Episode Details

Prayer

O Lord you are good and do good. Your mercies toward me have been abundant beyond anything I could hope or even understand. And yet I still fumble along, generally oblivious to your mercies – Lord, please pardon my iniquity. I thank you for this new day, I thank you that I am still with you, and that you hold me by my right hand – in spite of my sin, frailty, and weakness. Please lead and guide me in your counsel, please take me in to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And the earth has nothing that I desire beside you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion. Please be my portion now as I open up your word. I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Reading

Gen 1:24-31.

“And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 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.”

Meditation

If you remember back to when we looked at day one, you’ll remember that what we saw is that God’s purpose for creation is to fill creation with his glory and presence. On day one, when God said “Let there be light”, he wasn’t talking about physical light. The light of the sun, moon, and stars was created on day four. No, when God said: “Let there be light”, he was referring to the light of his own glory. In 1 John 1:5 we read that “God is light”. In 1 Timothy 6 we hear the report that God dwells in light. Many other scriptural references show the way that light is a reference to the glory and presence of God as well. So when God says “let there be light” on day one, what he’s saying is that he intends to fill the creation with his glory and presence. The image of God in man has a very important and key role to play in this divine plan, because man is the glory of God (1 Cor 11:17).

When man is created on day six we get a clearer idea of exactly how God intends to fill the creation with his glory and presence. We find that he intends to fulfill this big-picture plan chiefly by making man in his own image. So also, as mankind multiplies the image of God in creation, his glory thus extends, and blessing fills the earth. Tragically however, as we’ve seen, when man fell into sin, this image was defiled and broken. But that was not to be the end of the story, for even though Adam failed in this calling, there came at last a second Adam who did not fail. In Jesus Christ, the image of God in man was renewed and restored.

And so at this point, from a biblical theological per