Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction & Review - Last week we looked at the origins and beginning of the universe and how God literally spoke everything into existence.

God the Father, God the Son & God the Holy Spirit went to work.

When did this happen?

At the beginning of time as we know it, in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.

The earth had no shape, was dark, void - nothing.

Yet God’s Holy Spirit hovered over the waters.

Then God spoke and said “Let there be light!”

and immediately there was light!

God turned on the lights with only the power of His voice.

God saw the light and evaluated the light was good because God is good and everything He does is perfectly good.

He named light Day and God called the dark Night.

By creating Day & Night, God created time as we know it because the evening and the morning were the first day.

Day 2, God said “Let there be a firmament in the middle of the waters, (we would understand it as an expanse of sky, a fixed dome of atmosphere above and below the waters).

Day 3 God commanded that all the waters in under the canopy He made on day 2 gather in one location to let dry land appear.

What’s really cool about that is God gave a name to the dry land: Earth.

God looked at the earth and seas He had just created with approval because it was good!

God also created all the plant and tree life on day 3.

Day 4 - Sun, moon & Stars.

Day 5 - Fish & fowl.

Day 6 - Animals & Man.

Of all God’s Creation, only man was created in the image and likeness of God.

God saw everything He made was “very good” (Gen.

1:31).

In other words, everything was perfect.

Day 7 - God rested & declared the 7th day holy.

All of what we learned last week, is a “big-picture” panoramic view of God’s Creation.

It’s like standing on the mountain top and seeing all the mountains and forests from a distance.

Today we’re going to learn more details about God’s Creation and the first institution God Created.

The story begins: Today’s story comes from Genesis 2:4-25.

Again I encourage you to listen to the story and there will be an opportunity to jot down some notes at the end.

History is the study of past events, about things that happened before where we are today.

Sometimes we have to use descriptors, adjectives to help narrow down the period of history we’re talking about.

If I said recent history, that would refer to something that happened not that long ago.

But it could still mean something that happened within the last 24 hours or within the last 2 or 3 years.

If we say something is ancient history, it means it’s very old in history.

I mean extremely old.

Now I feel old and I may look old, but I’m not that old.

Yes if you must know, I’m 58.

One of the reasons I feel old is b/c my body is starting to tell me that I’m not as young as I used to be.

I got to play golf on Friday and then Cheryl & I cleaned out the garage on Friday afternoon.

So when I woke up yesterday, my body was telling me I’m old b/c my back was stiff and all my back muscles were sore.

There’s another reason I feel old, I’ve been accused of being old ever since a woman older than me guessed I couldn’t be a day over 50 when in fact I was 29.

One time one of my co-workers asked me how old I was on my birthday and when I informed him I was 30 years old, he paused for a moment and said: “Gee the milage is getting to ya.”

4 years later, in a Hardees fast food joint in Wake Forest North Carolina, I was offered my first “senior discount” when I was only 34 years old.

Now there’s a difference between appearing and feeling old from actually being old.

The earth that we live in has the appearance of great maturity and age.

Some might say the “mileage is getting to planet earth.”

Contrary to what you may have been taught in school, the earth is not billions and billions of years old.

In fact, based on the Biblical record of Creation and the genealogy of man, the earth could not have been created before roughly 10,000 BC and it’s actually even more likely the earth was created around 5,000 BC.

The history of earth is ancient history to us, because we were not around to see its beginnings.

But there was God who was present and He recorded for us that He created by the power of His spoken word.

History is really “His Story” because His Story reveals our story.

When God made earth and all the plants, trees, fish birds, animals, and mankind, all were fully mature and grown.

The plants were mature to bear seed according to their kind, trees able to bear fruit according to its kind.

God said in Genesis 2:4 “This is the history, (or genealogy or generations) of the heavens & the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

Up until this point, God has only revealed himself by the generic term for God - Elohim is the generic term the Hebrew people have for God.

The term is plural meaning Gods.

Remember God is 3 persons, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, yet one God.

Now God chose to reveal Himself to us by adding a new term, calling Himself “The Lord God” in Gen. 2:4.

The word Lord is Yahweh or Jehovah.

It signifies ownership and the rule, master and authority of the Triune eternal God over all of His Creation.

I might add His authority over the history of the world, over time and space.

God reveals more of that history, that up until this time it had never rained on the earth, but rather the Lord God watered the ground with the mist or dew coming up from the ground and that’s how God watered the earth, before there was a man to till the earth.

Then Lord God reveals the more “hands on approach” He took in the forming and fashioning of man.

Long before “ancestry.com"

was a thing, God formed/fashioned and made the first man out of the dust of the earth.

When you add water to dirt, you get mud, clay.

God took a lump of clay like a potter would and molded, shaped and formed it in His own image.

When we think of man being made in the image of God and according to God’s likeness, it’s not physical attributes that are being spoken of because God is a Spirit and a Spirit does not have flesh and bones.

So God fashioned a body for a man.

It’s interesting the word God used for man is the word Adam which means first man.

There are several places in the Psalms where we’re told of the Lord God’s fashioning of humans.

Ps. 33:15 God fashioned their hearts - Fashion is the same word formed in Gen. 2:7 that God wrote in His journal.

Ps. 94:9 - God formed the eye, He planted the ears to hear.

Ps. 139:16 - God even formed/fashioned the number of days each man would live even before we had any of them!

Then God did something incredible with that lump of clay made from water and dust.

Something He didn’t do with another part of Creation!

God performed the first mouth to mouth procedure by breathing into Adam, the first man, the breath of life and man became a living soul!

It was the breath of God, the life giving Creator who breathed life into the body of the man He hand-crafted.

A man with a unique genetic code with unique DNA, a man with unique characteristics like God - holiness for example because man was unique and set apart from all the other parts of Creation.

Man has God’s goodness, truth, love, grace, mercy, long-suffering and righteousness as an image bearer and reflection of God.

Man had the ability to comprehend and receive instructions directly from God.

As the Creator, God had and exercised the right to tell the man what to do and what not to do.

Of all the characteristics of this man made in the image of God, they can all be summed up with one word: Personhood.

Yes, God gave life to the plants, trees, fish, fowl and animals, but it was when God breathed into Adam the breath of life, that man became more than an object, he became a person!

Then the Lord God planted a garden in a place called Eden, surrounded by 4 rivers named the Phison, Gihon, Hiddekel, since that is hard to pronounce, it’s also called the Tigris & the 4th river is the Euphrates.

God’s Garden named Eden, means pleasant & delightful & the Lord God placed man in that delightful, pleasant, beautiful lush Garden for his home.

This garden God planted was full of trees and plants that were pleasant to look at, so good it made you want to eat the fruit, and it was good food too.

You know what it’s like to see a shiny red delicious apple?

You want one!

We learn and understand that God hand-crafted this first man He made in His own image, and He obviously loved this first man He made because everything God created, He made for the man!

He gifted this man the most incredible home you can ever imagine, everything just perfect for the man to flourish and thrive.

When Lord God put Adam in this special Garden God made for Adam’s enjoyment, God gave Adam the responsibility cultivate, keep and manage God’s garden for God.

In other words the Creator God made a creative man and gave him a job to take care of and steward what God had made.

In the middle of this Garden God made, He made two special trees that He identified for Adam.

The first tree was called the tree of life.

Fruit from that tree would allow Adam to live forever and God invited Adam to specifically eat from that tree so man could live forever and ever in a relationship with God.

The second tree God identified for Adam was “the tree of knowledge of God & evil.”

God commanded Adam - means Adam had the ability to listen, think and come to a conclusion based on what he’d heard from God.

The Lord God commanded Adam that he had access to eat freely, literally as much as he wanted, he could have.

Every tree including the tree of life, God said Adam eat all you want and enjoy what I’ve given you.