When was the last time you turned up at church and heard your minister (or whatever you happen to call him) teaching about the creation story? If you are anything like me it was back in Sunday school and it wasn’t your minister at all it was your Sunday school teacher who simply read you the story and then gave you pictures of Adam and Eve hiding behind a bush to colour in. I suppose then it won’t surprise you when I tell you that the Genesis story is one of the least taught in our churches today. This doesn’t bother most people we all know the story, and after all it’s a pretty straightforward story isn’t it? Or is it?
Did you also happen to know that the majority of Bible believing Christians today actually believe that the story of creation in Genesis is only a representation of the actual event written down so that the people of the day could get an idea of how life started and does not actually factually represent how God created the world?
Many believe that God used the evolutionary process taught in our schools to create mankind over a period of thousands of years, they support this using the passage in Psalm 90:4 that says that one day to God is like a thousand years to us. They also believe that Adam and Eve are simply examples of early man i.e. they were just one couple among many roaming the earth at the time.
You may be wondering at this point why it should matter whether we think the story of creation is a representation of what actually happened or a factual recounting of the actual Events. Does it really matter how long it took God to create the universe or whether or not Adam and Eve were in fact the only two people in the beginning or of there were others that just didn’t get included in the story.
If you are interested in the science of the creation there are several good books available for you to read. You can also find some good websites on the subject (try www.answersingenesis.org). I am not going to make this a science lesson simply because I am not a scientist and I would simply confuse you if I tried to teach you science. I would however like to look into why it is important to know the truth about the creation story.
Genesis means first things, it tells the story of how everything began, and in particular the beginning of God’s plan of redemption for all mankind. It is the very beginning of sin and the foundation for our need as a human race for a saviour. I believe it is important to understand the events of Genesis because if we do not fully understand the events of Genesis then we can never fully understand the sacrifice Jesus made for us on the cross at Calvary.
Let me start by saying that I believe the creation story in Genesis is a factual representation of Events as they took place. I believe that Adam and Eve were the first people God created and he created all mankind through them, making them ancestors to every person who has ever or will ever exist. I also believe that God created the universe in six actual days and then rested on the seventh, not over a period of thousands of years, not even in six thousand years.
Let’s start with Adam and Eve. I want to begin by looking at what would have happened in the story of Adam and Eve if they had just been one couple of many on the earth at the time.
Let’s assume for this story that the world was sparsely populated with early humans and Adam and Eve were for whatever reason chosen by God to tend the Garden of Eden for him. We know that God told Adam that he was allowed to eat the fruit of any tree within the garden except the one in the centre of the garden aka the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. His warning to Adam was that if he ever ate from the tree he would surely die. We know that Satan tricked Eve into eating the fruit of the tree and then Eve took the fruit to Adam and he ate it also. At this point God gets angry and kicks Adam and Eve and the serpent out of the garden and curses the serpent, Eve and on Adams behalf the ground (Genesis 3:14 – 19). So after Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden they lose all the perks they had from being the chosen tenders of the garden, like the ability to meet with God in the cool of the evening and are forced to rejoin society and make their living just as everyone else does, they have children, they have grandchildren, and great grandchildren and they live to the ripe old age of 1000 years and then they die.
Ok so what is so bad about this version of the story?
This is where we need to look deeper into the story of creation to understand the significance of the events of the fall. Genesis 1:28 says “…and God said to them, ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’”. God gave mankind authority over the earth.
What happened when Adam and Eve sinned is that they forfeited that authority. And the worst part is they forfeited it to Satan, who was the one who tricked them into eating the fruit in the first place. Look at Matthew 4:8, Satan takes Jesus to a high place, shows him all the world and tells him that if he bows down and worships him, he would give it all to him, which is exactly what Jesus came for in the first place isn’t it. Basically Satan was saying to Jesus that if he worshiped him he would give him everything he came for and Jesus could avoid having to go through the suffering of the cross. Of course Jesus knew his tricks and didn’t fall for it as Adam and Eve had done. But the point is Satan offered God the world, how could Satan do that if the world was not his to give? The reason Satan was able to make this offer to Jesus was because he did have the authority to give it to him, that authority was given to him at the fall.
We looked earlier at Genesis 1:28 which is the passage in which God gives authority over the earth to Mankind, but look at the verse before it where it establishes exactly who it is that God is talking to at the time. Genesis 1:27- 28 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them….” In this passage God was addressing mankind, not specifically Adam and Eve, the passage says God made Man in his own image, he did this by making Adam and Eve yes, but the authority was given to mankind not specifically to an individual. If Adam and Eve had been just one of many couples roaming the earth at the time, then once they had sinned the authority that was given to them on behalf of mankind would have passed to someone else not to Satan, Satan is not human he is a fallen angel therefore the only way the authority that was given to mankind would pass to him is if it was forfeited by all mankind, which would have been the case if Adam and Eve were the only ones on the face of the planet at the time.
Now look at the curse. The bible makes it very clear that we are all born into a sinful nature Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:10, Romans 8:3, but God created us in his own image and God is not sinful Genesis 1:31 says “ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day”. So how did all of mankind go from being very good to being sinful? Through the disobedience of Adam and Eve of course. This however, could not have happened if Adam and Eve had not been the only people on the earth at the time. Romans 5:12 says “...sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men...”
When God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he gave them a warning he said “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”. What did he mean by that? This is also related to how Satan tempted Eve with the fruit, he said “You will not surely die” Genesis 3:4 and in fact they did not physically die otherwise we could not be here today. So what did God mean when he told them they would die if they ate the fruit? I think he meant that their souls would die (be disconnected from God). Look at John 3:3, 6 Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and he says that unless we are born again we cannot see the kingdom of heaven. Now look at his explanation of born again in verse 6 “That which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of Spirit is spirit”. Before man became sinful we were made up of two parts one flesh and one spirit, in fact we are still made up of two parts only now we are born into the flesh, in order to be born of the spirit we must be born again into the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
To understand this we must first understand what sin is. Basically sin disconnects us from God. God is perfect and because of his perfection sin cannot abide in him, therefore in order for us to abide in him we must be sin free. God is spirit, therefore to abide in him our spirit must abide in him. Since we are born into a sinful nature our spirit is unable to abide in God therefore we are unable to abide in God. This is why Jesus died for us, so that by his sacrifice we have the opportunity to be born again into the death and resurrection of Jesus. By his sacrifice he paid the price for the punishment of our sin, a price that we could never pay, so that by being born into his sacrifice we are able to be wiped clean from our sin enabling our spirit to abide in God (this is how our spirit lives). This is what the bible means when it says born of spirit, at this point our spirit is born into God.
This brings us to the question of how can all mankind suffer from the sins of only two people. Well if Adam and Eve were just two of many people on the earth then it is in fact not possible. God does not punish you for your neighbour’s sin. But if Adam and Eve were the first two and the only people on the planet and through them all man has come into being then it is very possible, God can and does punish people for the sins of their ancestors. Exodus 20:5 “…I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me”, Exodus 34:7 “Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation", and Leviticus 26:40 “But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers”.
Don’t have a stress attack now because you think you have to repent for all the sins committed by your family over the generations before you were born and don’t stress out about the sins you think you may have passed on to your own children, not all sins are generational. Also take note of the end of the passage in Exodus 20:5 “...of those who hate me”.
If you want me to go into generational sin I can do that in a different study, but the point that I am trying to make here is that the only way mankind could go from being very good to being sinful by the acts of two individuals is if those two individuals are the only two individuals on the earth at the time and the punishment from the sin gets passed down through the generations to everyone else.
Having said all that if you want to know the main reason I believe that the record of creation in Genesis is a record of the full reality of the situation, it is because I believe what God says. There is only one thing that God cannot do and that is lie. Exodus 20:11 “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, ...” Out of the very mouth of God himself, he said it therefore I believe it.
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