Mankind) 17 April 2015 A.D.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them 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. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 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 fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Gen 1:26-28)
In the quoted text above, God conveys a GENERAL purpose in His Creation of Man. All other elements of Creation are created to serve the benefits of this highest and crowning glory of God’s Creation – Man. Chapter Two of Genesis will provide a PARTICULAR description of Creation; but Chapter One will serve our purpose of examining God’s very first Commandment to Mankind. Bear in mind that this does not relate to the more general Moral Law laid down by God in the Ten Commandments – but this first Commandment is not exempt, either, from the greater Moral Law. God generally declines to proclaim laws that reveal sin until that sin becomes rampant as in that wicked and utterly reprehensible sin of which Sodom was noted. (Sodomy, or homosexuality).
It should at first be observed that God created Man after “His own image and likeness.” He created man from the dust of the earth, and made man a free moral agent. That does not mean man has a free will in committing sin for sinful lusts and desires all are evoked by a bondage of that will to the Prince of the Air (Satan). But God intended, I believe, that man should be free to make moral decisions involving devotion, loyalty, obedience, and love. Love that is mandatory is not love at all. Only the sinner is an automaton of the Devil. Those who lust in sin are simply acting out their father’s will – not God’s – and that father who wills sin is Satan. As Jesus condemned the hypocritical Pharisees and Jewish priests: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” (John 8:44) It is THIS will that the world calls ‘free,’ but it is neither free nor independent since it is subject to the influence of the sovereign of their souls – the Devil.
Notice that God created man, being in His own Trinitarian image, with a three-partite nature – Spirit, body, and soul. This perfectly reflects the nature of the Triune Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in personality, but not in righteousness. Man, being made from the dust of the earth, has a physical body. His soul and spirit are, as suggested by the very terms they employ, ‘spiritual.’ God the Father is a Consuming Fire and Spirit. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) No , evidence is necessary to reveal that the Holy Ghost is a Spirit. But Jesus Christ, being with God in Eternity Past in Spirit, came to earth in the body of a man and in every whit as we are and subject to pain, suffering, temptation AND to the Law. The Man is just a little (and much inferior) model of the Triune God in composition, if not perfection. So man is two parts spiritual, and one part physical (or carnal).
As was discussed earlier in the First Day devotion, God (Elohim) is a noun possessing the particular meaning of a ‘singular/plural’ which means more than One in One. Here in today’s text, we see a reiteration of that designation of the Godhead as plural in One. “Let us make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness.” God is a Creator of life, and those life-forms are made in the most beautiful and meaningful ways. A baby lion, lamb, chicklet, or kitten reflect the artful genius of our God and Maker. All such creatures of the animal kingdom are not born completely helpless, but have a natural instinct to rise immediately to their feet and seek their mother’s nurturing. Babies of mankind, however, are born completely helpless to survive the challenges of life. They can neither stand, speak, or communicate except through a ceaseless outrage of crying for gratification of their wants. Yet, these little ones are loved by mothers everywhere, are they not? The ‘motherly instinct’ is a Godly instinct, for all that God made, He thought to be GOOD.
This very lengthy introduction I believe to be necessary to understand that first Commandment of God which we undertake to examine in this devotion; and what was that Commandment? It was: “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 fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” This was the first Commandment God gave to mankind after creating male and female after His own image and likeness. He thereby, gave man a role in the Creative process as His keepers of the vineyard (Creation), so to speak. What was that role? To be used of God in creating other male and female whose likeness was like unto that of God in Heaven, and to be nurturers of that gentle Creation of plants and animals that God had made.
This first Commandment is one of the most vital that God has ever uttered because it sets the stage for all of God’s purpose in Creation. As we will learn later in our devotion on the First Marriage in Eden, God made male and female to form one entity in the institution of marriage – the first that God instituted. God clearly defines marriage as being between and man and a woman. In purpose and Godly intent, marriage is the union of one man and one woman into one body or person. Man and Woman become One with one another just as the Church becomes One with Christ, as Christ is One with the Father, and we, being in Christ, are also One with the Father. In the words of the beautiful prayer of the Lord in the Garden at Gethsemane: “20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; 21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. 22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: 23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” (John 17:20-23)
God has made overwhelmingly clear that there is no definition of marriage except that which exists between a man and a woman in the estate of Holy Matrimony. There is no other definition.
The modern perversions of homosexuality, lesbianism, and, yes, adultery also, are simply that – perversions of wickedness against that which God has blessed and ordained. Homosexuality turns the Creative Model of our Maker on its head. It refutes not only the physical law of nature, but the Moral Law of Nature’s God. It is a filthy and reprehensible sin that decent, moral people of all religions have recognized as being hostile to God’s will and Law, and this from the expulsion from Eden, through the centuries and millennia of time since, in conformity with the wisdom of the ancients of every civilization.
Two men, or two women, cannot “replenish the earth,” but only make it desolate of habitation. This fits snugly into the One World government ambition to reduce the population of the human race by two-thirds of its present size. They will attempt to accomplish this through indoctrination, in public schools and other forums, by suggesting the benefits of accomplishing that goal through abortion, homosexuality, and stringent environmental controls that make the production and distribution of food impossible. If the goal cannot be accomplished by such ‘passive’ means, then more forceful means will be employed.
It is for this reason that God has condemned and forcefully rejected homosexuality – not only as a grievous sin – but as an ‘abomination’ in the eyes of the Lord. It is such a serious sin that God has said that He will destroy that nation that allows this filthy sin to be practiced within its borders. I fear for our nation when I read the words of Leviticus 18 and Romans 1:
“22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. 23 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. 24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: 25 And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. 26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: 27 (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) 28 That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. 29 For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.” (Lev 18:22-29)
“22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” (Romans 1:22-32)
I am not reluctant to confirm that every practitioner of the egregious sin of homosexuality is an abominable SINNER. Do not tell me that I am being ‘judgmental’ unless you accuse the Lord your God of the same presumed indiscretion, for it is His judgment, and not my own. The modern church has made itself sterile to proclaim the truth of God and to condemn the sins that God has condemned for fear of being accused of being ‘judgmental.” I share no such fear!
There is a sin unto reprobation, but God ‘s arm is not shortened to forgive every sin that is sincerely repented of with a broken and contrite heart. We must warn those young people, and elders, who have been hood-winked by the devil to believe that homosexuality merits respectability and recognition. The modern church has shirked its duty to God in not doing so. WE MUST! There is room for even those who renounce that reprobate sin and come to the Lord: “9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Cor 6:9-11) There is a place with God for every FORMER sinner, including you and me.
It is more i8mportant today, than ever before, for the people of God (His Church) to recognize the importance, and severity of abrogating, that first Commandment of God.
AMEN
