The God Who Covenants | Genesis 1:26-31

Introduction

Some of you undoubtedly are thinking, “The same passage? Again?” Yep, we are still in Genesis 1:26–31 this morning. But honestly, that shouldn’t surprise us. How many of you have a favorite movie? And how many times have you seen that movie? How many lines can you quote?! Mine is the original Star Wars (the fourth in the series, as numbered). We had it recorded on VHS as a kid, and every time I was sick, that was my go-to movie. I must have seen it almost a hundred times by now in my life, and it never gets old! We all are like that in different ways—we love to repeat the things we love! Movies, meals, favorite stories, or your favorite outfit. It should be the same here in Genesis. When we started Genesis as part of our “In Between” series, we talked about how God has a PLAN for us in this ‘in between’ moment, this moment between his first creation and his recreation of all things. And his plan is seen right from the very beginning, and we should want to repeat it to ourselves over and over again. This is a story we need written on our hearts and minds so well that it is second nature to see these images when we read Genesis, so that the path and the plan of God are clear throughout the rest of Scripture.

This morning, I want to revisit Genesis 1:26–31 one more time to look at several problems we may all be running into in this section of Genesis and their solutions:

1. Problem: Assumptions & Remembering
   Solution: A Summary—Presence, Place, People, Purpose

2. Problem: Imagery
   Solution: Disciple Makers

3. Problem (Again!): Failure
   One More Ingredient: Covenant Love

One of the first reasons Genesis may not have stuck in your mind, given all that we have talked about, may be several problems. First, we tend to make assumptions about Genesis for many different reasons, and second, it is hard to remember the storyline if this is all new to you. One thing that can help with that is a simple summary. Genesis is all about God’s presence in God’s place with God’s people living out God’s purposes, which is what our life is still about today in Jesus. But even then, we will run into more problems: we often have a hard time with the imagery, but the solution there is to notice the connection between the images in Genesis one and our role today as disciple makers. The last problem we may notice is that we keep failing to live this way, to live in this identity and truth, even today, which helps us to see that there is one more crucial ingredient—a necessary aspect of our life with God found even here in Genesis 1:26–31—that we need to begin to see today: that our relationship with God is established in covenant love from the very beginning.

Problem: Assumptions & Remembering
Solution: Summary

Let’s start with our assumptions and all there is to remember here. The funny thing about our Genesis 1 sermons in this series so far is that these sermon ideas may NOT be all that familiar to many of us. It likely doesn’t feel like that familiar movie. In some ways, many of us have heard so many different versions of teachings on Genesis that it has gotten muddled. This may not feel like a repeat for many of you, and that is okay and a good reason for us to be looking at Genesis in depth.

When we come to Genesis, we often don’t simply read it for what it says. From the beginning, we see much about who God is:

God

God Who Creates Out of Nothing

God Who Reveals Himself to Us

God Who is Present with Us

God Who is for Our Good

From the very beginning, we see our God who creates out of nothing. He always has been, always will be, and he creates with no preexisting materials, no preexisting constraints, and no preexisting needs. God demonstrates that he is creating everything for his own purposes and joys, and for a joy that he wants to share with me and you. We talked about how this is often called the transcendency of God, his otherness. We are not like our God in so many ways. We do have a beginning. We need existing things to create with. We are little mirrors that reflect well the light and glory of God, but we don’t make our own light nor our own glory. Those characteristics belong to God alone, like his omniscience (his all-knowing nature), his omnipresence (his being everywhere), and omnipotence (his being all-powerful).

Some people say the whole purpose of Genesis chapters one and two is to show us two different aspects of God—the God who is transcendent and different from us in Genesis one and the God who is close to us and cares for us in Genesis chapter two. Genesis two is showing us the same story, but clearly from a much more intimate and close perspective, but Genesis one could hardly be said to be only about our God who is other than us! That is one of the amazing things about our God—He doesn’t desire to stay distant from us. Even in an account like Genesis one, an account that admittedly is more of a 30,000-foot overview of all of creation, we still get bright and clear glimpses of the closeness and loving relationship our God wants with us.

I flew to Phoenix and back this last week in a 24-hour period with some of our members to talk with a mission organization. In both directions, we were landing in the dark (thank you, time change!). But that is one of the cool things about flying at night—you may not know all the contours of the land below you, but you can definitely see bright ‘pops’ of light here and there. Glimpses of where civilization is. Glimpses of where LIFE is happening! The same is true here in Genesis one. We may not see every road and every detail in these accounts of all God is doing. In fact, that is what is maddening to many people about the Genesis creation account in general—we never get that kind of clarity. But even in Genesis one, we see the beautiful closeness of our God who intimately knows us and cares for us. His desire for a relationship with us is popping off the page even in this first chapter!

We see in Genesis one the God who reveals himself to us. He shows us what he is doing, he declares things good, and he even lets us know his private conversations amidst the Godhead. We see that God was always present with us and with his creation. He did not attend to creation from afar, but he stepped in close to us. He was over all of creation as it was made, and he intimately formed humanity. And importantly, when man and woman are made, they are declared very good—because God is for our good. This is a very close God, even here in Genesis chapter one.

Out of this closeness, God also teaches us about ourselves. As God creates humanity, man and woman, we see the most important aspect is that we were all created as image bearers of God, which is such a grand and amazing idea!

Humanity

Image Bearers: Inherent Worth

Image Bearers: Sons & Daughters

Sons & Daughters: Kings & Queens

Sons & Daughters: Priests

Image Bearers: Purpose

Purpose: To have Dominion

Purpose: To Guard and Keep God’s Words and Ways

Being made in the image of God means God literally made two humans—Adam and Eve—and it means you and I and all of humanity was meant to image the invisible God in visible ways like them. We are to reflect what is true about God in a limited, human form. And because we have been given that ability and task, we all—even in our broken state—have an inherent value because of the imprint of God on us.

More than that, being image bearers also means we are his sons and daughters, which carries with it amazing ramifications. It means that because our God is King over everything, we also are little kings and queens, princes and princesses of the Most-High King. And because our God is holy and we are his sons and daughters, we are also to act as Priests giving worship in many ways to our God.

Both of these roles are further described here in Genesis 1:26–31 as God gives us our purpose: we are to have dominion—meaning rulership—over all of creation and to even be part of extending creation out from the garden and across the whole earth like our God and King, who was establishing all things in Genesis one. That is what little kings and queens do—we act like our father, the king, who creates and extends. Additionally, we are to guard and keep God’s words and ways as priests—an image that comes back again in the tabernacle and temple, and in our call as God’s ambassadors in faith in Jesus Christ. If your Father is the most Holy God of all creation, then we are to worship him and invite others into that worship rightly.

Knowing more about God and then knowing more about humanity also helps us know more about this place—all of creation that is around us. We can see several things about creation.

Creation

Eden is an image of King’s Kingdom

Eden is an image of God’s Temple

The King has been establishing the start of his kingdom on this earth and he has created his sons and daughters to take their place as kings and queens and expand his kingdom from its beginning in one corner of creation, and like the rivers that flow out of Eden, go out themselves and cover the earth in the kingdom of their Father, the good king.

Additionally, the God of all things has made a temple for himself. A place where his priests, his living and breathing idols, will live to guard and protect his words and ways. A place where God’s very presence is with his people and his people are with him. A place where God’s words and ways are protected and shared with others, and worship to God grows across this earth as the kingdom expands increasingly across this earth.

Most of us do not approach Genesis with these three categories of who God is, who humanity is, and what Creation is as the foundation of what we believe God is trying to tell us in Genesis one and two. We have seen too many flannel boards, we have read too many children’s Bibles, and many of us have gotten too stuck in the debates of Genesis so that we forget the bigger picture we are meant to see. And even if we don’t bring all the wrong assumptions, we often don’t think first and above all that this is all about who God is! This is about who God has created us to be! And this is how we are to relate to God and his creation. Even here, in Genesis one, at a 30,000-foot view, we see God’s grand plan for our lives beginning to unfold before us. This is way more important than we might think. It may not be giving us many of the details we were expecting to get, but what we are given is nothing less than our identity and mandate from our God—our Father, King, and Holy Creator!

Part of the problem is that is a lot to remember! And to help us remember all of this, much of what we have heard can be easily summarized into four main points:

Summary

Presence (of God)

(in the) Place (of God)

(with and through the) People (of God)

(living out the) Purposes (of God)

That place originally was in Eden, it was imaged again in the land of Israel, and now it is in us—you and me—and the church gathered as we live in the presence of God again through his Holy Spirit dwelling in us as the very people of God walking back in the very purposes of God. God is showing us his consistent character and purposes as we come back again and again to the presence of God in the place of God for the people of God to walk in the purposes of God. Memorize those four p’s! They are one of the great summaries of Scripture and the main contours of what God is doing and all that we see throughout Scripture. Those images help us to see what God is doing at any given time with people like Abraham, Moses, Israel, David, and all the others we see in Scripture.

These four ideas help makes sense of what God is doing with you and me—a story that is consistent from Genesis to today and on into the future. You and I, through faith in Jesus Christ, now get to live with the very presence of God again—his Holy Spirit in us and with us all the time. And now, we are the very place where the presence of God dwells—in each of us but also as we gather (two or more, as Jesus says Matthew 18:20). We are again the people of God on his mission and purpose to see other sons and daughters come back to their good Father. What an amazing calling we have and incredible identity! That is everything we have been talking about in Genesis today and up to this point in our series.

Problem: Imagery
Solution: Disciple makers

Another problem is that we struggle to connect with the imagery we find here in Genesis. Even when we begin to think in these categories, we often have a hard time knowing what this would even look like.

Some of that is our American bent. We don’t think much of kings here in America. Starting with the Revolutionary War, even up to today, we like our freedom and can’t imagine giving up democracy for a monarchy. Yet, that is what we are doing when we follow our good King. Then, thinking of a world where THE ONLY ANSWER is that we serve a king and we are to take our place as his little kings and queens is a little odd. As Americans, I think we can often struggle in general with this idea of our God the King with no accountability, and then how are we to relate to him and also represent him to others ourselves as his little kings and queens.

Similarly, I don’t think we like the image of priests very much.  For some of us, this is still a post-Reformation reaction to the Catholic church, where the idea of a priest embodies for many Protestants everything bad about the Catholic system. A system where Christians don’t necessarily have a direct relationship with God, and the priest is the one who mediates for you with God. Similarly, in our state and city context, some of us hear the word " priest and immediately think Mormons. We similarly aren’t sure what it would look like to be a priest and worship our God, and how we would go about it without being Catholic or Mormon.

Frankly, the general image of a son and a daughter in general is the image that resonates with most people. We know we have a hole inside of us that is longing for a good Father to love us and care for us, but the images of what sons and daughters do are more complicated. We don’t immediately think of sons and daughters as royal priests. Even if we begin to grasp this in some ways, I think the image is very shallow for us. But I think it can help us understand the images if we just stop for a moment and think about what Adam’s and Eve’s lives would have looked like if they had not sinned and lived rightly as royal priests.

Adam and Eve were living in the original kingdom of God and his Holy Temple. They walked directly with God and talked with him. God was sharing with them his holiness, his righteousness, and all his words and ways. Had they not sinned, they would have spent their days learning from God, relating to him, and in that relationship, they would then have extended the garden and temple of God over all the earth. They would have overseen all of creation—from plants to animals—and made sure it continued to point back to a creator who made everything that he might be seen, known, and loved. They would have gone out into the wilderness that we see existed outside of the garden in Genesis chapter three and made it like the garden itself—ordered it, made it purposefully, helped it to be reflective of God and his goodness, and they would have made it a further temple and kingdom for their good Father and King.

Adam and Eve would have also had children, as they were told to be fruitful and multiply. They would have taught their offspring about God, brought them into his presence, and made sure they would have known God’s words and ways. They would have taught them how their job of having dominion over creation and guarding and keeping God’s ways brought God glory and how it brought them all joy and true life. They would have shared what not to do as well, guiding their children continually toward God and watching them also take their place in multiplying, loving God, and caring for God’s creation.

That begins to help us picture what little kings and queens and priests do. It would include real work and real activities that are trying to fulfill what God asked his priest kings and queens to do. In many ways, those roles still apply to us now. We are still to engage with our world, work, and bring glory to God as we steward everything he has given us. We see many of those things reiterated in the New Testament. Yet now, in Jesus, we aren’t just trying to spread out a garden or, perhaps, our version, a city. In Jesus, we are trying to spread out something a little different. We can see exactly what this looks like now, in a new dominion mandate, given to us by Jesus in Matthew 28:

And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

(Matthew 28:17–20 ESV)

Our job of being priest kings and priest queens, beloved sons and daughters of God, now looks like being sure to GO out and live our lives across this amazing world God has made for us now back in relationship with him through the Holy Spirit and as we GO, we are to make disciples of Jesus who also want to make disciples of Jesus. We work in the power of the Holy Spirit and as HE, the Holy Spirit, does his work WE work to encourage our fellow brothers and sisters to come back to their good Father! Our work as kings and queens happens as we seek to extend God’s kingdom through our work, our relationships, but most importantly as we go out and make disciples. People who love that God has brought us back to himself and this kind of relationship though Jesus Christ—God’s beloved son who was THE high priest and THE good king who loved us all through his death on the cross and resurrection in power.

We also take our place as priests now as we learn and love God’s words and ways. We have seen God’s righteousness more clearly in Jesus, so now we can clearly call one another and future brothers and sisters to follow God as we look to Jesus as the founder and perfector of our faith. We guard his words and ways as we exhort and teach one another and live a life that points to Jesus in everything we do. We go to Scripture and learn to know God in Jesus.  This is why we have summarized our mission here at Main Street as:

Love God

Love Others

Make Disciples of Jesus

This is what it looks like as a Christian to live out our call as king and queens, royal priests, and sons and daughters of our Father. The Christian life you and I read about and talk about and encourage one another about from the New Testament is THE image and picture of what kings and queens, royal priests do today. We take the mobile temple of God in ourselves and as the church out into the world, and we seek to see God’s place spread as other lost sons and daughters come back to their father and bend their knee to his rule. This is us fulfilling the original dominion mandate TODAY as we walk in the spirit in faith to Jesus.

And that is why we have a Missions Fair today! We are all called to head out, to GO, in both Genesis one and Matthew 28! We go locally, nationally, and globally. We go from our house to our neighbors, our co-workers, and we go—when God calls us—willingly to wherever he may be moving to gather his sons and daughters.

One of our main application points this morning is that we are to pray and consider what this going out, what this process of being God’s people who are his mobile temples now, who walk in the presence of God, and are trying to live in his purposes, what that looks like in our lives. How are we taking part in this grand going and making disciples of all people? And probably more importantly, do you see this as not a new call but rather as us coming back into our original purposes of being God’s sons and daughters, his royal priests, by making disciples today? To the degree you and I struggle to feel valuable may often be linked to how much we view the call of Jesus in Matthew 28 to make disciples, to regain our role as image bearers who are royal priests. If we miss this, we miss much of our identity.

Think about that for a moment. I hear many Christians often say that they don’t know what it looks like to make disciples of others. That would mean you likely won’t feel very fulfilled because you are not living out your original image-bearer responsibilities before God. We sometimes get partway there—we find joy in the working, the engaging others, the gathering together as Christians, and praising and worshipping God. But we have been called to more than that. We are called to extend God’s royal kingdom and his temple by bringing other sons and daughters into discipleship with Jesus. That is an amazing call, and if we miss that privilege that we have again through faith in Jesus, we may find ourselves feeling like we are living an incomplete life. Learning how to disciple others is a necessary part of our job as image bearers! It is us rightly taking our place with our God as his sons and daughters. And it is a high and glorious calling!

Problem (Again!): Failure & Covenantal Love

But all this will bring us to another problem! Even when we remember all these amazing aspects about God, humanity, and creation, even when we remember an easier summary that this is all about God’s place, his presence, his people, and his purposes, we will still notice something else.

Problem (Again!): Failure

We notice that we fail. We see that Adam and Eve failed. We see that Israel failed. We see that we still struggle to walk as God’s people in his presence, as his place of worship and glory in the Holy Spirit, and we fail to walk in his purposes. We will fail. And that is why we need to notice one more crucial aspect of the story that is started even here in Genesis 1:26–31 and continues on through chapters two and three:

There is a special relationship here—a covenantal relationship!

Everything we see in Genesis one is already meant to tip us off that God is in and has entered into a special relationship, a covenantal relationship, with his people and with creation. At its simplest definition, a covenant is:

A covenant is a chosen relationship in which two parties make binding promises to each other with stipulations (what to do and not do) and provisions (blessings and curses).

You may not have heard it said before that there is a covenant here in Genesis one, but all the signs are here. Father with sons and daughters. Identity and a job. Close and special relationship. The language of God giving us dominion and all the entailments of being image bearers is pointing us towards a special covenantal relationship being made between God and man and man and creation here in Genesis. Look what some of Scripture says as it looks back on Genesis one:

“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away….But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.”

(Hosea 6:4, 7 ESV)

“The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: “Thus says the LORD: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the offspring of David my servant, and the Levitical priests who minister to me.”

The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: “Have you not observed that these people are saying, ‘The LORD has rejected the two clans that he chose’? Thus they have despised my people so that they are no longer a nation in their sight. Thus says the LORD: If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed order of heaven and earth, then I will reject the offspring of Jacob and David my servant and will not choose one of his offspring to rule over the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy on them.””

(Jeremiah 33:19–26 ESV)

Looking back at Genesis one, both Hosea and Jeremiah, prophets of God, see a covenant there. In Hosea, we are told that God’s people in his day are breaking their covenant with God just like Adam broke his covenant with God. Jeremiah says that God’s promises to his people Israel through David for their future only holds if his covenant with day and night (creation) holds true still to their day and beyond.

Genesis one is the first place we see glimpses that this special relationship—a relationship where God has made us in his image as sons and daughters and has given us a purpose as royal priests—means we have even more than that in this relationship with God. We have a covenant with God, a special promised relationship, given at the very beginning. As one scholar says:

“Genesis 1:26 defines a divine-human relationship with two dimensions, one vertical and one horizontal. First, it defines human ontology [who humans are] in terms of a covenant relationship between God and man, and second, it defines a covenant relationship between man and the earth. The relationship between humans and God is best captured by the term sonship. The relationship between humans and the creation may be expressed by the terms kingship and servanthood, or better, servant kingship.”

Gentry, Peter J.; Wellum, Stephen J.. Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants (Function). Kindle Edition.

As we have said, we are sons and daughters who are royal priests! This is a covenantal relationship.

This covenant is sometimes called the covenant with creation, the Edenic Covenant (from Eden), or the Adamic Covenant (from Adam). All those titles are pointing to the same thing—that even from the very beginning, God’s relationship with us and creation was rooted in a covenant. A special relationship bound up in promises, provisions, and stipulations. And for me and you, that is amazing news! Knowing humanity's relationship with God started with a covenant is amazing because in every example of a covenant with God, God ultimately takes on the responsibilities of the covenant on himself.

As Adam and Eve fail in Eden, God himself promises that their seed will arise and crush the serpent. In his covenant with Noah, God promises that he himself will never again wipe out all mankind. In his covenant with Abraham, God walks between the two halves of the animals and covenants that this will happen to him if the covenant is broken (and it does happen in Jesus). We see it in his covenant with Moses and Israel as he promises one day HE will give them the new heart, new eyes, and new ears they will need to walk in all his statutes. In his covenant with David, he promises HE will provide a king who sits forever on the throne. And in the New Covenant, he promises that HE will keep his people to the end through the same Holy Spirit given to us in faith, that is, a down payment of the future glory we are given.

We will talk much more about this Adamic or Creation covenant in Genesis 2 and about covenants in general. But as we see all of the amazing aspects of who God is, who we are meant to be, what God’s creation is showing us and as we remember that God is all about his Presence, Place, People, and Purpose, we are also meant to see that this is all rooted and bound up in a very special relationship, a relationship:

Bound in Covenantal Love

This covenantal relationship means you and I don’t have to fear looking at God’s original intent for us and despairing. We don’t need to see and hear his renewed call to us in Matthew 28 and despair. Yes, we will fail. Just like Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Israel, David, and even Jesus’s disciples, we will fail. Yet this identity—who we are called to be and the purpose we are given—was given and provided for from the very beginning and is still given and secured today by one thing and one thing alone: Our identity is secured in our God Jesus Christ! Every stipulation and every covenantal promise was secured and done by Jesus Christ—the true king and the great high priest. He accomplished it all FOR us and has given it TO us through Faith.

Conclusion/Response

That means we can come back to all that we see in Genesis one and again in Matthew 28—that God’s presence is once again in God’s place with God’s people who are living in God’s purposes—and not worry, nor fret, nor run back into works to make ourselves saved, because God has secured that for us in a covenantal relationship with us. We have a grand identity as God’s image bearers, and what was marred by sin God is remaking through his Holy Spirit in our lives that we might rightly be these image bearers again. What was broken but never erased is now being rebuilt IN us. We want to remember amidst our assumptions, our struggles to see past our own cultural expectations and our fears, that from Genesis to today God truly is all about His:

Presence

Place

People

Purpose

Bound in Covenant Love

Main Street, we want to see our original goal as image bearers in Genesis one and again in Matthew 28 and exclaim, “Praise God!” We do not need to work for this status or relationship, but rather rest in what Jesus has done for us and accept this New Covenant bought in his blood and REST in what he has done for us. That is what we will talk about next week—all of this is to be done in REST and for REST.

But today, I want to have us look at these amazing aspects about our identity and what God has done from the very beginning, the outline and structure for this great story of humanity and our life with God, and ask ourselves several questions today:

1. A) Do you treasure through faith that this is your identity? This is who God is, how we are to relate to his creation and one another, and that in Jesus this is all ours again?!
   
   If there is an aspect that is hard for you, how can you come to God’s word and read it looking for those truths and identity and see how again and again God has called us to this life and has provided everything for us to live this way in Jesus and his Holy Spirit. And,
   
   B) Can you walk in this identity because of your covenantal relationship with God? Can you trust in this relationship, identity, and roles that you have because it is created in a covenantal relationship with God? He has and will do all the work in you so you can walk in these ways. Do you accept and treasure that?
   
   Similarly, as we have a day like today with our Missions Fair:
   

2. A) Do you see that going is your identity? From Genesis to today, our identity means spreading the presence and place of God so that all his people come into a relationship with him. Locally or globally, we are called to go and make disciples.
   
   And:
   
   B) Our going is possible because of the covenant we have with God. He will do it all. We simply come alongside him in his great task.

What an amazing identity and what an amazing opportunity we have to come back to our original purpose again through faith in Jesus! What would it look like for you to walk again in this identity and purpose? Where do you need to trust in God’s covenantal relationship with us through Jesus and simply BE these people? I want to encourage you to find JOY this morning in who you were meant to be and now get to be again rightly in Jesus, and ponder, what would this truly look like in your life? You are part of the greatest story ever designed and you have a major role! Our God has drawn near to us in Jesus Christ, and he has secured this identity for you—will you walk in it? Will you go out—in Boise or abroad—and live this life of disciple making for God’s glory and your good?