THE PURPOSE AND NATURE OF HUMANITY!!!!!

Genesis chapter 1




Today we are walking in: The Purpose And Nature of Humanity







Today we look to the word-DOMINION- H4475 memshalah--rule, dominion, realm, rule, dominion, realm, domain









The Torah testifies..................…
Genesis 1:28

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.










The prophets proclaim...............…
Jer 34:1 - The word which came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army, and all the kingdoms of the earth of his dominion, H4475 and all the people, fought against Jerusalem, and against all the cities thereof, saying,




Jeremiah 51:28 - Prepare against her the nations with the kings of the Medes, the captains thereof, and all the rulers thereof, and all the land of his dominion. H4475




Miciah 4:8 - And thou, O tower of the flock, the strong hold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion; H4475 the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem.













The writings bear witness.............






1 Kings 9:19 - And all the cities of store that Solomon had, and cities for his chariots, and cities for his horsemen, and that which Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and in all the land of




Psalm 103:22 - Bless the LORD, all his works in all places of his dominion: H4475 bless the LORD, O my soul.

his dominion. H4475


Psalm 145:13 - Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion H4475 endureth throughout all generations.




THE PURPOSE AND NATURE OF HUMANITY




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

-Genesis 1:27




Let us now look at the purpose of humanity, starting with the first two human beings Yah created, because they represent all of us. When Yah created humanity, He had two overarching purposes in mind: relation and vocation. The first purpose is Yah’s personal reason for creating us- for the lifework He designed us to carry out for Him in the earth.




The Creation of Man




The book of Genesis tells us of the origin of humanity. Genesis 1 is a declaration chapter. It declares what Yah did in creation. Genesis 2 is an explanation chapter. It explains how Yah accomplished His act of creation. In Genesis 1:26-27, we read,




Then Yah said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over… all the earth… “So Yah created man in His own image; in the image of Yah He created him; male and female He created them. (NKJV)




The first question we need to ask is, Why did Yeh Decide to create man? The second is, What does it mean to be created in Yah’s image? Third, What does it mean for man to have dominion over all the earth? Fourth, Why did Yah create male and female?




Why Did Yah Create Man?




Yah created man out of love.




The ultimate purpose behind the creation of man was and is love. The Scripture tells us that “Yah is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). What I especially like about this statement is that Yah doesn’t just give love, he doesn’t just show love, he is love. He desires to share His love with us because love is His essential quality.




From front to back, the Word of Yah teaches that Yah is love. Consider these passages:




The Most High appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with lovingkindness.” (Jeremiah 31:3)




The Most High your Yah is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)




I am convinced that neither death nor life,.... Nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of Yah that is in Hamachiach Yahusha our Most High. (Romans 8:38-39)




Because of his great love for us, yah, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Hamachiach. (Ephesians 2:4-5)




How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of Yah! (1 John 3:1)




Yah has many other qualities besides love that we could list. He is righteous, holy, omnipotent, almighty. He is all of these wonderful things. Yet Yah could be all of these attributes and still exist by Himself in isolation. He doesn’t need anyone else in order to be holy. He doesn’t need anyone else to be righteous. He doesn’t need anyone to be almighty. He can be omnipotent, omnipresent, and all the rest of His qualities by Himself. However, it is the nature of love to give of itself, and it cannot give in isolation. In order for love to be fulfilled, it has to have someone to love, and it has to give to its beloved.




“I am The Most High, and there is no other; apart from me there is no god” (Isaiah 45:5). There is no other god besides The Most High, yet He is a Yah of relationship, not isolation. He desires someone of His nature and likeness whom He can love. Therefore, Yah’s primary motivation in the creation of man was love. He created man because He wanted to share His love with a being like Himself, a being created in His image.




This truth is amazing to me. Genesis tells us that Yah created the heavens and the earth. He created all the plants and animals. He made the sun, the stars, the galaxies, the millennia, and the eons. He looked at all these remarkable things that He had created, and He said that they were good. However, he couldn’t truly love these things because they were not like Him. Yes, they reflected His power, glory, and creativity; they revealed His nature and qualities, but they were not made in His essential likeness. It is man whom Yah created in His image to love.




In the New Testament, Yahusha both affirms and exemplifies Yah’s love for us. He said, “For Yah so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16 NKJV). “He gave.” He gave because He loved. You cannot love without giving. When you love, you give. It’s automatic. Yet in order to give love in a way that is truly fulfilling, the receiver has to be like the giver in nature; otherwise, the love would not be complete. You cannot give in a meaningful way to something that is not like you, because it cannot receive your gift in a way that will satisfy your giving. Giving is only complete when the receiver and the giver are alike. Yah desired a shared and mutual love- not a one sided love.




Yah looked at what He has created, and here was this man, this beautiful duplicate of Himself. Here was someone to fulfill His love. This relationship of love was the primary purpose that Yah created man. This is not an abstract concept. This means that the entire human race- including you and me- were created by Yah to be loved by Him.




Some years ago, I was pondering the question of why, when humanity rejected Yah’s ways, Yah didn’t start over and make a new race of men. The reason is that Yah is not a two-timer. His love is pure and unconditional; it is not based on the actions of the receiver. Therefore, when we offer our lives to Yah, we should not do so believing that Yah merely feels sorry for us. We should go to Yah because, in response to such unconditional love, we can’t love anyone else the way we love Yah.




Yah and humanity were made for one another. It doesn’t matter whom else you love, you aren’t ever going to be satisfied until you love Yah. No matter how many relationships you have and how many gifts you buy for others, when it’s all over, you will still be lonely. Why? It is because the Person whom you were made to love above all else- yah- doesn’t have the place in your life that He needs to have. You were made to love Yah. Your love was designed to be fulfilled in Him.




What Does it Mean to be Created in Yah’s Image?




Yah drew man out of Himself.




What is this image of Yah in which we were created? When Yah said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26), He was saying, in effect, “Let us make someone to love, and call it ‘man.’ Since we want man to be the object of our love, we’re going to make man in our own image and in our own likeness. This creation will be just like us.” Therefore, when Yah made man, He essentially drew man out of Himself, so that the essence of man would be just like Him. In this way, the receiver could be just like the Giver, and could reciprocate His love. Yah created man out of His own essence. Since “Yah is spirit” (John 4:24), He created man as a spirit. This is a vital aspect of creation that we will return to again.




Man is the only being on the face of the planet- and even in the universe, that we know of- that is created in Yah’s image. This includes angels (messengers). Nowhere in the Bible do you find that the messengers are made in Yah’s image. However, man came out of Yah and was created in His image and likeness. Man is the only being of Yah’s creation that is like Him.




So man- the spirit-man- was created as a result of Yah’s love. Note carefully that, at this point, we are still talking about the creation of man, the spirit. We are not yet talking about male and female. Whom did Yah create in His image? Man. Man is spirit, and spirits have no gender. The Bible never talks about a male or female spirit. Yah created the spirit-man without a gender.




Yet we next read in Genesis 1:27, “Yah created man in his own image, in the image of Yah he created him; male and female he created them.” Yah took this spirit-man, and He placed him in two physical forms: male and female. The spirit-man is neither male or female. However, to fulfill His eternal purposes, Yah used two physical forms, called male and female, to express the one entity of man. Therefore, the essence of both male and female is the resident spirit within them, called “man.”




There’s a man within the woman.




In the Bible, when Yah speaks to humanity, He uses the term man. He doesn’t address the male or the female unless He’s talking to individuals. Instead, He talks to the man within them both. He addresses the spirit-man. Many of us are preoccupied by the outward manifestation of male or female, when we should be focusing on the spirit-man. For example, some people say, “I don’t believe in women preachers.” However, they fail to realize that there’s a man within the woman. If you don’t like women preachers, then close your eyes and listen, because there’s a man within her. Let the man within her preach. Yah deals with the inner being (Ephesians 3:16). Paul said in Galatians 3:28 that in the body of Hamachiach is neither male nor female, neither slave nor master. When Yah deals with people, He deals with their spirits.




Genesis 5:1-2 says, “When Yah created man, he made him in the likeness of Yah. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them [together] ‘man.’” Whom did Yah call man? Both male and female. Therefore, it would be incorrect for you to call me “non-man’ and to call a man “man.” Both of us are man. Yah is referring to the spirit inside.




Yah deals with the man inside us because “Yah is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). We worship Yah with our spirits, not with our gender. That means, if you are a man, before Yah, your spirit does not depend upon your wife. If you are a woman, before Yah, your spirit does not depend on your husband.




Many men seem to have this impression. They drop their wives off at service because they believe their wives are going to cover for them while they go off to some other activity. “She’s the spiritual one in the house,” they think. “She’ll pray for the kids, and she’ll pray for me. I’ll just go and play basketball.” Yet the man within the male and the man within the female are each responsible to Yah.




Many women misunderstand this truth, also. They seem to be waiting for their husbands to become believers before they will worship Yah. If their husbands don’t care about Yah, that fact has nothing to do with their own worship of Him. A woman has a spirit; she is a responsible spiritual being. Even if a woman’s husband wants to live in an evil way and be an abomination to Yah, she is to worship The Most High anyway. Yah is not going to say to her, “Well, since your husband didn’t worship Me, it’s fine that you didn’t, either.”




The Bible says that every person must stand on his own feet before Yah (Romans 14:10). Yah is going to deal with us Spirit to spirit. Therefore, spiritually, Yah does not care whether you are male or female. He is concerned with the spirit-man. Your relationship to Yah is not dependent on whether you are male or female. You must come to Yah through your spirit.




“Man” means both male and female.




The presence of the spirit-man within us is why the Bible says that all men have sinned, rather than that “men and women have sinned.” “Death came to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). The word “men” in this verse is translated from the Greek word anthropos, meaning human beings. With the exception of Yahusha Hamachiach, every human spirit-being from Adam forward has sinned, whether male or female. Have you ever wondered why, when a wife becomes a believer, Yah doesn’t always save her husband at the same time? The reason is that he’s a different spirit-being altogether. Yah does say that believing spouses sanctify their unbelieving spouses, which means that they keep them in a protective environment so that Yah can reach them (1 Corinthians 7:13-14). However, these spouses still have to go to Yah of their own accord.




So the person who lives inside you, the real you, is the spirit-man. No matter what anybody else does, you are responsible for your relationship with Yah.




The fact that the same spirit of man resides in both female and male has generally been forgotten by humanity, so that men and women end up battling one another for supremacy, as if one needs to prove superiority over the other. Yet neither is superior, for they are both of the same essence, even with their differences.




What Does It Mean for Man to Have Dominion?




The personal reason that Yah created humanity, therefore, was to establish a relationship of love with man. Yah created man- the spirit-man- in His own image, so that love could be freely given and received between Creator and created. Yah also created man for vocation- to carry out His purposes in the earth. What is the central nature of that purpose?




Then Yah said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule [“have dominion” NKJV] over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So Yah created man in his own image, in the image of Yah he created him; male and female he created them. Yah blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:26-28)




Man was created to have dominion over the earth, to rule over it. Let us keep in mind that the word “man” in genesis 1:26 refers to the species that Yah made, the spirit being called “man.” This means that the purpose of dominion was given to both male and female, since the spirit-man resides in each. Therefore, spiritually, both male and female have the same responsibility toward the earth.




What does it mean for man to have dominion over the world? First, Yah has entrusted the earth to the care of man. Yah’s charge to humanity to have dominion means that man is to be the proprietor of the physical earth, including all the other living things in the world- fish, birds, livestock, all the animals. In Genesis 2, we read that the man was placed in the Garden of Eden to tend it and cultivate it. This is what mankind is to do with the entire earth: both tend it and cultivate it. Yah told humanity in effect, “Rule over My world. Take care of it. Subdue it and fashion it with your own creativity.” In this way, amn would reflect the loving and creative spirit with which he was made in the image of Yah.




Yet having dominion means even more than taking care of the physical world. Since man is both physical and spiritual in nature, humanity is to reflect Yah and His purposes in the spiritual realm as well as in the earthly realm. Ephesians 3:10-11 tells us that Yah’s eternal purpose for humanity was made possible through the coming of Hamachiach:




His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of Yah should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in hamachiach Yahusha our Most High. (Ephesians 3:10-11)




Yah’s eternal purpose is that the entire spiritual world, including the powers of darkness, will know His wisdom through us. What an awesome responsibility! If the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms want to know what Yah is like and what He has accomplished, they are supposed to look at us. If HaSatan wants to know what Yah is like, he’s supposed to look at us. Most of us aren’t showing HaSatan what Yah is like; we’re showing haSatan what he is like. However, Yah’s purpose is that He might display His manifold wisdom to all of the spirit world through those whom He has both created and redeemed in Hamachiach. In this way, through the physical and spiritual realms, it has been given to man to reflect Yah’s wisdom, creativity, power, and glory. Humanity is to reflect the attributes of the Creator, in whose image we were created.