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(Genesis 2:18-22) The Climax of Creation

(Genesis 2:18-22) The Climax of Creation

by Stephen Davey Ref: Genesis 2:1–23

Today you'll learn why mankind was and always will be the climax of God's creation.

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Transcript

“THE CLIMAX OF CREATION”

(Genesis 2:18-22)

Genesis 1 is focused on God’s created acts of  creating the universe.  And the latter part of the chapter 1 the last few verses into chapter 2:4-23 focuses on God’s climactic creative act in creating man and woman.

It is interesting that, as I studied this passage in Genesis 1 & 2 again, it struck me that the name used for God in chapter 1 is the word Elohim or the name Elohim; and that is the name that speaks of God’s power--His majestic strengths.  And, as John Wesley wrote, as I mentioned the other week, it’s that God created the heaven and earth; and He didn’t even half try.  And that is so true for God with all of His power snapped it into being and into existence by His word and the name Elohim is used--which refers to His power.

However, when we read the accounts of God creating man and woman, we are introduced to a new name.  This is the name Jehovah.   Your English translations will probably in chapter 2 add the word Lord to God so you read in chapter 2 “Lord God.”

Jehovah refers to 2 things worth noting.

1. Jehovah refers to the personal God.   Jehovah speaks to God’s loving, covenant care for mankind.  Isn’t it interesting as He moves to the creative account where He creates man and woman the name changes.  Now not the majestic powerful God but the loving God.  The personal God.  You will see Him directly involved creating man and woman.

2. It refers this name Jehovah to the covenant keeping God.  This is the name that emphasizes His covenant with mankind.  And this is the covenant that is not fragile nor self-centered.  This is a covenant that will last forever.  It is sacrificing.  This is the thought used here, because  God created man and woman, He knew that they would sin,  He knew that they would fall.  He knew that they would need a redeemer.  So the covenant keeping God still brought them into existence.  As if to say, I will provide for you, a redeemer.

Now at the end of chapter 2, He will bring man and woman together with the same idea.  The covenant between man and wife should resemble the same as the covenant God to man.  It is not fragile.  It is permanent.  It is not self centered.  It is self sacrificing.  We, as man and wife, represent the covenant that Jehovah God has for His creatures.  So you find the name change that means so much.

Now I want you to notice there is going to be a change as we read through Genesis 1.  You remember as we study through Genesis 1: that it talks about every thing being spoken into existence, God says let there be, let there be.  Let there be.  You will notice the difference here in verse 26 of chapter 1, will you note that, Then God said, Let us as if the triune God was calling into a conference here.  The fact that they were about to create man.  We know from the New Testament writings that it was actually Jesus Christ and the words of Christ had formed and created the universe and man.  He was the person in this trying God that did the creative act.  But it is interesting that He now changes Let us make man, you will notice the next phrase, in our image.  Not physically for God is spirit.  He is speaking to the fact man will be created with a mind, with emotions, with a will.  With immorality, just like God.  Man is made in the image of God.

You see ladies and gentlemen, the reason you are able to laugh is because God can laugh.  And He created you like himself with the ability to laugh.  The reason you can cry is because God can weep.  And He created you in His own image with the ability to weep.  The reason that you decide, love, choose, to live, to do all that you do is because you are created like your creator God in His image.  Capable of doing the things that He has given you to do that resembles His own character.

Now notice verse 27, God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, note this and underline it, male and female.  He created them.  They are both the same and God created them.  And they are both immoral souls.  They are not toys.  They are not objects.  They are immoral beings, both male and female.

You will also notice here that God strikes a death blow to an unisex idea.  There is no difference.  I have been startled at things that I have read lately where they are saying, they would suggest the reason why boys act like boys and girls act like girls is because the parents condition them culturally when they were little.  You always give a little boy a hammer and regret that you did.  You give a little girl a doll.  And because of this, you create them to act like they do.  This strikes a death blow to that theory as well.  God created them male with all the inherent masculine traits and female.  That is with all the feminine traits.  It has been a real joy to parent, both boys and a girl.  And one of the fascinating things is being able to notice the difference our children.  The boys act a certain way.  They are different and yet they follow the same pattern.  It is usually destructive.  But they are different, but they are so much like little boys.

But Candace, our little 1 year old, is on an entirely different wave-length.  Even as a one year old she is already beginning to reveal the feminine qualities inherent in the female nature inherited from her mother and on back to her mother Eve.  It is fascinating. One of the boys will fall down and she will run over you, she will rush over and pat him on the head, and you can almost hear her saying, can I get you anything, milk? Juice?  Do you want to borrow my pacifier?  She is such a little mother.  In fact, what really worries me is that she is beginning to flirt.  We are talking about a one year old girl, she looks at me and wrinkle up her nose and bats her eyelids as if she can get her way by doing that with me.  She can.  Her mother says that Candace has me wrap around her finger.  That is not true.  I am eating out of the palm of her hand but I am not wrapped around her finger.

But all the differences are so obvious, even as a one year old, the little two year old boys.  Why is it that way?  Because God designed it that way.  He made them.  Male and female.  This also strikes a death nail to the theory that homosexuality can be a satisfying relationship.  If a man could satisfy a man, God would had created another man.  But He created another woman.  With all of those distinctive characteristics that makes them so different, that is part of his design.  So do not blur the differences.  Do not try to blend them together.  Exemplify.  Make much of those differences.  You  know this is an election year, I laugh out loud last week a man who said that we really do need a woman for president of the United States, and he said at least they would not spend billions of dollars on nuclear arms.  They would shop around until they found them on sale.  We are going to talk more about the differences and how they compliment in the weeks ahead.

Will you notice chapter 2:7.  I want you to notice the creation of man.  The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life the immortal soul and man became a living being. Literally he became living lives.  He would never die. Though the clay carrier of his soul would pass away, his soul would live forever.  He is immortal.  He will live one day either in hell or in heaven.  The words dust from the ground, you can jot into your margin of your bible into your notes that this could literally be translated a lump of earth.  God literally took a lump of earth and from it formed man.

The word performed is the same precious word used by the prophet Jeremiah as he talks about the potter taking a lump of clay and putting it on the potter’s wheel and forming a vessel.  God took infinite care the new ounces of mankind from the fingers of God, as He created man.  I read this past week that our bodies are actually made up of the same 15 or 16 chemical elements that is found in the earth.  That is one of reasons why the soul departs we go back to the dust of the ground because we are made up of the same 15 or 16 chemical elements, in fact, one man wrote if you boiled man down to those chemical elements and separated them and sold them on the market you would get about $4.50.  The next time you and I are prone to be proud remember on the market the elements in our body are worth a little less than $5.

Now I spent a lot of time in reading this past week and I appreciate the opportunity that you have given me to spend my week.  Let me give you some of the results of a particular book that I read.  I would encourage you to go buy it at the book store. Fearfully and Wonderfully made.  I don't want to take a lot of time in reading but yet I do not by any means have all of this memorized.  Let me give you what I discovered about the human body that is so fascinating and that is where I want to center our attention this morning.  I want to give you and I a greater appreciation for the creative act of God in the way that He took the time and care to design where you and I are made.  Let me read just a couple of things about different parts of our bodies.  The body come equipped with an eternal police force of about 50 billion white cells.  They attack all of the bacterial forms that invade the body.  This is an internal thing that takes place every day.   Inside the human eye, there are 107 million cells.  Seven million are cones, each loaded to fire off a message to the brain when a photon of light cross its path.  The other 100 million cells are called rods.  And they are capable of distinguishing a thousand shades of color.  The human brain will receive millions of reports simultaneously from eye cells.  The brain absorbs, sorts and organizes them all to give you an image of what you are looking at.

The normal ear is astounding.  It can detect sound frequencies as faintly as 1 billionth of a centimeter.  The vibration is transmitted into your inner ear by three bones.  For instance, when a note is struck on the piano, the piston of bones in your inner ear vibrates 256 times a second.  The brain sorts and records the vibrations that in turn produce impulses you perceive as someone is striking middle C.

A relatively new study that has exploded the world of genetics is the study of DNA molecule, the strand chemically coiled in a rope like fashion inside each cell.  Now we are breaking it down or actually getting inside each individual cell.  The nucleus of the cell.  Each cell has a specific purpose inside the body but yet each one contains each DNA contains all of the instructions for the bodies 100,000 genes.  That is the DNA inside your body, one of them has a specific purpose and yet included in the information that DNA knows is the specific purposes of every DNA in your body.  They tell us that the DNA can contain enough instruction to fill 6 million pages.  The DNA is so small that all of the genes in your body could fit into an ice cube.  Yet if the DNA were unwound and joined together end to end the strand would literally stretch from the earth to the sun and back again 400 times.

Your bones, though unappreciated at times, are created to withstand enormous wear and tear.  A normal person will stalk on his poor feet nearly 3 times around the world in a life-time.  It is interesting to know that no engineer has been able to match the simple human bone - they’d love to be able to develop a substance as strong and light and efficient as bone.  Imagine, it grows continuously, lubricates itself, requires no shutdown time, and repairs itself when damage occurs.

These are only a few instances.  We don’t have time to get into the miracle of the skin, the senses of touch and taste.  The way that our hand is created, we are the only living creature that has the thumb shaped as it is and able to grasp like we can, and in fact, Isaac Newton wrote if there was no other evidence other than the human thumb, I would believe in the existence of God.

It is interesting that we can make a machine and you know when you are making a machine and before you put it into work, and if fact when you do you have to work out all of the bugs till it finally works.  One engineer was looking at the chart the anatomy of an individual of all the nerves and muscles and tendons and all of the different things that make up the human body, he was heard to exclaimed, Imagine, when God put it together the first time it worked.  Imagine that.  No bugs.  Before the fall.

Now will you notice the verse 8 following chapter 2, this is the planting of the garden, and the Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; the word Eden means the light, it was paradise.  and there He placed the man who He had formed.  And out of the ground the Lord caused every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  In the next few verses we will talk about the different rivers, the water, the location, in fact, some thinks perhaps Eden was located near the Persian Gulf because of the references here, geographically the rivers that are talked about.

Verse 15, then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden, to cultivate it and to keep it.  The word garden is the Hebrew word gan which literally mean enclosure.  There was paradise, in fact the planet earth was paradise itself, yet in paradise God created an enclosure.  It had boundaries and it was fertile.  It was something that man would spend his life  managing, ruling, dominating, enjoying, this was Eden.  This was the garden inside of paradise where man and woman was to live. 

Now you have already notice the reference to 2 specific trees.  Can I give you the importance or the significance of these trees if you are keeping notes.  The first of all the tree of life is the symbol of immortality.   It is that symbol whereby man and woman could live forever.  Now we know that the ability to live forever was directly given from God and yet He used the tree as the symbol and eating of that fruit would be the means the method, the vehicle through which we would live forever.  There is another tree called the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that is the symbol of choice.  Why?  Because God did not want robots even in the garden.  He created man and woman with the ability to choose.  Now with the sovereignty He knew what their choice would be.  Yet, in His wisdom He gave the ability to choose whether to obey Him or to disobey Him.  God wanted a relationship even back in the garden with Adam and Eve.  A relationship.  That is a two-way street.  Where they would love him and He would love them.  And this was the test of course as you know after man ate he was kept from the tree of life.  I always wondered why?  I think maybe I had discovered the answer.  Because of what it represented.  If Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree therefore becoming sinners, if they had then eaten the tree of life they would had lived forever confined in their wicked state.

One of the blessing that God has given you and me is death.  We will not live forever as sinners.  Forgiven as we are it would be a tragic thing to live forever like we live today.  Death will open the gate to heaven where we will be given glorified perfect bodies, our souls will match the saviors in its perfection.  So God kept them from that and gave them another symbol.  That was the symbol of forgiveness.  In the coats that he gave them to wear, the animals died eventually in atonement of for their sin, their blood was shed.

I want you to notice in verse 18 God’s first statement of displeasure.  Lets move on, then the Lord God said, the first time note, it is not good for man to be alone.  What struck me about this verse was here was man living in a perfect environment.  He is in a perfect occupancy.  One that he loves, he gets up in the morning ready to go.  Ready to take care of the garden.  He has a perfect relationship, as perfect as they can be with God.  As he communes with God, and God sums all of this up and says It is not good.   So He in His perfect timing plans to create a woman.  What I look about God is His timing.

He did not rush up to Adam, and say, Adam you need a wife.  I am going to create one for you.  Adam would had said, I need a what?  I need a wife?  I am not so sure I do.  So God sets him up as a perfect match maker. Will you notice what He does in the next few verses. Out of the ground, verse 19, the Lord God formed every beast.  Now note that God in verse 18 has already decided to make him a mate.  He hasn’t told Adam yet.  But what He does first is that He forms the beasts of the field, every bird of the sky, and brings them to the man obviously coming in pairs to see what he would call them.  And whatever the man called the living creature that was it’s name.  Man gave the names to all of the cattle, to the birds of the sky, to every beast of the field.  Here is Adam just naming them off.  Here comes 2, well he and his brilliance noted the characteristics, in fact, this naming of animals.  The original text gives the implication that he gave them names matching their characteristics. He was brilliant.  And he is naming all of these and then he comes to the very end, and Adam says in effect it almost is as it were his thoughts, there was not found a helper suitable for him, in other words, he is starting to look now.  He has named a few hundred animals and now he is on the lookout.  Let’s see.  There is only one of me.  And there is 2 of them.  And he is naming them.

What is God doing?  He is setting him up!  He is making Adam come to the point where he realizes he is alone.  He does not have the other half.  And then God calls a deep sleep to fall upon the man, verse 21, and he slept, and God took one of the ribs and closed up the flesh at that place and the Lord God fashioned into a woman, the rib which He had taken from the man. Now, the word translated fashioned in verse 22, and the Lord God fashioned or formed is a different word that when God formed man.  A beautiful word that could be translated sculpture.  It is as if God is any master who would paint a beautiful portrait knelt over that rib that flesh and he sculptured a beautiful woman.  One who would become the counter part of Adam.

We need to answer the question why the rib?  Let me give you 3 reasons.  Why was it the rib that God took to fashion or sculptor a woman? First of all, to show the unity of the human race.  We all come from Adam.  This is a tremendous theological truth that will come out in the book of Romans that we are studying in the evenings.  Where we are all in Adam.  Because we are all in and out of and from Adam, we are all sinners.  We all have Adam’s nature.  But the second Adam will come along Jesus Christ. And we who are in Him will be forgiven.  So this truth will come out even later in the New Testament that is a beautiful theological truth.

Number 2, to guarantee the dignity of woman kind.  To guarantee her dignity.  She is not made from a inferior substance.  She is made from the same thing that man is made from.  Now I don’t want you to picture in your mind that God just taking a bone, a rib, He actually took flesh and blood around that rib.  He took a chunk as it were and fashioned her in the same substance that man was created from.

Number 3.  To illustrate the closest of kinship.  To illustrate the closest of kinship.  God didn’t take a bone from the foot as you probably read or heard as if man would tread upon her.  As if he was above her.  God didn’t take something from his head as if she was to be superior or above him.  God didn’t take a bone from Adams’s hand as if she was to be a servant of man and do his work.  God took a bone from his side to illustrate a closest of companionship.  She would be by his side.  She would serve as queen of the garden, of paradise.  And Adam would serve as king.  We are going to develop this of course next time.

I love the next part verse 22,  would you put on your imagination and just imagine it says, and the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and He brought her to the man.  And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, uh uh, I really don’t think that was the first thing Adam said.  The text doesn’t say that is the first think Adam said, it just says this, I think the first thing that happened was man probably looked at his counterpart and said Wow.  This is the first time man whistled in the history of mankind.  What a beautiful lady.  And then I think they probably talked for hours as if they were long lost best friends.  Then I think what is happening in verse 23, the man is introducing her to all of the other creatures.  It is as if he says I, now listen up.   This is now and in fact the literal Hebrew can be translated this is now at last bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.  I believe that this was the introduction of woman to everything that God had created.

Let me apply, this is as far as we are going to go this morning in the text, let me apply a couple of things that strike me from this chapter.  The first is found in the garden of Eden itself.  The garden of Eden, men and women, would represent a place where mankind would choose who we would obey.  The tenor or the creator?  It reminds me of another garden where Jesus Christ struggled with the will of His Father.  And he sweat drops as if it was blood.  And finally He said, in the agony of His soul not My will, but Thine be done.  No we are not in the garden of Eden and we are not in Gethesame, but ladies and gentlemen I believe you and I are in a garden as it were.  A place of choosing, who we will follow, who we will obey, the mentor or the creator.  The garden isn’t the only thing in this chapter that points to Jesus Christ its the tree.  A tree has been used throughout scripture on several occasions to symbolize some powerful truths.  The tree in the garden represented choice, again Moses in the wilderness, the children of Israel were being very rebellious.  God sent the poisonous vipers to bite them and He told Moses to lift the serpent up on a tree and whoever would look at the tree will be healed.  That represented healing.  And those that looked were healed.  But of course I also think of Calvary where I Peter 2:24 records And He bore in His own body our sins on the tree.  That we being dead in sins shall live under righteousness by His stripes we are healed.

My friend there is a tree in your life as well.  You either stand before the tree called Calvary as a forgiven individual or you stand before as a unrepentant believer.  The tree is lifted up today bearing Christ.  It is ours to choose.  To accept Him, to accept that atonement as our own to take Him as our personal savior.

Let’s pray together, shall we?  I am always mindful with an audience this size that there may be perhaps someone who has never trusted Jesus Christ as their personal savior, and if you are a Christian here will you pray for that unknown person, you might not know them, you may, you may had brought them with you this morning.  They may be a member of your family, I don’t know.  But they may be without Christ.  Will you pray for them?  And if you are here without Jesus Christ, I want to address you for just a second or 2, I want to assure you that Jesus Christ loves you.  As a matter of fact the scripture tells us that Jesus Christ died for you.  Why?  Because He loves you, He not only created you out of love, but His desire is to redeem you as a result of  His love.  Because God loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son.  That whoever believes in Him shall never perish but have an everlasting life.  If I am speaking to someone here this morning that has never trusted Christ as their own personal savior and you would like this morning to make that decision, say pastor will you pray for me?  With no one else looking would you just slip up your hand to let me see and then put it down quietly, I will not call you out or force you to do anything, but I want to pray for you.  If you are here this morning without Jesus Christ, is there anyone?  Perhaps there is someone here who is a believer that is in the garden as it were deciding who to obey?  You are making choices.  You made some choices last week that were not pleasing to God.  The life you are living is not pleasing to God.  You are choosing to follow, to listen to, to obey the accuser of your soul.  This morning as we sing in just a moment if you would like to pray with someone, if you like to make a commitment yes, I am going to be listening to the voice of God through Jesus Christ, I would like to straighten some things out in my life, as we sing I trust you will not sing but you would pray quietly alone there in your chair.  Lord, take control of my heart.  O I know you as my redeemer and I believe that you are my savior, but yet my life is not honoring to you and I want you to forgive me.  Perhaps you are like that here this morning and you would like to say, would you pray for me as well that God would give me the courage this week to begin living for Him.  Would you slip up your hand, put it down quietly and quickly.

Father, we thank you for your word, Lord I thank you for scripture that is so frayed with truth and implications.  Thank you for creating us the way that you did.  Thank you for taking the time to show your magnificent power.  Making it so evident to us in our world as we look around us.  I pray Father that you would challenge us to take time to develop the inner soul.  We know that the body that we have is simply a clay temporary carrier of the real us, the real personality, the mind the emotion the will.  Help us to develop within us the fruit of the spirit.  We thank you for what you have accomplished.  Will you stand with your heads bow and your eyes closed, Tim . . .

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