- Alright, we're in Genesis chapter one. Genesis, the foundation book of the Bible. This is lesson number 11, and we're gonna talk about
the details of the day of rest and also some more information
about man's creation. Now, in chapter one of Genesis, we have seen the three
basic acts of creation. Wanna just go over those with you so that we're familiar with the sequence. Number one, the creation
of the inanimate world. Number two, the creation
of the animate world. Number three, the creation of man, who is a combination of the inanimate, the animate, and also the
spiritual, all in one being. We said that man has a
triune nature in that sense, a reflection of God's triune nature. So in Genesis, chapter one, we see the panorama of
creation unfolding in six days. The world and all that
is within it is created and then set into place. Now, there's gonna be
mention of the seventh day, and then Moses will kinda
telescope into this panorama in order to give us more detail
about the creation of man, and also, a little more detail about the pre-sin environment, what the world was like before sin. Remember, last time I told
you that there are two worlds that we're not familiar with. One is the world to come and one is the world before sin, and those are two types
of worlds, if you wish, that we're not familiar with in the world that we live in today. Okay, after this detail, Moses will begin to tell the story of the first man and woman
after the creation is complete. Okay, so I want you to note
something very interesting here. Note that the Bible says that everything that was created was created then. Okay, so notice this. Let's go to chapter two, actually. We're in chapter two of Genesis, beginning in verse one,
he says the following, "Thus the heavens and
the earth were completed, "and all of their hosts." And so Moses, here, is
saying everything that was in the heavens and everything
that was on the earth was done, was complete. No new creation. No unknown creation. You know, we're always
looking for what's unknown. Well, unknown to us, okay? Because we haven't seen it. We haven't recognized it yet, but no unknown creation is to come. Everything that God has
created is complete. Verse two, he says, "By the seventh day, "God completed His work which He had done, "and He rested on the seventh day "from all of His work which He hath done." Now, the word rested here
means to refrain from doing, not necessarily whew, I'm tired. You know, I gotta lie down. We kind of look at that word and we see it from that perspective, but the Hebrew word here
translated into the English means to, you know, to abstain from work, not to do anything, so God refrained from creating
any other form of life, whether it be animate or inanimate or a combination thereof. It even says that by the seventh day, God had completed all that He had proposed to do in creation. Everything that He willed to do was completed, so if it
isn't here by this time, then it's not going to be here. We could be looking at all the stars to find something different. You know, all the
creation is now complete. This is why I believe
there is no life out there in the universe, no human life
out there in the universe, simply because the human life that God has created,
He's created right here. He's given us a description of that and we'll talk about that in a second. Let's look at verse
number three, shall we? Then it says, "Then God
blessed the seventh day "and sanctified it because in it "He rested from all His work "which God had created and made." And so, here, we have, you
know, a repeat of the same idea, except God blesses time itself. He's looked at everything, you
know, all the actual things that He's created, but
now He actually blesses the idea of time, the movement of time. He even blesses that. He has looked at the things
that He has created and blessed, you know, and when we say
God blesses something, we mean He's making it acceptable. His blessing means this is acceptable. This is good and acceptable, so He's blessed the
creation that has been made, and also the concept of activity as well. We call it work, right? Now, God blesses the concept of
time spent not working, so He blesses what He has made. He blesses activity,
man's activity to come, you know, to fill the earth and multiply, and work, activity. He blesses that type of activity, and then He blesses the
time that individuals spent not working, resting, recreation. He blesses that. Time not invested in work,
time not invested in activity, might become an issue of guilt, but God blesses the concept
of rest and retreat, so this time of rest will
be elaborated and explained through the law as the proper use of time, balanced between
the actual time of rest and worship and so on and so forth, but for now, there's two types of, use of time. The use of time to work, to multiply, to manage
the earth, the creation, the time that you're doing that, and the time you spend resting, the time you spend not
doing those activities, God blesses both of those times. So, for now, the pattern
of creation is followed. I want you to see, you know, we've always talked about there's a way that God is doing something. There's a pattern in
the way that He creates, and it follows right here as well. For example, God creates the generic or the essential concept, whatever it is. In this case, it's the sacredness
of time without activity. He blesses that, you know, that essence, and then later, He's gonna
give form to this time as time for rest, time for celebration, time for worship, time for meditation, so He blesses the essence
of the thing, you know. Time not spent working, and then He'll kind of give
it some sort of a formality, some sort of form. Well, that time when we're not working, He'll show that that
time's to be spent resting, worshiping, communing with God and so on and so forth,
so if you don't think this is important, you know, if you're wondering why are
we spending time on this? I mean, there are books out there. People write books like
whenever I stop working, I feel guilty. How many people, if they're
not busy doing something, feel guilty, feel ill at ease? You know, they always feel
they ought to be busy, they ought to be, you
know, pushing or doing and so on and so forth, and then if they just sit
down and put their feet up and do nothing, they start feeling bad, start feeling guilty, and so the fact that God
blesses even the time that we spend doing
nothing, just recreation, rest, doing stuff we like
that's not related to work, it's a wonderful thing that
He's blessed that time as well, because if He blesses
it and He accepts it, then we can use it with
a clear conscience. We can truly enjoy it and rejoice in it. Alright, so God knew that
the use of time would be an issue for man, and so
He blesses a period of time in the cycle, which will
later be used for rest and for worship. Now, another point to
note is that God rested after the work of creation was done, but it did not mean that
all His work was done. There's still some to do. He's going to soon begin the work of salvation through Christ, and this, too, will finish, of course, with Christ on the cross, so the work of creation is done, but it doesn't mean that God's work, you know, his activity
in the affairs of men, it doesn't mean that that is finished. We don't believe that. We're theists. We're not deists. Deists, they believe that, you know, God just started everything
and just let it roll, doesn't get involved anymore. Theists believe that God
not only created the world, had a hand in creating the universe, creating what is, alright? But He also intercedes, if you wish, or injects himself into human history with the plan of salvation
of the Jewish people and so on and so forth, culminating in the arrival of Christ and his death and resurrection, alright? Okay, now, remember I told you that the natural divisions
of the book of Genesis could be that of generations? Remember, I told you
there are different ways of chopping up the book, you know? Maybe a part A, part B, Genesis one to 11, chapters one to 11, and
then chapters 12 to 50. That's one way to separate the book. Another way is to just
separate it into chapters, you know, 50, and then I told you
there's a more natural way, more organic way to divide it, and that is by generations. Remember, we had a whole thing about that. Could be divided by generations, because at various points
throughout the book of Genesis, the different sections
end with the notation these are the generations of. Well, I just wanna go
over very, very quickly the generational division, because we're gonna
come up to one of these in our reading right here, so there's the generational division, so first section would be the generations of heaven and earth, chapter
1:1 to chapter two, verse four, which we're gonna read here in a minute. The next section, natural division, would be the book of generations of Adam, from chapter two, verse
four, to chapter five. Then, the next division would
be the generations of Noah. The next section would be the generations of the sons of Noah,
chapter six and forward. Then it would be the generations of Shem, chapters 10 all the way to chapter 11. Next would be the generations of Terah, chapter 11, short here,
just several verses. Number seven would be
the generations of Isaac, chapter 11 to chapter
25, a long section here. The next would be the
generations of Jacob, chapter 25 all the way to chapter 37, and then finally, number nine, the generations of the sons of Jacob, chapter 37 all the way to the
beginning of Exodus, okay? So, this section, these sections, the way they're divided, suggest that the ancient patriarchs kept records of their times and passed them down from
generation to generation. You know, we read in Genesis
chapter two, verse four, we're gonna read that in a minute, that we see, you know, the
different sections here naturally divided by the
people that are written about in the book of Genesis, and so, when God gave Moses instructions to write the book of Genesis, we said that what he probably did was edit these ancient records under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. Now, we know he wrote the
book of Exodus, Leviticus, and so on and so forth,
because he was there. He was writing about his own experience and the things that
took place in the desert and so on and so forth. Obviously, the book of
Genesis, he was not there, and so it's always been
a challenge to scholars to try to think well, how did he do this? How did he write this? Did God just inspire him? Did he have some material to work with? And what we're saying is yes, he had records from
these ancient patriarchs that he was able to edit and use in order to form the book of Genesis, so as we arrive at chapter two, we see that the first section is closed. That's why I've given you all of this. We read chapter two, verse four, it says, "This is the account
of the heavens and the earth "when they were created in
the day that the Lord God made "heaven and earth," so that passage is simply a passage saying to the reader this section here talks about the creation of the heavens and the earth. Now, this may have been given
to Moses directly by God, since there were no witnesses to creation. You know, the first section
gives the information concerning the generations
of the creation itself. It's not talking,
necessarily, about people. It's talking about how
God created the world. Now, the next section,
chapter two, verse four, all the way to chapter five, verse one, that's another section
that is naturally divided by this saying, and I want you to go to
chapter five, verse one, just to kind of prove my point here. It says in chapter five, verse one, "This is the book of the
generations of Adam." Okay, so remember, in
chapter two, verse four, it says, "This is the account
of the heavens and the earth "when they were created," so chapter two, verse four
ends the section on creation. Chapter five, verse one ends
the section on Adam and Eve, if you wish, so note that
this section will describe the generation of Adam
and his life and his time, and then, you know, the
natural division of Genesis moves on from there
according to, you know, the list that I just read for you. Now, it's been suggested
that Adam is the author. In other words, God created
Adam with the ability to speak, to write, he was literate, so the first section there, or the second section, rather, chapter two to chapter five, many scholars
believe that Adam wrote this. This is his account of
the world that he lived in and the events that took
place in the garden. This account, Moses used
to complete his transcript. Now, the material in chapter two does not contradict chapter one. Very important. It's gonna kinda, it almost seems like it's repeating itself. It's giving, you know, more information about the creation, and so the material in chapter
two, even though it repeats material from chapter one, does
not contradict chapter one. It merely adds more detailed information to what we have in chapter one. So, let's go to chapter two, and let's read verse
five and six, shall we? It says, chapter two, right. Let's go to chapter two. Let me get that right here, read for you. Chapter two, beginning in verse five. It says, "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." So, here we get a kind
of a pre-sin environment. We get a glimpse into
what the world was like before the fall of man, before the flood, and so on and so forth. It demonstrates how things looked, how things operated in
the original system, where the water canopy
above the atmosphere regulated the temperature and the weather. This here, this very brief few lines, is a description of the earth before there was vegetation or animals, how the earth received moisture, not from rainfall, but from mist, and so the earth is moisturized by mist from local evaporation
controlled by the water canopy, and also by underground rivers. So the author gives a glimpse
into this ancient world, and then he proceeds to explain in detail the creation of man and woman. Now, he doesn't elaborate
on the preceding days when, you know, when vegetation appears and animals and so on and so forth. He simply kind of reveals an
image of that time period, perhaps to establish authenticity, and then he goes directly
to describe in more detail the creation of man. Now, I want you to
understand the transition between Genesis one and Genesis two, okay? Genesis one is a panoramic view. Imagine you're watching a movie, okay? And it's the opening scene, shall we say? How many movies begin like this? You see a panoramic view, you know. Mountains and sky and terrain and right, you know, right at the horizon, if you wish, you see just two little dots. You know, you can't make them out. You just see two little moving dots, but you see all this
majestic, panoramic view. And you know, usually during that, you've got the credits rolling, and the movie and the music
and so on and so forth, and then, the camera begins to zoom in on those two little dots and
you get a telescopic view. They're not just two little dots. They're a man and a woman,
and they're on horses, and they're riding very
fast across the plain. It's the same image, right? We're seeing the same thing, except we're now looking at it
from a different perspective. We've got a close up
view as the storyteller, if you wish, gets into the action and the story of the movie. Well, Genesis is the same. You get this panoramic view, you know? The world is created, and
the stars and the earth and the water separated, and
all this is happening, okay? And then chapter two, the
author kind of zooms in and is now going to go into
a much more closeup view of what is taking place,
and give us some details. So, this is what's
happening in chapter two, and you know, I'm moved to think. Imagine that, when we
live, and when we will be with Christ in heaven, imagine, we'll be able to, you know, speak to Adam, speak to Eve, and speak
to all these patriarchs to find out what we want to find out. I don't know. I don't know if we'll
have time to speak to them or we'll be too filled with awe and praise that we won't wanna take
our attention away from God, even for a moment. Nevertheless, this is
what's taking place here. So, we're going to see
the creation of man, but now in much more detail, alright? So, we go to verse seven, and it says, "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," so He didn't create over again. This is not a redo. It's the same story, the same scene, except now, there's a closeup
of what's taking place, so some interesting points
here about this verse, about the creation of man. First of all, the uses
of the language formed, okay, the use of the language formed, here, because in chapter one, he describes the creation of man. In chapter two, he
explains how man is formed, how God did it. So, chapter one tells you He did it. Chapter two tells you how He did it. I also want you to note
that man's body is composed of the basic elements of the earth, right? In verse seven, then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground, okay? Not just dust, but the smallest particles of which the earth is formed, you know? Nitrogen, oxygen, calcium. You know, he makes man out
of the basic ingredients of the earth. Now, modern science has proven that human beings do share
a basic elemental structure with the raw materials of the earth, although it is not evident to the eye. I mean, flesh, you know,
doesn't look like a rock, but modern science has proven
that the basic elements of our body comes from, you know, is similar to the basic
elements of the earth. Moses had no way of knowing
this scientifically, but he reveals this fact 3,500 years ago. Also, note that man's body is formed like the original matter was formed, but now it needs to be energized
in order to come to life. Remember, in the beginning, you know, God creates the essentials, right? The basics, stuff, and then the Holy Spirit energizes it, brings it into form, forms it, what it's going to be. Well, this is what's happening
here, the same sequence. Man is brought into being, and then he's formed into something. He's energized, so God
creates the animals, you know, by pronouncement of His word, and they appear with consciousness, right? He speaks them into being. Let there be, you know, the
animals, the birds, the fish. You know, let them be, and they appear, and they're conscious. They have sentient life
and so on and so forth, so now, for man, God not only gives sentient life to man, which is consciousness, but a spiritual awareness of God as well. So, notice that God doesn't
speak this into man. He doesn't say, you know, you're created or you're gonna be like me, but rather, he breathes it into existence. This is a much more intimate relationship with the Creator. Something of God goes
into the making of man, and the point I'm trying to
make here is unlike the animals. The animals, the birds, those creatures are simply spoken into life, and they are as they are. Man's body is formed of the earth and then breathed into life. He is energized through
the breathing in of God. In other words, God gives
something of himself to man, which He does not do for animals, okay? Another point, there's also
another way of refuting the idea of evolution. If evolution is so, the
question is at what point in the scale of evolution
does man begin to have the ideas of God's existence? Where does that happen? And where in the scale of evolution does man have a notion of
beauty or mercy or justice or a sense of ought? Where does that, you know? If it's all survival of the fittest, if that's the evolutionary plan, then there's no room for mercy there. You know, there's no room for mercy there. Where does that idea, you know? What's the origin of that idea? Love your neighbor as yourself? Forgive your enemy? Where does that come from? See what I'm saying? These things don't come
from the ground up. What I'm saying is that high ideas and noble ideas do not
emanate from lower species. High ideas come from above. They come from above and
they come down to us. In other words, a dog
doesn't have a bright idea and pass it on to a man. It's never happened
that animals train men. It's always that men train animals, so man does not receive his
spirit from the lower animals. He receives it from above. He receives it from God at his creation, and so, according to the creation model, man begins as an intelligent, believing, communicative, spiritual being. That's how he begins. In evolution, you know,
man starts from a low base and evolves upwards. From a creation perspective, man begins at the top and
devolves downward because of sin. Alright, let's look at
one other thing here. Adam was the first human being. Alright, he was the first human being. That's what the Bible says. There were no human
beings created before him and there were no human
beings or human like creatures or whatever created after him. In First Corinthians,
chapter 15, verse 45, Paul says, "The first man, Adam, "was a living soul," so
there were no people. There were no humans. There were no higher beings
in the type of Adam, alright? Before Adam or after Adam. After Adam, it says, the Bible says, God rested from his creation. So, according to the Bible,
Adam is the only God-like being created by God. Now, some people say well, it
doesn't say He didn't do it. You know, the Bible doesn't
say He didn't do it. Well, that's not the
way we study the Bible. In Bible study, the rule
is we go what the Bible actually says, not what it doesn't say, so if the Bible says God created Adam and Adam was the only human, meaning the only God-like
being that God created, then what the Bible is teaching us is that Adam is the only one
that God created period. He didn't create any others. There's no use speculating that perhaps, well, maybe God didn't tell us, and you know, He created other
beings in other universes. Okay, so when God tells us
this is what I have done, it eliminates all the other things. I use this example, you know,
to bring this point home. When you go to a fast
food, McDonald's, right? And you go in and you say
I'll have the number one meal, the Big Mac, I'll have
the number one meal, the guy behind the
counter doesn't say now, do you mean to say that, you know, you don't want the quarter pounder? Or you know, you didn't
say you didn't want chicken McNuggets or something, right? He goes with what you said. If you say I want a number one, then that means you
don't want anything else. Okay, number one. That's it, that's it, number one. See the reasoning there? Well, the same reasoning,
this is the reasoning we need to use when we're
translating the Bible or we're interpreting the Bible. When God says, concerning this matter, this is what this is, then that eliminates all the other things, so concerning the matter of creation and the creation of God-like beings that can communicate and
think and worship God and know God and so on and so forth, concerning those beings, here's what I've done. I created Adam. He was the first one, and he is the only one
that I've created, okay? So, this rules out, you know, human-like forms in outer space, you know? Very sorry, you Star Trek fans, those of you who are listening, all the money we're
spending trying to look at are there intelligent beings out there? I think it's okay to explore the universe and explore stars and planets
and so on and so forth. You know, it's all God's creation, and so, you know, it's
out there for us to study and to understand and to glorify God with, but to purposefully look for something that God says isn't there, to me, is a waste of time and a waste of money. No use looking for intelligent life, 'cause there is none out there. That's not a question of man's egotism or anything like that, or pride, it's simply, well, if God
says it here in His word, then that matter is settled for me. Alright, so next time we get together, we're gonna look at how God fires up man's moral capabilities, and we're also gonna look
at some pre-sin geography and, of course, the creation of woman. Be a very interesting lesson, so thank you for your attention, and we'll pick it up at
lesson number 12 next time.
