A Special Creation 2018/11/25

A Special Creation

Genesis 2:4 – 7

Do you have enough self-esteem? Maybe you need to work on that. Is self-esteem really important? Is it unhealthy to have low self-esteem? The psychologists tell us it is. We have been bombarded for more than forty years with self-esteem propaganda! We’re told we need to teach kids to have self-esteem. We give a ribbon to every child that runs in a race, now, to make sure not to hurt the self-esteem of the ones who don’t finish first, second and third. What are the Olympics going to be like in the future? Are we going to give a gold medal to every Olympic athlete who participates? Maybe we can use pewter. Or maybe candy…

But we human beings do not need self-esteem! We have God-esteem. We are a special creation, created by God in His image, to have a special relationship with Him, forever!

Genesis 2:4 – 7

Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 was the synopsis of the creation of everything. In that short record, we discover all the steps in creation over a six day period, followed by a complete rest or cessation from work on the seventh day. Beginning in Genesis 2:4, we begin to see in more detail what happened on the sixth day of creation, focusing especially on the creation of man.

All the other creatures on the planet, in the water, in the air and on the land, were simply spoken into existence and began to do what they do. Man, on the other hand, was a special creation, a “hands on” creation, formed by Almighty God out of the dust of the ground and given life such as none of the other creatures have. We are, indeed, a special creation. We are not animals, we are not the same as the animals, but we are created in the very image of God!

I The Generations

  1. We generally think of a generation as a period of about thirty years, but the word also has another meaning: that which is birthed, or generated. This is the meaning of the word in our passage, today.

    1. The previous verses beginning with Genesis 1:1 is a record of the things that were generated by the Word of God.

    2. The Earth’s atmosphere, the universe and the Earth, itself, were all generated by the Word of God. That is how Almighty God created all things. “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” Psalm 33:6
    3. All things that were generated by the Word of God continue to exist by the same word that originally generated them, the word of the living Word, Jesus Christ. “Who being the brightness of his [God the Father’s] glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things the word of his [Jesus Christ’s] power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;” Hebrews 1:3

II The LORD God

  1. This very significant reference to God appears here in verse 4 for the first time. The LORD God, as it first appears here, refers to two very distinct names of God. This is Jehovah Elohim. It is significant that the name, Jehovah, does not appear until after the creation of man.

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    1. Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) is the name first seen in Genesis 1:1, referring to God the creator. As we noted previously, Elohim is plural. This is the first mention of God as revealed in three persons who said, “Let us make man in our image.”
    2. Jehovah (יְהֹוָה) refers to the Self Existent or Eternal. As Jehovah, he enters into a personal, moral relationship with man. Again, it is very significant that when the devil in the form of a serpent deceived Eve, he did not use this name! The only name he used was Elohim, the very generic name of our creator. Neither he, nor Eve whom he deceived, used God’s holy, personal name, Jehovah (or Yahweh).
      1. Jehovah is used approximately 7000 times in the Old Testament!

III A Productive World

      1. Included in everything that God generated by his word were all the original plants and herbs that grow on the Earth. There were no precursors to the trees, plants and herbs. The Bible tells us here that every plant appeared fully mature and unique in the field, before there were any seeds or any man to plant and tend to them.
        1. At this point in time, there was no rain to soak the ground to even cause seeds to germinate, should God have put them in the ground, instead of bringing forth fully mature plants.

IV A Greenhouse Effect?

      1. There is a lot of talk, today, about the so-called “Greenhouse Effect.” Most of it is negative. Yet we have in the fossil record evidence that the Earth was once far more productive than it is, today, requiring a much warmer and moister climate in order to support the abundance of huge creatures that were on the early Earth.
        1. In fact, with a warmer, moister climate, we could produce more food, even today. We know this, for one thing, just by the king’s records from Europe. About 600 years ago, they still grew what we now call “heritage” crops, or non-hybrid forms of wheat in Scotland, which they still cannot do. Furthermore, they grew abundant crops of wine grapes in northern England and at much higher elevations in Germany than is possible, today. Farming was possible on the southern shores of Greenland. None of these things are possible, today. It is simply too cold.
      2. Before the flood, the Bible tells us a mist went up from the earth and watered the entire surface of the ground. It is very important to note, right here, that the Bible does not say that it did not rain before the flood! It says it did not rain before God created vegetation and man.
        1. One intriguing thought from science on this is the way rain forms. It requires very tiny particles called condensation nucleii, on which raindrops begin to grow. These particles are .0001 millimeter in diameter. Each thimbleful of air we breath in contains about 100 of these particles. In the beginning, such particles would not have been in the air, so the water particles that went up from the ground would have simply fallen back as mist or dew. Because of this, clouds, themselves, would not have formed, and the sky would have been incredibly clear.
          1. Note that the Bible does not indicate any kind of surprise or lack of understanding by Noah about what rain is. A careful reading of Genesis 6 and 7 shows that God first told Noah that He was going to bring a flood, then he also told him later on in the dialogue that He was going to cause it to rain for forty days and forty nights. There is nothing to indicate that it had never rained on the Earth at all by Noah’s day.

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V A Special Creation

  1. God spoke on the 5th and 6th day, commanding the water, the dry ground and the air to be filled with creatures of all kinds. God created a world with a perfect, highly productive environment. Then, after all the animals, birds, fish, whales, dinosaurs, clams, bugs and fruit bats were created, God began a special creation, man.
    1. We read in Genesis 1:26 & 27 that God, that is, Elohim, 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” And so God created mankind exactly as He said, both male and female.
  2. Now we have a more detailed account of this creation, beginning in Genesis 2:7. The Bible says that God formed man of the dust of the ground, which he also did when he created animals.
    1. In this respect, there is a connection between physical man and the animals. We are made of the same material. Again, this shows the intelligence and good design of our Creator, who used the same building materials for everything on the planet.
  3. But further, we see the record of God’s very special care in the creation of man. God simply called all the animals to form out of the dust of the ground, but when he formed man, the Bible says He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
    1. This breath of life from God is more than simply air, or he would have needed to breathe that into all the other creatures, too. This breath of life from God is the spirit that makes us living souls, able to live with God forever. This breath of life from God was given uniquely to man, not the animals.
      1. Animals live, reproduce, get old and die, and that is the end of their existence. We believe that the reason they die is because of the sin of man that entered the world shortly after creation, but for the animals it is not a fearsome thing, but simply an end to their existence.
      2. Humans, on the other hand, created in the image of God, were created with living souls, creatures with a God-breathed spirit meant to live forever in the presence of God. The difference between a living human soul and a dead human soul, as we will see if our Saviour tarries a few more weeks, is that sin causes this breath of life, the spirit in man, to die. A dead spirit cannot be in the presence of God, so all who die without Christ, who do not repent as God commands and put their faith in Jesus Christ, will spend eternity out of the presence of God, the source of this life, forever. This is a conscious eternity in a place the Bible calls a “place of torment,” and the “Lake of Fire.”

Conclusion

  1. The Bible teaches that God created a perfect world and placed in it a special creation, man. We were created with a perfect body and given the breath of life. We are unique among all the creatures. We were all born living souls, but through sin we died, spiritually, because of our sin nature inherited from Adam. The Bible says “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.“ 1 Corinthians 15:22 “For the wages of sin is death [eternal separation from God in the Lake of Fire]; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:23 We are a special creation, created to live forever with the breath of life from God. We give this up the moment we sin, but the good news from God is that we are restored by His grace the moment we repent and trust Jesus Christ to save us.