Now for a minute look at Genesis 3:19. Part of the curse on man is that he is going to die. And when he dies, he will: “Return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” You come from dust; you shall return to dust. Reminds me of the little boy who looked under the bed and saw a whole lot of dust, and said to his mom: Quick, mom, somebody’s comin’ or goin’. Now in Verse 23 again it says: “The Lord God sent him” — Verse 23 of Chapter 3, “The Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.” Listen: It’s repeated enough times that anybody who says man developed out of a series of hominoid mutations is flatly denying the clear statement of Scripture; that God created man out of elements that are in the dust. I say: What does this men? Well, the smallest particles of the earth or the basic chemical elements are nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, calcium. We know those components. They make up everything. They make up the dust, and they make us up as well. We are made out of the same basic chemical elements. The atoms that compose dirt are like the atoms that compose our bodies and everything else that exists. We are all made out of the same stuff. That is why in 1st Corinthians 15, I think it’s Verse 47, it says: “The first man is of the earth, earthy.” You know, you look at a rock and you say well, that’s certainly — that’s an inanimate thing. Am I made of the same components as that rock? The answer is yes. Modern science will verify that you are. So God used some basic substantial chemical material and He made man; the same way He made dirt and rocks, out of the same components. No evolution at all.
And then it says: “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” Now, that’s an anthropomorphic picture. That’s a vivid picture. You see God, and He’s made Adam, and He’s made him out of dirt, and he is this — he is just this physical form. And then God, as it were, puts his mouth — and it’s anthropomorphic because God is a spirit — and he blows into his “nostrils the breath of life.” That’s the imagery. This is to convey the thought that though man had all the physical apparatus, all the organs for life, the immeasurable reality of life is something that’s not really part of those physical components. There is a transcendent reality of life that only God can give, and it’s an immeasurable thing. It’s an immeasurable thing. God then blew into him life, and started the breathing apparatus moving; the heart pumping, the blood circulating, and all of the bodily organs moving in their symbiotic harmony of life. It’s “the breath of life,” he calls it, “the breath of life.” Animals have the breath of life. Over in Chapter 7 at Verse 21 and 22 it talks about: “Birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms on the earth, and all mankind; and of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life.”
So God literally blew life into everything that lives; everything that is animated. Breath is “ruach.” It’s the same word as “wind.” It is the same word as “spirit.” But only into man, although he breathed life into all living creatures, only into man is God breathing life that is “in His own image.” “And man,” end of Verse 7, at that moment “became a living being.” Became a “nephesh,” became a soul. God breathed in him the immaterial part. “Nephesh,” I think in the King James, is translated by 21 or 22 different English words, but it’s always the immaterial part, the inner person, the soul, the spirit. And God literally took that form, that physical form made out of chemical components, and breathed into it life, so that man became “nephesh;” a life like other living things, but much higher, because it was life “in the image of God.” And so 1st Corinthians 15:45 says: “The first man, Adam,” was made “a living soul.”
Folks, there’s no evolution here. There’s no time here. There’s no process. There’s no mutating. There’s no survival of the fittest. There was no pre-Adamic man of any kind. There is no pre-human man. There is no transitional man. And I’m telling you: I am constantly amazed and I suppose amused at the bizarre, unfounded, confused machinations of evolution that have created nothing but an inexplicable, irrational, unprovable, chaotic complex of tangled schemes to explain what God said in one Verse. One Verse. That’s the creation of man.
Now next time we are going to talk about the location of man, but that’s all for tonight. Now, I told you; you’re going to have to think with me on that one.
Let’s pray. Father, it’s so wonderful to come to grips with the reality of what the Word is saying; to get down into the text and really grasp it. How thrilling it is to see all that you have said and how it’s unfolded so wonderfully, when we look deeply into your word. Father, we are blessed, so greatly blessed that we, of all people on the face of the earth, will someday understand what it’s like to live in a paradise, what it’s like to live in a world without sin, a perfect paradise regained, the glories of eternal heaven. Father, we can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like when there’s no sin, no curse, and only delight and joy and fulfillment. Just the way it was, only even greater when You first created man. How sad we are that sin came. How glad we are that a Savior came to save sinners. And we praise You, and we thank You. Amen.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
