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Gentleman is the second of the book of Genesis. This student this, that there are two accounts of creation in the book of Genesis. I, for my part, hold that there are three. And as I have said on previous occasions, I repeat it now tonight. These three accounts of creation do not contradict each other. Like the four gospels in the New Testament give us a fourfold view of our blessed Lord Jesus, his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. So the three accounts of creation in the book of Genesis give us a threefold view of creation, and each in its own way brings out the implications of the creation for all subsequent generations, and for us too, who live at this remote age i- in the history of the world. Now, while most students of Genesis, uh, agree that there is, therefore, this second account of creation from chapter two verse three verse four onwards. It is normally held that this second account comprises the rest of chapter two and the whole of chapter three. Tonight I want to advance the idea that the second account of creation certainly comprises the rest of chapter two from verse four onwards, the whole of chapter three. I want to add it also comprises chapter four. In a word, the second account deals not only with the creation of man and of woman, but then considering the terms upon which they were created, it follows their history through the temptation and the fall of mankind, and the subsequent history consequent upon that fall, bringing out the sad consequences of what, uh, was induced when man and woman disobeyed the command of their creator. I would like, therefore, to begin by demonstrating how these three chapters in Genesis hang together. Let us notice in the first place how the word ground, ground, uh, occurs time and time again in these three chapters, and occurs at the crucially most important point in each of the three chapters. I do not know what particular translation you may have in your hand, if you have one. You may find on occasion that your translation use some, uses some other word instead of ground, but, uh, the verses I shall point you to carry the same Hebrew word and are rightly translated ground. So first of all, the origin of man's body, let's read in chapter two, and we shall there read verses, uh, five to seven. Genesis two five to seven: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Now, having seen that creation of man, let's put it in its context. Go back to verse five. No plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight. Verse fifteen: and the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. So at this central, crucial point in chapter two, the creation of man and the purpose for which he was created, the word ground stands central to the message. Then let's go on to chapter, uh, 3. We come there to the sad story of the fall of man, and then the curse that was pronounced. Let's read God speaking to Adam in verses seventeen to nineteen. And unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. For out of it thou wast taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Verse twenty two. and the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So at this second crucial point in the story of man's fall, the word ground is once more central to the message that is being conveyed. But then let us notice how chapter four carries on that story. We have just read of the curse upon the ground for the sake of Adam and his disobedience. But in chapter four, we r- read of Cain's rebellion against God and of the curse that was pronounced upon him in consequence of his rebellion. Let's read it now. Verse 11 of Genesis 4. And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the ground, and from thy face shall I be hid. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth, and it shall come to pass that whosoever findeth me shall slay me. The Lord said unto him, therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should smite him. The verses that stand in chapter four at the crisis point of the story. The curse now pronounced upon Cain. It has, as you see, to do likewise with the ground. But notice now the difference between the curse pronounced upon Adam and this curse pronounced upon Cain. With Adam it was, cursed is the ground for thy sake. When you till it now, thorns and thistles will it bring forth to thee. That is to say, Adam was to be allowed to carry on with the purpose for which he had been created. He had been created to till the ground. Now he had disobeyed his lord and master. He was not turned out from his job, so to speak, allowed to continue the purpose for which he had been made and to till the ground. But now what had been delightful work before would be mixed with hard labor and toil. When you till the ground, it shall not yield to ye, uh, sorry, it shall bring forth thorns and thistles. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the ground from which thou wast taken. But when Cain rebelled against God and defied God, the curse pronounced upon him, as you perceive now, was much more severe. Now it would be useless for him to try and carry on tilling the ground. The purpose for which man had been made was removed from him. When you till the ground, says God, it will not yield to you her strength. You might as well get out, Cain. And Cain saw the point at once. Thou hast driven me out, says he, from the face of the ground. From thy face also I shall be hid. My punishment is greater than I can bear. But he had to see that being dismissed thus from the purpose for which God had originally created mankind, life for him now was without purpose. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. So much, therefore, for looking at the way these three stories hang together, uh, and just let's, for the moment, sum that up in our minds and see it here on the acetate. The second account of creation, then, the unifying theme between the three chapters two, three, and four. Uh, excuse this little, uh, typist error that merely shows what a bad proofreader I am, you see, and I didn't notice it. You will forgive my old age, won't you, I'm sure. It should be four eleven. The theme, the unifying theme, the ground, man's body made out of the ground. Man's function was originally created to till the ground. The curse upon Adam, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat, uh, food till thou return unto the ground, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And then at four eleven, the curse upon Cain, cursed art thou from the ground. And we notice the difference between those two curses. With Adam, it's cursed is the ground for thy sake, in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. But when Cain is cursed, it is differently worded, of course. Cursed art thou from the ground. When thou tillest the ground, not now it shall be hard work, and thorns and thistles shall it be bring- bring forth to thee. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. You might as well stop the thing, Cain. You might as well get out. And Cain said, thou hast driven me out from the face of the ground. Upon thy face I shall be hid. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. And the, uh, writer of the Epistle of Jude in the New Testament has perceived the point of the story and says that Cain went out. And the heretics, the false teachers of Jude's day were following the way of Cain, for it is written that Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. Now they are solemn things, and we shall not get round to talking tonight about those two curses. Let us rather sit back tonight and enjoy ourselves, if that isn't wickedness, you see. Why not? Why not once in a while sit back, uh, do see, hold your hands if you, if you need be, don't close your eyes, but uh, hold your hands and join with me in the celebration of the wonder of human life. What it means to be human, and what this many splendid, multicolored, multifaceted thing is, that is human life. Some of us have been living it so long that we're no longer surprised by all the wonders that inhere in our physical life. And then some of us, you know, knowing the salvation of the Lord, are all agog with that eternal life that God has already given us, and with the glorious and certain hope that one day we shall have a body, not like Adam's body, but like the resurrected and glorified body of our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore we praise God and look forward with a living hope, born of the resurrection of the body of Christ from the dead. But while all that is so, there's no harm, my brothers and sisters, and don't let's forget it, what a superbly wonderful thing even our physical life is here and now in this world, that we might daily praise our creator for the wonderful way in which he has made us. What is life, therefore? In these three chapters, we're going to hear about death. You'll not understand death if you don't know what life is. What is life then? Well, let's start with the, uh, early verses, and I'll put a list of things up for you to follow, if you care to, as we go along. There is, first of all, the component parts of a human person. The body, and then the non-material, immaterial part of him, the soul. The body, we are told, God made the body of the dust of the ground. That's very interesting because, you see, had you only read the first story of creation and listened as God said, let us make man in our own image, and so he made man, main male and female made he them, and blessed them and said so forth. Had you only that story, you might have supposed that when God said, let's make man, then in a trice, in a split second, there appeared a man fully formed, made out of nothing. But the second story fills in the details that the first story didn't tell us. That is, God didn't make the human body out of nothing. He made Adam's body out of the dust of the ground, out of pre-existing materials. Very, very interesting, because the biochemists will tell us all sorts of wonderful things about the chemistry of the body, will they not? And how, for a human body to be possible, uh, we must have a plentiful supply of carbon, for instance, the element car- carbon, which is a very heavy element, and other heavy elements, and how those elements are produced, if I've understood the chemists right, they can't be, uh, reproduced here on Earth. You can't make them. So God made the elements start to start with, and then, uh, he made on the ground. And so, as far as that goes, we're so much stuff. Excuse me by so describing you, my good friend, but we're so much stuff, a collection of the dust of the ground, marvelously put together, of course. But we're not just so much stuff, are we? And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Breathed into his nostrils the animating principle, the life-giving principle that should take hold of the, this material body and control it, be its life, and use all its faculties and facilities. And man therefore became not a living body, but a living soul. Now, on another occasion, God willing, we shall speak more in detail about man's composition, that man is not only flesh, but he is spirit. But tonight we notice the dual substance here described to man's body of the dust of the ground, then the God inbreat, life-giving principle, and man becomes a living soul. The scientists say they can't find a soul inside us. Well, of course they can't. With what in- what instrument would you use to have a look at a soul? Do you see? Of course they can't find it. But I'm going to submit to you that you know you've got one. Because you only have to look inside, and by intuition you are aware of yourself, as you call it. And on times, I dare say, you distinguish between yourself and your body. Oh, my body hurts. Oh yes? Who's it talking? Is it your body talking to me, or you say my body? Who's my? Well, you say that's me. Yes, of course it's you. Uh, you say I remember when I was four. You do, and you're eighty-four now? Marvelous. It's the same you? Well, as you say, the old body has changed, and I've learned a lot and grown by experience, but I am the same person. Yeah, marvelous, isn't it? Do you know what? The cells in our bodies, so the scientists tell us, change completely as at once in ten years, I've forgotten my sons, so that the cells in your body are completely different once in ten years, but yet it's the same you? Yes, of course it's the same you, because you are not just your body. It's you yourself, the living soul. And the Bible goes on to tell how that soul can exist apart from the body, and one day will. And if you are a believer one day, that soul shall be clothed with an altogether superior body. This present body, says the Bible, is a soulish body. The body, a kind of body that Adam had, glorious and wonderful. But, uh, the body we shall have at the resurrection shall be an even and infinitely more glorious thing. It will be a spiritual body. And you say, what will a spiritual body be like? Well, let not the terms confuse us. When the Bible says that in the resurrection believers will have a spiritual body, doesn't mean a body made of spirit. If I ask you what kind of a car have you got, a a diesel or a petrol car? You might say, I I have a petrol car. Oh, I see. You mean the car is made of petrol? No, you say, of course not. But it's a petrol engine, you see, because the force that keeps it going is petrol. The engine isn't made of petrol. When we shall have a spiritual body, it's not that the body will be made of spirit, but his life force shall not be soul, but spirit. Well, they're wonderful things. I mustn't be tempted to go off into those wonders. Uh, we're talking tonight about what human life is that we got from God's creation through Adam and Eve, our forefathers. Second, I notice here in the simple words of chapter two the function for which man was made. The historian tells us at the beginning there were not, there were certain plants and things that were not in the ground, plants that would require, uh, uh, uh, rainfall. Eh, and no plant was yet in the ground. So when there should be, uh, uh, plants, they would need somebody to tend them. So the Lord made man out of the dust of the ground and gave him as his first task to keep the Garden of Eden. That was his work. I ask you, who may from time to time be burdened down with your daily work and wish it weren't so hard, to remember that work was an original part of God's idea for man. Of course, in those days, it was certainly a gentleman's occupation, wasn't it? It hadn't yet entoiled the drudgery that we have known since the fall, even though, to be sure, some work at least still carries with it, uh, interest, if not excitement, and calls forth and develops our energies and ingenuities and talents, does it not? And that was a wonderful day when God not only made him a made man, but gave him work to do. For we're told that God Almighty planted a garden in Eden, which shows us this, that the rest of the world wasn't garden, doesn't it? He planted a garden in Eden, set it out. I would have loved to have been there. Set it out with its trees and its plants and the animals that came and went and the rivers that glided along through it, you see. What a magnificent thing. And there he put Adam to keep it and to guard it. You'll see. The original commission of mankind given in the first creation story was not merely that he should look after a garden. He should be viceroy over the whole planet, fill the earth and subdue it. But God, in his graciousness, gave him a little example of what Adam could do. What you could make of earth. Look at this, Adam, says God. Isn't it superb? See what can be made of this earth, you see, if you put a little care into it and organize it, and a little artistry. Gardens are still wonderful things, aren't they? That bring order, not just the ordinary straight nature, but nature developed, farmed, manicured. And what a lovely occupation that was for Adam, preparing mankind for now going out into the planet at large to develop it. Living as we do in our great modern age, we look back upon a long story, what a wonderful story it has been, of man's development of Earth. I do hope you're proud of it. Sometimes we can take a very gloomy idea of modern science and modern technology, though even those who do so normally do it and then look at the wristwatch on their hand, you see, which is the fruits of technology, isn't it, Watto? And they come in a beautiful car, and they have radios and goodness knows what, and they are delighted when, if need be, they go to hospital, and the surgeon knows the latest of medical technology and theory, do you see, and uses all sorts of things to heal and perpetuate life. Yes, God meant it so. We mustn't talk badly of modern technology and science, must we? It's a part of developing the earth. I, for one, am filled with admiration for the scientists and the technologists who learned to master the seas, to harness the winds, who eventually discovered electricity. What marvelous thing it was for mankind in fellowship with his creator to be a, so to speak, junior creator, not himself man creating out of nothing, but working with the creator as God's viceroy and creature to develop Earth in the way that God wanted it developed. Magnificent career, isn't it? Well, I hope you agree with me it is. Because I don't like work. I'm looking forward to go to heaven. Oh, won't it be wonderful when all my labours and trials are o'er and I sit down on the heavenly shore, and all labour passed and work done, and you're going to sit in the heavenly armchair and put your feet up on a heavenly footrest and never do a stroke of work again? You might even get bored with heaven if that were true. You'll not only work, you'll work far more and far better than ever you did here when you get home to heaven. Surely you will. You see, God loves working. I say it, I hope not without, uh, reverence. God doesn't have to work to earn his living. And why does he work? Why these billions of billions of galaxies out in space? Why does he do it? Well, the only answer I can think about is that he will to do it. He enjoyed doing it, of course. They are expressions of his character. One day, we're present, we're present, says scripture, we do not see all things put under man. The fall has intervened, but God is persisting with his purpose, and we see Jesus, who became truly man and for a little while was made lower than the angels for the suffering of death. We see him now crowned with glory and honor. And one day everything shall be put under his hands. And for the dispensation, the economy, the stewardship of the great ages to come, Christ will be in charge, and under Christ, the likes of you and me, who've been trained to work here, according to God's will and purposes and principles, will be privileged to join with Christ in the great administration of the new heavens and earth, and that for all eternity. That's what gives. Said our Lord Jesus, when you go to work, don't you be like the Gentiles. Why? Well, how do the Gentiles do when they go to work? They go to work, says Christ, s- simply to seek food and clothes and the money to buy those things with. Don't you make that your first objective, will you, when you go to work? What am I to make my first objective when I go to work? Seek first, says Christ, the rule of God in your life. That's what work is. God puts us to work that he might train us to do his will and live according to his purpose. Adam was given conditions, as we shall see, how to go about his work, what to do and what not to do. And that he should have sought God's rule first and foremost as he went to work was of absolutely fundamental importance. So it still is with us. Seek first the rule of God, for it is in our daily work that we find the challenge and the lessons. Shall we be honest? Shall we be truthful? Shall we not be lazy? Shall we be patient? For if we go to work without those motives, we might even make a pile of money. But the point of work, the first point, says Christ, is to seek the rule of life of God in every detail of your life and work, and thus build up, uh, righteousness of character, preparing us for the great day when the Lord comes, and we have our spiritual bodies joined with him, administer the new heavens and the new earth for God. Work. Yes, that's part of life, isn't it? Yeah. And then, of course, there was the aesthetic sense. You say, where do you get that from? Well, look at that, you see, uh, um, the Lord God, verse nine. out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So out of the ground, the Lord God made trees to grow. Every tree that's good to look at, and then good for food. I personally admire God's preference of order. Juicy, which would you have put first? Good for food or good to look at? Say, be, be realistic, Mr. Lecturer, do. I mean, food is our number one necessity. If you don't have enough food to keep alive, you can't enjoy anything. So you will put food first. Well, when I'm hungry, I do as well. But are potatoes the most important things of life? Or flowers? What would you say? Well, I think I know this, that if a friend of yours was seriously ill in hospital and you wanted to take him a little something and knew he already had had five or six pounds of grapes brought there by other visitors. What would you take him? A bag of potatoes? No, you say, it wouldn't help much. You wouldn't maybe take him a bunch of flowers, wouldn't you? Why so? Well, for the sheer beauty, and he just had to lie there and look at them and perhaps be distracted from his pain by sheer beauty. Ah, yes. God could have made this place a utility world, couldn't he? Just grab, functional. Not God. God loves beauty. He is beautiful. When our Lord here, the Creator incarnate, was conversing about other things, he had occasion to point to the flowers. Look at the flowers, said he. The lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, they don't spin. Yet Solomon, all his glory was not arrayed like one of those. That's God's idea of dress. I'm old and curmudgeonly and, you know, rancorous and all that, you see. It's a long time since I was young. But I have sometimes thought I observed that since the sixties, some young people have delighted in being scruffy. Instead of dressing beautifully. Uh-huh. Oh, don't take it as too bitter a criticism, put it down to my silver hairs, to see. But as far as I can gather from God and our blessed Lord, God loves people to look beautiful. God would never make you look ugly and grand. God put in the garden trees that were good to look at. What other use did they have? I didn't know they had any. That was their chief thing. Good to look at, for God loves beauty. What kind of a life would it be if you were born in a dungeon with no light and just four walls and nothing but blackness and no beauty? Would you call that life? Well, of course you wouldn't. Physical life is one thing, but all the many dimensions of life, beauty and good for food. And then we notice another thing. A potential knowledge of moral values. You see, he made these trees, the trees also of the, the knowledge of good and evil. Verse sixteen, and the Lord commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest eat freely. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. They are wonderful verses. For they tell us what is distinctive between, one of the distinctives between man and the animals. The animals have no potential ability to understand moral principles, have they? You can train your dog to do various things and not to do other things. You can train your dog, for instance, not to steal in next door and uh, uh, uh, and steal the weekend joint from off the kitchen table. You can train him not to do it by whacking him anytime he gives the appearance of going anywhere near the neighbor's house, so that in his mind, the neighbor's house and a very painful experience at the rear end of his body, uh, uh, uh, you see, are coupled in his mind. And so he, he thinks to go to the next door neighbor's house, and then he refrains because he doesn't want to get, uh, whacked. It's a memory. But you try to explain to your dog why it is wrong, Fido, to steal the next door neighbor's meat. It's morally wrong, Fido. Well, what hope of success would you have talking to your Fido like that, I wonder? There's no moral sense, nor any potential of developing moral sense. Man was made with that potential, wasn't he? That is a marvelous thing about you, you know. You are a morally responsible being. I met once at a series of lectures I was giving. The other lecturer was a psychiatrist, a Christian psychiatrist from the University of Bristol. He was in charge of a ward in a psychiatric hospital. He was renowned in that part of the world for the success rate he had in treating patients. And at the conference he told us, his fellow Christians, how important this moral responsibility question is. He said, you know, in the courts, the judges and so forth are often wanting me to say that the person who's just committed a, a crime of some sort is a bit, uh, psychologically disturbed and therefore not responsible. Now he says that can be so in extreme cases, but that's not so in all cases. He said, on my ward, if a patient flings a tantrum and breaks the window, I make them pay for it. Why? Well, he says it's part of their healing. To be made to shoulder responsibility, moral responsibility. That's part of our healing, part of what it is to be human. To say that people are not really morally responsible and they can't help themselves and it's all in their genes, is in the end to reduce men and women to mere animals or cabbages even. Now we have sinned, and so often we run away from the guilt of our sin, don't we? Because moral responsibility is a very big burden to bear. God, who is merciful, has provided, uh, uh, uh, the remedy for it so that we can be freed from guilt through the sacrifice of Christ. But not out now to go out and be morally irresponsible, but rooted in the love of God, learn to grow up and shoulder moral responsibility by the in abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, to learn to live morally, to please God. Now, at the first, when God put a man in the garden, there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God forbade him to take it. Why so, you say, if God wanted him to be, uh, morally grown up? Well, precisely for that reason, that when Adam and Eve were first created, they were as innocent as babies, right? Your little baby man hasn't the concept of good and evil yet, has he? Sometimes your young pre-teenager hasn't the concept of evil enough, so that when she goes outside, you say, now you be careful whom you speak to. And alas, nowadays it's coming more difficult, isn't it, in some great cities for parents to let their children walk to school. Children don't realize what evil there is around. They're innocent. How would Adam and Eve ever come to be morally responsible, to know what is good and evil? Well, they would get their first lessons and the basic principles from God himself, as they could bear to learn it and grow up morally. They would need to depend on God for his guidance, as your children depend on you in the days of their comparative innocence, or to be told what is good and what is evil. And if your children, as young children, were to despise you and throw off your authority, and they're going to decide for themselves what is good and evil, and go off into the drugs and who's know what, because they're not going to obey authority. Your heart will be broken, for they haven't the ability to carry the knowledge that such a thing is evil and s- stop doing it. And they can't foresee this unlawful pleasure will in the end result in tears and perhaps disease. And so they go their way. That breaks your heart, doesn't it, that they have to learn the hard way. And God would shelter man in his innocence from this. And so forbad him to eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And that shows us another absolutely fundamental thing about human life. Human life, to be fully life, has to be lived in relationship with God first. And a relationship that is bounded. Relationships are not, are not bounded, are not relationships, are they? That's why, uh, you have one wife, which I hope you have. Because if you had the same relationship with any old woman you met throughout the world, that wouldn't be what most people mean by a marriage relationship. And our relationship with God is bounded. It is bounded by his commands and prohibitions. He is our creator. And to put it crudely, if you get a car from the manufacturer with the manufacturer's instructions in it, and you decide to ignore them and flout them and do the very opposite and put sand in your petrol tank. Well, carry on, boy, but you are being exceedingly foolish. God, our creator, has the right and the love and the kindness to lay down the boundaries of our relationship with him, his commands and And his refurbish. purveyors. In life, morally responsible, and in relationship to God, it is bound by God's moral standards. But now notice another marvelous thing about God. To see, uh, God said to Adam and Eve, now of all the trees you may eat, except this one. But don't take it, don't take it, because in the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die. You notice now what is implied in that? God forbade them to put forth their hand and take of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But at the same time, God gave them the power to do so, if they chose to do so, didn't he? He straightly forbade them to take it. But he not only gave them the physical power, power to stretch forth their hand and do it. A great flaming sword descended from heaven to cut their hands off when they took it. He gave them the power to do it, and what is more, you will notice now, he gave them what we call free will. If they chose to disobey God, they were able to. They had free choice. They had no permission to, but they had free choice. I personally express my admiration for God. He being almighty, and I being not six foot of clay, that he would give me free will, so that if I choose to, I can go against Almighty God. What an awesomely wonderful God is. Some people there are who say, did God know that, uh, mankind would take that free will and abuse it. Yes, of course he foreknew. Mm. Then why did he give us free will, they say? Wouldn't this been, have been a better world if God had not given us free will and made us so that we couldn't transgress his command? We just worked like clockwork or a super duper computer. But then, if God had made us like a computer, look what would have been missing from human life. Well, moral responsibility would go out of the window, wouldn't it? If your computer goes wrong and disobeys your instructions and comes up with false results such that two and and two make six, and refuses to be cured, uh, well, you smash it in the teeth, don't you? You wouldn't take it in court and summon it and and find it guilty. Say, poor thing, you can't blame it. It never was morally responsible. To be morally responsible, you'll have to have free will. If you haven't free will, you can't be blamed for doing what you do wrong, nor credited with what you do right either, if you have no choice in the matter. Ah, but see what else would be missing if we hadn't got free will. Love would be impossible, wouldn't it? Suppose one night, dear sir, you're sitting in your lounge, drinking your postprandial cup of coffee, and in walks your robot, made in America. And coming over to you, it puts its computerized arms around your neck and in its curious voice says, oh, I love you. What would you do? I'd kick it in the shins, wouldn't you, and say, don't be so daft, don't. Why would you say that? Well, it's that's nonsense for a machine to say it loves me. Know what love is. It's only a machine. Someone programmed it to come in and say that. It doesn't say it's a free choice. No. For love to be love, I mean in the deepest sense, not covered love, but for love to be love, in the fully human sense, it has to involve free choice, doesn't it? All the wonder of God. He wants you to love him, sir. He'll not compel you like a machine to make you love him. The very gospel is couched in those terms. For God so loved the world, he gave his only son that whosoever believeth in him will have everlasting life. But what about those who won't believe? God will do his utmost to save. But in the end, God will not remove their free will, not even to get them saved. Why wouldn't he? Because if you remove a man's free will, then you've reduced him to something that is subhuman. An integral part, as you see from this story in Genesis, an integral part of what it means to be human, that God has given us free will. Marvelous. Are you beginning to feel that you're... and what marvelous you are, you know? I not fathom you. Made in the image of God, and even as a creature, before redemption has come. Marvelous. Anything else? Oh yes. Then God, uh, uh, uh, said it's not good that man should be alone. You see. So he called, uh, the animals before Adam. And Adam named them. You see. That's very interesting. For the naming of things is a human phenomenon, isn't it? A human characteristic. I worked at one stage in my career under a certain Professor Woodcock, who was professor of Latin language and of English. And at the beginning of one of his books, he called attention to this passage in Genesis chapter two to point out how this, uh, uh, story that Adam named the animal goes right to the heart of what human language is. You see, uh, some people will try to tell you that, uh, human language was res- uh, uh, evolved out of animal cry. You see. You say, how was that? Well, when a little piglet, so to speak, wandered off and came round a rock somewhere, and there stood a lion. The little piglet went, oh, you see, saw a lion. When that happened ever so many times, you see, pigs come in face with face with lions and say, oops. And all the other pigs knew that oops meant there was a lion somewhere around about here. Just a reaction, you see, to, uh, uh, the sight of a lion. And there are some who tell us that that's how human language began. Well, if that's how it began, it's come a long way, hasn't it? The pigs have no word for lion, not that I ever heard. What's the genius behind naming things? Well, it is to take it as a genius and invention to take an arbitrary sound, deliberately take it and use it as a label for a thing. For instance, uh, those who speak English, when they come across a bit of wood coming out of the ground with branches going out and leaves on it, they make the noise tree. Say, why do they make that noise? Why they make it that? It's just they've chosen to use that sound as a label for that thing. That's not an automatic reaction to being a tree. That was originally a deliberate use of, of sound label for a thing. In other languages, they use a different label. Well, the Romans would talk of arbor, you see, and the Greeks would say dendron, and the Hebrews eights, you see. Doesn't matter which sound. It was the genius of thinking up to use an arbitrary sound to indicate a thing that stands at the basis of language. God gave humans that possibility. And modern science, for instance, Professor Noam Chomsky, atheist though he is, a raven red Marxist, pointed to the fact that in his opinion, there is built into the human psyche what he calls a language faculty that animals don't have. You say, what do you mean by that? Well, whatever language you learn to use from childhood upwards, doesn't matter be it Japanese or Celtic or, uh, or Spanish or English or whatever. You can only lose the language if you first of all have the logical idea that language expresses. If you don't understand the logic, you won't be able to express it in any language, nor understand it when the language is spoken to you. It is the fact that as it from animals, human youngsters, little toddlers, very soon begin to evidence the fact that they have a language faculty inbuilt, and it's astonishing. Mother can say to five-year-old, Johnny, if you're good this afternoon, mummy will buy you an ice cream for tea. Johnny understands it. Not only ice cream, you know what ice creams are, not tea, Rufy, but he can understand the logic of it. That's astonishing because what mummy has now uttered is a hypothetical condition. If you are good. Might not be good. All hypothetical. But if you are good, on proposition of that hypothesis, you'll get a life created. That's high-powered logic, that is, isn't it? And Johnny of five years old can understand it. You try on your dog. Trained your dog to go out and catch pheasants, maybe, but you try to tell your dog, now, Fido, if you are good this afternoon, you'll get a bone for yourself. Doesn't register. Doesn't have the logic even to make, begin to make sense of it, even if he could speak. It's marvelous, isn't it? I'm not exaggerating. God gave you, made you that way, with this language facility. Marvelous. And in the context, the story began by telling you that God was going to provide a hilt meat for Adam, and goes on to tell how he made Eve and how charming she was and how wonderful the institution of marriage is. But let me keep to this matter of language for a little while. You know, if a lion wants to tell a lioness how marvelous she is, he's very limited in his vocabulary. Grump here and tap with the paw there, but you can hear the young man now telling his bride how wonderful she is, and he means it. All language. We all know what we mean when we say, oh, but that's only words. Words spoken without deliberate meaning behind them. But never let us say of this book, it's only words. What do you mean only words? They are the high point of human communication. God has given us to human beings a language facility, able to use words that we might speak to him who is the word. Expression of the mind and heart of God in these God-breathed words. The Bible exhorts us we are to take to ourselves words. Come speak to God. God's love is not just an emotional thing. It's a matter of the will, of course, and of the character. God has chosen to give us a language facility that he might also speak to us in words. And I say by far, I believe with all my heart that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. It said of Mary that she sat at the Lord's feet and heard his word. Oh, what a marvelous thing is and shall be. When we get home to glory, we shall never cease speaking to and about our By blessed blessed. Lord. And so Genesis two comes to that other, some people say it's the pinnacle of human life, that past, the relationship of man and woman, devised by God. God is not against pleasure, is he? But it's more than pleasure. A relationship awesome in its wonder, but beautifully natural. Co-workers with God in his creation of other human beings. A wonderful relation. The Bible itself uses as a prototype of the love of Christ for the church. Ah, how sad. The world has a beauty. God give you grace, you may recover. To show the loveliness of human marriage, in spite of all its glaces and praise, as something that the God of all beauty and grace and holiness intended. For our enjoyment and... but awesomely sacred. God give you help to bring up your children in this very difficult modern age. God give you grace, my dear sister, to train the younger women in what Christian marriage means, as distinct from the false standards that many of them nowadays be taught in their school. And then there was this other thing. We can pass over it briefly. Human beings... have to live their lives in the context of the spirit world. Perhaps in her innocence, Eve was not aware of what was happening when she was tempted. The New Testament informs us that it was that old serpent, the devil, Satan, who impersonating that snake, tempted Eve. We're not angels. They are spirit. We have spirit, but we also have body. The animals have body, like we do. There's a difference between us and them, is then we made a little lower than the angels. Never meant to descend to be animals. The awareness of the spirit realm, angels good and angels bad are part of our growing up in God's universe. Tomorrow, by God's will, we shall consider the fall, the curse upon Adam, and Cain's rebellion, and the curse pronounced in his place. And we shall then learn that when Cain went out, he gave birth to dependents. They lived and prospered as human beings. Some of them invented metalworking, and one of them was the father of organs and, uh, musical instruments. You say, ah, but they were Keynes, anything they produced must be bad. Huh? Well, who produced your motor cars? Sure he was a Christian? Was a surgeon a Christian or an atheist? I can tell you this, that musical instruments having been invented in Old Testament, they were used, weren't they, to the praise of God. All the wonder of music. God invented them. And if the hymn be true, that we constantly sing, then how wonderful it will be at last to hear the choirs of all his heart and his viles, that stand the great throng in the presence of Jesus and sing this new song unto him that has loved us, loosed us from sin, unto him be the glory forever. Amen. All you who love the Lord Jesus shall one day not only hear it, but contribute to it. God thank you he made you, so that you can enjoy music and sing it to his Is economical. eternal glory. No, no. We have two questions, or at least I have two questions from you this evening, the first of which runs as follows. You have mentioned a day of twelve hours and a day of twenty four hours. Now this we were talking about yesterday, the, uh, first creation story, and we notice this repeated phenomenon in the first creation story, how God not only made things, but he called parts of his creation by various names, and the first one was this: He called the light day, and he called the darkness night. Where you see the word day, therefore here means the hours of daylight, roughly twelve hours in the middle of the day, and night is the roughly twelve hours of darkness. So day is the twelve hours of daytime. Yet, eh, in the same verse, there was evening and morning, one day. And here the word day means twenty four hours, the whole thing, light and dark as well. Now that's nothing, uh, extraordinary. We have the same idiom in English, and so do a lot of other, uh, languages. We can say that somebody is due to arrive, uh, uh, uh, next Friday. What day of the week? Well, Friday. I see. You're going to arrive, uh, by day or by night? Oh, we say Friday night. So we're using the word day for the whole day of the week, and then we use the word day, uh, for the daylight hours, and the, uh, and we talk about the nighttime, the, the day, therefore, has two meanings. And because of that, my question is now, can we determine the number of hours in the day of Genesis two four? the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. I'm not quite sure what my question is implying. Perhaps he means that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and God said, let there be light, and there was light, and God divided the light of the darkness, uh, and there was evening and morning one day. Perhaps my question is of the hint, as multitudes of questions are, that the first day begins in verse one and extends to the end of verse five. And feeling that the, the first day, the Monday, starts in verse one, is he's asking, can we, uh, can we determine the number of hours in the day of Genesis two four, the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heaven? Well, my answer to that, I think, would be, uh, uh, thinking as I do, no, I couldn't say we could determine how many hours in that day, because for my part, I believe that day one starts only at the three. Why do I believe that? Because all the days, all six of them, start with the same formula, and God did, and God did, and God did, and so forth. All the days, without exception, start with that formula. Whereas, uh, this beginning bit here does not start with that formula. And therefore, it seems to me that it is quite probable that the activity of the creator described in these verses predated day one. And if that was so, how long it took God to do this thing? I wouldn't begin to know. I don't think God has told us. I don't think he includes this in day one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was like a form of void, darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving on the face of the waters. I think that may well describe, uh, God's, uh, earlier work, so to speak, in the universe and his operation there, uh, before the 6 days of creation, uh, relative to our canon, uh, began. But, uh, I freely admit that that is simply my viewpoint, that multitudes of believers out of more, uh, uh, perceptive than I, who would know that day one, starts at verse one, and goes down to verse five? If that is so, we just say, they're asking me, uh, how many hours in that day? Well, many people think that every day has a day of 24 hours, and therefore this day would be, uh, right from verse one to verse five would be a day of twenty four hours. See, I doubt that myself, but they may be right. I certainly didn't want to fall out, certainly not fight with any dear Christian over the matter. I must confess it seems to me unfortunate that sometimes Christians who equally love the Lord fall out about such things as these and come to regard each other as budding Trinity, you see. But, uh, I- I'm open to, to, to be, uh, uh, converted, so to speak. So what I do believe is that it doesn't take God more than a split second to say anything. God's head, don't think that takes, uh, uh, God a lot of hours about to say a thing like that. But then I find it instructive to note that in day six, halfway through the, the experiment, and God said, let us make man. And if you had that only, you would think that God said it, and there and then, in that split second, a fully grown man appeared. Uh, Genesis two, the second account, filling in the details, shows us that that was not quite so. God first formed man of the dust of the ground, you see, and then he, uh, uh, breathed into him the breath of life. And then eventually God said, it's not good for man to be alone. Put Adam to thee, and out of his rib, uh, he made the woman. And then he brought all the animals to Noah, and no one named them. How long all that took? Genesis two doesn't say. It's conceivable, perhaps, he did it all in one day of twenty four hours, along with the making of the animals as well. But, uh, uh, I would myself draw a distinction between the word of God as the creative fiat, the creative command of God, and then what you might call development. They are two processes which God has used in the creation of our world, creation strictly so called, the command, the fiat, let it be done, and then the necessary consequent development, you'll see. That's all I would want to say at the moment. There is another question. Did the tree of life have any supernatural qualities? And now we're talking about tonight's subject. In the tree- trees in the garden, there was, among other things, a tree of life. When man sinned and was driven out of the garden, chapter three says that the Lord God said, now man has disobeyed, uh, do you see? Now lest he put forth his hand and eat of the tree of life and live forever. Therefore, God drove him out of the garden. So, no longer having access to the tree of life, he began to deteriorate from that moment onward, and though he lived hundreds of years, eventually died, do you see? Because he had no access to the tree of life. That raises the question, very interesting question indeed. Did this tree of life had some supernatural qualities? Well, not to quibble about a world, a word, it came from the hand of God, like all the other trees did. If it had supernatural qualities, it's the same God, and I wouldn't be quite sure what the word supernatural in that context would mean, you see. Um, what I take it myself to be, starting with the plain text, is that the eating of that tree of life was necessary for the maintenance and perpetuation of human life. In such a way that if somebody were prevented from eating of that tree, they would begin to decline physically. That raises a big doctrinal and theological question. When God made Adam and Eve in the garden, did they possess inherent in themselves physical immortality? Could Adam just carry on and say, well, I'm immortal, I don't care what God says or does, I'm immortal, I have physical immortality, and I shall live forever. The Bible says God only has immortality. I myself feel that the text implies that if Adam was going to live forever, because he didn't have inherent in himself immortality, it was necessary for him to eat of that tree of life. When he was precluded from it, he began physically to to decay and go down the path that would lead him back to the dust. Now, uh, learned, uh, expositors, far more learned than I, have felt that when Genesis three says that the Lord God said, now man has become like one of us to know good and evil. Now, lest he put forth his hand and take and eat of the tree of life and live forever, God haste hush, hurried him out of the garden. They say, do you see that, lest he put forth his hand and eat? Doesn't that imply, they suggest, that hitherto Adam had not thought to eat of that tree? He had permission to, of course, didn't he? All the trees you may eat except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He had permission to eat it, but they feel that perhaps Adam hadn't thought, for some reason or other, to eat of the tree. And so God, so to speak, said, how fortunate. Let's hurry him out of the garden before he gets in- into his head to eat of the tree, because if he eats of it, he'll live forever. As though one bite of the tree of life and you would have lived forever. Myself, I think that's not quite right. I think it wasn't a question of one bite of the tree of life. It was a question of constantly eating it. Constant eating would have maintained Adam, and that he probably had eaten it when he was in the garden. It was when he was shut out from it that he began to decline. And one final thing that seems to support me in that view is that the tree of life is subsequently used in the New Testament as a symbol of our Lord, is it not? The Revelation, chapter two— chapter three— oh yeah, chapter two. To him that overcometh, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. Paradise, paradisos in Greek, is the Greek word for the Garden of Eden. That's how the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew translates the Garden of Eden as paradisos, paradise. Means a pleasure garden. And our Lord says, to him that overcomes, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. A symbol of himself, of course. He is the tree of life. He is the source of life. In him is life. Yes. But if I were to put to you the idea, it's enough for you to come and eat of Christ once, and you don't have to eat him ever again. You could come to Christ and eat of him, like our brother quoted in his prayer, John six, Eat of him once and then say, well, thank you, Lord, I now have eternal life. I don't need you anymore, Lord. Thank you very much. Now I go my own way. Uh, we shall probably never meet again. I don't need you anymore. I've eaten of you once, and that's all. You don't hold that view, do you? I hope you don't. We don't have life apart from Christ, do we? It isn't that a believer can lose his eternal life. We don't have our private store of eternal life. Our life is hid with Christ in God. And because we are united to him and constantly feed on him and draw our life from him constantly and are inseparable from him, that we have spiritual eternal life. So I think that at the physical level, that tree of life probably conveyed elements that the human body needs to maintain itself in continued life. Without those elements, the genes eventually go wonky, and, uh, the body starts to decline. But they were two very interesting questions, and I've given you honestly my opinion. I hope you'll love me still.