In 'Creation of Man Part 2', Chuck Smith elaborates on the creation of man as described in Genesis, emphasizing that man was formed from the dust and given life through God's breath. He discusses the significance of man's role in the Garden of Eden, the power of choice, and the creation of woman as a companion for man. Smith highlights the intelligence and perfection of Adam, suggesting that early humans were far more capable than modern perceptions. He also touches on the implications of the fall and the establishment of the family unit. The sermon concludes with a reminder of God's love and the importance of understanding our origins.

Oh, let the Son of God enfold you With His Spirit and His love Let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul Oh, let Him have the things that hold you And His Spirit like a dove Will descend upon your life and make you whole Welcome to The Word for Today, the broadcast ministry of Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California. Pastor Chuck is currently leading us on a verse-by-verse study through the entire Bible. And on today's edition of The Word for Today, we'll be continuing with more details on the creation of man as we pick up in Genesis, chapter 2, verse 4. So let's follow along as Pastor Chuck Smith begins today's lesson. Now this is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth, before there was any herb of the field had grown, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But a mist went up 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 being. So he speaks now of the creation of man himself. Forming man out of the dust of the ground. It is interesting that the same 17 elements that you find in the dirt outside are the same 17 elements that make up our bodies. Now there are questions about the resurrection. How are the dead raised? With what body do they come? Paul said, some will ask. And there are some people that are so attached to these bodies that they don't like the thought of losing them and hoping some way that this body itself is going to be resurrected. This body is going to be changed. Metamorphosis. Change of body. I'll be very happy to have a new building of God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Thus thou art to thus return it. Talking of the body, not talking of the spirit of man. But the spirit of man moves into the new body. The building of God, not made with hands. That's eternal in the heavens. So, the Lord God planted a garden. I love that. Planted a garden eastward in Eden. And there he put man whom he had formed. Now, to try to find the garden of Eden, we're given some clues here. Out of the ground, the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight, good for food. The tree of life also was in the midst of the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The river went out of Eden to water the garden. And there it parted, became four riverheads. The name of the first is the Pishon. It was the one that encompasses the whole land of Hevelah, where there is gold. The gold of the land is good. The name of the second is Gihom, the one that encompasses the whole land of Cush. Now, at this point, probably all of the land mass was still just in one land mass. This was before the flood, which did cause there to become tremendous geographical changes as the water were changed, as the seabeds inundated the land and the land under the weight of the water sunk and new mountain ranges were thrust upwards. And a fascinating book on the changes of the earth's structure and on the thrust, the gigantic thrust that have taken place on the surface of the earth during the last 10,000 years. I would highly recommend the book Earth in Upheaval by Immanuel Velikovsky. Fascinating book, as he deals with some of the tremendous geographical, geological and catastrophe changes that have transpired on this planet earth and the evidences of them all over the world, especially down in the Andes and some of the more recent thrust. Fascinating reading. So, to try to find the Garden of Eden would be futile because the whole structure has been so dramatically changed that it would be impossible to locate the Garden of Eden. So, we read of it, we read of the rivers and so forth that came out of it and of those areas, but even the Euphrates River, but things have so changed that there is no way of actually saying, well, this is where the Garden of Eden actually existed. Verse 15, Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend it and to keep it. And so, it was man's duty to develop the garden. He was put in the garden with the purpose of developing it, to tend it, to dress it, to keep it, to develop the potentials that are there. God put the raw materials there. Now, it's up to man to develop it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but 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. Now, remember there were two trees that were specifically mentioned, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man created in the image of God with the power of choice. One prohibition. Here it is, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat you will surely die. Commanded now to keep that which God created, develop it. Man in the image of God, made out of the dust, he's part material. God breathed into him the breath of life, he is spiritual. And so, the conflict now, on what side of the nature will he live? The physical, material, fleshly side, or the spiritual? The Lord God said it is not good that man should be alone. It's just not good. God said it. Man by himself could never be complete. So God said I will make him a helper that is comparable to him, or comparable to him. And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every bird of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. Imagine this task, of naming all of the creatures. But, now remember, Adam when God created him was perfect. And that brings up another question, how old was he when God created him? When God created the trees, how old were they when God created them? The trees were created to bear the seeds, so the trees were created first, they came before the seeds. When God created the pine tree, did he create them 100 feet tall? But how old were they the day they were created? How old was Adam the day he was created? Well, he probably had a full set of teeth, and he probably had muscular development, a reasonably large frame. Looking at him you'd say, well, I would say he's probably 35 years old, 30 to 35. No, he's a day old. You see, there were age dating factors built in the day he was born. He wasn't created as an infant to develop. He was created a full grown man. The trees were created as full grown trees. They probably had rings. How many rings did they have, I wonder? If you cut the tree down, you know, it'd be interesting to see if it had rings. Someone said they're going to find Adam when they get to heaven, they'll know him because he won't have a navel. I doubt if I will too in my new body. Adam, no doubt, was the most brilliant man who has ever walked on the face of the earth because God would have created him perfect. Now, his brain was probably programmed by God perfectly when he created him. There are those people today that we marvel because they have what we call photographic memories. The capacity of taking a mental picture and they can read the Bible and then quote the Bible. There are accounts of men who could quote the entire Bible or any passage of the Bible that you may name. Photographic minds. No doubt Adam had a photographic mind. Genius of the highest level. Not only was he a genius quality, but he had 900 years to develop his whole brain capacity. There have been estimates that we use maybe one-tenth of our brain capacity. I doubt that. I think we use much less. I mean the capacity of the human brain is amazing. The things that we are capable of storing, learning, and we've tapped just so little of the total brain capacities because we're lazy. You know, I've got my grade man, I'm out and forget the books. And rather than going on and continuing to store and continuing to develop, we get lazy and we just sort of ride on what we have. But here is Adam created perfect. No doubt as a photographic memory and all of this programmed in by God of tremendous knowledge and background, able to name all of the animals that God brought by him. And that remained and continued to be their names. God's perfect creation. We think of man as, you know, living in caves, you know, with a tiger skin over him and a big club and dragging the woman by the hair into the cave, you know. No, the earliest man was far more intelligent than we are. It is interesting as we move just a couple of chapters into the book. We will find one of the descendants of Cain who was skillful in making of iron and of bronze. Hey, this is way back before the flood and you know that we have discovered bronze articles that existed before the flood and we don't today know how they made that kind of bronze. We don't know how they put it together. They had a capacity that we don't have to the present day, the type of bronze that they were making. We know that the Egyptians were able to embalm bodies with a skill that we don't possess today. Secrets that we don't have. We don't know how they built the pyramids. We think of them being ignorant ancients. Far from that, Adam was no doubt the most brilliant man who ever lived and no doubt those first descendants of Adam before time began to corrupt the genes and before the mutations began to have their effect and the genetic code began to break down. Those early people no doubt had a much stronger more virile bodies than we possess. After all, they were able to live some 900 years or so and I doubt if any of you are going to make it that far. So Adam named every living creature. He gave the names to all of the cattle, the birds, every beast of the field. So he probably named them the golden plovers, the sparrow, the swallow, the blackbird, the red-winged blackbird. in all of the animal kingdom there was not found a helper that was comparable to him. And so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept and God took out of his side. The word ribs is not really in the Hebrew. It's just from the side of Adam. And he closed up the flesh in its place. Then the side or that portion which the Lord had taken from man he made into a woman and he brought her to the man and Adam said this is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She should be called woman because she was taken out of man. There is a book entitled Science in the Scriptures written by Dr. Wilson and going into the Hebrew text he suggests that God formed the body of the woman much as he formed the body of man and then took a blood transfusion. And he interprets or translates the Hebrew as out of his side as being a blood transfusion. And the life of the flesh is in the blood. So she's bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I don't know if he's correct but it's an interesting thought. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked the man and his wife and they were not ashamed. So chapter 2 the beginning of man. The creation of man and the woman and the establishing of the family unit of the male and female and of the family unit a man leaving his father and mother joining to his wife and when this of course was declared there weren't yet any fathers or mothers and they too becoming one flesh. So we got through chapter 2 and next we'll start with chapter 3. There are a lot of excellent books that you might get commentaries on the book of Genesis. If you are interested in looking at it from a scientific aspect the Genesis record by Dr. Henry Morris Modern Science in the Genesis Record by Dr. Harry Rimmer However Dr. Rimmer's book is a little outdated because he was a scientist back in the 40s and science has changed quite a bit since then. It's interesting how facts can change. I was always taught that scientists only dealt with facts. But those scientific truths that he taught in the 40s late 40s are no longer scientific truths, many of them. So a lot of the things that he declared have been discovered not to be true science. And so Rimmer's book is a little outdated but Henry Morris's is a more recent book and so it deals with the more recent aspects of science. I referred to Earths in Upheaval by Emanuel Velikovsky and that you'll find interesting when we come to the flood in chapter 6. Also Emanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision I find a very fascinating book. It is not at all intended to be a biblical study. I don't know that the man is or was even a believer in the Bible except that he did verify many of the interesting accounts in the Bible such as the long day of Joshua verified the authenticity of the biblical record by showing that at that same time in history the peoples of the world recorded long mornings or long evenings or long nights or long days according to where they were in relationship to the long day in Joshua's time. So there is in China the record of the long night in their records. The Inca Indians have the record of the long twilight in the morning and so the corresponding places of the world as they related to the long day of Joshua and he does a masterful job in tracing that in the records around the world. So there are a lot of interesting books that you can get on the subject and our intention is not a detailed study of the book of Genesis. We're going to be going through and hitting highlights and we will be moving much faster as we move along in the book. We'll return with more details on the subject of creation in our next lesson as we continue our verse-by-verse study of Genesis and we do hope you'll make plans to join us. But right now I'd like to remind you that if you missed any part of today's message or perhaps you'd like to order a copy for that special friend or loved one you can do so by simply contacting one of our customer service representatives and they'd be more than happy to assist you with the details. And we'll have all the contact information in just a moment. Now as we close out today's program we'd like to share with you a great resource filled with encouragement and application geared to the teenagers of today. It's called Standing Up in a Fallen World and this book by Pastor Chuck Smith addresses very specific and direct questions such as do you have what it takes to abstain from the immorality of our culture? Would you stand up for Jesus Christ in a group of complete strangers? What about a group of your closest friends? We all know it takes a lot to follow Christ with a sincere heart and Pastor Chuck Smith provides the youth of today encouragement as he teaches from the book of Daniel about a young man who took a stand for righteousness in a time when it could have cost him his life. So if you've been looking for a special resource for the special teenager in your life order a copy of Standing Up in a Fallen World A Powerful Message for Teenagers by Pastor Chuck Smith and you can order it now by calling 1-800-272-WORD Phone orders can be taken Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time Again our toll free number is 1-800-272-9673 and for those of you who still prefer to write you can use our mailing address which is The Word for Today P.O. Box 8000 Costa Mesa, California 92628 and be sure to include the call letters of this station with your correspondence and now on behalf of The Word for Today we'd like to thank all of you who share in supporting this ministry with your prayers and financial support and be sure to join us again next time as Pastor Chuck Smith continues his verse-by-verse venture through the book of Genesis that's right here on the next edition of The Word for Today Now once again here is Pastor Chuck Smith God bless you and give you a beautiful week May the Word of God dwell in your hearts richly and may God minister to you in a very special way His love this week May there be special demonstrations to the extent that you'll just sort of be awed by how much God does love you as He reveals Himself through Jesus Kids, I've got some exciting news Pastor Chuck has written a book just for you called The Story of David and Goliath Just listen David had many older brothers His brothers were big and strong and tough enough to fight in a battle It's so much fun to read along with Pastor Chuck and learn about God's Word God helped me to slay the lion and the bear so God will help me to slay this giant Lions? Bears? Goliath? Oh my! And parents, it's never too early to start reading to your children these timeless Bible stories taught by Pastor Chuck Imprint God's Word upon their little hearts as you read these stories over and over again And as a gift, each book contains an audio CD of Pastor Chuck actually reading the story of David and Goliath so your kids can read along To order your copy, call The Word for Today at 800-272-WORD Or see a sneak preview of The Story of David and Goliath visit us online at thewordfortoday.org Again, the number to call is 800-272-9673 This program has been sponsored by The Word for Today in Costa Mesa, California