This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. Let's turn to Genesis chapter 2. I'm going to read verses 4 through 7. 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. And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. This is the word of the Lord. The six days of creation were completed. And as we saw last week, As God completed those six days of labor, He rested on the seventh, not, of course, because He was fatigued or exhausted, but because His work was done, His work of creation was done. And so in giving us the labor and then rest pattern, He showed us, in a sense, the way in which we too should live. He blessed that day, He sanctified it, and now it is a gift to us. And so we have the seven days, the first week of creation utterly complete. Now, what is going to happen is that Moses is going to move from that panoramic view of the seven days now to a more focused view of Adam and Eve in the garden. Many scholars, not those that are necessarily very conservative, have often looked at 1.1 through 2.3 as a first creation account and then 2.4 through the end of the chapter somehow some sort of second creation account. That would be a profound misreading of the text. What's happening in chapter 2 verse 4, really through the end of chapter 4, is that Moses is now focusing in on what happened on day 6. So some of you have these little phones. I have one now too, thanks to a brother who was tired of seeing me text. What do they call that when you push the same button like five or six times to get to the letter that you want? And so somebody felt sorry for me and bought me a, what kind of phone is it? iPhone, right. So you can take pictures with this thing, good pictures. And here's one of the fascinating features. You can take a picture, believe it or not, tap the picture and it fills the screen. Then, then you can actually take your fingers and like spread the picture and make it bigger. Did you know this? Okay. This is true, it's true. I'll show you at lunch if you don't believe me, it's fascinating. So, what Moses is doing is, he took a picture, his first seven days, right? Then you got day six. And Moses says, what we're going to do is we're going to expand day six, make day six bigger. Because what happens on day six is God creates man as male and female in his image. And so as the seven days have been laid out in panoramic fashion, that sixth day now comes right into view, so Moses is going to focus on the crown of creation, which is none other than Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve now become central to the plot. Whereas the first seven days was a description, as it were, of God's creative work. Now, as you think of it this way, the plot is now going to thicken. God has set the stage and Adam and Eve are now the central figures, of course, next to Yahweh himself. So this next section, which begins in chapter 2, verse 4, really goes through verse 25. What's happening is that the stage is being set for the greatest tragedy of all time. So in one sense, we've had the greatest blessing of all time, God making man in his image as male and female, blessing them, calling them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, exercise dominion over, marvelous blessing. That blessing now sets the stage for one of the most profound tragedies, in fact, the most profound tragedy in all of human history. So Bruce Waltke likens these sections in Genesis to acts in a play. And Act 1 ends up being chapter 2, verses 4 through 25. He calls that humanity on probation. Act two will be the fall and its consequences, chapter three, verses one through 24. And then act three will be the escalation of sin in the human race, particularly in the line of Cain, chapter four, verses one through 24. Now, each of these acts, by the way, will conclude with a poem. It's really quite a fascinating structure. And each of the poems summarize the section, but each of the poems point to, ultimately, Jesus. This is the beginning of the drama of redemption. This is the beginning, truly, of the greatest story ever told. So, verse four, notice, this is the account of the heavens and the earth. You remember in one of our introductory sermons, I told you that the book of Genesis was structured around 10, okay, remember this, toledotes, you remember? Remember toledote? Toledote, it's a Hebrew word and it means generations or history or account And it's used 10 times in the book, and it's 10 markers in a sense. So typically we translate it, these are the generations of, or this is the history of. So just let me run through these very quickly. In 5.1 we have, these are the generations, or literally the total dot of Adam. 6, 9, the generations of Noah. 10, 1, these are the generations of the sons of Noah. 11, 10, these are the generations of Shem. 10, 27, these are the generations of Terah. 25, 12, these are the generations of Ishmael. 25, 19, these are the generations of Isaac. 36, 1 and 9, these are the generations of Esau. And then the last one, 37, 2, these are the generations of Jacob. Now, did you hear those? This first one is different. And it is just straightforwardly different. What's different about it? There's no name. All the other toledotes, that nine out of 10, the generation of X. and a person is there. Here, you have something that is very, very different. Now, what happens is that each one of these, these are the generations of each one of these Toledotes, is that it introduces a new unit or a new section. The first one is absolutely unique because it's not focusing on a person as it were, it's focusing on creation itself. And so rather than an actual genealogy of a person, it's introducing to us the aftermath or outcome of creation. So if I gave you a genealogy, all right, and you got the person up front, up at the top, right? The main person, okay? And so, then you go down and so these are the generations of what's happening is that the genealogy is telling you, as it were, the aftermath of this person. What's happening in Genesis 2-4 is God is saying, I'm going to show you the aftermath or the outcome of my creative work. And so this is the account of the history of, or if you prefer more literally, the generations of the heavens and the earth. And so this very first holodote shows us what becomes of God's universe as it encounters the human race. And we'll move from blessing to curse. In fact, one of the most devastating things that's ever happened to this planet is that it had inhabitants called men and women. So Alan Ross says, so beginning with 2.4, we have one of the most important sections in the book. It makes painfully obvious the need for the restoration of the blessing. Now, notice another detail. 4a says, this is the account of the heavens and the earth. And notice the middle part, when they were created in the day that God, the Lord God made, and notice the difference here. You notice the difference? It's now earth and heaven. It's now earth and heaven. Now, what happens is in verse four, you have God created the heavens and the earth, and then you have it inverted, the earth and the heavens. And what's happening is there's a shift in order. So remember 1.1, in the beginning God created what? The heavens and the earth. And then 2.4a, God created the heavens and the earth. Now there's an inversion. The earth and the heaven, there's a shift in order. And the shift in order actually is nothing less now than a shift in perspective. So now what God is going to do is God is going to, like a laser, focus in, not simply on the creation of the cosmos, but what is happening, as it were, at the center of the cosmos, which is that which is happening on planet Earth, or even more specifically, that which is happening in the land. That becomes the focus. You ever see that Lou Giglio DVD, How Great is Our God, is that what it's called? You know, and he puts the size of the earth in relative comparison to the other planets and the sun and the moon and all that. And what's striking about that, well, it's like how small the earth is compared to other entities in our solar system, right? It was kind of small. Now, I don't think we're the smallest, right? Lovelock is the smallest planet. We're not the smallest, but we're small. And all of a sudden, you might get a feeling of insignificance. Did you ever feel that watching how big our planet is, but then how small it is in comparison to other stuff out there? What matters is not the perspective of the Hubble telescope. What matters is the perspective of the creator. And what the creator says is what's happening on this planet is ultimately what is most important. So, notice one more thing in verse four. Notice God's name, Lord God. It's the first time God's divine name, Yahweh, is used in connection with Elohim. We're gonna come back to that, but just what you're gonna find out is from 2.4 on is that this combination of Yahweh, Elohim, is used repeatedly throughout this section. There's a reason why. We'll come back to it. Now that brings us to verses five and six, and sometimes there are things that you run into the Bible, you just don't really know exactly what to do. So I know that all the creation research people know what this verse means, and I know all the framework hypothesis people know what these two verses mean. I'm not exactly sure what it means. So what we have in verse five is a declaration of the planet, where there was no shrub of the field that was in the earth or plant of the field that had yet sprouted. And the reason it says is because Yahweh Elohim had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground, all right? So there are different opinions as to what's happening in verse five. And I'm not gonna be exhaustive about this because I really, I can't. Some say that what is happening is that 1-1 and 2-4 correspond to each other. Those are parallel statements. And then 1-2, remember that the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep. and that that corresponds to what's happening in 2, 5, and 6. Now, I don't know if that's true or not. Sounds good, but I don't know. Other people say that what's in view in 2, 5, and 6 is possibly related simply to chapter 1, verses 9 and 10, and the creation of dry land. So I don't exactly, I'm sure that there'll be like five or six of you that will come up afterwards and totally set me straight with five different opinions. But let me just say that what is clear is that what Moses is describing for us, and this is the important part, what Moses is describing for us is the condition of the land before the creation of man. That's the important thing. Now, he says, first of all, no shrub or no plant because one, no rain, and two, no man to cultivate the ground. One of the great things about looking at the Hebrew text is you pick up these wonderful plays on words. There was no Adam to cultivate the Adama. It's really wonderful. If you want to get right down to it, what Moses is saying is, there was no dirt person to cultivate the dirt. Okay? Now, this, by the way, is a little picture that's going to anticipate the judgment that's going to come in chapter 3. In fact, We have these little snapshots in this section that are anticipatory of coming judgment. Now we see that God is going to be preparing the earth in order to bring forth the shrubs and the plants and so forth to be cultivated. And then what's going to happen is in the curse, what's going to happen is that man's challenge now is going to be trying to exercise dominion over the ground to make it do what it did in the original creation without basically much effort at all. Notice also the little anticipation there, for it had not yet rained. That too will be anticipatory of coming judgment in chapter seven and verse four, when God actually will flood the earth. Now, the NAS says something interesting in verse six, it says, So before there was rain and before there was a man to cultivate, there was a mist that used to arise and water the surface of the ground. Now, New American Standard says mist, ESV says mist. Listen to these other translations. Springs would well up from the earth and water the ground. Water would come out of the ground. Streams came up from the earth. That's the NIV. Now, what really is probably in view here is not sort of like a morning dew that waters the earth, but rather what was probably in view is what one commentator calls subterranean source of water that blanketed the ground. It's like flood irrigation. So here's the big question, was the ground actually dry and so minimally watered by mist or was the ground absolutely inundated with water? Was the absence of plant life the result of the absence of water or too much water? These are the issues that are raised in chapter 2 verses 5 and 6. And here's my answer. I thought long, hard, and deep about this. I don't know. I don't. I don't. I don't know. I'm sure Henry Morris knew, and I'm sure Meredith Klein knew, and I'm sure that everybody in between knew, but I'm not exactly sure. And here's the other part of that. it doesn't affect the importance of what's being stated here. Because what's being stated here is that the earth before man came was in an uncultivated state. Whether that corresponds to the formlessness and void of 1-2, whether it corresponds simply to the emergence of dry land in 1-9-10, or whether something else is at play, whether it was mist that just kind of kept everything minimally watered, or whether it was an inundation of springs that came up from subterranean wells, I don't know. But that's the setting for what happens in verse 7, which is really the remarkable thing. I know some of you love water rights issues. Dave is like the water rights expert. So stuff like this is important to people like that, all right? I find what happens in verses five and six of relatively less importance than what happens in verse seven. And what happens in verse seven is absolutely unambiguous and very straightforward. What happens in verse 7 is simply an expansion of what has already been stated in chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. And that is Yahweh Elohim formed man from the dust of the ground. Now notice again, this is where we're going to spend a little more time on God's name. Yahweh Elohim. From 1.1 through 2.3, we have seen the consistent use of God's name Elohim, which is we translate in our English Bibles in the very simple vanilla word God. But the word itself is absolutely appropriate for the majestic portrayal, Ken Matthew says, of the majestic portrayal of God as creator of the universe since it properly indicates omnipotent deity. So you hear Elohim, and that is the God who is majestic, the God who is transcendent, the God who is omnipotent, the God who actually brought all of this into existence by the pure, simple, spoken word that proceeded from his mouth. That's Elohim. But here, Moses doesn't just use Elohim, he also uses the divine name Yahweh. If you want to know what God's actual divine name is, it's Yahweh. Elohim is somewhat of a title, like Adonai is a title. Yahweh is God's divine name, and that divine name Yahweh, which in the Hebrew text is simply represented by four consonants. Sometimes you'll hear a reference to the Tetragrammaton, that's what it is, it's the four consonants that compose the divine name. Here, chapter 2, verse 7, we have Yahweh Elohim. Now, Yahweh is not only God's divine name, but it is the name which is associated with His relationship with His people. It is the name that actually reflects His covenant-keeping power and presence with his people. It is the name that actually Elohim is transcendent. Elohim is exalted, Yahweh is intimate, it's personal, it's near, it's close, it's imminent, all right? And so when these two words come together, What's happening in the biblical text is that the writer is tipping us off that Yahweh Elohim is certainly Lord of His creation. He is certainly the Lord who made man in His image as male and female, but He is also not just some transcendent Lord and deity over His creation, He is actually also personal Lord over His people. Because the name Yahweh, which is in a sense formally introduced or revealed in Exodus chapter 3, all right, has the idea of the one who was, the one who is, and the one who is to come. the one who has always been, the one who is right now present, and the one who will always be. It is a name that actually underscores the self-sufficiency of God's person and the promise of his presence with his people. In other words, when the Israelites became associated or became acquainted with the name Yahweh, it was Yahweh is the God who has drawn near to us, who has entered into covenant with us, is personally present with us, and who blesses us and keeps us because we are His. So right out of the gates in chapter two of Genesis, we have the combination of Yahweh Elohim. And it is a reminder to the people of Israel because they would have really been the first recipients as Moses is writing the Pentateuch, they would have been the first recipients of these first five books. And so as they actually hear Moses, as it were, tell the story as they hear what Moses is writing under divine inspiration. What they are doing is they're going to make a connection. Yahweh is the personal covenant God of Israel. He's our God. We're in relationship with him. And then they're supposed to connect the dot. And they're supposed to say, but that's how God always has been. even from the very beginning, a personal covenant-making, covenant-keeping God who is intimate with his people. So we have Yahweh, Elohim, and then the next word is the word formed, formed. This is not the word that's been, there have been two primary words used in chapter one. And that is, one is sort of a generic word, asad, to do or to make, and then bara is more of a technical term that's really used about God's creative abilities and powers. Neither of those words are used here. The word that's used here has the idea of the artist, the sculptor, or the potter. And so what Moses is communicating to us by the Holy Spirit is that God himself is the artisan, he is the grand artisan, he is the grand architect, he is the grand potter, and it will be man that is the clay. Bruce Waltke makes this observation. God as the artist is bonded to his work. Now, I've never done pottery, okay? Have you ever done pottery? Like with real clay and a wheel, not like Play-Doh, okay? And your hands are in it, right? As it were, you're connected to it. your movements are what is shaping that clay. But there's a sense in which as the sculptor, you're investing yourself, you're connected to it. And so when Waltke says, God as the artist is bonded to his work, there's a sense in which God has spoken, day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, he speaks and things, boom, come into existence. Now, what we get is this narrowing perspective, and it's not just God saying, let there be man, and there was man, it's now God himself, Yahweh God, who is actually taking, as it were, dirt from the earth and getting his own hands in the project. He created Adam. Adam. The first man. The first real, live, historical man. How'd he do it? From dirt. That's the idea from the dust to the ground. From dirt. That's the raw materials. Now again, I said that there are these little tiny snapshots that are anticipatory of coming judgment. Well, make note of this, right here is also another one, because man's origin in life will also then ultimately be his destiny in death. From dirt you came, and to dirt you will return, Genesis chapter three and verse 19. And so here, God is making this great play on words. So he is making Adam from the Adama, okay? Which means, when you have a little boy, okay? And he just like grabs dirt, puts dirt on his face, eats dirt, okay? In fact, eating dirt for children is so common that there's a little cliche, you can eat dirt because dirt don't hurt, right? All you're doing is just like eating yourself, okay? So it's very natural, okay? Now, little boys, okay? Little boys, I wanna tell you, and some little girls. Eve came from a different place. This explains a lot, right? It just explains a lot because, you know, so Ashley didn't want to be dirty at all. You know, you put a birthday cake in front of her when she's one and she's like. You know, and you put it in front of the boys and they're like. And they're filthy, right? And they come in filthy. And you wonder actually what it is about boyhood that is so attractive to dirt. This explains it. This explains it. you begin to realize that as that little boy sits there and is just absolutely filthy and completely happy, right? Completely happy. It's not like, need a bath, right? No, just totally happy. They would go to sleep like that if you let them, right? Is that not true? Right, Millie? You're shaking your head. If you could roll them in mud and they would be like perfectly fine and go to bed like that. They don't care. Why? They're returning to their origins. Boys and dirt go hand in hand. And it's right here, play on words. He made Adam from the Adamah. So, here's God's project. Here's his pottery project. He takes man and he forms man. Yatsar. He shapes, he sculpts man from the dirt, from the dust of the earth, and then he does something that is absolutely remarkable that he doesn't do with any other created being on the planet. He breathes into Adam's nostrils the breath of life. It's really, it's really something. I mean, you think about, I mean, and of course, the imagery is to help us understand that here's God who is in such close, intimate contact with His creation, that here He is, He forms, He forms the shell, He forms the physical, and then He breathes into His nostrils the very breath of life. I love, I love what Derek Kidner wrote. Breathed is warmly personal. With face-to-face intimacy of a kiss. And the significance that this was giving was not only, it was not only an act of giving, it was an act of making and an act of self-giving in addition to that. What is God doing? He's actually God's breath, by the way, throughout scripture. You have it in Psalm 33, you have it in Job 27. God's breath actually is life. And so the picture for us in Genesis 2-7 is this. Man is more than just some sort of animate life. Man himself has God's life in him. You are utterly unique. As a human being, you are utterly and completely unique. Job 27, for as long as life is in me, is as long as the breath of God is in my nostrils. So God does this incredibly intimate thing where he imparts, as it were, his very breath into the nostrils of this man made from the dust of the ground, and then the text tells us, and man became a living soul. So the dirt before the breath was just now well-formed dirt. The dirt before the breath was just matter. It was mere matter. It was physical existence, but it was bare physical existence. But once God himself breathed the breath of life into man, something changed. And the way that Moses describes it is this, man became a living soul. Now, Most of our Bibles will say a living being, and that's fair, that's okay, because the word nephesh is similar to the word psuche in the Greek New Testament, and the idea could be animate human life, that's true, but there's something more going on here than just saying that God took a physical model, as it were, and made it alive. You know, this isn't some, you know, like some Frankenstein experiment where God does something and then boom, it's just life. Man becomes something as a result of him breathing in to his nostrils the breath of life. He becomes something that he was not before. And that something is a living soul. Do you know the idea of, you know what, my body is just a prison house for my soul. You know that's a pagan idea. Pagan. Raw pagan. Okay? Any kind of idea that has a hard dualism between soul and body, where body is negative and soul or spirit is good, is rooted in ancient pagan Gnosticism, not the Bible. God creates the body, and He creates it good, and He breathes into man the breath of life, and man doesn't get a soul, He becomes a soul. Huge difference. Huge difference. Man is not simply a body with a soul. You are a living soul. You are a whole person. You are a body-soul entity. You are a material, immaterial person. Now, here's just a little free footnote. We're doing biblical counseling in Sunday school, all right? Sometimes what we think is you've got spiritual and you got physical. You got material and immaterial. And then what the goal is, is try to figure out what's what, what comes from what, and how to treat what. You realize that your body and your soul are in such an interdependent state with each other. That it is not just simply this easy breezy thing to make some kind of fundamental distinction between physical and spiritual. Why? Because you actually are an integrated whole body soul person. Now, I can prove that to you in two different directions. will committing sin that you don't repent of bring about guilt? Is guilt predominantly a physical or spiritual phenomenon? It is a spiritual phenomenon, but does guilt impact your physical existence? Absolutely, absolutely. Psalm 32, all right? David's guilt actually brought about physical effects because he had committed adultery and murder, all right? Now, the other side, if you are sick, if you are physically exhausted, If you are mentally and emotionally fatigued, does that have an effect on you spiritually? Of course it does. Of course it does. Why? And the Proverbs are full of this kind of imagery, this kind of language, because there is an interpenetration between the body and the soul. So you're not a body with a soul. You're not a soul with a body. You are a body-soul entity. Now, man is created uniquely. His life is to image God because he has God's life in him. Doesn't this make tremendous sense? 126 to 28, and making man in his image, now all of a sudden it gets incredibly personal. Why is man supposed to image God? Because he is the handiwork of Yahweh Elohim, He is the very handiwork, He is the Son, He is the servant, He is the special masterpiece. And so, when you read that word Yahweh, you're also supposed to see man is not just unique in all of God's creation, he's unique in his relationship with God Himself. In other words, as Yahweh Elohim forms man from the dust of the ground, breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, man becomes a living nephesh. What has now happened is that his creator has entered into a special relationship with him as the created. What a paradox. He has God's breath of life in him, but he comes from the dirt. He's physical, yet he's also spiritual. As a living soul, as a living soul, he comes into this world in a way that none of the animals did, and that is, he has understanding. He has spiritual understanding. He has a conscience. He has moral capacities. He also has the capacity of communion and covenant with God. What's gonna happen is, remember how central God's word is in the creation narrative, right? So in chapter one, we see this powerful word going forth from God, just as it were, just bringing stuff into existence. It is absolutely unfettered, unhindered, unrivaled. It is doing its work. And that's the power of the word in chapter one. In chapter two, the word is gonna come to Adam. Adam will be a recipient of the word of God. not just simply the product of it. You are the recipient of God's Word. And then, this will not simply be the way that God brings stuff into existence now. It's now going to be the way that God Himself is going to test Adam by His Word. So, Is this important what happens here? It is incredibly, incredibly important. So, conclusion one, we are from the dust of the ground. There is an earthiness to our humanity. Some of you retain that earthiness better than others. But there is an earthiness to being a human being, right? There's a reason why we don't fly, there's a reason why we walk, it's because we're connected to our origins every time we take a step. But we also are a living nefesh, a living soul, and therefore there is not just this physical reality to our existence, there is an unbelievable spiritual reality to our existence, a spiritual reality to our humanity. We weren't just simply made in the image of God to represent Him in the world. We were also made to actually live in communion and covenant with God. God didn't just make you to be hired hands on the farm. He made you to enter into a living, dynamic, personal relation, covenant relationship with Him. And so the thing that makes being human an incredibly amazing reality is not the complexity of our physical being. Is the complexity of our physical being an amazing thing? And the answer is yes. The eye, the ear, the heart, fingerprints, you name it, fingernails. I mean, you can go on and on. It's all amazing. It's all astounding. And you could all say, you know, echo with the psalmist, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, but that's not the most amazing thing about being a human being. The most amazing thing about being a human being is that you are a living soul made for relationship and communion with God. So is it any wonder Jesus asks, for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world? forfeit his soul. For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? You as a living soul were made for God. Augustine put it so memorably, thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee. So, brothers and sisters, since God is the great source of the soul, He is also the great end. Nothing higher than knowing Him. Nothing higher than being in relationship to Him through His Son, Jesus Christ. And so, God's going to place man in the garden And there's obviously more to this Toledot that's going to be unfolding. But what you need to understand this morning is you need to realize that you as a human being are special. And you're special because of what God made you. He made you a human being, a living soul, and you're special for what you were made for. which is nothing less than for Him. He made you to be in relation to Him to glorify Him. And so everything else in this life that we settle for as satisfying, that's less than being in covenant communion and relationship with God, is a lie. It's a lie. If you think you're here because you're good at making money and you love money, money is your God and you're living a lie. God didn't make you for money, he made you for himself. Whatever other little lesser gods we wanna barter with and live for, understand this, the minute that we do, we're actually betraying not only who we are, but what we were made for. You want to chase after sex and drink and fun and you make those the priorities of your life. Let me just tell you, you are cheapening what you are as a human being. You want to take your identity in your sexuality. You want to take your identity in your job. You want to take your identity in any of these lesser things. You are actually cheapening the very reason you exist. You were made for God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the book of Genesis and the revelation that it is to us. We certainly couldn't learn this from unbelieving scientists. We have to learn it from you. May we learn well. May we take to heart the lessons of what it means to be a living soul. Father, we thank you. We thank you that we are, in fact, human beings. What dignity. And yet, Father, we realize that there's also depravity. And so we thank you for Jesus, who actually restores everything that was lost. All praise to him. Amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.