The text doesn't say that's the first thing that Adam said. It just says that he said this. I think the first thing that happened was man probably looked at his counterpart and said, What a beautiful lady!
And then I think they probably talked for hours as if they were long lost best friends. And then I think what is happening in verse 23 is that the man is introducing her to all the other creatures as if he says, All right now, listen up! This is now at last bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart with Steven Davey. We're continuing with a series from our vintage wisdom library called Origins.
Steven sounds a bit different in this series because he preached these lessons over 30 years ago. But it's an important truth that's relevant today. Our culture seems to downplay the importance of humans in the universe.
People tend to lump humans in with animals sometimes. God's word paints a different picture. Humans are the climax of God's creation. And that's the title of today's lesson. The Climax of Creation.
Here's Steven. Genesis chapter one is focused on God's creative acts of creating the universe and the latter part of the chapter. Chapter one, the last few verses, into chapter two, verses four to 23 focus on God's climactic, creative act in creating man and woman. Now the interesting thing is I study this passage in Genesis chapter one and two. Again, it struck me that the name used for God in chapter one is the name Elohim. And that is the name that speaks of God's power, his majestic strength.
And as John Wesley wrote, as I mentioned, that God created the heaven and the earth and he didn't even half try. And that's so true because God with all of his power just snapped it into being and into existence by his word and the name Elohim is used, which refers to his power. However, when we read the accounts of God creating man and woman, we're introduced to a new name and this is the name Jehovah.
And your English translations will probably in chapter two add the word Lord to God so that you read in chapter two, Lord God. Jehovah refers to two things that I think are worth noting. The first is that Jehovah refers to the personal God. Jehovah speaks of God's loving covenantal care for mankind.
Isn't it interesting as he moves to the creative account of where he creates man and woman that the name changes. Now, not the majestic, powerful God, but the loving God, the personal God. We will see him directly involved in creating man and woman, but secondly, it refers this name Jehovah to the covenant keeping God. This is the name that emphasizes his covenant with mankind. And this is a covenant that is not fragile nor self-centered. This is a covenant that will last forever.
It is sacrificing. And this is the thought used here because as God created man and woman, he knew that they would sin. He knew that they would fall. He knew that they would need a redeemer. And so the covenant keeping God still brought them into existence as if to say, I will provide for you a redeemer. Now, at the end of chapter two, he will bring man and woman together with the same idea. The covenant between man and wife should resemble the same as the covenant of God for man. It is not self-centered.
It is self-sacrificing. We, as man and wife, represent the covenant that Jehovah God has for his creatures. And so you find a name change that means so much. Now, I want you to notice there's going to be a change as we read through Genesis chapter one. You remember as we study the first part of the chapter that it talks about everything being spoken into existence as God says, Let there be. Let there be. Let there be. But you'll notice a difference here in verse 26 of chapter one. Would you note that, please? Then God said, Let us.
Let us. As if the triune God is calling into a conference here, the fact that they are about to create man. We know from the New Testament writings that it was actually Jesus Christ and the words of Christ that formed and created the universe and man. He was the person in this triune God that did the creative act. But it's interesting that he now changes and says, Let us make man. You'll notice the next phrase in our image, in our image, not physically, for God is spirit. He is speaking to the fact that man will be created with a mind, with emotions, with a will, with immortality, just like God. Man is made in the image of God. See, ladies and gentlemen, the reason that you are able to laugh is because God can laugh. And he created you like himself with the ability to laugh. The reason you can cry is because God can weep. And he created you in his own image with the ability to weep. The reason that you can decide, love, choose, live, do all that you do is because you are created like your creator God in his image, capable of doing the things that he's given you the ability to do that resemble his own character. Now, would you notice verse 27? When God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him.
Note this and underline it. Male and female, he created them. They are both the same in that God created them. They are both immortal souls. They are not toys. They are not objects.
They are immortal beings, both male and female. You'll also notice here that God strikes a death blow to any unisex idea, that there is no difference. In fact, I have been startled at things that I have read lately where they are saying that the reason boys act like boys and girls act like girls is because the parents conditioned them culturally when they were little. You always give a little boy a hammer, then regret that you did.
You give a little girl a doll. And because of this, you create them to act like they do. This strikes a death nail to that theory as well because God created them male with all the inerrant masculine traits and female, that is, with all the feminine traits.
It's been a real joy to parent both boys and a girl. And one of the fascinating things is being able to note the difference between our children. The boys act a certain way. Now, they are different, and yet they follow the same pattern.
It's usually destructive. But they are different, but yet they are so much like little boys. But Candace, our little one-year-old, is on an entirely different wavelength. Even as a one-year-old, she's already beginning to reveal the feminine qualities inerrant in the female nature inherited from her mother and on back to her mother Eve.
It's fascinating. One of the boys will fall down and she'll run over, you know, and she'll rush over and pat him on the head. And you can almost hear her saying, can I get you anything, milk, juice?
Do you want to borrow my pacifier or whatever? She's such a little mother. In fact, what really worries me is that she's already beginning to flirt. We're talking about a one-year-old girl. She looks at me and wrinkles up her nose and bats her eyelids as if she can get away by doing that with me. She can. Her mother says that Candace has me wrapped around her finger.
That's not true. I'm eating out of the palm of her hand, but I'm not wrapped around her little finger. But all the differences that are so obvious, even as a little one-year-old and little two-year-old boys. Why is it that way? Because God designed it that way. He made them male and female. This also strikes a death knell to the theory that homosexuality can be a satisfying relationship. If a man could have satisfied a man, God would have created another man. But he created woman with all of those distinctive characteristics that make them so different.
That's part of his design. So don't blur the differences. Don't try to blend them together. Exemplify. Make much of those differences. You know, this is an election year. I read and laughed out loud last week of a man who said we really do need a woman for president.
The United States. And he said, you know, at least they wouldn't spend billions of dollars on nuclear arms. They'd shop around until they found him on sale. We're going to talk more about the differences and how they complement in the weeks ahead. Would you notice chapter 2, verse 7? I want you to notice the creation of man.
Chapter 2, verse 7. And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, or nefesh, the immortal soul. And man became a living being. Literally, he became living lives. He would never die. Though the clay carrier of his soul would pass away, his soul would live forever.
He is immortal. The words dust from the ground. You could jot into the margin of your Bible or into your notes that this could be literally translated a lump of earth. God literally took a lump of earth and from it formed man. The word for formed is the same precious word used by the prophet Jeremiah as he talks about the potter taking a lump of clay and putting it on the potter's wheel and forming a vessel. God took infinite care. The nuances of mankind are from the fingers of God.
He created man. I've read this past week that our bodies are actually made up of the same 15 or 16 chemical elements found in the earth. The next time you and I are prone to become proud, just remember that on the market, the elements in our body are worth about a little less than $5.
Let me give you some of the results of a particular book that I read and I would encourage you to go and buy it at the bookstore. Fearfully and wonderfully made and I don't want to take a lot of time reading and yet I do not by any means have all of this memorized. Let me give you what I've discovered about the human body that is so fascinating and that's where I want to center our attention.
I want to give you and I a greater appreciation for the creative act of God and the way that he took time and care, the design whereby you and I are made. Let me read just a couple of things about different parts of our bodies. The body comes equipped with an internal police force of about 50 billion active white cells.
They attack all the bacterial forms that invade the body. This is an internal thing that takes place every day. Inside the human eye, there are 107 million cells. Seven million of them are cones, each loaded to fire off a message to the brain when a photon of light crosses its path. The other 100 million cells are called rods and are capable of distinguishing a thousand shades of color. The human brain will receive millions of reports simultaneously from eye cells.
The brain absorbs, sorts and organizes them all to give you an image of what you're looking at. The normal ear is astounding. It can detect sound frequencies as faintly as one billionth of a centimeter. The vibration is transmitted into your inner ear by three bones. For instance, when a note is struck on the piano, the piston of bones in your inner ear vibrates 256 times a second. The brain sorts and records the vibrations that in turn produce impulses you perceive as someone striking middle C. A relatively new study that has exploded the world of genetics is the study of the DNA molecule, the strands chemically coiled in a rope-like fashion inside each cell.
Now we're breaking it down. We're actually getting inside each individual cell, the nucleus of the cell. Each cell has a specific purpose inside the body, yet each one contains all the instructions for the body's 100,000 genes. That is, the DNA inside your body, one of them has a specific purpose, and yet included in the information that DNA knows is the specific purposes of every DNA in your body. They tell us that the DNA contain enough instructions to fill six million pages. The DNA is so small that all the genes in your body could fit into an ice cube. Yet, if the DNA were unwound and joined together end to end, the strand would literally stretch from the earth to the sun and back again 400 times. Your bones, though unappreciated at times, are created to withstand enormous wear and tear.
A normal person will walk on his poor feet nearly three times around the world in a lifetime. It's interesting that no engineer has been able to match the simple human bone. They'd love to be able to develop a substance as strong and light and efficient as bone. Imagine, it grows continuously, it lubricates itself, it requires no shutdown time, and repairs itself when damage occurs.
These are only a few instances. We don't have time to get into the miracle of the skin, the senses of touch and taste. The way that our hand is created, we're the only living creature that has the thumb shaped as it is and able to grasp like we can. In fact, Isaac Newton wrote, If there were no other evidence other than the human thumb, I would believe in the existence of God. One engineer was looking at the chart with all of the nerves and muscles and tendons and all of the different things that make up the human body, and he was heard to exclaim, imagine when God put it together the first time it worked. Imagine that.
No bugs before the fall. Now, would you notice verses 8 and following in chapter 2? This is the planting of the garden, and the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden. The word Eden means the light.
It was paradise. And there he placed the man whom he had formed, and out of the ground the Lord caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then the next few verses will talk about the different rivers, the water, the location. In fact, some think that perhaps Eden was located near the Persian Gulf because of the references here geographically, the rivers that are talked about. Verse 15, then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.
The word garden is the Hebrew word gan, which literally means enclosure. There was paradise. In fact, planet Earth was paradise itself, and yet within paradise God created an enclosure. It had boundaries, and it was fertile. It was something that man would spend his life managing, ruling, dominating, enjoying. This was Eden.
This was the garden inside of paradise where man and woman were to live. Now, you've already noticed, of course, the reference to two specific trees. Can I give you the importance or significance of these trees if you're keeping notes? First of all, the tree of life is the symbol of immortality. It is the symbol of immortality. It is that symbol whereby man and woman could live forever. Now, we know that the ability to live forever was directly given from God, and yet he used a tree as the symbol. An eating of that fruit would be the means, the method, the vehicle through which they would live forever. There is another tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That is the symbol of choice. The symbol of choice.
Why? Because God did not want robots even in the garden, and yet he in his wisdom gave them the ability to choose whether to obey him or to disobey him. God wanted a relationship even back in the garden with Adam and Eve, a relationship.
That's a two-way street where they would love him and he would love them. And this was the test. Of course, as you know, after man ate, he was kept from the tree of life, and I've always wondered why, and I think I may have discovered the answer because of what it represented. If Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree, therefore becoming sinners, if they had then eaten of the tree of life, they would have lived forever confined in their wicked state. You know one of the blessings that God has given you and me is death. We will not live forever as sinners. Forgiven as we are, it would be a tragic thing to live forever like we live today. Death will open the gate to heaven where we will be given glorified, perfect bodies.
Our souls will match the saviors in its perfection. So God kept them from that and then gave them another symbol, and that was the symbol of forgiveness. In the coats that he gave them to wear, the animals died evidently in atonement for their sin.
Their blood was shed. Now, I want you to notice in verse 18 God's first statement of displeasure. Then the Lord God said, It is not good for man to be alone. What struck me about this verse was that here is man living in a perfect environment. He has a perfect occupation, one that he loves. He gets up in the morning ready to go, ready to take care of the garden. He has a perfect relationship, as perfect as it can be with God, and God sums all this up and says, It's not good.
It's just not good. And so he, in his perfect timing, plans to create a woman. You know what I love about God is his timing. He didn't rush up to Adam and say, Adam, you need a wife. I'm going to create one for you. Adam would have said, I need a what? I need a wife?
I'm not so sure I do. And so God sets him up as a perfect matchmaker. Would you notice what he does in the next few verses? Out of the ground, verse 19, the Lord God formed every beast. Now note, God in verse 18 has already decided to make him a mate.
He hadn't told Adam yet. But what he does first is he forms the beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and he brings them to the man, obviously coming in pairs, to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called, the living creature, that was its name. And the man gave the names to all the cattle, to the birds of the sky, to every beast of the field. And he's naming all of these, and then he comes to the very end, and then Adam says, in effect it's almost as if it were his thoughts, there was not found a helper suitable for him. In other words, he's starting to look now. You know, he's named a few hundred animals, and now he's on the lookout.
Let's see, there's only one of me. And there's two of them, and he's naming them. What's God doing? He's making Adam come to the point where he realizes he's alone.
He doesn't have the other half. And then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, verse 21. And he slept, and God took one of the ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man. Now, the word translated, fashioned, in verse 22, and the Lord God fashioned or formed, is a different word than when God formed man.
It's a beautiful word that could be translated sculptured. It's as if God is any master who would paint a beautiful portrait, knelt over that rib, that flesh, and he sculptured a beautiful woman, one who would become the counterpart of Adam. We need to answer the question, why the rib?
Let me give you three reasons. Why was it the rib that God took to fashion or sculpture a woman? First of all, to show the unity of the human race. We all come from Adam. And this is a tremendous theological truth that will come out in the book of Romans, where we are all in Adam, and because we are all in and out of and from Adam, we are all sinners. We all have Adam's nature, but the second Adam will come along, Jesus Christ. And we who are in him will be forgiven. So this truth will come out even later in the New Testament that's a beautiful theological truth.
Number two, to guarantee the dignity of womankind, to guarantee her dignity. She is not made from an inferior substance. She's made from the same thing that man is made from. Now, I don't want you to picture in your mind God just taking a bone, a rib. He actually took flesh and blood around that rib. He took a chunk, as it were, and fashioned her from the same substance that man was created from.
And now number three, to illustrate the closest of kinship. God didn't take a bone from the foot, as you've probably read or heard, as if man would tread upon her, as if he were above her. God didn't take something from his head, as if she were to be superior or above him. God didn't take a bone from Adam's hand, as if she would be the servant of man and do his work. God took a bone from the side to illustrate the closest of companionship.
She would be by his side. She would serve as queen of the garden of paradise, and Adam would serve as king. I love the next part, verse 22.
Now, would you put on your imagination here? And just imagine it says, In the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man, and he brought her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. I really don't think that was the first thing that Adam said. The text doesn't say that's the first thing that Adam said.
It just says that he said this. I think the first thing that happened was man probably looked at his counterpart and said, Wow! You know, this is the first time man whistled in the history of mankind. What a beautiful lady.
And then I think they probably talked for hours, as if they were long-lost best friends. And then I think what is happening in verse 23 is that the man is introducing her to all the other creatures, as if he says, All right, now listen up. This is now, in fact, the literal Hebrew can be translated, This is now at last bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. And I believe this was the introduction of woman to everything that God had created.
Let me apply a couple of things that strike me from this chapter. The first is found in the Garden of Eden itself. The Garden of Eden, men and women, would represent a place where mankind would choose who he would obey, the tempter or the creator. It reminds me of another garden where Jesus Christ struggled with the will of his father, and he sweat drops of blood.
And finally he said, in the agony of his soul, Not my will, but thine be done. No, we're not in the Garden of Eden, and we're not in Gethsemane, but ladies and gentlemen, I believe you and I are in a garden, as it were, a place of choosing who we will follow, who we will obey, the tempter or the creator. The garden isn't the only thing in this chapter that points me to Jesus Christ. It's the tree. A tree has been used throughout scripture on several occasions to symbolize some powerful truths.
The tree in the garden represented choice. Again, Moses in the wilderness, the children of Israel were being very rebellious, and God sent the poisonous vipers to bite them, and then he told Moses to lift a serpent up on a tree, and whoever will look at the tree will be healed. That represented healing, and those that looked were healed. But of course I also think of Calvary, where 1 Peter 2, verse 24 records that he bore in his own body our sins on the tree, that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness. By his stripes we are healed. My friend, there is a tree in your life as well. You either stand before the tree called Calvary as a forgiven individual, or you stand before it as an unrepentant unbeliever. The tree is lifted up today bearing Christ. It is ours to choose to accept Him, to accept that atonement as our own, to take Him as our personal Savior.
I hope you've done that. And if not, I hope you'll put your faith in Jesus Christ today. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart with pastor and author Stephen Davey. This lesson is called The Climax of Creation, and it comes from our vintage wisdom series called Origins.
Stephen sounded different from what you're used to because this was recorded over 35 years ago. But we wanted to air it because we knew it would be a blessing to you. Do you take adequate opportunity to rest and reflect on God's word and on the goodness of God in your life? If not, we have a resource to help you. We have a devotional magazine that we call Heart to Heart. Stephen developed this resource as a gift to all of the wisdom partners who financially support our ministry and make it possible for us to bring you these messages each day. But we also send several issues as a gift to anyone who asks. Each issue features articles that help you apply God's word to practical issues of life. There's also a devotional guide to help you pause and reflect on the truth of God's word each day. If you haven't seen it, can we send it to you? Call 866-48-BIBLE and ask about Heart to Heart magazine. Do that today, then join us next time here on Wisdom for the Heart. .
