Sorry this is a little late. We made it through the stormy weather last night with flying colors. I don’t think I’ve made it through the respiratory virus that is going around. It’s not bad, but it is disrupting.
Humankind
Creating us did not grow God’s love for us. He already has an infinite amount of love that He lavishes on us.
Creation of humankind was different from the other creations. Humankind has a mind and free will. God created man in His own image. The Trinity had a divine consultation to determine how humankind would be created.
How Made
There is no indication in Genesis 1 of how the male was made. We are given a little more information in Genesis 2 about how humankind was created. Instead of just saying the words and we came into existence, God put a little work into it.
The man was made from dust. God formed him. He was more involved in our creation.
Does formed from the dust disqualify us from being created in His image? The first — in His image — is about the pattern used. The second — formed from dust — is how we were formed.
God gave humankind the breath of life. The way I interpret this is that the dust was formed into a lifeless body. He breathed life into us, creating a dual existence. We have a physical part and a spiritual part.
This dual existence comes with expectations. That makes us accountable to God as He is our Creator. We are living entities that have free will.
Humankind also became a servant in God’s plan. He could — and did — visit them in the Garden of Eden.
Humankind has a living soul. That is the part of us that is immortal.
We have to surrender our whole lives to God. It’s about character. It is daily. It is about our total life.
We were not made to be alone. We were made to be social and interact with others.
How could God have thought the man was alone? Wasn’t He with him? Well, not all the time (Gen. 3: 8). That makes it appear that there were times when God was off doing God stuff. He wasn’t with the man 24/7/365.
God, in His loving kindness, wanted us to have relationships with others of our kind. That is where the multiply came into effect (Gen. 1: 28).
The man needed more of his kind. So, God made woman.
I don’t think the deep sleep that God put the man under was a death sleep. I, personally, don’t think it was the man’s first experience with a normal sleep. I don’t think it was a trance.
God basically operated on the man. That is why I think it was more of an anesthetic sleep without the drugs.
God took a rib from the innermost part of man to create a woman. Woman was created through God’s love.
I don’t think it was God’s intent to make women inferior to men. Other than in physical strength — and that is not always the case — nothing in a woman’s nature is inferior to men.
God brought the woman to the man Himself. His intent was to make a loving companion. Each were to uplift and support the other. In other words, man (in Hebrew ish) and woman (in Hebrew ishah) were made to be a partnership, not a competition.
Does not the fact that God allowed for our individual differences because we were not all formed from dust fall under that, too?
Childbirth is another process that God utilizes to continue to create us. It is different yet.
If we say the woman is inferior because she wasn’t formed as the man was, what does that make us? More inferior?
Made in His Image
God patterned humankind after Himself. He made us holy and righteous. God formed us from dust the ground and breathed life into us to put spirit into us. That is the characteristic that separates us from other creations.
The woman’s subsequent creation from the man does not make the woman any less in God’s image. It just makes her different from the man.
Each of us are different. We are not a clone of the man. By creating the woman separately, God allowed for those differences.
We are still made in God’s image, but we have lost our likeness to Him. That is what sin did.
But God sent His Son to pay our debt for sin. Our relationships with God can be restored.
We have all have been made in God’s image, but only disciples are children of God. Worldview people — those who have chosen sin over God — aren’t children of God.
Moral Character
Being made in God’s image, then, is about our moral and spiritual nature. Our moral character is definitely not like God’s. We are not pure as He is. There is no way we can do all the do’s and not do all the don’ts — especially after sin was introduced.
We are children of the King, so we must look and act like Him. The problem is that our character changed after the original sin, not our nature. While we still have a soul, it was tarnished by sin.
God gave us spiritual capabilities. He wants us to use our intelligence to discern whether He has decreed something to be good/evil or right/wrong.
We cannot separate body, spirit, and soul. It is the spirit, this divine part, which separates us from animals.
One thing that did not change was the immortality of our souls. Like God, we will live eternally — not our physical bodies, but our souls.
Gender
God created only male and female as genders. All the rest are manmade through the influence of Satan.
- God made women to be an equal partner who will go along side and work with men to do what He has called them to do.
- Both men and women were created in God’s image and charged to be stewards of the earth and populate it.
- As part of the woman’s punishment for committing the original sin, she was to submit to her husband, not all men.
- If this is the consequences of the sin, it wasn’t this way prior to the sin.
- Jesus said that anyone who does the will of His Father is his brother, sister, and mother.
- Jesus taught women and extended the offer of salvation to them.
One of God’s goals for all of us is to make relationships so that we can spread the word about His love for us. He wants us to be connected with others.
Family
God wanted humankind to grow to more than just the man and the woman and to be more than they were upon creation. It is through marriage that children were to be conceived. The family must be built on love.
Yes, God wanted humankind to multiply to fill the earth. He always wanted them their spiritual conditions to grow. Yes, they were perfect because they had no sin in them; but being human, they could grow.
Humanizing God
We try to bring God down to our level. The worst way we do that is to say the second greatest commandment is “… ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Mk. 12: 31 NLT) and that means we have to tolerate their sin.
No! God does not tolerate our sin. We have to repent and turn from it.
We make God more human by trying to justify our actions and finding ways to say, “God didn’t really mean it that way.”
Yes, God said it exactly as He meant it.
We also try to humanize God by saying He made us so smart that we have figured out something — like creation. No, God isn’t going to let us figure some things out. He is more interested in our faith than our intelligence
Garden of Eden
A paradise was created in which mankind was to live. The Garden of Eden was created specifically for humankind. Also called the Garden of God, the Garden had a sacred purpose — an imitation of Heaven; it was a temple specifically appointed in the service of God.
However, the exact location was probably lost because of changes of the earth’s makeup as a result of the flood. Hmmm. I figured the exact location was lost because the tree of life was there. God did want us to eat it in our sinful bodies.
Tree of Life
Originally having no restrictions placed on the tree of life, humankind was free to eat of its life-giving leaves.
It is a real tree. We may scratch our heads at its life-giving or life-sustaining properties. But it has those properties.
The tree of life was a promise of spiritual life as long as humankind was obedient.
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
The tree of knowledge of good and evil is what offers humankind free will.
Good is what is pure and holy. Evil is sin. The man and the woman knew what good was because they were obedient to God up until that time. Once, they bit, they gained knowledge of evil.
The sad part is that the man and the woman had that good in them. But they may or may not have realized it.
Even here in the second chapter of the history of the world, it is about faith — and not just I believe faith. It is faith in the unseen — therefore, unknown.
We like to say that sin invaded because of the man and the woman’s disobedience. But wasn’t it already here? Didn’t it really invade God’s universe when Satan disobeyed Him?
Both Trees
These trees truly symbolize spiritual elements.
When the Wilderness Wanderers were wandering around, they would set up camp. The Tabernacle would be in the middle. The divisions would circle around the Tabernacle.
Both trees, symbolizing spiritual things, took the place of honor in the middle of the Garden. Honoring God is paramount.
The location of the Garden of Eden is potentially identified by the rivers that run through it. The four rivers – really branches – flowed from one unnamed river.
The first river is the Pishon River that flowed around the land of Havilah, named after a descendant of Ham, Noah’s son. The Gihon River, as the second River as well as a spring, flows near Jerusalem. The third branch, the Tigris River, is still identifiable today. One of the most familiar rivers, the fourth branch, is the Euphrates River.
Judgment
God was very pleased with His creation.
It is easy to think that God was saying that creation was physically good. That limits the complexity of creation and God’s purposes for creating the universe. What God was saying is that creation would fulfill the purpose for which it was made.
Everything God had made was very good, not just humankind. It means that it is pure like God is. It means we are suiting the purpose for which He intended.
In His blessing, God empowered humankind to grow and thrive in everything. He didn’t necessarily bless them to be successful in everything they do – as the world would define success.
Shabbat
God rested from creation because He had completed His plan.
Many say that He had no more to create. Well, nothing more was created, but not everything was there.
We can’t think that God rested because He is weary. It is more He ceased from His work because the work was completed.
God also rested from creation so that it could produce. Creation wasn’t supposed to sit around and do nothing. He created it so it could multiply and replenish itself.
Humankind did not create Shabbat in order to take a break from the stress of this world. God instituted it to be celebrated on the seventh day of the week for us to seek God. God blessed it by making it about salvation.
One thing we have to recognize is that God isn’t just calling us to put aside sin on the Sabbath day. We are to take our focus off this world and focus on God. We are to be content where He has placed us.
God gave us the Sabbath when we were in the Garden of Eden — our place of Heaven on earth. The original sin hadn’t occurred yet.
And we still needed a Sabbath day.
Shabbat was not a Ten Commandment thing — it is a creation thing.
On each of the previous six days, the proclamation was made that the evening and the morning completed each day. It closed the events.
No such proclamation was made for the seventh day. Everyone must worship God. It isn’t a Hebrew thing. It isn’t a Jewish thing.
There will be no end to worshiping God. We will continue on throughout eternity doing that.
We have a tendency to misunderstand what it means to be holy. We tend to think anything coming from God is holy.
God hasn’t told us to stop resting/worshiping Him on the seventh day of the week. The change was made to honor Jesus’ resurrection.
God gave very specific instructions on how to observe Shabbat. Well, God has given very specific instructions on how we are to live every day.
Making the Connections
Disciples are in the process of being remade. It is called sanctification. That is the process by which we are regaining God’s nature and characteristics. It is how we work out our salvation.
We aren’t given license to sin. It shows how loving God is to put up with us knowing we would – knowing the majority of humankind would have no problem with continuing to sin and disobey Him.
How Do We Apply This?
We need to understand God more. We know what His laws and commandments say and how we are to live to obey them.
Disciples replenish themselves by seeking God.
Be accountable to God because He is our Creator.
