The Creation of Woman

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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The Creation of Woman

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 11 November 2018

Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” The details are in Genesis 2:4, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that God made the heavens and the earth.”

Verse 28-30, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds and over every living thing that moves on the earth. 29 And God said, "I have given you every plant, yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, every tree which has fruit yielding seed, it shall be food for you. 30 And to every beast of the earth, every bird of the sky and everything that has the breath of life.”

Everyone was a vegetarian in the original creation, even the animals. Verse 31, “And God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.” So the creation of man came on the sixth day along with the creation of the animals. So on day six, verse 27, “God created man; male and female He created them.”

Now Genesis 2 goes back into day six and gives us the details. So what you have in Genesis 2 is an expansion of the creation of man indicated on day six in Genesis 1. Now man is created in God's image. He has been given self-consciousness, he is conscious of his own existence. And he is given personality, and rationality, and creativity and most importantly he is the only one in all the creation that can enjoy relationships.

Verse 6 says that the water that watered the earth didn't come from above through rain, it came from below, from underground sources and it gushed up in springs and literally covered the earth surface. So in the beginning of creation there was a constant water supply and no rain. You had a perfect system watering the environment of the world and there were no weeds to interrupt that growth.

Everything man needed for food was already there and flourishing. It didn't take any work on his part. In that perfect environment, God created man. And in verse 8 we learned about the location of man. God made a garden which was probably east of the nation of Israel. And it was in the place called Eden which we learned is an ancient word that refers to a well-watered place.

And in that place was every tree pleasing to the sight and good for food. And there was also the tree of life in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And in Genesis 2:15 we'll learn about his vocation. And that was he was given responsibility to oversee the garden and to provide a guardianship of its wonders and its resources. Then we saw the temptation of man of that forbidden tree.

Verse 16-17 says, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 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.” One of the dominant characteristics of man being created in God's image was that he was created with the capacity to have a relationship. No other creature is capable of a relationship.

A relationship implies a sharing of ideas, a sharing of emotions, a sharing of soul as it were in the heart and the depth of one person's personality. Genesis 2:18, “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” It is still day six, everything in the garden is very good. But it is not good for man to be alone. It's still on day six.

Man's circumstance in creation was not yet complete. And that completion required a woman. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Adam could not multiply and fill the earth by himself. He certainly couldn't subdue the whole earth just by himself. And that means a woman needed to be made in order to meet Adam's insufficiency.

Now in creation, all reproducing beings were both male and female. In Genesis 6:19 says, "Of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every kind into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female." Now in the Hebrew language it means a helper like him to make him capable of reproduction and ruling. So we are given some details about the creation of a woman.

Let us look first at 1 Corinthians 11:7-9, “For a man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” Man is uniquely created to be the glory of God, to rule the world, and to care for the creation according to God's divine plan. And it is Eve who is created from the side of Adam.

And that takes us back into 1 Cor. 11:3, "Christ is the head of every man. The man is the head of a woman and God is the head of Christ." There is even a responsibility of being the ruler within the trinity as well as within human creation. Woman is described here than in verse 7 as "the glory of man." Man was made to manifest God's authority; woman was made to manifest man's authority.

As far as saving grace goes, a woman comes as deeply in the communion with God as a man. She is made equally in the image of God and that image is equally restored through faith in Jesus Christ. She is as much capable of being like Jesus as any man is capable of it. She is capable of an eternal reward like any man would be in the spiritual realm, there is no difference.

But in the human realm, she bears a position under the authority of man, therefore she reflects the glory of man who reflects the glory of God in looking at the responsibility of man. And that is a deadly blow to any form of evolution. Because the bible tells us that man was made out of the dust of the ground and not born from some female. He didn't come from some female hominoid that was a part of a people group before Adam.

Genesis 2:19, “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. And whatever the man called every living creature that was its name.” How can anybody who is faithful to Scripture find evolution in that statement? God made everything out of the ground, out of the same material that dirt is made of.

Adam was more intelligent than you can ever imagine because his mind had never been corrupted by sin. In his unfallen condition, 6000 or so years ago, Adam was far more intelligent than any person 6000 years later being the victim of constant degeneration. And Adam was able in his mind to look at all these creatures and to determine some characteristic about them and give them a name.

At that time prior to the tower of Babylon, only one language was used to give them a name. Now if Adam could name ten of them a minute as they passed by, he could do 3,000 of them in five hours. Now as Adam looked at life, everything was perfect. And he was conscious of the presence of God.

But God was giving him an object lesson and he was recognizing some characteristics about them. He would note about these animals that they all existed in pairs. Verse 20 says, “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.” It became apparent to him, as a full-grown man that he was created without a helper.

There was nothing compatible for him; there was no counterpart. If Adam was essentially an ape’s body with a sort of human mind, it would be ridiculous to say that he couldn't find anything in common with what he saw. So Adam comes to the conclusion that in all the creation, he is all alone. And since there was in the animal kingdom, no creature capable of a relationship to man, God made Eve.

Verse 21-22, “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” He slept while God operated on him. And here was the operation. "God took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place."

Actually, the word rib, doesn't say it well enough. Because when you think of a rib you think of a bone, right? But the word ‘tsela’ is used about 35 times in the Old Testament. And this is the only time they ever translated it just as a rib. 20 of those 35 times it’s translated as side. And that's what we should use to translate it. God put him to sleep and then slit open his side.

Verse 23, “The man said, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." So when God did the surgery, he didn't just take bone, he took flesh. So the woman was created with material from the man. Now again according to Genesis 1:27, "she was made in the image of God." That is she has all the same characteristics of self-consciousness, cognition, spirituality, personality, relationship, motion, all those things as a man.

The only difference is that God made Adam out of dirt and God made Eve out of Adam. God took the material out of man some bone, some tissue and out of that he built woman. All the loveliness and all the beauty and all the grace that a man could never imagine until he saw one. After God closed up his side, He brought the woman to the man in all her perfection.

She would have been a mature woman; Adam was a mature man with the capability and the intelligence of created man without sin who could name thousands of animals in a very short space of time. And God brought to man this wonderful woman suitable for him and they are going to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So ‘flesh and bone’ became from that moment a way of expressing family relationships.

Verse 24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” That is a comment from the Creator. And this establishes the foundation for marriage. And it also establishes the foundation for sexual behavior. There's only one kind of sexual behavior that God recognizes in the human realm. That is the only context in which God has ordained sexual conduct.

So you have not only the creation of man on day six, but you have in the creation of marriage. And you have the definition of sexual conduct. One man, one woman, leaving and cleaving becoming one flesh for life. And what God established in the garden has never changed. So that you have marriage defined right there in the classic statement of Genesis 2:24.

This is the only biblical definition for marriage. Two women do not make a marriage. Even though public opinion recognize that as marriage, God says that is not marriage. Two men coming together is not a marriage recognized by God. Both of those are sins are recognized as perversion. Any sexual conduct outside of marriage is also a violation of God's design.

Verse 25, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." Well, they weren't ashamed because they didn't know any evil. They didn't know that sexual desire could be used for wicked purposes. They didn't have any wicked thoughts running around in their imaginations. They had no capacity to feel shame because they didn't know evil existed. Shame is produced by the consciousness of the evil that may exist.

In the beginning it wasn't that way. In the beginning in the perfect environment there was perfect love. And the perfection of wondrous creation by God. It was a shameless love that God gave these two. They had that kind of union that God has designed to be the pinnacle. Peter even calls it the grace of life. One man, one woman leaving their parents; cleaving together becoming one flesh.

God is a God of grace and a God of forgiveness, but that doesn't change the ideal. The ideal is one man, one woman in a strong bond for life becoming one flesh. No relationship outside of that can even come close to the joys and the fulfillment of that relationship. Woman was made specifically for Adam to meet his needs. If you want to be fulfilled as a man or a woman, this is where you find your greatest fulfillment.

Soon after the fall, in Genesis 4 you have polygamy. In Genesis 9 you have evil thoughts and evil words. In Genesis 16 you have adultery. In Genesis 19 you have homosexuality. In Genesis 34 you have fornication and rape. In Genesis 38 you have incest. In Genesis 38 you have prostitution; in Genesis 39 you have seduction. As soon as the fall came Satan went after that relationship of marriage with a vengeance.

Then you can add divorce. But as Jesus said in Matthew 19, "from the beginning, it was not so." In the beginning it was perfect then it was wonderful and there was no shame about anything in that relationship because there was no evil. This was the wonder of the original creation. The next words in Genesis 3:1 are, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field.” So here we see the tragic fall of man.

Especially now this spiritual battle is raging everywhere and can be seen particularly in Colorado. Same sex marriage and abortion have become law and expressions of Christianity in schools such as prayer are now forbidden. Religious freedom in America is under assault. Government entities and actors treat religious freedom and expressions as obstacles to overcome rather than as values to protect. But God is still in charge, Amen? Let us pray.



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