God Made Man

Introd. Little boy says to mother “Is it true that the Bible says that man was made from the dust and that he’ll return to the dust?” Mother says “Yes dear, that’s what the Bible says.” So the little boy replies “Well, I don’t know if he’s coming or going, but there’s definitely somebody under my bed.”

We’ve been studying the Bible’s account of creation.

The beautiful structure of Genesis 1 indicates that God created the Universe and life on earth in a careful, orderly way - it wasn’t haphazard. There is a pattern of form and fulness. At every turn, the universe bears the marks of the master designer.

Genesis 1 tells us that we are creatures, made by a Creator.

Genesis 2 tells us how he made us.

Genesis 1 tells us that we have been made in the image of God.

Genesis 2 tells us what this image entails.

Genesis 1 tells us that we have been made stewards of creation.

Genesis 2 tells us how this stewardship was to be carried out.

Genesis 1 tells us about the nature of nature.

Genesis 2 tells us about the nature of man.

One of the most fascinating things about the transition from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2 is that the name of God changes.

ch.1 - Elohim ch.2 - YHWH - the God who enters into personal relationship with man.

God is not a God who winds up the universe like a big watch and then goes away to let it run by itself. He is a God who is present, active, and interested in relating to each one of HIs creatures.

Genesis 2 is like a foundation for understanding the whole Bible.

illustr. school student who, due to absence, misses a key chapter in geometry and struggles for the rest of the year to understand the subject.

The whole basis for our relationship with God is laid down in chapter 2.

If you had to summarize the teaching of the whole Bible in just six words, those words would be the words taken from John 3:16 “God so loved, that He gave”

In Genesis 2, God shows us that the relationship he wants to have with us is a relationship based on his love for us. When God created Adam, God so loved him that he gave Adam six things:

1. he gave him life

2. he gave him a home

3. he gave him work to do

4. he gave him liberty with limits

5. he gave him a companion to share his life with

1. God gave Adam life

Genesis 2:7 the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground. Matthew Henry has well said…

“Man was not made of gold-dust, powder of pearl, or diamond-dust, but common dust, dust of the ground.”

Physically, we’re not much. We’re just a collection of common elements that you can find anywhere. 70% of us is nothing but water. The rest is made up of off the shelf elements that you could find in any high school chemistry lab. Total value of these raw elements would come to about $10.

But it’s how God put those elements together! Biochemist Harold Morowitz of Yale University set out to estimate the actual value of a human being in terms of the substances of which he is made. He found…

per gram price

hemoglobin 285.00

insulin 47.50

bilirubin 12.00

human DNA 76.00

collagen 15.00

acetate kinase 8,860.00

alkaline phosphate 225.00

bradykinin 12,000.00

He calculated that a human being was worth about $246.00 per gram in the biochemical marketplace. An average man weighs 79 kg., but 68% of that is water. His dry weight would be 24 kilograms. Multiply that by the 246.00 per gram and you come out to a value of about 6 million dollars - hence the 6 million dollar man.

So we may be made up of common dust, but God did a pretty good job of putting that dust together.

But there is something even more amazing about how God created us. It says in Genesis 2:7

God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

The word for breath in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin is identical with the word for spirit. For instance, in Latin, the word for spirit is “spiritus”. But that is also the word for “breath”. We can see this in a lot of English words that have been derived from Latin. When people “aspire” they take a deep breath and try harder. When they “conspire”, they put their heads together and breathe in and out with each another. A man is “inspired” when someone blows some of his breath into him. We “perspire” by breathing out through our skin. When we “expire”, we breathe out for the last time. We die.

In Greek, the word for spirit is “pneuma”, but that is also the word for “breath”. We’ve got some English words that reflect this, too. A tool that is pneumatic - like a pneumatic drill - runs on air. When we get pneumonia, our ability to breathe is impaired.

The Bible is telling us that when God breathed into man the breath of life, He was imparting to Adam a spirit, giving him an invisible component that would make him much more than just a pile of dust, but a living, breathing, eternal being.

I believe that God made it necessary for us to breathe to remind us of this fact. None of us can go more than about 2 minutes without breathing. God could have created us like the plants, which simply absorb air through the skin of their leaves. But he made us breathe to remind us that we owe to him the breath of life. We’re not self-sufficient.

2. God gave Adam a home.

Genesis 2:8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

Illustr. The places where people choose to live. The more beautiful the place, the more expensive it is to live there. E.g. - the North shore., the Colorado Rockies. Man is attracted to beauty. He wants it to be a part of his life. Beauty uplifts the spirit.

God made for Adam a beautiful home. He made him a garden. It says in verse 9 that the trees that grew there were pleasing to the eye. There’s something special about a garden. A garden speaks of peacefulness, and quiet - a refreshing place to be. The word for garden in Persian is the word “pairideza” from which we get the word “paradise”. It literally means a special place with a wall around it.

You have to understand that the first people who read Genesis were the Israelites who were wandering in the wilderness of Sinai - one of the most inhospitable, ungarden-like, deserts in the world. From that day to this the Middle East has always been a dry, arid place. That’s why the people of the Middle East have always had a special fondness - almost a reverence for gardens. We here in northeast North America have no appreciation for this. Our problem is how to get rid of the water!

In the 700’s, when the Arabs invaded Spain from North Africa, they built some very beautiful gardens. Outside the walls were barren, scorching sands and searing dry winds, but inside was a paradise. The focal point of the Moorish garden was water. Water ran in channels down the center of the garden, and danced in fountains and little waterfalls. Beneath the branches of fruit trees, there was cool shade, the perfume and color of flowers, the songs of birds, and the gentle sound of splashing water. It’s no wonder they thought of it as a paradise.

So God gave man a beautiful place to live, but he didn’t put him there to string up a hammock and while away the time.

3. God gave him work to do.

Genesis 2:15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

This was a great blessing. Man was created to work, to be productive.

Illustr. - If you take a marine outboard motor, run it out of the water for any length of time, you’ll burn out that motor. Because the motor has been designed to work against the resistance of the water, and the water lubricates and cools the motor.

In the same way man has been created to work, to run against resistance as it were. This is the opposite of what the world thinks. The world thinks “wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have anything to do?” In advertising, you see this ideal of endless leisure held up as something to which we all should aspire. Plan and work hard now and save diligently so that when you retire, you can just drop everything and do nothing and enjoy life. But you know, following that philosophy has gotten a lot of people killed. Because it was never God’s plan for man to do nothing.

If you take away the resistance, you’ll destroy the man. That’s why so many people die soon after they retire. There is no more work to do. They have no more reason for living, so they stop living. Wise is the person who stays active in retirement.

Unemployment can be a terrible thing, too. Show me a man who is out of work, just sitting back and cashing his unemployment checks, and I’ll show you a man who is in spiritual trouble.

God put man in the Garden to work it, to be a gardener. The other day I was watching my boys play in the dirt, and thinking “What is it about dirt that makes kids want to play in it?”

Then it dawned on me that it isn’t just kids who like to play in the dirt. Adults do too. How else do you explain the millions upon millions of American adults who love to get down on their knees and do gardening when they don’t have too. We yell at the kids when they get dirty, but we adults wear dirt as a badge of honor, because we’re gardeners. We’re people of the soil.

God put Adam in the Garden to be a gardener. Perhaps it was God’s plan for Adam to find out the secrets of gardening there in Eden so that he could then turn the rest of the world into a garden as well. But look what has happened. Instead of turning the rest of the world into a garden, we’re rapidly turning it into a garbage dump.

4. God gave man limits.

Genesis 2:16-17 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

The exact nature of this special tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the subject for another day. But for now, let’s just note that God gave Adam tremendous freedom in the garden. He could eat from any tree but one. Adam’s freedom was not unlimited freedom, however.

Psychological studies have shown that in the raising of children, freedom without limits produces insecurity. Children whose parents do not spell out clearly what they can and they cannot do grow up wondering whether their parents really love them.

God so loved us that he gave us limits. He said that there are certain things that you can do that will hurt you, that will be harmful to you, indeed that will even kill you. And because I love you, I don’t want you to do those things.

The limits that God put on Adam were not meant to be an irritation to him. This was not some arbitrary rule that God dreamed up for Adam, just to show him who was boss. There was a real peril in his eating this particular fruit - for when he ate of it, he would begin to die. God wanted to keep him from that because He loved him.

In the same way, the principles and commandments of God’s Word are not there just to bug us, or be an irritation to us. They’re not there to put a damper on our enjoyment of life, to spoil our party, to rain on our parade. They’re there to keep us from doing things that will ruin us, will make us miserable. Because God loves us and wants what’s best for us.

5. God gave man a companion

Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

The one thing that God saw about his creation that was not good was the fact that Adam was alone. He didn’t have a companion.

A few years ago, a good friend of mine went to Israel. He went alone. He stayed on a kibbutz and hitchhiked all around the country. He walked alongside the Jordan river and stood beside the Western Wall of the Temple. He drank from Jacob’s well and sat on the shores of Galilee. In telling me about it later, I’ll always remember one thing he said. He said “I wish that I had had someone there with me to share it with.”

This is what Adam was feeling in Eden. “I wish I had someone here with me to share it with.” And God knew what he was thinking, and God did something about it. He created Eve, a companion for him. Someone who met Adam’s deepest needs.

Genesis 2 tells us that God so loved that he gave. But the whole history of man since the Fall has been “God doesn’t love me, so I’ll take”. Ever since the serpent’s lie, man has believed that God has been against him, that God has been holding something back from him. So we’ve tried to make ourselves happy and fulfilled by relying on ourselves to meet our needs. We’ve turned our backs on God and gone our own way.

Maybe there’s an area of your life this morning where you find you are trusting in your own power, in your own resources. A problem you’re wrestling with, a frustration you face. A failure you’re finding it hard to deal with.

God so loved you that he gave his only Son to die for you. Do you not think that such a God - a God who created you to enjoy life… a God who came here to earth himself and died to redeem you so that you would live eternally instead of die eternally… would have the solution to your problem?