The Creation Of Man And Woman (Part 1 ) Series

Dr. Bradford Reaves

Crossway Christian Fellowship

Hagerstown, MD, USA

www.mycrossway.org

View this and other messages at: https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/channels/8118

I started off my message last week issuing a challenge of being more intentional in your study of Scripture. One way is to take notes and we provide notebooks for just that purpose. There is a very good reason for this and it is because the world system that we are living in today, including and maybe even especially, our culture here in the U.S. is decidedly anti-Christian. In 2013, the US Department of Defense began teaching US Troops that Catholics, orthodox Jews, and evangelical Christians are to be considered “religious extremists,” even equating Christian Americans to violent groups like al-Qaeda. In 2015 the US Army told its troops that the American Family Association was considered a hate group, and they could be court-martialed under the USMJ for donating to such groups.

It is not just the military. In Loudon County, a teacher resigned over equity training that stated the greatest problem in the school system is white Christian females. This isn’t something new, but it is becoming more widespread. The ACLJ reports that attacks on religious liberty have increased 133 percent in the last 5 years.

Understand that the problem is not with you. The problem is an increasing cultural assault on the God of the Bible. Which is the root of evolution. Understand also that this is spiritual. This world is not our home because it is under the dominion of Satan.

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I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, (John 14:30)

So it is often concerning to me when Christians attempt to redefine biblical terms, concepts, or doctrine in order to appease worldly people. The case and point of all of this is the creation and I’ve spent a considerable amount of time demonstrating to you how we find no evidence whatsoever in Scripture of any kind of evolutionary process in creation. In fact, we find the opposite and we’ll begin to see this as sin is introduced to creation by man.

If we cannot trust the creation account, then why should we trust anything else on the pages of Scripture? Once creation, the fall, and the flood are brought into question as history, then this brings immediately into disrepute not just the statements of the apostles, who affirmed Genesis, but also the Lord Jesus Christ who also appealed to Genesis as history. The whole meaning of sin and redemption is blurred and lost if we lose the anchor of Genesis. So at this point, we can, and many pastors have redefined the Gospel and what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We can redefine it in modern secular humanist terms and as a set of ideals and morals, rather than a revelation of the God of the Universe who created all things and holds all things in His hands.

This brings me to the central theme of my message and that is understanding biblically the second chapter of Genesis. Because we have placated much of Scripture in modern Western terms, Genesis chapter 2 has been widely misinterpreted. The common misconception is that Chapter 2 is an epilogue or secondary insertion of what may have happened at creation. It is used by those who try to impose evolution into the creation narrative to justify their stance. That simply isn’t the case. So we are going to take a couple of weeks and I think you will be fascinated with this portion of Scripture. Even more importantly, it is the groundwork to understanding Genesis 3-5.

Now, we spent months looking at Genesis Chapter 1. In that time we saw God creating the earth and everything in 6 days. The Hebrew word yom or day can mean an undetermined period of time when there is no number associated with it. But wherever, in the Hebrew yom has a number – like a day one, day two, day three – it refers always to a 24-hour day.

The highpoint of all of this was the creation of man on day 6:

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Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26)

So, God created man in His image, with self-consciousness, personality, rationality, intelligence, creativity, and relationships. And God gave him dominion over the entire created world and all its vast resources so that man could live abundantly in this world in communion with God. It would be man’s sin that relegated that dominion to Satan, as I mentioned a few minutes ago.