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.
Now we come to verse 4 of Chapter 2 and for many readers, it seems like the narrative changes, like something different, is happening. Whenever we in the western world describe something, we use linear terms to help people follow along logically. Makes sense. I like to use bullet points to define things or progress through something. This is not the case with Hebrew writing and Genesis Chapter 2 is a classic example of Semitic thought. Often what will happen is the writer will give you a great overview of a topic and then circle back around to underscore something of significance. Genesis Chapter 2 is circling back to the creation narrative to explain in greater detail the creation of man.
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These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. (Genesis 2:4 ESV)
Genesis 2:4 is a line of demarcation in the Hebrew text introducing a completely new section. Literally, the Hebrew says, “These are the generations” – toledoth in Hebrew – “These are the generations of the heavens and earth when they were created.” It is the beginning of the story of the generations of mankind. It is not a second account of creation, as critics have said, it is the start of the history of man. From this point forward in Genesis and all of the Bible, we are only dealing with Man’s creation
So when we get to verses 5 & 6, some people think that Moses is suddenly talking about creation day 3, but this isn’t the case. Look at these verses with me:
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When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground (Genesis 2:5–6)
what verse 5 is saying is not that there weren’t any plants, and there weren’t any trees - because there were created by God on Day 3. The word for “shrub” is siach and the word for plant is eseb. The siach of the field and the eseb of the field. These were plants of farming. They would emerge as a result of the fall when man would be required to work the ground. More specifically, they are thorns and thistles. (Cassuto)
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thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. (Genesis 3:18)
therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. (Genesis 3:23)
Moses is telling us in Gen 3:5. Before man was cursed to work the ground and toil against the thorn and thistle… in the pre-fall world, there weren’t any cultivated fields. Men didn’t till the ground. They didn’t make rows and plant seeds and grow crops. In the Garden of Eden, there was everything that man could ever want to eat in varieties that were probably beyond his description.
There are some other important details we need to see here. First, there wasn’t any rain. So how did the plants and trees get watered? The translation in the ESV says that there was a mist, but that doesn’t accurately describe what going on. There wasn’t some water vapor floating around. In Hebrew, it says, “But the waters of the deep went up from the Earth and watered the whole face of the ground.” In fact, there’s an idea of flowing water here. Literally, that the water table was so well situated that they would spring up from the earth and water the plants from below.
Rain is a result of the fall. It is unpredictable and inconsistent. Before sin there was never any drought nor was there such a thing as the rivers overflowing their banks. There was a constant unending, subterranean, spring-fed circulation of water that literally covered the face of the Earth and caused everything to have absolute unbroken continuity in a perfect hydrological system, rising up out of the ground to always, always, always keep everything completely watered perfectly.
Rain is a judgment of God. It was a judgment when it came to Noah. And it is used in the Bible to show the continued judgment of God, who can open the floodgates or withhold the rain according to His will. Cassuto writes, “Man would have continued to enjoy these conditions had he remained free from sin. But when he transgressed, the Lord punished him by decreeing that the soil should obtain its moisture from above so that he might requite man according to his deeds, giving him rain in its season if he was worthy, and withholding it if he was not worthy.”
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He covers the heavens with clouds; he prepares rain for the earth; he makes grass grow on the hills. (Psalm 147:8)
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so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:45)
Now with that, Moses gives us a clear picture of the conditions in which God made man. A perfect earth, abundant plants being watered from below, with no need for Adam to ever have to toil or labor for his sustenance:
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then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:7)
So God makes man from the ground. That’s important when we come to Genesis 3 when a man is cursed to work the ground. It also reminds us that we are the same chemicals and materials the rest of the world is made out of, but with one distinction: God breathed His life into us.
This is to convey the thought that even though man had all biology, the immeasurable reality of life is something that’s not really part of those physical components. There is a transcendent reality of life that only God can give, and it’s an immeasurable thing. God breathing life into us is God giving us His Spirit. We are spiritual beings; more than flesh and blood. Animals and birds breathe the air, but they do not have the Spirit of God in them. You do and that’s a game-changer, folks.
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Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)
?The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)
?But it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand. (Job 32:8)
I’ve said before that we are spiritual beings created by God and we live in a world that is engaged in an ongoing spiritual battle. It is the Spirit that gives us life and it is the Spirit that gives us understanding, relationship, wisdom, and strength. We cannot do it on our own nor are we created to do it this life apart from God.
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And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
I think what is needed in our churches more than ever is a spiritual renewal. Not a charismatic kind of movement, but a deepening dependence on the Spirit of God. That same Spirit that hovered over the waters gave you life. He breathed in you eternity that no animal will ever know. It is the curse of sin that corrupted us so that we are spiritually dead without the life and blood of Jesus. (Ezekiel 36:27)
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Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” (Ezekiel 37:9)
?For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3)
This is why the world hates all things God and especially Christianity. This is why we must cautiously look at the world and globalist movements. Because we know that there will be a day very soon when the enemy of Christ will assume the throne over the nations. That system is already in place and the church must use great discernment today.
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If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. (1 Peter 4:14)
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)
?Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:29)
