Creation Completed: Why God Rested & How Man Was Formed

Good evening, we're glad to have you all back with us again this week, and for those of you joining us on television, we're certainly glad to have you. Turn with me again if you will, we'll just pick this up because after all that's what this format is going to be, as the Lord tarries and as we are capable of going on, we're going to go verse by verse through the Scriptures, and like I've said in one of our earlier classes, there'll be some areas, of course, we won't take every verse, but at least in the book of Genesis, for the most part, we're going to be looking at it almost verse by verse. Now, if you'll come back with me then to where we left off last week, that'd be in chapter one in verse 27. You remember I made reference to it last week that both the male and the female almost had to have been within Adam when he was created, and the reason I take that approach is that when salvation comes by virtue of the Savior, the plan of redemption, it is not just limited to the male of the species, but everyone comes under that plan of redemption. Now in that plan of redemption, it's obvious that all the so-called blame, if I may use that word, is placed on Adam, and never on Eve. Now we'll be looking at this more in depth when we get to chapter three, but just to tide you over until we do get there, look at it this way. Had Eve not been in Adam? Now I say that Eve had to be in Adam, even before she was created at a later verse, not as we understand the woman physically, but nevertheless, the very concept of the woman had to be in Adam, otherwise God would have had to provide a separate Savior, a separate Redeemer for the female of the species, rather than just one. I like to use this analogy. We have no instance in Scripture of angels having an opportunity for salvation. If an angel rebels, if an angel falls, he's done. There is no plan of redemption for them, and the reason for that is that every angel is a specific creation. In other words, if God was going to provide a plan of redemption for the angels, He would have to have as many Saviors or as many Redeemers as He's got angels. Now that would be ridiculous. Now then, bring that right down into the human realm. If Eve had not been in Adam from the very beginning, so that Adam could be the head of the human race, the federal head is the word we use. Adam is the federal head of the whole human race, men and women, and consequently there was then only a need for one Redeemer. So this is why in chapter 1, verse 27, I like to emphasize that even though Eve is not on the scene, she won't come on the scene until now later verses, it says that God created him male and female, He created them. And then last week, remember, I took you back to chapter 5, and let's look at it again just for a quick review. In Genesis chapter 5, verse 2, now this is a recap, this is a summarization. In verse 2 it says, "...male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam." Now He doesn't refer to the woman, He doesn't refer to Eve, He merely says He created them and He called their name Adam. They were both in Adam. Now let's come back and let's pick up the creation of woman, if we can, by going over to chapter 2, and we'll come back to the earlier verses, don't worry. But just for now to pick up the appearance of the woman, and she won't even be called Eve until after the Fall, but she's only referred to as the woman. But now in chapter 2, in these verses we saw last week, Adam has just given names to all the other living creatures, and as I mentioned then, he must have gotten an inkling of what it would be like to have a helpmate, as he saw all these creatures already with the female and the male and their mate. And so God realized it, that He needed a helpmate, such as up in verse 18. And now in verse 21, after Adam has already named all the species of the animal kingdom and the birds and what have you, verse 21 it says, "...the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept." First instance of anesthesia, isn't it? So He put Adam to sleep, and He's going to do some surgery on the old boy. "...and He caused sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. And He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." Now, I for one like to take this Scripture as logically as we possibly can. Now, I know we take it by faith, and I don't want anybody to come up and say, Hey, you can't take Scripture logically. I think a lot of times we can, and especially from the scientific side. There's so much pure science in Scripture that most people miss. But anyway, the word rib, translated rib, in the Hebrew is the word Sela, S-E -L-A. And I think some 19 times, if I'm not mistaken, some 19 times the word Sela, which is here referred to as rib, is translated side, or a better one, especially when it made reference to the ark, the chambers. And so I like to use that. The side chamber is the word Sela, because they all come out of that same root. Now if you'll read it in that light, let's go back and look at it that way. And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took a side chamber, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the side chamber, which the Lord God had taken from man, He made the woman. All right. Now this may be stretching the point a little bit for some of you, but I put these things out just to help people contemplate and study a little bit more, and take this whole thing into perspective, because the reason we're doing this is to understand the plan of redemption. That it is just as much appropriate for the woman as it is for the man, and that the woman's fall was not precipitated by Eve's eating of the fruit, never. It was Adam who ate, and the whole human race fell. All right. But we have to see that here, Eve is part of that fall, because she came out of Adam. Just the same as you and I came from our parents, Eve came from Adam. Now let me show you something else that's interesting. Let's go all the way back to the New Testament. Go back to Luke for just a moment, and to the genealogy that we have here in Luke, and I think most are agreed that this is the genealogy of Mary and not of Joseph, and I guess it's in chapter 3. Did I say chapter 2? In Luke chapter 3, and we're not going to take the time to read all the way through that whole family tree, but I just want you to go to the end of the genealogy, and that would be in Luke chapter 3, verse 38. Luke chapter 3, verse 38, and we started, of course, up there at the time of Mary herself at the very birth of Christ, and we've come all the way down from that family tree to verse 38, where it says Canaan, up there in verse 37, was the son of Enos, who was the son of Seth, who was the son of Adam, not Adam and Eve, but the son of Adam, who was the son of God. Now where's Eve? Well she's in Adam. And again, I think it makes it so clear that Eve, as part of the human race, was already in Adam when Adam was created. And so consequently, we can definitely say that Adam is the federal head of the whole human race, not just of men, but of men and women. All right. Now then, if you'll come back to Genesis chapter 2, and again, I'd like to just throw this out as a tantalizing thought, just to make you think a little bit about these things. If God simply took a rib from Adam, what would that do to the man? Well, it'd leave him one rib short. And believe it or not, I've had people ask me whether men have one less rib than a woman. Well, of course not. And certainly God didn't take one rib and make out of that rib the woman. But rather, I like to put it this way. He took the reproductive segment of the woman. We call that the gonad, or the germs plasma. And He took that reproductive, which was certainly in a side chamber in Adam. Yes, He had the male and the female both. I think the Scripture indicates that. And if you think that's preposterous, there are still a lot of creatures in the animal kingdom that are bisexual. I shouldn't say a lot, but there are quite a few. And amongst insects and so forth. It is not an unknown fact that we have things that are bisexual. So I think that Adam was bisexual, and some of the very early rabbis who were certainly students of the Old Testament, they had that concept, that Adam was bisexual until God removed the female reproduction system from Adam, and with that then He created the woman. Now doesn't that make sense? I just think it's so logical, because you see, the whole reproductive process of not only the human race, but of all of God's creation, is based on those reproductive organs. And that is the very heart of all creation, is reproduction. And so He removes that part from Adam, and with it now then He surrounds it with the body of the woman, and now we've got man and woman. And as yet she's not called Eve, remember. She is merely referred to as the woman. All right, now let's go down to verse 23. God now has brought this new creature to Adam, His helpmeet, and that's an interesting word as well. It means a complement. Now that's spelled with the E. The word helpmeet is the word complement. In other words, it's that which makes complete. In other words, Adam was not complete until God brought him that helpmeet. Now it's interesting that even the New Testament uses that same word with regard to Christ and you and I, the Church. The Church is the complement, and this is why even the Lord Himself is looking forward to the day when He will have the body of Christ with Him. And we become then that completion of even Christ Himself. And there is again that correlation then between Adam and Eve, or the husband and the wife, and husband and wife as we saw it last week from the book of Ephesians. All right, now then, verse 23. Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken... What's the word? Out of man, see? She was taken out of the man. And the red bone doesn't amount to that much. It was something more than that. And he took the woman out of the man. And like I said last week, what we want to emphasize now from this is that all of this points to the fact that Eve was in Adam, and that when Adam sinned, the female of the species came under the condemnation just as much as the man. All right, I think that's well taken. Verse 24, Therefore, all of human history has to fall back on what took place in Genesis. Therefore, shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife? And they shall be... What's the word? One flesh. One flesh. And you know, we've lost that concept. And I think it's so unfortunate that we have just sort of glossed over what God originally intended. But if you will take a look at the word here, cleave. And I'm not going to take credit for it. We were visiting my son one time when he was still up at OSU, and we went to his church with him. And the Sunday school teacher that morning, I'll never forget, explained the word cleave in a way that I've used ever since, because I think it was so apropos. The word here in the Hebrew again means that once a man and woman come together in marriage, they should never be able to be separated without causing irreparable damage. And isn't that what divorce does? Even those of you who have gone through it, and even in my consulting work that I have on the telephone, I'll have folk call from one end of the country to the other who are going through the awful distress of divorce. And I don't envy people going through divorce. I empathize with them. But you see, this is exactly what God had in mind, that when man and woman came together and would become one flesh, to tear them apart would be just doing irreparable damage. And so He says they shall be one flesh. And now I like that next verse because they were so perfect. They were so sinless, and even in their naked state, they were perfectly comfortable in God's presence. Now that just shows how pure their very mind makeup was. And it says in verse 25, they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. They were beautiful people, and they had everything going for them. Now again, if you'll remember, we went back a week or two to that beautiful earth with a perfect climate, no real intense heat, no intense cold. It was pole to pole, perfect climate, no storm clouds, no severe weather. Everything was ideal. And they had fellowship with their Creator. God came and walked with them in the cool of the evening. How could anybody want anything more? But you know what? They weren't satisfied. They weren't satisfied. And we get the account of it now as we move on into chapter 3. Chapter 3. Now the serpent, verse 1, was more subtle, and I always encourage people to go to a dictionary and look up this word subtle. The last time I looked it up, I think it was about 12 or 14 words to define the word subtle. It means sly. It means cunning. It means with tremendous intelligence, hey, this creature had everything. Now I like to take the approach, and not everyone will agree with me, and that's perfectly all right, but I take the approach that the serpent was probably the most beautiful of all the created creatures. I think it walked upright, and I'm even going to stick my neck out far enough to say I think it spoke. I think that Eve was not the least bit surprised when this beautiful creature came up to her and was actually speaking in her own language. But whatever, the point I like to make is that even to our present day, Satan will always use the very best that he can get his hands on. He will never use that which is of no other good, but he will always use the best that he can possibly get a hold of. And he begins with it right here. And so the serpent, beautiful, upright, the Scripture says the most subtle of all of the created beings. In other words, Satan is using the best that he can find. And now what does he do? He was the most subtle of any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said to the woman, Yea, hath God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? Well, I'm going to have to be remiss. I told you we'd go back to the verses in chapter 2 that we missed. I'm sorry, and we just got to do that. We've still got a few minutes left in this half hour. So if you'll come back with me, and we'll come back to chapter 3 probably next week. But come back to chapter 2, so we pick up these verses that we originally skipped in order to get over to the creation of woman. And let's come back to verse 1 of chapter 2. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. Now this of course is just after Adam was created, and I don't think Eve is on the scene yet at the end of that sixth day. I think that's going to come some time later. But anyway, the six days of creation are now finished, and then it says on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, sanctified it, set it apart, because that in it He had rested from all His work which He had created and made. Now again I'd like to bring in a little scientific fact here if I may, and again maybe not everyone will agree with me. But I think here when God looked at that beautiful creation and everything that He had put into it, we have here the very first law of thermodynamics. Now for those of you who have had any science courses, you'll remember that almost in chapter one of most chemistry textbooks you're introduced to that law of thermodynamics. Thermal meaning heat, dynamics meaning energy. In other words, when God had finished creation, He had the law of thermodynamics in place. Now for those of you who may have forgotten, the first law of thermodynamics says that there is now nothing being created nor destroyed. Got that? Nothing is being created or destroyed. And I think that's what you have here. You have a perfect creation. There is nothing deteriorating. There is nothing dying. There is nothing rotting. The first law of thermodynamics. Nothing needed to be any more created. Everything was here that God knew the coming race of people would need. Everything was perfect. It was good. The first law of thermodynamics. All right, now then, in the next moment or two that we got left, come down to verse 3, I mean verse 4, and these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God had made, earth and heaven. Now what do you notice in that verse? Well, we've changed from God, G-O-D, throughout all of chapter 1, and now all of a sudden we've got the introduction of Lord God. Now that's not a misprint. The translators didn't make a mistake, but this is all for a purpose. Now you see, even the Old Testament is going to show that there is a person of the Godhead who is uniquely in the God of chapter 1, but now He is set apart as someone special. He's called the Lord God. Now the Lord, L-O-R-D, is the word that we're going to be later introduced to, Jehovah. So it could be read that in the day that the Jehovah God made the earth and the heavens. Now the very name Jehovah, and we'll look at that more in detail probably in our next half hour, the name Jehovah is that person of the Godhead who is always involved with the human race. It's that person of the Godhead, again, who is to be the communicator. He is to be the Redeemer. It's the one that's going to be the Savior of mankind. It's the one that's going to fellowship with Adam in the garden. It's that person of the Godhead that's going to appear to Abraham and to Moses and various others, all the way up through the Old Testament, Jehovah God. And I'd like to make that point because man has now come into the scene, and God knows that man is going to have to be able to identify with His Creator. He's going to have to be able to not only fellowship with Him, but be able to know that He is. And this is why God the Son, who is always Jehovah with only one or two exceptions, Jehovah is always God the Son, like I said, with one or two exceptions. And if you can get that concept straight, that whenever you see the word L-O -R-D in capital letters, it is Jehovah. It is God the Son. Now our translators, I've read, use that word Lord instead of Jehovah most of the time, out of courtesy to the old Jewish writers and so forth, because they had such an awe for that name Jehovah that they wouldn't write it. And so they would leave it blank. But our translators came along, and instead of using the word in opposition to that Jewish mentality, they used the word Lord. So whenever you see that word Lord in capitalized, remember that it's Jehovah. You won't be doing any harm to Scripture if you'll just intersperse those two terms. So what you have here then in chapter 2, verse 4, is the introduction to a name of deity that we have not seen before, and it's the Redeemer. It's that person of the Godhead who is going to be the communicator. It's going to be the one who will make Himself known, as I've already said, at various times, all the way up through the Old Testament, and then as we'll see next week, it's the one who comes on the scene, and we know Him in the New Testament as Jesus the Christ. Now again, just for a little recap, in the moment that we have left, we find that Adam was created first with Eve within Him. God created then the woman out of the man and presented her as His helpmeet, and the two became one. God instituted it from the very beginning. At the very same time, God reveals Himself as the one who will be the Redeemer. He's the one who's going to fellowship with man, not only in the garden, but all the way up through human history, until He comes on the scene then as God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Jesus of Nazareth, the one who died for us and rose again. Thank you, and we'll see you again next week. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. 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