Genesis Creation Part 2

Genesis Part 2, Chapter 2 Good preaching usually begins with a story—to set the stage, so to speak. To draw you in. To capture your attention. Then the pastor explains the Scripture text, illustrates it, and gives application—so that everybody can walk out spiritually nourished. Today, I’m not going to tell a story to get us ready to encounter God’s story. What we’re going to do is to read God’s story right at the beginning. None of us can improve on this story. So I’m going to ask Kitty to read Genesis 2. But I want us to begin at 1:26. If you were with us last time, or were able to catch the message on Facebook, I told you the structure of these chapters: God gives a summary statement up front, then He fills in the details. So, Genesis 1:26–2:25: 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.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 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.” 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. 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. 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. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. I mentioned last week that God’s creation of man was His finest hour. We are the only creatures made in His image, after His likeness. God created us for a purpose: to represent Him well. The Lord delegated His authority to us to take care of His world: “Fill the earth and subdue it.” God declared what He made: “very good.” We have all heard this story. Probably multiple times. And how many of us, even without knowing it, attach something like “once upon a time” to this story? Because this is so far out there. Unreal. Like a fairy tale. And that is why many people call this a myth. To them, it does not matter whether, or if it is historically true: some nationally known evangelical pastors hold this position. What matters to them and many others is if a story like this can help people cope with life, and as I mentioned last week, to help answer the big questions we have all asked: where did I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Or what may even be worse: when we hear it, we yawn. But what if we take Genesis 2 as inspired truth? What then? How would this affect you and me? As I read this book and do the hard work of understanding how things are put together and some of the culture surrounding Genesis, the more I marvel at God’s wisdom, at God’s power, at God’s love, at God’s grace. And at how great God made us. I want to have us go back through this story and point out some of the details of God’s finest creatures. I want us to take stock in God’s handiwork—you and me, and marvel at how great God created us. For in marveling how great He created us, we can then declare His truth, the truth David said about every human being in Psalm 8:5–6, when out of a sense of wonder and astonishment he said, you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet. So let’s walk back through the truth of how we got here. First, we are made in God’s image, after His likeness. That means that we can reflect something of the nature of God—something that He did not give any other creature. For example, God did not dialogue with the lions. He did not have chats with the zebras. But he did that with the first man. God reasoned with him, gave him a commandment, invited Adam to perform meaningful work. Truly, God blessed man and woman, just as He blessed the animals. He told everything to be fruitful and multiply. But God told man to be fruitful and multiply—have a lot of babies—so that they would rule over the world as God’s image bearing representatives—a main reason for marriage. Second, does it strike you, like it does me, about the environment in which Adam and Eve first lived? Imagine you and God in a perfect relationship, where there is absolutely nothing between you. Originally, God put Adam in a garden that he planted—to take care of it. Think about this. What does a person do to take care of a garden that is perfect? No weeds. No need to water, for it was already done for you. No need to take precautions against stormy weather or cold snaps. God gave Adam a perfect job! God also provided abundant food. “Every tree—except 1, you can eat from.” Can you imagine the fruit in the Garden of Eden? What other things did God give Adam to do? For one, naming things. Who else did that? God Himself. He called the light day. He called the darkness night. He named the sky, calling it heaven, the land, calling it earth, the waters, calling them seas. Notice how the Lord brought the animals to Adam, and He perfectly accepted Adam’s work. When Adam saw an animal with a long neck and spots and called it giraffe, what did God do with that? He accepted Adam’s name for it. God did not chide or improve on Adam’s name for that animal. After all, it was God who gave Adam the creativity and superintelligence he needed to name all the animals. Later on, as God declared that something was not quite right, He put Adam to sleep and created a woman—a companion suitable for him. It was God who brought her to him. And now, let’s hear the declaration of God ordained marriage. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Man and woman perfectly corresponded one to another. And of all things mentioned that could have been said about their relationship, He declared it to be one flesh. Notice, it wasn’t “you are now soulmates.” It was “one flesh.” Why was that? So they would experience the blessing of His command—to be fruitful and multiply. Male and female marriage. Producing children. To the glory of God. And the wonderful last verse of chapter 2: And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. So, here’s what we have. A perfect environment. The first man and woman living in perfect relationship with God. Adam had a perfect job that God tailor made him to do. God literally hand crafted Adam’s wife, and when God introduced them to one another, was he ever excited! “At last!” Adam said, “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” And in true fashion, Adam gave her a name—woman. Later in chapter 3, we will see Adam even renaming his wife, calling her Eve, because she was the mother of all living. In Adam’s and Eve’s relationship, there was no fighting or arguing. They hid nothing from each other. They were naked and not ashamed. They had no need for clothing—it was a perfect environment: not too hot, not too cold—just right. They looked upon one another’s nakedness with delight. Perfect people. Living with a Perfect God. In Paradise. Tragically as we know, that was not the end of the story. Orginally, Mankind was good. He was sinless. Unfallen. And Genesis 2 is not a myth, as so many seem to believe. It is actual history preserved and written down. There’s something I want to briefly introduce you to. The word is toledot. Say it with me: Toledot. Kitty just read it a minute ago. Did you hear it? Probably not that word, but you heard the English translation, for it is the word “generations”. Unfortuantely when we see “generations” in the Bible we groan, because we usually think of “the begats!” How often do people have high hopes of reading through the Bible beginning January 1, only to stop when they see all those names. But let me tell you something that I learned about toledot. Without getting technical, toledot, or generations is repeated 10 times in Genesis. It’s this word is what really holds the book together. This word is almost like the summary statement of the smaller sections of Genesis. And the first time this is used is in 2:4, as a summary statement of the 1st chapter. Now, it was common way back in those days to write on clay tablets and to label them—and toledot was part of the labeling. Contrary to popular belief, people knew how to write back then. Let me make 2 brief points here. First, these tablets were written down by someone, or several someones. What if some of these tablets were written by say, Abraham, Jacob, Noah, or even Adam? It is plausible, is it not? Didn’t God give Adam superintelligence? The Lord didn’t take that away when Adam fell. And if Adam had the creativity and intelligence to name all the animals, what else could he do? Could it be that he actually wrote down some things perhaps as an eyewitness in his day of what God was doing? It blows my mind! The second point is about these tablets being inspired by God. In the New Testament, Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, to include Genesis. In other words, every word of Scripture had its origin in God. There are many who say that since Moses was the writer of Genesis, that God would have had Moses sort of take a letter—like dictation. But inspiration also can be God directing Moses to which tablets that contained God’s revelation to be included as he wrote Genesis. I can think of the gospel of Luke, for example. His entire gospel is based on eyewitness accounts that Luke put together. Luke begins his gospel this way: Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. Luke’s gospel was made up of the testimony of others. No one disputes that Luke’s gospel is inspired Scripture. Why couldn’t God’s Spirit have directed Moses to have chosen which writings were God’s revelation? Again, a lot of info surrounding Genesis. Perhaps some of you are writing me off. Maybe some of you, like I was when I learned what I just told you, are blown away. The bottom line is, we can rely on God’s story as being true. Believable. Our God is awesome! He is worthy of our praise! Now let me turn the corner and keep my promise. Last week I told you that Genesis 1 and 2 is story, not hard science. God is the Creator, speaking the universe into existence out of nothing. This is a foundational truth of what Christians believe. But as we know, there is a rival story in our culture: naturalism, and its spawn, evolution. I promised you that we can refute evolution by treating Genesis 1 and 2 as theology—where God is the center, not science. Genesis 1 and 2 were never written to refute evolution, specifically macro evolution, where all things came from the-primordial soup, evolving from amoeba to multi-cell creatures, to animals, then monkeys and finally us. Let me quickly walk you through 3 assumptions where God’s creation story counters evolution. But we need to begin, not in Genesis 1, but with the first 4 words in Hebrews 11:3: By faith we understand. That is true regardless of which of these stories a person holds to. If one holds to God’s story, we finish Hebrews 11:3: that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. But if one holds to naturalism, then it’s just the first 4 words of the verse. Bottom line here is that both stories require faith. A die hard evolutionist will say that he does not hold to faith, but evolutionists themselves say differently. They will say that Darwinism is indeed an article of faith. J.W.N. Sullivan, in 1933, for example wrote, "The hypothesis that life has developed from inorganic matter is, at present, still an article of faith." The point is, whether we believe in God’s story or naturalism, it requires faith, precisely because human beings were not around when things began. And science, in order for it to be true science is something the must be observable and repeatable. And in case you didn’t notice, we can only have the origin of the universe happen once. Unobservable. Unrepeatable. Now on to the 3 assumptions. First, evolution requires matter to have always been here. Many of us have heard the statement in our middle school years: “Matter is neither created nor destroyed.” And not only matter, but in order for the big bang to have happened, a physical property called gravity is also needed. And we all know about the big bang—when matter came together to form critical mass, then the explosion happened. Creationism says what about matter? There was a time when matter did not exist. With a word, God created all things. So, a creationist would say, before there was matter, there was God. An evolutionist would say, there never was a point when matter did not exist. So which is true? Which story do you put your faith in? A second assumption is that for the evolutionist, death has been around since the beginning. Survival of the fittest, or natural selection is necessary, because life forms must mutate and then die off in order to evolve. Creationism says that there was a time when death did not exist. Paul tells us when death did enter the world, Romans 5:12: Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. Evolution is based on death; creationism based on life and the curse because of sin. Which is true? Which story do you put your faith in? A third assumption is that for the evolutionist billions of years are required for natural selection to have occurred. The name of the game is gradual change. The life form must go through many changes over billions of years to evolve from one species to another. Creationism says that the Hebrew word yom, translated as the word “day”, when quantified—like the first day or 6 days, always means a 24 hour period. In Genesis 1 we find, “and there was evening and there was morning”, the first day. The second day. And so on. A straight forward reading communicates to us that these days are 24 hour periods of time. Another case in point is in Exodus, when Moses, who wrote both Genesis and Exodus appealed to the creation story to strike a timeline for their weekly Sabbath observance. Here is what Moses said in Exodus 20:8-9, 11: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. There are those who quote 2 Peter 3:8 to say that “day” is not really a 24 hour period. It could really mean any length of time. Here is what Peter says: But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Notice that Peter is making a comparison when he says one day is as a thousand years. In other words, God’s timeline is not the same as ours. But the crucial question here is this: if God is all powerful, can He not create the universe in 6-24 hour periods? So, billions of years? Six 24 hour days? Which one is true? Which story do you put your faith in? I think it’s time for some of us to stop talking out of both sides of our mouths, claiming God is all powerful while denying the plain grammar and straight forward reading of God’s word. Science is God’s servant, not the other way around. Speak the truth, let the chips fall where they may, and let the blowback happen. Now I just walked us through 3 assumptions of evolution. We are able to refute all 3 points by treating Genesis as an inspired story, rather than hard science. Notice though, I did not say convince them but we can refute evolution with good arguments. Admittedly, it does not answer all questions. But if people are not convinced in creationism as we tell it? That does not matter in the least. The Lord calls us to be witnesses, not lawyers. The bottom line answer for either story is regardless which one we believe to be true does not change the truth. Truth is true whether we believe it or not. But what story we adopt as true will affect how we live. If I am convinced—placed my faith in the notion that naturalism is true and I am not accountable to God, then how am I going to live my life? On the other hand, if I am convinced—placed my faith in the notion that creationism is true and I am accountable to God—along with every other person on the planet, then how am I going to live my life? I submit to you that the difference in how I live my life will be night and day. And so will yours. So what do we walk away with today, besides being able to present a witness for God’s creation story? Let me give you one overarching application. Live the truth of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” God is God, we are the creation. God is the one you and I are accountable to. As followers of Jesus, we know that He is Immanuael—God with us. The Second Person of the Godhead—of Father, Son and Holy Spirit of Genesis 1:1 is the one spoken about in John 1:1 and 14: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Jesus is our Savior and Lord. We don’t follow Him because He is our Savior, though He is. We follow Him because Father sought us and we responded in repentance and faith in Jesus. The Holy Spirit convicted us of sin, righteous and judgment: the sin of unbelief, righteousness by faith in Jesus and rejoicing because we will not be judged the way the world will be judged. In other words, we follow Jesus because we are worshippers of God. In Christ, we have the gift of salvation but we don’t worship Him because of the gift. We are forgiven of our sins, but we don’t worship Him because we are forgiven. All these things make it possible for us to truly worship holy God. And that goes to the very heart of the reason why He created us. When Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman, He told her what the Father was up to in John 4:23: But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. We worship Him because He created us to do so. So for us, reflect the truth of Genesis 1:1. There is one God. How do we do that? Apply the divine commentary of Genesis 1:1, which is Genesis 1:2-Revelation 22:21. And that means we are to live authentic lives of worship in His presence. And I’m not just talking about singing on Sunday mornings. Part of our authenticity is seeing ourselves as God sees us. We are immeasurably great, because of the image of God within us. As we will see next week, humanity took a huge tumble, but God’s image is still stamped on our very being. That’s why the way we treat others and the decisions we make, and the way we live our lives in the presence of God carry so much weight. We just heard the truth of who we are: image bearers of God. Every person on the planet. Part of reflecting that truth is seeing every other person as a fellow image bearer of God. To include our husbands, our wives. And our future husbands and wives if you are not married. What are you really like behind the closed doors of your home in the presence of your family members? What about when you are by yourself—alone with your thoughts, when you think no one else sees or knows? Do you live your life as a practical atheist? You claim allegiance to God’s creation story. But your lifestyle speaks loud and clear: you have pledged allegiance to naturalism and along with it, evolution and you live as though God does not exist. What a good time for us as followers of Jesus to take stock to see if we are living out the truth of Genesis 1:1. Today is Super Bowl Sunday. Let’s take a look at this clip and we will wrap up the message. Do you have your own private idols that nullify Genesis 1:1 in your life? It doesn’t have to be the NFL. Just fill in the blank. The challenge and question remains. Will you live your life as an authentic worshipper of God? Or will you live a life of hypocrisy? But in the midst of the challenge, let’s not forget the grace of the Lord and the work He is, by His Spirit is doing in the life of every true follower of Jesus. Philippians 1:6: And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. God will finish what He starts. He is faithful that way you know. Has He begun that work in you? Then authentically live it out!