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South Bay SDA Church

Genesis

Jeremy Arnall

02 Day 2 of Creation: Under Heaven’s Quilt

04 Let There Be Time

05 Day 5 of Creation

06 Day 6 of Creation

01 The Creation Account: Let There Be Light

03 Day 3 of Creation

Text says that God saw that it wasn't good that man be alone.

Of course we know God knew this from the start, but Moses, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, takes time to write to us that God saw it first.

When we know that God already knew this because that's how the language is present in his very speech within himself when he says, let us make man in our image.

You see, throughout the creation record, we see that as God looked at his creation, he saw that it was good.

Moses uses that language and repeats it throughout.

So it is, the contrast is now more evident.

And to make the point even more clear, to bring it home, God decides to bring the point to Adam well and clear by having him name the animals.

God could have just told Adam, go back to sleep, this isn't quite finished yet.

He could have said, this isn't good, But he didn't.

Just like our pioneers had to wrestle in the barn to kind of, barns and then the kitchen around the table.

They had to wrestle out the truths that we hold so dear.

God often allows us to wrestle to discover his plan.

And so there in the garden, Adam is led by God to this discovery.

In other words, here within just moments, hours if you will, of creating Adam.

God is already trying to help Adam see as he sees.

When God saw this, the text says that he had Adam name all the animals.

And I can't, I mean I try to wrap my mind around this.

You know you can argue well there was you know less variety or something.

All I know is Adam had to spend quite some time and there wasn't even a log to sit on because all the trees were upright, right?

Remember in Hebrew thought naming something was important.

A name meant something and the 1 who gave the name had dominion over the 1 receiving the name.

So when the text says that Adam was given dominion over the animal kingdom, that is supported by the fact that he named the animals.

Now, can you see Adam, or can you see God watching Adam as he names those animals?

Can you see perhaps a smile on God's face as Adam begins to notice that the animals seem to come to typically 2 by 2?

Now, I don't know if it was like a parade of animals, you know, that went by like we saw with the flood.

All I know is somehow either God led him around and there's the monkeys.

But the point is, is he saw them and the Bible indicates that he noticed they were in twos because everything had a companion.

And in time, Adam notices that everyone else except him has a partner.

And so it is that when Adam has this desire awakened in him, he's ready for a partner, for a wife, for a woman.

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

That'll be 1 of the many reasons why heaven will be so sweet because we will finally be with the 1 with whom we've longed to be.

We'll be able to spend eternity with the 1 we've longed for.

So it was that after God established this longing in Adam that he put him to sleep for all of creation, with the exception of Sabbath, was done in the absence of man's being awake.

There may be no confusion as to who the creator is and who the creature is.

He takes a piece of Adam, a rib to be more specific, and from that builds upon it and makes a woman.

Note that with man he takes dirt and fashions it.

He starts with, but he started with man when he made woman.

For woman was not an entirely new creation, she was phase 2 of man.

Thus mankind wasn't complete until Eve was made.

After all, when God said, let us make man in our image, He said us.

So He said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

So even though he only fashioned Adam first, it's obvious in God's mind that this was just part of a process so that love could be established with it.

It's fascinating that He created us through a process, and it's so important how He did it that Moses dedicates a whole other chapter to explain how it happened.

So having taken part of man to fashion the rest of mankind.

Of course, he made her not identical to Adam, but in his likeness.

There were some modifications, amen, which would allow for difference, which would allow for admiration.

Thus the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit while unique in personalities are all as 1 and Adam just as Adam and Eve are 1 flesh.

You see, the Godhead is 3, and God is love.

The reason he is love is because there is love amidst the 3.

Thus to be in the likeness of God we must be made within the capacity to love and be loved.

And God thus created man to be in relationship, not just with him, but with each other.

So the text says that God brought her to the man.

That means that God walked Eve up the aisle, right?

And I have to wonder, when God introduced them, had God taken Adam's rib and gone off somewhere else to fashion Eve?

Or had God taken her on a tour after creating her while Adam slept so that he could do with her what he had already done with Adam, and awaken in her a desire for a companion so that the 2 could have that special union together.

However it happened, God introduced them.

And by this, God married them to each other on day 6.

When God, when Adam, I should say, met Eve, poetry streamed forth from his lips.

In fact, from what we see in Scripture, the first words from man to woman were words of poetry.

Maybe that's why women still like it, right?

So God sees, according to chapter 1, that all that he had made was good.

And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Now it's possible to read the story of Adam and Eve and think of it as a fairy tale.

It all sounds too perfect, you know, or romantic, too sublime.

Yes the story within Genesis doesn't end happily ever after.

But if you finish the entire book and read the closing lines of Revelation, you'll find that after all it does.

The creation account isn't about paradise though alone.

It's about life and love, both of which may be still had today.

That is, the beauty of God is available to us today.

The breath of God can fall upon us here and now.

The wonder of it all can be had for it's not all about where you are, It's about who you are with.

Those same hands that fashioned man from the dust, those same hands that removed Adam's rib and formed Eve, those same hands were spread out upon a splintery man-made cross and were stained with life-giving blood so that we might be cleansed and restored into His image.

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Genesis

06 Day 6 of Creation

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