We're turning to Genesis, please, in the chapter 2. Genesis chapter 2, back to the beginning again. Genesis chapter 2 and the verse 4. Genesis chapter 2 and the verse 4. We're coming back to this title that we were thinking of last week, which was First Things First. First Things First. And we're going to be thinking today about the first home. I'd hoped to do slightly more than that. but there's so much teaching in here and we're just going to deal with the first home today. Genesis chapter two please and the verse four. This is the word of the Lord and we read, 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 every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 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. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Now out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Come with me to verse 15. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And we trust the Lord will bless his word to each of our hearts today. Let's pray with God's word open on our laps just now. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for everything that has gone before in this service already. We thank you, Father, that we have a wonderful King who is perfect to worship. And how we have declared from our hearts today as we sang our opening hymn, O worship the King, O glorious above. And Father, we have a great God who is greatly to be praised. And Father, we bow humbly in that presence just now, asking, O God, as your word has now been opened and read, that you would speak. that you would speak into our lives, that you would teach us from your word, that you would challenge our hearts, that you would encourage us. Father, may there be a great stillness in our meeting just now as we consider the scriptures that are before us. May the living God speak into our lives. Father, may we hear from thee this day. Hear our prayer, O God. We ask this in the precious name of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Last week we arrived in chapter 2. And we looked at the first Sabbath as we started thinking about these first things first, these first things that we find in chapter two. And as we introduced chapter two and the different number of verses which appear, we thought of the first Sabbath. God willing today, we're going to consider the first home, we'll consider the first covenant going forward and also the first marriage as well are all fine. in Genesis chapter 2, but we're focusing in on this first home today. We mentioned last week that in this second chapter we see a shift in focus and the camera turns and it focuses now on the story of humankind. It's been focused on God in chapter 1 and now humankind becomes the focal point of the story in this dramatic telling of the fall of man. This telling of the fall of man answers many questions that we have about why the world is the way it is today, why there's so much trouble, why there's war, why there's poverty, why there's difficult matters in this world, why evil exists in a world that was spoken into existence by a good God. And we find that God, who we have learnt in our series so far, who is a God of order, not chaos, we find that God sets out a number of creation ordinances that we ought to follow and obey, not just ourselves, but these are rules and laws that God set out for Adam and Eve here in chapter 2. And these laws came long before God set out the Ten Commandments. for his people. And as we looked at the first three verses of chapter two last week, we took time to consider that first Sabbath. And we traced this first creation ordinance right through scripture and saw how it translated into the lives of God's people, the Israelites. And we considered how the Sabbath was observed by the New Testament church on Sunday, the first day of the week, Resurrection Day, the day the Lord Jesus rose from the dead. And that is how we consider and we consider how they came together with God's people and how they met each Lord's day around the Lord's table. So here we are and we arrive today at the first home. As we turn to verse number four, we're arriving at the first home. Lewis Johnston said this, the book of Genesis is an account, an exploration of the mystery of man. and the modern crisis of our identity. The mystery of man in the modern crisis of identity. There's a modern crisis in identity, isn't there? Identity in this day and age has become an idol to humanity, hasn't it? People simply state what they think they are or what they want to be and expect society around them to accept that. But these verses before us today teach us about our true identity and how things are meant to be. These verses teach us all we need to know about humankind. John Calvin, who is a 17th century preacher, wrote this, true wisdom consists of this, a knowledge of God and a knowledge of ourselves. A knowledge of God and a knowledge of ourselves. So if you want to be truly wise and if you want to understand who you are and who God is, these verses, these are a great place to begin. An account of the story of where man all began. I want you to note a number of firsts, we've been noting a number of firsts in the chapter, in the second we're going to note a couple of things so we are from this first home. And as we consider this first home we need to look at the text before us, look at verse 4, look at the opening words here that we've read this morning. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. The NASV puts it this way, this is the account of the heavens and the earth. That phrase, these are the generations, or this is the account, is a very important phrase when you're studying the book of Genesis, and we are. So let me share this with you. The word used here for these are the generations, or this is the account, is the Hebrew word toldot. T-O-L-E-D-O-T. Tolda. It could be translated, this is the history of. And this little phrase serves as a phrase that will come up time and time again through the book of Genesis. These are the generations. These are the generations. And normally it will be filled with a long list of names and families and relations. And long before there were ever chapter divisions, these were repeated phrases that God used and inspired and placed in the text that allowed people to know that we're moving to a different part of the story. And Genesis chapter 2 and verse 4 marks that move. We move from talking about creation at large, narrowing down to the story of humanity specifically. but also in this translation in chapter 2 verse 4 we're able to begin a new story that will continue all the way through to the end of chapter 4. Chapter 1 through to chapter 2 verse 3 has been talking about God who created a wonderful world and now we arrive in Genesis 2 verse 4 and we learn of the creation of humankind and the fall of humankind. By the end of chapter 4 humanity has fallen and turned against God, and we'll be thinking about that in later weeks. We think in these chapters how God made something amazing, how God made something good, and because of Adam, because of humanity, it devolved into chaos. And we're going to see over the next number of weeks the entrance of sin into the world. We're going to see in Genesis chapter 4 just what a mess Adam made of this world. And something else that we must note about verse 4 before we move on. You'll notice that the name Yahweh, Lord, you'll see it in capital letters. In verse 4 it says, these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord, and you'll see it in capital letters in your Bible, the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Now, it's not by itself that word Lord, it's Lord God. Really it's a double-barreled name, Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. It's put together deliberately. And through this section it will continue. You will see it in verse 4 and verse 5. You will see this double-barreled name in verse 7 and verse 8 and verse 9 and verse 15 and verse 16. In fact, through chapters 2 and 3, that double-barreled name will appear 20 times. And now, let me give you a little bit of perspective. In the first five books of the Bible, this double-barreled name will only appear one other time. Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. So there's a stress here in chapters 2 and chapters 3 of Genesis about the person of God. You need to understand that the God of creation, the God who designed man and woman, is the God who is transcendent above all things, all worship the King, all glory is above. He's transcendent above all things and yet He is extremely personal. The Yahweh Elohim, the Lord God, is the one who Scripture reveals in this particular chapter. We've learned about Elohim. Remember when we were considering verse 1 of Genesis chapter 1? As we just opened the front door of Scripture and stepped in, we were introduced to the Almighty God, the One above all things, which is what that word Elohim means, God. Almighty, well all of a sudden we're introduced to a personal God in chapter 2, Yahweh Elohim. You know when you think of the world, Moses of course was the one who penned these words under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. And when you think of the world that Moses was writing in, it's interesting that he should use Lord God. In the ancient world they had lots and lots of different false gods, gods of their imagination. But those gods were one of two things. They were either cold, removed and remote. They never engaged with people. People were simply slaves to do their bidding. Or you have the other extreme. gods who were messy, carnal, nasty creatures that were involved with the people but exploited them in many different levels immorally. And both distorted false gods of the ancient world, they were broken. And the God revealed here, the Lord God, the Yahweh Elohim of chapter 2 and chapter 3 stands in contrast to all those ancient systems, for he is the one, number one, who's fully in control, and he is the one who speaks, and the world comes into being, and yet at the exact same time, he is the one who handcrafts the man, and breathes life into his nostrils, he's the one who is intimately involved in the process, and creates the man and the woman in his image. And if you're trusting Christ today, we have a Lord God, we have a Yahweh Elohim, you have One who you can approach in prayer, who is able to do to the uttermost all that He desires. We can pray to the One who is in control, and yet when we come to pray to Him, we come and we pray and we say, Our Father, who art in heaven, The One who sits on the highest of thrones is the One we can approach and call our Father. He's both transcendent and wonderfully personal. We're able to sing of Him immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible, head from our eyes. And in the very next song that we sing, we can be singing how deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that he should give his only Son to make it rich, his treasure. This isn't the God who comes from the figment of human imagination. This is the God who spoke all things into existence, who is sovereign and in control. yet gloriously personal with his people. What a lovely thought. What a lovely thought to know today that the God who's on the throne in heaven is already in the service. As his children, as Bill opened this meeting in prayer, we stepped into that throne room of heaven. and the personal God we approached and asked for his help, that he would speak to us in this meeting. It's a lovely thought, the Lord God. Now look at me with verse five here, it says, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to tell the ground. In verse 5 we see the plants and all creation is there but they're untended Man's home has been made ready. An untended creation awaits the cultivation that mankind will bring to it. And as man explores the earth, eventually this will manifest itself in computers that we have today and the discovery of DNA and all the wonders of the modern world that man and his creativity has brought into existence. But in the garden, it all started with things like peaches and all these plants that needed care for. And that was the responsibility that was given to man in this first home to care for this creation. Look at verse 15, Adam's responsibility at the end was to dress it and to keep it. And today we still have been given a God-given duty to care for God's creation. Why do you think our government are so concerned about looking after the environment or this earth, our home? Well, because it's a creation ordinance. It's been ingrained into the heart of man. And whether men acknowledge it or not, the desire to look after this planet and the desire to look after our home, Earth, is because God has ingrained it into our DNA. You see we're learning about the origin of man. Man is not just some animalistic creature looking for something to survive or to put a sphere through something so that it can eat. Man has been given this extraordinary responsibility by God, even commands that he will cultivate and subdue the earth and eventually he'll pull oil out of it and minerals out of it and he'll build a spaceship to explore it and he'll categorize all the creatures that live in the jungles, and he'll map it out, and he'll discover it, and he'll gain greater knowledge generation by generation. But all of that is because God commanded us to do so. It's ingrained into us. It's a creation ordinance. But here in verse 5 and 6, it tells us at this stage there was no one to look after this home. In the verse 5, there wasn't even a man to till the ground. So even everything has been created and God has created a home fit for man to live in with everything that he might need. And then in verse 7, 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. I believe that what I'm going to share with you now, with the help of God, will be of a benefit to you in understanding who you are and why we were made. I just want you to know two things as we bring our service to its close, this part of our service to its close. I want you to see first of all this, that man is material. Man is material. Look at the start of verse 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground. The Lord took dust, took soil, took earth. Now that verb formed, he formed, the Lord God formed man. It fosters in mind the idea of a potter working with the clay. And there's the idea of a handcrafted work going on here. There's something extra. It's not just spoken the way the rest of creation has been and everything happens. This is something where careful attention is put into it. Every detail is noted. Everything is thoughtfully shaped with great care and great detail. This is a distinct involvement. that's being stressed here in verse 7. It appears that God made a clay model of our form and then he breathed life into it. Now some Bibles have a footnote, you might have this footnote in your copy of the scriptures and it tells us the Hebrew word for man is Adam. And it sounds like, and may be related to the Hebrew word for ground, which is Adama. Now of course, it's also the name that God gave man, Adam. But it all appears to be intrinsically linked, that we are creatures of the earth. I've read, and of course I'm not qualified in this area, but I've read that humankind and the earth essentially have the same ingredients. The same essential elements are found in the body of men as is found in the soil. Nitrogen, oxygen, calcium and the list goes on. So this is part of man's makeup that previously existed. The earth was created by the Lord and then he takes that dust and he makes our physical material for him. Now what do you think of when you think of dust? strikes us as something very common and very ordinary. It's not nothing, but it's next to nothing. And this is what God took as the fundamental material of what he was going to meet mankind with. We find dust everywhere. It's on the ground. I wouldn't dare say that it's on some of your surfaces in your home. But dust, it's common. It's ordinary. It's almost nothing. It communicates to us, even as a metaphor, though this is more than a metaphor, it speaks to us of weakness and frailty. Turn with me to chapter 3 for a second, Genesis chapter 3, and the verse 19. We don't want to run ahead of ourselves as we look at this, we'll look at this verse at a later date, but I want you to look at Genesis chapter 3. And verse 19, you'll see this verse after the fall, after mankind falls headlong through temptation into sin, the consequence, the curse that we read of in chapter 19, listen to it. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust, there's our word, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. You wouldn't feel very high and mighty about yourself after reading that, would you? You're just dust. Anyone here thinking much of themselves, anyone feeling proud or feeling like they're above people, I've got news for you. You're dust. And to dust you shall return. What a lesson on humility. Psalm 103 in verse 13 tells us this, As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. For he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust. God remembers that you are dust. Can I ask you a question? Do you ever forget what God remembers? God remembers your dust? God remembers your frail, God remembers your weak, God remembers that you are material, He knows your shortcomings, He knows your abilities and your lack of them. I wonder do you or do you think more of yourself than you should? We would do well sometimes to remember what the Lord Jesus said in John 15, for without me ye can do nothing. And maybe today in your life situation, you do feel free and you feel inadequate. Maybe you even feel useless. Well, remember God is a good God. He's a merciful God. He's compassionate and he remembers how free we are. He knows our freedom, says the psalmist in Psalm 103. And if you're struggling today, I want you to listen carefully to what I'm about to say. You see, dust also speaks positively of great potential. Because you see dust, though it might seem next to nothing, when it's in the hands of an omnipotent God, it has great potential. Brian reminded us of this lovely thought last Wednesday at the Bible study. Little is much when God is in it. Well, this is no exception here, because as God takes this clay, he makes from this dust something that appears to be weak in itself, just like we are, it's strong in him. And that's why we must seek to live for God and live in his will, because that's where we are best. Dear friends, you know, as we think of Adam who fell, maybe you're here today, You don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. You were created for a purpose. And it was to serve God. And just like Adam and Eve, one of us, we have fallen into sin. We've broken God's law. And in our current state, we're on our way to a lost eternity. The second part of the Bible, the New Testament, speaks about another Adam who came. A perfect Adam. A new and better Adam. His name was the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn't sin. And yet He went and took the punishment for sin at the cross for you, so that you can go free. And that if you were to bow the knee and repent of sin today and place your trust in Him, well, dear friend, let me tell you, one day you'll know that you'll go to be with this Almighty God who cares personally for you. I wonder, are you trusting in him today? He knows our frame, and he remembers your dust, and without him you're nothing. What a great spiritual lesson is found here. We need to remember, all of us, who we really are, and how much we need the Lord. He is the potter, we are the clay. Man is material, but I want you to see also that man is spiritual. So yes, we learn something about humanity here, But that's only half the half-truth, because the rest of it is this, that we're not formed out of circumstances, but we're formed by God himself, and he doesn't just leave us as dust or as clay. Look at what happens in the composition of man. We could ask the question, What is man or who is man? And the answer is man is dust. But second, we could ask, what else is man? Well, let's go back to verse 7. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground. So there's the first part, we're material. And here's the spiritual part. And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And man became a living soul. There's a verb here, we're formed. and then we're breathed in. That's a very powerful expression. You see, God has made man not just to be some product of the earth, but by breathing the breath of God into him, he makes him a spiritual being that can have relationship with him. This is a way of expressing where our breath enters and how God has animated us with his spirit, with his breath. Kidner explains it like this, there is such intimacy here, breathed is warmly personal with the face to face intimacy of a kiss and the significance that this is an act of giving as well as making. God gives us the breath of life, that word breathed is literally to puff, to blow. It's a forceful breath. It's used in Isaiah 54 and verse 16 when speaking about trying to rekindle a fire, you know, blowing on some smoldering coal to try and reignite them. God breathed forcefully into man. It's similar to the vision that Ezekiel had of the dry bones being brought to life by the breath of the Spirit of God. And that's what happens here in the creation of man. The breath of life shows that we are both material and immaterial, that we're both physical and we're supernatural. There's part of us that will live after this life, that we have something in us that is God-like. In chapter 1 verse 27 it's called the likeness and image of God. Our creativity, our will, our understanding, our ability to have a relationship with God. All of that is part of the image of God in us. But the Spirit, the breath of God that blows into man gives us dignity, gives us purpose. What is your purpose dear friend? What is your purpose? It's to worship God. It's to come with his people in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and to worship him. That's the way it was meant at the start. Because God has placed his spirit within us. You see the spirit of man is a gift from God. And a day will come when you will only exist on that spiritual level and you will stand in the presence of God. And it's because of this origin story. It's because God breathed into the first man and he became a living being. And this teaches us something about who we are and what we ought to think of ourselves. We could think of Psalm 8 right in the middle of the Bible. Psalm 8 says this, O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. The psalmist goes on to contemplate how great God is. Here's what he says in verse 3, how great is God. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is mine? that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man that thou visitest him. For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! How great is God! We'll take a look at man in all his dignity, and intelligence, and splendor, and dominion, and rulership, and physicality, and spirituality, and the breath of God animating him, and the dust of the earth God made being used to form him. Look at this crown of creation man. What a scene is set before us in these words in verse 7. What a phrase we find at the end of verse 7. A man became a living soul. made in the image and likeness of God, a creature of extraordinary destiny, so fundamentally different than a rat and a dog, able to apprehend and understand and acknowledge and relate, able to live and cultivate the world that God particularly and specifically made for our enjoyment, our creativity, our discovery and our usefulness. You know, if you have a man-centered worldview, where only the answers of life come from the mind of a man, human philosophy, scientific answers that man comes up with, you are so impoverished. You just don't have it, you just don't get it. Because you don't know who you are. The Bible says you're unique in a special work of God. He formed you, and he made you like him. You're unique as an image of God and unique in being given this responsibility and command to fill the earth and subdue it. But there's more too. The story is literally just setting up the story for what's going to happen next. Because God puts this man, and we see it in verse 15. We see it in these verses that follow as well. God places this man. into the garden, end of verse 8, and there he put the man whom he had formed, he put him into the garden of Eden, verse 15, and the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And God puts Adam into this garden and he walks in fellowship with this man and there's this covenantal relationship with man and he tells him, you follow me and you obey me and I'll bless you. And because of our father Adam and the rebellious choice that he made to turn against God and to follow his own way, rather than to understand and to listen to what God commanded, Adam would plunge the entire human race into sin. And that's why this world is the way it is. Adam made a moral choice. He turned away from God. That's why you and I are the way we are. Sinners by nature, sinners by choice. Born into this world not as perfect babies at all, but sinful and worse. Because as we live in this world, we follow our own sinful appetites and desires. You know, sometimes I think as Christians who love the Word of God and understand the significance of Genesis 3, we will get there. I think sometimes we react too strong and we miss the fact that before you get to the sin in Genesis chapter 3, we have Genesis chapter 2, which declares to us that this world, that you and I as human beings, we have dignity and we're special. We've been made with a unique purpose, made by God and to be known by God and to have a relationship with him. Do you have a relationship with God? You know, I ask you this question often. And I'm talking to God's people here. Do you have an up-to-date testimony? Did you speak with God this morning? Has God been speaking to you throughout the week? You were made to have a relationship with God. And you know, when you're asked to give your testimony, so often we go back to that day, and rightly so. that day that we realized we were sinners and we repented of our sin and we came to the cross and we pleaded for forgiveness from the Lord and that is your testimony. But can I ask you about this week's testimony? How's your fellowship with God? The relationship hasn't changed. We were made to serve and God has given us all that we have. This earth is our home. You know, as I drove in this morning, I saw the beautiful autumn leaves and all the colors and the fields and all the beauty that God has given us to enjoy. You see the farmers tilling the ground. You see all these things and we've, in recent weeks, thought about the harvest. How good and gracious God is and the responsibilities he's given to us. But can I ask you today, dear Christian, in humility, you're dust, and to dust you'll return. Are you seeking to live for God each day? Are you relying on God each day? We're dust, clay. It's your testimony each day. Have thy known way, Lord. Have thy known way. Thou art the potter. I am the clay. mold me and make me after thy will while I am yielded forever and still.