Last week I discussed the importance of believing Genesis because there are consequences if you do not believe what God has revealed. Now there are consequences whether it's ignorance, but there are more serious consequences if it is out of defiance. It could be something as simple as, well, it's just an uncertainty. I'm not sure if I really trust the Bible. And so you're not as vibrant in Christian life as you could be. I mentioned last week that was true in my own life. It just was, I believed it, sort of, but I wasn't sure because I kept being told, I don't know what to do with this section of scripture. And the vibrancy just really wasn't there. And as that came in order, it became much more vibrant in my life that I need to live for Christ and be His servant. It could be consequences to picking and choosing what you want to believe in the Bible. That has become very true of a lot of folks. You don't believe Genesis, which the foundation and everything built upon it is subject to crumbling and falling off. So there's a lot of people who profess to be Christians, but they pick and choose out of the Bible. I belong to believe that part. I don't like this other part, so I won't believe that. And they pick and choose. That certainly affects how they live for Christ. But of course, the more serious consequence is that you could end up with a false Jesus. You end up with a Jesus that is not the one described in the scriptures. One that really is not God. One that lies about things that have happened in the past. One that cannot do miracles. You have a false Jesus, and a false Jesus cannot save you from your sin. You cannot say you're from God's condemnation. So there can be, well there are consequences, there can be extremely serious consequences to not believing what God has revealed. And I built upon our initial study, and in that initial study I demonstrated, especially by going through the text of Genesis 1, you cannot take it as anything other than literal without completely destroying it. I also showed that science and evolution don't match because evolution is not science. It doesn't qualify. It doesn't fit the definition. It doesn't even qualify as a scientific theory. It has to be observable, repeatable, and testable, and it's none of those things. But we did say it could be a model, and we compared a little bit about what the model might demonstrate or tell you about what to expect, and we showed that real going out in the world, real science, observing what's there, doesn't match the model. as my favorite quote is, it's a fairy tale for grownups. It's not true. We went through that last week. It isn't based in science. It has nothing to stand on except dogmatism by arrogant and sinful people. Now, this morning, we're going to examine the creation of man. So turn in your Bible, if you will, once again to Genesis chapter one. On the first day of creation, God created the heavens and the earth, and he separated the light from darkness. and then establish a sequence of events, evening and morning, one day. That's why I said you cannot get anything other than a literal interpretation from Genesis. The day is described within the text as a sequence of evening and morning constitutes a day, period. So you have seven sequences of evening and morning throughout the entire week. That's seven days, not millions of years or thousands of years. It's seven days. On the second day, God separated the waters above and the waters below the heavens. On the third day, God gathered the seas, allowing dry land to appear and created vegetation, seed plants, and fruit trees. The fourth day, God created the sun, moon, and stars and set them in order for signs, seasons, for days, and years. The fifth day, God made all the sea creatures. He made all the birds of the air. The sixth day, He made the cattle, the creeping things, and the beasts of the earth. and then man, and that's where we pick it up today is verse 26. Follow along as I read, please. Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle and all the earth, and over every creeping things that creeps on the earth. And 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 rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Then God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed, it shall be food for you, and to every beast on the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that moves on the earth which has life. I have given every green plant for food, and it was so. And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Now, among the very significant points made in this text are the origin of man, the nature of man, the purpose and responsibility of man, and then God's evaluation of creation. Now, the origin of man is clearly stated. He was created by God. There's nothing in this text or any other biblical text to suggest some sort of pre-Adamic race. Man has no common ancestry or relationship with apes. Human evolution is a fraud thrust upon the ignorant public by egotistical men and women that have few qualms about fudging the facts, spinning tales, and making pronouncements about things which are not so. Among the more famous of the hoaxes, you may remember some of these, those who are older might remember them in your textbooks, was Nebraska Man. He was in the textbooks when I was a kid. Nebraska Man was built off a tooth. Turns out later it's a pig's tooth. But in our textbooks, we had the whole family there. Mom, dad, kids, everybody was there from a pig's tooth. The most famous of all the frauds put upon man in this was Piltdown Man. He was an absolute hoax, but he fooled the evolutionary experts from 1915 until 1953. That's a long time. All the experts said, oh, this is definitely, it was a hodgepodge of bones that someone compiled and manufactured to fool them. Now, they're not the only ones. We can go on and on about this, but there are also other things that you're never told about. There are a lot of Homo sapien bones that are contemporary or older than the alleged ancestors if the same dating techniques are used. But of course, evolutionists can't imagine that a modern Homo sapien could be as old as the supposed ancestor. So they say, well, then our dating system here must not be right. So they throw it out. But we talked about that last week and how fossils date the rocks and rocks date the fossils. If it doesn't fit the sequence you want, throw out the information. That's not science, is it? That's fraud. But it's rampant because there's a lot of money being made in this and a lot of prestige. If that kind of thing interests you, I suggest you get Bones of Contention by Marvin Lemineau and read it. He does a good documentation of that. There was another book out, Eight-Men Factor Fallacy, by Bowdoin, but unfortunately that's out of print. But this is a good book as well. If that interests you, pick it up and start reading it, finding out what really has been going on. So the origin of man is by God, not evolution. Well, what about the nature of man? That's also expressed in this passage because it says, God made man in his image. That means man reflects certain characteristics that belong to God. The first and foremost characteristic is that of personhood, which exists in three qualities. Man has an immaterial aspect to him that separates him from the mere material world. Now, among those is the fact that man is rational. That means he can think. He has a mind. Rocks, plants, water, fire do not think. Animals have minds and they can think in a limited sense according to their instincts. And many animals can be trained to do all sorts of... Well, we think, that's wonderful. We'll even pay money to go see them do these things. but they cannot think in the abstract. That belongs only to man. Man can contemplate not only concepts such as beauty and logic. We can contemplate things that do not manifest themselves in the material world. We can imagine things that actually only can exist within our minds. Man has that ability. He's rational. Man is also emotional. He can feel psychically. He can make choices based on this ability to think and to experience emotion. Animals make choices based on instinct. Man, I'm sorry, means he can experience feelings caused by the thoughts of his mind. Not only do you realize that, your emotions actually come from what you think. They don't arise from nowhere. They are caused by what you were thinking. Often you're just not aware of what you're really thinking, what's behind it. And so you can have emotions and that's why you can think through them and come to a rational understanding and change how you feel. Feelings follow what you think. That includes things that we experience, love, hate, compassion, anger, peace, anxiety, joy, depression, all the emotions. Belongs to man. God has given it to us. Man is also volitional. That means he can make choices based on his ability to think and experience emotion. Animals make choices based on instinct. Man makes choices based on abstract thought. Now these abilities give us what is commonly referred to as personhood, and that is a reflection of God himself. Now, there are certain other attributes that belong only to God, things like omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, immutability, eternal existence, past as well as future, sovereignty. Those are things that only belong to God. We can't hold those things. They only belong to one being and that is God. But God has other attributes, often called communicable or moral attributes, that he shares with us. And when we're looking at the creation of the first man, he had them in totality. These would be characteristics such as holiness, righteousness, love, goodness, kindness, justice, mercy, graciousness. The first man would have had these in complete capacity. We have the ability to reflect them, though we are marred by sin. But these also are an aspect of us being made in the image of God. We reflect God's very character, his very attributes. So when God made man and the woman the first day to possess all these things in perfection, all the mental capacity that was there is in perfection, all the ability to feel is in perfection, to make choices is in perfection, experience in their fullness. Original man, we need to understand, was far superior in both character and ability than we are. In verses 29 and 30, we're told about the purpose and responsibility of man. He was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over all the animals. The plants then were given to man and to the animals for food. So man's purpose is to be God's region on earth and exercise dominion over it. That's our purpose. And fulfilling that purpose and responsibility is going to be an underlying theme throughout the rest of the Bible. Because once we fell into sin, it was how to restore us back to the proper place. Now, it's important to note here that dominion does not mean that man has the freedom to do whatever he wants. He is a regent. He is under somebody else's authority, God's authority. He is responsible for God for what he does. He's a steward. He's not autonomous. And this means that the resources that God has given us in the earth are for our benefit, but we're responsible to God to use those things wisely. Let me give you a couple of quick examples, because there's a big difference between utilization of something and exploitation in the negative sense of it. Farming is necessary. We all like to eat. Praise the Lord for farms. You wouldn't be able to eat if you didn't have a farm. Farming is good, it is necessary, but it should be done in such a way that the soil is conserved and it can be continued to use in the generations that come behind you. Not just to exploit it so that it's worthless after you're done. That's not good practice. We are stewards. Mining is a good thing. Anybody like the fact that you have a car? You like your car? You like the air conditioner? Okay. Do you know there are metal things that are part of all that, and you can't get the metal unless you mine? That's true. You can't get it. Ladies, do you have diamonds? Do you like your diamonds? No? You do? Okay. Well, you get those from mining. There are good things that come from this. We are to utilize them, but in our mining practices, we should make sure we're not harming our neighbor in the process, or destroying the environment in such a way that it cannot replenish itself, and it's worthless thereafter. Utilization, not exploitation. Forestry is important. Seedlings should be planted to replace the trees that you just harvested, so that the future generations will also have wood. That's important. Utilizing, not exploitation. Now, at the same time, we need to understand something else. It is good to set apart land areas in parks and refuges and things like that. Those are good things. But we always must remember that we are here to worship God. He has given things for us to use wisely. We do not worship animals and plants and the environment. When it comes to environmental extremists, we need to understand that the earth and animals do not have equal rights with us. And there are some that want to make sure that they have superior rights to us. We have a responsibility before God, period. We worship him, not Mother Earth. Do you get the difference? Christians should be the best at using whatever resources are there. without exploitation of them. Wise usage because we know we are stewards to a God who will hold us accountable. That's what drives our interest in things like environmental protection. Stewardship to God, not worship of the earth. Our hope again is in God, not Mother Earth. Well, God's evaluation of all this was that it was very good. Very good. Let me add right here, going back in the text, I think it's verse 27, it's something else we do see about God. And that's the fact he says, let us make man in our image. Right from the beginning, we find that God reveals himself to be a plurality, a plural union, a plural unity is better. We call it a triunity because as we go through the rest of scripture, you'll see that not only is the God, the Father, but God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit are all involved in creation. And that's what he's talking about. Three persons in one eternal Godhead. So that in later on Deuteronomy, when it says the Lord our God is one Lord, it is one. But it also uses Elohim, the Lord our God, and it's a plural word there, this triune Godhead is one God. Just to point that out now, because it occurs very early in the text. Our God is different than us, beyond even our ability to comprehend. Well, the story of creation itself actually ends in chapter two. Remember that all your divisions in the Bible, are not from the Holy Spirit. They were put in there by men just so they could reference things quickly with each other. Probably better to divide a chapter at the end of verse three because verses one through three of chapter two are the end of the creation week. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. And by the seventh day God completed his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made." It's the seventh day. It's interesting that we note that here God rests on it, but there's a pattern given that is followed all over the world. Man still uses a seven-day week. Why? Now, some would say, well, seven days is a quarter of a lunar month, but why use that for a week? Why not use 14 days? Why this period of work six days and rest a seventh? And even some nations where they tried to make it 10 days, they found they had to go back to seven because the people weren't handling working nine days and resting a tenth. Why? It's because it's the pattern God set. And that's true in all cultures, not just those that are affected by Judaism and Christianity. It predates it because it comes from God himself. And so there's a seven-day pattern for man's work week and a day of rest. In Genesis chapter 2, 4 through 25, we find a recounting of the sixth day, but now in more detail. It's an emphasis here upon the creation of the man and the woman. Now, there are those that want to make this a second creation story from another author or that Moses or some speculated later editor appropriated this. But detailed literary analysis shows that Genesis chapters 1 through 11 could only have been written by one author. It's actually extremely complex and intricate. There's a good book called Before Abraham Was by Isaac Kikawada and Arthur Quinn that goes into detail if you like literary analysis. You can pick up the book and read it. We won't go any farther today. Some of you should be happy about that. Did you like English in school? No? Yes? Then you read the book. Did you not like English in school? Be glad I'm not talking anymore about it. But you pick that up. I want to just point out this. Moses' style of writing includes a lot of parallelism, including chiastic structures in which there's a lot of repetition. And that's why we keep going through and you're like, but he just said that. Yeah, and he's going to say it again. And guess what? He's going to say it again after that too. That is Moses' style, and it's all interwoven together. That's why it's only one author. But we can briefly outline the rest of the section as this. Verses 4-6 is a description of earth prior to Adam. 7-9 is creation of Adam and the Garden of Eden. 10-17 is a description of the Garden of Eden and Adam's responsibility. And 18-25 is creation of Eden or purpose. Even there you see there's a flow. Description, creation, description, creation. Well, let's look at the description of the earth prior to Adam. It says, this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. Now, no shrub of the field was yet in the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprouted for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. Now, the section begins with a phrase, and depending on your version, it's either going to be, this is the account or these are the generations or something similar to that. That phrase is going to be used throughout the rest of Genesis, and it marks off different sections of the book. And in fact, also the key character within that section. There are quite a few people that believe that it may be also indicating who wrote that section or where the, I should say, the original information came from. If that's true, then we actually have an account from firsthand witnesses for the information that Moses then compiled together and put together for the book of Genesis. So we have firsthand information from God himself, because he's the one that created the heavens and the earth, and that's what it states here, but also from Adam, Noah, Shem, Abraham, and on through the rest of the book. And in your notes, I have the particular verses where that's marked off if you want to see how that's divided. Now, within each section is key information, detail given, that will be important as you go into the next sections in weaving the whole story together. And that's what we find even here. It's a summary statement with a couple details that are important to you later on. What are we told here? Well, first of all, is that creation is the heavens and earth was the first day. That we already read about, but it's a recounting of it. and emphasized it. First day is creation of the heavens and the earth. The events of the next four days are skipped and goes directly to the creation of man on the sixth day, but verses five and six give this detail about how the earth was watered. Now, at first you kind of scratch your head, what's that all about? Until you start reading later on and find out, oh, this was helpful to understand where the water came from during Noah's flood. It hadn't been raining before. where the water come from. So it gives us this idea. Now, exactly how it worked is somewhat speculative, but we know that God divided the waters on day two, waters below and waters above the heavens. So there was some sort of canopy around the earth and whatever it was, and we'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to chapter six and seven, It had to have had an effect on the weather patterns, and they were different than what we have now. It somehow moderated the temperatures of the earth. What caused our weather patterns is uneven heating and cooling. It heats one area, you have a massive air that rises. It gets hot, it rises, it's going to move. You have other areas that cool, and you end up with massive circulations of air currents. It moderated it. Now we know from fossil evidence that subtropical plants, were at one time in what are now Arctic zones. So at one time in the past, the Earth was a very different climate than it is now. That would be evidence we'd expect by reading Genesis. It was a different kind of climate. I'll also throw this one out. There's evidence of massive glaciation in the past as well. So not only was the Earth warmer at some period in the past, it was also cooler in the periods in the past. And so the current claims of man being the cause of global warming are pronouncements of people who claim wild speculation to be fact. We don't know. The only thing we're really correlating right now is there seems to be cycles with the energy of the sun of how much output and our temperature on earth seems to be fluctuating, correlating with that. But be careful what you read in the paper. There's a lot of stuff there is nonsense and they're not going to tell you the truth. It doesn't fit what they're trying to sell. There are agendas in there. Be careful where you get your information. Now, whatever was going on back then, there was enough temperature variation due to the day and night cycle that there would be local evaporation and condensation, which would be due. And so the original creation, a very different world than what we live in now. No sin yet. No consequential curse on it yet either. Verses seven through nine then give a detailed account of the creation of Adam and the Garden of Eden. Now the creation of the various forms of animals would have occurred earlier in the day. Here's what we find. Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, and there he placed the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow 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 knowledge of good and evil." So first there is God forming out of the dust of the ground a physical thing that would become man. Then he breathed into that physical entity the life force. Now, animals also receive the breath of life. Chapter 6 verse 17 specifically tells us that. But only Adam is recorded as receiving it in this specific manner. This is another area where evolutionists get it wrong because their theory presupposes that the elements and chemicals have a capacity to organize and live by themselves. But life only comes from life. It doesn't come from non-life. The living God who created Adam breathed life into Adam. Well, now that Adam is a living soul, God prepares a special place for him on the earth. It's a garden and it's filled with fruit trees. It's located in a place called Eden. Eden means delight or pleasurable. Our whole concept of paradise comes from this. We always want to go back to paradise. Eden was paradise. Notice, again, Adam's source of food. It's the trees. He didn't have to prepare the ground. He didn't have to sow seed. He didn't have to hoe weeds. All he had to do was reach and reap to eat. That kind of rhymes, doesn't it? That sounds pretty good. Reach to reap and eat. That's all he had to do. No hard work there. Now the reference here of it being toward the east means that it had been east location which Adam was formed because it is after God forms Adam that he then places him in the garden. So he forms Adam and then he plants this garden and then places Adam in it. Now it doesn't mean there weren't plants before, this is a specific place he planted just for Adam with specific trees in it. Now among the various fruit trees are two special ones which will play an important role later in this chapter and in chapter three, and they are the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They are in the garden. Verses 10 through 17 give a description of this garden in more detail and Adam's responsibility to it. It says, now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon. It flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good, and Bedellum and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon. It flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, it flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is Euphrates. Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for in the day that you eat it, you shall surely die. So here's first a description of Eden and it describes its water source. There is some river that comes from the middle of it, described sort of like a spring. As it flows, it divides into four different rivers. Now, there's a lot of speculation about the location of Eden based on the names of these rivers and the land they supposedly encompass. But remember something, there is a flood that is between us and these events. The flood destroyed everything. Those areas, there's thousands of feet of sediment there now that weren't there before. We don't know where it was. We just don't. But some say, well, but the Hygris-Euphrates, we know where those rivers are. Yes. I think all of us, especially as Americans, understand this capacity that humans have if we move somewhere else and we name something that's similar to what we remember with the name that we remember back where we were from. How many people live in a place that's new something or other because it's named after a location where your ancestors came from? This is a common thing, and the same thing would have been done then. Tigris to Euphrates, the name of ancient rivers, but also the name of rivers after the flood that were given the names that had been prior. Now, Adam is given a specific responsibility. He is to cultivate and keep the garden. Now, in a world that's not yet cursed by sin, we would hardly consider that work. There are no weeds to pull. There's nothing to cause sweat. Work without sweat. Now that sounds good. In fact, when I got back from vacation and had to do something with the jungle that had become my garden, and on warm days, I wish I was there prior when there was not that kind of work. No weeds, no sweat. But he was to cultivate it. We'd have to conclude it was a joy and pleasure for him to do the work that God had given him. Now he's given one command and one command only. He could eat of anything except the fruit from the tree, the knowledge of good and evil. God warned him that if he ate from it, he would surely die. Now this gives Adam a moral choice. He can either love God who created him. The sequence of events here is possible that Adam saw God plant the garden. What we find later, we're certainly going to find that he saw and was aware of God creating Eve. But he has a choice. Am I going to love and obey my creator or am I going to disobey God and do whatever is in my own heart and my own selfishness? There's a moral choice that God gives him immediately on the first day. You can obey me and here's one opportunity to disobey me. Will you love me and obey me or not? Verse 18, then the Lord God said, it's not good for the man to be alone. I'll make him a helper suitable for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She should be called woman because she was taken out of man. For this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. When I was in college, I ran into one of my professors, a professing Christian, but he says he didn't believe that Genesis was literal. And I thought we were going to get the whole evolutionary line. He said, no, he didn't believe evolution either, but he said, I don't believe it's literal because he says, I just can't believe that Adam could have named all those animals in one day. Well, that's different. I've never heard that one before, but that's what he had. But that's the nature of human pride. We have this idea that somehow we, in whatever generation you happen to be that are currently living and breathing, are superior to the generations that preceded you. You are smarter. You are more intelligent. Why look at all the things that we have? And then you point out to technology. Technology does not demonstrate you're more intelligent. It just demonstrates you were able to build upon what was given to you to begin with. There is no evidence that man is becoming more intelligent as time goes on. There's a lot of things that may indicate that we're becoming less intelligent as the generations go on. Now, that's a little harsh. We don't like that. That wounds our pride. But we need to remember a couple things. To build upon a foundation is easier than to lay the foundation. Which is easier? to improve a musical instrument or to create it from scratch. No model, just come up with the idea and fashion it. Which is easier to do? Which is easier to do? Improve some metal tool that you have or to invent the metal tool along with the mining practices, smelting practice, and forging practices in order to get the metal and make it useful. Which is easier? Which is easier to do? improve a wheel so it rolls more efficiently and has the quality you want, or to invent the thing to begin with. Do you see my point? Adam is there in the garden and the generations following him invented everything. We simply are building upon it. Extremely intelligent. We also need to understand that Adam is operating with full capacity of the mind. He was more intelligent than we are. There's no question about it. How many of you have senior moments? Yes, we get them. How many are young and still have them? Adam didn't have them. He wouldn't have had them. There's no decay within his brain matter. He had the full capacity. You ever get one of those points when everything just seems so clear, and you go, yes, I understand, and then five minutes later you go, I don't even know what I was thinking. Adam always had clarity. There's no sin, no degradation, full capacity of everything that God had given man as potential. That's Adam. So for him to name all the animals, it wouldn't have been hard, especially when you consider a few other facts here. First of all, Adam didn't have to gather them. God brought each animal to Adam. See what he'd call it. Then if you look at the text carefully and look, you find not every animal is brought. It's only the cattle, the beasts, the field, and the birds of the sky. He didn't have to name the creeping things. He didn't have to name the fish. So it's a limited number of the animals that are brought to him to begin with. And third, Adam would only be naming each kind, not every single type we would know today. For example, he would have named the dog kind, but he wouldn't have to name each specific thing that we now see, like the domestic dog and the coyote and the fox and the wolf and the dingo and all the rest, because they were all in the one dog kind. Those things have come out of that kind later. You only had to name the one kind. So that makes it a lot easier. If you want something equivalent in our own modern classification terminology, it'd be something more like naming families and genuses, not every species. In fact, just to remind you from what I said last week, things that people call species are not species because if they can mate together and have live offspring, they're the same species. But that's another thing about science and prestige and getting published. Well, what started this whole quest of naming all the animals to begin with? It was because there was a not good. It was not good that Adam was alone. That's what started this whole thing about naming the animals. There was no thing, nothing there that was, as its text says, a helper suitable or something corresponding to Adam. And so after naming all the animals, which may have come before him in pairs, that's speculation, but may have come male and female in front of him, there's still nothing that corresponds to Adam. There's nothing like him. Now that's yet another contradiction for those who still propose some sort of compatibility between the Bible and the evolution, or suppose that man arose from apes, or there was some sort of pre-Adamic humanoid. If there had been anything like that, it would have been compatible with Adam. It would have been close to Adam because Adam would have been part of that. There's nothing there. Nothing compatible with Adam. Nothing corresponding to him. God directly intervenes and does what he said he would do in verse 18. He makes a helper suitable for Adam. He did it, did it directly. Now the text tells us how he did it. He says, he caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and then took part of his side from him and then closed up the flesh. Now that's the very first medical procedure ever done. It's surgery. Now, most of us are glad for the procedure's methodology because it put him to sleep first. If you're going to have surgery, you want to be asleep, okay? God did that with Adam. And then he closed up the flesh so that Adam would heal. And then God took what he had taken from Adam, and it's a different word here. It means build or fashion. Ladies, you probably prefer that one. Fashioned Eve. That's why you're fashionable. You were fashioned. but you're still refined dirt. Men are dirt, you're refined dirt. You're fashioned dirt, because you came from something that was dirt prior. But that is what God did. Now it's interesting, the material used, it says, was taken from Adam's side. Most of the translations say rib, but every other place this word occurs in Genesis, it's translated side. Now, that doesn't mean it wasn't a rib. It could have been a rib. It might have included a rib. In fact, it's an interesting medical note that a rib is the only bone in your body that can regrow as long as you leave part of the outer sheath. There's an area around the bone. If you leave part of that, the rib will actually grow back. It's the only bone in your body that'll do that. Interesting fact. But whatever God took, it was from the side. He fashioned Eve. from that material. And then Adam's body would have replaced what had been taken away so that he didn't lose anything in having Eve form from what came out of him. His body replaced that. And that material was simply removed and redesigned into something that did correspond to him. She was indeed bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and so Adam called her Woman. The word itself is simply the feminine form of the word for man. She's a feminine man. That's the relationship. It's that close. There's not some separate entity. It's that close. It's often pointed out in wedding ceremonies that the material that was used to form Eve was not taken from Adam's head. She wasn't going to be superior to him. It wasn't taken from his feet that she'd be inferior to him, but from his side. Again, an analogy, but probably an important one. Equal partner, equal companion, something that corresponded to him. It also should be noted that it's God that brought her to Adam. I used to like to joke, say that God brought her to Adam. He wakes from his sleep and he sees her and goes, whoa, man. And that's how she got her name. But some people don't laugh at that. Well, God's the one that brings her. God is the one that institutes marriage. That's extremely important in this section. Marriage isn't something that man came up with. God designed it, instituted, defines the roles within it for husband and wife. And regardless of what governments may do in trying to redefine marriage, which is happening in our own day and time, they are doing it to satisfy the demands of depraved and perverted people. And that's what they are. They are depraved and they're perverted. They are not walking in righteousness and they are perverted off the course that God has set. But regardless of what governments do, God's definition doesn't change, does it? So it really doesn't matter what laws are in the land from that perspective. God's definition is still the same. When governments legalize sin, no matter what sin it is, it only encourages people to do the things that God is going to judge them for and the nation. That's the danger. You're simply setting people up to have a worse fall. Now, verse 24 is quoted by Jesus and Paul in explaining marriage. For this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Marriage begins a new family with the responsibility of the husband and wife to each other. That is a new family. Yes, they're still to honor their parents, but the responsibility now is to husband and wife. It's a new family. Extended family and all the rest, they're important, but they're not the priority. It's the husband and wife. And you're a family as soon as you're married. Kids simply make the family larger. You don't start a family after you're married. When you're married, you're a family. Period. This is God's design. The two then, it says, become one flesh signifying the sexual unit that will produce children. Now, how important was this? Well, I think it's interesting that up through the creation of the animals, God stated that everything was good. In fact, after he created the animals, he said that it was good. Here in this text, we're given more detail about day six, and it says man by himself is not good. And it isn't good. Single men do not live as long as married men. That's just a known demographic fact. Single men tend to be a little odd. compared to married men, because their wives help them mature socially and make them dress better and behave properly. Single men don't have anything that's keeping them in line. It's tougher. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule, but it isn't good for man to be alone. God has certainly given some a particular gift. Jesus talks about it in Matthew 19, but overall it's not good. But after God creates the woman and brings her to Adam, his pronouncement is, it's very good. I think that's significant. It's important. Now, Adam and Eve could be completely open with each other on every level because their relationship was different than ours. We are after the fall. They were before the fall. And that shows up here in this statement in verse 25. It says, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Generally, we miss the point of this because we're not reading Hebrew. And we take naked, okay, no clothes, and that's what it's about. But the word naked and the word crafty or subtle in chapter three, verse one, are the same root. Hebrew, they're the same. And what it means is it's not hindered. There's nothing blocking it. There's nothing... making it complex, nothing covering, it's unhindered. And so Adam and Eve, prior to the fall, are completely open with each other on every single level, not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally, because there's no sin present, nothing. It is the curse of sin that has caused married couples to hide from each other. Not just physically, that actually is more of an indicator of the shame. Nakedness is shame because it's a reminder of our disobedience to God. We'll get to that next when we get to chapter 3. But also unhindered emotionally and mentally. Unafraid to, here's what I'm thinking, here's how I'm feeling, and no fear in sharing that. Every married couple knows there's danger when you start talking what you really think and really feel. Because what you really think and really feel may not be too nice. It may be sinful. and so we hide from each other. Adam and Eve did not have that. Complete open relationship with everything. Us being after the fall, we have to struggle with that. Sin is here, and the only hope we have is in walking with Jesus Christ. We must walk with him, and then the Christian couple can begin to overcome this hindrance that is upon us and develop the type of merits that God intended. That's in Ephesians chapter 5. They're unhindered. We are. But Ephesians 5 tells us that the relationship between the man and the woman are to reflect Christ's relationship with the Church. And as we walk with God and walk in holiness and walk in righteousness, submitting ourselves to Him first and foremost, we can begin to develop the kind of relationship that God always intended for us to have as a husband and a wife. Yeah, it's difficult right now. It's hard because we're not where we're supposed to be. And it's not going to be that way until you're perfect. That's not going to happen this side of heaven. But you can improve. You can become more and more of what God wants you to be as a godly woman, as a godly man. And as that improves, so will the relationship. So it starts to reflect this thing that we really can't even understand, a completely open relationship that Adam and Eve would have had prior to the fall. God is the one that made man. Made him on the sixth day of creation. And he created man to work under him as a regent. He created him male and female. God's representatives on earth, God's stewards overseeing what's there. They were to fulfill This purpose, this responsibility by first filling the earth with their offspring. I was reading some stuff, ancient mythology, and preparing this week. It's interesting, almost all the ancient mythology is about how having children and an abundance of children is bad. The scripture is the opposite. To fill the earth, not to try and get rid of too many offspring. Exactly the opposite. but to fill the earth, subdue the earth, have dominion over the animals. And when God got done with all of it, he said, it was very good. God's our creator. We owe everything to him. And that's what we praise him. Father, thank you for your word, the truth of it. Father, even when it hurt, and there are some things in here that we realize because we don't live in the kind of environment that Adam and Eve did when they were first created. It is labor for us to work. We sweat. We struggle against the curse of sin upon the world around us and upon us. Father, we struggle in our marriages. We know that sin creeps in and disrupts and divides and salvageness is there. Father, thank you that there is hope in Jesus Christ. And Father, though the hope will not be fully realized until he returns and establishes his rule upon this earth. that even in the present, as we walk with him, we can see glimpses of what you had originally intended, experience the blessings that come from walking with you in righteousness. Father, thank you. Thank you for life. Thank you that we can be used of you for things much beyond ourselves. In Jesus' name, amen.