David Macdonald - June 04, 2023

And to hear you sing. So that's what we do up here. We listen to you sing and we try to just play along. So that's exactly what we do.

Simple minstrels in the gallery. That's what we try to just listen to you and you lead us. It's nice. All right, let's have a word of prayer.

Father, thank you this morning for bringing us here. Thank you, the death was indeed, arrest us. And that we have new life in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's our prayer for everyone here, that they know Him, and that they have new life in Him.

And Lord, if there's anybody here this morning who doesn't know Him, that they will come to trust the Lord Jesus with their heart as they see Him as the only Savior. Thank you again for bringing us here. I pray for help with speaking your word. And I pray for help for everyone to be hearers of the word and doers of the word.

We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. I'm probably in trouble because as I was driving here this morning, I was thinking of, well, conversation was going on in my car. I'm thinking, who's speaking this morning? So knowing full well it was me, I guess I should have.

And it was one of those moments of fog. So as you were all singing so well, I hope you're praying very well right now for this. So here we are. We're continuing our studies in the book of Genesis.

And the title for today's message is Creation Completed. Creation Completed. As we look at a fairly lengthy passage, I'm going to look at Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 to 225. But don't worry, I will try my very best to stay out of the weeds and hit what we need to know from this.

First of all, why are we studying Genesis? I'll probably put this slide up with every one of these. The Bible tells us to remember now your Creator in the days of your youth before the difficult days come. And the years draw near when you say, I have no pleasure in them.

And I'm glad the young people are up here to hear these messages because they are in the days of their youth. And it's important that they remember their Creator in these days. And the Scriptures also tell us in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And we are told in a thousand ways, a thousand times a week that it's otherwise.

But that goes against what the Bible teaches us. And we need to know what the Bible is teaching us about the God who created it, what he says that he has done. It's a foundational book. We've gone through these before.

And I won't spend too much time on that. So let's just read the passage. We'll read the end of chapter one. If you have your favorite version of the Scriptures on your lap, please open it up.

If it's on your tablet or it's in book form, or you can look up here behind me and the words are on the wall. Then God said, verse 24, then God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind. And it was so. God made beasts of the earth after their kind and cattle after their kind and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind.

God saw that it was good. 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 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 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 the earth and every tree that has fruit yielding seed, it shall be food for you. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky, everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food and it was so.

God saw that. God saw all that he had made and behold, it was very good and it was evening and it was morning the sixth day. So this is the sixth day of creation. We started this the last time and we looked at what God had created on this day.

It says that he made cattle, the domestic animals, cattle, horses, those things that you would find domesticated perhaps on a farm. And then creeping things. I don't know what's included in creeping things, but just saying creeping things kind of is creepy. But he made those.

And then the beasts of the earth, the wild animals, the large animals. I mean, to be a beast, you're not a squirrel. Actually, my brother said squirrels are just rats with good marketing. So and he's right.

I want to eliminate the squirrels at my place. But they're just so cute to everybody else, not to me. They're rats. They steal, they destroy, they corrupt.

Where was I? OK. So he made all of the beasts, all the animals, even the dinosaurs. Now I remember back in the day when I was studying geology.

And paleontology was one of the courses that I took from a man named Franco Medioli, who was also the console for Italy here at the consulate, which was quite interesting. That was my teacher. He had us all over for food one day. And I'm telling you, he could cook a lot better than he could teach.

He was a great teacher, but he was an amazing cook. So anyway, that's again another path. And we won't go down there. But see, popular science is going to tell you the dinosaurs.

They ruled and reigned over the earth. I don't read that in the Bible. Man was set to rule over the earth. You'll see all kinds of books, all kinds of things on the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, the Smithsonian Channel, the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

You will not read anywhere that dinosaurs ruled the earth, but they lived on the earth. Now, you also hear that they were extinct before man by about 60 million years by several different theories. If I read my Bible correctly, the beasts were made on the same day as man. They coexisted.

Even the Flintstones guys knew that. Dino and Fred lived in the same house. So dinosaurs lived at the same time as man. I don't want to go down too much about the whole thing of dinosaur footprints.

But there has been dinosaur footprints found at a place called Glenrose, Texas, where they found dinosaur footprints and humanoid-type footprints in the same rock strata. The problem is, when you tell everybody this back in the day before you had UNESCO and all of that stuff, and you say, hey, this is really cool. We found human footprints. We found dinosaur footprints together in this dry river bed in Glenrose, Texas.

And then everybody with a hammer and chisel goes down there and digs them up. So to go and study them, it was kind of wrecked. So I don't want to hang everything on that. But the Bible tells me that beasts were made on the same day as man.

So therefore, I just accept that. So the other interesting thing is, OK, so why aren't there dinosaur fossils and man's fossils on top of each other? So I'm going to give you some stuff on fossils. This is the only science I'm going to go into today.

I did my science lesson the last time. But 95% of all fossils that are found, 95% remember that number. That's quite a bit. It's quite a bit.

95% of all fossils are shallow marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish. And they're found everywhere from death valley to Mount Everest. They're found over the whole earth. 95% of the fossils you will find are going to be the remains of shellfish and corals and marine organisms.

95% of the remaining, 5%, OK? So that's 95. And then you've got 5%. But 95% of the 5% that are left over are things like algae and plants.

95% of the remaining, quarter percent, are invertebrates. Insects, things like that. See, look at that. I don't see what he calls things.

I don't know. But they'll probably rescind my degree if anybody does, obviously, says this. The remaining 0.0125 are vertebrates, mostly fish. 95% of land and land vertebrates consist of less than one bone and 95% of mammal fossils are from the ice age after the flood.

So there are not a whole lot of fossils of mammals to be found on the earth. It's so, so small. It's not even a rounding error. It's smaller than that.

So that's why you don't go out and say, well, well, they haven't found any fossils of humans riding on the back of a dinosaur anywhere. Yeah, they haven't found too many fossils of humans either, or dinosaurs. It's such a small, small part of it all. Enough of that.

It's interesting that you find in this passage, through these verses, the name for God that is given here, that is given in verse 26, it says, and then God said, let us make man in our image. So the word that's there is for God is, hello him. Hello him. It's the first name of God that we read in the scriptures.

Hello him. And they say, let us make man in our image. So the word is a plural noun, let us. But when it's used, it's singular.

It's interesting. It's a plural noun, let us. And it says, it doesn't say, and they made man in their image. And he made man in his image.

It's the same personage we're speaking of, a plurality of God acting as a single God. So that's your introduction to theology, 101. Actually, 100. We'll dumb it down because I'm teaching it.

So who is God speaking to? God speaking within the Trinity, between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But all three are together. God, they're one.

It's one unit in three. Now, I'm sure there were people who stood in pulpits in this building, and many have stood in pulpits everywhere. And we batted around in our Bible study yesterday, in the men's study. And guess what?

Nobody's figured it out. Nobody has figured out how a Trinity works. And you can try all kinds of examples like an egg. An egg has three parts, a shell, a white, and a yolk.

And they're all three parts, but they're all one. Bad example. Or you can go to water. It's a vapor.

It's ice. It's liquid. That doesn't make me think of God. So those are OK examples.

But to really figure it out, it's a huge mystery. So I take it from the Scriptures when God says that he is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I know Jesus is God the Son. Why?

Because we read yesterday. Miracles that he did. He opened the eyes of the blind. He raised people from the dead.

Only God can do that. He forgave sins. Even the people around said, only God can forgive sins. How can he do that?

Because he's God. And we know there is God the Father, because he speaks of God the Father who sent him. And we know that there's God the Holy Spirit, because he said, when I go, I'm sending the Spirit, who is another one just like me, who is just like God. So that is who is at work in this creation of man.

It's very different from the creation of the animals. It's very different from the creation of the plants, because there was no, let us make beasts of the field. No, it just hasn't got to be a piece of the field. But when it comes to man, there's a special creation where all aspects of the Godhood are involved in the creation of man, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

So when I read in my Bible, I'm not ahead of myself. Uh-oh. I'm not sure why day one light is there. OK.

Good. It says, just forget that day one light part. This is called cutting and pasting and reusing times PowerPoint and trying to do it late at night. Genesis 1, 26, and 27 says, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

And God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. This is probably the second most important verse in Genesis chapter 1.

The most important verse is, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. You have to deal with that first. But this tells you that God created you and me. He created us in his image, and he created a male gender and a female gender.

This is today under attack. Huge. This is the battleground right now in our land, in our world. This is one of the biggest issues we're dealing with today.

The truth of God's word is that he created male and he created female. That's not my teaching. That's not North Bible, Chappell's teaching, on some statement of faith, that is written in stone. This is the word of God.

And I'm just stating this by on the basis of the word of God. This is just the basis of what the word of God says. Male and female, he created them. Now, we're made of the image of God.

What does that mean? I mean, I've got mirrors in my house, and I look at it, and I don't really see God when I look in the mirror. Really, if I did, then nobody could live with me. Nobody could look upon my glory.

Or glory, or whatever you want to call it. Really image of God. We're different from the animals. None of the animals has ever said that they are in the image of God.

They don't resemble God in any way, but we do. First of all, we have an intellect. We can reason. We can think.

We're different from dogs and cats. We're totally different from them. You might think that your cat is sitting there, chewing on his toy, reasoning, and thinking, someday, all this is going to be mine. And your dog walks up to you and begs, can you give all this to me?

But the cat is sitting there thinking, someday, all this is mine. That's what you might think. But no, the cat does not have that kind of an intellect. We're able to reason through things.

We have rationale. We have logical thought. And we can make a chain of thoughts. Animals can't do that.

We are in the image of God. Somebody actually said, one of the differences between humans and animals is a person can turn and look up towards God. Animals don't do that. Animals look ahead.

Men can look up. And women. The other thing that we are in three parts. We are tripartite.

We are composed of body, flesh, soul, our consciousness, and our spirit. Our spirit is what is regenerated. Born again, when we are saved. Our soul is what will live forever.

I had a discussion with my little grands on the other day. He was asking me, so what happens if somebody owned in one of those fires? He's all the way, or six years old. He knows what's burning in Nova Scotia.

And he said, so if somebody died in that fire and they're all burned up, then they don't go to heaven or hell, do they? I said, yes, they do. Because they're sold as eternal. Their soul goes on forever.

We are different from the animals. We are elevated above the animals because we are a reflection of God. But you see, the thing is, we're flawed now, very, very much so because of sin. And we'll talk about that a little later on.

Not what we were intended to be as God created us. Chapter 3, we'll see that. We're degenerating. We're diminishing in our reflection of God.

God is perfect. God is flawless. God is sinless. And where do we see that?

We see that in Jesus Christ, who is all of these things. So not only are we special creation, but we have this unique relationship with the universe around us, verse 28. Now, I'm only two verses in, so you're thinking, OK, we're going to be here for a long time. But I look at my notes, and I'm on the halfway pages.

So Genesis 128, God bless them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and so do it. And rule over it.

The fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and every living thing that moves on the earth. Some people call this the cultural mandate. So this is not a really popular thing today to say, we're to rule over the earth. We have dominion over this earth.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're to worship this earth. We're to honor the mother from which we came, and so on and so on. We need to be, we're in an emergency right now.

We need to look after this. Now, do I believe that we should just pollute and wreck the earth? Not at all. It's just part of this.

We are to manage it, to harness it, to study it, to research it, to use it for man's benefit. Not to worship it. We are to use it to the best use that we can. We're not to destroy the earth.

I mean, we have done some dumb things over the years. But again, it's amazing how God has made an earth that heals itself when things happen. If I mentioned Exxon Valdez, stick your hand up if you ever heard of Exxon Valdez. OK, very few, right?

That was going to destroy the whole western side of North America, wasn't it? Remember that? It was a ship that went around in Alaska. Oil leaked out, and the earth was ending.

The world was ending. All that oil was going to come down. It was going to destroy the whole earth eventually. OK, granted, a few ducks died.

It was kind of sad. But they had dawn, soap, and they cleaned them up, and all of that stuff. Now, I'm not trying to make light of some of these disaster things. They're tragic, and they're awful things.

You don't want to live through them. My heart breaks for the people in Tantellin right now, and the people in Shelburne. My heart breaks for that stuff. But we have to keep things in the right perspective here.

So the Lord has made an amazing earth. He has designed an amazing earth. And He has given it to us to manage it, to subdue it, to harness it, to study it, to research it, to use it for our benefit. He never tells us to worship the earth, to worship the creation.

We are to worship the creator. We have dominion over the animals. Why? Because we are created over the animals.

You are not an animal. You're not an animal. You might pull a book out somewhere and look through the whole enay and list of this order, to this group, I have it backwards, but right down to the species and so on. You are not just another species of animals.

You are a unique creation made by God. The other thing that tells us in these verses is we were given vegetables to eat herbivores. As Yme says, we should eat our leaves. But there's a good point to that.

I read a book on time. My influence are here. It said I should eat more live food than dead food. Now, dead food is the steak that you throw on your grill.

Live food are those green leaves, the apples. The food still has life in it. It is much better for you. So often I look at my plate and I think how much live food and how much dead food is on here?

Oh boy, I'm eating an awful lot of dead food. So the original prescription was that we eat live food. Meat came for food later in Genesis 9. All right, so the value of God's creation, as far as he's concerned.

God's assessment was he said seven times. This is good. This is good. This is good.

This is good. And then on the sixth day, he made man. And what did he say? This is very good.

This is very good. So don't be mistaken that you're just another animal. You are the crown of God's creation. Man is the crown of God's creation.

It was very good. Let's read on. Oh, yeah, OK. And that again is why I'm not following the gap theory, because when he made this whole thing, it said it was very, very good.

Would he have said that before? And then trashed it and said, OK, I got to start from scratch again. It makes something that's very good. Genesis chapter 2, let's read through this.

Then of us, the heavens and the earth were completed. And all their hosts, by the seventh day, God completed his work, which he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all the work, which he had done. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it, he rested from all the work which God had created and made.

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and heaven. Now, no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no plant of the field yet sprouted. For the Lord God had not set rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise up from the earth and water and the whole surface of the ground.

Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. The Lord God planted the garden toward the east in Eden, and there he placed the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground, the Lord caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the site. For good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now, our river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pichon. It flows to the whole land of Havela, where there was gold, and the gold of that land is good, and delim and the onyx stone are there. And the name of the second river is Guihon.

It flows around the whole land of Kush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, and it flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates. Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, from every tree of the garden you may eat freely.

But if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. Then the Lord said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.

Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. But whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, to all the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, it was not found a helper suitable for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman, the rib, which had been taken from the man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. All right, so I once heard somebody say, yeah, I got trouble with Genesis chapter two, and chapter one, they don't seem to match up. What's the story here?

So here it is, Genesis chapter one gives you the scope of all of creation. It goes right from in the beginning God created, the earth is without form and void. It takes you from without form and void, right up to the creation of the man, actually to the creation of the man and the woman, male and female. It's a great summary, it's a great look, and I put up here some pictures, hopefully you can see.

So look at this picture right here. What do you see? Yeah, a farm, right? Or something, a field, a meadow, somewhere.

So there's Genesis chapter one. You're gonna see a whole picture, all together, right here. Genesis chapter two focuses on one day. It zooms in.

Now I like photographer, photographer. I like photography. I like photography. I have a bag that I carry with me.

Guaranteed if I take the bag on the trail, no wildlife up here. That's just the way it works. I leave the bag at home, it's squirrels, it's deer, it's eagles, it's everything all over the place. But see, Genesis chapter two is, we're getting into this.

So this is the same place. And I can see right there, there's a little red something, but now as I zoom in, I'm getting a better picture. I'm getting more detail. So Genesis chapter two is taking your zoom lens, or your macro and getting in close and seeing and focusing on one day.

Genesis chapter one gives you the nice wide angle. I was gonna take my own pictures, but I ran out of time. If I took a picture of my whole backyard, mess, mess, just stuff. But then if I put my zoom lens on, I could focus in on the bark, on the birch tree and see what that looks like.

It's in the first picture, but now let's focus on this and we'll talk about that. So this is what Genesis chapter two is doing. It's focusing on the creation of man. It's zooming in.

It's focusing on day six. It's not a conflicting account. It's not an account that's stolen from Babylonian history and so on and so on, as some guys would point, you have to tell you. It's none of that.

It's just more detailed account of what happened on the sixth day. Now on day seven, it says that God rested. Was he exhausted? I mean, on the sixth day, work week, that's brutal.

Was he tired? He did all this. He spoke and things happened. No, it meant it was complete.

He was done. He rested. He blessed and sanctified the work that he had done. Seven is repeated three times in his first, on the seventh day, on the seventh day.

It means to be full or complete. The pattern for our human work cycle really is six days and one day off. That's the one that works the best. You say, OK, well, yeah, but we really get two days off Saturday and Sunday.

Really? Saturday off with that to-do list? It's not really is it? Or if you're doing this, I'm kind of working today.

And so we usually work six days and take a day off. It's a pattern that was set by the way God created heavens and the earth. Now this account is the beginning of human history. This is focusing on mankind from here on in.

In verse four, we learned a new name for God. Remember it was Elohim before? Now we learn this new, Elohim is transcendence and power over creation. This new word, and I'll say it's Yahweh, but nobody really knows how to pronounce it because the way that the Jewish people recorded things, they didn't use vowels.

They just put a bunch of consonants and little dots and things around it. So the word means I am, that I am. I am self-existent. I am the uncaused cause.

Hi, I don't know why I put that there because I should have put more details. No, it's so. Okay, ignore that one. He is eternal in nature.

He's eternal God. Jehovah is another translation of it. This is who we're introduced to at this point in time. And in verses four to six, we read about how there was no rain on the earth.

How it says there's no shrub in the field as of yet. No plant in the field. Yet sprouted for the word God had not sent rain upon the earth. And there was no man to cultivate the ground.

But a mist would rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. Now, there are those who teach that it's a vapor canopy that's surrounded the earth. I don't know. I wasn't there, didn't witness it.

And there are no details in scripture that would indicate that that's so. It's possible. It might be what the firmament is. But it definitely says that until no, I came, there was no rain.

It had not rained. So how did everything grow? How could a garden be so lush? The Lord sent water up.

This is kind of a greenhouse effect. It kept the temperatures even. There was a restriction on the airflow. It was very lush.

There was no ice caps at the poles. People lived longer. Slower aging. I didn't say I wasn't going to teach anymore.

Science. And then God formed man. God formed man. It says that he molded him.

He molded him. Yes, sir. He formed him. He shaped him like an artist.

God is an amazing artist. I just think that, I mean, the human body, the human person is such an amazing creation of God. I'm just amazed. I'm amazed as doctors study and students study the human body what they can do.

I had a medical procedure done last month. I thought, they couldn't do that 10 years ago. And now they know how the human heart works. They know how the eye works.

They know so much. They don't know much about the shoulder though. Actually, they probably know a lot about the shoulder now. For Andrew back there wishing he didn't have a shoulder.

But God is an amazing artist. Everything that he created. I don't know if you saw it. I posted it on Facebook the other day on Instagram.

I stood under a tree in my yard. I have to try to film this and see what this comes up. It was filled with bees that sounded like a super highway over my head. It was just buzzing.

I thought, whoa, I'm in Toronto next to the 401. It was just buzzing. It's amazing. I stopped and watched them.

Some of them landed on me and they just said, hey, thanks for taking our picture. Got back into the tree. But they're covered with pollen. They're digging.

They're working. The tree has never looked better. Why? Because I have a gazillion bees in my tree.

God is an amazing designer. If you just even study how the honey bee works, it's amazing. It's unbelievable. And you cannot come away from that and say, oh, this happened by chance.

It's head to be designed. It's head to be created. But here's the thing. We live in a designer planet.

But it's also a disposable planet. That I just say, it is a disposable planet. This earth that we're living on is not going to exist forever. The Bible tells me that.

You read 1 Peter chapter, or 2 Peter chapter 3. The elements will be dissolved with fervent heat. Read revelation. What's going to happen to this earth?

And ultimately, it's going to be destroyed in a new heaven and a new earth will be created. Not popular stuff to say today. How dare you? And you need a dose of reality.

This is what the Bible teaches. But it doesn't mean I become part of the destruction. I know my car is not going to last forever, but I still change the oil in it. I still treat it well.

I maintain it. I still look after it. I don't take it down roads that I shouldn't go down. But the reality is, it's not going to be with me forever.

Are you ready for the new heaven and the new earth? When that comes. Or will you be swept away with this one? Eternity.

Will you live in the new Jerusalem? Will you live in the new earth? That's why God sent his son Jesus Christ to die for you. So that you would have eternal life forever with him in heaven.

Back to the creation of man that says he breathed in him. Breath. Wind. Spirit.

He breathed in him. He didn't breathe life into the nostrils of the other animals directly. He breathed it into man. You have the breath of God breathe in you.

So then he took them and he placed them in a place called Eden. It says now Riverflow. of Eden. And then it names these four, it split into these four rivers.

Pichon, Guihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. Now where is this? Well, there's a map of the Middle East. And you'll see, right?

Yeah, I better not point that at that. Tigris, Euphrates. Don't know where the other rivers are. But guess what?

The Tigris and Euphrates that are refers to here probably aren't where this Tigris and Euphrates are. Because we're going to read in a few chapters where everything was destroyed and swept away. The current Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow through hundreds of feet of sediment that are underneath that were deposited in the flood. So why does it say Tigris and Euphrates?

See, this is the whole thing about the Bible. It's made up after all. No, no, no, no, no, hold your horses. Have you ever been to Newcastle, New Brunswick?

I've been to Newcastle, England. New Castle, New Brunswick is named after New Castle, England. People just reuse names. Have you been to Sydney, Nova Scotia?

Hmm. I stole that name and they have Sydney, Australia. I was reading Ken Ham said something very clever that he's Australian. And there's all these places in Australia that when the settlers came from England and settled into them thinking, yeah, the prisoners were brought to Australia.

But they named them after other places. So the current Tigris and Euphrates are just names that were remembered from before in the records. And they named these mighty rivers that run through Mesopotamia now, or what was Mesopotamia then now, Iraq, after these rivers. So then we read in verses 15 and 17, 16 and 17, and the Lord God commanded the man saying, from every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat, you will surely die.

I read that I learned a whole lot about God. What do I learn about him? First of all, he's generous. See all these trees?

Eat from every single one of them. Wow, that's amazing. He's protective. I want you to not eat of one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because that is not a good place for you to go.

It's best that you stay innocent. It's best that you're innocent concerning evil. He gave freedom. Enjoy this whole garden.

Every bit of it's yours. Enjoy it. It's for your pleasure. But he also gave volition.

He said, it's up to you, Adam. Are you going to obey or are you going to disobey? I'm going to tell you, this is a command, but it's up to you to keep the command. We'll find the rest of the story the next time.

So then after all of this, and this beautiful garden, and then man gave names to all the animals as they came by, then you might think, okay, he couldn't have done that in a day. Are you kidding me? All this happened in a day. Yeah, I did.

Now, he didn't, Adam didn't name cockerspanules, poodles, German shepherds, laboratory treevers. There was not any such thing. It would be a dog. Actually, we're going to have to learn this song.

He gave names to all the animals in the beginning. So he named, there were very few until speciation took place over time. So he named all the animals. And here he is with all of these animals, a wonderful creation, and then all of a sudden the dawns on him.

Well, where's my other? I don't seem to have one. And God says, you know what? This isn't good.

It's the only time in all of the creation. God says, it is not good. It is not good for a man to be alone. So he's in this beautiful garden.

Oh, yeah, that's mine. So he's in this beautiful garden. Everything is very good. There's no taxes.

There's no smog. There's no mortgage. He's got a great job. Tend the garden.

Name the animals. But something's not good. He's out of balance. Adams like a south pole with a North Pole or vice versa.

He's not complete. He needed a suitable companion, a suitable helper it's called in the scriptures. Not hired help. So if I say this, ladies, because this is the creation of a woman, and I say you were a helper, suitable for Adam.

Doesn't that sound great? Yes. And I'll bake his dinner. No.

Psalm 46, verse 1, God is our refuge and strength of very present help in trouble. I'm glad that God is my helper. You read through the Psalms. God is our helper.

He is alongside of me. This is what the creation is about. God made the woman to be alongside the man. There's Martin Luther wrote the words, and I didn't take the full quote, and I meant to put it in there.

But God made the woman. It says that this is God the surgeon. He said, so the Lord God caused deep sleep to fall upon man, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and he closed up the flesh at that place. And Adams said, whoa.

Really? In a couple of translations it says, at last. Or here it is. This is it.

Now Matthew Henry says that she was not from his head to be above him. She was not from his foot to be stepped on. She was from his side to be his equal. She was from under his arm to be protected and from near his heart to be loved.

I like that quote when I read that. It made a long, long time ago. But so very true in what God had intended. And Adams' response, this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.

This is it is what it says in the living Bible. At last it says in the NLT. This is now the crown of creation. The man and the woman made together, made for each other.

Now God became the matchmaker. He had a wedding ceremony and Eden. It doesn't really say that. But Adam is going and goes, wow, man.

Or woman. He said this is awesome. And she probably looked back and said, man, that's awesome too. You.

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and should be joined to his wife and this should become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. Leaving and cleaving. A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined too.

I took cleaving because that old King James thing, it sounds just different. You know? It's a good word. Here's the thing.

When God put man and woman together, a new relationship starts and you leave home. You know, the old ad used to say, don't leave home without it. Well, when you leave home, leave home without your parents. So join to your wife and the two of you have to become one unit together.

You're a new universe. Sorry, fall for the rerun and all this. You're a new, we had a discussion and this is what we talked about. But you're your own universe.

And there's going to be all kinds of things that are going to try to pull you in different directions. But God's designed for marriage is that a husband and wife leave all other relationships. This becomes your primary earthly relationship as husband and wife. And even when children come along, if you don't protect that primary relationship of husband and wife, the family unit will fall apart.

So that's where the cleaving comes in. There's a permanence when you're joined together. You're not to be separated. You're to be glued together.

Now, I don't know, most of you weren't here, but we did a marriage course in the evenings back a couple of years ago. I was going to glue a couple of pieces of paper together. I just didn't. But if I were to glue these two pieces of paper together and I joined them together and I glued them.

Are they two pieces of paper? Are they joined together as one? Yes. Is the answer to both of those?

You may get more interaction than I do. Thank you. But can I separate them if they're done with paper glue? Yeah, I can.

Can I? I can take them apart. Are they as good as they were? They're wrecked.

There's going to be holes in it. It's going to be a mess. God's intent for marriage is that it is permanent, that it is one unit together. Glue together.

For good. The word, and I didn't put it up there, but the Hebrew word is Dabak. This is for cleaving. It means to cling or adhere or to catch by pursuit.

Okay. She chased him until he caught her. Follow close. Hard after to be joined together to keep fast, to stick.

God's intention for marriage. This is the second battleground right now. Christians. This is the second battleground that we have right now that is attacking families, homes, and believers.

The marriage is disposable, that it's cheap. The marriage was designed by God. It was his design. He's very specific.

Leave your father and mother and join to your husband and wife together and be one flesh. Then in verse 25 it says, they were negative, not ashamed. There's an intimacy in marriage that's only to be enjoyed in marriage, physical, emotional, and it's designed for marriage alone. I'm passed by time, so I take a close in prayer.

But I do want you to read through this again on your own. Understand how God has designed you and designed me. It's broken, but it can be fixed. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who came to die to reverse all that the curse has done to us.

If you don't know him, I pray this morning you will come to him. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for these foundational truths that we find in your word.

Thank you that you have given us this record in your holy word, that we can go back and it answers the questions of where do we come from? Why do we get married? Why do I struggle with some of these things, with all these voices about gender and what am I? Father, I pray, especially for our young people, that they will remember their Creator in the days of their youth, that they will turn to you, and they will turn to your word to find the answers.

I pray, Lord, that you will enlighten us through the Holy Spirit and through your words, that we may follow you wholeheartedly. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.