Genesis 6:1-4: Who Were the Nephilim?

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, ² the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. ³ Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in^[a] man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” ⁴ The Nephilim^[b] were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

I’ll start this post right off with a confession.  I don’t know what God is talking about in verses 1-4 of Genesis 6.  I did a little research to see if I could begin to understand, and here’s what I found from http://www.answersingenesis.org:

A brief summary of the four popular views of the origins of the Nephilim:

Name	View in short
Fallen angels view	Satan and/or his fallen angels bred with human women and had offspring that were called Nephilim.
Fallen angels overtook men view	Fallen angels and/or Satan possessed men and caused them to breed with women.
Sethite view	The sons of God were the godly line from Adam to Seth down to Noah, and the Nephilim were fallen children who sought after false gods.
Fallen men view	Godly men (sons of God) took ungodly wives, and their descendants (Nephilim) followed after the false gods, rejected God, and fell far from God in wickedness.

In short, the answer to Who were the Nephilim? remains a mystery today.  If God included the Nephilim in his account of Genesis, then I believe it’s relevant.  But I don’t know enough to go farther than that in my discussion here.  There are different views of the Nephilim and what is going on here in Genesis 6.  I’ve never heard a sermon on the Nephilim or many references to the Nephilim in my Christian life, except one my mother-in-law pointed out to me from http://www.searchablesermons.com entitled “The Weirdest Story in the Bible.”  I couldn’t get the link to work but if you go to searchablesermons.com and search for this title, you should get an interesting discussion.  And I’ll leave it at that.  On to Noah …

Genesis 4: The Story of Cain

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten^[a] a man with the help of the Lord.” ² And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. ³ In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, ⁴ and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, ⁵ but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. ⁶ The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? ⁷ If you do well, will you not be accepted?^[b] And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for^[c] you, but you must rule over it.”

⁸ Cain spoke to Abel his brother.^[d] And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. ⁹ Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” ¹⁰ And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. ¹¹ And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. ¹² When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” ¹³ Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.^{[e] 14} Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” ¹⁵ Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. ¹⁶ Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod,^[f] east of Eden.

Genesis 4:1-16 (ESV)

 

Having grown up outside the church and Christian circles, my understanding of this passage was always pretty vague.  And yet, I still knew about the story of Cain and Abel.  Something about it transcends Western culture; if you stop 10 strangers on the street and ask them who were Cain and Abel, changes are you’d get a strong majority of people who know something about these brothers.

 

Until recently, I always gave the account of Cain a cursory review, assuming that because it is so well known, I already knew all there is to know about it.  I assumed it didn’t require an in-depth study.  The lesson here is obvious, right?  Don’t kill people.  Don’t give inferior offerings to God. 

 

But still, with that understanding, something always bothered me about this story. 

 

In this passage we see Adam and Eve moving on after the Fall, trying to make the best they can out of what’s left of their lives.  They bear 2 sons, first Cain, then Abel.  Not much information is given about either Cain or Abel, except that one worked the ground while the other tended sheep.  We can’t be sure how or why Cain ended up working the ground and Abel tending sheep, as opposed to the other way around.  My sense about the Bible is that God gives us the information he wants us to have.  So anything that’s not even subtlely explained isn’t really that important, I suppose.  So all we need to know at this point is that one brother had one job, and the other had a different job.

 

The most relevant information we have from the beginning of this account is found in verses 3 and 4.  We see that Cain brought an offering to God “of the fruit of the ground,” while Abel brought an offering “of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.” 

 

Does anything about this jump out at you?  After years of being bothered by this story it finally struck me to ask:  What’s the difference between these two offerings?  Isn’t that what forms the basis of Cain’s eventual wrath against Abel? 

 

So I zoomed in on the two offerings.  Cain offered the fruit of the ground.  Abel offered of his firstborn and their fat portions.  On the face of it there doesn’t seem to be a big difference.  Both brothers brought offerings from the fruit of their labors.  Does it really make that big a difference to God that Abel’s offering was from the “firstborn” of his flock?  If Cain tended the ground, there would be no “firstborn” of his labor to offer.  So why did God have regard for Abel’s offering, and not for Cain’s?

 

Long story short, here’s what I learned.  I was focusing too much on the offerings themselves, and not enough of the persons doing the offering.  Proverbs 15:9 says in the ESV that “The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but he loves him who pursues righteousness.”  The New KJV put it a little differently:  “The sacrifices of the ungodly are an abomination to the Lord, but the prayers of the upright are acceptable with Him.” 

 

We know that God is all-knowing.  He sees directly into the heart of a man, whereas we human beings can know a person’s heart only through his words and actions.  God doesn’t rely on such outward appearances to discern whether a person is right before him or not.  Consequently, when Cain and Abel brought their offerings to the Lord in verse 3 and 4, God already knew that Abel was humble in his heart and loved God above all other things, whereas Cain did not.  Abel’s love for God resulted in him offering the firstborn of his flock – a genuine sacrifice.  Cain, by contrast, had little to no love for God, as we will see in the verses that follow.  But God already knew where Cain’s heart was, and it wasn’t with him.  So God rejected Cain’s offering – not necessarily because it was an inferior offering in comparison to Abel’s, but because it represented an inferior heart in God’s sight.  Cain’s priorities were out of order.  And again, God already knew this.  We don’t begin to see it until Cain responds outwardly to God’s rejection:  “Cain was very angry, and his face fell.” (verse 5b).

God is not subtle in his reply to Cain.  “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?”  Notice that here, as in Genesis 3 after the Fall, God’s first words are in the form of a question.  As with Cain’s mother and father, God wants Cain to take a long, hard look at the state of his heart and recognize that he has a choice whether to pursue righteousness, or not:  ^7 “If you do well, will you not be accepted?^[b] And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for^[c] you, but you must rule over it.”

Here, Cain is presented with an express choice.  It’s the same choice Abel had, the same choice Cain himself has always had, though perhaps he did not recognize it.  Now, he must recognize it and acknowledge it.  God has made it plain:  it’s up to you how to proceed from here.  And how does Cain proceed?

“[W]hen they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.”

Not a good choice.  I don’t say that lightly … this is clearly not a good choice.  The first parents in the world have now suffered the loss of their child, and what’s more, their other child is responsible for it.  It was needless, senseless death.  The first murder, in only the second generation of human life. 

From this, we see clearly that Cain has refused to adhere to God’s warning.  Instead, we see him allowing the passions of his flesh to rule over him as before, this time, with dreadful consequences.  Instead of inquiring with God why his offering was rejected, Cain became angry, outwardly angry.  Instead of considering the root of that anger, he allowed it to control his decisions.  Perhaps this brings sharp relief to God’s earlier admonition:  “[I]f you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for^[c] you, but you must rule over it.”  In other words, if you indulge in the flesh, it will control you … but you must control it.

Again, we see God introduce the dilemma with a question:

“Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’”

Cain’s response?  He is dishonest and sarcastic.  “He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’” That he would address God in such a way should, I think, give us all the evidence we need to understand why God rejected Cain’s earlier offering.  He knew all along that this is where Cain’s heart was.  We don’t see it until now. 

Again, God presents another question to Cain:

^10 “And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. ¹¹ And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. ¹² When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth’

Watch carefully how Cain responds:

 ^13 “Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.’”

Again, the NKJV gives his response a little differently:  “My guilt is too great to be forgiven!”  This demonstrates a lack of faith in God’s grace:  no sin is too great to be forgiven, except the sin of unbelief.  Cain’s perspective, his understanding, of who God is and how God operates shows how little Cain has gotten to know his Creator during his life.  That would suggest that his relationship with God has been virtually non-existent.  Here, we see the consequences of that distance coming to bear.

Cain continues: ^14 “Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden.”

“From your face I shall be hidden.”  This would be akin to “from your presence” I will be hidden.  This is how I would imagine Hell:  some people would describe it as a place of enormous suffering, and I would probably agree.  Not because it is where tremendous torture and pain are inflicted upon people forever.  I think it’s a place of enormous suffering because there, you are outside God’s presence, forever.  In such a place there can be no hope for the future.  Every day is the same as the last, or worse.  I can get through a lot of things in life if I know they’re temporary.  But in Hell, where God is not present, there’s no such thing as temporary.

This is what Cain has ahead of him.  God does not banish him to Hell, specifically, but I think the difference here is nominal.  Being outside God’s presence is the most severe punishment God can inflict, I think.  Cain has always wandered on the margins of a healthy relationship with God.  Now, he has stepped so far beyond the boundaries set by God, there’s no going back.  Cain does not ask for God’s forgiveness, or for his grace to change his heart.  Read on as he continues:

“I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

If you stop and think about it, Cain’s reaction to his punishment is actually quite remarkable.  There is no humility or even repentance here.  Cain is grieving over the punishment he must suffer, not over his sin.  This is like the burglar who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but only that he was caught. 

God isn’t terribly sympathetic in his reply:

¹⁵ Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. ¹⁶ Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod,^[f] east of Eden.

This was another part of Cain’s story that used to bother me.  After Cain murdered his brother and generally acted like a spoiled brat, why should God protect him from likewise suffering a violent death?  Isn’t protecting Cain from being killed tantamount to justice denied?

But in the end, the answer is no.  Indeed, the opposite is quite true.  If God’s punishment for Cain was to live a life of wandering outside his presence, if this is really akin to Hell on Earth, then God would cancel out its effect by allowing Cain to be killed, thus ending his suffering.  But God prevents that from happening here.  He wants Cain to live a life on his own, without a home, without that sense of inner peace of a right relationship with God, without any chance of such a relationship ever again.  He gives Cain a lifetime of reliving what he’d done.  And there’s not even the hope of an untimely death to assuage that suffering for Cain. 

What did I learn from studying this passage, until my questions were answered?  I learned that God often confuses us with the way he chooses to handle things.  But I don’t have to understand.  It doesn’t have to make sense to me at all.  God never commands any of us to “get” what he’s doing.  He just says, “Trust me.  I know what I’m doing.”  And he does.  He really does.

So while this is a dreadfully sad story about Cain and Abel, there is indeed a very practical lesson here for all of us.  Guard your heart.  Guard your heart for its value is beyond compare.  It should be reserved only for God.  Not for any worldly possession or position or anything other than God.  When you allow something other than God to sit on the throne of your heart, you risk taking the road of Cain.  I don’t mean to say that you’ll inevitably become a murderer.  Cain’s sin was indeed very great; but his deepest problem lay in the state of his heart.  If his heart had been right with God, he would not have murdered Abel.  Guard your heart from any inferior worship of inferior things; keep it for God, and watch what he does with it.

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.  Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

Genesis 3:8-24

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool[c] of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”[d] 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

14 The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
    cursed are you above all livestock
    and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
    and dust you shall eat
    all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring[e] and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise his heel.”

16 To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for[f] your husband,
    and he shall rule over you.”

17 And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
    and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
    ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.”

20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.[g] 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

 

Last time we talked about Genesis 3:7 and how sin’s entry into the hearts of Adam and Eve affected them, both individually and in their relationship with each other.  Today we’ll talk about what happened next:  namely, how did their relationship with God suffer?

verse 8:  And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool[c] of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 

The ESV begins this passage with “And,” as if to indicate that verse 8 is directly connected with the events of verse 7.  The New King James Version replaces “And” with “Then,” as if also stating that verses 7 and 8 are directly connected.  

Similarly, the ESV describes the events of verse 8 as occurring “in the cool of the day,” while the NKJV specifically says they heard God walking in the garden “that afternoon.”  Both versions would indicate that not much time passed — no more than a few hours at the most — between verses 7 and 8.  Again, as we discussed with regard to verse 7, the consequences of sin are far-reaching and immediate, even if we don’t immediately perceive them.

Also notice in verse 8:  the same God who Adam and Eve were tempted to believe did not care for them, but actually wanted to hide the truth from them to keep himself above them … this is the same God who is now referred to as “Lord God.”  We haven’t seen him referred to this way since Genesis 3:1.  Despite how Satan would have us perceive God’s character — despite how we ourselves decide to perceive God — he remains both good and great, strong and loving, powerful, mighty, intensely concerned with our wellbeing.  Even in our sin, and in its immediate after-effects, we may change, but God does not.  His goodness is eternal.  And yet, although God is described in this way, Adam and Eve still hide from him as soon as they hear him coming.  How often do we ourselves fail to understand God’s true nature?  

 verses 9-13:  The Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”  And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”  He said, “Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?  The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”  Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”  The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

 

Some misguided commentaries take this passage to suggest that God cannot be all-knowing, because he must ask Adam a series of questions, as if interrogating him for information.  Shouldn’t God already know all this?  

 

But I would suggest that God isn’t asking these questions because he wants to know the answers.  God does know the answers, even better than they do.  But notice, the serpent is also present throughout this interaction between God, Adam and Eve, but God doesn’t direct any questions toward him.  This is important.

 

By asking Adam what he has done, God is forcing him to examine their conduct.  He’s not trying to teach the serpent any lessons here.  But he reaches out to Adam and Eve because he cares about how they view their sin.  He doesn’t want them to remain oblivious to what they’ve done.  It’s important that they know what they have done.  Remember the saying, “Recognizing the problem is halfway toward the solution”?  We are FAR less than halfway toward solving our own sin when we acknowledge it …. That’s where Jesus comes in!!!  But the point remains:  what they have done isn’t a mere trifle.  It was sin, and Adam and Eve needed to acknowledge it as such.  Just like we need to acknowledge our sin as such.  So God’s first response to each of them (notice how he asks the same question of them both, though they committed the same act) is to ask, “What have you done?”

Notice the response from Adam:  

Adam:  “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 

 

He admits that when he first heard God, his initial reaction was fear.   With sin in our hearts, we are instantly afraid of God.  So what does Adam do?  He hides.  Then, he tries to deflect responsibility for what he has done:  “The woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

What is Adam doing here?  He gets attacked a lot these days for deflecting responsibility to Eve.  But is he deflecting to Eve, or to God?  Notice:  The woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit…  

Just two chapters before this, we saw Adam made perfectly in God’s image.  How has he become capable of this degree of cowardice and deflection?  Where does he get the nerve to blame God, of all things, for his sin?  

It’s easy for us to overlook the depravity that resulted from Adam’s eating the fruit.  Let us never forget that any disobedience against God, whether it’s eating fruit God said not to eat or something else, the simple choice we made to substitute God’s will for our own twists the human psyche, the human heart, into something far different from what God intended.    

After God questions Eve, notice is her response:  The serpent deceived me, and I ate.  She, too, deflect responsibility for her sin onto the serpent.  While he was easily to blame for tempting Adam and Eve, they are accountable for their own choices to believe him, and act on that belief. 

As previously stated, God doesn’t interrogate the serpent, asking him what he has done, or why.  God already knew why, just as he knew the answers to his questions to Adam and Eve, and the answers they would give.  God is all-knowing.  

 

So instead of posing any questions to the serpent, God goes into immediate condemnation:

 

 The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
    cursed are you above all livestock
    and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
    and dust you shall eat
    all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring[e] and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise his heel.”

Notice again the reference to “Lord God” at the beginning of this passage.  This not accidental.  It is reminding us again that even in his anger at the rebellion of Adam and Eve, his perfect creation designed in his own image, he remains good.  When should fear his wrath when he is angry, but we should never lose sight of the fact that he is good.  Whatever he does is always best, always good, always to be trusted, no matter how much it may hurt.

 

In verse 15, we see the first foretelling of Christ in the Old Testament.  “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”  

 

Who is this “he” God is talking about?  For years, this passage used to bother me because the sudden shift from “offspring” to the singular “he” just didn’t seem consistent to me.  And for years I glossed over this verse because it was yet another passage of Scripture that seemed beyond my understanding; cryptic, at best.  But having now understood that the “he” here is actually Christ, being described in his battle against and ultimate victory over Satan, the verse makes perfect sense, and it is amazing to see this early reference to the Gospel.  God knew even then what was going to happen; he created us with the crucifixion firmly fixed in his plan.  That is amazing.  Is that not amazing?

 

Verses 16-19:  

To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for[f] your husband,
    and he shall rule over you.”

17 And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
    and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
    ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.”

God’s order of operations here is interesting.  I think we discussed in a previous post about how God created Adam first, then Eve.  He commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, tasking Adam with communicating this command to his wife after she was created.  But Satan, in his efforts to tempt mankind into rebellion against God, speaks to Eve first.  Why?  He is attacking God’s order.  He recognizes the care with which God has designed humanity.  He also recognizes that tempting Eve first is a subtle way of thumbing his nose at God’s efforts.  

But notice how God approaches them beginning with verse 8.  He calls to Adam first, and interacts with him before any mention is made of him speaking to Eve.  Only once he has spoken to Adam does he turn to Eve, then to the serpent.  And once he has conversed with all three, he’s ready to hand down the consequences of their rebellion against him.  And he does so in opposite order, as if saving the most significant consequence for his interaction with Adam, the one he created first, and communicating his command to directly.

As for Eve, possibly one of the greatest joys she was ever to experience before sin was the bearing of children.  Now, that joy has been tainted with the promise of tremendous physical pain.  Not only in the context of a healthy childbirth, but think about all the complications that accompany pregnancy and childbirth, even today.  What should have been an event of unspeakable joy now carries with it the risk of unimaginable grief, even death.

But what else does God say to Eve in this passage?  Not only will she suffer in her efforts to bring forth children, she will also suffer in her most intimate and significant human relationship:  her marriage.  That relationship with the man who once protected her and taught her the commands of God, who loved her above himself, will now be fraught with conflict.  Again, that which God designed to be a perfect reflection of his glory and a source of incredible joy for his creation is now tainted by the presence of sin embedded in the human heart.     

As for Adam, God promises hard work and difficulty, toil and trouble.  God reminds Adam that he directly commanded him to avoid the fruit of the tree, and Adam disobeyed.  While Eve also clearly disobeyed God, I think there is significance in the fact that God reminds Adam specifically that he commanded Adam first, directly, and entrusted that Adam to communicate that command to his wife (who was not even created yet, compare Genesis 2:17 & 22).  Adam, who stood first in God’s order, now bears the ultimately responsibility.  It is through his sin that death is now a fact in the world.  Not just for him, not just for Eve, but for all living things.  God had promised death as the consequence of Adam’s disobedience.  Now we see both a spiritual death, evident in their distance from God, as well as the promise of a physical death in the days, months, or years to come.  

But notice this irony, which follows in verse 20:

20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.[g] 

Does that not seem strange?  Eve is so well known in Western civilization that it’s easy to forget, she didn’t have a name until this moment.  I went back through Genesis 2 and the beginning of Genesis 3 and confirmed — she is consistently referred to as Adam’s wife or “the woman,” but never by her name, until verse 20.  

Given that Adam had just received the judgment of God in the form of the promise of death, it seems odd that he would name his wife Eve, calling her “the mother of all living.”  Sure, she is the physical mother of all humanity because we descended from her biologically.  But if you go a little deeper, is there not also the promise of redemption in this name?  God has just promised death, and yet she will be the mother of “all living.”  Make no mistake — I don’t think Adam was confused about the nature of the death God promised.  I think he understood completely what it meant for his descendants.  But I also think this verse is subtlely hinting at the coming of Christ, of redemption, of eternal life.  Because all those who will be saved by Christ will be descended from Eve.

This interpretation of verse 20 is encouraged by what follows in verse 21:

21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

It is dreadfully sad that we see the first death of an innocent animal, killed as a consequence of humanity’s sin, for the purpose of making coverings for the man and woman.  I’m not exactly sure what connection God sees between our sin and our need to be clothed from this moment forward in Scripture, but I accept that there is indeed a strong connection.  Clothing is sometimes referred to as a symbol of our separation from God:  that we are not what we were created to be, and so must be covered in some way.  To go without clothing remains among the most socially unacceptable behaviors; it is so heavily ingrained in our psyche that we rarely even question the purpose of it or its origin.  But I submit that the origin is here, in Genesis 3.  

And yet, through the dreaded sadness of the first death of a creature made by God, we also see the “Lord God’s” provision, his compassion, his commitment to sustain Adam and Eve even in the midst of their disgrace.  They are still living and breathing physical objects.  Destined for a life of unspeakable difficulty and suffering, yes, but still under the hand of a gracious God who has supplied them with the very coverings they now need as a consequence of their sin.  God is indeed good, through it all.

22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Now, as a final statement of God’s mercy, even through what must have been his own tremendous grief, we see God provide death as a way to terminate the grip sin has on us all.  He knows, far more than Adam and Eve, how dangerous it is for them to stay in the garden.  They are in an irreversibly fallen state.  If they take of the tree of eternal life, they will be forced to remain in this state forever, always.  Now, by forcing them out of the garden and preventing them from reentering, God is protecting them by providing a way out of a life of sin.  They will live out their remaining years on Earth in a fallen state.  But those years will come to an end.  Mercifully, they will end.

  

Genesis 3:7

Hey everyone.  It’s been a while since I added a new post on here.  I’ve been struggling over this latest post.  

We left off last time with Genesis 3:1-6, with Adam and Eve eating of the forbidden fruit.  

The rest of Genesis 3 is packed with lessons and truth stemming from the events of vv. 1-6.  As I began to consider how to cover the rest of this chapter, I became more and more convinced of my own inadequacy to this task.  While Genesis 1 and 2 are also filled with enormous lessons for us, my attempts to thoroughly and accurately cover the second part of Genesis 3 left me more and more aware that this task it too big for me.  Who am I to think I could exhaustively and correctly cover every passage of Scripture, God’s Word to humanity?  I’m not a trained Bible scholar; I didn’t go to seminary.  I’m just a working mom who enjoys reading in what little spare time I have (when I’m not too tired).  I believe the most important book a person could ever read, and should never stop reading, is the Bible.  I also enjoy writing what I’m learning from my own reading of the Bible.  Nevertheless, it seems presumptuous at best to consider myself qualified to do a good job at this.  

My conclusion?  After starting several posts that I never finished, and battling over how to approach the rest of Genesis 3, I finally decided that my goal with this blog shouldn’t, and can’t, be to cover the Bible word by word, point by point, with complete thoroughness and accuracy.  All I have to offer here are my own thoughts, what I am learning, what I want to one day share with my kids when they’re old enough.  I thought of putting it all on a blog to see if it helps someone else, someone I don’t even know, by sharing what I’m learning.  That doesn’t mean it’s completely, infallibly correct on every point.  But if perfection is the standard, then I might as well give up the blog.  And I don’t want to do that.  I still think, with its human flaws, that God can use this blog.  And it’s a good outlet for me.  It keeps me accountable in my Bible study too.  So I’ll continue what I started a few months ago.  I’ll continue reading this Bible as if unpeeling an onion … the deeper we go, the more truth emerges.  But at no point do I represent that it’s exhaustive or perfect or anything close to either.  The Bible is divine.  I am not.  

So, having acknowledged my own inadequacy to this task, I take it up with a new determination.  I’ve finally sat down with the purpose of actually completing a new post for this blog (-:  To make that task less daunting, and to encourage a more thorough but concise analysis, I will cover just one verse today:  Genesis 3:7.  I chose to “isolate” this verse because it is a watershed moment in human history, a turning point in which Adam and Eve have stepped outside the boundaries God set for them.  They have thereby stepped away from God, away from what they were meant to be, into something quite different from what they expected.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

Genesis 3:7 makes no attempt to hide the enormity of what’s just happened.  Its first word, “Then,” indicates there was no delay in the consequences of sin’s entry into the world.  Adam and Eve knew something was wrong, and they knew it immediately.

How do we know this?  Because “their eyes were opened.”  Notice the passive voice here — it doesn’t say they opened their own eyes.  Their eyes were opened, as if by an outer force acting upon them, against them.  In his commentary, Matthew Henry notes that this is not a physical, literal opening of the eyes.  Adam and Eve were not blind in the sense of lacking physical sight up to this point.  Nor is there any reason to suppose they’d been walking around with their eyes closed before now.  What’s happening here is that Adam and Eve have seen sin for the first time.  Previously, they knew they had a choice to disobey God.  They knew it wasn’t a good choice.  But now, they’ve turned in the direction of sin and walked through it.  In verse 7, they are standing on the other side of it, as if they have stepped over the boundaries of freedom and into prison.

Because let’s make no mistake about this.  To choose sin is to turn toward it, move in its general direction.  Adam’s and Eve’s orientation now was toward sin, away from God.  Whereas before verse 7, they were perfectly and intimately connected with God in the holy communion for which he created them, now they were separated from their Creator, as orphans, lost, alone.  And once that step away from God was taken, it could not be un-taken.  Adam and Eve now known the truth with all its ugliest ramifications:  they had walked away from God, and there was no going back.  

This is, in part, what I think God is communicating with the phrase, “the eyes of both were opened.”  The Garden of Eden was specifically designed as a paradise for mankind — comfortable, yielding its fruit readily to meet their needs and their wants.  But with introduction of sin, what Adam and Eve now saw was an irreversibly altered world.  

Remember that this is before the Gospel has been communicated.  Hence, Adam and Eve know nothing of redemption, salvation, sanctification, restoration.  They don’t have the hope we have today.  This must, therefore, be the darkest moment in human history.

What happens after a person sees their own sin for the first time?  They are convicted (or should be).  In verse 7, “the eyes of both were opened” is also referring to Adam’s and Eve’s sense of conviction at what they’d done.  They recognize that it was their choice, their voluntary decision to allow this new thing into the world, which they knew — even intended — would fundamentally change their relationship with God.  Now they see, that instead of elevating themselves to the likeness of God, they are now far beneath any position they previously held.  They have lost their holiness, any power they could have held over sin.  Instead of becoming like God, now they cannot even tolerate his presence without being overcome with fear.  

Conviction leads to guilt.  Guilt creates shame.  “They knew that they were naked.  And they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths.”  The New International Version states that “they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”  

The language here is important — each word.  They knew they were naked, so they made coverings for themselves.  The cause and effect is made deliberately clear:  sin led to conviction, conviction to guilt, guilt to shame.  What does a person do with shame?  They try to hide it.  It is also a knee-jerk response — you don’t even have to think about it first.  Some people describe terrible dreams in which they are not being stalked by a serial killer or trapped under water in a gaping black ocean.  No, the dream that frightens them, which they would even call a nightmare, is where they find themselves standing naked in front of a room filled with people.  Everyone is pointing and laughing.  The shame of being exposed before our peers is enormously compelling.  The only way we know to respond is to try to hide ourselves as a means of protection.  Because at the root of this shame is an even deeper problem — our ever-present companion when we are separated from God:  fear.

Fear explains why Adam and Eve suddenly couldn’t stand to be exposed.  Before, nakedness was the most natural thing in the world for them, as was the perfect agape love God designed them to participate in with the Father, Son and Spirit.  Now, all that protection, all that holiness and perfection, is drained from their nature as if a cancer has invaded their hearts and left them wanting.  Their sense of safety in their closeness with God has disappeared.  

When we are misaligned with God, our relationship with God necessarily suffers.  This has what I would call a “trickle-down” effect on everything else in our lives, including our relationships with each other.  Having stepped away from God and toward sin, Adam and Eve’s perspectives are now inward — away from each other.  Instead of putting each other’s well being ahead of their own, they now think of themselves first.  Their greatest priority now is neither God nor each other.  Having shed this holy lens from their eyes, they are now prisoners to their own selfishness.  Eve, having perceived this change in her husband, now knows he does not seek to protect her but himself.  She must be on guard now.  That is a new feeling.  The change in Eve is equally visible to Adam.  He knows that he has lost his perfect helpmeet in her.  This is a fundamental rupture in their marriage, a time of mourning for them both.

Is it any wonder, then, that their first instinct in verse 7 was to hide?  Fig leaves would have been chosen due to their size.  In photos I have seen, they appear to be about the size of a large baseball mitt.  Some commentaries have noted that fig leaves are comparable to Amazonian shields, because of their usefulness for covering.  

Next time we’ll discuss the remainder of Genesis 3.  In verse 7 we have seen the internal consequences already perceptible to Adam and Eve.  In the remainder of this chapter, God tells of the external consequences.  How does God react to man’s first sin?  What will be the long-term consequences?  We’ll find out, next time. 

Genesis 3, part 1

Two weeks ago we began studying Genesis 1 and last week we went through Genesis 2.  I hope you have gleaned some greater understanding from those two discussions, about the Creation of the Universe and perhaps most importantly, about the nature of God as both Elohim (Gen. 1) and Yahweh Elohim (Gen. 2).  In summary, God in his sovereign majesty created all living things, time, and the Universe as a whole, in Genesis 1.  In Genesis 2, we see the Lord God, intimately concerned with his creation, taking care of Adam and Eve, walking with them closely in perfect fellowship.  Today, we see how things change as we move on to Genesis 3.  Due to the length of this discussion I’m actually going to split it into two discussions, and do the first half of Genesis 3 today, and the second half next week.  

Genesis 3

The Fall

 

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

 

He said to the woman, Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”  And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”  But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.  

This chapter illustrates, I believe, all we need to know about the nature of sin, how we fall into it, and its consequences.  If you remember back to the last two weeks, we studied the difference between “God” and “Lord God.”  “God” as used in Gen. 1 is translated from the Hebrew Elohim, emphasizing God’s power, sovereignty, majesty, etc.  I compared him to a person standing on a balcony, viewing the ground below.  Or a person searching Google Earth, with a birds-eye view of life on the ground.  In contrast, “Lord God” is translated from the Hebrew Yahweh Elohim, emphasizing the personal, intimate, relational nature of God.  He cares about his creation, he provides for it.  Last week we discussed the detail and care with which God created both Adam and Eve, the garden as their home and source of food, etc.  We discussed how God took pains to not only provide for Adam, but to show Adam his need for provision.  God cares about meeting our needs, and about how we view him as our source of life.

That is why Genesis 3 is probably the darkest chapter in all of Scripture.  It’s tempting to say that Christ on the cross is the darkest, or various passages of Revelation.  But none of those passages would have come to be without Genesis 3.  And yet in a way, Genesis 3 is also the most encouraging.  The story could end with Adam’s and Eve’s rebellion from God, but it doesn’t.  As we will see, Genesis 3 ends with a way out of our sin, a path of hope. 

Let’s begin.

It’s hard to say too much about this and I don’t think it’s too repetitive to remind you all, once again, that Genesis 2 refers to God as “Lord God” throughout the text.  This is deliberate, as I hope the previous paragraphs have stated.  This continues in the first verse of Genesis 3:  Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

Genesis 3 picks up on the theme begun in Genesis 2 by emphasizing God as great but also good, perfect in his divine provision, his care and concern for his creation, especially Adam and Eve (and by extension, you and me).  But look what happens the moment Satan steps into the picture:

He said to the woman, Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 

The difference may be subtle but it speaks volumes.  God has not been referenced as God, or Elohim since the beginning of Genesis 2 (where it describes God as surveying all of his completed creation).  It is no accident that Satan emphasizes God as Creator, the one with all the power, might and majesty, thereby tempting Eve to forget (however temporarily) that God is Yahweh Elohim, good as well as great, personal, caring, a loving father.  Satan wants Eve to buy into the notion that God is a distant Creator and if nothing else, something for her to envy because he holds all power and knowledge in his hands.  Put more simply, Satan wants Eve to believe God doesn’t care about her. 

Notice also that Satan’s question is the first question in all of Scripture:  Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”  Not only has Satan tempted Eve to question the goodness and character of God; he is tempting her to question what God has said. 

This is the first step into sin.  Sin is not merely an act; it is more than adultery or theft or idolatry or covetousness.  Sin is a state of mind, a place wherein we step, beyond the boundaries God has set for us.  God created us, he gave us our home to live in, food to eat, and air to breathe.  It is not for us to question him.  It is for us to trust him, to trust that every question we have will be met with a good, complete and holy answer from God, and if he chooses not to reveal that answer to us, we are to trust him in that as well. By contrast, to simply decide that we have our own answers and have no use for God’s, is to overstep our humanity, out of the place God designed for us, and into sin.  Once that step is taken, there’s no going back.

But at this point, Satan has merely tempted Eve.  She hasn’t stepped into sin just yet.  And she didn’t have to.  She could have remember the God who walked with her in the Garden.  She could have stood up against Satan and reminded him that God is, in fact, good, by calling him Lord God.  But instead, her response indicates that she is already falling into Satan’s trap:

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

 

I used to think, this isn’t such a bad thing, really.  Eve is just naïve, like a child.  She doesn’t know Satan is trying to trick her.  No wonder she falls for it.

But remember that God commanded Adam, and Adam communicated this to Eve:  do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  So often we as humans assume God is expecting too much.  But that our own misconception.  God would not have commanded this if he knew Adam and Eve were too naïve, too weak, etc., to obey.  God rightly expected them to obey.    

Meanwhile Eve, who has seen the goodness of God coupled with his greatness and majesty, has fallen into the trap of forgetting that God cares for her and knows what is best for her.  She addresses God not as the personal, relational, benevolent Creator; nowhere in her thinking does she seem to remember that she was made and given life and sustained up to this point by Yahweh Elohim.  She instead references God as Elohim, as Satan wanted. 

So Satan has succeeded in getting Eve to question God’s character.  What happens next?  He succeeds into getting her to doubt what God has said:

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die….”  Now Eve has begun to think not only that God cares little for her well-being, but that he has deceived her. Satan loves for us to think God is the evil one, while Satan is good.  He tries to switch roles with God, first in our minds, and eventually in our hearts.  He would have us believe we are foolish to blindly follow God, when his aim is to have us blindly follow him instead.  How does he accomplish this?  By tempting us with promises of our own power and sovereignty:

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 

Notice the repeated references here to God and not Lord God.  Satan is tempting Eve to strive for God’s power, to envy God, to want to become like him.  He neglects to mention that this is impossible, because he wants Eve to believe it is possible, and desirable.  And it works:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate[.]

It was said in Genesis 2:9 that the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground–trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.  After hearing Satan’s argument, Eve now considered this tree to be no different from the others in the garden.  Despite what God had said, she saw nothing harmful or threatening about this tree. She decided the tree would give her something good.  When we decide forbidden fruit is no more harmful than other fruit, we are dangerously close to overstepping our humanity, substituting our wisdom for God’s, our judgment for his, and before we know it we have stepped beyond the point of no return, into sin. 

[S]he also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 

Remember that God created Adam first.  It appears he gave Adam the command not to eat of the tree before he formed Eve.  It is assumed, therefore, that Adam told Eve not to eat of it as well, since she clearly knew the command by the time Satan came to her.  God had given Adam the authority to name all other creatures (and as we’ll see at the end of Genesis 3, he named Eve as well).  There is a clear order established by God in which Adam is the head.  So if Adam was with Eve during her conversation with Satan, why doesn’t Satan approach him first?  Why not tempt Adam first?  Some like to think Satan knew Eve would be easier to sway.  But I think there is a more profound, underlying reason:  Satan was attacking God’s order by approaching the woman first.  It was a subtle slap at God, because remember, God is Satan’s real enemy here.  Adam and Eve were merely pawns available to Satan, pawns which Satan knew God valued above all other creation.  This should dispel any idea that Satan, contrary to what he implied to Eve, cares for our well-being and desires us to attain divine wisdom or knowledge.

 

That ends the discussion for this week.  There’s a lot more to finish up the chapter next week.  

Genesis 2

Last week we started back at the Story of Creation as told in Genesis 1.  This week we move forward to Genesis 2.

 

Genesis 2

 

The Seventh Day, God Rests

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

The Creation of Man and Woman 

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.

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, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—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.  And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.  And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.  The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.  And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.  The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush.  And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”  Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.  The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.  So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.  Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

    and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

    because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.  And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

In Genesis 1 we studied the creation of the Universe.  Basically, everything around us, including our definition of time, space and matter, were all created by one God,Elohim.  The name Elohim emphasizes God as sovereign master of the Universe, majestic, powerful, etc.  I picture him like a person on a balcony looking down at what’s going on below. 

But in Genesis 2, beginning with verse 4, we are introduced to a God who is on the ground with us.  He is the same God as the Creator in Genesis 1, but here we focus on a different aspect, or facet if you will, of his character.  The Lord God is personally invested in our creation and involved in our lives. 

“Lord God” is derived from Yahweh Elohim.  “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” is used in the Bible to give special emphasis on God as a relational being who cares deeply for his creation.  The distinction between Elohim (“God”) and Yahweh Elohim (“Lord God”) can be illustrated by comparing two passages, one from Genesis 1 and the other from Genesis 2:

Genesis 1:26-27:  Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness …”  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:7:  [T]hen 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. 

The first passage is told as if by someone looking down on the earth through a telescope.  The second passage is told as if by someone on the ground, involved, concerned with every detail.  This passage makes clear that man was first formed and then became alive after God specifically breathed life into him. 

Further on in Genesis 2, we see God planting the Garden of Eden, specifically so the man would have a place to live and eat.  He began to speak to Adam, telling him what to eat and what not to eat.  I’m reminded of when I leave Kayden and Vivienne alone in an unfamiliar room … I tell them what they can do, and what they can’t. What is safe, and what is not.  God is taking care of Adam, making sure his needs are met, and that he knows what is safe and what is unsafe. 

Later on we see the separate creation of Eve.  But notice that God first takes pains to show Adam his need for a mate.  God gives Adam authority to name each animal in Genesis 2:19-20.  The power to name them is consistent with God’s command to Adam in Genesis 1:28:  “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”    

Only once Adam has seen and named each living thing does he recognize that he himself is without a suitable mate.  The text doesn’t explain how Adam came to this conclusion.  Did he see male and female pairs of each animal, then notice he was the only man (sidenote:  “man” in the original Hebrew can include both male and female)?  If God knew Adam would need a mate, why did he bother to wait for Adam to see it too?  Why not just make Eve from the ground, at the same time as Adam? 

A few thoughts:  Eve was not formed from the ground but from the same material as Adam (this … is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh).  They were two halves of a whole, the same created being, equally made in God’s image.  If you remember back to your geometry classes in high school, 2 complementary angles added together will equal 90 degrees.  The same concept applies here; their strengths compensated each other’s weaknesses.  Eve was formed to be Adam’s helpmate.  The original Hebrew from which “helpmate” is derived indicates that Eve was to strengthen Adam, to powerfully help him, an integral part of him, a complement to him, and an influential companion to him.  They were designed to fit together perfectly in all ways (not just physical).  They were stronger and more magnificent together than either of them was alone.  This illuminates what God said in Genesis 2:18:  “It is not good that the man should be alone.”  This is the first reference to anything in creation that was “not good.”  For reasons perhaps known only to God (or maybe I’m the only one missing it), God wanted Adam to recognize his need for a helpmate before he formed Eve.   

Notice the care with which God creates Eve … God is all-powerful; I suspect he could have simply said “Let there be Eve,” and she would have appeared.  But instead, he causes Adam to fall asleep, and forms her from part of Adam’s body.  He doesn’t ask Adam for advice on what he would like in a mate.  God forms Eve based on his own counsel and what he knew was best, whether Adam was happy with it or not (hint:  he knew Adam would be).  He formed Eve with the same degree of care with which he made Adam.  He then brought Eve to Adam, rather than calling Adam to come find her, or leaving the man and woman alone to run into each other and introduce themselves on their own.  All of this is deliberate … God made the man and the woman, and brought them together for a purpose.  And he was present throughout the entire process. 

Genesis 2 is the story of God and Adam and Eve before the fall that comes in Genesis 3.  This is, therefore, the only glimpse we have of the relationship God intended between Adam, Eve, and himself before sin entered the world. 

Genesis 2:24 is read at many weddings.  [T]hey shall become one flesh is still the standard to be aspired to in biblical marriage.  Marriage, therefore, is not the combining of two separate lives into one life … it is the end of two individual lives and the beginning of a new life, one flesh. 

Finally, Genesis 2 ends with a powerful statement:  And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. 

This sentence is enormously relevant to us.  It hints at the level of trust, comfort, and openness Adam and Eve shared before sin changed everything.  Can you imagine standing naked before someone and not wanting to run and hide?  I suspect it didn’t even occur to them to hide from each other.  The level of vulnerability and trust this would have required is almost inconceivable to us today.  But for them, they knew no other way to be.  God made them that way, introduced them to each other that way, and the thought that they shouldn’t trust one another in that setting likely never occurred to them. 

In summary, Genesis 1 gives us a big picture view of creation.  But zoom in on Genesis 1:26-27, as if you would a map on Google Earth, and you’ll see the details of the creation of mankind come to life in Genesis 2.  Genesis 1 gives us a portrait of God as great, powerful and majestic.  Genesis 2 adds to this by showing us the Lord God, great but also good, relational, loving, concerned for the well being of his creation, for us. 

But as we’ll see in Genesis 3, the man and woman will question the goodness of God in their desire to set themselves up in his place.  We’ll see what happens the moment they overstep their humanity … next time. 

Genesis 1: Why did God create the world?

It’s a question we’ve asked since before we can remember.  Who is God?  Why did he make the world?  Why did he make me?

I used to let these questions get in the way of faith.  I thought, if I couldn’t find answers to these basic, ground-level questions, why should I believe anything the Bible says?  My problem then was, I was approaching God through logic, not faith.  But God never tells us to understand him.  He never says, “Believe in me, because I make sense.”  Of course he does make sense, but in a way that transcends our ability to understand.  Our minds are too limited to even begin to contemplate who God is.  That’s why, instead of commanding us to understand him, he commands us instead to have faith.  Trust him.  Believe what he says.  Once you get past the nagging desire to understand God, who he is, “where” he came from and why, the rest of the Bible is pretty easy (for me, at least) to accept.  I can believe B-Z, because I trust I will understand A one day, on the other side of this life.  And if I don’t, it won’t matter.  Because A will be so perfect to behold, that asking to understand will be like asking for McDonald’s when you know Ruth’s Chris is at your fingertips.

So we may not know who God is, etc., from reading the Bible.  But I guarantee you will get a much better picture of who he is by reading the Bible than you will from any man-made resource available.  And as you read his Word, I also guarantee you’ll get a better idea of why he made the world.  Because as we all know, that question is just as important to us as Who Is God?  And the answer might just begin to tell us who God is.  So here we go … let us begin at the beginning:

Genesis 1

The Creation of the World

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  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.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”  And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.  And it was so.  And God called the expanse Heaven.  And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.”  And it was so.  God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.”  And it was so.  The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.”  And it was so.  And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.  And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”  So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.  And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”  And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so.  And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

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.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.  And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”  And it was so.  And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

One big question here:  Why?  Why did God create the world?  Why did he make humankind?  He knew from the beginning that Adam and Eve, and all mankind after them, would rebel from him.  So … why?

I think the answer lies in the Psalms.

Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

Psalm 29:1-2

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us,
that your way may be known on earth,
    your saving power among all nations.
Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you!

Psalm 67:1-2

God created so his creation would display his glory.  If you ever wonder what is the purpose of your life, there it is.

But … does that make you a bit uncomfortable?  It used to bother me.  To think that God made everything, basically to have an army of worshipers.  As humans, we are taught that vanity is a bad thing, evidence of our sin.  Is there a double standard here?  How does God get away with this?

But first, consider:  Who else would you have him worship?  No one else but God is worthy of our complete devotion.  Not our loved ones, our families, our pets, our work, our hopes and plans for the future, and certainly not ourselves.  Only God measures up.  This is how Jesus gets away with saying If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  (Luke 14:46).  He’s not telling us to hate our families … he’s calling us to love him so much that our love for our families looks like hatred in comparison.  God is to be central, number one, top priority, the foundation itself, of our lives.

Okay, so he is worthy.  I get that.  But that answers only part of the question.  I was still uncomfortable, and not sure why.  Then I realized:  We know that God is good, God is love, etc.  So the natural conclusion must be this:  If the center of all things good and gracious and wonderful and perfect and holy is found in God alone, then what is the greatest thing he can ever give us?  Himself.

So in a way, God can’t help but appear “self-absorbed” in our human perception.  If he appears selfish that is our flaw, not his.  God is incapable of sin, so he is clearly not motivated by the sinful vanity we would ascribe to a human being.  In fact, what we might perceive as God’s self-absorption is actually God’s ultimate act of selflessness.  He doesn’t hoard all his glory for his own enjoyment.  He seeks to share it with us.

Imagine waking up in a world where the only tears you will ever shed will be tears of joy.  Where you will experience pure goodness forever, without the stain of sin.  No pain, loss, or suffering.  All perfection.  He gives that to us.  When we ran away from that, thinking we had a better idea, he didn’t let us go.  He chased after us, to the point of allowing his own Son to pay the cost of our sin, so that, rather than eternal death, we could have eternal joy with him.  I’m getting way ahead of myself here since we’re still in Genesis 1, but I hope you get the idea.  God is worthy.  And that’s a good thing.

In the beginning, before the Fall, Adam & Eve likely understood that God was worthy, without question.  In fact, the Fall itself came about when they began to question it, and disobeyed God.  Since then, learning to love God and honor him is (at least) a lifelong journey.  It sounds scary and depressing in a way … but be glad there is any way at all (-:

Turning back to the text:

Notice verse 1:  In the beginning, God created.  It doesn’t say “In the beginning God WAS created,” or “God came into being.”  In the beginning, God was already there.  Later on in verse 5b, we see And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 

It’s not specifically stated but here we see that God created time in the midst of creating everything else.  God already existed in what was, only for us, the beginning.  He therefore exists outside the boundaries of time.  I picture it like a man writing inside a book.  We are characters inside the book.  He is the writer.  Despite our active imaginations we cannot begin to comprehend anything beyond that.  But it’s exciting to wonder about, and to think that one day we’ll get to see it!

Other things to point out from Genesis 1:

I noticed the repeated references to waters throughout the first part of this chapter.  No mention of when they were created.  Do you think when God created the … earth, he made the Earth covered in water?  Because later on in verse 9 God finally gathers the waters into one place, & lets dry land appear, as if it was already there, but hidden beneath the waters.  Food for thought, perhaps?  Or was it obvious to everyone but me.

Notice also the repeated references in Genesis 1 to God creating plants birds, animals each according to its kind.  This would indicate that God made each kind of plant, each kind of fruit, each kind of bird, fish, animal, etc.  It could dispel some theories that God created generic things that later evolved into different species.  It also answers the question (I think), “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”  I think the chicken was first.  God created living creatures and, at least to the fish and birds, commanded, Be fruitful and multiply.  Do you think it matters that a similar command to the animals isn’t found?  So many details in the Bible pack so much necessary information so this could matter.  It could mean the egg came first.  Maybe God did it on purpose just to keep us scratching our heads.  He does have a sense of humor.  (-:

Moving on to Genesis 1:26, we see an early reference to the Trinity:  Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  No one is quite sure what this means, in our image.  But as we’ll see in Genesis 2, God intended man to be a little different from the rest of his creation, set apart in some way.  I think in our image refers to that in some way.  Not sure how.

Finally, one big, important thing that jumps out in Genesis 1 is how it refers to God.  It might not seem important at first, since “God” is how we often refer to our Creator.  But God actually has many different names throughout the Bible, each emphasizing a different facet of God’s character.  “God” as used in Genesis 1 is translated from the Hebrew “Elohim” (El-oh-HEEM), emphasizing God’s power as Creator of the Universe.  Why does Genesis 1 use this particular name, over and over, throughout the chapter, and no other?  Because throughout the chapter, God is emphasizing that he is awesome, all-powerful, with absolute, sovereign majesty over all.  Makes sense, given what he’s doing throughout the chapter.

But as we’ll see next time, something changes in Genesis 2, beginning with “the Creation of Man and Woman” in verse 4b.  It’s super-duper tremendously important.