Man-God Built
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“Man-God Built”
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Several years ago The London Zoo posted a sign in front of their newest exhibit:
"Warning: Humans in Their Natural Environment." The exhibit featured eight Homo sapiens in a sealed enclosure adjacent to another sealed enclosure of various primates. The human "captives" were chosen from an online contest, and spent their time sunning on a rock ledge, playing board games, and waving to spectators. A signboard informed visitors about the species diet, habitat, and threats.
The goal of the exhibit, according to Zoo spokesperson Polly Wills, was to downplay the uniqueness of human beings as a species. Seeing people, among other animals, said Wills teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate.
Tom Mahoney, one of the participants in the exhibit, said “A lot of people think that humans are above other animals, but when they see humans as animals it reminds them that we're not that special.
That is what our children are being taught in the public school from the time that they are old enough to sit in a classroom and listen.
What happens when you teach and indoctrinate generations of children that they are nothing more than an evolved animal and there's no Creator they are responsible to? I will tell you what happens; you end up with a society of people who have the morals and restrain of an animal.
That's why we have 5th graders killing for a pair of shoes. That's why we have pre-teen's swapping sex partners. That's why we have high school girls having babies in the bathroom during prom, throwing the baby in the trash and going back out to dance.
What you believe about where you came from is going to impact where you're going and how you act on your way there.
Were we created by God, or did we evolve from a monkey?
The evolutionist teaches that we evolve from a lower life form; they cannot tell you where this life form came from, but that’s what they believe.
I believe we came from the only life form that is eternal in nature, and that is God!
Moses the writer of Genesis has already told us that God made man in His own Image, .
But in these verses, He is going to zoom in for a close up look at God making man, putting him in the Garden, and giving him the freedom of choice.
In these verses we discover three facts:
1. You are Wonderfully Made by God!
V:7-“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Up until this point God had created everything by just speaking it into begin, God said and it was so. We find that phrase over and over in chapter one, nowhere else in creation do you find God putting His hands on something! But when God made man, he personal got his hands dirty, this tells us about the dignity, value and worth of man. You are handcrafted by God; you are special and unique to God, you are one of a kind.
Every person is handcrafted by God; just as God formed Adam, God formed you.
Psalm 146:14-“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knows right well.
The picture we are given in V:7, is God personally forming man from the dust of the ground. The word “formed” is the word “to mold” it means the act of creation was by careful design, and intentionality. God is the potter who perfectly works out his designs.
Man was not an afterthought to God; man is not the end result of a long line of animals. No! Man is the master piece of God’s creation!
When the bible says that creation declares the glory of God, that means not only the heavens and the earth, but it means man also!
The first man Adam was molded by God, out of the dust of the ground.
I heard about a little boy that asked his Sunday school teacher, where did we come from? She said, Dust. He said, well, where are we going? She said, back to Dust. The next day the little boy was up in his room, and he came running out screaming for his mother. He said, Mamma, come upstairs quick, I just looked under my bed and somebody is either coming or going.
When the bible says that man came from dust, that is not only biblically true, it is scientifically true!
Research scientists from NASA Ames research center reported that every element in the human body is found in dirt.
If you give the scientists time, they'll catch up with the Bible. Whenever a scientist has a good word to say about the Bible, that doesn't give me more confidence in the Bible; it gives me a little more confidence in the scientist.
The elements of man came from the dirt.
Man is made up of 58 pounds of oxygen, 50 quarts of water, 2 ounces of salt, 3 pounds of calcium, 24 pounds of carbon, some Chlorine, phosphorus, fat, iron, sulfur and glycerin.
We could go to the store and bring all these things home and put them on the kitchen table, it is your do-it-yourself kit for a human body. Good luck!
The Bible tells us V:7- "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." God took that dust, that water, those elements and formed and molded them into a man. The amazing human body testifies to the wisdom and power of God.
The human body is a miracle of God:
I learned a lot about skin during Tess’s surgeries .I learned that your skin is your biggest organ, and that one square inch of skin; that’s the size of a postage stamp, that one square inch of skin has 3 million cells. And every cell is more complicated than New York City. And in that little piece of skin the size of a postage stamp would be a yard of blood vessels, 4 yards of nerves, 100 sweat glands, 15 oil glands, 25 nerve endings in a piece of skin the size of a postage stamp. God designed your skin and without it you cannot live!
Think about your heart:
Make a fist, that is about the size of your heart, and it weighs about a pound. Yet it is the strongest muscle in your body. Your heart beats 72 times a minute, 40 million times a year. It will push almost 1 million gallons of blood through the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. And your blood carries oxygen and nutrients to your body and your white blood cells fight off infection. The bible says the life of the flesh is in the blood.
Think about your eye:
The human eye is amazing and complex; there are over one million optic nerves that connected the eye to the brain. And your eye is superior to any camera lens that has ever been made; your pupils adjust automatically to bring into focus things that are near or things that are far. When your eye takes a picture, it takes it in color and develops it instantaneously! Your eye has the ability to transmit to your brain over 1.5 million messages at the same time.
You think that just happened? Not on your life!
-“The hearing ear, and the Seeing Eye, the Lord hath made even both of them”
We don’t have time to talk about the ear, I did a little reading on the ear it is an architectural wonder. No man has ever produced a microphone that can duplicate the human ear.
The eardrum is capable of handling over 73,000 vibrations per second and the liquid in the inner ear picks up those vibrations and turns them into sounds your brain understands.
And your brain weighing in at about 3 pounds, is a computer far above any computer every built by man! Your brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. Your brain designed by God is the control center for your body; it sends messages that travel faster than 300 hundreds miles an hour along the nervous system to the entire body.
I was putting wood in my woodstove the other morning when it was so cold, and I got my finger between the wood and the door of the stove; and when my finger got mashed by brain said, Praise the Lord that hurt!!
The body that God formed out of the earth is fearfully and wonderfully made, it is no accident!
When God had finished forming man we are told V:7-“God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”
The picture here is absolutely wonderful; it is a picture of God face to face with Adam, and breathing into his nose His breath. God blew into Adam His life!! Human life is sacred because it comes from God!! Man is made in the image of God; He is body, soul and spirit, unlike the animals.
Man’s body will die, but his soul that came from God will never die! Man is immortal!
Paul told us in , that our bodies are just the house we live in on this earth; the real you lives in the house we see, your body.
You should take care of your body, if came from God, it needs to last you until God is done with you on this earth.
But your eternal, never dying soul is of greater value than your body, please today; take care of your soul by giving if to Jesus!!
We discover: You are wonderfully made by God.
We discover a second fact:
2. You are Strategically Placed by God!
V:6-14.
God planted a garden in Eden and placed Adam in that garden for a specific purpose. Adam’s home was beautiful and fruitful, there were all kinds of fruit trees, and a river in the garden that went out and became 4 rivers.
Nobody knows where the Garden of Eden was, many people have speculated. When Christopher Columbus passed the mouth of the Orinoco River in South America, he said that its waters came from the Garden of Eden, but he also thought he was on the east coast of Asia.
The word Eden means- delight. The Garden of Eden is called the “garden of the Lord” in .
Adam walked and talked with God on a daily basis, he was in paradise.
God who gives us life cares about where we live, and how we live.
,-“ God that made the world and all things in it…hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation”
God determined the time and place that Adam would live. God has put me here in Springfield and he put you here in Springfield.
There was a need for Adam in the Garden, so God put him there to work, and protect that Garden. The garden would be a better place because Adam was there. Make the place God has put you a better place.
There is no better place on the face of the earth than the place God has put you. You say God didn’t put me here; I put myself here, now I want out of here. Wrong!
You are not where you are by accident!
God determine the time of your life and where you would live your life before you were even born.
God had a need for Adam in that Garden, and God has a need for you were you are; stop looking over the fence at someone else’s garden!
Go to work in the Garden God has put you in, start taking care of and watching over the relationship of your marriage, children, job, ministry, church that God has put you in.
Don’t spend your life, wishing your life was like someone else’s, put your heart and soul into the life God has given to you!!
You are Strategically Placed by God, where you are right now is going to impact the rest of your life!
I was born in Alabama, moved to Jax, Florida when I was 9; Tess was born in California and moved to Jax. Florida when she was 9.
My dad was called to Pastor a Church 5 miles from the trailer park Tess and he family were living in. My dad bought a bus and started a bus ministry and picked up Tess and her 2 sister and brought them to church. That little church, Bayard Baptist was Paradise for me; I met Jesus and Tess there!!
God moved my family to Springfield, Mo, in December 2000, Tess and I were 38 years old, Jared was 16, Jordan was 12, and Bethany was 8.
God moved us to Pastor Broadway Baptist Church, what an amazing journey it has been. I look back over these almost 15 years and see the hand of God at work in my family’s life, I am so thankful that God put us here. Jared and Bethany were saved here, all three of my kids found their spouses here, and all of them are serving God here!
How important it is to be in the place God puts you, and stay there work and enjoy the fruit of your labors.
Turn your marriage into a beautiful garden, work in your family and see your children blossom and bloom. Till the ground that God has given you in your business.
There is a third fact we discover in these verses:
3. You are Personally Responsible to God!
We are told back in V:9-“The tree of Life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Those two trees stood side by side in the very center of the garden. Life was at the center of the garden, and eating fruit from “the tree of life” would result in continued life. After the fall Adam was excluded from the garden 3:22-“lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever”
Adam was personally responsible to God, he was told V:16-17-“ And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you shalt surely die.
God first words to Adam were words of permission, you can eat of every tree in this garden….we do not know how many trees there were in the garden, by I imagine there were a lot of trees to eat from. Adam could eat until his heart was content, he could even eat of the tree of life! Everything he could possible want or need was made available to him.
But then came the word of prohibition, V:17-“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”
Adam becomes personally responsible to God; he was put into a positon of choice, chose to obey God, or chose to disobey God.
Standing there in the garden side by side were the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God in his great love and wisdom tells Adam “Do this” and “don’t do this”.
God made man with a free will, to love and obey or to disobey.
They are given a daily opportunity to choose wisdom or foolishness, God or Satan, life or death. The temptation to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a temptation to have wisdom apart from God. To do things my way instead of God’s way!
God tells Adam don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is the one tree that you are not to eat of, trust me, obey me; don’t eat of that tree.
Adam take God’s word for it; don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, eat of the tree of life. God says to Adam, don’t disobey me, and don’t live independent from me!
There are certain things you don’t want to have intimate knowledge of. You don’t need to know what a hangover feels like. Take somebody else’s word for it. It’s no good. You don’t need to know what being a drug addict is like, and how difficult that makes your life and the life of others around you. Take someone else’s word for it.
That’s what we were supposed to do with God. God says this is good, this is bad. Trust me. We are supposed to trust God in faith.
God is like a loving parent who tells his children; do this, don’t do this, trust me on this.
When Jordan was about 2 years old he loved electric sockets. We put the little covers on them to keep him from sticking things into them; he would pull them off and we would catch him sticking
Pop- sickles into the socket; we would tell him NO-NO!! But he would try it again. Well one day he struck the keys into the socket; Jared was right there watching him. We it shocked him, and burn his little fingers; and I said, how did that work out for you!! I said, daddy is sorry that happened to you, but that is what I have been telling you. I told you no, because I didn’t want this happen to you.
Our heavenly father tells us NO on certain things because He doesn’t want us to hurt ourselves; He loves you and wants what’s best for you!!
Don’t be the child that says to God; don’t tell me what to do!
God says don’t eat of that tree, eat of this tree, don’t do want I have told you not to do, it will kill you!
You can say, I am free, I’ve been to college, I have a good job, and a family, and I can do what I want. Yes you can, but it you eat of the tree of disobedience to God it will kill you!!
God has been so good to you, and given you so many things to enjoy; He gave Adam a whole garden full of trees, fruit and His own presence.
But He tells Adam, this tree of the knowledge of good and evil is off limits; do not eat of this tree.
And Adam was personally responsible to God for the decision that he would make!
Every day, Adam would walk by these two trees, and he would need to choose life or death, obedience or disobedience, wisdom or foolishness. He would have to make that choice multiple times every day; and so do you and I.
Don’t say I obeyed God yesterday, last week, last year, No, you need to obey God today, tomorrow!
Walk by adultery today and tomorrow, and the next day; walk by pornography today, tomorrow and the next day. Walk by drugs and alcohol today, tomorrow, and the next day. Walk by Gossip today, tomorrow, and the next day. Whatever the temptation is that’s hanging on the tree in the middle of the garden of your life, you must walk by it, and not eat of eat!!
God has given us the freedom to choose, we are free moral agents, we can eat of the tree of death- disobedience, or we can eat of the tree of life-obedience to God!
And today these two trees still face each one of us, the tree of death, disobedience to God; and the tree of Life, the Cross.
Think about the contrast of these to trees:
· One tree bought death; the other tree bought life.
The tree of sin and disobedience brings death, and separation from God. The Cross of Christ brings life, abundant life, and eternal life!
· One tree bought an exit from the garden of God, the other tree kept you in the garden.
The tree of sin and disobedience shuts you out of paradise. The Cross of Jesus gets you into paradise.
In the gospel of Luke there was a thief that was dying on a cross next to Jesus, he look at Jesus in faith and said, Lord remember when you come into your kingdom. Jesus said to him:
-“Today you will be with me in paradise.
Adam ate of the first tree, became a thief, and was driven from paradise. The thief on the cross ate of the second tree and was invited in to paradise.
One tree had the power to put a thief out of paradise. The other tree had the power to bring a thief into paradise.
This morning which tree is it going to be for you; the tree of sin and disobedience to God; or the tree of life, the cross of Jesus?
It is your choice; you are personally responsible to God!!