Genesis Chapter 2 Account Of Creation Story – Part 2 of 3

Hello and welcome to Social Media Ministries, my name is Spencer Coffman. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you are returning with us, this is the second part in a three-part sermon series. We are talking about the stories of creation, how there are two different stories of creation written at different times and they are both in the beginning of the Bible. So we are getting into that, what they are, and why that is.

If this is your first time tuning in, then keep watching, also go back and watch last week’s message. There will be a card up here on the top if you are watching on YouTube, otherwise, there will be a link in the description below. As well and in addition, please hit the bell icon below and the subscribe button, so that next week when the sermon comes out you can be alerted and notified when the message comes out, so you can keep watching and finish the whole sermon series to get all the knowledge.

We are talking about Genesis and how there are two different stories of creation in the Bible. Now last week spoke about how even though there are different stories and many people can use that as a point to contradict each other and say that it invalidates creation, then there may be proponents of evolution or atheism or something else, you can use this knowledge to defend the faith, you can take up some apologetics. Learn about this and know what you are talking about so that when they come at you with that attack, you know exactly what to do and what to say. Even if you haven’t prepared your defense, know that if you know this material, the Holy Spirit will speak for you. It will give you words to say, God will not let you fail.

So with that in mind, let’s dive into Genesis chapter two. There are two stories of creation, Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 2, and Genesis chapter 2 is the older of the stories, older as in chronologically, it came before but then later on in time a new story was written and placed before the original first book in the Bible. Why would they do this? Well, we are going to talk about that next week, so stay tuned for that.

Right now if you have your Bibles and you are in a place where you can open them and read along and follow along, I encourage you to do so, open them up to Genesis chapter two. Now if you are driving or if you are engaged in something, maybe you are at the gym or wherever don’t worry, I will read you the entire chapter so you will know exactly what we are talking about. We are going to go through it point by point, we are going to dissect this and we are going to get into what really is behind all of this, so you know exactly what to do if someone questions you about this.

Now if you are not going to follow along, I really really really hope that you will get your Bible out later sometime, read this story perhaps while you are watching this message again, to go through it with me piece by piece. Also, I really hope you share this with someone else, encourage them to watch it, and then you guys can talk about it.

All of these sermons will be online, they will be archived, you will be able to play them back again and again, so use this as a study tool and a method and go over it, because the more you go over something the more you will internalize it and then be able to externalize it when questioned or asked or attacked.

So let’s dive into it. For starters, according to a lot of scholars and historians, Genesis chapter 2 is considered to be a J document, the letter J. Why is it a J document? What does this J mean? J is a letter code used to date old ancient documents. What does the J mean? J stands for Jehovah. It is what they called God during this time period.

Now of course God’s name is Yahweh, but the J document is Jehovah because when it was written in translation they wrote with the J, Jehovah. These other documents are also corresponding to the time period and the action of God that they used in that time. We will come to that again next week when we talk about Genesis chapter 1 being a certain letter code.

Now Genesis 2 was written around the same time as the rest of the Book of Genesis, the majority of the Book of Genesis let’s say time period because obviously, Genesis goes through hundreds of years of events, but when it was written this creation document was written about the same time, even though the events that took place spanned over hundreds of years.

All right, so the original account of creation begins in Genesis chapter 2 verse 4. We are going to start reading there. I am going to read through the whole thing, then we are going to go through and unpack it verse by verse.

All right 2:4, ‘This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created’. If you can follow along, I encourage you to do so, if you have a different translation don’t worry, if you have any questions comment below. Here we go, ‘When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.’ Capital L O R D, this is Yahweh, another point we will come back to, Yahweh was a Hebrew name for God, that is the original name. Remember Moses and God, he says, well who should I tell them that sent me, I am or Yahweh is who sent you, that is who it is, so Yahweh, Hebrew name.

All right, we are going to continue on, we are going to read through the whole thing. ‘And no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

‘Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east in Eden and there he put the man he had formed, and the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

‘A river watering the garden flowed from Eden, from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is Pison, it winds through the entire land of Havilah where there is gold, the gold of the land is good, bdellium and onyx are also there. The name of the second river is the Gihon, it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris, it runs along the east side of Assyria and the fourth river is the Euphrates.

‘The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it and the LORD God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.

‘The LORD God said, it is not good for man to be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him. Now the LORD God formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field. But for Adam, no suitable helper was found.

‘So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs, closed up the place with flesh, then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man and the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.’

All right, so here we have the story of creation. According to this account of creation, we are going to get into two different types, this is an anthropocentric type of story. Anthro meaning anthropology or the study of man, it is how humans came to populate the earth. Anthropomorphic, anthropology, so anthropocentric centers on anthropology, you get the idea, okay so that is what this account of creation is. According to it, God created the earth and everything in one day.

Here in the beginning it says, the heavens and earth were completed in all their vast array. So it was either already completed when God came in or He had created it already, and it was sitting empty and then He started working.

‘This is the account of the heavens and earth when they were created,’ so the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. So He made them. When? We don’t know if He did it right then or if they were already made. We will get to that first. The first thing that happens, springs and streams came up from the ground. That is in Genesis 2:6, ‘Because no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground.’

Here we go, verse 6, streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground that was made, then God created man from the dust of the ground. This is a physical action that is happening, God is doing something. This is showing us how God worked to create His creation. The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, then another physical action, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being. Then God planted a garden with all kinds of trees and put the man there.

Here we have in verse number 8, ‘Planted a garden in the east then he put the man that he had formed.’ Verse 9 he started making all the trees grow out of the ground, ‘Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.’ Now we go to the next part because this is where it talks about the river in verses 10 all the way through 14. Then we have verse 15 where God is talking to the man, putting him in charge of everything and the next thing we hear or read about God creating are the animals.

He makes all these animals and he asks Adam or the man, Adam is man translated in the original text, so it is animals being created in verse number 19. If we go to 19 it says, ‘Now the LORD God formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air, he brought them to the man to see what he would name them and whatever the man called them, that is what their name would be.’

He did this for two reasons. Number one Adam was in charge, the man was in charge, this was his domain, God created man, he did a physical action, created man, and then breathed in him the breath of life. Then he started creating all these animals, molding them out of the ground, creating these animals, giving them life as well, but not the breath of life. That he gave man, so there is a difference here.

Man is ruler over the animals. Now man meaning mankind, not just man itself. At this time there weren’t women yet, so it is literally the man, the man is ruler over all of this. As a part of giving man that authority God said, here are all these animals that I am creating, name them, whatever you call them that shall be their name. That is the first reason, to help establish authority for man on earth. Now there are many more reasons and we may not even know them all, because who can know what God knows? We can’t, we can’t, we would probably literally explode.

What’s next? Well the other reason, and this is a very important point, is because Adam then saw that all of these animals, they were together with other animals, because you can see here the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. That is verse number 20, the second half of verse number 20 says, but for Adam, no suitable helper was found.

So Adam went through all of the animals, naming them and he is like, wait a minute, I got wildebeests, buffalo, birds, this, that, nothing like me and so then the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping, He took one of his ribs and He created woman. So then God brought Eve to Adam, Adam gave her a name as well and called her woman, because it was from man that she was taken.

This is the first account of creation in its entirety. What do we have here? What is the point of all this? Well, this is the original beginning of the Bible, it is a J document, it is old meaning that is when they called God Jehovah. Now you notice throughout this it says LORD God, capital L O R D God, Yahweh.

This is Hebrew written text, just like the rest of Genesis. Who wrote all of this is very speculated. Pretty much proven that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, so he would have written this. Now he didn’t write the first chapter of Genesis because that came later, and then was placed before the first book of Genesis. So he wrote this, about how Yahweh God made the earth and all the heavens and what order they were made.

The first part was the earth and everything, the world was created, then springs and streams came up, then God created man, a physical action, He made this, He planted a garden, He caused these things to grow, trees, shrubs, all of the stuff, pleasing to the eye, then He put the man there. How did He put the man there? Pick him up with a little claw machine and drop him in the middle of the garden, like on some kind of video game? No, He probably moved him with His spirit.

He caused the man to go there, He created this beautiful place, then He made all these animals, had the man name all the animals, this shows that man was the original ruler of the world, this place here was created for us. Later on, we see how the serpent, the crafty serpent which was satan or the devil who was thrown out of heaven, tricks Adam and Eve into giving up their dominion of the earth to him, so that is how we know that satan rules this world, it is not our place, we are in a heavenly place. There are other messages on that, other scriptures on that, that all support that, you can check out some of our other sermons to see that as well.

So He made animals, Adam named them all, then lastly He made woman. He did this so that Adam would appreciate woman and how important it was for him to have a companion. He is like, wait a minute, I have no one, all these animals have something, where is my helper?

So then woman was made and he cherished her for that reason, this is why it says at the end, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh.’ They are to be together, inseparable forever, they are a true duo, a partnership that progresses forward, an unstoppable force when they work together. That is why it is important, marriage is a very important thing, between man and woman and when they come together, what God has put together let not mankind separate, because if it is divinely put together, it is meant to be together that way forever.

This is the story of Genesis, the original creation story in the Bible. Read it, understand it, you can even do some research on it if you want, comment below with any questions, in addition, click the bell icon and the subscribe button to be notified next week when we talk about the next story of creation which is Genesis chapter 1. That one is a little bit more detailed, a little bit more fun if you will, I like it better which is probably why it was put at the first part of the Bible, no that is not why, it is not because I like it, but it was put in the beginning because it is more inspiring and awesome and memorable. So we will talk about that next week.

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus thank you so much for giving us the knowledge and desire to examine these different documents of text and to learn about them. Please help everyone internalize it. Lord, I know that it can be kind of confusing and the presentation of this document is a little murky from myself, but I ask that people would be able to see through that and get to the heart of the matter and that they would be inspired to do their own research and look into this and read these documents and really truly understand them, so that they will know and that they will be able to give an accounting to anyone who asks them about their faith or about this particular aspect of the Bible and that you would speak through them and for them, in a clear and concise manner, and that as a result of that more and more people would come to know you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thanks again for tuning in, for sticking with me, this was part two of a three-part series. Tune in next week to hear the conclusion. God bless.