What Gives You Value? – 8/6/2017

WARNING PREACHY…

Genesis 1:26-31

²⁶ Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

²⁷ So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.

²⁸ And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹ And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. ³¹ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Genesis explains to us that God created the heavens and the earth and everything else – even mankind.  And behold, God found it to be very good.  God created the heavens and the earth exnilo which means He created it from nothing at all. 

In my family there are two ways to bake a cake.  Way number one is to buy a Bette Crocker cake mix and add the egg and oil then bake it for 30 minutes - done.  The second way is to make it from scratch; this is where you get raw flour, add baking powder, salt, vanilla or chocolate flavorings, eggs, and oil and mix it with beaters then bake it.  Generally I use a cake mix but it’s always a treat when my mother or grandmother would bake a cake from scratch.

But how does one bake a cake from exnilo?  Mustn’t we get the ingredients from someplace?  In fact we do, so it is impossible to bake a cake from nothing – exnilo.

Then we look to the creation of man.  Man was created, not exnilo, but from scratch.  For we men were created from the elements of the earth and so it is said that after we die, it is back to the earth we will go.

Neil Anderson is a missionary with the Wycliffe Bible translators who translated the Bible into the language of the Folopa tribe in Papua New Guinea.  Neil explained that the Folopa people had no concept of how they came to exist and when he translated the first couple of chapters of Genesis with them they were amazed to learn that they were created of the earth directly by God Himself.  And this revelation changed the way they conducted themselves and how they viewed themselves in the world.  However, the biggest and most drastic change came in their view of the females among them.

The women in the Folopa tribe were somewhat considered a different species from the men and they acted and were treated as such.  But when the Folopa people learned that God created man from the earth and then created women from the rib of a man they changed.  The men recognized that the women were not another species but were extensions of themselves and when the women learned they were intentionally created by God they realized their value and began to walk with dignity; for they finally understood that they had value among the men and this new found value for both men and women transformed the entire community.

Many people today consider themselves to be valuable by what they are able to earn or do in this world, but the reality is that each person has value simply because they have been intentionally created by scratch by God.

Do you know your value today?  If not, maybe you need a refresher course in Genesis 1 and 2 so that you will know that you are the intentional creation of God.