Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #26 of Genesis, chapter 1 and we are going to read Genesis 1:29-31:

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

I will stop reading there. In our last study we were looking at the “herb bearing seed” for the second time because we had also looked at it back in verse 11. We saw that the “herb bearing seed” points to the Word of God. The Word of God falls like the rain that produces the grass of the field and is food for the cattle, beasts and creeping things of the earth. These creatures, like the beasts and the fowl, typify mankind, so it is a picture of the Gospel.

In verse 29, God was speaking to Adam and we spent some time discussing how Eve was created “in” Adam on day six. We should point out that this was unlike the creation of any of the other creatures. When God made the rabbit, He made the rabbit male and female. When God made a dog, He made the dog male and female. When He made all the other creatures God made them male and female to begin with and God could have done this with mankind, but He did not. He made the “man” and this broke from the pattern of all the other creatures. Yes, we know that man is special and above all the other creatures God created in the six days of creation, but that does not answer why God would do it this way. Why did He not make Adam and Eve, male and female, like He had made all the other creatures? Why not form Adam of the dust of the ground and form Eve from the dust of the ground at exactly the same time? Then you would have mankind. Instead, God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and He counts Eve as being in Adam at the time He made Adam. Then sometime later He made Eve. We do not know how long it was, but it was after the seventh day because God rested on the seventh day. On the sixth day He had Adam name all the creatures. Then at some point, He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and from the rib of Adam God formed the woman. If you do not look for the spiritual meaning of things, it makes no sense at all. If you just look at it literally as an act of creation without a deeper spiritual meaning, it was a pretty ineffective way of creating to create the man and to put off the creation of the woman to a later point.

Of course, God had the power and ability to create both of them at the same instant, but for the purpose of the Gospel God is demonstrating that the deeper spiritual meaning of the historical events is extremely important to God and His Word. God paints pictures and in order to paint this picture He creates “man” first as a great type of Christ and later comes the “woman,” although the woman was counted as being “in Adam” at the time of his creation. God called their name “Adam.” God is the father and Adam is declared to be the son of God and, as I mentioned before, that ties into the glorious event that took place at the foundation of the world when the Lord Jesus Christ bore the sins of His people, died for those sins and rose from the dead and declared to be the Son of God. Do you see the analogy?

Think of Adam being formed from the dust of the ground. When man dies, where does he go? Even today when people die, we “return to the dust,” so the dust identifies with death. For Adam, the son of God, to be formed from the dust of the ground is as though he was dead and came to life to be called the son of God and within him lies the woman. She had not been formed yet. God will cause Adam to fall into a deep sleep (another picture of death) and He will form the woman from his rib, but now the woman is simply counted as being “in” the man, just as God’s elect were counted as being “in” Christ at the point of the world’s foundation. God saw the Lord Jesus and He saw the bride of Christ in Him. Then later in history, the woman came to be and she was formed to become the bride of the man. The entire history of the world has been about the formation of the woman for the man, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a very important thing to God because later God would say that it was not good that the man should be alone. After God made everything, He made the same declaration that He had made after creating the other aspects of creation and He says in Genesis 1:31:

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good…

Everything God had made was good. It was pure, holy, right, just and without sin for the six days of creation. For 144 hours all was good and all would remain good until the serpent tempted Eve, which we get to in Genesis, chapter 3. However, amazingly, God said in chapter two that it was not good that the man be alone and He made the woman. Now God did not mean that there was anything sinful about it, but that statement does stand out: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” And it is not good that Christ should not have a bride or that He should not become one with His people. God’s salvation program is a good thing. It is a beautiful thing that He has formed the woman to be a help meet and to be His wife and become one with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is good that there was this union between the Creator and His people, created again in His image through salvation.

But, again, it said, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” We can find examples in many places in the Bible where God makes reference to His creation. For example, it says in Psalm 95:5:

The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

It says in Psalm 96:5:

For all the gods of the nations are idols: but JEHOVAH made the heavens.

It says in Psalm 100:3:

Know ye that JEHOVAH he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Also, it says in Psalm 104:24:

O JEHOVAH, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

We could read verse, after verse, after verse, where God refers to His creation. He made the sea. He made the dry land. He made the heavens. He made man. And all that He made was “good” in the early stages of His creative work. Six days He worked and now He has made the crowning jewel of His creation, mankind. He has formed a creature that was created in His own image and likeness. Certainly, God was pleased with this creature and man was a “good” creature. Is it not nice to say that? It is, is it not? But when we read all the Bible we know about the fall of man and how the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things. We know that there is none righteous, no not one. There is none good, no not one, according to Romans, chapter 3, and all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We can read Romans, chapter 1 with its ugly list of sins or we can read Matthew, chapter 15 where God speaks of another ugly list of things that flow forth from the heart of man. It is all negative. It is all terrible, ugly, filthy, dirty, rotten sin.

Of course, we live in a world where all of that is much in evidence. It is really amazing that people discount the Bible just because the Bible tells us the truth about man, unlike any other religious writing. The Bible describes man as desperately wicked and filthy in thought, word and deed. The Bible describes a fallen creature and a rebel in which there is no goodness at all. When we live our lives in this world the evidence of this truth is everywhere. It is just everywhere. But the secular outlook and the things declared by other religions say that man is “basically good.” The philosophy of man tells of the “goodness” of man. It lifts up man and exalts man. That is what all other religions tend to do. It wants man to perform good works in order to get to heaven, which must mean there is some goodness within man. That is the way of the world, but it is contrary to the Bible to say that man has some inherent goodness within him. That even goes contrary to everything we see in the world all around us on a daily basis. This is an enormous testimony from the world to the truthfulness of the Bible and that God does know our “inward parts.” As God said before the flood, in Genesis, chapter 6: “And JEHOVAH saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” That is accurate, is it not? It is a very correct observation and it fits into all the evidence – the Biblical evidence and the evidence in our own lives. If we are honest enough to look at ourselves, what do we see? Do we see a “good” person in us, apart from God making us anew? When we look back on our lives, do we see someone “good” or do we see a fallen Adam? Do we see someone that has rebelled against God and gone his own way? Well, if we are honest, we know that is what our human nature is like. It is what everyone in our family is like and what our neighbors are like and everyone we see or hear about in this world. It applies to all people, so, yes, it is a relief and a pleasure to read of this first week of creation: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

It is almost like a “vacation of mind and spirit” to travel back in time to the very beginning in the year 11,013BC and see this good world. There were no hurricanes that week. There were no tidal waves. There were no earthquakes. There were no “thorns and thistles.” If you walked through the Garden of Eden you would not get poison ivy. There would be nothing to sting you. There would be no danger from animal attacks. A lion may come up to you like a little kitten and you could pet him. You could continue on your stroll and there would be an elephant, bear or tiger or any animal that would offer some form of danger to us today and there would be no danger. There would be no fear of them and they would have no fear of you. We would not have seen the animals chasing one another to kill each other for food. They would have gotten along very well with one another. We can read in a couple of places where God gives us a glimpse of the proper order, like Isaiah 11:6-9:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of JEHOVAH, as the waters cover the sea.

Back in that first week, these creatures were walking around freely. They had the protection of God and they had the blessing of God upon them and upon the ground and the entire creation. God provided food for all. There was no anxiety or worry or crying out of fear that there would not be food for the young of any creature. God created them with the trust that He would provide for their needs. Fear, worry, anxiety and doubt are all products of sin. There was none of that. It was a world that trusted God. It was a creation that trusted God. The creatures trusted God, including man. Adam trusted God. God made it all in six days. For six days God worked in creation and ever since then the number “six” identifies with work in the Bible. God established the work week here in the first week of the world’s history. Six days He worked: “And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

God did “good” work. His work was wonderful and beautiful. God is the Creator and He creates things that are “good.” He never creates evil things or bad things. As far as we know, God has been actively working from eternity past in creating other creations that are outside of this creation. They are distinct creations and different from this one. They are all “good” because that is how God creates things, but for this one particular creation (this world), God created that special creature mankind in order to set up a program that would display and show forth His glorious attributes for all principalities and powers to see. It would be evidence of the greatness of God’s love and mercy for all to see, as God would work a program different from anything else He had ever done in all eternity.