Category: Genesis

It has become so common on crime dramas that we don’t even think about it. A weapon is found at a crime scene, and the first thing the investigator does is “dust it for prints.” What the naked eye cannot see is “brought to life” with a little smoke and the application of scotch tape. The hidden marks identify a criminal! They were there the whole time, but they needed to be discovered and matched to the person to place them at the scene. This wasn’t always the case. You may be interested to know…

Dactylography or the “science of fingerprint lifting for the purpose of identification” probably began in Mesopotamia as far back as the time of Abraham, about 4,000 years ago. King Hammurabi (c. 1950 BCE) apparently used “finger seals” (on clay impressions) embedded in contracts. Law officers of the day were authorized to secure fingerprints of arrested persons accused of violating their contracts. We have no information on how the prints were used (like point-to-point comparisons) but we know they were used.

On the other side of the Himalayan Mountains in about 650 CE, a Chinese historian made reference to fingerprints being used in the preparation of contracts. A law book from the same period insisted that a divorcee sign a document with his fingerprint. Yet in the west, it wasn’t until the late 1700’s that a German doctor reported fingerprints were “never duplicated by nature.” A little later, historians credit Sir William Herschal in 1858 as the first western person to deliberately use fingerprints for identification purposes. Working in Bengal, India under the British crown, Herschal made natives place their inked prints on contracts and receipts.

The first person in western history given credit for using fingerprints to solve a crime was Henry Faulds. He wrote in Nature magazine that when bloody finger marks or impressions on clay, glass, etc. exist, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals. Ironically, Faulds’ first use of the science was to successfully resolve a case of stolen liquor. He eventually joined Scotland Yard Police where he later worked to establish fingerprint identification methods.

I mention this little history to suggest something from the Scriptures. If God is the Author of the Bible, as He claims, can we uncover with certainty His identity by looking for “prints?” I think we can. The strange part is they have been staring us in the face silently tucked over scrolls of genealogy lists. Here is the truth for our study…

Key Principle: In even the most mundane parts of Scripture, the Author left fingerprints of His identity.

In this lesson, we want to look at two name lists, two records of family genealogies. I am almost hesitant to tell you what we will read, because our natural inclination is to switch off our minds on mundanity. Yet, there is a “Cracker Jack” surprise for anyone who will take the time to search the box. It is in there. To find it, we must look at the end of Genesis 4 and contrast it to the list of names offered in Genesis 5:1-6:8.

This List came with a specific context marker:

Genesis 4:17 Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son.

In our last lessons, we noted that when expelled from the Garden, Eve conceived and the moment of her greatest blessing ensued. We noted that as a moment of HOPE for the one broken by rebellion. Here in Genesis 4 is the same pattern: Though expelled, Cain’s life wasn’t done yet. The writer noted Cain became a city builder and made something he could leave to his son. Both men were apparently proud of the labor of Cain.

Following that note, Genesis offered the line of Cain in a little more detail…

Genesis 4:18 Now to Enoch was born Irad, and Irad became the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael became the father of Methushael, and Methushael became the father of Lamech.

Fixated on the character of the “last of the line” named Lamech, the writer then offered this detail about his family:

Genesis 4:19 Lamech took to himself two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other, Zillah.

The narrative even offered details about the children of each wife.

Genesis 4:20 Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. 21 His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. 22 As for Zillah, she also gave birth to Tubal-cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron; and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.

The text ends with the boastful expression of the end of that family line.

Genesis 4:23 Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, Listen to my voice, You wives of Lamech, Give heed to my speech, For I have killed a man for wounding me; And a boy for striking me; 24 If Cain is avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

Even on a first-pass over this short record, there are a couple of observations about the words that are in order.
First, the text is a genealogy, just like the one that follows it in Genesis 5. No matter how you cut it, the text appears to be a boring list of names with a few interjected notes about the people. If you feel that way when you read them, you aren’t unspiritual; you have common sense. It isn’t more exciting on its face than reading a phone book for pleasure. Yet, there are a few interesting clues that more may be here than first understood.

Note that when man has turned from God and spurned a life of following Him – his life becomes about his ability to make something, build something, or leave something behind. In the absence of a view toward afterlife, his human journey becomes about what he can do to leave something on Earth. In Cain’s story in verse 17, it was the city he left for Enoch (Hanoch) that his son could have for his use. There is nothing wrong with leaving behind something for your children – provided you leave them a heritage of spiritual connection with God. Apart from that, you are working, night and day, to accumulate yard sale items that will be sold for pennies on the dollar after your demise.

Let me say it this way: A life lived without eternity’s values will become a life swallowed by temporal treasures, where moth and rust will work their wonders to reduce it all to nothing.

Drop your eyes to the end of the list in verse 19, and look at the colorful character of Lamech. He decided that one wife wasn’t enough, and added a second. Adah and Zillah became his prizes. There is no note that God instructed in this area, and this line of Cain, destined for extinction in the flood of Noah, simply made up its own rules. Please note that.

Man, when denying God the right to make the rules and set the boundaries on everything and its use, makes up his own version based on what he DESIRES. This isn’t done without intentional arrogance about his right to satiate any desire he chooses. Listen to Lamech’s hot hits from the local radio station recalled in Genesis 4:23-24. He demanded the attention of his women based on his physical prowess and his unrepentant spirit of vengeance. His song revealed he truly believed the best way to live was to “look out for number one” and mercilessly avenge any infraction against him.

Don’t look past the details. In the first line of people who lived on our planet, among people who defied God openly, there is found another marker of the work of the enemy. Lamech was arrogant, vengeful and “touchy” about anyone who challenged his right to be whatever he wanted to be, according to moral standards he “made up on the fly.” Keep your eyes open for people who have such a character in modern life. This is an old play, re-run in a new theater.

Let’s think of it this way: A life lived apart from God is a life forging moral standards from his own desires and hungers. What one desires becomes enshrined first in his identity, then in his practice.

It appears there really are lessons here.

Yet, genealogies may have something even MORE than the lessons found, not in the lists, but in the little inserted stories of some of the people of the list. Maybe it would help us not to overplay the lessons if we understood what genealogies are made to do.

In the Bible, genealogies organize narratives. The whole record of Genesis is organized around the Hebrew word “toledot” translated “these are the descendants of…” That word marks transitions between stories as we have noted before in our study. We find it in places like:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created (Genesis 2:4a).

The very idea of “generations” organizes the narrative into “scroll” sections, even in cases where family histories are not the heart of the story.

Genealogies also make claims about social roles. Kings and queens prove their bloodlines to demonstrate rightful claims. Other positions in ancient society are organized by kinship, like that of jobs assigned to Levitical families. Take, for example, the choosing of musicians appointed from each of the families of Korah, Gershom, and Merari for service in the sanctuary (1 Chronicles 6:31-48).

Genealogies established national and tribal inclusion. After the temple was destroyed and the exile to Babylon was complete, Ezra and Nehemiah both counted on the tribal record of the Levites to show who could work in the renewed temple. Nehemiah enrolled returnees by genealogies, establishing who “rightfully” belonged in which community. When returnees claimed priestly descent but couldn’t find their names in the genealogical record, they were excluded from priestly roles (Nehemiah 7:61-65).

Here is another tip, though. Sometimes genealogies tell a story. This is where the smoke and scotch tape lifting of the prints becomes important.

One obvious example can be found in Matthew’s Gospel at the opening of the story. One of two genealogies of Jesus is offered by the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 1:1-17, cp. Luke 3). Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus doesn’t seem to align with Luke’s (see Luke 3:23-38) nor does it recount any story of the Hebrew Scriptures that we can readily identify. The oddity of it seems to point to offering truth about something else. The scene offers clues that must be followed…

Matthew’s genealogy places Jesus within a story of the people of Israel as a whole. Yet, it offers four unique features:

• First, the list connected Jesus to Abraham, as One Who descended from the patriarch to whom God promised to “make of you a great nation” (Genesis 12:2).
• Second, the list highlighted the prominence of King David in the credentials of Jesus as King in order to be the Messiah (the Anointed, just as ancient Israelite kings were anointed).
• Third, Matthew’s genealogy highlights four female ancestors of Jesus, in addition to his mother Mary: Tamar (1:3), Rahab (1:5), Ruth (1:5), and the wife of Uriah (i.e., Bathsheba, 1:7). Each woman has something both scandalous and heroic in her story. Perhaps this was to make clear that Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was an unwed mother, did not create a scandal eliminating her from God’s use in her (Matthew 1:19). That deserves more exploration, but we will simply make the note and pass by in this lesson.
• Fourth, the notation of the number of generations is made obvious in Matthew 1:17.

Matthew 1:17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.

The problem is, the number of fourteen generations is not historically correct. Check the Hebrew Scriptures. There are more generations than fourteen.

For example, Matthew 1:8 states that “Joram begat Uzziah,” but 2 Kings chapters 8, 11 and 14 show that:

• Jehoram or Joram was the father of Ahaziah.
• Ahaziah fathered Jehoash or Joash.
• Jehoash or Joash was the father of Amaziah.
• Amaziah was the father of Uzziah.

In other words, ‘begat’ can mean “was related in the line to.” In the Bible, terms like ‘son’ and ‘father’ can mean ‘descendant’ and ‘ancestor’ respectively.

Matthew’s genealogy (Matthew 1:1-17) of Jesus was arranged into three successions of 14 generations each, and that genealogy is clearly selective. The secret is in the number “14”.

In Hebrew as in ancient Roman culture, numbers did not reserve their own fonts. People wrote numbers in letterform. As a result, a name was a number and often a
number formed a name. In Revelation 13, the “number of the name of the Antichrist” is called “666.” In Hebrew, the number “14” is formed by the spelling of the word “David.” The genealogy didn’t ignore the number of people in each segment – it offered fingerprints to the clue that Messiah was a son of David. The number wasn’t WRONG; it was the POINT of offering Matthew 1:1-17.

Granted, this isn’t really riveting stuff.

In fact, Ray Stedman tells the story of an old Scots minister who was reading from the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel, which is another genealogy. Ray wrote:

“He started reading, ‘Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac beget Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah,’ and he looked on ahead and saw the list to follow and said, ‘and they kept on begetting one another all the way down this page and halfway into the next.’”

On its face, a genealogy isn’t interesting, but it may have within it a clue to something essential to your understanding. It may offer the fingerprints of the One behind the scene of the obvious.

Let me show you by going back to where we were in Genesis 4.

Take a moment and see if you can recognize a pattern when I read to you the meanings of the names on the list. Be a little careful here, because Hebrew words can have more than one meaning, and are less specific than their English counterparts. With that in mind, look at this as a viable possibility of fingerprints:

Adam – means man

Cain is from Qayin, a word that can mean a spear from quwn (a word for a lance), but in its most basic consonant form (used only in antiquity) could be the base of a verb can be “acquired,” “received” or “gotten.”

Enoch or Hanoch, was from a verb Hanach, meaning “initiating” or “commencing,” like the beginning of a new stage of life.

Irad is from the word “Ir” which means city. It appears to be an early term for townsman or citizen. It may be “city dweller” as opposed to cowboy.

Mehujael (mekh-ee-yaw-ale’ is from machah and ‘el: smitten of God). The name simply means, “smitten of God” and may be a positive sense of “God struck.”

Methusael (meth-oo-shaw-ale’) is a tough combined word that includes a couple of ideas. Look it up and you will find a range from “Man of God” to “Who demands his death?” It is used in a wide range of forms. Meth was sometimes used in antiquity as the poetic designation of “that guy” or “a male.” It was used of a “champion” or a “man’s man.” In some places, it was used of a sword-wielding man who could increase his spoils, etc.

Lamech (leh’-mek) probably came from “to make low” in Hebrew and became the figurative word for “despairing.”

In Genesis 4:19 Lamech’s two wives had boys named…

Jabal (yaw-bawl’) which was a word for the meandering stream or watercourse, which figuratively seems to mean “wanderer.”

Jubal (yoo-bawl’) is another form of the word for his brother’s name, the fertile root-verb יבל (yabal), figuratively meaning to watercourse, but in this form perhaps more to “carry or bring along” probably as an early word for transport of goods on the water.

The half-brother of the boys was “Tubal-cain” (too-bal’ kah’-yin) is a word not of Hebrew origin. It was likely originally associated etymologically with a foreign priest and meant “higher man or exalted man.” It became a word used in forms as an answer, sometimes to “return an answer.”

After all that complexity, let’s see if we can venture into figuring what the name list COULD mean (if it is intended to tell a story).

• Adam – Man
• Cain – Acquired or received
• Enoch – (his) beginning or start.
• Irad – citizenship
• Mehujael – smitten of God
• Methusael – a man of increase.
• Lamech – despairing or lamenting
• Jabal” – a wanderer
• Jubal – brought along or brought about
• Tubal-cain – a man exalted.

How about this as a rough try: “Man received [a] beginning [of] citizenship smitten of God. Increasing as a champion, he laments and wanders [attempting] to bring about or bare along his [own] exaltation.”

Is that right? We don’t know. It isn’t far off, however. What is interesting is that it IS the story of Cain’s line. It ended with Lamech’s song, later found in Right Said Fred’s 1991 version of the song: “I’m too sexy for my shirt.”

Strip the whole thing down and here is what you will see: The line of Cain went from bad (Cain) to worse (Lamech). The line of Seth held out a little promise. It was in Seth’s days that men began to “call upon the name of the Lord” (4:26).Cain started his banished life making it all about what his hands could build. Men of his line accomplished innovations in self-made morality and exalted themselves. In the next chapter, they all died in the flood at enmity with God.

Ah, but the story with the fingerprints isn’t done. There is another whole chapter of genealogies!

They begin in Genesis 4:26. Let’s zero in on the names of the OTHER LINE of Adam and Eve’s next child, given to lift the countenance of their parents after the couple buried their son, Abel.

Genesis 4:25 Adam had relations with his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for, she said, “God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.

Did you notice chapter four ended with a song that was a direct contrast with the “I’m too sexy for my shirt” anthem of Lamech? Seth’s line produced Enosh (en-ohsh’) who seems to have been instrumental in the development of worship – perhaps even making the first worship songs!

Look at Seth’s line in the names alone:

Genesis 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.

Mark the names:

Genesis 5:3 …Adam or man.

Genesis 5:3 …Seth (Shayth) or appointed.

Genesis 5:6 …Enosh (En-ohsh’) or “mortal,” “frail,” or “miserable.” (Note: It is likely from the root “anash” as in to be incurable).

Genesis 5:9 …Kenan (Kay-nawn’). (Note: Many study aids unfortunately presume an Aramaic root synonymous with “Cainan” rather, it appears to be a word from a “sorrow,” dirge,” or “elegy.”

Genesis 5:12 …Mahalalel (Mah-hal-al-ale’). (Note: It appears to be from mahala,l which means “blessed” or “praise”; and El, the name for God). Many Hebrew names included El, the title of God (as in Dani-el, “God is my Judge” or Nathani-el as in “Gift of God.”)

Genesis 5:15…Jared (Yeh’-red). (Note: Probably the future of the verb “yaradh” meaning, “shall descend” or “shall come down.”)

Genesis 5:19 …Enoch (Khan-oke’). (Note: Likely from the word meaning “commencement.” He was the first of four generations of preachers. In fact, the earliest recorded prophecy was by Enoch, which amazingly enough deals with the Second Coming of Christ.)

Genesis 5:21 …Methuselah (Meth-oo-sheh’-lakh). (Note: The name Methuselah may come from two roots: muth – a root that means “death” and from shelach, which means “to bring.” If these are correct, the name Methuselah signifies, “his death shall bring.”

It is worth understanding here that the Flood of Noah in the next chapter was not wholly a surprise.

Enoch appears to have named his son to reflect a prophecy of the coming cataclysm. In fact, by all we can see in the text, it appears in the year that Methuselah died, the flood came.

The text reveals Methuselah was 187 when he fathered Lamech and he lived 782 years more (Genesis 5:25-26).

Lamech had Noah when he was 182 (Genesis 5:28).

The Flood came in Noah’s 600th year according to Genesis 9:28:

Genesis 9:28 Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood. 29 So all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died.

Add up the 187 years of age of Methuselah when he had Lamech, and add the 182 years of growth of Lamech until he had Noah, and then add 600 years to Noah’s life and you will get 969 years, Methuselah’s age when he died.

Genesis 5:25 … Lamech (Leh’-mek) likely meant “despairing.”
Genesis 5:29 … Noah (No’-akh) means comfort.

If we are even close, when we put this all together you will get:

‘Man [was] appointed mortal and sorrowful – The Blessed God shall come down [and] commencing with his death [one] shall bring the despairing rest.’

Was this a prophecy of the Gospel? Maybe. Was this a prophecy of the death of Methuselah ushering in the end of a time of earthly despair? Surely. We will look at the despair and remedy in our next lesson. For now, it is worth noting this:

If God wrote the story, did He leave His fingerprints anywhere we can find them?

I would say without apology: “He certainly did.” God revealed to man what man could not otherwise know. That is why we study the Bible. It isn’t so we can somehow stump people over the curiosities – it is so we can stand in the presence of an awesome God and know that the line of Seth knew: God is to be praised.

• Cain’s selfishness and sinfulness played out its hand and ended singing an anthem to man’s goodness, man’s rights and man’s self-made morality.
• The gift of God to Eve in Seth was there was another way. The line of Seth would yield worship, wonder and, in the end, warning.

If you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you understand the wonder of God well enough, because you have seen His love to you when you didn’t deserve it at all. You have stood back in wonder and fallen down in worship. Today, you have no pleasure in warning a generation that God is serious about sin, and the return of the Savior excites you for yourself, but troubles you for your neighbor who does not yet know Jesus.

If you care little for these things, thank Cain. You can measure life in accomplishments, but the Bible assures they will be swept away. One generation erects memorials to men; the next generation may well tear them down.

It is a generation following Cain’s way that makes up its own rules, defines family as they see fit, and raises arrogant and self-entitled children that have confidence they can bring down God Himself. The problem is, the day of the rains arrives, and they don’t have a boat to save them.

There is a true story about two brothers from the nineteenth century. When I reveal their identities, you will know one of them well enough to share even his middle name.

The older brother was born in 1833 and became perhaps the most famous actor of his generation. He toured throughout America and the major capitals of Europe, performing his signature roles in Shakespearean plays. In 1869, he founded a theatre in New York. Theatrical historians consider him among the greatest American actors, and mark him as the greatest Prince Hamlet of the 19th century. Virtually every one of his generation knew his name, but it was lost after a single action of another actor, his younger brother. The older brother’s name was Edwin Thomas Booth. Ironically, Edwin was noted for his ardent support of the Union in the Civil War, and in 1864, he saved Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert, from serious injury or death on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. Robert Lincoln recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine. Edwin managed the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City and bought the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. He made a fortune, opened a theatre, lost it in the panic of 1873, traveled Europe and regained it all. He founded The Players, a private club for performing, literary, and visual artists and their supporters, and dedicated his home on Gramercy Park to it. Nothing could stop his popularity and success – except his brother. John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865 and the infamy associated with the Booth name forced Edwin Booth to abandon the stage for many months. He recovered, but you probably have never heard of his brother John.

Two boys grew up together. They came from the same place. They made different choices, and they led to different ends.

The Cain and Seth story is an old tale, but it is still happening.

In the autumn of 1952, Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck published a now famous work called East of Eden. Critics described the work as his “most ambitious” novel, while (according to his third and last wife Elaine) Steinbeck considered it his “magnum opus.”

If you haven’t read it, the novel has some rough language and tough scenes (so I hesitate to recommend it even if it is a classic work), but the plot line details the growth of two families – the Trask family and the Hamilton family – and shows how the two intertwined over the decades. The manuscript was addressed to Thom and John Steinbeck, the two sons of the author who were both grade school aged at the time of the publishing.

Steinbeck wanted to eloquently describe life in the now lush (but once harsh and uninviting) Salinas Valley. The area has become one of the most productive agricultural regions in central California, following the course of the Salinas River south of San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley. The story offered grand detail of the landscape – the sights, sounds, smells, and colors. Its beginnings were filled with stories of grit, dirt, rock and stiff-lipped arduous laborers.

I won’t ruin the plot of the novel except to offer up its underlying theme. Set in an ongoing philosophical debate by two of the stories characters, a discussion about Cain and Abel revealed the author’s true query: Do men have the power to choose their course in life, or are they somehow compelled to plot a course toward “sainthood” or “doomed sinner”?

The title of the book was taken from Genesis 4:16, the last verse we will consider in this lesson. East of Eden suggests an ending place after one has savagely betrayed another. The story details a scorned walk into banished lands.

The problem is that many people tell the story of their life as if ongoing rebellion is somehow God’s fault. The banishment and its exhausting and punishing effects seem to just happen to these hapless victims.

That isn’t the truth. While it is true we are born broken, it is also true that our continued troubles come as the result of our deliberate choice to continue in rebellion against God.

That is at the heart of the next part of the Genesis story. In chapter four, we get the opportunity to remain tucked behind a bush and witness the first murder of a man by another man. As we are shocked by this heinous crime, consider an essential underlying truth of the passage…

Key Principle: Though our sin nature was passed from Adam, it offers no excuse to the rebel. We must admit to ourselves that we still choose to sin – because our default setting is set to “selfish.”

Take a moment and read the text of God’s Word from the familiar story of Cain and Abel:

Genesis 4:1 Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord.” 2 Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. 4 Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; 5 but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. 6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” 8 Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. 11 Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is too great to bear! 14 Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 So the Lord said to him, “Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him. 16 Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Before we explore what we just read, let’s refresh memories concerning the path behind us in our book study of the first of our collected works of Moses. We have looked at some important truths over these studies:

• First, when we began our study, we noted the divisions of the book into a prologue and ten “scrolls” that unfolded a deliberate story – beginning with the Creation and moving into the formation of a tribal family through whom God decided to show Himself to the world.

• Next, we looked at the prologue of Genesis 1:1-2:3 where the text revealed the facts that God both made everything and that He liked what He made. Each element of creation served His decreed purpose.

• Finally, as we dove headlong into the first “scroll” in Genesis 2:4-4:26 unfolded the story of “what went wrong” in God’s treasured Creation. We are still in the midst of that tale in this study.

As you look at the familiar story of Cain and Abel, you will note that God took three steps on behalf of a rebel in spite of his continued angry insurgence.

First, God offered a rest and blessing even after rebellion.

Adam and Eve sinned and were dismissed from the Garden. Yet, the sun rose. A new day began…

First, Eve experienced God’s blessing in spite of her sin:

Genesis 4:1 Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a man child with the help of the LORD.” 2 Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel.

Sin and rebellion wasn’t the END of the human story – and that opening offers great hope and promise for all of us! God purposed to move the human story forward – and Eve knew that God was at work. Though the words of the story of Cain and Abel were meant as a sampling of sin’s consequences and spread, even those words included the goodness of God in spite of human failing. It is an important reminder: God works in spite of us because of His character and His decree. He desires obedience, but doesn’t only bless us because of obedience.

Eve overtly credited God with her offspring, suggesting that she saw God as continuing in blessing even after expulsion from the Garden.

Many scholars see an implication of personal repentance in the exclamation of Eve that her womb was filled with the help of the Lord. They do so because people who reject God are prone to overlook His goodness, and do not easily offer Him credit when they reach their greatest life moments. Clearly, for Eve, becoming the mother of the living was her greatest achievement, and she saw it as something from the hand of God

Second, the next generation grew into relationship with God:

Note the beginning of the account:

Genesis 4:2b …And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Two things are obvious about these words:

The first one is there is a diversity of what the children of Adam and Eve accomplished. Two children from the same parents can respond to the opportunities and challenges of life in two very different ways. Bear in mind that Biblical scholars believe the depth of variation in the earliest genetic material was far greater than what we have today. As a result, the differences between the sons may have been much more drastic physically than in the case of our children. They may have looked quite different, and clearly, they chose different occupational paths.

Stop and consider for a second the words of Proverbs 22:6:

Train up a child in the way he should go,
Even when he is old he will not depart from it.

The child-rearing lessons of the text appear, many believe, are taken from the images of a growing fig tree and its fruit. For instance, the term “train” is the Hebrew word “khawnak” – a word that was also used in reference to the work of a midwife rubbing the gums of a newborn with oil, or with the white milky juice of a “pag” or green fig. In Arab culture, chewed dates or figs are still used to get a reluctant baby to nurse from a mother. The idea is to “squeeze into the child things that will cause the child to intrinsically desire truth.” Add to that the phrase, “in the way he should go” which should be more accurately translated “according to his bend” and the illusion to the fig tree is obvious.

Let’s say the verse this way: “Squeeze into the child truth that causes him to desire more, but do it according to the bend of the child, and when they are old, they will not depart from those truths because they were intrinsic and explained in a way that made sense to them.”

Since we know children may be starkly different from one another, we must recognize each will require different ways to reach into their heart. Each will respond uniquely to the type and number of restrictions we place on them. A good parent learns the child before they make the rules. That allows them to speak into the life of a very young child in a language the child will recognize as loving and intentionally helping. As the child grows, a parent must prepare them for a more impersonal system meant for older children and young adults.

Next, note how closely these early young men were identified by what they accomplished in life. In our last lesson, we made the point that behavior and identity are not the same thing. Here it is important to understand how early that confusion was woven into the human experience. From some of the earliest words of Scripture, we see accomplishment and behavior became a summary statement of one’s identity. It can be hard to see it as you read, because it has become so fluent in our thinking. Cain farmed. Abel shepherded. Yet, look at the words and you will see something different: Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. It is subtle, but it is there. We all refer to people by what they do, and are very casual about it. That isn’t wrong; it is simply incomplete. We are all much more than what we do.

Remember, though the crossing of identity and accomplishment is a very old idea, it can easily lead to a misunderstanding. Remember the story of of Cain and Abel isn’t one of success, but one of complete failure and breakdown in relationship. Let’s say it clearly, so we don’t allow a haze to remain on the text:

Cain wasn’t simply a farmer. Abel wasn’t simply a shepherd. Both began as children implanted into the womb by God’s grace.

They were sons of a family who saw, experienced, and even FAILED God. I don’t want to read too much into the way they were introduced, but it is important to see how early in history men framed their identity by their work, and to understand why that can be a dangerous proposition.

I implore young men and women not to wrap your identity in your accomplishments. The day will come as you age when you will no longer be able to do what you once did. Does that diminish your identity? It will tend to do so if you don’t understand that your accomplishments are not what make you who you are, rather your character is. When the lights go down and the crowd has moved on to younger talent, you will need to know the things you did were not who you are – or your life will fall apart. Go back to the text…

Second, God still made Himself personally available to fallen men.

Watch how the relationship between each man and God developed individually. Moses recorded:

Genesis 4:3 So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. 4 Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; 5 but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.

Before we focus on the details of the respective offerings, there is something that must be addressed about these words. It is obvious that much more was going on in the background of the story that is not verbalized in it. Don’t forget that.

For instance, other children were clearly born to Eve, because Cain and Abel needed and found wives to continue the adventure of human history. Unrecorded instruction must have been given to men and women on the subject of worship. Cain and Abel knew to bring offerings of their labor to the Lord, but the call to do so is not overtly specified in the text up to this point. How did they know? The answer is simple, but also critical. Most people who lived in the time of the text never got as much as an honorable mention in it. Much happened that was not recorded because the nature of history is selective. Many events and many people critical to forming the most important ideals are left in the unremembered dust of history.

Not to be too pointed, but would you allow me to ask: One hundred years from now, how many people will know ANY contribution you made on the planet? It is simply a mistake to think that only those mentioned in the text were born, and only instructions mentioned in the text were offered. That is clearly not the case if you read the whole account closely.

Look carefully at the words that describe the offerings given to God.

• You will note that each man gave from his increase (that increase came because of God’s enabling).

• You will note that Cain came first with an offering, and Abel followed.

• You will note that God didn’t receive the two offerings the same way.

Because of the brevity of the account, we don’t really have detail on what the specific issue that was between God and Cain – but there clearly was an issue. We also cannot be certain how Cain KNEW his offering didn’t get God’s approval, but we know from the story that Cain knew God simply didn’t regard his offering as He did in the case of his brother’s offering. The Hebrew term translated “regard” is “shaw-aw” and is normally translated with words like “gazed at.” The word suggests something that draws your attention in a way that makes it difficult to look away. God’s “eye” was caught by Abel’s offering, but not by Cain’s offering.

Third, God offered counsel to the distraught rebel.

Without God’s gaze, Cain became angry within (khawraw is “burnt up”) and despondent (with a sullen face) without. Rather than drop to his knees to ask God about His lack of regard, Cain simply turned to emotionalism and burned inwardly. I suspect he didn’t ask because he knew what the problem was already.

Regardless of what you think caused God’s disregard, I would like you to be open to the idea that the source of Cain’s trouble was neither God nor his brother Abel. In fact, his problem was made plain by God’s own declaration. To find it we must keep reading:

Genesis 4:6 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” 8 Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

Here is the heart of the passage. It seems clear that Cain thought he was entitled to be considered acceptable to God, especially if his brother was! Yet, God made it clear:

• Cain had a choice in the presentation of his offering.
• Cain had a choice in his response to God’s apparent rejection.
• Cain’s wrong choices about both invited the lion at the door to bound into his door and pounce on him.
• Cain could not insist that he couldn’t be held responsible because God made clear: “You must master it!”

Consider for a moment the phrase: “It lies crouching at his door.” Of whom or what was God speaking? It will take more investigation to find the answer. Stop and think of it this way: There are three primary reasons why you may do wrong.

First, we act out our identity – and we are born sinners. We can almost “auto-sin” by nature. Our default switch is set to self-protection and self-focus. Because Cain was conceived after the Fall of man, he was formed with that flawed switch – yet that wasn’t a fool-proof excuse to be released from responsibility for his choices, as God made clear.

Second, we get enticed by the enemy and drawn into rebellion. Clearly, God’s enemy is involved in fanning the flames of mutiny in us and in our culture. Yet God has offered a resistance plan – so it IS possible to resist. Further, God didn’t blame the enemy for Cain’s choices – He blamed Cain.

Third, we respond to chastening with “digging in” further. Cain may simply have chosen the path of continued intentional rebellion instead of softening before God – and each step is easier to continue and harder to reverse. Rebellion causes a momentum flow like a downhill ride. The initial push against inertia is more than it takes to “go with the flow” once rebellion has taken hold.

In this case, the fallen nature within Cain assisted him in choosing to do wrong, AND the continued momentum made it easier to remain in rebellion than turn back in repentance, so he chose to keep digging himself in. It appears to me the enemy was a part of the problem only after Cain invited him in by rebellion. Remember our key principle:

Though our sin nature was passed from Adam to all of us, we must admit to ourselves that we still willfully choose to sin – because our default setting is set to “selfish.”

There is a temptation to blame Satan for things that believers do without his assistance. Cain’s trouble was the continual rebellion and rejection of God’s right to rule as He sees fit. That mutinous rejection robbed Cain of happiness and set him up for a terrible attack in his life. It wasn’t simply Cain’s basic sin nature that became the main problem here; rather his main problem was his refusal to turn around the actions of his life in softness toward God and recognition of His right to rule. The wrong choice wounded his heart and set him up for attack. Enter Satan.

Let’s think of it this way: While there was a sin nature infecting Adam and Eve’s sons, the setting of the jaw in rebellion was the real culprit.

How do I know it wasn’t Satan at the beginning? 1 John 3 mentions:

1 John 3:11 For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; 12 not as Cain, [who] was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.

If you look closely at what John revealed, long after the fact (by means of the Spirit) you will note that he depicted Cain as lacking love, being “of the evil one” and committing a murder. Look at the order. First there was a choice to love and do good, THEN (only after that choice) did sin crouch at the door. Satan entered a situation where disobedience was already an acceptable option. That is why we identified the one crouching at the door as the very lion who sought to devour, Satan himself. John asked, “Why did Cain murder Abel?” His answer was straightforward: “Cain’s deeds were evil, while Abel’s deeds were righteous. That isn’t a complete answer, but it is a hint. Remember, when Jesus addressed the statute of murder, He reminded us that:

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person.

The problem for Cain was not that he was being treated unfairly, nor was it his ignorance of offerings. Sin is of the heart. His problem was the heart with which he brought the offering.

Remember Abel? Hebrews 11:4 reminds:

By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

What did Abel do by faith? He offered to God an acceptable sacrifice. Why was his offering accepted? It was NOT the substance of the offering, since Moses was clear – Cain was a farmer; Abel was a shepherd. The issue was what was in their hearts, not their hands.

At this point, you would think God was DONE with Cain, but He wasn’t. God willingly engaged Cain long after Cain wouldn’t speak the truth:

Moses recorded:

Genesis 4:9 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.

If my count is correct, this is the third time God pressed Cain to come clean and make right his rebellion. Only when the rebel wrapped himself in mutiny, God made plain the cost of what he chose to do:

Genesis 4:11 Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is too great to bear! 14 Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 So the LORD said to him, “Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.” And the LORD appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him. 16 Then Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

You end up in Nod, east of Eden, when you dig in instead of turning back.

Though our sin nature was passed from Adam to all of us, we must admit to ourselves that we still willfully choose to sin – because our default setting is set to “selfish.”

Stop overplaying that God has somehow abandoned you because of your gross sinfulness. It isn’t true.

• He blesses even when we don’t deserve it.

• He makes Himself available even after we are willfully wrong.

• He offers counsel when we are bewildered by the troubles of life.

If you are honest, it isn’t the number of times God makes overtures in your life to please Him. The real problem is how comfortable you and I become with living in rebellion!

John Simon Ritchie was born on a spring day in 1957 in Lewisham, England to a middle-aged couple, John and Anne Ritchie. John’s mom was a high-school dropout who left school to join the RAF. His dad was a guardsman at Buckingham Palace and a trombone player on the London Jazz scene. Shortly after Ritchie’s birth, the couple split up and in his early years, little John lived in a small rented flat in east London. As a teen, he became an avid David Bowie fan and a “clothes hound.” He learned to play bass guitar and eventually became the most famous member of the influential punk rock band the “Sex Pistols” where John took the stage name “Sid Vicious.”

During the meteoric rise of the band, Vicious befriended and later lived with manager Nancy Spungen, as the pair entered a destructive codependent relationship based on heavy drug use. Sometime later, Nancy Spungen’s murder was well publicized, as she was found in a pool of blood, stabbed while the couple was staying in New York City’s Hotel Chelsea. Under suspicion of the crime, Vicious was released on bail to continue performing but was later re-arrested after assaulting a man at a nightclub. A judge ordered a psychological evaluation and John forcibly underwent drug rehabilitation on Rikers Island in New York. In celebration of Vicious’ temporary release from prison, his mother hosted a homecoming drug party for him (she had been supplying him with drugs and paraphernalia since he was young). Late that night she assisted him in procuring heroin, and he died in his sleep after overdosing on it.

By all accounts, in less than twenty-two years of life, John Ritchie had seen life. He knew what it was to be rich and what it was to be poor. He knew fame and he knew loneliness and rejection. He lived a short, tumultuous life. I wanted to read you some of his lyrics, to help us hear how his bleeding heart was so very obvious, but couldn’t find any that had words I could be comfortable reading silently, let alone reading out loud in mixed company. I thought it telling that his most purchased song was a takeoff of the Sinatra song: “I did it MY way!” The lyrics are vulgar, woven together with some of the more familiar Sinatra ones.

Why do I mention Sid as we open Genesis 3. The answer is simple, but painful. Sid lived life on his terms. So did Frank Sinatra… so did Adam and Eve – and that is the problem. Many in our day frame life as though “living on my terms” becomes a statement of freedom. The record of the original sin confirms a contrary view.

Life lived by rules formed in rebellion will not lead me where I think it will.

Let me go backward for a moment to set that statement in context… Over the last few weeks, we have been walking carefully through the record of the beginning of the human story, looking at the Biblical Creation account and then searching the text for an explanation of the origin of evil in the world. We have called that pursuit “What Went Wrong?”

• We looked at Genesis 1 and recognized the story told us two things: God created everything and gave it the purpose for its existence, and God LIKED things the way He designed them.

• We followed that in Genesis 2 and found that God designed man, then woman. He assigned them both certain tasks, and then made them MORAL AGENTS with the opportunity to obey Him and commune with Him, or not. We recognized from Jesus’ statement in Matthew 22 of the “Greatest Commandment” that God’s highest moral ethic was love, and true love requires choice. God’s original design allowed the possibility of evil, though God did not create evil.

As we continue our look at “What went wrong?” we should keep reading Genesis 3 to the end. As we do we will note the following truth:

Key Principle: Every facet of life was disastrously infected by the introduction of sin into a world not designed to operate well after the assault.

Understanding what Evil Is

Before we look at the impact of the introduction of evil and sin into the story of humanity (which is the heart of the rest of Genesis 3), we need to stop and emphasize something so that we don’t go astray from the truth. We must address a definition so that we can discern what evil truly IS and what it is NOT.

To that end, let me offer a simple illustration I used at the Youth Conference this past week speaking to the crowd of teens in attendance:

If I place a chair in the middle of the platform, can you seriously make the argument the area beside that chair is the place I created a “not chair” space? That is how many people approach evil. In other words, some people argue about EVIL as if it is something God could have created – but evil IS NOT a thing. It is the absence of something.

Ask any police officer derided for the ticket they just wrote, and he or she will tell you: “You don’t create disobedience by creating a standard.”

Let’s say it this way: Evil is mutiny against His designed order and ultimately against God Himself. When any of us disobey God, we engage in evil. Evil is not the presence of something; it is the absence of righteousness, the negative, and the disobedient diversion from the standard. It is the willful absence of submission to God’s perfection. It is the abandonment of holiness (the distinctive quality of God).

We must be clear on this: Evil is NOT a thing created, a substance invented, an entity discovered, or a dark force God surprisingly encountered along the way. Evil is the lack of moral perfection. Therefore, God did not create evil, author evil, or make evil – that is simply the wrong way to think of the concept.

That doesn’t solve everything because there is something God DID that bothers people.

The Lord God of Heaven decreed evil would be included as part of His eternal story. He used the heinous departure from His good desire for His own purposes in the telling of His story. Don’t forget! The point of the story has always been to REVEAL WHO HE IS to the cosmos (in contradistinction to His enemy’s claims about Him). God’s story was constructed for an audience that includes both mankind and the angelic world that preceded man in creation.

Let’s not float in the stars – let‘s get down to the account of how evil entered the human story, and what it affected.

We read in our last lesson the story of 3:1-7 and learned:

• The story began with the serpent and his arrival to the Garden (3:1).

• Satan’s mimicry of a known animal of the field was a trick explained in later portions of the Bible, where his sneaky ploy was unmasked (3:1).

• In costume, Satan used Eve’s misperception of what it means to “die” and used that to twist her thinking (3:2-4).

• Eve was drawn by the appeal of the fruit and rejected God’s analysis that the fruit was poison. She called it “good for food” in her mind, when God said it would, in fact, kill her (3:5)

• After Eve touched the fruit she kept breathing, so she decided to eat it as well (3:6).

• By the end of the account, Adam and Eve had defied God, and suddenly things in the Garden looked “changed” to them (3:7).

It is at that point we resume the story with the devastating results of their mutiny against God.

The backdrop was a beautiful canvas. Remember the words that ended the creation account in Genesis 2:25?

Genesis 3:25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

When they were created, man and woman were feeling good. Man was OK with himself. Woman was OK with herself. No billboard advertisements at the edge of the garden made them feel inadequate. They had no marred self-image – no need for better makeup or another exercise machine they would eventually save for a garage sale. The issue wasn’t whether they were beautiful enough or felt important enough – they were happy with who God made them.

Enter the tempter (3:1). Think about the series of events that led to a long row of dominoes falling in an escapade of destruction:

• The man was to guard the garden and failed – exposing his wife to the guile of the tempter and neglecting the protection of the boundaries of God (Genesis 3:1b).

• The woman actively entertained the vital question of God’s authority over her and focused on the one thing God told them to leave alone – deciding the promised poison looked perfectly palatable (Genesis 3:2-3). She failed to trust God’s Word.

• The serpent openly accused God of holding back on what was best for them and they failed to recognize that God was exactly Who He claimed to be (Genesis 3:4-6).

What came from the fall affected every area of life:

They faced the initial LOSS of INNOCENCE – when the text reminds, “their eyes were opened” in Genesis 3:7a.

In 1998, Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels and Joan Allen starred in the Hollywood version of a play named “Pleasantville.” In the story, David Wagner (played by Maguire) was a TV loving kid whose mind was stuck in the 1950s. He was addicted to a classic 50’s sitcom show named “Pleasantville,” a story about people living in a simple place where all of its citizens were swell and simple-minded. They knew nothing of violence and life seemed idyllic. Watching the show one evening, David and his obnoxious sister Jennifer (played by Reese Witherspoon) are tossed into the TV world of that town when an eccentric repairman gave them a mysterious magical remote. Dropped into 1950’s Pleasantville, David and Jennifer bring the village out of their 1950s lifestyle of repressed desires and move them into more modern societal values (read: they bring in sexual immorality as a device to set people free) while trying to find their way home. In the beginning of their time in Pleasantville, the whole screen is in “black and white” as a 1950’s show would be. As each person in the movie launches from repression to freer sexuality, he/she becomes color. The town begins to become rich in color. That is the view of the producers of the film. Life that is beautiful is life that has left even the simplest of ethical morays – like sexual expression in the context of marriage bonds.

Isn’t that exactly what Satan promises? “Throw off the rules and you will be free!” Live with your eyes wide open. Don’t be naïve, as if the worst thing that can happen to you is to miss the dirty connotation to the joke just told. From that generation of “freedom thinkers” we saw the value of childhood diminished. Little girls needed to grow up faster.

Let me challenge this way of thinking for a moment. “Worldly wise” when it really means “Sexualized and forced from innocence” is no wisdom at all.

Keep reading what else casting off God’s Word and leadership did:

They faced the DEATH of a positive SELF IMAGE, seen in the phrase “they knew they were naked” in Genesis 3:7b. Suddenly, they found themselves deficient. This was the birth of fashion houses, cosmetic companies, and Gold’s gym. Eve looked at her body and began to evaluate that she wasn’t looking as fine as she did yesterday. She was going to need some accessorizing. Adam noted some mid-section pudginess and started thumbing through magazines for an “ab buster” to keep that “six pack.” Wait a minute! Wasn’t eating the fruit supposed to make them BE LIKE GOD and know everything? What they learned is that without God, life doesn’t look the same!

Not only that, but they faced the first embarrassing blush of SHAME when the text reminds they “covered themselves” in Genesis 3:7b. It wasn’t bad enough they didn’t like what they saw on themselves, but they suddenly felt it wasn’t good enough for anyone else to see either. Shame convinces us we are worthless – because worth was instilled by God and living in disobedience makes us feel like a fraud. Shame makes us feel unlovable to others. It isolates us.

Remember this: One of Satan’s most important ploys is to entice you to isolate yourself.

If he can convince you that you should be ashamed, you will volunteer to live in a prison with an unlocked cell door!

It was only that, they faced a DEBILITATING CHANGE in their relationship with the Creator, feeling, for the first time, the need to “hide themselves” from God in Genesis 3:8-10. Not only did Satan beckon them to isolation, but guilt drove them to run from the only ONE Who was deeply invested in making them truly successful. They could have run up to God weeping and told Him they were wrong…but that isn’t like us. We’d prefer to hide what is wrong and hope He doesn’t know as much as His Word teaches He truly does.

They faced the anguish of all that DESERVED GUILT and exchanged healthy and holy reverence of God for open FEAR to be seen of God in Genesis 3:10. Reverence leads us to worship. Fear leads us to HIDE. One ends in acknowledging how GOOD God is in spite of us, the other leads us to believe we are rejected before we even ask for forgiveness.

The bottom line is that man’s pain came from his deliberate mutiny against His Creator’s right to rule his life – and so does YOURS.

When we decide we know better than God does about our children, our finances, our emotional needs and our sense of fulfillment – we relinquish the benefits of trusting Him to meet our every need. Seeking to gain, we lose out on blessing. Blessing comes from submission, correction and re-connection. The wages of mutiny are a grand dose of shame, discontent, guilt and a host of unforeseen problems and unintended consequences.

Go to Genesis 3:12 and listen to the sound of blame shifting and guilt:

First, hear the sound of BLAME:

Genesis 3:12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

• Man tried to blame the woman for his lack of guardianship and leadership (3:12) – the leader blames the followers!

• The woman blamed the tempter (3:13) – like the shopper blaming the advertiser for MAKING HER BUY the product!

Don’t miss the common thread in the two! Blame is formed by ignoring personal responsibility while victimizing yourself. It is an exercise of making someone else responsible for your response to a situation.

Inside the BLAME can be found the dulcet tones of human RATIONALIZATION: We are prepared to trade long held grand ethics for short term practical benefits.

Dottie and I bought another older vehicle for her use this week. The seller thought they were being kind by leaving off the purchase price of the vehicle so we could claim less if we didn’t want to pay the full sales tax. After all, they said, the tax was paid on the vehicle when it was bought new. Why should the government get another tax revenue on the used price sale? Can you hear how easy it is to rationalize? Can you read the hash tag “#not my tax” as if people who don’t agree with something have a right to lie to cover their disagreement? Remember this: rationalizing is making a plausible excuse that is entirely acceptable to you, but is not actually correct. We do it when our morals call us to sacrifice our account balances. If you want to work to change tax policy, that is a great place to get involved in government. The wrong way to do it is lie about a price to receive the benefit of it. Why? The answer is simple.

God didn’t amend “thou shalt not lie” with words like, “unless thou thinkest thy government already has enough and shouldn’t get more of yours.”

Keep reading in the text:

Genesis 3:14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life;

It is clear that God immediately imposed judgment against the creature. Don’t miss that this is the first time in the Bible that we read about God “cursing” something. What does that mean? In short, God’s curse is the opposite of God’s blessing. It is the turning of the winds of support into the face of the one advancing. Where God guides, He provides. Where God forbids, He allows the elements to harm us in exposure.

Picture God’s blessing as a warm parka in an Alaskan snowstorm. Picture His curse as taking away the waterproof quality of that parka, and allowing the elements to seep, creep and freeze. It isn’t designed to be comfortable. It is designed to be punitive, instructive and corrective – as well as a deterrent to onlookers.

Even greater than what man could understand, the mutiny opened the front in a spiritual WAR.

Look at Genesis 3:15:

Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”

Because of sin, God promised to engage man in a battle between the deceiver and his own future through the provision of the Messianic seed (3:15). Look closely at the verse. God would bring enmity (read: a “knockdown, drag out fight”) between Satan and man. In the process, the seed of the enemy (those convinced to follow him) would battle the seed of the woman that was coming.

Look at the promise, because something is obviously incorrect on the face of the statement.

Women don’t provide “seed” to make a child. That necessary ingredient is placed within them. Only ONE WOMAN would have “seed” placed within without the assistance of the man (perhaps in response to his passivity in the Garden). That woman was the physical mother of the Savior, who bore a child without carnally “knowing” a man.

The bottom line of the passage was this: Satan’s seduction, Eve’s mutiny, Adam’s passivity and stupidity – none of it surprised God. Not one thing. He already had a plan in place to redeem from the moment sin occurred.

The passage is one of judgment, but even in the midst of God’s strong hand there was GOOD NEWS of undeserved grace and unstoppable salvation. Theologians call this passage the first proto-evangelion – the first “Gospel” if you will.

The great news exposed in this promise was this: sin will not rule forever. In fact, even in His judgment of death, God made clear that physical death was not immediate, and the woman would have offspring. That offspring would one day crush the serpent’s head. That good news found fulfillment at Calvary in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The fact is that you were born into a spiritual war. There is a real enemy. There is a real fight – but you were given the armor of Ephesians 6 to stand the ground upon which God has placed you!

God turned His eyes to the woman, and in a famous passage He promised her PHYSICAL PAIN would replace the joy of the reproductive system. A collective groan may now rise from the females of the assembly! The pain of childbirth is not ALL there is to this! He said:

Genesis 3:16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children…”

Whereas the woman was designed to find great joy in bearing a child, there would be physical pain in the reproductive cycle, in pregnancy, and in delivery. What should bring JOY now brought pain. What should have been SAFE, now often became unsafe. For centuries, many women left this life while bearing a child. I suspect Adam (if he saw her delivering children) probably never forgot the risks were directly associated with their rebellion.

In addition to PHYSICAL PAIN, there was another change in the woman. She, who was designed to be an assistant to do good, became A HELPER in REBELLION! Woman was made to AID man in his walk with God – and now she would COMPETE with him and help him by supplying her own rebellious spirit to his fully saturated rebellious heart (3:16b).

Look at the phrase:

Genesis 3:16b “…Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

The text suggests that she will want HIS JOB – and struggle with submission. I believe this record of the early penalty was given to remind us more and more of what will happen as the end draws near. What began as man’s passivity and woman’s mutiny will evolve into all kinds of confusion in relationship. What was designed to be TEAMWORK was about to become COMPETITION. She would find her relationship to her husband now to be a struggle for dominance. If physical pain weren’t the needed reminder, emotional struggle would be!
Look at the whole of the STRUGGLE: Because of the lack of guardianship and leadership, God ended His dealings with their rebellion in words to Adam – the work I gave you will now be a struggle. The ground won’t cooperate (3:17b-19).

Genesis 3:17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground because from it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Instead of Paradise, you will move to Thornburg. Nothing will be easy. Simple work will become sweaty toil. And the ultimate judgment for sin is death – and the bringing of the body BACK TO DUST.

Life went on.

If you keep reading, you will see that God wasn’t done with Adam and Eve’s role in the story.

Genesis 3:20 Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all [the] living. 21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

In Genesis 3:15, God showed He had a plan to provide for man long before man ever realized his problems. God set forth a coming VICTOR in the struggle against the enemy (3:15). In the interim, God supplied a temporary covering when man felt naked (3:21). Sadly, both the coming Victor and the short-term covering required the death of an innocent for their sin.

Before the end of the chapter, man was cast from the Garden into the fallen world (Genesis 3:22-24).

The text simply states:

Genesis 3: 22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

In Genesis 3:22, we became “like God” in that we now bore full culpability for our sin, because our defiance cast off the protection of innocence. Most of us experienced this as we grew into adulthood, so that we are now fully responsible for things were weren’t before.

• If you put your shirt on backward at age three – you tried and we give you credit for that. If you put your shirt on backward at twenty-three you are probably trying to say something, make a social commentary or protest. We think you are weird, but we accept that you are young. If you put your shirt on backward at 73, we think about calling your doctor!

• A perfectly understandable lapse of table manners at age two becomes a public point of shame if you don’t catch on by fifty-two.

• We understand when you run down the beach without your pants at age three, but if you do it at forty-three, we are going to collect our children, run to the car and call the police!

In Genesis 3:22b God said: “…and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—

From the beginning, death wasn’t the only option. There was another way for man to remain physically alive by God’s provision – if man ate from the tree of life. If he ate, his cells would regenerate, and his physical death would be pushed back. If he kept eating, the time of his physical death would keep moving back. God could have easily shut the system down, but that wasn’t His choice. He wanted to set up systems and operate within them. For the most part, He still does. There is the occasional breach of the norm – a miracle here or a healing there – but that isn’t the norm of our lives, even those of us who know Him.

If you keep reading, Genesis 3:23 reveals that, “God sent him out from the garden of Eden”.

Look at the link between man and the ground. He CAME from it, and now he would FIGHT with it to sustain himself. Held away from the cell regenerating plant of the Tree of Life, man needed to work the landscape and plant food. Eventually, he and his wife would go back to the ground – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The chapter ends…

Genesis 3:24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

The end of the story can be felt in the words “drove the man out.” He was pushed to the OUTSIDE of the place of peace and blessing. He faced a hostile landscape with a sense of blame and failure, a newly changed competitive relationship with his wife.

Apart from God, our lives are DRIVEN OUT. We don’t have God ever-guiding, ever-providing. We live without the security of His divine approval.

Every facet of life was disastrously infected by the introduction of sin into a world not designed to operate well after the assault.

 Our history books can be filled, not only with stories of great men, but stories of incredible women. For instance:

Marie Curie (Maria Sklodowska) was born in Warsaw, Poland in the second half of the nineteenth century. Even from a very young age she showed vast academic promise, but was not allowed to attend university because she was a young woman – and these were the days when women weren’t to work in such areas. That wasn’t true everywhere, so she relocated. First diving into studies secretly, she eventually moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne in the open in a society that allowed her to pursue her passion. She excelled and earned advanced degrees in both mathematics and physics. Within a short time after she was noticed by the French academy, she met an impressive scientist named Pierre Curie, and the two fell in love and were married. Not a normal husband and wife, they formed a unique partnership in scientific study – each helping the other in projects and experimentation. Over the years of her work, Marie Curie organized disciplines of study and essentially is credited with largely assembling what today is dubbed “atomic physics.” In a paper, she coined the term “radioactivity” as her description of atomic phenomena observed in the collective lab work they did, along with the work of other contemporary scientists. Pierre and Marie discovered together two radioactive elements: polonium (named after Poland) and radium. In 1903, Marie Curie’s work was recognized internationally when she became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in physics. After Pierre died in 1906, Marie took over his position as a university professor, becoming the first female professor at the Sorbonne. Later, in 1911, Marie was recognized again in a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. To this day, Curie is the only woman to win two Nobel Prizes. She is one of many incredible historical figures, explorers, artists and brilliant minds that dot the landscape of human history.

What is clear to anyone who has truly studied history is this: women contributed in dramatic ways throughout human history. They still do, and they will until time gives way to eternity. In this lesson, we want to look at the design and purpose of God’s creation of woman.

In our study of Genesis, we found two important (and intentionally densely worded) truths:

• In the prologue of Genesis 1:1-2:3, we learned in the “story of the seven days” that God made everything according to His desire, ascribed each creation its only true purposes, and is (by virtue of creation) the absolute Owner of all of the universe.

• In the first of four stories in the scroll of “What Went Wrong” (2:4-4:26) God made man and placed within the design MORAL AGENCY, thereby opening the possibility of sin and destruction – because it suited Him to tell His story in such a world.

We noted there are three more stories of the “What Went Wrong” scroll.

Last time we looked at the “creation of man.” This time we will examine the “creation of woman.” As we look at the passage, I want you to notice yet another foundational truth that helps explain how “things went wrong.”

As man was designed to be a moral agent, so woman was designed with very specific purpose. Within the statement of her purpose there is more than just a pedantic story of “Adam gets a helper” – as the children’s storybook version suggests. Her purpose was disclosed as part of the story of how things went wrong in the cosmos. If you read the passage carefully, I believe you will see that the woman was created with purpose, and then (as you knit the account into the scroll from which the story was taken) you will see this truth…

Key Principle: The enemy exploited the unique design for man and woman to use their own purposes against them.

Go back to near the beginning of the human story…The fall of angels had already happened, and a rebellion was afoot by the time man was first placed in the garden. The “morning stars” that sang at creation were now divided into two groups – one following God and one in mutiny against God. When God placed man in the garden, He moved forward with a story the entire cosmos could observe. It is the story of Who our Creator truly is.

Genesis 2:18-25 is the primary text that described the creation of woman by God. The passage can be cut into three natural parts:

• The first part supplied the background: it teaches about man before her creation and his needs to set the stage for her introduction into the story.

• The second part offered the “essential substance” of the story: God brought forth the woman.

• The final part included an important note about the basic building block of human society – the formation of the nuclear family.

All of it ties into a larger story of how evil and trouble entered our world.

The First Part: Genesis recorded the following about man and his needs:

Take a moment and examine the background setting in Genesis 2:

Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” 19 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; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

From the first part of the record, ironically we learn four essential truths about man, before the woman is on the scene in the garden:

First, man was not only designed for organization, administration, service (work) and guardianship of God’s estate, but also intimate relationship with others (2:18).

Look again at the simple statement:

Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone…

It may be hard to tell when you look at the behavior of some men in your life, but men were originally designed to crave relationship and connection. “Alone” was not a description of what was BEST for man.

Consider two important observations that we learn from this simple sentence:

First, the twisting of a God-given desire for companionship, including physical contact, was one of the most effective weapons Satan could invent by twisting it from its natural shape. He isn’t creative; he is an impostor. He steals what God made and warps it to help us mutiny still more. The man’s inherent created desire for connection, when twisted, becomes his inordinate attention to sexual expression and physical relationship. He was made to DESIRE TO CONNECT. In his lost state, that connection of heart is all too willingly traded for self-pleasure.

Second, anyone who counsels those who struggle emotionally and spiritually will easily testify that isolation is another one of the excellent weapons our enemy has formed against us from our design. As the father of deception, he pushes us to isolate ourselves with shame and guilt because we are most vulnerable and susceptible to his direction when isolated. That isolation is, perhaps, the area we need to guard most strongly against. We need to force ourselves to keep relationships solid when we are tempted to retreat. Think of it! There are a plethora of “one another” commands in the Scriptures that suggest that in our fallen state we will not naturally connect and care for one another as we ought without a push from God.

Second, man needed a specific kind of companion (2:18b).

Genesis 2:18 “…God said…“I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

Though animals can bring both comfort and companionship, the true relationship man lacked deep inside was intentionally designed to be something MORE. It included a helper SUITABLE (neh-ghed) for him. The term means “conspicuous” or “obvious” for his needs (2:18b).

Don’t get distracted by the word “helper” (Hebrew: ay’-zer). Clear in the text is the notion that God made for man a woman as a helpmate, someone who would help him fulfill God’s assignment for his life. Yet, we can make a terrible error here. Does “helper” imply that the woman was made strictly as a servant to the man? Not at all!

Helper is not synonymous with assistant, servant, minion, or subordinate.

Indeed, the Hebrew word “helper” is often used for God as a helper of man (cp. Ex. 18:4). The term doesn’t presume lesser value in and of itself, as it may denote in the English. Rather, it focuses on the end result – assistance to the one needing help.

God helps man, but He is not man’s servant – His desire is for the man’s success and so aid is offered.

The term “helper” is unrelated to any claim of worth or value – the idea is entirely separate. To be clear, one cannot argue from this term that woman was simply created to serve man – rather she was created to complement man on his mission before God and help him succeed to that end. Her purpose is obviously tied to his – but not in any way that makes her less valued by God. She offers man much needed assistance without which man would fall short of his Creator’s desire.

Furthermore, the Hebrew word translated “suitable,” kenegdow, carries much more meaning than simply “fit” or “appropriate.” This word also means “opposite or contrasting.” This implies that the two beings were designed to work and fit together perfectly, not just physically, but in all ways.

In many ways, the strengths of each compensated for the weaknesses of the other.

It was “not good” for the man to be alone (Genesis 2:18), but, together, Adam and Eve became something far stronger and more able than either of them could have been alone. Adam lost a bit of tissue from his side, but he gained so much more!

We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk. – Thomas Moore

There were times in the history of the church (and of the West) where even Jesus followers became sloppy with our Holy Writ and adopted prejudices and attitudes that are not actually defensible from the Word at all. In some instances, we held women back from things like a vote for elected officers, etc. that are well outside of the reasoning of Scripture. You cannot find a place in the Bible where it defends inequality in access to education or personal development. In the Word, there is no question that God made women equally intelligent and quite able to cast a vote with discernment equal to men. Any argument to the contrary seems hostile, not simply to our culture, but to the text of God’s Word.

At the same time, we must face the fact that we live in a highly feminized environment, with some cultural ideals that have been openly developed as HOSTILE to God’s Word. We can easily see that some of the highest values of God’s Word (the inherent dignity of human life, the wondrous and exalted place of motherhood, etc.) stand in direct conflict with some of the loudest voices in our culture. Be careful here.

God called women “suitable helpers” and DID distinguish between the man and the woman in terms of spiritual culpability – but NOT in terms of worth. In the Law, specifically in Numbers 30, a woman was restricted from making a DIRECT VOW before the Lord. That wasn’t because she was undiscerning – it was because she was created FROM MAN, in an indirect creative work of God. Paul made that argument in the 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2. That is a difficult to understand argument, and it deserves time (perhaps later) to dissect. At the same time, I would be remiss if I didn’t openly point out that God’s Word is structured around two creations – man and woman – equal in value by different in how they approach and serve God. I have no interest in holding anyone back from serving as they choose – provided it fits inside what the Scripture expressly allows.

A third important truth: man isn’t the first to recognize his needs. (2:19-20).

Look at the end of the short sentence in Genesis 2:20.

Genesis 2:20 “… but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

In the story, God clearly knew the need man had of a companion and helper, but He desired that man feel that need as well. This is one simple example of how God may bring us through a times of LACK to help us understand our own needs – even the ones He is filling (or longing to fill) in our lives. That lack is not a punishment; it is a school (Gen. 2:19). God knows your needs before you do, but may bring you through a series of circumstances simply to help YOU see your needs (2:18-25). Adam needed a helper – God knew it (2:18) but Adam had to discover it (2:20). Only after Adam felt the loneliness, did God take care of it. Perhaps the reason this detail is included is to help us understand something of the nature of the man that needed the assistance of the woman.

Is it possible this account was included to remind men they need to be open to another set of eyes on “what they need?” I suspect that is the case.

Men, listen to this simple truth: You need a better perspective than you can provide yourself. In the home, you need a wife who can tell you what you didn’t see. At work, you need a team mate to make sure you are learning to perceive what is happening around you. We don’t have all the tools in our toolbox because we were made for relationship.

By the way, don’t fuss about lack. Lack can help you learn to see more clearly. A periodic sense of profound weakness can produce a life of intense strength. Constant fullness and elated bliss isn’t healthy. One writer put it this way:

Never have I seen so many young, privileged, people trying so hard to be happy. There are countless articles written about it, blogs named for it, workshops attending to it. Who ever said we’re supposed to be happy all the time, anyway? We’re not. And the pressure to do so might be what’s making us unhappy to begin with. It’s OK if you’re not completely content with your life twenty-four hours a day. Can you imagine what a boring person you’d be if you were? Going through … storms, feeling uninspired, hating the way you look and having guilt over not accomplishing enough are just some of the things that make you interesting, relatable and human. ..This is not to say that people shouldn’t strive to better their positions in life, however it seems like so many of us are no longer content with a regular amount of happy, yet dead-set on being maniacally jubilant, all of the time. -Kelly Rheel (blogger).

Fourth, it is also important to note that man named things to symbolically show his responsibility for them (2:20).

Don’t skip the detail in verse 20:

Genesis 2:20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

Giving a name was more than authoring a dictionary; it was about taking the assigned responsibility over the environment. One cannot manage what one does not distinguish and name. For some people, they can’t eat an animal after they named it. They feel a sense of betrayal.

Adam needed to wade out into his job and take responsibility for what God designed him to accomplish. He needed to take on life and own the work before him. The only way you truly fail at life is if you retreat from participation in your calling. Don’t miss that he was busy FOLLOWING GOD’S DIRECTION before God entrusted a mate to him.

Let me say this: Don’t expect God to take one of His best and most precious creations and drop them into your life BEFORE you are willing to show Him you desire to obey His direction!

The second part of the narrative examines the actual creation story of woman:

We have seen the first part of the story – that man had true needs and God was about to fulfill them. Now comes the FUN PART if you have discovered (as I have) a happy marriage…

First, God deliberately and intentionally designed woman without consultation from man (2:21).

Consider the words of Genesis 2:21:

Genesis 2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.

Take a look at the fact that woman was formed while man was in “a deep sleep” (tar-day-maw’) which is a term for “deeply sedated” or even “comatose.” Her “formation” (baw-naw’) was the term for “constructed” and is sometimes used for building, but also used for the term of what happens inside the womb as a baby is formed. It can even be used of God “building up a house” by adding children to the family.

• You may never have considered the difference between how God made man and how He made woman. Remember that Genesis 2 revealed that God “formed Adam out of the dust of the ground.” The Hebrew term “yawtsar” meant “to mold or shape as in a potter shaping clay.” The word is one that denotes the making of a pot by a potter – the shaping of a substance for USEFULNESS.

• In the case of the woman, the term “bawnaw” denoted she was “fashioned” not simply “shaped.” That term was used of a complex structure, such as a temple, palace or perhaps a “work of art” would have been. Most scholars would agree the terminology implied that the woman was meant as both a companion, and an aesthetic work, a design for pleasant appearance.

It may also be worth noting that she was not only designed to be aesthetically pleasing (which became obvious by Adam’s response to her), but to be more aesthetically sensitive – it seems she was designed to CARE about appearance more. Consider this:

Researchers note nearly one of ten men are color blind (actually 8%), but a mere one out of two hundred women share that malady. Some think this implies God built into women a greater capacity to be aesthetically sensitive, though with the Fall it is hard to know for sure.

Now consider how the enemy took advantage of the way God made man and woman.

• In the case of the woman, she could (if led away) become overly concerned with appearance to the point that it distracts her away from helping the man complete the God-given mission. She could get caught up in how she catches his eye, rather than how she helps his heart.

• In the case of man, he could (if led away) become obsessed with her beauty to the detriment of his own mission. He could care more about capturing her affections than following God’s will.

It isn’t difficult to imagine either of those issues, but they are part of the twisting of God’s original design of each. That is part of the reason God took the time to explain the creation of each.

Second, woman was formed out of the tissue of man (2:22).

Keep reading, and the technical side of her creation is exposed.

Genesis 2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.

The word for “rib” (tsay-law’) is actually a term that can refer to the side of a structure, or the side wall of a terrace. It simply refers to the location from which the tissue was extracted by God, but not necessarily the technical piece of bone itself. In effect, the text simply reveals that man was used as the “starter tissue” to form woman. She was not taken directly from the ground, but was taken from already living tissue that came from man after he was already a living being. That fact will have important implications later in the Bible.

God explained that He used the man’s tissue to form the woman in order to show they were actually parts of the same created being, two halves of a whole. The female was created distinct from the male but both were completed in each other. In that way, the note on “one flesh” makes even greater literal sense. We use the term physically and spiritually, but it essentially means “putting the whole back together.”

There is a sense of completion that happens in the bonding of a good marriage. There is also a severe tearing that occurs in the breakup of a marriage. This isn’t simply a contract or a case of inane familiarity (i.e. “we are used to each other after this many years”). Anyone who lost their spouse to death can tell you it affects you on so many levels, you feel torn in half. It isn’t your imagination; it really is a tearing from one into two.

Third, woman was brought by God to the man (2:22).

Keep reading, and we will get to the relational part – where Adam first saw Eve.

Genesis 2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.

Fortunately, the scene was a page before sin when the term “awkward” set in. God didn’t let Adam figure out an approach or “pick up” line. Considering his inexperience with females, anyone who ever observed a Jr. High dance will tell you it was good that God didn’t let him actually approach her to meet, or they might still be standing opposite the punch bowl in the garden looking at each other like cows in a field, deathly afraid to speak to each other.

No, this meeting took place when they were still unafraid of each other. The awkwardness didn’t come until the breaking of man’s self-image – and that came at the Fall in Genesis 3.

Fourth, when man awoke, he knew she came from him (2:23).

Genesis 2:23 revealed Adam KNEW where she came from in the beginning (and it wasn’t from Venus!).

Genesis 2:23 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.”

Here is the absolute first of a long series of “boy-meets-girl” movies. Adam said she is “bone” from me (eh’tsem), which refers to the frame, the limb or the strength of a man. The term (baw-sar) is the term “flesh” and literally means the “meat on the bone” (i.e. muscle, etc.) of her frame. He exclaimed that she was “taken” (law-kakh’) “extracted” from man. This isn’t incidental; it reveals that every part of her was taken from his design and from his tissue, but carefully constructed into a new related form.

Look carefully at the man’s exclamation: “She is from me, and I will name her as something additional to me.” He was called “man” (ish) while he called her “woman” (isha).

Adam’s first reaction, “She is one being with me”, is later strengthened in verse 24 by the phrase “and they will become one flesh.” It is as if he recognized from the beginning the single word that makes marriage successful: the word “ours.”

Look closely at the words “She shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” In them is the Biblical principle of headship, which was developed more in the New Testament. In the Bible, the man held ultimate culpability for the nature and character of the home, and was charged with the responsibility with exercising unique leadership as he followed God’s direction and purpose.

The third part of the narrative included a God breathed note dropped into the narrative about the nuclear family and its formation:

Genesis 2:24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

First, a man’s commitment to permanent responsibility was the basis of the family structure.

Because woman was taken from man, brought to man and named by man – man was to take responsibility for the woman BEFORE they became the basic biological components to the foundational social structure – the nuclear family. The terms “father” and “mother” are used, as is a reference to biological reproduction in becoming “one flesh.”

The foundation of any marriage is a commitment to permanence. The man LEAVES home (and establishes his own desire to take self-responsibility, then CLEAVES to his wife. The Hebrew term “dabag” means, “to adhere as in glue.” Remember, this was written long before the glue of a “sticky note.” This was a word of intentional permanent bonding.

Second, a man and woman were made to engage life together without the need to cover who they truly are.

Genesis 2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

The final words of the text speak clearly of openness and transparency between a man and his wife. Secrets kill a marriage; communication establishes it. Retreat and silence make a marriage shrivel; sharing together deepens the foundation.

We live in a culture where people share a meal reading the words from a screen and caring little for the person with which they are having the meal. Marriage isn’t just about longevity. People can endure torture for a long time – but that isn’t the measure of the experience. Honestly, the breakdown of communication with your spouse IS the breakdown of your marriage. The inability of a couple to love past surface differences and allow each to share without constant fear of judgment is the undoing of a marriage.

Can you see it?

The enemy exploited the unique design for man and woman to use their own purposes against them.

God didn’t build the world on nations. He didn’t build it on political parties or even types of government. God built the basic fabric of our society on a home. He built it on two people – a man and a woman – completing the mission God gave them.

I close with an observation about never underestimating a woman…

A police officer jumps into his squad car and calls the station.
“I have an interesting case here,” he says. “A woman shot her husband for stepping on the floor she just mopped.”
“Have you arrested her?” asks the sergeant.
“No, not yet. The floor’s still wet.” (Smile!)

As a grandfather, I have been delighted to rediscover childhood, in some small way, as I watch one infant and one toddler learn the basics of navigating life. Some time back as a dad, I was busy so much of the time, I missed out on things that others see – but I am trying to see with more tender eyes these days. Here is something I have observed that most of you already know, but it helped me to see: Children learn by playing with things. Train tracks that don’t fit together won’t keep the train running. Big blocks on the top of my pile with small ones on the bottom make a collapsed mess. I even recall when I was a child, learning that “Lincoln Logs” make a great looking house (because someone else cut and notched all the wood and I only had to take each ready cut piece from the box). Those house building projects taught me that if I wasn’t careful about how I built, I would end up with a nice house that was missing a door to enter or exit! It would look great, but not one would have been able to use it. That is where childhood imagination kicked in, and I gave my little imaginary home dwellers the power to walk through walls like “Casper the Friendly Ghost.”

It is surprising in how many venues children can learn. They soak up everything! Even playing with food can teach children. Moms make airplane landings in the mouth with a spoonful of strained spinach, selling the child that “this is delicious” and children learn what blatant manipulation looks like! Even so, we have to admit that some food is fun to play with. Oatmeal on a highchair tray is itching to become “dried oat art.” Spaghetti with sauce is just begging to become a new artistic swirl imitating paint on the kitchen wall!

When I think about food, here is what I learned: You can’t build anything on a “Jello” foundation! It seems firm, but it really isn’t! Between the slimy nature of it and its unreliable stability when placed under pressure, I have concluded that no secure buildings will ever have “Jello” foundations.

I guess the bottom line of building is this: everything stable must be fixed to a firm foundation.

I have been observing all around me people who seem to be living lives built on metaphoric “Jello.” Some are kind couples who love each other until they fight and cannot stay married – then it’s over. Their vows were obviously cast in a Jello mold. Others express belief in certain life principles until those same ideals cost them too much money.

For instance, I was talking the other day to a ministry leader distraught because two senior citizens in his congregation who expressed they knew and loved Jesus were found to be living together outside of marriage because their pension and retirement would be cut if they actually married again. They apparently believed in integrity, unless it was to a corporation or unless it would cost significant income with their retirement – in which case such integrity was simply too costly. I call that a jello foundation.

If you think about it, Jesus taught that stable foundations are essential and available. In His opening message recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus made the point in the close of that rousing message on “becoming a disciple” that:

Matthew 7:24: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. 26 “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”

His point was that storms will certainly come in life, and deliberate actions taken because of attentiveness to His Word were what would provide a secure, immovable foundation to get a follower through the storm.

Don’t skip past the two steps involved in a secure foundation.

The first step is KNOWING the Word of Jesus. Without an understanding of what the Lord said, He argued that we face the world without security. I want to make that very plain, because Jesus did. The world is filled with storms, and it simply isn’t a safe place in its fallen state. Because I have God’s Word, I can know both the Designer and the design. Because God explained what happened in the Fall of man, I can understand why things fall apart in a world built by a good God. Knowing is the first necessary step.

The second step is BEHAVING in each of the operations of life (i.e. relationships and responsibilities) in deliberate response to the Words of Jesus. It isn’t just about what we KNOW, it is about what we CHANGE because of what we know. I know how to eat right, but my waist line often reflects knowledge without behavior. That is what Jesus meant when He said:

Matthew 7:26 “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”

In these lessons, I want to follow the truth all the way back to the foundation given by God.

These lessons aren’t designed to be steeped in academics, but rather a renewal of stabilizing principles from the text of God’s Word.

I want to be sure our foundation and behaviors are a deliberate response to the truths Jesus made clear. Consider the words from “The Message” Paraphrase of Proverbs 22:3:

“A prudent person sees trouble coming and ducks; a simpleton walks in blindly and is clobbered.”

Doesn’t that have the echo of the same idea “and great was the fall of that house” as Jesus reminded?

As you open your Bible to the very first page in Genesis 1, I want you to consider the truth upon which the entire Word of God rests…

Key Principle: A strong foundation for life is set upon two powerful underpinnings: knowing the truth and living based on the truth.

Let’s ask some simple questions to the text at the beginning. What are the foundational truths that can root me deeply and bring stability? What truths enable me to be a dependable person deeply rooted in a stability the world around me cannot understand?

Foundations are usually the beginning of any work. They are not ONLY there, but some important ones are found at the beginning of God’s Word.

As we look at the opening page of the Bible, remember that many of us believe that Genesis was put into its final Hebrew form as a “prologue’ and ten scrolls that each began with the phrase “alle toledot” or “This is the story of” (cp. 2:4; 5:1; 6:9, etc). The older King James designation was “These are the generations of” and the newer translations – “this is the account of – “. In any case, the idea is the same. There is an introduction followed by what appear to me to be ten stories or accounts that are critical to my understanding of the world. Some of the accounts are quite short and pointed, but others are an entire mini-series set for prime time television.

Today I want to look more carefully at the opening introduction to the Bible, and make sure we know how the story began, and what God gave us in the record of the ‘first pour’ of the foundation of His Word. With that is mind, look at the opening words of the Word, a primer of history revealed to Moses at Sinai. Expect this message to address “simple things” because it is foundational. Begin with the Bible’s opening:

The Prologue: The Story of the Seven Days

In the intimate prologue of God’s recorded creation event, there are three details that carry the story.

First, there is the “WHO.” One cannot escape the beginning general note about the intentional Creation of the physical world by God Himself.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

“In the beginning” forces us to conclude any word of something before what we see now is entirely speculative and beyond the story God has explained to us about the cosmic origins. The starting place in the story of man and his world was God’s creation. The beginning was in God. For this reason, wisdom begins with knowing Him. We will never be wise chasing design without acknowledging the Designer.

Second, the ownership of all things is rooted in their making. God made us. He deliberately and purposefully crafted our world and our persons. Therefore, because He was our origin, He alone can ultimately determine my purpose and my destiny. There is an emphatic assertion from the opening line that no one competes as the owner of the planet. This is my Father’s world. Let there be no mistake. No council can overrule Him on why things are the way they are, or dismiss that His record is clear and concise.

Let’s say it this way: The opening line of the Bible offers this simple and straightforward word, that truth is found in the One Who created. Every other choice to explain origin, no matter how sophisticated in appearance, is a dressed up form of rebellion against God, and against the grain of how it all really happened.

God offered man (later in the story) opportunities to innovate with created things in order to improve conditions of our lives on the planet, but creation of something from nothing is beyond the purview of the created. God creates. God owns. In God’s explanation are the knowable facts of our origins.

A culture which cannot accept the opening line of the Bible is one rooted in rebellion. It can form models and even operate great technological advances – but ultimately the truth is found in the opening line that stares back and exclaims: “I am God, I created, it is all Mine.” This is not a fact we can “come half way” and “explain away” for popular acceptance. Either there is a Designer and therefore an Owner, or there is not. The Bible falls clearly on one side of that argument. It is the foundation of morality, mission and mankind’s destiny.

Second, there is a brief mention of the “HOW.” The fact that Creation was done in specific stages and sequences.

Genesis 1:2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

In the record there was a time when the organization of the world was not as we see it today. God could have created with absolutely finished villages and street cars and a world full of developed and modern people – but that is not the record. Creation occurred in an intentional and developmental way. He described creation’s steps. What were they?

It began with matter created but not in its final organized design as we know it. Note the terms ‘earth was formless and void” or the Hebrew “תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ” (tohu v’ bohu). The words mean literally “chaos or confusion” (in the sense of disordered) and “empty of meaning” (in the sense of devoid of recognizable purpose).

The Bible clearly stated that God put matter together, but didn’t immediately assign its order and purpose – that was a second stage. Don’t miss that. The creation entitled the Creator to assign purpose.

God created everything with a purpose and God alone can assign that purpose. Your body was created by Him, and its limitations and its proper uses are determined by Him. Biology is not bigotry – it is control. That is why the world rejects the very science they vaunt when it expresses controls on their desires.

Another important facet of creation that is made clear here is apart from God’s assignments, things devolve into chaos. Whether we are referring to the boundaries God placed on separation of species or of social constructs – the world was designed to function under assigned rules. Defy gravity and you will pay a price. Re-write biology and family function and you will as well.

Freedom doesn’t come from throwing off design. Each initial sense of freedom will eventually show the Pandora’s box of trouble it unleashes when accessed.

Suzie was shy and couldn’t speak to men. She was 27 and had a successful career. She wanted a husband and children to match her dreams. The problem was that her shyness caused her to freeze in social situations. She couldn’t talk, and she couldn’t show her shiny personality that was hidden. Someone told her that alcohol would help her “loosen up” and the bottle would offer confidence that she didn’t feel inside. She decided to dive in. What she didn’t know was the party girl she became solved ONE problem, but unleashed a series of other problems that she couldn’t control. The unintended consequences destroyed the dreams they were supposed to fulfill. I don’t have to describe how. It is a well known story that most all of us have seen in life.

Third, (beyond the “Who” and “how” of Creation) there is the revelation of “WHAT.” Moses reminded us what God designed and how His design fits together.

Look closely at the rest of the verses in chapter one. Note the following:

First, notice the words that mark the “days” in the first chapter:

• Verse 5: “first day.”
• Verse 8: “second day.”
• Verse 13: “third day.”
• Verse 19: “fourth day.”
• Verse 23: “fifth day.”
• Verse 31: “sixth day.”

Next, note how each new day began. In verse three God said: “Let there be light.” God inspected it in verse four and named the light and darkness in verse five. In verse six God said: “Let there be separations – land from sea and in verse seven he separated atmosphere from the vacuum of space above, forming an envelope around the earth. He named the separations in verse eight. Each day began the same way – with the SPEECH of God. That is a point that is repeated and should be carefully considered.

Genesis 1:3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

Genesis 1:6 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. 8 God called the [expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Genesis 1:9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.

Genesis 1:14 Then 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; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. 19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

Genesis 1:20 Then God said, “Let the waters [teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” 21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

Genesis 1:24 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. 25 God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 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.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

The point is clear: God is the initiator and communicator, and what caused each part of Creation was logical, rational and deliberate thought. He is not hapless not haphazard. He is purposeful and intentional about what He does.

Many in our day seem to think that God is powerful enough to create with intention and purpose, but somehow unable to publish and maintain an accurate and careful record of what He did. They will argue that “Moses made the Creation story” as if God could place one quintillion stars in the Heavens but failed the supreme challenge of passing information to a secretary to write down the Holy Writ.

Third, notice God’s control in the world. When God spoke – what He commanded was EXACTLY what took place. Look at the words “It was so.” The world was created to LISTEN to God’s voice. After the Fall, we have gotten SO used to the mistaken idea that God’s Words aren’t really as significant as the words of our peers and the feelings of our heart about things. Do you recall that Jesus taught His disciples to pray: “As in Heaven, so on earth” as an expression of how WE should think about God’s commands?

Take a moment and look at what the text claims He created:

• Light and darkness – long before heavenly bodies gave them. He can create the effect before the cause.

• Land from sea – the very shape of the continents is in His hands.

• Atmosphere from the vacuum of space – after generations of technology to simply travel into space, it is worth recalling God made both and keeps the atmospheric envelope around the earth. No amount of human ingenuity could possible pull that off.

• God planted the garden of the world with each species and kind of plant. He parked in the heavens planets, stars, sun and galaxy. He tossed into the sea scores of creatures, designed with unique features and adaptability – because the Fall of mankind was coming and things were about to get marred. When the seas were teeming with life, He turned His kind attention to the mud and earth, and built His own zoo.

• Every creature on the earth came from His hand. Every fish in the sea reflects an incalculable complexity and houses within its organs the image stamp of a Creator.

Now, stop and look at God’s evaluation of what He created.

Make note in your Bible in 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, 1:25, 1:31 – “It was GOOD.” God was satisfied with His design, and had no one to please beside Himself.
We need to remember that when God makes something, He knows what He wants and why. That truth is important!

Every shred of Biblical evidence available in the revealed truth of the Living God makes clear this truth: You are not a mistake. You are not surplus DNA on the planet. You are a formed child with a specific purpose by a Creative God. Simple songs of old reveal that in the Psalms:

Psalm 119:73 “Your hands made me and fashioned me; Give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments.”

Psalm 139:14 “I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.”

Look at the end of the prologue (Genesis 1:1 to 2:3), because God’s evaluation is crystal clear:

Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

God was satisfied. There was no need for more or less. He could set aside the creative work and enjoy the fruit of that labor. He created what He created the way He chose to create it, for His own purposes.

Now, consider that those simple truths are the foundational basis of surrender to Him and they are the very points at the heart of our rebellious contention against Him.

If God created all and God purposed all – my life ISN’T about ascribing purpose to things or “making” them valuable – it is about finding my purpose in HIM.

If He is the absolute ruler and owner, and I am His – made by Him for the purpose He made me – ANY other proposed purpose is a false one. Every time I ignore or reject His Word, I am in rebellion… plain and simple.

If the world was designed by God to follow God– our futile attempts to pull off life without attention to His Word will bring collapse in the storm. That was Jesus’ simple teaching in Matthew 7. Storms will crush the stability of your home, and pummel your life.

Yet, that is not what the world says…

Our world celebrates rebels. Look up the word REBEL online. We name sports cars, sports teams, powerful trucks, slick motorbikes and advanced cameras after the idea. In our modern world, rebel evokes untamed exploration, clever innovation, engaging excitement and risky edginess. God’s Word expresses it differently!

According to God:

• Rebellion caused every emotional and relational pain you have ever experienced. Rebellion is the fruit of feeding on selfishness.

• It isn’t exciting, unless you count excitement as violent destruction.

• It isn’t edgy – unless you count slipping from a high place and plummeting below.

• It isn’t exploration – it is violation. It is not simply “going where no one has gone before” but rather “trespassing where entrance has been forbidden.”

We must acknowledge the glorification of rebellion as a means to gain a sense of freedom is one of the greatest hoaxes of our day, sponsored by the Deceiver himself.

When I rebel, I will pay. Sadly, often someone who is innocent in my rebellion also pays. It may not happen today, but God says it will happen. I cannot ignore my need for a Savior and a covering!

When you recognize your rebellion, remember: God didn’t leave us to fix the problem on our own!

R. G. Lee, that great Baptist preacher once wrote:

“There never was another Who caused all creation to be ransacked in pursuit of words appropriate to convey to human hearts and minds His glorious pre-eminence.

There never was another Who was a human child and also a divine Son; Who was wounded by Satan and Who, at the same time crushed Satan; Who was appointed the Savior of men, yet was crucified by men; Who was Judge of men; yet was led as a felon from one tribunal to another.

There never was another Who died and was buried and yet lived; Who saved others and Himself could not save; Who had no sin in Him, yet all sin on Him; Who was the King of Glory, yet wore no crown but a crown of thorns; Who, in the glory He had with God before the world was, had the angelic hails of heaven and yet, on earth, gave Himself to the murderous nails of men!

There never was another Who was the Prince of life, yet died on Calvary; Who was as old as His heavenly Father and ages older than His earthly mother.

There never was another Who was the victim of a Roman cross and victor at a Jewish grave.

There never was another Who poured all seas, all lakes, all rivers out of the crystal chalices of eternity, yet on a cross said with a mouth hot like a parched desert that cries for rain, ‘I thirst’”.

All of this was written to describe the Lord Jesus Christ. God has given Him a name far above every name. We speak today of the Righteous, Risen, Reigning Christ!”

If you don’t know Him, you need Him. If you do, you need to listen to Him. Why?

A strong foundation for life is set upon two powerful underpinnings: knowing the truth and living based on the truth.

Don’t forget: His very NAME is “Truth”. Jesus said: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by Me.”