Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Wednesday, May 21st

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is 2 Samuel 11-12; Psalm 101; Acts 12
Today's scripture focus is Genesis 2:4-7

Genesis 2:4-7

English Standard Version (ESV)

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.

Accompanying Bob Deffinbaugh sermon: The Meaning of Man: His Duty and His Delight
Accompanying John MacArthur sermon: The Creation of Man

Starting from this passage, and continuing on through Chapter 2, God gives us more details about Day 6 and the creation of man.
Deffinbaugh: If chapter one is laid out in chronological fashion—that is in a sequence of seven days, chapter two is not chronological, but logical. Of course the events of chapter two fit into chapter one’s order, but the chapter is laid out differently. If chapter one is creation as seen through a wide angle lens, chapter two is viewed through a telephoto lens. In chapter one man is found at the top of a pyramid, as the crown of God’s creative activity. In chapter two man is at the center of the circle of God’s activity and interest.

And what this passage is reminding us is that God created Adam and Eve in a pre-fall environment.  There was no rain yet because rain and the withholding of rain is a blessing and a judgement - a post-fall event.  Vegetation had already been created, but there were no crops because there was no need for man to plant, till, water, or weed.  Everything was watered perfectly, not by rain, but from within the ground which was constantly, consistently, perfectly irrigated through subterranean springs.

Can you just imagine the perfection of Earth at that moment?  How glorious it was?

And that was the state of the world when God created man.

We were created out of the dust of the ground (not monkeys), and God Himself breathed the breath of life into Adam and he became a living creature.  God breathed life into everything that lived, including animals, fish, and birds.  But God took the physical form of man whom He had made out of chemical components, and He breathed into man specifically, a living soul.

MacArthur:  man became nefesh, like other living things but much higher because it was life in the image of God. 

And that is what gives human life it's worth.


Tomorrow's scripture focus: Genesis 2:8-17
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: 2 Samuel 13-14, Psalm 102, Acts 13

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