Are There Two Creation Accounts?

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if you would open your Bible with me and turn to Genesis chapter 2 and we're going to continue our study of Genesis this morning.
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As you're opening I want to begin with a question.
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It's a question that maybe you've maybe you've asked yourself, maybe someone else has asked it and it's caused you to have a question.
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The question is this, have you ever heard that the, have you ever heard the accusation that there are two opposing accounts of creation in the Bible and not one unified account? More specifically, have you ever heard an unbeliever appeal to creation and the narrative of Genesis 1 and 2 as an example of a contradiction in the Bible? We exist in a time where the authenticity, the historicity, and the reliability of the Bible are constantly being called into question by an unbelieving world.
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Often this criticism begins in the very first chapters of the Bible.
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In our previous messages we've looked at the questions that come from Genesis 1.
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We've seen the arguments that are made about the days and the periods of time.
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Did God really create out of nothing? Are the events of chapter 1 genuinely chronological and so on and so forth? We've heard all those questions and those questions don't stop when we get to a new chapter.
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In fact, chapter 2 gives rise to even more questions because some take issue with how the events in this chapter do not seem to be explained in the same way that they're understood in the first chapter.
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And some go as far as to say we have two mutually exclusive creation accounts, which means the Bible has a contradiction.
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Well, my goal today is to give an overview of chapter 2 and demonstrate that it is not a contradiction of chapter 1 but instead is a complement to chapter 1.
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What chapter 1 did in explaining the creation of the heavens and the earth, chapter 2 will do explaining creation of mankind and in the garden of Eden.
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Rather than doubt, this passage should encourage confidence in God who would go to such great lengths to explain to us the very origin of our own existence in such detail.
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So we're going to read a long section of scripture now when when we come to the section that we are going to preach I invite everyone to stand and if you are able to stand I would encourage you to but if you can't it's okay because it is a long section but we're gonna we're gonna read verse 4 all the way down to verse 25 if you'd like to stand with us.
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This is Genesis chapter 2 beginning at verse 4.
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These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
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When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food the tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden and there it divided and became four rivers.
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The name of the first is Pishon.
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It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah where there is gold and the gold of that land is good.
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Bedelium and onyx stone are there and the name of the second river is Gihon.
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It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush.
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The name of that third river is Tigris which flows east of Assyria and the fourth river is the Euphrates.
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The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it and the Lord God commanded the man saying you may surely eat of every tree of the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
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Then the Lord God said it is not good for man should be that man should be alone I will make him a helper fit for him.
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Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.
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Whatever the man called every living creature that was its name.
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The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
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So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man then the man said this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed.
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May God add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his word and may God bless us as we study and may God keep me from error as I preach.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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There are two methods which can be used to study just about any subject.
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The broad method and the narrow method.
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One might liken the broad method to looking at a piece of property from atop a tower.
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From atop a tower the entirety of the land can be surveyed.
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The borders of the property are easily determined.
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The variation in the landscape is discernible.
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Its size and shape are easy to define.
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From atop the tower you can see everything in a shot.
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But the problem is when you're on top of the tower you can't do any micro investigation.
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It's all macro investigation.
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It's all looking at the big picture.
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If you want to look at that which is small you have to come down from the tower.
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You have to come down to the to the to the earth itself and then you might not be able to see the borders as well.
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You might not be able to see the shape of the property as well but you can reach down and feel whether or not the soil is soil or sand.
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You can walk over to the trees and see whether they're fruit bearing trees or or not.
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And you can reach out and touch and see what kind of plants there are if they're poisonous or not.
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You can make a better observation when you're up close than you could when you were atop the tower.
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And therefore when you are studying any subject it's often good to take the broad view and look at everything and then come down and take the narrow view and look at it more closely.
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Well I believe this is what we see in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis.
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In Genesis 1 God gives the broad view of the forming and the filling of the world.
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In the first three days he forms the world.
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In the next three days he fills the world and then on the seventh day he rests.
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But then in Genesis 2 we have a more narrow view of the work of God in forming man and fixing his habitation.
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In essence chapter 1 looks at a broad view of seven days and chapter 2 focuses on the narrow view of one creation day.
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Day 6.
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However what is often accused in Genesis chapter 2 is that what we have is a contradiction.
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In fact this is often accompanied by accusations of unreliability.
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Well see your Bible can't even get it right in the first two chapters.
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Why should I trust anything? It can't even get it right in the first part.
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And we do know this the very hallmark of truth is consistency.
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How do you know someone's lying? When their story doesn't add up.
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When they say something one day and then they say something completely different the next day.
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You know that person isn't telling you the truth because the hallmark of truth is consistency.
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And an inconsistent testimony is a false testimony.
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Therefore some accuse the Bible of being a false testimony.
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Lying at this point because the first chapter and the second chapter say different things.
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And there is a law in logic.
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The law of non-contradiction.
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You cannot have something be true and not be true at the same time and in the same relationship.
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That's called the law of non-contradiction.
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Something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship.
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Therefore if the Bible says one thing in one place and something else in another place then the Bible is untrue.
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And there are entire groups of people who are bent on trying to prove the Bible has contradictions.
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Because they know if they can find contradictions in the Bible they can prove that it's not true and they can demand that other people disbelieve it.
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Go out onto the internet.
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There are whole websites dedicated to supposed contradictions in the Bible and you won't find one of those where Genesis 1 and 2 are not mentioned.
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Because this is on what I would call the scriptural hit list.
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So here's what we're going to do today.
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First we're going to examine chapter 2 as a whole.
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And by the way that's often my way of studying anyway.
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Those of you who have listened to me preach for any length of time, oftentimes when we get to a new section I'll look at the whole section and then go back and break it down.
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And sometimes that's where I get in the weeds a little bit.
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Because when I go back to break it down I spend a lot of time.
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But the very first thing I like to do is get on top of the tower and look.
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Get on top of the tower and take a look.
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And chapter 2 really deserves that.
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Before we get into the minutiae of Adam and Eve and before we get into the minutiae of the creation of man and the garden and the first marriage, all those things which we are going to talk about in the weeks to come.
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We need to get up on top of the tower and take a look.
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And see how these things fit together.
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So we're going to examine the chapter.
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Then we're going to address the arguments.
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And then finally we're going to demonstrate that there is harmony between chapter 1 and chapter 2.
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Not disharmony.
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There's consistency not contradiction between these two chapters.
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So let's look first at the chapter itself.
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Let's examine the chapter.
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Most of us would probably think that chapter 2 begins in verse 1.
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But that's actually not the case.
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You know the chapter and divisions were not added until later.
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Chapter divisions did not come into the Bible until many centuries later.
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And even verse divisions were centuries after that.
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So we know that this is not how the Bible was written when it was written.
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And if anything, we do have markers in the Bible for Genesis particularly.
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Because Genesis has something called the Toledot.
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The Toledot is a Hebrew phrase which means in the generations of.
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That's how it's translated in your English Bible.
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Toledot is translated in the generations of.
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If you look at verse 4 you'll see that verse 4 is really where chapter 2 begins.
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Read it again.
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It says these are the generations of the heavens and the earth.
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Now just to point this out, and I don't want to spend too much time here, but if you were to go through the book of Genesis you'll see that this phrase happens 10 times.
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The word Toledot in Hebrew shows up in the book of Genesis 10 times.
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And it separates the book of Genesis into basically 10 parts.
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Each one starting with the phrase this is the generation of.
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And we see this when it comes to Adam in chapter 5.
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This is the generations of Adam.
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In chapter 6 with Noah, these are the generations of Noah.
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In chapter 10 with Abram it begins to talk about the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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Or rather chapter 11 with Shem who is the ancestor of Abram.
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And then we have in chapter 11 it comes up again.
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In chapter 25 it comes up twice.
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In chapter 36 it comes up twice.
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And in chapter 37 it comes up once.
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So this phrase is the marking posts of Genesis.
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And it lets us know this is focusing on this thing.
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And so the question becomes when we get to chapter 2 verse 4 when it says these are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
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The question about that phrase, and this is one that sort of puzzled me as I was looking at it, is this the end of chapter 1 or is this the beginning of chapter 2 in the mind of the writer? Because read it again.
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It says these are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord made the earth and the heavens.
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That could be the end of chapter 1.
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Because that summarizes everything we've learned so far.
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But when we look at this, oh and by the way I just want to mention this if you're familiar with Hebrew writing we have here something called a chiasm.
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A chiasm is a particularly unique form of writing where there is a in the Greek language there's a the letter key looks like an X.
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And if you read this phrase it actually comes across in a pattern where it says something and then it repeats it backwards.
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So it says something, and listen to it this way, these are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord made the earth and the heavens.
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It starts one way, stops in the middle, and then turns around and goes backwards.
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This is used several times throughout the Old Testament and even in the New Testament.
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Most particularly we see this in Psalms and Proverbs because this is a poetic use of language.
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So this is telling us, this is a marking post.
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Not only has it got the phrase Toledot, but it's written in such a way as to say this is particularly important.
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And some would say well this is ending the great grand narrative of chapter 1 which is the first seven days.
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I think that's possible, however when you look at Toledot throughout the rest of Genesis what you find is it's always starting something new.
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These are the generations of, boom, and it begins and it starts something new.
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These are the generations of, boom, and it starts something new.
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So from the perspective of looking at all the other uses it would seem as if this is actually beginning the second explanation.
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But what happens in the second explanation? The focus changes.
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The focus changes from the heavens and the earth to man and the garden.
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So that leads me back to the idea that maybe this is ending the first.
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Because beginning at verse 5 we're no longer talking about the heavens and the earth.
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We're talking about the earth and man.
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And so the focus beginning in verse 5 is earth and man.
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Particularly man and the garden.
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But either way it goes verse 4 is the marking post.
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And this stops what was talking, this stops that narrative and it begins a new narrative.
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Not in contradiction but in complementation.
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This is not stopping the, it's not saying that was wrong, it was saying this is a closer picture of what we just learned.
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This is coming down off the tower.
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This is getting down into the weeds.
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This is looking at it through the microscope rather than through the telescope which shows us the big we're looking now through the microscope.
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In chapter or beginning at verse 5 we have the beginning of looking through the microscope.
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And this is what we see beginning in verse 5.
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We see in verses 5 and 6 the condition of the earth and the ground.
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And it's very interesting.
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He mentions some things that honestly still puzzle me.
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I'm going to explain them more in the weeks to come but the idea there was no rain but there was water that came out of the earth.
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In some of your Bibles it says it was a mist but actually that's not what it, the original word doesn't mean mist, it means water coming from the ground.
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It could literally be an irrigation that came up and wet the ground from below.
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And almost like a swamp would cause the ground to be wet.
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We don't know what it looked like and again I wasn't there so I can't draw you a picture.
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But it's an interesting thought to think about what could it be.
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And it goes on to talk about the creation of the first man.
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It talks about him being created as a living soul.
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I do not like the ESV, it's a living creature.
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No, man is a living soul.
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I love that.
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So I can disagree with the ESV and I know why they chose the word they chose but the I think from a modern use of the term I think soul is so much more precious because man is a soul.
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He's a living soul.
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Then we have the creation of man's habitat, the garden, that's verse 8.
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Then we have the conditions of the garden, verses 9 to 14.
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I look forward to going over that and talking about it because it's a wonderful picture of what God made for man, for that first man, that beautiful garden to live in, that habitation.
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Then we have the law given in the garden, verses 15 to 17.
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The law given to man.
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Then we have the creation of man's companion, verses 18 to 23.
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And then we have the establishment of marriage between man and woman.
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Notice again as I go through that list, everything in that list is focusing on one thing, man.
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Let me say it again.
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The creation of the first man, creation of the first man's habitat, the condition of man's habitat, which is the garden, the law given to man, the creation of man's companion, and the marriage of man and woman.
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The focus has changed from the heavens and the earth to the man and his habitat.
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So again, I'm pointing to the fact it's not contradictory, it's complementary.
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It's giving us a closer view of the crown of God's creative work.
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What is the crown of God's creative work? Man.
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The Bible says it in Genesis 1.
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It says, I made man in my own image, not anything else.
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No bird bears the image of God, no animal, no gorilla, no sheep, no oxen, nothing but man.
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And everything else God spoke into existence.
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But man he formed from the dust of the ground.
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And he breathed into him the breath of life.
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And so you might, somebody might take issue and say, well the Bible's all about God.
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Yes, it is all about God, but God's focus in this section is to get us to understand what he's doing in the creation of man.
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Because this is the this is the high point of his creative work.
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Now, that's the overview of the chapter.
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I want to now address the arguments that often come in relation to the chapter.
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The primary argument, and this is one that you might have heard or maybe even thought of yourself, the primary argument regarding Genesis 1 is the argument of chronology.
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The argument is the chronology of chapter 1 does not seem to agree with the chronology of chapter 2.
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And a cursory reading would suggest that there are certain elements in chapter 2 which are out of order if we were to consider Genesis 1 to be a strictly chronological account.
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In chapter 1, vegetation comes on day 3.
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Man does not come until day 6.
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However, when we come to chapter 2, it seems like there's a reversing in the order.
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Man is coming and then later vegetation comes.
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And somebody says, well there's a contradiction.
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So your whole Bible's just thrown away.
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We'll go to Sonny's and, you know, eat, sleep, drink, and tomorrow we die.
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If the Bible's untrue, we have no reason to gather.
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If we can't trust it, you know, that's the point.
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That's the argument they're making.
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So that's one of the first arguments.
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The second argument comes in the same argument of chronology in the argument that the animals were formed before man in chapter 1.
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But in the second chapter, it seems as if man was formed before the animals.
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Look at verse 19.
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Anybody have a King James Bible? I know Andy does.
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He just got him a new one.
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No, brother, I have it printed here.
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Go ahead and read it to us.
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Verse 19.
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Okay, I'll read it.
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It says, And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.
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Okay, that is how it reads in the King James Bible.
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If you read it in the King James Bible, it seems as if man is already created and animals are now being created and therefore there would be a reversing of the order from chapter 1.
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However, if you're in the ESV, which many of you are, you'll notice that the ESV shows the translational difference because here's how it reads in the ESV.
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Much different.
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Now, out of the ground the Lord had formed the beasts.
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Notice the difference.
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And you say, well, which one is correct? The ESV is closer to the Hebrew here because it is in the past tense.
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They had already been formed.
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This isn't saying that God formed man and then formed the animals.
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This is saying they had already been formed.
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The problem is you get the translation.
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Let's say you have a King James and that's all you've ever read.
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You can see where someone would come to a translational issue here and say, wait a minute.
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Over here it says he formed man.
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Second, here it seems as if he formed man first, but that's not what verse 19 says at all.
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Verse 19 is not indicating chronology.
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It's indicating what actually took place.
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God had formed the animals from the dust of the ground, something that he had already done before he had formed man.
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And the same can be said about the vegetation.
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The text that refers to the vegetation is verse 5.
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It says, when no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and watering the whole face of the ground, then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.
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This would seem to indicate that man came first and then vegetation came later.
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But the issue here is what kind of vegetation and what kind of growth, because this is not vegetation in general.
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And if you read it back, it reads very clearly.
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This is speaking about the vegetation of the garden.
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This is speaking about what God had planted and what did God plant the garden for? For man.
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And what was the garden's purpose? To give man a habitation and to give him an occupation.
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See, the garden provides two things for man.
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It gives him a habitation, a place to live, but it also gives him an occupation, gives him a place to work.
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Because what is he supposed to do? He's supposed to work the ground.
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By the way, this reminds us, and Brother Mike and I have talked about this many times, work is not part of the curse.
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Work is a blessing.
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What's the curse? The pain and toil and the weeds and the difficulty of work.
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One day we're going to be in heaven and I don't think we're going to be sitting on clouds strumming harps for eternity.
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I think God's going to have things for us to do.
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And I don't know what it's going to be.
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I know this, I won't have to preach anymore, but I figure we'll be in heaven.
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But whatever it is God has for me, it's not going to be just sitting and doing nothing.
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And so, man is being created here.
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This is not saying there's no vegetation anywhere.
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This is referring to the land of the Garden of Eden that God had not yet planted.
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God creates man and he plants for man a garden for the purpose of habitation and occupation.
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So, there is no disjunction in the order.
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It's referring to a specific thing.
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So the first argument, the argument of chronology, the answer is simply this.
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Chapter 2 is not providing for us a chronology of creation.
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It's not even really providing us a chronology of day six.
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What it is telling us, the things that happen on day six in their relation to man.
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And the relation to man is God planted a garden for the purpose of giving man a habitation and an occupation.
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So that's the first argument.
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The second argument is that the name of God changes.
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Look with me again at verse 4.
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It says in verse 4, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
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This is the first time in the Hebrew Bible that we get the word Yahweh.
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This is the first time that the word Yahweh is used in the Hebrew Bible.
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Up until this point, the word that has been used is the word Elohim.
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And the word Elohim is the generic word that we would translate simply as God.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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That is Elohim.
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And God said, let there be this.
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And God said, let there be this.
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Elohim, Elohim, Elohim.
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That word is used all throughout the first chapter.
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But when we come to the second chapter, we have the introduction of the name Yahweh.
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And so some would say that what we have here is an example of another writer.
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And they try to divide the writers of chapter 1 and chapter 2.
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And they say, see, what we have is we have the Elohist.
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That's what they call it.
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The Elohist is the writer who uses Elohim as a name.
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And the Yahwist, the one who uses Yahweh as the name.
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And he's writing chapter 2 and they're writing two disjunctive accounts.
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They're writing two separate accounts.
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Here's the problem with that.
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They're both in the same verse.
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So if group number 2 is meaning to write separately and differently from group number 1, they stopped them mid-verse and included their part.
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Are you following me on that argument? It does not make sense.
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Because it's not as if Elohim, Elohim, Elohim, and then Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh.
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That's not how it works.
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What happens is in verse 5, or excuse me, verse 4, there's an introduction of Yahweh added to Elohim.
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Elohim's not removed.
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Elohim, the term God is given the name Yahweh.
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Why? Because we're seeing the personal interaction of God with man.
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And what is the name that man refers to God? Lord God, Yahweh Elohim.
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He is, that's the name and therefore because it's moving to the personal interaction it uses the personal name of God.
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Elohim is what He is.
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Yahweh is who He is.
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See the difference? He is God, that's what He is, but He is Yahweh, that's who He is.
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And therefore in the second chapter we get the introduction of Yahweh Elohim, the Lord God, or God the Lord.
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So there's no contradiction.
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It's again an expansion of who it is who's speaking.
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And the third thing, the tertiary argument, and this one someone might think is not even worth mentioning, but I do think it is worth mentioning.
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There are some people who argue that there's so much that happens in chapter 2 this couldn't possibly be one day.
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And so this comes back to the argument of is it six literal days, right? Think of all the things that happen.
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God creates man, God creates a garden, God establishes a law, God brings animals to man, man names the animals, that takes time, and God puts a man to sleep, God creates a woman out of His rib, and then man and woman are married.
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That's a lot for a day.
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I mean I would need a nap if I had to accomplish all that in a day.
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And some people say, well see you couldn't accomplish that in one day and therefore we shouldn't accept this as six 24 hour little days.
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And they attack the young earth position by saying all that couldn't happen in a day.
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But I want to take you back for a moment.
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Why not? Does it take God any time at all to do anything? Does it take God any time at all to create man? Now it says He formed him out of the dust of the ground so there is some interaction there, but again it's not as if God is like a like a woodworker having to chip away at the, you know it might take a stonemason a bit of time to carve out something.
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But God takes no time at all.
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The thing that I think would have taken the longest amount of time, and we're going to talk about this when we get there, when we start looking at the details.
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The thing I think took the longest amount of time was naming them animals.
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But you understand what the purpose of naming the animals was? It was showing Adam there was not one fit for him because God was showing him that he needed one like him to be his counterpart.
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God brought the animals to Him to show that there was not one fit to be his mate.
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There was not one fit to be his counterpart.
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And so there's a purpose in it.
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I don't think God, I don't think, and you can argue with me later if you want to, but I don't think Adam named every single amoeba and everything in the garden.
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I think there was a point and purpose of bringing him the animals that were animals that he would interact with and he named them.
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And the purpose of it was to show none of these are fit for you.
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None of these are fit to be your mate.
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And therefore God causes them to go to sleep.
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God performs the first surgery, uses the first bit of anesthesia.
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All that stuff happens.
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He takes a rib out, makes a woman.
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Very interesting.
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We're going to talk more about that when we get there.
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But the whole point of the narrative is to show that Adam, who has been created by God, is alone.
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And so God makes him one who is suitable for Him.
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Why couldn't God do this all in one day? Like I said, the hardest part for me is naming the animals.
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But there is one very good scholar that I read, Jason Lyle.
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He wrote a book on Genesis and he talks about the fact that if you think of the major animals that he would have been addressing, it probably would have taken no more than a couple of hours if God's interacting with him.
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So again, is it a long day? Did Adam need a nap? Maybe.
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It's a long day, but still can fit into a day.
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So the primary arguments of Genesis primarily deal with time and chronology.
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And here's something to remember.
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Genesis chapter 2 is not attempting to be chronological.
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Genesis chapter 2 is intending to provide details that the chronological account did not get.
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We already have a chronological account.
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Genesis chapter 1 is our chronological account.
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So Genesis chapter 2 comes in to give us the details that were not given when we were on the tower.
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Now we're down on the ground.
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Now we're looking at the details and here's the details that we did not see in chapter 1.
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Don Batten, who is a writer for creation.com, he wrote this.
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Genesis was written like many historical accounts with an overview of summary events leading up to the events of most interest first, followed by a detail account which often recaps relevant events in an overview in greater detail.
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Genesis 1, the big picture, is clearly concerned with a sequence of events.
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The events are in chronological sequence with day 1, day 2, evening and morning, etc.
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The order of events is not the major concern of Genesis 2.
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In recapping events, they are not necessarily mentioned in chronological order, but in the order with which makes sense to the focus of the account.
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For example, the animals are mentioned in verse 19 after Adam was created because it was after Adam was created that he was shown the animals, not that they were created after Adam.
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Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are not therefore separate contradictory accounts of creation.
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Genesis 1 is the big picture and chapter 2 is the more detailed account of the creation of Adam and Eve and the sixth day of creation.
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So I know it was a longer quote, but just reaffirming what I've said, this is a Christian science, not Christian science, a Christian scientist who wrote for creation.com had given that.
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Alright, so now what I want to do, now that we've looked at the overview of the chapter, now that we've looked at the arguments, now I want to demonstrate the harmony between these two chapters.
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By examining the evidence we have already seen, there is no reason to claim contradiction and those who do so are coming at the text with the presupposition of the existence of error and this leads to all kinds of speculation regarding collusion, redaction and contradiction and any fair-minded reader should have no reason to suggest the two chapters cannot be harmonized.
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But Christians, we who believe in Jesus have an even greater reason to believe in the harmony between chapter 1 and chapter 2 and the reason why we have a greater reason to believe in the harmony between chapter 1 and chapter 2 is because Jesus demonstrates the harmony between chapter 1 and chapter 2.
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So I want to take you to the New Testament and show you what I'm talking about.
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Turn in your Bibles to Genesis, I'm sorry, to Matthew chapter 19.
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Now Matthew chapter 19 is going to come up a few times in the weeks to come because Jesus quotes from Genesis and Matthew 19.
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But the point I want to make today is simply to show you that Jesus, when he quotes from Genesis, he quotes from Genesis 1 and 2 together in the same sentence about the same subject.
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So if anybody believed that Genesis 1 and 2 were complementary accounts, it was our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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So let's look at Matthew 19.
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In Matthew 19, some men have come to Jesus and they're asking him about the subject of divorce.
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They're asking him whether or not a man should be able to divorce his wife because at that time in history there was a lot of debate over how divorce should be handled, whether or not divorce should be allowed.
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There were certain schools who said it should never be allowed.
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There were certain schools who said it should always be allowed.
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And so they came to Jesus trying to trick him, trying to trip him up and they wanted to try to fool him into saying something that wasn't true because in that way they could then get him as a false teacher.
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So they come to Jesus in chapter 19.
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Verse 3 it says, "...and the Pharisees came up to him and tested him, asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" This is what Jesus said, verse 4, "...he answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?" By the way, that's a quote of Genesis 1, 27.
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And he said, "...therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh." That is a quote of Genesis 2, 24.
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So when Jesus was asked about the subject of marriage, Jesus responds quoting scripture and he quotes Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, both of them being accounts of creation.
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Notice he says, "...since the beginning man made them male and female." That's chapter 1.
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That's a direct quote of Genesis 1, 27.
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And then he says, "...and therefore a man shall leave his father and mother." Direct quote of Genesis 2 and verse 24.
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So, if Jesus can harmonize Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, should we not be willing to concede that there is no contradiction that is to be found? If Jesus believed these two, one, he believed they were both written by Moses, which should tell us something, but he also believed they were complementary, not contradictory accounts.
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Here's the amazing truth, beloved.
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For centuries these accounts were read by believing Christians and no arguments about contradictions were ever brought up.
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It wasn't until the last 200 years that the arguments of contradictions began to arise and it was with the rise of something called higher critical scholarship.
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Higher critical scholarship comes to the Bible with an anti- supernaturalistic bias.
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And they come to the Bible looking for those areas that they can make a case that the Bible is not divine in origin.
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When you presuppose the Bible is not of divine origin, your immediate desire is to find the places where it fails to meet your expectations.
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Rather than concede to this line of thinking, Christians should stand on the reliability of the Word of God.
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We need to remember this and I encourage you to remember this.
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The Bible is a reliable witness to human history, to world history, to the history of the universe.
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The Bible is the only infallible source of truth that we possess.
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We live in a world inflamed in chaos.
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The Bible provides us a foundation upon which to build our lives.
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If you cannot trust the Bible, where upon will you rest your faith? Someone says, I don't believe in the Bible, I believe in Jesus.
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What do you know about Jesus if not coming from the Bible? The Bible says, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
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How were you saved? You were saved because someone shared the Word of God with you.
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God opened your heart to believe His Word.
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You recognized your sin.
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You trusted in the atoning work of Christ, all of which came to you through the Word of God.
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As believers, we must be confident in what God has said.
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And if you are here today and you are not a believer, may I challenge you with this.
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The Bible is God's Word and it is true.
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Everything it says about you is accurate.
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It says you are a sinner and that's true.
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Everything it says about God is accurate.
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It says He will punish sin and that is true.
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Everything it says about Jesus is accurate.
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It says He came to save sinners and that is true.
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Everything it says about salvation is accurate.
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It says if you repent of your sins and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved and that is true.
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There is nothing more sure that you can rest your life upon and your eternity upon than the Word of the living God.
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Later in Genesis, we're going to see this.
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The reason for the fall was the devil introducing this question, Hath God really said? Isn't that the question that continues to plague man today? What a world it would be if every man would realize the value and the truth of the Word of God.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your Word.
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Father, it is the truth.
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Jesus Christ in His prayer said, sanctify them with your truth.
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Thy Word is truth.
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Lord may it be that we truly understand the depth and the breadth of the truth of the Word of God.
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Lord, for those who are here today, who have come in today as believers on the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that this would be a stronger encouragement to trust and where they may have wavered, where they may have began to doubt, that this would be a stronger encouragement to trust on the rock of the Word of God and to trust in Christ who the Word testifies to.
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But Lord, if there are those here who have not believed, maybe they'd be young people, maybe they'd be older people, maybe they've been in church for a while, maybe they've been only in church for a short time.
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Lord, maybe there are those who have not bowed the knee to Christ.
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Lord, may they today hear the Word of God and by hearing, believing by the power of your Holy Spirit.
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Thank you, Lord, for all that you have done and are going to do.
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In Jesus' precious name, Amen.
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We come now to...