The Creation Week, Creation of Man
Genesis 1–2
Understanding the Old Testament Lesson #003
January 16, 2000
www.deanbibleministries.org
Father, we welcome the time that we can gather together as a body of believers this morning to study Your Word, that we may be refreshed by the Truth of Your Word and by Doctrine, that we may be encouraged, and that we may see Your overall plan and purpose in the creation of man, and the creation of the human race, and the outworking of Your purposes in human history. Now, Father, we pray that You will help us to understand the things that we are studying to see how they relate together, and may God the Holy Spirit would help us to see how they apply to our thinking and to our approach to life that we may think in a manner that glorifies You, and live in a manner that is a reflection of Your Character and is a testimony to both the angels and to those around us. We pray this in Jesus Name, Amen.
We continue our study this morning looking at the Old Testament; when Paul wrote Timothy and said that "All Scripture is God-breathed," in the previous verse in 2 Timothy 3:15, he had referred to the fact that Timothy had been brought up according to the principles and the Holy Writings. And that is a definite reference to the Old Testament since there was no New Testament Canon at that time in history. So that tells us that even for Church Age believers there is a tremendous resource in the Old Testament. The sad thing is that unfortunately many today do not know the Old Testament very well. There is a tremendous amount of detail and history there and that unfortunately seems to turn some people off because their exposure to history is the history you have in elementary school and junior high, high school and the public schools, where you are taught history from the secular framework. When you don't have a worldview as we have today, which is dominated by secularism and the absence of God, then history is nothing more than a random collection of events and data. So it has no meaning and nobody can come into the classroom and teach history from a Divine perspective; and yet God is the God of history and history really begins with the secular Greek historiographers, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, but with Moses; because true history assigns meaning and interprets the events of history. So we have seen this in the Old Testament. We will continue to look at this. That is why we are spending so much time in the early part of Genesis, to get that overview and interpretative framework to understand why these things are the way they are.
By way of review, we have seen that the Old Testament is organized in your English Bible according to subject matter. In the Hebrew Bible it was organized according to office; so there are three divisions in the Hebrew Old Testament: the torah, which refers to the Law and Instruction, which is the first five books of the Pentateuch written by Moses; the nebihm, the Prophets, both the early prophets and the later prophets, and the ketuvim, which are the Writings, Psalms, Proverbs, the Wisdom Literature, Daniel, written by authors who did not hold the office of prophet. In the English Bible it is organized according to subject matter. The first five books are called the Law or Pentateuch, the torah, written by Moses about 1440 BC. Then from the time of the conquest you have the episode with Joshua, the commanding general who took the Israelite armies into the land, and the reason I have that dark line down there in the middle (chart) is to indicate the Divided Kingdom. You have a United Kingdom up until about the early 900s BC, and then there is a division into north and south. The Northern Kingdom is Israel; the Southern Kingdom is Judah. Then in 586 BC the Southern Kingdom goes out into exile; the Northern Kingdom had already gone out, been conquered militarily by the Assyrians in 722 BC; and in 586 BC the Southern Kingdom goes out for a 70-year exile. Then they return and your three Books, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther cover the post-exilic period.
In terms of the Writings and how they fit into this overall scheme. Now this gives you this overview. This is your framework; if you can understand this you can understand the Old Testament. You have to have the broad categories: Law, History, Divided Kingdom, Exile, Post-Exile. Now that is the Old Testament. Everything else fits into that framework. So you have Job, which was written, or at least occurred, I think, prior to Abraham. We don't know when it was written. It is probably the earliest of the Books written in the Old Testament.
Then you have the Writings. Most of the Psalms were written by David, some were written by Moses, and some others. We'll just put them in there. They were written roughly between a 1000 BC and 600 or 500 BC. Then you have the Solomonic Wisdom Literature: Song of Solomon (Songs), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, written during the lifetime of Solomon, roughly the 10th century BC. Major Prophets: Isaiah, in the 7th century BC; Jeremiah, up to and including the exile; Ezekiel, up to and including the exile; Daniel during the exile; then you have the Pre-exilic Minor Prophet: The 12 Minor Prophets, and then your three Post-Exilic Prophets: Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi. If you have that you can get a good overview of what is going on in the Old Testament.
Now the Pentateuch itself is organized in a very special way, unique to its time in history. It was written by Moses on the plains of Moab in roughly 1400 BC, just prior to the entry into the land. In liberal scholarship, they always attack the Mosaic authorship, first of all. See, the assumption of liberal theology is that God has not spoken in history, that all of revelation, all the Bible, is merely man's record of his interactions with "God." According to that they reject any kind of supernatural breaking into human history by God, so naturally the Pentateuch is always under attack by liberal scholarship because it violates their basic approach to life, which is the basic approach of fallen man; that man is independent and that God really doesn't exist or interact with human history. So one of the things that always happens in liberal scholarship is they tend to 'late date' all the books of the Bible, so instead of the Pentateuch being written in 1440 BC they move it up to about 1200 BC. So obviously if the date was 1400 BC there would be predictive prophecy there, and my goodness that would suggest that there was a God and we can't have that! And there would be other things as well that would indicate Divine authorship, so we can't have that, so let's move the date up to about 1200 BC. And that's what they do. One of the interesting things is that Moses wrote this in a particular form which we will get to in a minute, but it was unique to his time in history, unique to the 15th century BC; we will see that in a little detail in a minute.
So Moses is on the plains of Moab with the Israelite army, poised and ready to invade the land that God has given them. That is why he is writing the Pentateuch. It is to explain to the nation why God chose them, why God chose Israel. It explains their national purpose and destiny, that God has a special plan and purpose for Israel. They were called specifically by God through Abraham into existence to be God's firstborn and to serve as a priest nation to all the nations. So the initial Books will explain how the nation came into existence. That is why when you look at Genesis 1, we looked at it from a Gentile perspective and we want to know much more about these events between Genesis 1 and Genesis 11, but that is not Moses' purpose. If you take a look, just step back and look at Moses writing Genesis you have 50 chapters. The first 11 chapters, which is about 1/5 of this Book, covers about 2,000 years and then it begins to slowdown, doesn't it. You cover 2,000 years in 11 chapters and then the remaining chapters cover four people. So you have all of Genesis involve four events and four people. The four events are: Creation, Fall, Flood and Babel, those are the four events. The people are: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. So Genesis 1-11 covers those first four events, but the next 39 chapters cover four people, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. So, you see that it is slowing down and you see that the focus if you look at Genesis, what Moses has in mind, is for you to pay attention to what God is doing in these four men. That sets the stage for what will happen in the Exodus.
Then you come to Exodus 1 and things slow down a little more; you focus on Moses, but you are still coving a vast among of time in just a few chapters. You come to Exodus 19:1, when the nation comes to Sinai and God gives the Law, and the brakes come off. It just comes to a screaming halt in terms of its temporal movement, and everybody stops at Sinai from Exodus 19:2 to end of Exodus 40; it covers a one year period.
Now, if you were just stopping and looking and thinking about this, what is the main point in Genesis and Exodus? What does God really want the nation to be paying attention too? What happens between Exodus 19 and Exodus 40? That is where the focus is; everything just comes to a screaming halt. You will see why in a minute; but you have to understand that when you read the Pentateuch, read it like a Jew prepared to go into the land wanting to know why we are doing this; why did God give us the land; why did God give us the Mosaic Covenant; what is God's plan of salvation; and how do we fit into this; what is all of this about? That is what this is written to explain. It is not written to answer all our questions about where there dinosaurs on the earth with man; what about this and what about that; and all the different questions that we have and we have a lot. But it is written to explain a theological purpose, God's plan and purpose in history specifically through Israel.
Now, when Moses structures the Pentateuch he does it in a special way. He uses a secular treaty form, a secular contract form. Remember, the Old Testament is built around covenants. A covenant means a contract from the Hebrew word berith, which means a covenant or contract between two parties. Now it was typical in the ancient world, as it is today, that when you sit down and make a legal contract that there are certain things that are going to go into that document; and at different times in history there were different forms that were used.
So if you look at the literary structure of a contract, for example a real estate, and a 1,000 or a 100 years from now someone found a real estate contract and it did not have a date on it, and you looked at it according to the provisions and the way it was structured and the way it was written and the kinds of things that had to be in there; if you were a student of the law of Connecticut at this particular time, you could determine whether that contract pertained to the early 70s, late 70s, early 80s, late 80s, early 90s, or late 90s simply by the way it is structured.
The same thing is true about the Old Testament and especially the Pentateuch. We can look at the Pentateuch, and in the early 1960s an Old Testament scholar by the name of Meredith Cline published a book called The Treaty of the Great King, in which he demonstrated that the entire Pentateuch, as well as sections within the Pentateuch, which shows how incredible the organization is; this could not have been haphazardly written by two or three different authors and then thrown together. It shows that it has deep internal thematic structure that is repetitive. The entire Pentateuch is laid out on the pattern of a Suzerain-Vassal treaty form. Not only that, but Deuteronomy, which is a subsection, is according to the Suzerain-Vassal treaty form; and there are others sections within the Pentateuch that are also according to this same form. So that indicates, just because of its literary structure that it was written in the middle 2nd millennium BC, around 1500-1400 BC.
Now Moses, remember, is a brilliant individual. Moses was reared where? In the court of Egypt; he was reared as the prince of Egypt, which means he had what would be equivalent to an Oxford or Cambridge education today. He was drilled in the sciences of that time, which would include astronomy, geometry, mathematics, law, military art; he would have been very familiar with the things going on in neighboring cultures. And the dominant treaty form that was used during this time was called a Suzerain-Vassal treaty form. I know that terminology is not something you use all the time. Think back to when you studied feudalism, and you were sleeping through feudalism; when you were in world history classes in high school and college -- a Suzerain is a Lord, the overlord, a Great King. A vassal is like what we would call a client state.
The best analogy we would have is the relationship of the satellite countries to the Soviet Union during the cold war: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, these were client nations. They were indeed vassal states to the Soviet Empire. A vassal is someone, a country, that is under the domination and hegemony of a higher, greater empire, under its control.
So there would be the contract, the covenant, the treaty that the two countries would enter into. The great country would bring the lesser king in and say 'we are going to keep you on the throne and allow you to continue to rule and here is the deal, these are the guidelines, these are the regulations.' It will always start off with a historical prologue defining the past relations between the two countries and how the Great King has blessed and prospered and benefited the lesser power; and then it would define the legal relationship within the present structure. Then it would go on and list the things that could happen if you break the contract; this is what will happen to you if you abide by the contract these are the good things that will happen to you. These are the benefits that will come to you. You can already see how this relates to the Mosaic Law.
So we see that the Pentateuch is laid out with these basic patterns. There is a historical introduction to the covenant in Genesis 1:1 through Exodus 19:2. All of that covers the past relations between God and Israel. Genesis 1-11 is a historical prologue that explains why God has to call out Abraham specifically and create a new nation. Then in Exodus 19:3 through Numbers 10:10 there are the covenant stipulations proper, the main rules and regulations of the covenant that God is entering into between Himself and the nation Israel. Then the historical conclusion to the covenant is from Numbers 10:11 through Deuteronomy 34:12. Deuteronomy itself is laid out according to this same pattern, this same program.
We know this because archeologists in the earlier part of this century discovered some of these contracts in a Hittite library. One example we have comes from a Hittite king, King Mursillis, and he had a vassal king, (?), who was an ailing, aging king down in what we would call an Amorite in the country of (?), and that gives us a perfect pattern of how these things relate. In that particular document we have a historical prologue that showed the past relationships between (?) the Hittites and the Amorites (king); and it reviews the various acts of blessings and kindness between the two countries and includes the reasons why Mursillis shows (?) and why he put him on the throne and allowed him to be king in spite of his aging and ailing condition.
So we see this same thing when we come to Genesis 1:1 through Exodus 19. Remember there were no… The reason these are broken up into books is because of the size of the scroll. They could only get so much information on one scroll, so they are broken where they are because of the size of the scrolls and the length of the paper. It is not that Moses said, "Okay, I am going to write five books, the first book is going to have this outline and the second book is going to have this outline… He wrote one lengthy document and we broke it down that way; and it is broken down that way because of the way it is organized according to the scrolls. What we learn from all of this is that what the Bible claims to be true, that this is a document related to this time period, is substantiated by its very form. Now this Suzerain-Vassal treaty form is crucial to understanding all the covenants of the Old Testament. That is why I am introducing it to you this morning and we will come back and learn some more things about this. The Suzerain is the Great King, the Great Lord. Some people now try to call it the Sovereign-Vassal treaty form, but the technical term, and I think you should learn what the technical terminology is. The technical term is that this is the Suzerain-Vassal treaty form or the Suzerain-Vassal Covenant.
Now, when we examine all of this, what we see is that the key verses are in Exodus 19:4-6. Three we read, God saying to Moses, "You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and {how} I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; (the key verse, focal point) and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel."
Now what is the purpose of a priest? A priest is the intercessor and mediator between people and God. The prophet was the one who spoke for God to the people, but the priest was the one who came as the intercessor and the representative of the people to God. So Israel as a nation is put in the position of serving as a 'priest nation' between God and the rest of humanity. This is why Israel has such a central role in all of human history. So the first thing we see here is that Israel is not simply the purpose of the Old Testament. The focal point here is not the redemption of Israel. Israel is chosen as a means to achieving a higher purpose, and that purpose is the salvation of the nations. So Israel is chosen as a means to an end; they are the priest nation through whom God will come and work and reveal His Word for all the nations, and in fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant that all the nations would be blessed in them:
1. So the first thing that we learn from this passage is that Israel is not the purpose for the Old Testament but the means to achieving the broader purpose of God which is the salvation of all the people.
2. The second thing we see is that Israel was to serve as the mediator between God and all of the peoples of the earth; they are in a national position. If you examine a map of the ancient world you see that all the trade routes, all the caravan routs converged on Israel. If you were going from Egypt to Babylon you had to go through Israel; if you were going to go from Asia Minor, up in Turkey or Rome or Europe or that area, and you were headed down to Persia or the Middle East or to Egypt, you had to go through Israel. So all these caravan routes converged in Israel and it was that tat that point, to these truck drivers basically, that Israel would evangelize the caravan drivers and then they in turn would take the Word of God back to their nation. That was how Israel was to be a witness and evangelist in the ancient world.
3. The third thing we see is that Israel's role in the plan of God is to serve as a means to the end; they are not the end. Incidentally, it is just a side point observation here; there are many people who think that the whole purpose of the Bible and the purpose of the Old Testament is to express the salvation of God. But that is why God has salvation; this same principle applies, salvation is not the end; salvation is merely a means to an end. We are saved from something to something, so salvation cannot be the overriding purpose of understanding the Bible. What is the overriding purpose? It is the glory of God. Now why is that important? For those of you who are a little more advanced, but can learn a few other things, one of the major differences between Covenant Theology and Dispensational Theology (and we are dispensational in our theology) is that Covenant Theology teaches that the overall purpose of the Scripture is salvific. It is soteriologically related to salvation. But Dispensational Theology says that there is a broader purpose than salvation; it is the glory of God. So I am simply reiterating and emphasizing the point so that you see this, that salvation isn't the end, but the means to the end, and the end is the glory of God. That is why we are saved. We are saved for a purpose, to fulfill the role God originally intended for mankind.
4. The final objective is for God to have unbroken fellowship with His creatures, the people of the earth.
This leads us to one very important question: Why is the human race, then, so crucial? Why has God chosen to create mankind? For the Jews the question was why has God called us as a nation? Why are we here? Why has God given us this land? Why are we to go in and annihilate all of these people? Why is God using us in this way? But beyond that is the question: Why is the human race so important and so crucial and why does God emphasize mankind as the central part of all of creation?
Here we see that the original vassal in God's contract is: God as the Sovereign, the Suzerain; Adam was created as the original vassal, and he was created in perfect environment. We we'll see as we look at this that there are important ramifications for understanding this. The whole concept of the Suzerain-Vassal treaty is going to drive us right into being able to understand why Genesis 1-2 are so crucial. If you do not take them literally, if they did not happen they way they are written, and it was not a literal interpretation, then it destroys the significance of everything that God says to Israel, and in turn it destroys everything that is in the New Testament. You cannot separate history from doctrine at all.
Three things we will look at.
1. First of all the creation account of man as the image of God in Genesis 1:26-27. This is the central focal point of the Creation narrative in the first part of Genesis.
2. The second thing we will look at is that that this Creation account is a covenant-establishing document. There is a contract established that is inherent within the verbiage of Genesis chapter one and we see this in relationship to God's covenant with Noah in Genesis 6:18. This is the second thing and you will see it again. (Repeats points 1 and 2) For God said to Noah just before the flood, "But I will establish My covenant with you." What covenant is God talking about here; is it a covenant in the future or is this a covenant that God has already established with mankind? What we'll see when we get to this point, is that the covenant God makes with Noah is a repetition of what God said about mankind and mankind's purpose in Genesis 1:28, 29, with a few significant differences. When God says to Noah, "I will establish my covenant with you," what He has in mind is, I am going to reestablish with you the covenant I made with Adam in the Garden of Eden when I first created man. I will continue, despite this horrific global judgment; I will continue the covenant with man to serve as my vassal on planet earth.
3. The third thing we are going to see is that the context of the Creation week emphasizes the creation of mankind as the centerpiece and the purpose of all of God's creative work.
It didn't just happen by chance. It is not just happenstance that there just happen to be bipedal hominoids who were rational creatures on planet earth. But there is a purpose to everything that God did in those first five days to prepare the earth for the presence of man. What we are seeing in this is an overview. We keep coming back to this; I want you to understand this framework. We have first the overview of the Old Testament five parts: The Law, History, Wisdom Literature, Major Prophets, Minor Prophets. That is the English Bible. So we are focused on the Law. The first part of the Law is the historical prologue from Genesis 1 to Exodus 19. It surrounds 4 events: Creation, Fall, Flood, Babel; four people: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. We are focused on the first event, which is Creation. Now, if you look at this, which is bringing the microscope down, we have gone down from the big picture from Genesis 1 to Exodus 19. Now we are coming down to the next unit, which is Genesis 1-11. In Genesis 1-11 Moses uses a phrase that he repeats seven times in this section, and this is the phrase around which all of his material is organized. We first find it in Genesis 2:4, "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth."
So the formula is: "These are the generations of x. There are seven statements; "these are the generations of the heavens and the earth;" "these are the generations of Adam;" "these are the generations of Noah;" all of these things indicate, probably, most conservative scholars believe that what this reflects that from the creation of Adam, probably from the Fall, up through Moses, there were records kept, a tremendous amount of records kept; and some fact argue that the phrase tol'doth, "These are the generations…" "these are the records of…" And so it would seem that under the ministry of the Holy Spirit, Moses had historical documents going all the way back to the Creation; and under the supervision of God the Holy Spirit, he was picking and choosing the information from those documents and editing them, and putting them together into this particular document. So there are seven sections and you will see this slide many times:
1. The creation narrative in Genesis 1:1-2:3.
2. The second division is the sins of Adam and his descendants in Genesis 2:4-4:26.
3. The third division covers human history from Adam to Noah, Genesis 5:1-6:8, just prior to the flood.
4. Then we have the record of Noah and the world-wide flood, Genesis 6:9-9:29.
5. Then the fifth division covers the scattering of the human race, Genesis 10:1-11:9.
6. Sixth we see the genealogy, very specific genealogy from Shem, Noah's third son, to Abraham, Genesis 11:10-26. Which brings us down to that specific individual God calls out who starts the Jewish race.
7. And the seventh division is the introduction of Abram and Sarai, Genesis 11:27-32.
So that is the overall structure. So the reason I bring this in is to help you understand that this is not, as liberal theology says, just a sort of collection that was thrown together by a later editor; that there is a deep internal structure, the literary structure. I cannot even scratch the surface of this; we're just going to survey; I am just going to cover the high points. But I needed to build at the beginning of this, because Genesis 1-11 is so foundational to the rest of the Bible; our confidence that this is indeed the Word of God as it claims to be and should be handled and treated in a literal manner. So, having said all that, we come to the first point this morning which is:
1. The context of the creation week as emphasizing the creation of mankind as the centerpiece and purpose of all God's creative works. The first point we need to remind ourselves of from last time is that man was created to resolve the angelic conflict. In the document of Genesis we don't go all the way into eternity past because that doesn't fit Moses' purpose to write to Israel. He is not putting them within their overall framework of the angelic conflict; he is putting them within the framework of God's purpose for man, according the Genesis 1:26-27, which is the centerpiece of this discussion.
But we saw last time in our study that God created the original Earth in Genesis 1:1, that this was the center of the Throne of God, in Ezekiel 28:13, describing the Fall of Satan, it says that he was the anointed cherub that was in the Eden of God. That Eden is not the Garden of Eden of Genesis 3, but predates all that. So we put that all together; that this was the original Throne of God, and just as an Admiral places his flag on a flagship, he is not the Commander, there is a Captain of the ship, so God had a Throne Room on Earth and Earth was the center of Lucifer's pre-Fall activities. That is why he is still the god of this age, the god of this world, the prince and power of the air. That is why planet Earth is the focal point, because this (Earth) is the center of the angelic rebellion from the very beginning.
2. We saw that there was a unified angelic choir that praised God at the creation of the Earth in Job 38:4-5. All the sons of God shouted together for joy and they sang praises to God. There was not yet, at that time, a division among the angels.
3. We saw the Fall of Satan, the Fall of Lucifer, which is described in Isaiah 14:12-14 and in Ezekiel 28:11-19.
4. We saw that the Earth was judged, the universe was judged. "The earth was without form and void," tohu wa bohu, indicates judgment. "Darkness was on the face of the deep" those terms, "darkness," we saw last time, always indicates "judgment on the earth," chaos. The universe is judged and placed in darkness; and notice, in Genesis 1:3 when you start reading God's recreation account, He says He, separates the light from the darkness and He called the "light" good. He did not call the light and the darkness good, He just called the light good. And in Genesis 1 we see the pattern of God creating something and calling it good. But He does not call the darkness good. Only when He brings light in. Darkness is the absence of light; so darkness is there because God has removed His presence; removed light from the universe and brought judgment upon the universe. Then there is the restoration, which shows the grace of God and the redemption of God throughout human history. So the universe was judged and placed in darkness.
5. Fifth, there was the trial of the angels, Matthew 25:41, the Lake of Fire was created for the devil and his angels. If that was created in eternity past, why did the angels not end up in the Lake of Fire? What is the purpose of planet earth? We draw a theological deduction that Satan must have challenged the judicial decision of God. How can You be just and fair and let me, consign us, to the Lake of Fire without giving me the opportunity to show what I can do – that I can be like You; I can be God; I can run the planet; I can run the universe; I can be God; give me that opportunity on the basis of my standards and my way of doing things, which is based on arrogance and pride and self-sufficiency. And so all of human history is designed to demonstrate the fallacies of Satan's plan. That the only way to success, happiness, meaning and definition is to have a right relationship with God, our Creator, and to be fulfilling the purpose that God created us for and not running independent of that and thinking that we can come up with the answer on our own and provide meaning to life on our own. It can only come from the Creator.
The next thing we see is that the structure of the creation indicates that everything is created to provide the perfect environment for the final creation of man. Everything from day one through day five and a half is designed to provide the perfect environment for man. Everything is anthropocentric; everything is man-centered. Look at the structure, on day one we see the creation of light; the separation of light from darkness, and temporal separation. God says it was morning and it was evening; on day one God creates a time clock, morning and evening. Now if you are a Jew and you are sitting in the plains of Moab, getting ready to go into Canaan and you read that, and you say, "It was morning and it was evening, day one." What are you thinking? You are thinking in terms of your frame of reference; that it is morning and evening day one. You are not going to think, well that was an age, a 1,000 years, that was 10,000 years. You are thinking this was a 24-hour morning and evening then just like morning and evening now. So God creates an environment of light and darkness and temporal separation.
On day two God creates the atmosphere. The earth up until that point is still covered with water. He takes part of that water and He puts it like a canopy around the earth, much like Venus. We do not know if it was a vapor canopy, if there were ice crystals, there are several different things that have been written by scientists trying to set up models as to how this would impact the earth. But it was made of a very different environment. The earth from the restoration to the flood was vastly different from the way it was. Some physical laws were different. Some of the botany and biology was different; for example, we will see that in Eden one river flowed out and divided into four. Well you do not have that on planet Earth today. There are no rivers that diverge; they all converge. But you don't have one river that splits into four. You might have two or three rivers come together, like the Missouri, the Mississippi and the Ohio; three rivers that come together and form one; but you do not have one river that splits into three. And this is the situation you have before the Fall. So this is a unique situation on the earth. So Day 2 you had the atmosphere set up.
On Day 3 you see the sets up of the seas and the continents. You now have an upper level, a canopy, then the atmosphere and the water on the earth, Day 2; Day 3, God divides the seas from the continents creating the environment s of water and dry land. He creates vegetation and here we have geographic separation.
On the fourth day He creates the light-bearers; notice the patterns: on Day 1 He creates light, light as an entity; it is not substantiated in anything. It is just light that permeates the universe. And then it is encapsulated or in Hebrew you have the creation of 'owr,and on Day 4 the creation of Ma'owr, the light-bearers, the sun, moon and stars that fit into the environment of the heavens. So, Days 1, 2, and 3 create environments; Day 4, 5, 6 create what fill the environment.
On Day 5 you have the creation of the creatures of the air that live in the upper atmosphere, and the creation of the creatures of the water, the fish and other creatures that live in the water on the earth. The air creatures and water creatures of Day 5 fill the air and water created on Day 2. Then Day 6 you have the creation of land creatures and man who will fill the continents, which were created on Day 3.
What we learn from this is that God is an orderly God; He is intelligent in His approach and in His work. (Repeat) It is not haphazard; there is a plan; there is a procedure; He is systematic. Now that is important. What is the application? If God is systematic we should be systematic. We are created in the image of God; we shouldn't live life haphazardly; we should not live life randomly, whatever happens happens; we should have a plan and a purpose and think things out just as God did. God is orderly and organized. Seven quick observations:
1. First of all, these days are 24-hour days, they are not lengthy periods or geologic ages. How do we know that? First of all, on the first day God creates the time clock—morning and evening indicate a 24-hour day. The second thing is based on the language used. In the Hebrew we have the word yom, which is the word for day; yom is used with an ordinal number—Day 1. Every time, there are over two-hundred times in the Old Testament that yom is used with an ordinal number, and every time it is used with an ordinal number it refers to a literal 24-hour day; no exceptions.
The third reason is given in Exodus 20:8-10 when God says to the Jews in the commandment related to the Sabbath, it says, "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day…" You are to work six days and rest on the seventh. Why? Because that is the pattern of the creation. Now, if you are a Jew sitting on the plains of Moab, having God say work six days and rest seven; what are you thinking? Is that a seven week work week? I work six and rest seven? God did it in literal 24 hour days. If God made it something different from that then He is deceiving the Israelites.
Once again, if He is deceiving the Israelites, then God is not God and you can throw the whole thing out. You have to take a literal Creation; take the Bible at its word or you have fundamental problems throughout the rest of Scripture. Furthermore, in Exodus 28:8-10, when God said, "I made the heavens and the earth in six days," it is the plural of the word yamim. The plural is used over 700 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and every single time yamimis used in the plural it refers to literal 24-hour days. No exceptions. So there is no linguistic data anywhere to support the idea that yom used either in the plural or with an ordinal number means anything other than a literal 24-hour day.
Furthermore, it can't fit the pattern. Look at the chart, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3; Day 3 you have the creation of vegetation. If Day 3 refers to the Cenozoic Age or the Mesozoic Age or some other Age, and you have the creation of plant life, and you have 10,000, 20,000, or 100,000, years go by before there is a sun; then all that plant life demands photosynthesis for survival. You can't go more than maybe a day or two until those plants get sunlight in order to survive. You cannot go into those days and make them fit the geological ages. Because the order of the events in the geological ages are drastically different from the order of events in Genesis 1. So, first you have 24 hour days.
2. The second is that you have language demarks barriers and categories. Now what do I mean by that? Day 1 God creates light and He calls the light day and the darkness He calls night. As you go through Genesis God starts naming things. Now as a child is growing up and as a newborn baby he starts to learn things and he sees the family dog run through the living room; you point to it and say, "Doggie!" And the child learns that it is a "doggie." And one of the most fantastic things is that Mortimer Adler, one of the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica and books of the western world, made the observation that the most incredible intellectual accomplishment we ever made in all of our life, we made before we were 5 years old. What was that? We learned a language.
That is the most incredible thing. Animals do not do that. Beside the fact that you have a couple of apes, monkeys and gorilla that picked up sign language here and there, it is limited. It can only go so far. I am not saying that animals do not have some sense of communication; when my dog runs to the food bowl and looks at me a barks there is some form of communication. What we know is that language is unique to man; language establishes a category; so when you teaching your little child and they learn the definition of a dog, isn't it incredible that it only takes about a day until they realize that when they see the spaniel down the street or the German shepherd, they categorize all of those are dogs and they learn that cats are not dogs.
Now, assume evolution is true; cats evolve into dogs. You go to sleep and wake up in the morning and the dog is not a dog anymore; but somewhere between a dog and a cat. What does that do to language, to learning, to meaning in the universe? It destroys it! That is the implication here. Language establishes that there are unbreakable categories in the Creation and that becomes a foundation for learning and for knowledge.
3. When God says these things were good and concludes by saying that they are "very good;" it means that it was in accord with God's plan. This indicates the expression of divine purpose. It is the Hebrew word tov and it indicates purpose not moral quality. When God says the light was "good" that does not mean that it was moral. Light does not have qualities of morality or immorality. When God looks at the animals and says they are "good" they are not moral or immoral; they are what He intended them to be. So tov means that this is exactly what God intended and His Divine purpose.
Now the reason that is important is because there are some who will come along and say that at then end when God says that it was "very good," which is the culmination of His plan to be finished; they will say that it means that everything was perfect, there was no sin in the universe yet and that Lucifer had not fallen. Now that is a major problem at that point and it is based upon misrepresentation of the text. I know Hebrew scholar that will argue that, but the Hebrew professors that I had at Dallas (Theological Seminary) argue from a better position and I think they are right.
4. Fourth, the terminology "after their kind" substantiates categories again. Categories are very important. God starts off with categories, creates the animals according to categories, and then He has Adam name them. He is going to initiate language, bring the animals to Adam and then Adam is going to carry out and continue the process of naming. That is what history is all about. God initiates, gives man the framework of knowledge and then man operating within that framework of Divine knowledge then builds. It is designed for man to utilize what God has created, not just to live in harmony with what God has created.
"After their kind" indicates that this is not the same species; "the kind" in Scripture is broader than species and smaller than genus; it indicates that there is no cross fertilization between the kind. So, when you take, what is it a horse and a donkey, then you can have a mule, the mule is sterile and cannot reproduce. So even though you may have some kind of creature that is developed between two species, it depends upon whether it is reproducible. So the kinds are rigid categories; you have a dog kind or cat kind and the DNA was built/created with all the complexities, so that it is diversified through history.
God's plan included all of these options within it. It has the flexibility within the DNA cells to handle what would happen in the flood. This is remarkable to look at all that is involved in this. There is more information, ten gigabits of information in one female ovum. And to think about that, if you change one you change everything and it may not even function after that. To think that all of that could come about by chance is absurd. "After their kind" is used three times on the third day in relation to plants; three times is repetitive; God wants to make sure you get the point that the plants reproduce after their kind, they don't become some other kind of plant. It is used two times on the fifth day in relationship to sea creatures and birds.
The Hebrew phrase is lamina, which means "kind or category." It is important to not this; it is used only three times in three passages in Scripture; lamina is used in Genesis 6:20 in the instructions God gives Noah and taking animals on the ark; these categories are the same; the animals "after their kind"…God is preserving the "kind" breakdown through the flood; then again the word is used in Leviticus 11:15, 16, 19, 22 in defining clean and unclean animals. So this word is a very precise term that indicates a rigid barrier between animals. If there is fluidity between the kind category, then what would that do to the demarcation of clean and unclean animals in either Genesis 6-7 or Leviticus 11. It would render those things somewhat meaningless.
5. Fifth observation: Shabbat, after six days of Creation, God rested on the seventh day. Did God rest because He was tired? No. God is omnipotent; God never grows weary or tired. God rested to establish the pattern for man. A pattern we later learn through the Mosaic Law and in Hebrews is the pattern of resting and trusting in God. Sabbath is created for man; God needs no rest; the emphasis is always on Faith Rest Drill. It is always on trusting God; man relaxing in the provision of God. God rested because God has supplied everything that mankind needed. There was nothing left out, everything was included and perfect.
6. What we see in the passage is indications of the God. God said, "Let us make man." The word for God is Elohim, which is the plural. What you will find today is in Hebrew scholarship is "it is the plural of majesty" which means that when you really want to emphasize that something is "Great" you use a plural of "Majesty," it does not mean plurality, but monotheism. But Elohim indicates plural but monotheism.
7. Seventh observation is that God exists; that is what we see in Genesis 1; God is self-existent; He is not dependent upon His Creation. He is distinct from all Creation. He is, orderly; He has planning; He has thought; He is purposeful, there is reason for what God does, tending to the most minute detail. And it is, because of language, it is comprehendible. Language is the tool of thought. It is comprehendible. Therefore, implication: Therefore God's revelation is also self-consistent, orderly, purposeful and comprehendible. That means that the Word of God is given, not to befuddle you; not for you to go home and say, I need the keys to understanding that…, but God's Word is given to be comprehended. It is understandable; it is clear; you do not have to have some mystical key of knowledge in order to unlock the meaning of Scripture. That is why emphasize that the interpretation of Scripture is based upon the literal, plain understanding of the text. You have to understand the time in which it was written; we did some isogogics this morning in understanding the Suzerain-Vassal treaty form, but it is understandable. You may need to learn some historical background to interpret it correctly, but it is designed to be understood, not to befuddle.
Now that leads us to the second point that I wanted to cover this morning, which is that this account is covenant-establishing, and this is related to God's statement to Noah. In Genesis 6:18 God said to Noah, "But I will establish My covenant;" as I said earlier, God is going to establish a new covenant or reestablish a new covenant that is already in existence; now I take it that this means that it is already in existence because of the parallels we will see between Genesis 9 and Genesis 1:26-28.
"But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark," Genesis 9:1. Let's look at this outline of the covenant with Noah. "And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth'." Now God says the same thing to Adam. We are working backwards here. We are going to work from Genesis 9 back to Genesis 2. The word "covenant" is not used in Genesis 1 or 2. The terminology is, that is what the argument is. It is the reason we are saying that God makes a covenant with Adam from the instant of Creation and that that whole passage is covenantal. Because the terminology is identical to the terminology in Genesis 9. If Genesis 9 is covenant then Genesis 1:26-28 has to be covenant. "God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth."
Now what did this mean to Noah? It meant go out and procreate, fill the earth meant the same thing to Adam. Genesis 9:2, this pay attention to, this is where there is a difference. In Genesis 1 we will see Adam was to rule over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, but now there is a change. What happened in between was the fall. And the fear of you and the terror of you. That did not characterize the pre-Fall environment. But Genesis 9:2, "The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given." Now they become part of the food chain.
You are always going to run into someone who is a vegetarian and they think that it is the ideal way to determine what has happen as far as human construction since the flood, because you changed the environment. Man prior to the flood was vegetarian; but after the flood he must eat meat. There are nutrients and vitamins and you must get some meat, if for protein alone. So there is a change here and it goes back to the flood. Genesis 9:3, "Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as {I gave} the green plant…. Genesis 9:7, "As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it…" Genesis 9:9, "Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you."
Now let's go to Genesis 1:26-29, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in Our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, (see the similarity, same terminology); 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.' Then God said, 'Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you.'"
This was referred to in Genesis 9, it goes back to plants; just as I gave you the plant, I give you the animal. So there is a modification in Genesis 9 of the original Creation Covenant. But if Genesis 9 is a covenant, then Genesis 1:28-29 is also a covenant; it is the Adamic Covenant. Genesis 1:30 "And to every beast of the earth, every bird of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth which has life I have given every green plant for food," which means that all the animal life prior to the Fall was herbivorous, land animals, not carnivores; that is a result of the flood.
That leads to the third thing I wanted to get to this morning, which is the focal part of all of this, and that is the creation of man as the image of God, but we have run out of time, so we will have to start there next time and we will try to get the creation of man in Genesis 1-2 and then on into the Fall next time. We have to lay the foundation. We have to go back to the Suzerain-Vassal treaty, you have the Great King who establishes the vassal kings. The vassal is to be his representative; that is where the image and likeness relate to functionally. We are to represent God on the earth. That was man's original pre-Fall position. But the image is more than just a function, as to who we are immaterially. That image is marred by the Fall and then is restored through regeneration and resanctification, where we are being renewed according to the image of Christ. What all this is leading to is God created Adam in the Garden to be His representative, His Vice-Regent to rule the earth. So that is the function, that we are being restored to as believers and our role today is that we are to be the image of Jesus Christ, representative of Jesus Christ to the earth, because we are being restored to that original image. It does not happen until glorification, but it begins the restoration process, because of God's grace, at salvation.
With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, Father, we thank you for what we have learned today and the way it increases our confidence in the veracity of Your Word; when we see all of the complexities of Your Creation and how everything is enter related and is controlled by Your omnipotence and Your power. Father, we also see Your Grace in restoration, restoring the planet after the Satanic Fall and judgment. And Your Grace extends to the Cross where all things are paid for by Jesus Christ. Father, we pray that if there is anyone here uncertain of their eternal destiny that now would be the opportunity for them to make a decision as to where they stand with Christ. Salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You don't have to join the church; you don't have to reform your life; you don't have to make a deal with God; you don't have to give any money. All you have to do is to accept a free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. Now Father, we pray that You would help us to meditate on these things; that the Holy Spirit will bring them back to our mind during the week that we might think them through and understand them; that our understanding of the world around us might be changed and transformed according to the Spirit. We pray this Jesus' Name, Amen.
