We all are used to the idea that God created Adam and Eve personally. Genesis 2:7 and 2:21-23 tells us so. God is good. He is imbued with incredible creative powers and impulses and desires to share His goodness with others. His angelic and animal creations were magnificent, but not enough to suit His plans. He wanted to create a being that was as close as possible to Him in capacity to enjoy His creation.
So He made man and woman in His image, more in His image than the physical animals and more in His image than the spiritual angels. His combination of animal and angel was the deluxe model, God’s highest creation, and He saw that it was very good (Gen 1:26-31).
In my mind’s eye, I can see God at work and at the same time at play. His human habitat (earth) is complete. It is full of trees, flowers, animals, sun, stars and order. It is ready for His principle masterpiece, His original intention, the main attraction; i.e. mankind. Joyfully, almost gleefully, He kneels in the dirt and begins to shape and form the clay. Exploding with creative genius He crafts arms and legs, eyes and ears, right breast and left breast giving it symmetry. He centers it with one nose, one mouth and genitalia. (He knows that one of each of these is about all that we will be able to manage).
Inwardly His mind roams the form of man and creates networks of veins, vessels and nerves. He installs a central hydraulic system to move the fluids and an incredibly complex computer in our head to power and organize all of the pieces and parts to work together and with maximum efficiency. He builds in a central thermostat to assure a proper temperature balance throughout our systems. Then he builds an electrical, neural distribution system from our head to our feet.
Each piece He installs is of the highest quality and amazing complexity. The eye alone has more complexity and intricacy than the solar system. He provides Adam with various pumps and processors within (liver, kidneys, spleen, gall bladder, colon, etc.) to keep all systems fueled, clean and functional for eternity. He installs a comprehensive, elasticized counter balancing system of muscles, tendons and ligaments that allows us to stand, walk, run, lift, throw, catch and move about at will.
Eventually, he covers the whole creation with the largest organ in the whole body; i.e., our skin, which is a major wonder in and of itself. It is both armor and sensor. It is tough and tactile. It is designed chemically with an acid/alkaline-balanced protective mantle that allows it to resist germs and to heal itself when breached. And all of this is just the “Cliff notes” version.
God is having fun, like a child at play in the dirt. He who knows no time takes time to enjoy His handiwork. When He has it fully formed in His own image and by His personal design, He bends down and blows the breath of His Spirit into man, and Adam comes alive, fully cognitive, fully developed, fully functional. He was created 10 minutes ago but he is already measurably around 20 years old. He is created with an implied history. He has been through puberty and has his adult molars. He has facial hair and functioning testes. He is no child. He is a man, and he has a man’s needs; i.e., needs for food, water, sex, warmth, companionship and accomplishment.
He has those needs because the loving God installed them into him long before the fall of man. They are right and natural and godly and purposeful. They are ordained by God to provide drive and motivation and God had already (for the most part) designed proper objects to meet those needs.
Eventually, this leads Him to create the ultimate in companions; i.e., woman. But woman is no object just as man is not an object to God. Man, woman and God are a community of like beings similar in structure to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That is partly why man and woman together are in the image of God. In the same way that God invited man to share His creation, He invites man and woman to mutually share it and to enjoy it, and each other, together.
Woman was constructed like man with some notable differences, and as the French say, “Ooh lah lah! Viva la difference.” Different gifts, different roles at times and different sensitivities, yet together they make an extraordinary living model of and testament to God. And they were every square inch and every nuance personally and intentionally designed and created by God.
Adam and Eve were unique. Among other things, they probably had no navels. But you and I are unique as well, more than we sometimes realize. It is easy to think of ourselves as genetically descended from the original pair, spinoffs, second generation models, less personally designed. But that is not what our Bible teaches us and it is important for us to understand this. God created you and me with the same care and design as he did when He created Adam and Eve.
One place this is clearly seen is in Psalm 139. From beginning to end it tells us that we are, each and every one of us, a personal project of God who is with us everywhere, at all times and in all circumstances, including the moment of our creation. Let’s unpack it.
Ps 139
Ps 139:1-4 O LORD, Thou hast searched me and known me. 2 Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up; Thou dost understand my thought from afar. 3 Thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down, and art intimately acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O LORD, Thou dost know it all.
David who knew God well tells us that God is constantly running a scan on our systems. He knows exactly how our bodies are functioning and what is going on in our minds. Unlike Satan or the angels, God is omnipresent. God is everywhere at one time. No other being can be more than one place at a time. So while God is adjusting the temperature on the star, Alpha Centauri, he is also scanning you and me.
He sees our lying down and our rising up and everything in between. He knows our quirks and tendencies, both good and bad. He is monitoring us at all times. He knows what we are thinking and what we are about to say. God is that intimately involved in our existence and He invites us to be intimately involved in His. He made man for that very purpose. When we fail to be intimately in fellowship with God we are acting in opposition to our design. We are separated from God and in overt rebellion, or in benign neglect of His presence in our lives.
When I was a young Catholic boy, we studied catechism to learn about God. The first catechism question is, “Who is God?” The answer is, “God is the supreme being who made everything.” The second question was, “Who is man?” The third question is the one we want here. It is “Why am I here?” The answer is pivotal to our very existence. It says, “I am here to know, love and serve God with my whole heart, soul mind and body.” Sound familiar? Jesus called it the first and foremost of the Two Great Commandments.
Matt 22:35-40 And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 “This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” NASB
At Mount Pisgah, we simplify it to say, “Love God, Love people.” Did you know that righteousness means “rightly related?” It does not mean sinless. God knows we are sinners. Jesus died to fix that, because we could not fix it ourselves. What God requires of us is right relationship with Him and with our neighbor. All salvation is based in relationship and all relationship is based in trust (faith). We cannot fix ourselves, but we can decide to walk with God. We can decide to trust God and to believe Him.
Heb 11:5-6 And without faith (trust) it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. NASB
James 2:23 “… Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness (right relationship),” and he was called the friend of God. NASB
Sometimes people will try to justify their behavior, saying to me, “I am not bothering anyone. I am just living my life. What does it matter?” But here is the root of the problem. My life is NOT my life, nor is your life yours. Our lives belong to God. The first great commandment calls us to fealty, obedience, service and intimacy. Paul reminds us that God not only created us (He is the Potter; we are individually the pot.), but also that we have been bought with a price; i.e., the blood of Jesus.
Adam submitted to God until he submitted to Satan. Since then, we were born captured or “stone cold dead when we stepped out of the womb” as Dylan sings. We submitted to Satan, the god of this world, until Jesus set us free to submit to God again. It is not our life. It belongs to God. He created it and then He redeemed it with His life. His intimate knowledge of us is not largesse, it is design and it is intentional.
Return to text: Ps 139:5-6 Thou hast enclosed me behind and before, and laid Thy hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is too high. I cannot attain to it.
Jesus taught us that God knows and cares when even a sparrow falls from the sky. He goes on to say that we are of much more importance than many sparrows. Here in Psalm 139, David captures the essence of it. God holds us in His hand, gently but firmly, protectively like one would pick up a fallen sparrow to put it back in the nest, enclosing us behind and before. The idea just blew David away. “It is too wonderful, too high for me. I cannot fully grasp it,” he says above. But David at least saw it and was intimately aware of the living God’s intimate care and concern for him. Are we?
Ps 139:7-12 Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there. 9 If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, 10 even there Thy hand will lead me, and Thy right hand will lay hold of me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,” 12 Even the darkness is not dark to Thee, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to Thee.
There is no place on earth or elsewhere where God is not with us. If we go up to Heaven, God is there. If we go to our grave, God is there also. If we fly up to the highest altitudes or swim in the deepest depths of the sea, God is there, and He is ready to lead us and guide us even there. Darkness cannot hide us. God can see in the dark as easily as in the daytime.
Even if we are caught up in the darkness of the darkest of sins, God is there watching over us, ready to lead us back if we call upon Him. God hates sin, but he loves us more than He hates sin, so He is with us even when we are sinning. If you are a parent, you know that you never stop loving your children even when they are lost and wayward. A mother will walk her son to the gas chamber, even when she knows he is guilty. He is her son. God is at least as good as we are.
Ps 139:13-14 For Thou didst form my inward parts. Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well
Now we come to the heart of the matter. The bible says that God “formed our inward parts.” He wove us in our mother’s womb. These statements imply active intentional and intimate creation. It is easy to say that God’s hand crafted Adam and Eve, and the rest of us were just spinoffs, clones without the individual touch of the Master’s hand.
Thomas Kinkaid painted the original and his underlings copied it. The copies are expensive enough but the master (the original painting) is priceless; i.e., worth more than all the rest.
It is easy to see ourselves as made by underlings (our parents) and of lesser value; i.e., NOT a masterpiece. But we would be wrong. The Bible says the Master Himself formed us and wove us. But how does this square with what we know about the biology of reproduction? The key is found in the word “weave.” You can crochet with one thread, but it takes two threads to knit and weave. And it takes a weaver.
Now to the biology lesson. When we are conceived, the mother provides the egg (thread one). The father provides the sperm (thread two). In fact, the mother provides many eggs in a year and the father provides thousands of frantically swimming sperm. But it is God who chooses the egg to be fertilized and God who hand picks which swimmer wins. Who we become is entirely dependent upon which egg is united with which sperm. The options are almost unlimited.
Now we can see the Holy Spirit hovering over us at the moment of conception (as He hovered over Mary) designing, working with the creative materials and deciding who you and I will be. We are as individually crafted as were Adam and Eve. We are fearfully (awesomely) and wonderfully made and David knew it very well. Do we? Are we each aware of our thoughtful and intentional creation?
What if we were the product of rape? The rape is evil, but we are not. If God decides to create us in that unholy union, we are nonetheless purposely, intentionally and individually handcrafted. God cares about us more than He hates the violence of rape. This has implications in the debate over abortion. Is the baby at fault? Tough question!
In Dickens novels and Puritan literature, we see ‘bastards” treated as unholy spawn, as if they were evil.
The implication is that Satan created these children out of sinful or violent sexual behavior. But is there anywhere in the Bible that says that Satan can create? No, there is not. God is the author of ALL life. God loves fallen man. (Is there any other kind?) He always has to work with imperfect and non-ideal circumstances. There is a rapist in one bed and a hypocrite in another. Every bed is filled with sinners. Only God knows why He creates the people He creates.
What if we are born with a severe handicap? The world is a dangerous place and all creation has been subjected to futility because of the fall of man. The world is broken and does not work like it should. God has to work with the broken structure we hand Him, because there are no unbroken, unfallen structures. God could sort His way around the really broken elements and not use them, but He doesn’t do that. He uses the genetic material that we who are His partners hand Him, and no one emerges from the womb unscathed and perfect.
We are all flawed. We may have a hierarchy of sin and of brokenness, but God does not. He values all of us the same. God does not make “junk.” Everyone He creates is “very good.” If you ask the parents of a handicapped (special) child, they will tell you that their child is precious. They relate to that child with the love of God, even if we do not.
Consider the story of Bartimaeus, the man born blind. The disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned? This man or his parents?” They assumed Bartimaeus was a mistake, an error. Jesus told them, “Neither he nor his parents sinned that he was born blind, but God allowed it for His purposes.” Don’t assume that the broken child is a bad child or a mistake. God values us all even though we are all flawed physically and morally.
I may be pink and plump and apparently intact, but I have genetic predisposition for prostate cancer that is invisible or I could have a heart condition. God can and does redeem it all. God does not make junk. He makes each and every one intentionally. When we devalue people because they are broken, we do not reflect the nature of God. God loves and values all us personally, individually, and intimately, even though we are all broken in some way. Who of us have not been inspired by Joni Erickson Tada or Christopher Reeves?
PS 139:15-16 My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. 16 Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.
David goes on to acknowledge that God knew what He was doing when He created him. God was not stumbling around in the dark. Remember: God sees clearly in the dark (see verse 12 above). David says we are made with skill in the depths of our mother’s clay. David knew we are made of earth. The word “Adam” means “dirt being;” i.e., made of earth. David knew that God could see clearly his “unformed substance.” God is involved in our creation at the molecular level. God even foreknows how long we will live.
Our son, Ben was born perfectly formed to the naked eye, but he was only given 17 years to live. The genetic material we handed God was predisposed to seizures in the ovum/seed combination that became Ben. (Some of his behaviors and choices contributed to the problem, no doubt.) God could have made us a son without that predisposition by choosing a different sperm or a different egg, but it would not have been Ben. I would hate to have missed Ben. He is my son.
When I preached his funeral, I asked the question, What if God told you that He wanted to give you a special, precious boy whom you would love dearly, but you could only keep him for 17 years? Would you have turned God down? If so, you would have missed an extraordinary being with a short life span on earth but an eternity of fellowship opportunity.” If we trusted God that He knew what He is doing, we would have said “Yes” to that question I asked.
Ps 139:17-18 How precious also are Thy thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with Thee.
David finishes by acknowledging that God DOES know what He is doing, and that God is trustworthy. God is smarter than we are and if He creates a child in the midst of a rape or a child with a disability, He should be given the benefit of the doubt. Look at it this way. If you had the choice of being created for eternal joy but with a handicap (and we have already acknowledged that we are all handicapped in some way), would you rather not have been created? If you had been created in the midst of a rape, would you have rather not been created?
God could have created someone other than you without that handicap simply by choosing a different sperm. Would you have preferred that? What will your answer be in Heaven after this life and its trials are long gone? Will you be glad at that time that God created you even with imperfect “unformed substance?” You bet your sweet bippy!! (60’s expression ?) When you “wake up” from the dead, you will still be with God, David says, just like when you rise from sleep in the morning. Even if you think your life is all or in part a bad dream, it will not last long in the economy of eternity.
Ps 30:3-5 O LORD, Thou hast brought up my soul from Sheol. Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. 4 Sing praise to the LORD, you His godly ones, and give thanks to His holy name. 5 For His anger is but for a moment. His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning. NASB
Return to text: Ps 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts; 24 and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. NASB
David concludes by asking God to “scan his disk” and ferret out any wrongheaded thinking. He asks God to drive away his anxiety and to lead him into an eternal way of trust-based thinking and valuing. David wants to learn to think like God, to see things the way God sees them, to have an eternal perspective and to be God’s friend. So do I. Don’t you?
God created you personally, individually, intentionally and intimately. He loves you dearly and watches over you constantly. He never leaves you nor forsakes you even if you leave of forsake Him. He made you and gave you all your potential for happiness and fulfillment and He wants you to achieve it. God wants to be your friend. He invites you into fellowship and makes it possible that you can enter in. He is calling you to Himself even now and rejoices when you respond. He knows you are broken, flawed, sometimes very broken and very flawed, but He can fix it if you will let Him. He sure wants to.
God created you so that He can spend now and eternity with you. If you were the only who sinned, He would have sent His Son to die for you, just you. Jesus said so when He spoke about leaving the ninety-nine in safety and going out to look for the one who was lost. You are that lost one. I am that lost one. We are all that lost one. Jesus is the Shepherd who seeks you and God is the creator who designed you intentionally, personally individually and intimately. What do you think about that?!?*