The Lord Can Use Those Who Seek to Walk With Him

Introduction

Everything starts good, every day the Almighty God creates something new, and every day He, the Lord of all, gives Himself a grade: It was morning, and it was evening, and it is all good. Even on the day when He created the creeping and crawling varmints and snakes, the Lord saw His creation and declared that it is good.

The crown of the Lord’s creation was the human being. It was the last thing that God created. Man and woman He created them! The human species was in the highest state above all the animal kingdom.

God gave the humans the right to rule the earth and take care of it. If you ask me how do I know that, my answer would be very simple. Whoever gives the name, whoever attributes the identity of any thing, is the master of the thing or the being that He names. The control of the identity is also the control of the person or thing that he named.

So, when God appointed the human being to give the names of the animals, God gave the human being the right to catalogue and to rule over the animal kingdom, over nature. The most important phrase of the story of Genesis is from 2:15.

The man is not indigenous to the garden. He is fashioned elsewhere, and finds himself in the garden only by the grace of God. It is very important for us to realize that the human being is not like the trees or flowers of the garden, and not like the animals. He is put there by God’s grace to work, to till, and to guard God’s creation and give the names, that is, to rule over God’s creation.

Yes, his needs are easily taken care of in the garden, but his life in the garden is not to be one lazy lifestyle. He has duties to perform. It is his responsibility to nurture and conserve the perfection of the garden.

This he must do by the labor of his hands. This is before man and woman sinned and disobeyed the Lord’s command. The design of the Lord was for man to administer and protect God’s creation. He was not to exert power over the creation, but he was to respond to nature’s needs with intelligent and wise guidance, so that it will be preserved and develop according to the original design of the Creator Himself. The Hebrew phrase in that verse of Genesis is “la’avda v’leshmara”, “to work (or serve) it and protect it”.

The end of this parasha of Genesis is verse 6:8. From that great divine appointment of the beginning of mankind’s design, and the close relationship of the men of flesh and blood in God’s domain, mankind has deteriorated and fallen to the point that God repents that He created man!

One of the saddest verses in the whole Bible is from Genesis 6:5,6:

The Hebrew word for “sorry” is “nacham”, which actually means “repent”. I have heard of parents that regretted giving birth to their child, and saying that it would have been better if they would have aborted this child before he was born. This is a sad state of a family. When a father or a mother rejects their child and wishes he was not born is bad enough, but when God, who created all things and crowned man above all of His creation, “repents” that He created man, that is much more than sad.

God's Great Love and Grace

Here is the great love and grace of the Creator for His creation, and above all, for the man and woman that He created. Even though God was sorry that He created the humans, He found one man, who was not perfect, who had weaknesses and had problems, but relative to his generation, he was a righteous man - Noah!

Notice the small word between verses 7 and 8, and pay attention to the importance of one man in the way that the Lord of the universe makes His decisions. Don’t underestimate yourself and allow your meekness and weakness to block you from doing God’s will:

Verse 9 is also of great importance to me:

The “just” here is also “righteous” in Hebrew. The rabbis say that if Noah had lived in a different time (generation), he might have not been considered just or righteous, but in that evil generation he was relatively just and righteous.

The Lord Can Use Us

How comforting and how wonderful is our Lord, who judges us on the bell curve, and relative to the time and place and the world we live in. This does not give us permission to do wrong, but it does say to us, and especially to me, that as long as I walk with the Lord, even in my weakness, and even if I fall, I can get up and keep on walking, holding on to the Lord’s gentle hand.

The Lord can use me, and you, and us, and all our brothers and sisters who seek to walk with the Lord and do it!