My intention in these messages is not to teach us from Genesis 1 and 2. Instead, my intention is to use Genesis 1 and 2 as an illustration to instruct us in how to read the Bible properly. First, we need to get the facts from the record of the Bible. Today the Bible has been translated into more than one thousand languages and has become accessible for nearly everyone to read and receive its facts.
Furthermore, learning the Hebrew and Greek languages, the original languages with which the Bible was written, can help us to better understand the real meaning of the Bible. The translation of the Bible from the original languages is not an easy task. A popular Chinese translation translates the word spirit, the human spirit, as “spirit-soul” or “spirit-heart.” This means that the translators thought that man’s spirit, soul, and heart are the same thing. Such wrong translation leads people astray from the proper understanding of the Bible. This is why we must find out the real meaning of the facts according to Hebrew and Greek. Many Bible scholars and theological teachers understand the biblical languages, but they also make the mistake of saying that spirit and soul are synonyms. Paul, however, said in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that God sanctifies us in our spirit and soul and body. The three nouns with two conjunctions strongly show that man is of three parts.
We have seen that we first need to get the facts from the Bible, but then we need to go on to receive revelation. Once we receive the revelation, we need to go further to see the vision. In these few messages, I have the burden to present illustrations of how to do this. Now let us consider the illustration from Genesis 2 of receiving revelation and vision through revelation.
Genesis 2 tells us that God ordained the seventh day to be the Sabbath as a repose (vv. 1-3). The Sabbath is a separating repose between God’s creation work of six days and the eighth day.
Genesis 2:7 shows that God created man in three parts with a body made with the dust, a spirit made with God’s breath of life for man to receive God, and a soul as the issue of the spirit meeting with the body.
God put man into a garden in front of the tree of life, and by the side of the tree of life there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was prohibited by God to be eaten by man (vv. 8-9, 15-17).
From the place where the tree of life was, a river flowed out into four heads, and at the flow there were gold, bdellium, and onyx stone (vv. 10-14).
God brought all the created things to man to see what man would call them, so Adam named all the living things. None of the living creatures created by God was qualified to be a mate to match man as his wife (vv. 18-20).
Jehovah caused man to sleep and took one of his ribs with which He built a wife to match man to be one body with man (vv. 21-25).
These are the facts of chapter two, but what do they mean? Why was there a repose, a Sabbath? Why is man’s spirit not mentioned in the account of God’s creation before the Sabbath? Genesis 1 says that God created man in His own image and after His own likeness, but it is not until Genesis 2, after the mentioning of the Sabbath, that man’s spirit is mentioned.
Home | First | Prev | Next