Now, where does the creation-evolution debate come in? It comes in because, in the beginning, God created, and there you go, it comes right in. However, we do have to remember, as we go through the book of Genesis, it was written to an audience of Jewish people, and do you remember when it was written to them? What big event in their life was about to happen? They're about to enter the Promised Land. Now what sort of challenges are they about to face as they go into the promised land? Okay, there's a lot of people there, okay? So there's a lot of enemies, there's a lot of hostile situations. This is a land that they haven't been in for about 400 years, you know, and so some things have changed, all right? So that's part of it. What else are they gonna find in the land? Other gods. Okay? They are going to be challenged because they're gonna go into a land where, if you know anything about the worship of some of these false gods, it was, the Bible uses the term abominable for a reason. It was horrible. This wasn't just, you know, oh, we're gonna set up a tree and bow down. No, like this was human sacrifice. This was bad, bad stuff, all right? Now I think we all understand that the Jewish people had a tendency to fall into that trap over and over and over. Now here's what we're going into. Because as you read the creation account, God is drawing attention to a few things about himself. What are some of the things, what are some of the characteristics of God that he's drawing attention to in the creation account? If you were to start, so to speak, writing a biography of God, and you were to use the book of Genesis to do it, what would be some character traits of God? What would be some attributes of God that you would pull out of specifically this creation account, but we can get elsewhere as well? Like what are some character traits, Frankie? That he is almighty and all powerful. Okay, he's almighty, he's all powerful, okay? Now, as we get into this character trait of God, We call it omnipotent. We use that term. One thing we have to understand is God can't do just anything. I know how that sounds. When I say it like that, you're like, hold on. What are some things that God cannot do? He can't lie. He can't sin. What are some other things God cannot do? Yeah, you can't do anything but fail. All right, but that's a good point. We have to understand, because you've got guys, I have had the displeasure of arguing with atheists before, and I have had the time where they will bring up like, oh, can God create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it? Ah. They think that's a brilliant argument. It really isn't. Here's why that's a stupid argument. God can't create something that's a contradiction. Like, so for instance, if you are married, are you a bachelor? No, probably not. So can you create a married bachelor? No, because those terms don't mean the same thing. All right, can you make a four-sided triangle? No, because our term for a three-sided figure is a triangle. Our term for a four-sided figure is a square. And so to say an object's so heavy, that he can't lift it, that's a contradiction. It just doesn't make any, like the question itself is nonsensical. And so when we talk about God being omnipotent, when we talk about God being all powerful, we have to understand God can do anything that he wants to as long as it's in his character. As long as it's in his character to do it, he can do it. So he's not gonna create a contradiction. He's not going to cause sin. He's not going to lie. So there are limits to what God can do. And in fact, God will use that illustration throughout where he says, like, I have put a limit on myself. I have bound myself with an oath that I will do this. What is God doing in that situation? He is limiting himself to say, I cannot do otherwise. So when he goes through, so you'll see with Abraham, he will go through, and there was this tradition of what was called cutting a covenant, where they would cut an animal in half, you'd pass through the pieces of the animal, and it would be the idea of let this happen to us if we break this covenant. And you'll notice that God, he cuts a covenant with himself. He doesn't cut a covenant with Abraham. He doesn't make Abraham pass through as if they're even anywhere close to being equal. He just goes, I'm going to do this, and I'm making a vow with myself to say, I will keep my word. In fact, as you go throughout the rest of the Bible, you'll see God do this as well, where he makes promises to David. And he says, I will keep this covenant. And then what do you notice as you go through Chronicles and Samuel and all these other, what does God keep doing? He keeps referencing the promise he made to David and said, the whole reason I'm not wiping you off the face of this planet is because I made a promise to David. And I am going to keep that promise, though you don't deserve me keeping that promise. And so I think it's important to understand when we say God can do anything, We all know what we mean, but the specific, like we've gotta be careful, because God won't lie. God's not gonna cause you to sin. There's certain things like that, that there are limits. And so again, that's the first character trait of God that we are gonna draw out of Genesis, is God is all powerful. He can do whatever he chooses to do, all right? So you can summarize it like that. What are some other character traits of God that you can pull out of Genesis 1? If you were writing a biography, if you're putting together the character traits of God, we've got the attribute that he is all-powerful, he's almighty, okay? That one's pretty much in spades. What are some other characteristics of God? He's just, all right? And so as you go through, specifically as you go through Genesis, it's gonna talk about God's justice, it's gonna talk about he's not going to do things flippantly, all right? And in fact, he pulls his punches a lot. There are judgments that God could have laid out, there are things God could have done, and he chooses to restrain that a lot. And so again, you'll see it where, I mean, the Garden of Eden, they literally had one rule, the one thing that they were told to do, and they couldn't do it. It was like, you don't accidentally stumble into a tree that is put in a very obvious place and accidentally eat the fruit. It's not an accident. God set up this thing to say, do you trust me? And he sets up the tree in an obvious spot, middle of the garden, so it wasn't like, there's a hidden tree out there in the middle of the woods somewhere. All the fruit's yours, but there's one tree with a special fruit you're not allowed to eat. Good luck. No, like he took that tree and he plopped it in the middle of the garden and he pointed it out and he said, just so you know, you can have anything else. Don't eat that fruit. And again, if you argue with atheists, there's like, well, why did God put it in the middle of the garden? Why didn't God put it up on top of a mountain somewhere? And again, it's God saying, just asking a simple question, do you trust me? I remember I had a manager I worked with when we worked at the escape room. And he needed to know whether he could trust the people who worked for him. And so he said, you know what, every now and then I would leave a $5 bill just sitting on a counter just to see what someone would do. And it was his way of just kind of proving a point. And sometimes it's proving it to the manager. Sometimes it's proving it to the worker. But the idea, because the Bible says that every man is going to declare his own goodness. Everyone is gonna say, I'm reliable, I'm trustworthy, I'm whatever. But when push comes to shove and you're tested, that's when you prove what you're made of. And so what God did is God did the $5 bill test where he set a $5 bill out and said, don't take it. And then he just stood back and he waited. And he set the tree, and I believe that's why he set it right there in the middle of the garden, to say, you can't confuse this with any other tree. You can't play ignorant, you can't pretend, oops, didn't know it was that tree. And he gave a very specific way that you knew you broke it. Because again, none of us have accidentally tripped and eaten a piece of fruit. You might have accidentally tripped and broken something. You might have accidentally tripped and hit someone. Those type of things happen by accident. But eating something is a very specific action, especially when the object's in the middle of a clear, this is a very obvious trespass. And so God sets it up and says, do you trust me or not? And you'll notice, how did Satan trick him? What was the appeal that Satan went for? You'll be as gods. And he called into questions, really, is God's goodness? Has God given you enough? And he's like, oh, God's trying to hold stuff back from you. And he's like, well, it's an attractive piece of fruit. You might as well go for it. And it'll make you wise. You'll know the difference between right and wrong. You don't need God to tell you that. You'll know. I mean, we live in a culture where the knowledge of right and wrong is pretty backwards. Again, we'll make a slight discussion of it this morning. But there was an assassination attempt yesterday. I don't know if you guys follow the news. I was following it pretty much from the moment it happened. I was on Twitter kind of watching the trends. It was an amazing thing to watch, because the morality swung from didn't happen, was fake, it was a BB gun, which I've shot enough BB guns to be like, that is ridiculous. But it went from that type of attitude toward you had one job, man, and you missed. Whoa. Hold on. You're celebrating the idea that someone was just shot at. The morality of that, whoever it is, the morality of that is, whoa. But think about what we celebrate in this country. Think about the things that we in this country go after. and are happy about and we make parades about. Like just think about the absolute abominations that we celebrate in this country. That type of thing, Satan's appeal is you will know good and evil. You'll be able to tell yourself what's good and bad. Don't you dare throw your judgment on me. So I think it's interesting because God is a God of justice. God is a God of righteousness. He's a powerful God. I think the other attribute that goes in with this is he's a patient God. He's kinder to us than we deserve. Let's just put it that way. So those are some of the character traits. But again, the justice of God demanded that he keep his word. He said, in the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely die. And what do you start seeing from that moment on is death comes into the world. And it's not just like an instant death. It's the process of death begins. And the Bible says that's why death will then pass on all men, because we've all followed in their footsteps. Now, let me make a little aside here before we keep talking about the character of God. Remember, the ancient Jewish context for the book of Genesis really has nothing to do with the creation-evolution debate. Now, I like the debate enough that I am going to talk about it. But just understand, the whole creation-evolution argument isn't the point of this early part of Genesis. It's teaching the Jewish people about their God. It's teaching them about the origin of sin, and marriage, and death, and it's teaching them about a lot of those truths. It's giving them their background. But this is one of the reasons why I pretty much wholeheartedly reject what we call macroevolution, and I'll explain those terms in a future lesson. But the idea of evolution, let me ask you this question, which comes first, death or humanity? In the mainline theory of evolution, which comes first, death or humanity in the timeline? Death, clearly. You've got millions of years of things killing each other, and these proto-humans coming up out of wherever they came from, and they're killing each other. And so basically, you have the idea in evolution, by the time the first humans pop up, and they're considered modern humans, there are mountains of dead bodies underneath them. You know what I mean? Death isn't human's fault in evolution. Death is just a natural product of life being life. Now in the creation account, which comes first, humans or death? Humans. So what you have, and there's a lot of other things we could look at as well, this is just a side note as we're on this topic. Humanity came first. God looks at humanity, God looks at his creation, and he says it's very good. Why? Because it was as he intended it to be. Now, he didn't say it was perfect, okay? Because that term perfect would be very hard to define, you know, because nothing's 100% perfect, it's well-balanced, it's as it should be, okay? We'll get into that in the future. But God looks at his creation and he says, it is good, it is good, it is good, and then he concludes with, it is very good. It's good. But you notice he says all that before death comes into the world. And so what do you have at the beginning? You have no death, very good. Death comes into the world and then you have the rest of the Bible and then the revelation ends with there'll be no more death. Death is the last enemy that's defeated and it's done away with and now it's good again. So when we talk about this idea of evolution, and you have a lot of well-meaning Christians who are trying to take the millions of years, potentially billions of years of evolutionary process, and they're trying to shoehorn that into the Bible by literally between Genesis 1 and 2. So in Genesis 1, when it says, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, take a few million year old breath there because there's a gap, and then you start, and the earth was without form and void. And you're like, huh? Because they're like, well, God doesn't create anything void. This just means empty. He hasn't put anything in it yet. But they'll try to shoehorn in potentially millions of years with other animals like humans. They'll try to stick everything in. And then, like I said, there's well-meaning Christians. I do not think for a moment that they're unbelievers. They're well-meaning, but they start looking and they're like, well, this day could mean millions of years in between these days, and they just, this is the first day he steps in and does something, and then millions of years, and then he takes another day in, and he does something again, and millions of years, but again, the argument is death. Death comes upon all men because of sin. So either you make the case that there were literally no humans ever, ever, ever, all the way up through, and so for millions of years, there was death among just the animal kingdom, and then mankind came on, and theoretically, he wouldn't have died until he sinned, and then God says, oh, well, the death passes to you too. I've heard people make that argument, that death only came upon man, and there was death before. Again, I ask you this question. Who was the original audience? What would they have understood? What does the rest of the Bible have to say about these topics? And so again, we've looked at some characteristics of God. We looked at God's power. We looked at God's almighty nature. We've looked at God's justice. What are some other aspects of God that we can pull out of this passage, specifically creation? Yeah, he's very creative and intelligent. It feels silly to say it like that, because you're like, you know, yeah, Einstein was kind of smart, you know, a little bit. You know, like, that's what I feel like I'm saying. But when you talk about God, like, I don't know if you've ever delved into, like, the fine-tuning of the universe, or the specific details. Like, if you've ever hopped in a boat, you know, and you've used an outboard motor to get yourself around a lake, You understand that outboard motor is a rather complicated system. It's got the driveshaft, and the propeller, and all these casings, and all that. It's crazy. There are little single-celled organisms that you can't even see without a microscope, and they have one of those built into the outer layer of their cell to move them around the cell. It's ridiculous. And it's all made of just little parts, and it's got bushings, and all those things like you'd expect to see in an outboard motor. And it's just all driven internally. So God has built little miniature creatures with an outboard motor called a flagella. And you're like, what on earth? And he's built these little creatures with little hairs that will let them swim through your bodily liquids. And it's just crazy to watch these things move their way around. And these are things so small that it takes microscopes, really powerful ones, to see them. But God's like, yeah, I'm just going to bury those inside of you. And if they get into the wrong spot, they're not going to be pleasant. But they're just these little swimmers just moving around, doing their thing. So have fun. But those are the types of things where you're like, why on earth? I don't know if you've ever watched some of these animals just go at it, the feathers and just some of the other things that animals do. You're like, that is just fascinating. One of the ones, I didn't believe it when I first learned about it. There's a whole field of science that has kind of really blossomed in the last decade. It's called epigenetics. Have any of you heard of epigenetics before? OK, so some of you. So epigenetics, so in your body, you have genes. And so as you pass your genetic code onto your children, it takes the mom's genes and the dad's genes and sews them together and you get, I'm just kidding, but it puts them together and you get the baby. Well, they have started to realize that these genes can have little chunks of genetic code that are bound up that don't actually manifest. And so you could be passing on these genes to your children, and they've got these like, compare it to like a time bomb, and it's got this little time bomb inside that says, if this situation is right, we're gonna unravel this genetic code and manifest it. And what they've found is, so people who come from areas where there's famines or things like that, they may have a special little marker in their genetic code that will help them survive better because it helps them retain food and nutrients. Now, we understand in a famine environment, that's really great. But in an environment like here in America, if you retain your food nutrients, you tend to be a little larger. And so that is an epigenetic trait that is built in from your grandmother. And so someone made the joke. They said there was the old saying, you are what you eat. But literally, if you look at the genetic code, you are what your grandmother ate. Because what they've done, you can look it up. It's called the agouti mouse, which is just an amazing name. But the agouti mouse is a fat-looking little mouse. I mean, that's, for lack of a better term, it's just this pudgy little mouse. And if you look up the picture of the agouti mouse, when this gene isn't turned on, actually, I can't remember. I can't remember if the gene is turned on or off by default. But there's a presence of a gene that will make it obese, susceptible to cancer, susceptible to diabetes. And so if you picture a mouse that's obese, diabetic, and cancer ridden, you've got a pretty good picture of what the agouti mouse looks like. And so it's just kind of this pudgy little mess of a mouse. Well, what they found is if they feed the mother mouse a certain food, as you know, again, you've got the genetic code coming together and all that stuff, she will end up having children with this gene turned off, and they look like normal mice. So they can actually figure out how to turn genes on and off. And so what God has done is he has built into nature these character traits that say, you know what? It's going to be bound up. It's not going to manifest until it needs to manifest. Now, I don't know why there's a gene for prone to cancer and diabetic and obese. But I'm sure there was some other thing that it had a purpose for that got corrupted. But that's what they find, that you have this epigenetic code that's there in your genetics, just waiting for the right environment to trigger these genes and unwrap them. But they don't manifest until the right environmental triggers cause them to manifest. And it's all just built in. It's all waiting there in the wings, passed down generation to generation, just waiting to be used. I didn't believe it when I first heard about it. I was like, I don't know. That's just too good. But that's the creative level of God. That's what God has behind the scenes going at it. And so again, just amazing stuff. And so if you get a chance, the agouti mouse is the one you want to look up. I think it's spelled A-G-O-U-T-I. And so that one's especially fun. But go look that one up, he's funny. And they show, like, this is what it's like with the gene turned on, and this is what it's like with the gene turned off. The genes are still there, but they're just being turned on and off, and that's how they manifest. So again, we can talk about God being creative. There's a lot we could talk about in that regard. What are some other characteristics? Again, we're reading through Genesis 1. We're looking at the creation account. We've seen that God is powerful. We've seen that God is almighty. We've seen that God is creative. We've seen that God is just. Any other character traits of God as you look through specifically this first part of Genesis? We've covered most of them, so I don't blame you for like, you're really making me think on a Sunday morning. I think one other one is God is concerned with details. I mean, let's look at it, because look at the way he records. It starts out, it says, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. Here we go. Now, it's interesting to note, we covered this last week, the sun, moon, stars, all of that, they've not been made yet, so this light is most likely coming from God himself, but he's letting light exist, and look what happens. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day. Now remember, written to a Jewish audience, their day begins at about 6 p.m., so that's why it's worded evening and morning. Okay, so if you're reading from a Jewish context, your assumption is naturally going to be, there's nothing unusual about this day, evening and morning. However, we understand sun, moon, stars, earth, all of that doesn't exist yet, so when we talk about, it was a literal 24 hour and the sun, Okay, we're speaking generally as it's a day. It's just the normal way that we would use this term. There's nothing weird about it. We can get into details on that later. But again, we understand that for the first few days, the thing that is used to mark the day doesn't exist yet. Okay, verse six, and God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and divide the waters from the waters. Now you can go look up pictures of what they suspect the Jews would have understood this to mean. There is a reason why it uses the term firmament, because again, in the ancient world context, they actually did believe that there was a solid dome above the earth, and that's why they called it firmament. That's where we get that, there was arguments on how firm it was, but when it talks about, even in Noah, when it talks about he opened the windows of heaven, Again, if you put together a model of this, people are like, oh, so you believe in a flat earth held up by pillars with a dome over the top of it and windows? I think what's happening here is he's using poetic language to describe things. And some people may have taken the poetic language a little too literally. Because if it's like, yes, there is a dome of the sky, do you mean a solid dome? Are we talking like I took Tupperware and just laid it down over, is that the type? It looks like a dome, like it's the dome of the sky. Don't overthink this. But there is something to be said because one of the descriptions of God is God walketh upon the firmament of heaven. Or God is the cloud rider, which is the idea of he rides the clouds across the sky. All of those are things that only a God could do. That's really important because as you get to the New Testament and Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, he uses a specific line and he says, because they ask, are you the one? And he says, I am, and you shall see the Son of Man riding in the clouds of his glory. And what Jesus is doing is he is speaking to a Jewish audience, and he's using this type of language to say, so, the Son of Man, that's a reference to someone who's deity in Daniel. And you're gonna see me riding the clouds of glory, which is something only a God could do, according to the ancient context, because actually one of the names for Baal was he was the cloud rider, because it was a description of what a God would do. A God would ride a cloud, and the idea of only a God could walk across the firmament of heaven. And so all of these terms, Jesus is very, very masterfully going, hey guys, I'm gonna be the one riding in the clouds. I'm gonna be the son of man. I'm gonna be the one who comes in the glory of God. And you notice the Pharisees understood what he just said because immediately they tried to kill him for blasphemy. Because again, it's not him going, you just misunderstood me. No, he's very clearly going, the things that only a God can do, I'm doing. The thing that only the Son of God can do. I'm doing. I'm equal with my Father. Those are all ways that Jesus is very clearly saying, I am God. And so again, just a little side note there as we read through this passage, but look what he's doing. He says, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And so again, he's dividing out waters, he's making an atmosphere. And it says, and God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And this is really interesting. Look where he puts the stars and everything. Where does he put the stars and everything? He puts them where? The next verse. Oh, I guess there's a few verses down. So it said, God made the firmament, he divided it, and God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day. And as you keep reading, specifically verse 14, I got ahead of myself. And God said, let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years. And let them be for lights in the firmament in the heaven to give light upon the earth, and it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night, and he made the stars also. And so what God's doing is that whatever this firmament thing is, he's putting the stars and everything in there. And so the firmament is pretty clearly understood to be outer space. Okay, now again, we have to understand this is written to a Jewish audience. They're reading this and they're trying to figure out what God's talking about. And so they came up with some weird ideas. But again, that's because God is using poetic language to describe things in a way that a human would understand. Okay, he's not going into quantum physics here. He's just using language that they would understand to say, there's this thing called the firmament, which we as moderns call outer space. I'm gonna put stars and planets and things out there for you to use for signs and navigation and all these things. That's where it's gonna be. And okay, good. We all on the same page? Okay. And I love this little detail. I don't know if you picked up on it. Look at what he says here in the end of verse 16. And he made the stars also. Now let me ask you a question. As you read this from a Jewish audience, Why on earth, didn't mean that, but why on earth do you think God makes such a passing comment when it comes to the stars? If you've studied stars, you understand they are far more magnificent and massive and powerful. Why on earth are you looking at something like the stars and just hand-waving them off and going, they're nothing important? Okay, there's no humanity there. So God is very human-focused. Okay, so that's a good point. Why else do you think God is just hand-waving the idea of the stars and going, they're not even worth your, like. Yeah. And so what's happening is, they're going in, and you know, when you get to Egypt, and when you get to some of these other cultures, their gods are manifesting as these things in the sky. I mean, Egypt had this mythology that the god would ride across the sky, and at night he'd enter the underworld, and then throughout the night he'd battle his way through the underworld, and then the next day he'd rise again, and he'd go and he'd ride his chariot across the sky again, and then he'd enter the underworld again. So that's our god, and he's about to enter the underworld, and we need to do this. And God's looking at him going, it's a thing I put up there so that you could use it. It's a sign for you. It's not a living thing. It's not a God. It's nothing. In fact, he wants to draw attention to how trivial they are by saying, oh yeah, I made those also. Now again, if you think about a creative, if you think about someone who is really into designing and building, they probably are going to show off their best work, or they're going to focus on their best work. If you've studied stars, You know, like you study out the power and the magnitude and all the glory of the heavens. Our natural tendency would be like, I wanna show those off first. I wanna make a big deal about those. But you notice what God is building to. He's building to a focus. He's zeroing in and saying, humans are the point. Humans are what I made. I did all of this for humans. And like, God is, if you wanna use this expression, he's really proud of humans. Like, they're his, They are the special things. In fact, people get really caught up on this because if you read Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, the creation order is slightly different. And people get all upset. They get all bent out of shape because they're like, oh, these stupid writers of Genesis. They couldn't even keep the order of creation in place. Oh, those dumb people. Just ask this question. If you were compiling Genesis from a bunch of different sources, do you think you'd be so dumb as to get the order wrong back to back? No. If you are literally splicing the book of Genesis together from potentially four different sources, which is what modern scholarship tries to say, it's called the J-E-D-P theory, because there's four different sources for the Pentateuch. Let me ask you this question. Would you be that bad at your job that you did not notice that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 didn't match? No. No. It was clearly done on purpose. Because Genesis 1 ends with the creation of man and God resting. And then look at what verse, chapter 2, it kind of finishes off that story. But look at what Genesis chapter 2 starts off on. So Genesis chapter 1 all the way to chapter 2 verse 3 is the first creation account, kind of summarizing the order, so to speak. But then you get to Genesis chapter 2 verse 4 and it says, these are the generations of the heaven and the earth and the day they were created. In the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, every plant of the field before it was in the earth, every herb of the field before it grew. The Lord had not caused it to rain on the earth and there was not a man to till the ground. There went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face. And so you notice as we get into chapter two, it's starting the focus on humanity. Even the idea of like, yeah, these plants are starting to grow and there's this and this, and the whole reason they're not growing quite as much yet is because there's no man on earth yet to till it. And so what God is doing in Genesis chapter two is he's rearranging creation to focus on humanity. Genesis 1 ended with the creation of humanity and now Genesis 2 is picking up going, let's focus in on humanity and let's talk about humans. And look what it says in verse 7. And the Lord formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And so yes, the order is slightly different, but it's because Genesis 1 gives you the order leading up to the creation of man. And then Genesis 2 zooms in and says, now. let's really zoom in and focus on those humans. And let's talk about those humans. And let's talk about what I did for those humans. So what character of God do we pull out of that fact? So we talked about God being creative and powerful and just, but what character trait do you think you could get out of that sudden focus on humanity? I'd say that he's caring. He's caring. He provides. Yeah. God isn't gonna take humanity and just chuck them on a barren rock and say, hey, good luck. Like he prepares the environment. He prepares the universe. He prepares the food. He gets the water out of the way. He's doing all of this stuff. He's building up and he's saying, I'm going to take a special interest in man. He even gets to the point where he looks at Adam and he says, hey, you don't have a help. You don't have a helper. You don't have anyone. All these animals have a male and female pair. You don't have anything like that. Let me make one so that way you two can be together. And he creates man and woman, and he creates them both in his image. And he's doing all of this saying, I am doing something special for humanity because I love you and I care about you. And that concern and that care that we see God bringing into the picture, and again, it's all focused on humanity, to the point where the one thing he tells them not to do, He makes it abundantly clear where it is, what the penalty is. He doesn't hide it and make it hard to understand. I used the illustration last week of my chemical cabinet. And I talked about the chemical cabinet, and I said, if I had acid in that cabinet, and I put a lock on it, and I put a sign on it, and I watched it and said, don't touch it, I've done everything I can. Because the simple fact is we do not know what purpose that tree served otherwise. Someone who didn't understand chemistry would look at my chemistry cabinet and say, well, just get the acid out of there. You have no reason to need acid in that chemical cabinet. And I would look at them and go, you don't understand what you're talking about. You don't know what it's like to teach chemistry. You don't know what it's like to need some of those chemicals, because we do experiments. That chemical cabinet needs to stay in this room, because otherwise, I'm not going to walk all the way down the hall to this locked room to get, no. It needs to be in here. And the safest spot for it to be is right there, labeled and locked. And the simple fact is, we do not know what other purpose that tree served. It could simply be a test. It could simply be God saying, I'm just going to put something really blatant right out there and say, don't touch it. But we don't know. It could have had some other purpose. And God just said, I'm putting it right there. And I'm putting a sign on it and saying, don't touch it, which in his case was, don't eat it. And humans couldn't handle that. So again, the reason I bring this up, and you may not have run into this, the reason I bring this up is because that is the sticking point for atheists and people who don't want to believe in God. They get all upset that he would put a tree in the middle of a garden and say, don't eat the fruit. He's like, well, that's just petty. You don't understand what you're talking about. Again, we do not know why it was there. It could have simply been God saying, don't touch it. Could have had some other purpose. Could have had some, whatever. But the simple thing that we are drawn attention to is the weakness of man in that we could not do the one thing. That was it. That was all we had to do, and we couldn't. And so again, as you look through Genesis, God is reminding the children of Israel of a lot of things, but specifically, he's reminding of his character, and we've looked at a lot of those. Before we wrap up, any questions or comments? I don't want to leave that all just hanging out in midair. Any questions or comments? Dick. My dad taught me growing up, he said that people in eternity would give up everything they ever owned if they could have what we have, and that is our,