Session 12 Blog Post

The Garden Planted and the Man Settled

We’re in Genesis 2, picking up at verse 8. This is a different angle on creation than Genesis 1. There, we were given the broad account. Here, the focus narrows, especially on man and the place God prepared for him.

“And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden toward the east, and there He placed the man whom He had formed.”

That word “placed” is worth pausing on. It’s more than just setting someone down somewhere. It carries the idea of settling, even resting. God didn’t just drop Adam into the garden—He settled him there. It was a place for him to be, to belong, to rest in a sense.

Then we’re told what God caused to grow:

“Every tree that is desirable in appearance and good for food.”

That’s an expansive description. Every tree that looks good and is good for food. You start thinking through what that could include—apples, pears, cherries, nuts, things we know—but this is before the fall. Whatever existed then would have been untouched by decay. It’s hard to even imagine the fullness of it.

In the middle of the garden were two specific trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was no prohibition given about the tree of life. It seems they could have eaten from it. The restriction was tied only to the other tree.

The Setting of Eden

The passage goes on to describe rivers flowing out of Eden—Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. That places the region somewhere in what we would now call the Mesopotamian area, around modern-day Iraq.

At the same time, we have to remember the flood changed everything—river courses, land formations, the whole topography. So while we can approximate, we can’t be precise.

There’s also that brief note about gold, bdellium, and onyx. It’s simply stated. No explanation is given. But God included it, so it mattered in some way.

Work Before the Fall

In verse 15, we read:

“Then Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.”

That’s before sin enters the picture. Adam was given work to do. The word “cultivate” means to work it—to tend the garden. But this wouldn’t have been burdensome work. Later, after the fall, God says that work will come by the sweat of the brow. So this earlier work was different—still effort, but not toil.

“Keep it” means to guard it, to take responsibility for it. There’s even the possibility that part of this involved beautifying it—arranging, tending, shaping what was already there.

This tells me something important: work itself is not a result of sin. Work is good. Even in a perfect environment, man was not meant to sit idle. There was purpose built into his existence.

The Command and the Warning

God then gives a clear command:

“From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat from it, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

That phrase “surely die” in Hebrew is expressed by repetition—“dying you shall die.” It’s a way of emphasizing certainty.

Later, when Eve speaks, she adds something God didn’t say—“neither shall you touch it.” Since she wasn’t there when the commandment came down, her response likely came from Adam, passing along the command with an added safeguard. We don’t know for certain, but it would make sense.

When they eventually ate, they didn’t drop dead physically that day. So what did God mean? Some suggest this shows God’s grace—death began, decay began, but it wasn’t immediate physical death. Others say it refers to spiritual death. The text leaves some room there, and we shouldn’t force more precision than it gives.

“Not Good for Man to Be Alone”

Then comes a striking statement:

“It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

Everything up to this point has been called good. Now, for the first time, something is “not good.”

The phrase “helper suitable” carries more depth than it might sound like at first. “Helper” can mean assistant, but “suitable” has a range of meaning—corresponding, opposite, even in some sense contrary.

Think of something like a step ladder. One side supports the other, but it does so by being set opposite it. That opposition is what makes the structure stand.

So this helper would be one who supports, corresponds, and at times even stands in a kind of necessary contrast. Not opposition in a hostile sense, but in a way that strengthens. After the fall, that opposing role sometimes takes the form of outright opposition. That then is a sinful twisting of God’s loving design for marriage.

Naming the Animals and Learning the Lack

Before creating the woman, God does something that raises a question.

He brings all the animals to Adam for naming:

“The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.”

Why do this?

It seems God was showing Adam something. As he named each creature, he would have seen pairs, distinctions, categories. And through that process, he would have come to recognize that none of them corresponded to him.

Naming itself is an act of dominion. To name something is to classify it, to organize understanding. It’s part of ruling over creation. That’s what we humans do all the time. Everything needs a name. A plant for example will have a common name for identification purposes, and a scientist will have a more specific Latin name for the same plant. A young child is constantly pointing at things and asking, “What’s that?”

But all of that activity—purposeful as it was—did not meet his deepest need. There was still no one suitable for him, someone like him but different.

The Formation of the Woman

Then God acts:

“So Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man… and He took one of his ribs… and Yahweh God fashioned the rib… into a woman, and He brought her to the man.”

Adam was formed from the dust. The woman was formed from the man. Neither was created out of nothing.

When Adam sees her, there’s an immediate recognition:

“This one finally is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”

After all the animals, this is the one who corresponds.

He names her “woman”—in Hebrew, ishah, taken from ish (man). Even in the language, there’s a connection that reflects her origin.

The Foundation of Marriage

The passage then gives us the foundational statement:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

This verse is picked up later in the New Testament, but even here, it establishes the pattern—leaving, cleaving, and becoming one flesh.

A Closing Reflection on Design

What we see in all of this is design. Intentional, ordered, purposeful design. Male and female, corresponding to one another, formed in a way that fits together.

When that design is rejected or redefined, it’s not a small shift. It’s a fundamental departure from what God established at the beginning. And when that happens, the results are not neutral. They lead somewhere.

This passage brings us back to the foundation—how God made man, how He made woman, and how He intended them to live together in His created order.

*Some articles on this publication or website are adapted from my recorded Bible teaching. I use transcription and editing tools (including AI-assisted editing) to convert spoken lectures into readable written form. The ideas, interpretations, and theological conclusions are my own and come directly from my teaching.

We’re in Genesis chapter 2, beginning at verse 4. This is where the text says, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven.”

As we move into this section, it’s worth noticing right away that the account feels different from Genesis 1. In chapter 1, everything is structured around the sequence of days—day one, day two, day three, and so on. But here, the narrative slows down and looks at the same creation from another angle.

That’s really the best way to understand it. It’s not a contradiction or a different story; it’s the same reality viewed from a different perspective. Just like in everyday life—something can look one way from one angle, and then from another angle you realize there’s more going on than you first thought.

So when verse 5 says, “no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet grown,” even though plants were created on day three, the writer is not undoing that earlier account. He’s focusing in, narrowing the lens, and telling the story in a way that prepares us for the creation of man.

The “Generations” of Creation

The passage opens with the phrase “these are the generations of the heavens and the earth.” That word “generations” is helpful. It doesn’t just apply to people. It refers to development, to sequence, to stages—how something unfolds.

Creation itself had a kind of progression. God created, He made, He formed, and in many cases, He separated what was already there. In Genesis 1, much of what we saw was God taking what existed and ordering it—separating light from darkness, water from dry land, waters above from waters below.

So when Genesis 2 revisits creation, it’s not starting over. It’s stepping into the process and looking more closely at certain parts of it.

The Introduction of “Yahweh God”

One of the most important shifts in this passage is the introduction of a new name for God. In Genesis 1, the name used is “Elohim.” But here, beginning in verse 4, we see “Yahweh God.”

Many English Bibles render this as “the LORD God,” with “LORD” in all capital letters. That’s not accidental. It’s signaling something specific.

In the Hebrew text, the name is represented by four letters—YHWH. There were no vowels originally written in Hebrew, only consonants. Readers knew how to pronounce the words because the language was passed down orally. But centuries later, when Hebrew was becoming less commonly spoken, scribes added vowel markings to preserve pronunciation.

Interestingly, when it came to this name—YHWH—the Jewish people chose not to pronounce it at all. They remembered the commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain, and their conclusion was that the safest way to avoid misuse was simply not to say it.

So instead, whenever they came to YHWH in the text, they would say another word: “Adonai,” which means “Lord.”

Later translators followed that same pattern. Rather than writing the name itself, they used “LORD” in all capitals. That’s why your Bible distinguishes between “Lord” and “LORD.” One is a title; the other is standing in for the personal name of God.

At some point, the vowels from “Adonai” were combined with the consonants YHWH, producing the form “Jehovah.” That’s where that familiar name comes from.

God’s Name and Its Meaning

To understand the significance of this name, we have to go to Exodus 3, where God speaks to Moses at the burning bush.

Moses asks a very practical question: “If I go to the sons of Israel and say, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me,’ and they ask, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say?”

God’s answer is striking: “I am who I am.” And then He says, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

Then He adds, “Yahweh, the God of your fathers… has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial name to all generations.”

That connection matters. The name Yahweh is closely tied to the idea of “I am.” It speaks of God’s eternal, self-existent nature. He simply is. He doesn’t become; He doesn’t depend; He doesn’t derive His being from anything else.

And He calls this His memorial name—His name to be remembered.

That raises an important thought. If God gave His name to be remembered, then replacing it everywhere with a title like “Lord” means we are remembering something different. A title describes Him, but a name identifies Him.

So when Genesis 2 says “Yahweh God,” it’s not just adding information. It’s revealing something personal. The Creator of Genesis 1 is not just a powerful being—He has a name, and He makes Himself known.

The Nature of Language and Translation

All of this also reminds us how complex translation really is. We sometimes assume that moving from one language to another is straightforward, but it isn’t.

Words don’t always map neatly from one language to another. A single word might have multiple meanings depending on context. And sometimes two different translations can both be faithful, even though they express the idea differently.

There are even cases where a sentence could legitimately be translated in more than one way—not contradicting itself, but carrying different shades of meaning. That puts a lot of responsibility on the translator.

And yet, despite those challenges, the Scriptures remain trustworthy. The process isn’t mechanical, but it is careful. God gave His word, and people have labored to preserve and communicate it.

The Creation of Man

Coming back to Genesis 2:7, we’re told that “Yahweh God formed man of the dust from the ground.”

This is different from how other parts of creation are described. Man is not simply spoken into existence in the same way. He is formed. There is a shaping, a fashioning.

And there’s even a wordplay here. The Hebrew word for “man” is closely related to the word for “ground.” So you could say God formed Adam from the adamah—the ground itself.

That tells us something about our nature. We are made from the same material as the earth. The elements that make up our bodies are the same elements found in the ground. And when we die, the body returns to that dust.

But that’s not the whole story.

The Breath of Life

The verse goes on: “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

This is what sets man apart. God doesn’t just form the body—He breathes life into it. And the result is a living soul.

That raises the question of what exactly that means. Animals are described elsewhere as having the “breath of life” as well. So there is a similarity at the biological level. But there is also something distinct about man—something tied to being made in the image of God.

The text doesn’t pause here to fully define that difference, but it clearly marks a transition. The dust becomes something more when God breathes into it.

Created from Dust, Yet More Than Dust

So man is both formed from the earth and given life directly from God. Those two truths sit side by side.

We are, in one sense, earthy. As Paul says, “the first man is of the earth, earthy.” Our bodies belong to this world, and they return to it.

But at the same time, we are not merely physical. There is something in us that came from God in a way that distinguishes us from the rest of creation.

That tension runs through the whole Bible. We are made from dust, and yet we bear the breath of life.

We’ve been moving slowly through these studies, and I hope that doesn’t trouble anyone, because when you really study Scripture, it takes time. Some things can’t be hurried. You have to sit with them, turn them over in your mind, compare passage with passage, meditate, and let the Word teach you.

That’s one reason I leave space in the notes. They’re not meant merely to follow along in class; they’re meant to encourage your own study. We need more than a Sunday lesson and a sermon each week. Those are gifts, but they’re not meant to be the whole of our feeding. I hope you are opening the Bible during the week, tracing references, thinking deeply, learning to linger over truth.

I often think of the Lord’s word to Joshua: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night…then you will make your way prosperous, and you will have good success.” That is not prosperity in the worldly sense. It is prosperity in walking with God. It is spiritual success.

That really has been behind this whole study.

From Creation’s Sabbath to Christ Our Rest

We began in Genesis, but we’ve taken something of a side road into the New Testament, and I’m content to stay on that road as long as the Lord keeps leading us there. The Old Testament gives us pictures and shadows, and the New Testament often opens those shadows and shows us what they meant.

We had been looking at the seven days of creation and especially the seventh day, the Sabbath, which God sanctified and set apart. Later Israel received the Sabbath command formally in the law, but when Christ came, again and again He collided with the Pharisees over Sabbath questions. They had wrapped God’s gift in layer after layer of regulations.

And our Lord said two things that are tremendously important.

First, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Second, He declared Himself Lord of the Sabbath.

That means the One who instituted it has authority over it.

We saw a similar principle when God once declared certain foods unclean, and later said through Peter’s vision, “What God has cleansed, no longer call unclean.” The One who made the rule has authority over the rule.

That matters when we come to the New Testament understanding of Sabbath. The ceremonial regulations concerning special days and feasts and Sabbaths were shadows. They pointed forward. Their substance is found in Christ.

And that led us into Hebrews.

“Today” — Entering Rest Now

One of the great words in Hebrews 3 and 4 is “Today.”

Not someday.

Today.

The writer is not talking about dying and going to heaven. He is speaking of a present reality believers may enter into now.

Hebrews says, “For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.”

That takes us all the way back to Genesis.

God ceased from His works, and the believer is called into a corresponding rest.

Now that doesn’t mean inactivity. It doesn’t mean we stop serving. I’m busy myself—even in retirement, maybe busier than I expected. But the issue is not activity versus inactivity. The issue is whether we are operating in self-effort or resting in God.

There is a way of living the Christian life where we are striving in our own strength, trying to produce spirituality, trying to please God through our own energy.

And Hebrews, tied together with other passages, calls those “dead works.”

That phrase has arrested me.

Dead works are not only sinful acts. They can even be religious efforts done in the energy of the flesh.

Even as believers, we know something of what Paul describes in Romans 7. There is that struggle. We desire what is right, yet how often we attempt to do what is right through ourselves rather than by dependence upon the Spirit.

And Isaiah says that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”

That can be unsettling until you understand what is being exposed. Even good things can be mixed. You can do something outwardly kind and still have the flesh tangled up in it. You might bring cookies to a neighbor, and hidden somewhere in the heart is the thought, “I hope they think well of me.” And then you realize how deeply self can creep into things.

That is why true righteousness has to be something God produces.

Christ Living His Life in Us

Several passages come together here.

Philippians says it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Hebrews says He is working in us that which is pleasing in His sight.

Paul says, “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”

Jesus says, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.”

And Galatians says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

Those verses all point in one direction. The Christian life is not mainly imitation. It is participation. It is the life of Christ being expressed through us by the Spirit. That is very different from merely trying harder.

And I want to be careful here, because people can hear that and turn it into a new kind of burden. They start analyzing everything. Was that flesh? Was that Spirit? Was this motive pure enough? And now they are laboring over the very thing meant to bring them rest.

Don’t do that. Trust Christ with this, the way you trusted Him for salvation. Live before Him. Love people. Serve Him. Walk with Him. And rest in the fact that God Himself is at work in you.

That is entering His rest.

God’s Larger Purpose from the Beginning

Step back and look again at creation.

God made a perfect world, rested on the seventh day, and placed Adam and Eve in the garden for fellowship with Himself.

Human beings were created in His image.

Sometimes I stop and think what the earth might have become had sin never entered—an earth filled with image-bearers living in perfect harmony with God and one another.

But sin marred that image. It turned humanity into enemies of God. And much of Scripture is the story of God restoring what was ruined.

Israel was called in a special way to display God’s glory, but failed repeatedly.

Then came the Second Adam. The perfect Man. The exact image of God.

Jesus Christ.

Through His death we are reconciled. And, as Romans 5 says, through His life we are saved. That is not merely something future. There is a present saving activity of Christ in His people. God now has sons and daughters scattered through a hostile world, indwelt by His Spirit.

And our calling is not merely to talk about Christ, though we do witness with words. It is also to be His presence, as it were, wherever He places us. At work. In the neighborhood. In the store. Everyday places. Displaying His character.

The Dwelling Place of God

That brought us into another astonishing truth.

Jesus told the Samaritan woman true worship is not tied to this mountain or that mountain.

Not this location or that location.

True worshipers worship in spirit and truth.

In Eden, God walked with man. Later, under the old covenant, He dwelt in the tabernacle and temple, in the Holy of Holies. But under the new covenant something remarkable has happened.

“We are the temple of the living God.” “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

We are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

Those are not just doctrinal statements to memorize. That is reality. God has always desired to dwell among His people. And in Christ, He does.

I said in class—and I mean it quite literally—when you walk through Meijer, you are a walking temple of the living God.

Think of that!

When believers gather together, we are collectively His dwelling place. God in our midst.

That should shape how we think about life.

We carry the presence of the Holy Spirit everywhere we go.

Where we go matters.

What we watch matters.

How we speak matters.

Because we do not go anywhere alone. The Spirit goes with us.

And this, too, reaches back to the beginning and forward to the end. Because what began in Eden and is realized spiritually now will one day be openly and perfectly fulfilled.

“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men…He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people.” (Revelation 21:3)

That is where this whole story is going.

In a very real sense, it has already begun.

Today we’re going to continue to look at 1 Peter 1:3-5. Here are those verses:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

I find this long sentence fascinating. We were talking about this in our men’s Bible study a couple weeks ago and we noticed that it is full of many prepositions. We joked about how we used to diagram sentences in high school. This one would be a fairly complicated sentence to diagram.

Let me break it up a little bit so that we can get at the meaning. There is a lot here. God has begotten us again. That has to do with the new birth that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about. Look at the verse to see if you can determine the motivation for God giving us a new birth. He did that because of His abundant mercy. God is a God of tremendous mercy. Mercy is receiving something that we don’t deserve, and there is no question that we don’t deserve mercy. We are great sinners — not just before we were saved, but now as well. Sometimes we focus on a few major sins that we don’t commit very often and rate ourselves pretty highly on the obedience side. But just ask yourself, “How many times today have I failed to love God with my whole heart, soul, mind, and strength? Your whole heart. And then how many times today have you failed to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself? At least for me, the numbers are staggeringly high. All of those times we failed at this, we were not acting like God. It is ungodly not to love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s why we need a savior, isn’t it. It’s of the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, Lamentations 3:22.

Let’s look at the next little phrase: to a living hope. The whole purpose of God’s giving us the new birth is so that we may have a living hope. There is real hope for the believer. My dad used to say, “It’s not hope-so hope.” Sometimes people ask if we are going to do something and we say, “I hope so.” That kind of hope is tentative and uncertain. This entire passage that we are studying over these weeks gives us rock solid hope, confidence that God is faithful to His promises and has guaranteed the outcome of our faith — the salvation of our souls (1 Peter 1:9).

God’s Word is Truth

One of the things that has been on my mind the last couple of weeks is how we handle the promises of God. We read them, we believe them, we might even memorize them—but sometimes they just sit there as facts. True facts, important facts, even encouraging facts—but still somewhat distant.

I’ve been trying to change that in my own thinking.

Instead of simply acknowledging a promise, I’ve been trying to take it in personally. When the Bible says, “God never leaves us nor forsakes us,” I want to stop and think, God never leaves me. Not just generally true—true in my life, right now. When He promises to meet every need, I want to hear that as something directed toward me, not just something I agree with in theory.

As we read Scripture, we’re not just reading religious material. We are reading the word from God. That’s what Paul commended in 1 Thessalonians 2:13—that they received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God. That’s how I want to approach passages like Psalm 33.

Seeing the World Through Psalm 33

In Psalm 33, we read statements that are easy to pass over, but they’re meant to shape the way we see reality.

“The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.”

Do I actually believe that? Does it look that way to me as I go through the day? Or do I mostly notice what’s wrong—what’s lacking, what’s frustrating, what hasn’t gone the way I wanted?

God says the earth is full—full to the brim—of His goodness.

The psalm goes on to remind us that by the word of the Lord the heavens were made. He spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast. And then it says something that I find especially encouraging: He brings the counsel of the nations to nothing.

All the plans, all the discussions, all the decisions that dominate the news—God is not threatened by any of it. He sees it all, and He rules over it all. His counsel stands forever.

That’s meant to steady us.

The Pattern of Creation

As we come back to Genesis 1, it’s helpful to review what we’ve seen. And one of the things that stands out is the structure of the six days of creation.

On day one, God creates light. Then on day four, He creates the sun, moon, and stars to govern that light.

On day two, He separates the waters and forms what the Hebrew calls the raia—the expanse or space. Then on day five, He fills those realms with birds and fish.

On day three, dry land appears, along with vegetation. And on day six, He fills the land with animals and mankind.

There’s a kind of correspondence there—day one with day four, day two with day five, day three with day six. It’s orderly, but there’s also something almost poetic about it. God is not only purposeful in what He creates; there is a structure and beauty to how He does it.

Appointed Times

When God made the sun, moon, and stars, one of their purposes was to mark what the text calls “appointed times.” The Hebrew word is moed—a word used for set meeting times.

This wasn’t just about seasons or agriculture. It also relates to the rhythm of worship—Sabbaths, feasts, gatherings. These heavenly bodies were given, in part, to structure time around meeting with God.

And it’s interesting to note that three days after their creation—on day seven—we arrive at the Sabbath, the appointed day of rest.

“Let Us Make Man”

When we come to the creation of man, we read, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.”

There’s a plurality there—“Let us… our image.” We’re hearing something of the Trinity in that statement.

And then we’re told that man is made in the image of God.

Image and Likeness

The word “image” carries the idea of a figure, a representation—even something like a statue. Not in the sense of a false god, but in the basic sense of a visible representation of something.

God made us as His image—His representatives in creation.

Then there’s the word “likeness,” which has the idea of form or pattern—something modeled after another. So we’re not just general representations; we are shaped in a way that reflects Him.

God is spirit, and we are not. We have physical bodies. But there is something about us—our nature, our capacities—that reflects Him.

The Perfect Image

In the New Testament, we’re told that Christ is the image of the invisible God.

That’s significant. Adam was made in the image of God, but he fell. The image was not lost, but it was marred. There is now sin, weakness, corruption.

Christ, however, is the perfect image. Where Adam failed, Christ did not. He is the true and flawless representation of God.

A Thought on Idols

Something that struck me recently is this: God tells His people not to make graven images. And yet, in a sense, He has already made an image—mankind.

He created the true representation. There’s no need for us to create substitutes and bow down to them. That’s a distortion of what He has already done.

Male and Female

Genesis says, “In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

That’s an important statement. The image of God is reflected in mankind as male and female. Both together are part of that design. We’ll explore that more when we come to Genesis 2, where the creation of Eve is described in more detail.

The First Commands

God then gives mankind their first instructions.

“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth.”

The intention is clear: humanity is to spread, to fill the earth. Not to remain confined, but to extend outward.

Then He says, “subdue it.”

That word can sound harsh to us, but this is before the fall. There are no weeds, no chaos in the sense we experience now. So what does it mean?

It has the idea of bringing under order—organizing, shaping, managing what God has made.

There is work to be done, even in a perfect world.

Dominion Under God

God also says that man is to have dominion. That’s a kingly term. It speaks of rule, authority.

But we need to understand this correctly. God is the King. He rules over everything. What He does here is place humanity under Him as sub-rulers—managers, stewards, representatives of His authority in creation.

You might think of it as a kind of structure: God at the top, and under Him, human beings spread across the earth, exercising rule in their appointed places.

A Living Picture

I’ve often thought about this in terms of something very practical.

When a Christian man and woman marry and start a home, they’re not just forming a household. They are establishing a place where God’s design is being lived out. In their neighborhood—maybe just a few houses down—there is now a home that reflects something different.

The way they treat one another, the way they raise their children, the way they live—it becomes a visible expression of what it means to live under God’s rule.

That’s part of what it means to bear His image.

Ordering the World

Even in the beginning, part of man’s role was to bring order.

You can imagine Adam taking what God had made—already good, already beautiful—and arranging it, shaping it, organizing it in new ways. Not correcting something broken, but developing and structuring what was there.

That’s part of subduing the earth.

The Weight of Being an Image Bearer

Every human being is made in the image of God.

Even in a fallen world, that remains true. And that has implications. It affects how we treat people, how we speak about them, how we pursue justice.

We are not free to take vengeance into our own hands. Justice is meant to reflect God’s character, not our impulses.

Learning to Rule

The New Testament tells us that believers will one day rule and reign with Christ.

And that sheds light on something else. In this life, we are learning. Even in the ordinary conflicts of life—disagreements, misunderstandings—we are being trained.

Paul rebukes believers for taking their disputes to court and asks, in effect, “Don’t you know you will judge angels?”

That’s a remarkable statement. It means that what we are doing now is preparation. This is practice.

Creation Calls Us to Praise

We ended by reading Psalm 148, which calls all of creation to praise the Lord.

The sun, the moon, the stars, the weather, the animals, the nations—everything is fulfilling His word.

Even the stormy wind does exactly what He commands.

And when you think about that, even in a world that has been affected by sin, there is still so much beauty. The earth is still full of His goodness.

That ought to move us to praise.

And as we go through our days, whatever our routines may be, the call is to take God’s word as what it truly is—the truth from God—and to live in light of it.

In our last overview we had a little science lesson.

We talked about the fact that everything is made of three basic particles — protons, neutrons, and electrons. That’s the chemist in me coming out. But it struck me years ago, even when I was teaching chemistry, that if you picture it this way, God basically had three “sacks” of things. And everything we see is made out of those three put together in different ways.

That’s amazing to me.

We went there because of Hebrews 11:3:

“By faith we understand that the worlds were formed out of things that are invisible.”

With my chemistry background, I immediately think of atomic structure. The invisible things. And yet everything we see is built from them.

On page five of your notes we reviewed a few passages. Romans 4:17 tells us that God “calls into being things that do not exist.” That’s what He did at creation. He called light into being. He calls things into existence that were not there before.

Then 2 Corinthians 4:6 reminds us that the God who spoke light into being at creation is the same God who shines the light of the gospel into our hearts. The One who said, “Let there be light,” is the One who awakens us by His Spirit through His Word.

And then Isaiah 45 — especially verse 7 — where God says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” He speaks of creating light and darkness, peace and calamity. He even names Cyrus before Cyrus knows Him. The gods of the nations are inventions. The God we serve is the One who actually does these things.

That brings us back to Genesis 1.

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Day One: Light and Separation

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Then we are told the earth was without form and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Something is about to happen. There is chaos and darkness, but God is present.

Verse 3:

“God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

He speaks. It happens.

God saw that the light was good — tōv. There’s your little Hebrew lesson for the day. If you’re doing really well, you can say tōv me’od — very good.

Then God separated the light from the darkness. He named them — Day and Night. And the evening and the morning were day one.

We talked a bit about why it says “evening and morning.” The story begins with darkness. Darkness first, then light. The Jewish day begins in the evening. And that pattern runs all the way through Scripture.

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Day Two: The Expanse

On day two God says:

“Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters.”

The Hebrews used a word — raqia — which carries the idea of something beaten out thin, like metal hammered into shape. They did not understand space the way we do. To them, it looked like a dome overhead, like a planetarium ceiling.

God says, “Expanse, be.” And it is.

This expanse separates the waters below from the waters above. Some creationists suggest there may have been a canopy of water above the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect. That would explain tropical growth found in places like northern Canada and Greenland. According to that view, the canopy collapsed during the flood. I don’t know if that’s correct, but it’s interesting.

God calls the expanse “heaven.”

Psalm 19:1 says,

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork.”

Daniel 12:3 uses the same word when it says the wise will shine like the brightness of the expanse.

Again, God speaks. It happens. And He names it.

Evening and morning, day two.

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Day Three: Land and Vegetation

On day three, God gathers the waters below into one place so dry land appears. He calls the dry land Earth and the gathered waters Seas.

Then He commands:

“Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind.”

Notice that phrase — “after their kind.” He repeats it. Plants yielding seed after their kind. trees bearing fruit after their kind.

That matters, because when you plant corn, you do not expect carrots. There is continuity. There is variation within kinds — like dogs. You can have Chihuahuas and German Shepherds and all kinds in between, but they are still dogs. What I struggle with is the idea that a fish turns into a dog. That is a different claim altogether.

The more we learn about the complexity of cells — the machinery inside them — the harder it is for me to imagine it all arising by accident. I was raised in a Christian home and trusted Christ at five. But I am more convinced now than ever that what Scripture says is true.

God commanded the earth to bring forth vegetation, and it did. The earth obeyed Him.

And God saw that it was good.

Evening and morning, day three.

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Day Four: Lights and Appointed Times

On day four, God says:

“Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens.”

These lights are for several purposes:

• To separate day and night
• For signs
• For seasons
• For days and years
• To give light on the earth

He makes the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night — and He made the stars also. He places them in the expanse to rule and to separate light from darkness.

And God saw that it was good.

Evening and morning, day four.

But here is something that fascinated me.

The word translated “seasons” is mō’ed. When I hear “seasons,” I think summer, winter, spring, fall. But mō’ed means appointed times, meetings, assemblies.

Genesis 17:21 — Isaac would be born at the appointed time.
Genesis 21:2 — Sarah conceived at the appointed time.
Exodus 13:10 — the Passover is kept at its appointed time year after year.
Exodus 27:21 — the tent of meeting. The tent of mo’ed.

The heavenly lights were placed there not only for weather cycles but for appointed gatherings. Festivals. Worship. Fellowship with God.

Israel’s calendar was governed by the sky — new moons, full moons, equinoxes. Even Easter today moves because it is tied to Passover, which is tied to the location and phases of the moon.

So when Genesis says the lights are for seasons, it may mean more than agriculture. It includes appointed times with God.

God loves fellowship with His people.

Doug mentioned Ecclesiastes 3:1:

“To everything there is a season.”

That word season again. An appointed time. A purpose.

And all of it — from atoms to stars — begins with this:

God said.

And it was so.

*Some articles on this publication or website are adapted from my recorded Bible teaching. I use transcription and editing tools (including AI-assisted editing) to convert spoken lectures into readable written form. The ideas, interpretations, and theological conclusions are my own and come directly from my teaching.

Scripture tells us that it is God that is at work in us both to will and to do of this good pleasure. Sometimes, when I’m battling with some sinful attitude or practice, it is more a problem with the desire to change than the power to actually make the change. When we pray for God’s help in such times, it seems to me we could start with asking for a change of the will. We need to be willing to be made willing.

The Great Exchange

Blog Repost — First posted January 2005

I was reading my dad’s Bible the other day and came upon some notes that he wrote related to II Cor 13:4 which says, “For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you.”

His notes are as follows:

Because of II Cor 13:4 I need to pray daily:

1. By faith I apprehend and trust in a perfect Christ and His perfect work – but I do so with an imperfect faith. I pray that God will help my unbelief. (Mark 9:24)

2. Pray in trust that God will work in you (me) both to will and to do of His good pleasure – Phil 2:13

3. As I wait in prayer before God, I need to confess the love of whatever sin I may have succumbed to as well as the fact that I have fallen.

4.  Daily I need to reaffirm my comprehensive choice, solemnly made before God to live in the NEW nature and refuse to live in the OLD.

5. Daily in prayer, I need to ask God to make real in experience the fact of Rom 6:14 “Sin shall not have dominion over you.”

6. Daily in prayer, I need to ask God to “Gospelize” and spiritualize my obedience.

7. Daily I need to plead: “Lord strengthen me mightily by thy spirit in the inner man against temptations that daily come my way.

8. Daily I should review important matters for prayer – especially those for whom I have promised to pray.

He closes with the words from the hymn Not What These Hands Have Done

Not what these hands have done can save a guilty soul
Not what this toiling flesh has borne can make the spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God.
Not all my prayers and sighs or tears can bear my awful load.

Thy work alone, oh Christ can ease the weight of sin.
Thy blood alone, O lamb of God can give me peace within.
I bless the Christ of God I rest on love divine.
And with unfaltering lip and heart I call this Savior mine.

Notes by Rev. Gerald J. Tuinstra