SOMEBODY HELP ME!

Genesis 2:4-7
Bob Bonner
January 11, 2004

To many, being a doctor appears to be a glamorous profession. Few, however, realize the sacrifices one makes, the hard work that goes into becoming a doctor. One medical student I read about spent his first summer vacation before entering med school working two jobs just to pay his way through the first year of school. In the daytime, he worked as a butcher and a hospital orderly in the evenings. Both jobs, of course, involved wearing a white smock. One evening he was instructed to wheel a patient on a stretcher into surgery. The patient, a lady, looked up at the student and let out an unearthly scream, “Somebody help me! It’s my butcher!”

Mistaken identities can cause people all sorts of problems. In 2002, Steven Spielberg directed a movie called “Catch Me If You Can”. It is a biographical drama, a true story about Frank W. Abagnale Jr. In real life, Abagnale worked as a doctor, a lawyer and a pilot for a major American airline all before he turned 18. This cunning Abagnale was so skilled at forgery and lying that he managed to steal millions of dollars through his various occupations. He eventually got caught, but rather than being sent to prison, the government hired him! The government figured he was too brilliant a man to have working against them, and could be of more help to them in sniffing out other con artists.

In the movie, shortly before he gets caught, Abagnale came to one of those times in life when he wasn’t rushing off somewhere; a time when he stopped long enough to look at his life and see it for what it really was. At that point, he makes this confession. He said that after acting in so many roles, after faking so many different professional careers, he could not figure out who he really was or why he was put here on earth. He was tired of running and deceiving others, for it only led to his deceiving himself. He finally came to a point that he wanted to know who he really was and how he could invest his life in something worthwhile. The cry of his heart was “Somebody help me!”

Today you ask the average person, “Who are you?” and they will typically tell you what they presently do, not who they are. For instance: A woman may respond to that question with, “I am the mother of three children, the wife of ___________, and a real estate broker.” But I submit, that really doesn’t answer who she is. It simply declares what her present life job assignments are. But what happens to her view of who she is when interest rates return to double digits and the real estate market crashes and she is out of work? What happens if she suddenly finds herself no longer married and her children were tragically killed? Now who is she?

I submit to you that if you are going to find emotional stability, meaning and purpose in your life, you must know who you are, and who you are must be defined by something greater than what you do. Who you are is a more permanent state than what you do. What you do will change several times in your life as your roles change. But who you are and ultimately why you are here never changes. I submit to you that only when you operate from the foundation of knowing who you are and why you are here can your life truly having meaning and make a significant difference.

We are beginning a new year. It is wise as we look back and as we look forward to reconsider the question, “Who am I and why am I here?” If we don’t stop long enough to answer those questions correctly in light of how we are investing our lives, we can come to this point next year and look back at one year we wasted, because we invested our lives in something that was worthless in the grander scheme of things. We find we invested our lives in things that had nothing to do with who we are or why we were placed here on earth.

This morning we come to a passage in Genesis that in the grand scheme of life, explains more about who we are and why we are here than just about any other one passage of scripture I can think of. It is a passage we need not only understand, but we need to meditate on for a while. We need to consider the implications of this truth upon our lives for the years to come.

Please look with me at Genesis 2:4-7. It reads, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

Before we get started looking closely at these verses, let’s get something straight. It is popular in some circles to teach that this section of Scripture introduces a new and contradictory account of the creation of man. The motive behind such a popular teaching is to discredit the Bible, to prove that it can’t be the Word of God, and thus brush off the Bible as having any thing authoritative to say about us or how we should live.

However, these verses in Genesis 2 and those found in Genesis 1 are not to be viewed as competing or contradictory, but rather as complementary, viewing the same event of creation from two different angles. The author employs a common literary device in writing these two chapters. In Genesis 1, he sketches the background first, and then, in Genesis 2, one feature is highlighted and brought to the forefront with additional details. Genesis 1:1-2:3 focuses on the universe as a whole with special attention paid to the earth and its creatures. Genesis 2:4-25 focuses on the sixth day, the creation of humankind. Genesis 1 focuses on the Creator and His arena of divine / sovereignty; the second focuses on human beings as God’s agents responsible for the stewardship of His creation.

So, you see, these are not contradictory or competing accounts, but quite complementary. Hence, this is a sound, trustworthy and the only authoritative place from which to build a proper anthropology or understanding of who we are as humans and what our purpose is for being created by God and placed here on this earth.

Sometimes the best place to begin in understanding who we are and why we function the way we do is to take a closer look at our parents and the conditions of our births and upbringing. This couldn’t be more true than when we consider who our ultimate parent is, God the Father, and the circumstances under which we were created. When we understand who our heavenly Father is and the lengths He went to create us, then we have a positive reason for being excited about who we are, our worth and our purpose for being.

In 2:4, we see something for the very first time that helps us understand a little better Who God our Father is. For the very first time we find a new name for God being mentioned. This name for God is used eleven times in 19 verses in chapter 2. Hence, by the sheer repetition of this name for God, God is trying to impress upon us that there is something important here for us to grasp about Him and our relationship to Him.

This new name for God is a name made up of two words, in our English text, translated “Lord God.” In Hebrew, it is “Yahweh Elohim.” “Elohim” is the word for God mentioned in Genesis 1 that describes the powerful, sovereign creator of the world.

In chapter two, where God zeroes in on His most important creative act, the act of creating man and woman, He introduces Himself as “Yahweh”, which means “I AM, THAT I AM.” He was here before us, before we were created and He will always be here for us. The intended message behind this term is to tell us that He is the ever present with you God.

That which is truly significant about this word “Yahweh” is that it is more than just a word, a title or attribute. It literally is the personal name of God.

For many years I believed that the first time this personal name for God was ever used was when God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. But after studying the names used for God, I learned that the first time God’s personal name, “Yahweh” was used was right here in Genesis 2. The significance of this discover is enormous, for it tells us that “Yahweh” is not just the name of the personal covenant-keeping God of the nation Israel, mentioned in Exodus 3, but first and foremost He demonstrates in Genesis. 2 that He is the personal God of the individual (in this case Adam). This tells us that God cares first about the individual and always has. “Yahweh” is not just a group God or national God. He is first revealed as a personal God, interested in the individual. The importance of this can be summarized in this important truth:

God personally created you to be intimately related to Him; to know, love, and serve Him as well as be loved by, cared for and blessed by Him.

Another observation can be made from the order in which these two words, “Yahweh Elohim” are put together. One would think that since God first introduced Himself as Elohim that He would have continued revealing Himself in the order that He began, first Elohim then Yahweh. But by putting His name Yahweh before Elohim, God is stressing the importance to Him that we recognize He is a personal God, not just some powerful distant creator who cranked up the world, got it started and then abandoned us to our own devices. No, He is a God who wants to be apart of our every day lives.

He is the all powerful creator who also is the God who condescendingly and tenderly cares for each individual. He is the ever-present personal God who wants to be intimately involved with us as we steward His creation.

The final evidence that reveals how much God wants us to be personally as interested in Him as He is in us can be seen in the fact that the most used Hebrew name for God found in the Scriptures is this personal name for God, Yahweh.

Another way God demonstrates His personal concern for each of us and His desire for us to be intimately acquainted with Him can be seen in the terms He chooses to describe His creation of us. In verse 7, there are specific terms used that reveal His tenderness and care for us during His creating of us.

For instance: Yahweh’s personal love and care for us is revealed in the verb “formed” which describes what went into His creating us. This Hebrew term is the word from which we get the noun, “potter” or that person who artistically works with clay in their hands to shape and mold it into a one-of-a-kind vessel. It conveys the idea that God personally had a design and purpose for your life when He formed you. You and I were not mass-produced in a factory as something pouring off an impersonal assembly line, all to do the same job. We are individually, hand crafted by God for a specific purpose.

When God created Adam from the dust of the earth, He knelt down, picked up the earth and tenderly formed Adam’s life. David’s Psalm 139 conveys this same message of God’s ongoing personal involvement in the forming of each of our lives today. In verse13, David speaks of God’s working in creating David’s life while he was still in his mother’s womb. He writes, “For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship...” From this word “workmanship” we get our word “poem.” As a poem is a handcrafted individual work of art, so are you. You are a custom-designed, one-of-a-kind original masterpiece.

God the Father hand crafted you for a purpose, and I might add, He is still crafting your life. Sometimes we don’t like God the Father’s pulling on our lives and twisting us as a potter pulls, twists and molds clay in his hands. That pulling and twisting hurts, or makes so little sense to us that we think that God our Father doesn’t love us or that He has abandoned us or is mad at us. But the writer to the Hebrews reminds us, in Hebrews 12:5-11, that this is not what God our Father is all about. He tells us, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or faint when you are reproved by Him for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.”

Keep in mind, the word “discipline” is not the same as “punishment.” “Punishment” is an act done out of anger and wrath and hatred, and a desire to reject and cause pain. True “Discipline” is motivated love and its purpose is constructive not destructive. It is educational and character forming. It is part of the process by which all of us mature into the men and women of God that we all desire to become.

The writer of Hebrews continues, “It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”

“Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.”

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

In addition to God the Father personally forming each of us by hand as a divine artist and engineer, we also read in v. 7 that God the Father shared the very essence of Who He is with us; something He did with us that He did not do with any other of His creation. We read that God “breathed” into man. This word for “breath” is used to describe God’s very life, His very spirit that He imparted to us. It is a verb that is never used of God’s creative work of animals. This is something God has only done with us.

Furthermore, this breath brings more than animation to us; it brings to us His very spirit, as well as giving to each of us our own individual spirit. God the Father’s spirit being placed into us and connected to our spirit makes up what the Bible calls “the nature of man.”

Our spirit was designed to be co-joined with God the Father’s spirit. In essence, we are spirits that have souls that live in bodies. The key to who we are, the main reason that we are different than animals is that we have a spirit that is meant to be joined with God the Father’s spirit, and animals do not. They have bodies and souls, but not a spirit.

When God the Father joined our bodies with His breath or His spirit, He made our souls alive. Without His spirit active in us, we are not spiritually alive, nor are we His children. We are spiritually dead, separated from God. Perhaps an illustration will help: an electric light bulb is made up of two parts: glass and wire. By itself it has great potential, but without the third component, electricity, it cannot function. But when you add this third invisible component called electricity to pass through the wire the function of light is born. But if you remove the electricity, the light goes out and the bulb is “dead” as far as it fulfilling its potential is concerned.

It is very much the same for human beings. We have a body and soul that is made alive when our spirit (when made alive by God) energizes our lives. We were created for a purpose, like the light bulb that produces light. God made us with a body and a soul (or unique personality) and then He poured His spirit into us giving each of us various potential and purposes for our lives.

When our spirit passes from our body, the life of the body/soul ends. James 2:26 teaches us that, “the body apart from the spirit is dead.”

This might be better illustrated by these concentric circles. The outer circle represents your physical, visible body. The two inner circles represent that which is immaterial and invisible, your soul and your spirit.

I define a soul differently from some. Some people define one’s soul as being made up of one’s mind, emotions and will. My problem with that is that the Scriptures indicate that our spirits also possess a mind, emotion and will. Hence, I choose to differentiate the soul from the spirit by describing our soul as the seat of our personality. It is in our soul that our talents, our life experiences and our education and family background shape who we are as individuals.

Our spirits are the key supernatural part of our being that connects us with God the Father and makes us different from animals. It is through our spirit that His spiritual power enables us and flows through us to connect with others in a supernatural way.

But after the Fall, this was the biggest change that took place in the human race. Some call this change that came as the result of us rejecting God becoming spiritually dead. When we died, God the Father’s spirit left our spirit and left us powerless to live lives as He intended. In addition, it left us with a void in our lives; a void that can only be properly filled by Him. This is what the Scripture means when it says that we are “dead in our trespasses and sins.” We are spiritually separated from God and thus powerless to live our lives as God intended us to live them. His Spirit does not function as it should in us any more.

Therefore, our souls, which reflect like a mirror the activity of the spirit, reflect a lifeless nature. This spiritual deadness is what creates the worldwide restlessness of men’s and women’s hearts. This is why so many people are living dissatisfied lives and are searching everywhere and doing crazy things trying to find meaning in life. Many people know that only God’s spirit can fill that void. Many of these people are even very religious, like the Pharisees. But even they have missed the boat. They may talk about godliness, but they know nothing of the power of God in their lives.

Notice what Jesus said to these religious leaders who were spiritually dead and what it was that had filled the void of their lives that only God the Father was meant to fill, in John 8.

The setting is in the temple in Jerusalem. The religious leaders of the Jews, the Pharisees, are questioning Jesus before the people, trying to discount His spiritual authority. Jesus is telling them that He is simply doing the work and deeds of God the Father. They deny it. Jesus then turns to them and says in verses 41-44, “You are doing the deeds of your father.” They said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father: God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.”

What is Jesus saying here? Is it just that they unknowingly were doing the devil’s deeds? No, I believe that He is saying more than that. He is saying that these religious people, like all of us, were looking for something to fill that void in their lives, some kind of power or enablement to live their lives. For them, they were allowing the spirit of this world, Satan, to fill the void left by God the Father. The god of this world and this world’s philosophies were what they were trusting in for direction in their lives. They didn’t know it any more than I knew it before I was saved. But none the less, that is what Jesus tells us happened to them.

So what happens to us after the fall? God the Father’s spirit disconnects from our spirit and another spirit, the spirit of this world, the father the devil joins our spirit and we live apart from God.

Can we ever return to having God take His proper place of being joined to our spirits? Can we ever experience His Spirit’s power in our lives again? Yes! That’s what being spiritually “born again” is all about. When we put our trust in Jesus Christ to be our Savior and Lord, He forgives us and removes the control of the god of this world over our spirits and Jesus comes in to reconnect with our spirit permanently. Jesus and the Father are one and when Jesus comes into one’s life, our spirits permanently return to the pre-fall condition.

Does this mean we will never sin again? No. But it does mean that we don’t have to allow the god of this world, Satan, to control our lives or act as our spiritual father anymore. He may deceive us at times, but he has no authority over us. We belong to God the Father, because Jesus is our Savior. That’s what John is speaking about in John 1:12, when he states, “But as many as received Him [Jesus] to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.”

This has been God’s plan all along. Ever since creation, it was God the Father’s plan to create a people who would fellowship with Him. He began by creating an earthly home and preparing it perfectly for them to indwell before they were created.

After their home was prepared, then God personally formed or handcrafted them so that they could relate to Him like no other part of His creation. He made them with a body, soul and spirit.

And then, He breathed the breath of life into them, and gave them His very life, His spirit, to energize and be joined to their spirit. All along this is what God desired: He desired people to know, love, and work with Him, and He desired for there to be people upon whom He could shower His blessing and goodness.

But even before He created Adam and Eve, He knew that they, and subsequently we, would fall to sin. That’s why He created a plan to reconcile those who wanted to come home to their heavenly Father. He provided us with a Savior, Jesus Christ.

Friends, do you feel empty and confused about your life? Do you want to know who you really are? Is there a small voice inside you crying out, “Somebody help me!”? If you want to understand who you are and what purpose your life holds, then you must begin with this understanding:

**** I am made by God; to be energized by His spirit, so that I can glorify Him, enjoy Him and fulfill His purposes for my life.

Life is not about how much you have or what you have accomplished with your years. Life is about who you are. And understanding who you are begins with the realization that you were created by Him and for Him.

Do you know for a fact that you are one of God’s forever children? How do you know that? Have you entrusted your life to Jesus Christ to be your Savior, your reconciler, your master so that you and God the Father are permanently joined back together? If you have not done so, then this morning I invite you to come home where you belong. Come home to God the Father, by first putting your trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Begin today to get to know Him better and learn to walk with Him.

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