Creation of Adam: Body, Soul, and Spirit Explained

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has taught home-style Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting, people say the time seems to fly by. And now, here's Les Feldick. Good evening. Good to have you all back again, and let's just pick right up where we left off last week, and I'd like to bring you back to Genesis chapter 2. Let's go back to that verse 4. Genesis chapter 2, verse 4. And again, for those of you watching us on television, we'd like to have you take the time, if possible, to just find a Bible and a piece of paper and a pen and take some notes and look at these Scriptures with us here in the studio audience. Genesis chapter 2, verse 4. Again, these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And we pointed out last week, if you remember, that all through chapter 1 we've simply had the word God, G-O-D. But now that the six days of creation are complete, man is on the scene, the name of God is introduced as the Lord God, or Jehovah God. I think it probably helps if we can break down that name Jehovah a little bit. I feel real confident that I'm on the right track, because several years ago my wife and I were in Israel, and we ran through this whole thing with a well-educated young Israeli. He was a high school principal, he had his master's degree, and when we laid this out before him, not on a blackboard of course, but without benefit of any notes per se, he was just aghast, and he said, you're right, I can't disagree with a bit of it. But he said, I can't wait now to get home and look this up in my New Testament, because what we're really doing is bringing this all the way down to the appearance of Christ Himself. The name Jehovah really comes from two Hebrew words, the Yahweh that most of you have heard, Yahweh, and the second Hebrew term is Havah. Now the definition for the Hebrew deity name Yahweh was the I AM. Now if you remember when Moses was at the burning bush, and Moses said, now when I go back to the children of Israel and tell them that God has sent me, they're going to ask me what's His name, and what shall I tell them? And you remember what the voice of the burning bush says, you tell the children of Israel that I AM hath sent you. The I AM that I AM, that was the definition of Yahweh, the eternal, preexistent I AM. Now you add to that the definition of Havah, which really meant the I AM is to be revealed. Now that's more or less a continuing action type of verb. So the eternal, preexistent I AM would be more and more and more revealed as you come on up through human history. Now then, the contraction of Yahweh Havah then, as we see it in our Old Testament, becomes the name Jehovah, and that's what it is. It's a contraction of Yahweh Havah. Jehovah then is the I AM who is to be more and more revealed. Now then, the extension of the Hebrew word Jehovah into the Greek is simply the name Jesus. Isn't that simple? And the word Jesus of course is a further revelation of Jehovah, and in the Old Testament it would be Jehovah Joshua. And the word Joshua of course means Savior. And so Jehovah Savior is in the Greek then Jesus, and we normally refer to Him as Jesus Christ or Jesus the Messiah. So this is a continuing revelation of the eternal I AM. Now maybe it would help us, we'll be doing it again when we get to Exodus, but that's a long way down the road. Turn with me a minute to that portion we just referred to in Exodus chapter 3, and I do this just to show that now with Adam on the scene, the eternal pre-existent I AM, God the Son, is going to be the one that is going to be more and more revealed as we come up through the human experience. All you have to do is just stop and think about it for a minute. First He walked with Adam in the garden in the cool of the day. Then in a further revelation we see Him reveal Himself to Abraham. And if you want to see a good example of God appearing in human form in the Old Testament, all you have to do is read Genesis 18 when Abraham prepared the fatted calf and prepared the meal. And the I AM, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, actually sat down and partook of that meal. Then you come on up to Exodus chapter 3 and we find Him in the burning bush. Now of course in the burning bush He doesn't appear in human form, but He appears by way of a human voice. And as Moses is standing there on that holy ground where he was told to remove his shoes, then in verse 13, Moses said unto God, Now see there is that term again. Even though we've separated Him out of the Godhead as the Jehovah, as God the Son, yet He's still God. Which brings me of course to, and I didn't intend to use it, but it happens to me in my Bible so I think I dare, I just was shown something the other evening that's hard to comprehend, but on the other hand I guess if someone prints it we have to believe it. Where a national magazine took a survey of preachers and pastors across the land, and I won't take time to do all of it, but some of the questions were like this one, Do you believe in the Deity of Christ? In other words, do you believe that Jesus Christ was God? And the answer to that question was, No, from 89% of the respondents, 89% of those preachers and pastors did not believe that Jesus was God. Another one they asked, Do you believe in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ? They answered, No, 99%. I mean these things are shocking, and then they wonder why people take the time to listen to this old layman. Well, I think I know the reason, because I don't answer no to those kind of questions. But anyway, in chapter 3, verse 13, "...Moses said unto God, this voice in the burning bush, Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name?" Now you see, Moses had been in Egypt for 40 years. He knew the very mentality of all those Jews, as well as the Egyptians, and all the Egyptian gods immediately came to Moses' mind, and they had a name for everyone. Now the Israelis, living under that kind of a society for 400 years, were now in the same boat, and Moses knew that. And Moses said, Now the first thing when I get to Egypt, those Israeli people are going to say, Well, God has sent you? What's His name? And there's the setting. And so Moses says at the end of verse 13, when they ask that, what shall I say to them? Verse 14, "...And God said unto Moses, I AM that I AM," and that's capitalized in every version I've ever seen, "...Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." Now it's that same I AM that I've already broken down, and the rest of the Old Testament will call Him Jehovah. In fact you pick it up in just a couple pages along in your Bible in chapter 6 of Exodus. Drop down to verse 3, where in verse 2, "...God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I AM the LORD." Now I said that word LORD could be interchanged with Jehovah. So He says, I AM Jehovah. Then verse 3, "...I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty. But by my name Jehovah, I was not known to them." But now He is. The name Jehovah has been put out in plain language. Now let's follow that up into the New Testament, when theologians will say that Jesus never claimed to be God, and that they don't believe in His deity. You see what they have to do with Scripture? They have to throw it away. Turn with me to John's Gospel, I think it's chapter 8. In John's Gospel chapter 8, and here in this portion of Scripture, of course, the Pharisees are literally testing Jesus. They're trying to drive Him into a corner, and to them, whenever He would claim to be God, it was pure blasphemy. And this is what they really wanted to hear. They wanted to hear Him say in uncertain terms, that He was the God of Abraham. And boy, then they would have every cause to put Him to death. That was as blasphemous as they thought a person could get. Now let's jump down to verse 52. So after all this conversation going on between Jesus and these religious leaders of Israel, verse 52 says, Verse 52. know that thou hast a devil, or a demon. Abraham is dead, and the prophets, and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead, and the prophets are dead? Whom makest thou thyself? You see what they're driving at? Hey, you're talking about things that only God could do. Who do you make yourself to be anyway? Look at Jesus' answer. Verse 54. Verse 54. Jesus answered, If I honor myself, my honor is nothing. It is my Father that honoreth me, of whom you say he is your God. Now you talk about caustic, I think that's what we've got here. Look what He says to these religious leaders. Verse 55. Yet ye have not known him, but I know him. And if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you, but I know him. And keep his saying. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad. Now remember I mentioned that back in Genesis 18, the Lord actually sat down in human form and had that meal of fatted calf and everything else with Abraham, and of course God shared His covenant with Abraham. So Abraham knew all about the coming of this Son of God one day to the nation of Israel. So Jesus rightly said, Abraham saw my day and rejoiced. Now then look at the response of these Jewish religious leaders. Verse 57. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and thou hast seen Abraham. Now how long ago did Abraham live? If you remember our first lesson when we took that overview, that timeline, Abraham was about 2,000 B.C. And what they're aghast at is that here Jesus, only 30 some years old, is claiming that He knew Abraham who had lived 2,000 years before. And that's what they're saying. You mean to tell us that you knew Abraham? Oh, they're unbelieving. But now look at Jesus' response. Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Now isn't that beautiful? What's He claiming? He's the I Am. He is the pre-eternal, self-existent I Am who would be more and more and more revealed. Now just follow that up. We've already seen Him revealed coming up through the Old Testament in various and sundry ways. Now He comes on the scene, born of Mary, in the flesh, presents Himself to the nation of Israel. He goes to the cross, He's risen from the dead, and again He presents Himself to His followers for 40 days. Now that's a different Christ than the one that was before the cross. Oh, He was the same one, but now He's in that resurrected body. He's in that body fashioned like the body we will one day have. It was a further revelation. Then we go on through the Scriptures and Paul begins to reveal Him as the God of all grace, the Lord Jesus who loved us and died for us and gave Himself for us. Oh, that's a further revelation of the very person of Christ. His compassion, His love for us, that He actually went to the cross in order to purchase our redemption. And then the last book in your Bible, what's the name of it? The book of Revelation. And it is a misnomer to call it the revelation of Saint John the Divine. It's a revelation of Jesus Christ, and we see Him now coming in the clouds of glory to be King of kings and Lord of lords. You see this constant revealing? We get more and more and more of who He is as we come on up through the Word of God. Now then I think we're ready to move on from chapter 2 down to at least verse 7 of chapter 2, where again it's just a summarization in one verse of that which took place back in chapter 1. Someone has asked the question, I guess I've never really heard it put that way before, whether this was a different creation from the one in chapter 1. No, it's the same one, it's just simply a summarization. Verse 7, "...and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Now that just puts the frosting on the cake. After He was created out of the natural elements, and that's all our flesh really is. It's just water and the elements that are taken from the ground, and when we die we go back to those same elements. The crowning act of creation was when the Lord God breathed into that new creation the breath of life. If you'll remember last week when we had it on the board, when He made man in His own image by giving him mind, will, and emotion, He gave him three invisible entities that were all attributes of God as well. And that was all in then when God breathed into man the breath of life, and He became a living soul. Now that word living is more than just 70, 80, 90 years. This means eternal. And I can never emphasize it enough that every human being is an eternal being. He's going to live in eternity someplace, and this is why it behooves us to understand the plan of salvation that God has made so available and so free that by simply believing the gospel we can live eternally in God's presence, whereas by rejecting the gospel, by being disobedient, we're going to live forever separated from God. And of course it's that separation from God that is by definition then the second death, that we will be separated from God unless we are united to Him by faith in the gospel. Now since I'm mentioning the gospel and I haven't mentioned in the first few weeks, maybe this is an appropriate time because those of you who have been with me over the years, you realize that even though we go verse by verse in the Old Testament, we're going to jump into the New every chance we get. Come with me to 1 Corinthians, if you will. In 1 Corinthians, when I make mention to the gospel, I want everyone to take a note of it, to memorize it if possible, and realize that the gospel that we are responsible for believing tonight is most clearly put in 1 Corinthians 15, those first four verses. You cannot find, I don't believe, another portion of Scripture where it is so simply put and so plainly put that there is no room for argument. And this is the gospel. Now I always maintain that my classes include people from all kinds of backgrounds, denominational, and there may be differences, but on one point there can be no difference. I don't care what our background, what our handle is, there is only one gospel. And here it's laid out in 1 Corinthians 15, and I'll come back to it over and over and over as we come up even through the Old Testament. Verse 1. "...Moreover, brethren," Paul writes, "...I declare unto you the gospel..." He doesn't use the article, a gospel, but the. There is only one. "...I declare unto you the gospel, which I preached unto you, which also you have received..." Now again I have to make a point, Paul always writes to the believer. I think most of you realize that. Paul always writes to the believer, whether it's Romans or anything in between, he always writes to the believer. Now as he writes to the believer, naturally the Word of God is going to have an effect on the unbeliever. But I think the whole idea goes back again to Romans chapter 10, where Paul again writes that how can they hear without a preacher, or a teacher, or a go-between, and how can they understand the Word unless some human instrument explains it to them. Then he comes to that capstone, "...for faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." And that's why I teach. I hope that every one of you will be skilled enough in the Scripture that God can use you to present this gospel to anyone who may be searching and looking for the plan of salvation. And let's look at it again. "...Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel, which I preached unto you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand, by which also you are saved." By that gospel, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, lest you have believed in vain. In other words, you have to know what you believe. Faith isn't something blind. We have to know what we believe. Then here it comes, verse 3 and verse 4. You'll never find the gospel presented any simpler or in plainer language. Paul says, "...I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." That is, it was prophesied in the Old Testament that He would die. Then verse 4, "...and that He was buried," He was really dead. He didn't just go into a coma. He didn't just go into some unconscious state. He died. He was dead, and that three days in the grave proved it. All right? "...He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." That's the gospel. You can't add anything to it. You can't take from it. That's the gospel. Let me show you just for example how Paul will refer to it. You're in Romans, just come, or in Corinthians, come back to Romans. Come back to Romans chapter 10, Romans chapter 10. We probably won't get back to Genesis anymore this evening, but we'll pick it up again next week. But back to Romans chapter 10. Drop right into verse 9, where Paul again is writing to the predominantly Gentile congregation at Rome, and he says, "...that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus," and God hath raised Him from the dead. Now he doesn't mention that He died, but you don't rise from the dead unless you do. So that's implied. But here he is pressing the gospel, see? "...that if thou shalt believe in all thy heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Can you get it any plainer? Let me turn to one more in the time we have left. Again back to I Corinthians. Go back to I Corinthians chapter 1, I Corinthians chapter 1. And again drop down to verse 18, I Corinthians chapter 1, verse 18. You all got it? 4. Paul writes, "...the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness." Well, what's the preaching of the cross? That Christ died, was buried, and rose again. That's it. The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. And isn't that exactly what the world says? Ah, how can I believe that somebody 2 ,000 years ago has got anything to do with me today? But oh, that's the preaching of the cross. Now read on, "...but unto us who are saved," and remember we're precious few anymore, "...but unto us who are saved it," that is the preaching of the cross, or the preaching of the Gospel, "...unto us who are saved it is the power of God." I like to put it this way. It took greater amounts of God's power to save this old sinner than it did to create the universe. And oh, if people could just get a glimpse of this, that the very power of God has to become instrumental in our salvation. That's why we can't work for it. That's why we can't merit it. It takes the very power of God. And how do we release that power? By believing the Gospel. Oh, something I'll never forget. A lady in San Antonio looked at me one time and she said, "...unless you make it too simple." And you know what my answer was? I said, if I'd make it any more difficult, you'd say, that's too hard. That's the human nature. But it is. It is so simple, and yet it's so complex, you know, I can teach it night after night and never exhaust it. But it's the power of God unto salvation, as Romans 1.16 puts it. To everyone that joins a church, no. That's baptized, takes communion, no. But to everyone that believeth. Remember, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. And oh, how I pray that everybody I teach would be capable of just using a few of these verses that we've just shown you. 1 Corinthians 15, 1-4, Romans 1.16, and Romans 10.10, and 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18. And show them how to be saved. Glad to have you with us, and Lord willing, we'll see you next week. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like to be part of our studio audience, call 1-800-369-7856. That's 1-800-369-7856. Or, if you would like a copy of today's Bible study on tape, send your gift of $5 or more to Les Feldick Ministries, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552.