All this week on Things Unseen, we've been thinking about the Christian view of man,

and especially the way God created man, as his image, male and female.

Today I want us to notice a pattern that is embedded in this biblical account of our original

creation, and I'm not the only person to notice this.

It's that Adam was created to be the prophet and the priest and the king of creation,

marvelous dignity.

A prophet is someone who speaks God's word.

I think people often think of prophets as men who foretell the future, but if you reflect

on it, you'll realize that much biblical prophecy is not so much foretelling, but forthtelling, applying God's truth to every situation.

It's about the present as much as about the future.

So in the Genesis narrative, we find Adam being called to the prophetic task of naming the animals,

and of course to pass on, first of all Eve and then to his family what God had revealed

to him. And then Adam was a priest. Again, we tend to think of a priest as someone who makes

a sacrifice for sin, and that's true. But a priest was also a person who representatively led the people in worship.

Adam in that sense was the priest of the original creation, the one who supremely and

representatively led and expressed the worship of God that the whole animal creation expressed

in their own beautiful but limited way.

And as you may know, the later tabernacle and the temple were built in a way that

reflected the beauty of the Garden of Eden. And the Levitical family had the responsibility to

look after them.

The very same expression, incidentally, that describes Adam's priestly ministry in the

garden in Genesis 2.15.

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