Creation: Adam and Eve

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Studying God’s Word

Introduction

We have been studying the biblical account of the creation of the universe for a few weeks now. We have taken a big overview and then zoomed in on a few specific aspects. We have already mentioned the creation of the plants and animals in detail and the distinct creation of man, but we are going to continue looking at the creation of man today in more detail.

Of all of his creation, God has chosen to communicate and have a relationship with man. God has created man in his image and has given him dominion over all the earthly creation. And he has called man to be a steward of those resources.

Adam & Eve

Let’s read Genesis 2:4–25 together and then look closely at the text to help us understand God’s special creation of man and woman. Have someone read the passage aloud, possibly splitting the passage at verse 15 for two readers.

• What type of literature is this passage? It is historical narrative, just as verse 4 states. There is a short poetic section in verse 23.
• What point in history is this passage describing? The setting is the creation week, stretching from day three when God had not yet created plants (verse 5) to day six when God created man (v. 7).
• How was the first man created? God made him from the dust of the ground, and God breathed life into his nostrils (v. 7).
• How did the garden come to be, and what was in it? God planted the garden and placed the man in it, along with trees, including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
• What was the man’s role in the garden? He was to work and keep it (v. 15).
• What command did God give the man regarding the trees? He could eat of every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (v.16).
• What did God call “not good”? That the man was alone (v. 18).
• What new information is given in verse 19? It is the first time the man is called Adam.
• What role did Adam fulfill with respect to the animals? He named them.
• Which animals did Adam name? Livestock, birds of the heavens, and the beasts of the field (v. 20). Point out that Adam only named a selection of the animals, not all the animals God had created.
• What did Adam not find among the animals? A helper fit for him.
• How was the woman created? God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, and then God took one of Adam’s ribs to form the woman.
• When God presented the woman to Adam, how did he respond? He recognized that she was a part of him and called her “Woman” because she was taken out of man (v. 23).
• What pattern is described in verse 24? Just as Adam and Woman were joined together, having come from one flesh, so is a man joined to his wife as one flesh in marriage.
• How does verse 25 contrast with our understanding of nakedness today? They were both naked and unashamed—today nakedness is a mark of shame that reminds us of sin.
• What does the passage tell us about God? We see that God is the Creator of everything and that he loves his creation. Specifically, God wanted Adam to have a helper, and he demonstrated his love by providing that helper for him. Refer to Love on the Attributes of God poster.

Discover the Truth

Now that we have asked questions about the text, let’s continue to look at the importance of this passage for understanding who man is and how this runs contrary to an evolutionary view of man.

Many people, including some professing Christians, believe that man is a product of an evolutionary process which has occurred over billions of years. Some believe God guided this process to produce the world we see, and others believe it has been a natural process free from his influence.

• What are some of the problems you see in trying to reconcile those views with what we just read in Genesis 2? Discuss various answers, including the idea that man was created from the dust and not from another animal and that the woman was created from the man and did not evolve alongside him.

  Remember that it is always a good practice to look to other passages of Scripture to make sure that we understand a specific text properly. Let’s look at a few passages from the New Testament that relate to this topic.

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  Someone read 1 Corinthians 11:7–9 for us. What does this passage tell us about the creation of the man and woman? The woman was created from man and for man.

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  Turn to 1 Corinthians 15 and look at verses 47–49. What do we learn there? Adam was the first man and was made from dust.

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  And what about 1 Timothy 2:13? What does it confirm about Genesis 2? Adam was formed before Eve.

  Some might suggest that Genesis 2 can be understood as a type of metaphor or analogy and that it should not be interpreted in a literal sense. However, if we reinterpret this Old Testament passage, we must also reinterpret these New Testament passages in order to be consistent. Doing so would have a major impact on how we understand the doctrine of the roles of men and women in marriage. We will look at this more closely in a few minutes.

  The Bible is clear—Adam and Eve were created by special, supernatural acts of God, not by an evolutionary process. This is another example of God’s omnipotence and authority over his creation.

  Some have suggested that God breathed the spirit into an early, spiritless hominid and that this is when man came to be in the image of God. One very popular writer suggests that God may have taken two of these hominids that had evolved and erased their memory of their former animal life, and then they became Adam and Eve. But you can see that this idea clearly does not come from the text, but from his imagination.

  Even more alarming are those who have accepted the evolutionary view to such an extent that they teach that Adam and Eve didn’t even have to be real people—they were merely allegorical or mythical characters to tell a story about creation. These ideas undermine the authority of God’s Word.

  Fossils of hominids like “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis) and others reveal that these creatures were simply extinct apes, not on their way to becoming humans over millions of years. Despite their scientific classifications, other remains of individuals like the Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis) and the “hobbit” skeletons from Asia ( Homo floresiensis) are representative of the great variety within the human ( Homo sapiens) population. Starting from a biblical perspective, an ape-like creature does not change into a human. The record of Genesis 1 and 2 makes that abundantly clear as God supernaturally created the first man and woman—the ancestors of every human that has ever lived.

  If we fail to place God’s Word as the authority over man’s opinions, we will fall into the trap of believing these arguments, which run counter to God’s description of his creation.

Marriage

I mentioned a few minutes ago that we were going to take a closer look at marriage. We are going to fast forward about 4,000 years to the time when Jesus was ministering to people on the earth.

Turn to Mark 10 and let’s read verses 1–9 together. Have someone read the passage aloud.

• • Matthew 19:1–9 relates the same account.
  Who is interacting in this passage? Jesus is interacting with the Pharisees who have questioned him about marriage as he was teaching a multitude.
• What do the Pharisees want to know? They are looking for Jesus’ understanding of divorce.
• Was divorce allowed according to Moses? Yes.
• Why was divorce allowed? It was allowed because of the hardness of men’s hearts.
• Was divorce part of God’s original plan for his creation? No, the two were to be joined as one flesh and to not be separated.
• What passages does Jesus quote? Verse 6 is quoting Genesis 1:27 and verses 7 and 8 are quoting Genesis 2:24. Point out to the students that the quoted text is probably in italics or distinguished in some way in their Bibles. There is probably also a footnote that will identify the Old Testament references in verses 6–8.
• What does verse 6 tell us about the timing of the creation of the male and female? They were created “from the beginning of creation” (v. 6).
• Would we be justified in calling the union of Adam and Eve the first marriage? Yes, it is the model for marriage according to Jesus. God presented the woman to Adam, and Jesus says that God has joined them and that they should not be separated.

Discover the Truth

• If we were to write a biblical definition for marriage based on this passage, what criteria would it include? One man united to one woman for life is the biblical definition of marriage. Anything outside of this would not be part of God’s original design for marriage.
• How has society tried to change this definition over the millennia? Beginning early in history, Lamech had multiple wives (Genesis 4:19), and that practice has continued throughout history. There have also been other perversions of marriage, including homosexuality. It is also important to remember that fornication (sex before marriage) and adultery are perversions of God’s intent for human sexuality and are ways that marriage is undermined.

  All of these are outside of the way God created the world to function—all are sin in the eyes of a holy God. We often tend to focus on homosexuality as especially egregious, but passages like Galatians 5:19–21 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 set that sin alongside others, including sexual immorality, adultery, drunkenness, greed, stealing, and anger.

• But what if we had an evolutionary worldview? How would we define marriage? There would be no standard by which to say marriage should follow one certain pattern. Marriage could be defined in many different ways.

  If humans evolved from animals, then there is really no reason that marriage should be restricted to one man and one woman. It is only because of what God has revealed to us in Scripture that we can claim with authority that marriage is one man with one woman for life. Once again, we must remember that the Bible is our standard, not tradition or worldly philosophies (Colossians 2:8–10).

  Another important aspect of this passage comes as Jesus describes Adam and Eve as being married “from the beginning of creation.” He powerfully refutes old-earth views of mankind and the creation of the earth. His statement makes no sense if Adam and Eve were present only 14 billion years after the beginning of creation. This passage indicates that Christ understood that Adam and Eve were present from the beginning, not at the end of an evolutionary process.

Two Creation Accounts? Activity

Have the students work in small groups to answer the challenges presented in their Student Guides, and then discuss the answers.

If time is short, divide the class into two groups and assign one of the challenges to each group, and then have them share their explanations with one another.

Has any of you ever heard someone claim that the accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 contradict one another? Allow for responses.

That is a common claim from skeptics who deny the Bible’s truthfulness. In your Student Guide you will see two challenges from skeptics. Use your Bibles, especially Genesis 1 and 2, to come up with a reasonable explanation for these apparent problems, and we will discuss them in a few minutes.

Connect to the Truth

Challenge: Genesis 1 says that the land animals were created before mankind, but Genesis 2:19 says God formed the animals and brought them to Adam, who had already been created, and then formed Eve later. (Hint: note that the ESV, NIV, and Tyndale translate the passage “God had formed every beast,” while some other translations such as NASB and NKJV say, “the Lord God formed every beast.”)

In general, Genesis 1 is a chronological description of the creation week and Genesis 2 is a close-up on the events of day six. So Genesis 2, starting at verse 4, is actually the beginning of a detailed history of Adam’s family, which extends through chapter 4.

• How did you answer the first challenge? Genesis 2:19 is just looking back to earlier in day six when God had formed the animals and is presenting them before Adam to be named—there is no contradiction.

  Challenge: Adam could not have named millions of species of animals in just part of one day.

• How could you respond to the second challenge? Looking carefully at the text, we see that Adam did not name every species of animal on the planet. The skeptic is assuming that there were the same number and kinds of animals in Adam’s day. Genesis 2:20 says that Adam named the livestock, the birds of the heavens, and every beast of the field, not all animals on the planet, so the task was much smaller than the skeptic mistakenly assumes. Also, Adam would likely have simply named the kinds of animals, not every individual animal or variety within the kinds like we have today.

  How refreshing to realize that a little thought applied to such challenges can clear up any confusion. There will always be challenges from both those who are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and those who are sincerely seeking to understand what the Bible teaches. Answering such challenges using Scripture as the authority demonstrates our trust in God’s Word and its truthfulness. And since we know that God has given us this trustworthy record, it won’t contain any real contradictions.

Application

To summarize, we have looked at God’s intimate involvement in the creation of Adam and Woman. (She won’t be known as Eve until after the fall.) Despite the claims of skeptics, Genesis 1 and 2 are not conflicting accounts of the creation week. Rather, Genesis 2 fills in some of the details of the events of day six, and the significance of the order of those events is clear from other passages of Scripture that point to these events.

Contrary to the evolutionary view of the origin of man, God made man in his image and specially created man and woman to complete one another as one flesh. The woman is a suitable helper for the man, having been formed from his side by a loving Creator. People have been corrupting this God-given order since the entrance of sin into the world.

The remedy for sin has been in place since before the foundation of the world, and even those who are trapped in sins of sexuality—fornication, adultery, homosexuality, etc.—can come to Christ and receive the forgiveness he purchased on the cross. God’s loving care is demonstrated both in the creation of man and woman, and in the redemption of mankind. These connections remind us of the crucial importance of Genesis as the foundational book of the Bible. Apart from what God has revealed to us, we would not know what he intended for marriage. We would be relying on the empty philosophies and traditions of men rather than the unchanging Word of God. Thanks be to God for his clear words to us.

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  What forms of “marriage” do we see in society today, and what is the biblical error in those forms of relationships? In the West, we see male and female homosexual “marriage” being legalized, and polygamous relationships are not being prosecuted despite their illegal status in most areas. Divorce is very common, even among professed Christians. All of these are outside the biblical prescription of one man with one woman for life.
• How should we relate to people we know who are living in relationships that are sinful (e.g., adultery, fornication, homosexuality)? We need to lovingly show them their sin by looking to God’s plan for sex within marriage and encourage them to repent. We have been saved from our sin, and we can share that hope with them. Christ’s work is sufficient to deliver them from any sins they have committed. God’s mercy is available to all.
• Many people, Christians included, seek to make an argument for biblical marriage based on statistics of “healthy and happy” families. Is this an adequate argument to make? No, the surveys can be twisted and stretched to show just about anything the researchers want to show. If we simply use dueling surveys, we will never reach the hearts and minds of people. To reach hearts and minds requires the truth of God’s Word—we must make our arguments based on the truth of Scripture first. It is the gospel message that is the power of God for salvation, not statistical analysis.
• When discussing the state of marriage in the West, should we say that we desire a return to traditional marriage or biblical marriage? If all we seek is a return to tradition, we have failed to ground our thinking on God’s Word. Referring to biblical marriage places the authority on God’s Word rather than tradition or history of man. We must also guard ourselves against thinking that “reclaiming marriage” will bring about a change in the culture, or that changing the culture should be our goal.
• How can you help Christians who believe in the evolution of mankind to see the error of thinking that Adam and Eve evolved from animal precursors? Open the Bible and show the clear description of the creation of the man from dust and the woman from his rib. To accept evolution, you must reject that this is a clear explanation of how God made mankind and turn Genesis 1–2 into an allegory or a fictional account. Point to the danger of undermining the source of sin in the world and the need for the Savior by denying the biblical explanation of sin, especially the connection between the first Adam and the last Adam (Romans 5:12).
• Would you do anything differently in the previous situation if you were speaking to a skeptic instead of a Christian? We should not be afraid to open the Bible and proclaim the truth of God’s Word. The process is the same. We can still discuss the evidences and how the various fossil hominids are not scientifically or biblically consistent explanations, but we cannot neglect using God’s Word as we proclaim the truth. Only the truths of God’s Word and conviction of the Holy Spirit are going to bring about changed hearts and minds.
• Abortion and euthanasia are important topics in the world we live in. How does the truth from Genesis 1 and 2 help us to have an answer for how to deal with these situations? Because every person is made in the image of God, every life has value. We cannot let our thinking be based on man’s ideas of value for society or on the idea that man is just a highly evolved animal that has no special value. Looking to God’s Word, we rightly understand issues like these.
• If you ever hear from a skeptic that Genesis 1 and 2 contradict one another, how can you respond to that claim? Genesis 2 is a close-up of the creation of Adam and Eve, not a separate account that contradicts the first.

Group Prayer

Be sure to pray with your students and take requests if time allows.

• Praise God that we can reflect a small part of his character to those around us.
• Ask God for wisdom and boldness in proclaiming the truths of his Word.
• Thank God for his care and love demonstrated in creating mankind.