Thank you for that, ladies. I love the hymn that we just sang. I love to tell the story. And I really like the chorus, "'Twill be my theme and glory, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love." And then the verse that I like is, I love to tell the story, "'For they that know it best, seemed to hunger and thirst to hear it like the rest. It reminded me of what Saddaq told me. When Saddaq was 13 years old, he memorized the Quran. I think there's, if I'm not mistaken, there's 1,400 chapters in the Quran. Anyway, that might be a little off, but he memorized it at 13. He seems to have a photographic memory that he tells me that whatever he reads, he remembers, or as he put it, when I read it, I can't forget it. And he said, if I read two times, then I have it. Well, that's a photographic memory. What a blessing to have such a memory. And so as he came to Christ, he had such a hunger to know the Bible. And so he told me that he memorized the Old and New Testament. I think he started with the Old Testament first, maybe, or maybe it was the other way around. But here's what he told me. He said, when I read the Quran, I felt nothing, just words. But when I read the scripture, I felt life. And so I was thinking about that in the song, you know, this wonderful. You know, each time you tell it, it's more wonderfully sweet. And in all of eternity, we shall be speaking and never tire of this wonderful It's like reading a story over and over again. And every time you read it, it's just more wonderful. It's just like, kind of like as you read the scripture, of course, and Pilgrim's Progress, I'm just, I'm always thrilled to read Pilgrim's Progress. And I read early on some years ago in the 80s, 1980s, I read, I started reading, Francis Schaeffer. And then I found out that Francis Schaeffer's teacher was Cornelius Van Thiel. And so I started reading Van Thiel and I put Schaeffer down for many years, for decades. But a few years ago, I just, something triggered my memory and I wanted to find something. And so I picked his book up again. And I began to read. I was introduced to the writings of Francis Schaeffer. In fact, I was so moved by him, and he was such a wonderful influence in my life, that I wanted to name Stewart, I wanted to name Francis. And Paula Woods said, no, no, no, we're not naming him Francis. So anyway, so we didn't. But I picked up the three books that introduced me to Francis Schaeffer's thinking, and really a precursor to Cornelius Van Til's thinking, was Escape from Reason, The God Who is There, and the third one was He is There and He's Not Silent. So I remembered reading again and how Magnificent it was, and I thought to myself, why did I quit reading him? So that's the kind of thing we're talking about. Just the sweetness, and the more you read it, you don't tire of it. Just like the scripture, the more you read the scripture, the more you see in it. So thank you for that hymn, Jamie. I guess you picked it out, and so I appreciate that. Well, we are looking at the creation of man. I kind of gave you a general introduction of all of that as we read the scripture. But we'll go back and let's read beginning at verse 26 in Genesis 1. Speaking of magnificent, I would encourage you to go back and read Genesis 1 through 10 again, because if you don't get Genesis, especially Genesis 1 through 3, If you don't get that right, you're going to miss everything else. It was Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that said that we are people from the end, we see the beginning from the end. And he wrote a commentary on Genesis 1, 2, and 3, and it was a good commentary. And so, but if we don't get that right, Nothing else can be right. So it's very important to get this right. And so in the 26th verse it says, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. And God blessed them and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, or literally seeding seed, which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree, yielding seed. To you it shall be for meat, or for food, and to every beast of the field, or of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I've given every green herb for meat. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was good in the evening and the morning. were the sixth day. Of course, if you follow the scripture, if you follow the text, if you don't twist the text, just simply follow the text, if you're not looking for some way to avoid the text, then you'll see that this was six days that the Lord did. And that shouldn't surely surprise any of us that know anything about the Lord. What is that to Him? He could have made everything in one moment in the first day. He decided to do it six days and then rested the seventh day. Now, a week is something that is just given to us by God. A day, well, we have a day because of what happens in the firmament. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. If we have a moon, The moon comes up, the moon goes down, and it's a day, the evening and the morning. And we have a year, because as they tell us, though I don't feel like we're moving, but as they tell us and scientists tell us, and I think it's the widely accepted view, that a month is a cycle of the moon, from the phases of the moon. That's a month, roughly 28 to 31 days. And then a year is where the earth goes around the sun. But a week is the creation of the Lord. And the reason the Lord created in six days and rested the seventh day is to give us a Sabbath. Indeed, Sabbath is uniquely Christian. Now in the dispensationalists and many of them that have pitted the Old Testament against the New, they would say, well, the Sabbath is no longer necessary. There's not the Sabbath day, the Sabbath that's passed. It was really just the rest of Christ when Christ came, the Sabbath passed. Well, there's a few problems with that. First of all, it has, I mean, we still have seven days. And we know that the Lord still in the New Testament marked days because Christ rose the third day. So indeed, he's marking days. And over and over in the narrative part of the New Testament, they came the first day of the week. Now, some of them, they worshiped every day. But on the first day of the week they came, they brought their offerings. And so we see Christ was raised on the first day of the week. The Holy Spirit was given on the first day of the week. And so we see that as the Christian Sabbath. And we do have our Sabbath rest. There's no question that the Sabbath is a picture of Christ, is a picture of the rest of Christ when we rest in Christ. However, It is that which we do every week to show to our children, to ourselves, to our community, to this world, that we are Christian. That on this day, we come to this house to worship our God. And if it were not necessary, to do some things. Now, the Lord surely allowed us and his people to do things on this day, but ultimately a day of rest from our labors. And we lived in a day when we didn't have to have 24-hour electricity or other processes that we have that takes a long time. I know that in the paper mill, when I was in West Monroe, they said if you shut down, if you shut down that meal for the day, for the Lord's Day or for the Christian Sabbath, that it would take you three days to get it back up. Well, anyway, so it's just, you would only, so you could only run it three days and it'd be very difficult to do that. So some of these processes have to continue And I think the Lord obviously gives some allowance for that. Cows have to be milked. Animals have to be fed. So, I mean, even if we're in an agrarian economy. But the church of Jesus Christ, from its beginning, did put this day, the Lord's Day, the Christian Sabbath. Aside for worship, six days thou shalt labor. Still, it's moral law. And second of all, we see that the Lord's Day is in the heart of the moral law. It is the fourth commandment, that is the Sabbath is the fourth commandment. Now, how can we say that we are under the 10 commandments? We don't say we're under the nine commandments. but that we're under the Ten Commandments, and just do away with this day. No, that's a faulty understanding of the scripture. And I can tell you this, that when a nation is a Christian nation, it celebrates this day. And so as much as we can, we will celebrate. As much as we can, we will hold. as much as we can, we will be here and we will deliberately be here. We won't do those things that is not necessary to be done. I mean, you know, in the sense of cutting your grass or washing your car or, you know, whatever, shopping at the grocery store. I mean, these things surely can be done on different days. And so we are, a Christian nation, as a Christian nation, we will celebrate this day. So six days, that's why he took six days, so he could rest the seventh day. God didn't rest because he needed to renew his energy. He rested That is, he ceased his labor, he ceased the creation, because we need the rest. And so on the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord. Now, in this article on the creation of man, there are a number of points here. I would think that there's seven points that we could look at. I'm not sure we're gonna get through the seven points tonight, but we'll start. Well, the first point is after God made all of the creatures. Now, Renahan says it's very clear that we should not overlook the word after. That means that God created as created man, as the summation of creation, and as the summit of creation. And so we should understand that it wasn't an afterthought. In fact, everything else that was created was created in light of the fact that he's going to create man in his image. Everything in the earth has been created so God could give man what we call the dominion mandate. You shall take dominion, you see, as we've read, over. So you're taking dominion over creation, over the living creation here. It quotes them over these animals that have been created. God gave us dominion. Pita, notwithstanding. They are made here to make man's life easier. And of course, he put him in a garden and to tend the garden. Man was not made for rest. Man was made for work. And in fact, we see this, that I hear many, many times people say, well, this man retired. He worked to retire. Well, I don't think that the idea of retirement comes out of the Bible. I think it comes out of, you know, some other human, you know, that we're going to retire. Now, you might switch jobs, but you're not going to retire. And I know people, they say that, well, he retired. He went home, sat down, and he died. A man is looking for something to do. I saw a commentary, or documentary, I should say, on Clint Eastwood, and he continues to work. And I think maybe it's his daughter or someone that said, he needs to continue to work, because if he doesn't work, He'll die, so he works. Well, that's right, that's a biblical concept. You continue to work. God has created us for work and gave us a mandate, a dominion mandate. Now, what's magnificent about that dominion mandate, that ultimately that dominion mandate is given in terms of the gospel and we are given a great commission, go ye therefore and disciple the nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you. So all of these things, you see, all of these things about work, all of these things about what we should be doing, unto the glory of God. Now, obviously we do some things unto the comfort of man, but it's all to the glory of God. God has given us all of this. He's given us our life. He's given us this world. He's given us this universe. And in fact, man has this desire to discover even more. Man has a desire to go deep in the ocean. Man has a desire to go high in the sky, to go around the world. There were people who got on ships, little things, little things, and sailed into a place that they had no idea where they were going. but they had that urge to do these things, and finally, man went all over the world. David Livingstone went to Zambia. Why in the world would a man leave England and go to Zambia? I mean, deep, dark Africa, the Zambezi River. In fact, they said that he wore out numbers of boots And I think if I'm not mistaken, I read the other day about David Livingston, that he actually developed and created a boot because they said that he walked across the continent of Africa more than once. So this idea, well, this mandate, I mean, what moved William Carey to go to India, you see? this image of God that he's put in us that gives us a desire and created us with a desire to reach out, that is to work. And now we form rocket ships and we're going. Now there's some people that believe that the landing on the moon was fake. I don't believe it was fake, but we went to the moon. and left some junk on the moon. I'll never forget the picture. First time we've ever seen Earth from this vantage point. You know, it was before 1969, because 1969, I think, is when they landed on the moon, so this was before 1969. And they came around, so they, you know, they had to practice, spent lots of money practicing getting to and around the moon. Well, the first thing, first time when they came around that moon, we saw the earth and it was blue and white. See, before that, we always colored it green and kind of dark, but after that, see, it came around and it was blue and white, the ocean and the clouds. And it was a magnificent sight, you see. And then you remember they were doing this, I think, if I'm not mistaken, it was Christmas Eve, and one of, and I wish I could remember his name, but one of the astronauts was reading the story of creation as they came around the moon. You think that could happen again? Well, man was made to work. but also to rest. So God made man in his image. He is the summation and the summit of it. And you'll notice that at the end, in verse 31, that he adds a word. So, and God saw it and it was good, day one, and it was good, day two, and it was good day three, and it was good day four, and it was good day five. But in day six, after he created man in his image, it was very good. Now that word in the Hebrew, very, it comes, it is, May, M-E, and then O-T-H. It could be D, but it probably should be T-H. And so it is maoth. Now this word maoth is translated in the King James Version, in the Old Testament, it is translated 137 times as very. And we see it here. It was very good. But 49 times it's translated greatly. So this could have been, it was greatly good. It was good to a great degree. And then 23 times, and this is an English, an old English, sore. I mean, so we read that right. And when the shepherds saw the angels, what were they? Soar amazed. Of course, that's the Greek, but in the Hebrew, soar. Soar means greatly. I mean, to a great degree. Sometime, 18 times exceeding. 12 times great. 11 times exceedingly. 10 times much. six times exceeding again with another Hebrew word and exceedingly with another Hebrew word and diligently. So it was diligently good. Sometimes this word is just translated good. It's good good. Might or mightily good. So we see that when God created man, it was more than good. It was exceedingly, to a great degree, good. In fact, we might could even say it was absolutely good. The second thing we see is that he created man, male and female. Now, of course, that could be, and like I said this morning, It could be anticipating the next chapter when it says it is not good that man should be alone. So we see that in Genesis chapter two. You'll remember the story that God brought all the animals before him. But before that, in verse 18, the Lord God, that's Jehovah Elohim, that the Lord God said, it is not good, right? So he made everything very good, but now he said, it is not good, the word there in Hebrews, tov, T-O-V, it is not good that man should be alone. Man was never created to be alone. I've read things about putting men in solitary confinement, which is cruel and unusual, by the way, because it doesn't take many, many hours before a man begins to be mentally harmed when they're in solitary confinement. We see that. Man should not be alone. It is not a good thing for him. So I will make him, now King James translates this, and help meet for him. Now, of course, that would, you know, if you translate it that way, obviously what you see here that, okay, we're going to give him a helper, the word meet means that is perfectly suited for him. And so that is, If you were to read this without knowing any Hebrew behind it, you would see that this is, you won't see that this is one word, you see. You know, it could be, I will make him a helper as before him. So the word is a helper. Some people say, well, that's a helpmate. Well, you know, okay, we're putting it in English, that's fine. But a helpmeet, a help, and one that is before. So the idea, one that is before him is a mirror image. All right, so it's like looking in a mirror. Your image is before you, you see. And, So it's not good that man should be alone. So he made him a helper that is his mirror image or his perfect opposite. And we see that later as we read the scripture and we read the relationship between man and woman, we find out that two become one flesh, that together they become one flesh in marriage. So what the woman, or maybe I should say, what the man likes, the woman has, what the woman likes, the man has, you see. So they come together. Men were created to have a helper, a wife. He that findeth a wife, the writer of Proverbs, he that findeth a wife findeth a good thing. We should be looking as men for a wife. We should be setting ourselves up to find a wife and surely a woman should be looking for a husband because we are not fulfilled apart from each other. It's only when we come together are we fulfilled. Now the greatest decision that any of us would ever make in this life is this decision of who will be our helper, our helpmeet. Extremely important. And yet, most people make this decision when they're furthers from God. We find that in the church, and this basically is held true no matter what year or what generation, that children stay in the church with their parents until they go to college. So somewhere around 18. That's when almost every child leaves the church. Then they come back to the church after they have children. So what's happened? Well, they found them a wife or a husband when they're furthers from the church. By and large, it's not everybody, but that's the flow. Deadly. No wonder the divorce rate. Do you know the divorce rate now is 50%? Well, actually, it's gotten a little better. The younger people have a tendency, my generation destroyed marriage. It wasn't a homosexual marriage that destroyed marriage. I can tell you who destroyed marriage, my generation destroyed marriage. Didn't stay together. I remember watching the Mary Tyler Moore show, and there was a woman on that show named Rhoda. Anyway, and she got married on the show, and the marriage vow said, and we shall, whatever, as long as our love shall live. Well, that might be, you know, Monday morning. I mean, when something just didn't go right. Your love may not be living very well that morning. You may get into a discussion. How absurd, how absurd is that? No, it's for life. One man, one woman for one life. Now, obviously there's providential circumstances that people die and get killed. And so therefore, there would be maybe a need to have a second wife. I do know that Stephen Campbell and Joyce, they both were married before. Joyce's husband died of cancer. Stephen's wife died of cancer. And they found each other. And so, Again, so some of those certain, but normally one man, one woman for one life. And that's what we pray for. That's what, when I married Paula, I didn't want it to be temporary. I want it to be lifelong. And that's what it'll be. I mean, we didn't have any control of that, but we have lived now. And if we both lived till September, it'll be 50 years. That's right. That's the way it should have been. That's the way we wanted it. And so, it is absolutely necessary to make this decision when you are well informed. There can be, now, you know, there's no absolute decisions I mean, in our life without absolute doubt because there are things, because people are not, people lie. People put up false fronts. People change for whatever reasons. But as much as life within you, and of course, in the scripture, we're taught these things because we're in a fallen world. But as much as life within you, you must, Indeed. And it must be a very hard, it should be a very hard thing to get a divorce. It should be very hard. It should only happen as the Lord gives allowances for it to happen and nothing else. I remember as a younger man, you would hear people say, well, we're gonna get divorced because it's for the children. The children shouldn't live in a relationship that's, you know, in a family that's tense between their mother and father. Well, that was blown out of the water by a little statistical research. It's better for children to be in the home with the husband and wife are kind of, you know, having difficulty with each other than to destroy the home. You know, I have grandchildren. They don't have a home. Their father has a home. Their mother has a home. And they live out of a suitcase. It's not right. And let me tell you, I've lived long enough with this relationship. They were little. But I've lived long enough to see the devastating effect upon their lives. Now, they're not homeless, and they're not in need of things. But they don't know what it means to live in a normative, biblically ordered family. I mean, they see ours. They see their cousins. but they've not experienced it. And it's a shame. It is a shame. Well, it's not good. So I'm going to make him help me. And out of the ground, the Lord formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all the cattle. He gave, or he called all the cattle. And to the fowl of the air, obviously Adam was a genius. Obviously he was a linguistic genius. He knew language, whatever language this might've been. It might've been Hebrew, but he knew language and he had a broad vocabulary that he would be able to name these animals. And to every beast of the field, but for Adam, there was not found a helpmeet for him. So God brought these before him to show him that for every male there was a female, but that none of these females were sufficient or suitable to him. So he made this mirror image, this helpmeet for him, this one who is before him, you see. Not one of them could be that. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. And he slept. Anesthesia. And he took one of his ribs. So he took genetic material from Adam. Why a rib? Well, I don't guess we really know because the text really doesn't tell us, but Matthew Henry had great insight into this and I often quote him in Weddings. Matthew Henry says, he took him not from a bone in the foot to be trampled on by him, nor did he make her from a bone out of the head to be Lord over him, but from his side to be near him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved of him. What a beautiful sentiment. I think that may be right. And he closed up the flesh instead thereof. He healed him. No one heals us. They give us medicine. They sew us up. They set the bone. They take out certain issues and problems and tissue, but they can't heal you. But God did. He closed up the flesh, completely healed the flesh. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman with his own hands, mysterious, and brought her unto the man. And Adam, the man, said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman. So she's going to be called Isha. A man is Ish. He's Adam, which is mankind and the first name of the first man or the name of the first man. But now he goes to the lesser word. And ishah, when Hebrew puts an a-h on the end, it's female. And so woman, basically the English word means a wound that is one who has a wound, man, woman. Now there are many, many feminists that despise that. and they don't like, but it really doesn't matter. This is what happens, you see. And she is from man. So the genetic material to make a woman was taken, God didn't create that genetic material. He took genetic material from Adam that she would be from him. So, again, the Apostle Paul says that woman was taken from man, but now man comes from woman, you see. She shall be called Ishah because she was taken out of Ish. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife And they shall be one flesh. He shall cleave unto his woman, his wife. She's his wife because she is his woman. She is the one that God has given to him. And they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and there was no shame in it. Shame only comes from sin, you see. No shame. Well, so we see that when the confession says or when the scripture says he made, he created them male and female, it could be talking, could be anticipating that he's going to make a woman, a female, male and female. man and woman. It's the same, just a different root word here. Now, but it also can mean, and I think we see it clearly in the text, that in man is when he made man, he anticipated making woman from man. So what we have And we discovered that in genetic testing, when we discovered genetics, that there are, of the 46 chromosomes, there are two sex chromosomes in every person. There is an, and of course, you know, God didn't put this, but this is scientifically, we decided, you know, to write it this way. So there's an X chromosome and a Y chromosome in the man. When God took the rib, he only used the X chromosome, not the Y. And so the woman is an XX. That's what makes her a woman. I am not a biologist. I am a preacher. But I can read and I know what a woman is. A woman is a human being descended from Adam and Eve that has two X chromosomes. Now I do realize that we're in a fallen world and sometimes things don't go right. But the two X chromosomes makes a person a woman. An XY chromosome makes a person a man. From the very first cell, the zygote, the genetic material is there. When God made Adam, He made him male and female, anticipating that he would take a rib, make him a help meat, and bring her to me. So we believe that. In his providence, and we'll talk about providence as soon as we finish this chapter, that in his providence, he brings the woman to the man, the man, to the woman, the special creation that we are. Let's pray.