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Lives and Legacies
First Ladies of The Bible
Cheryl Rhodes
Copyright © 2019 Cheryl Rhodes
All rights reserved
First Edition
Fulton Books, Inc.
Meadville, PA
Published by Fulton Books 2019
ISBN 978-1-63338-982-3 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-63338-983-0 (digital)
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Mrs. Noah
Deborah
Esther
This volume is dedicated to Cheryl’s “first ladies”:
Zella E. Pinkney—Cheryl’s mother
Mary Helen Clifton—junior church pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church
Betty Esch—Christian Endeavor director, Grace Presbyterian Church
Martha Cordell—Pioneer Girls’ director, Grace Presbyterian Church
Mary E. Carlson—a founder, principal, and teacher at Peoria Christian School
Evelyn Crowell—Youth for Christ choral director
The royalties from the Lives and Legacies series go to Global Commission Partners to dig wells in the 10/40 window, poorest part of the world.
Eve
first lady
created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26)
wife of / coregent with Adam
mother of all living (Gen. 2:7, 3:20)
I know you’ve all heard the term first lady. Well, I am the original first lady, created in God’s image to be the coregent with the first man, helping that man in the order, purpose, and relationships with which we’d been entrusted. I’ve come to tell you my story, but I need to begin at the beginning. That was just five days before I was created.
The beginning tells you about the place of perfection into which we were created, with the order, purpose, and relationships. You need to understand all that was prepared for us and how we fit into God’s perfect creation. You could divide my story into two parts: before and after our disobedience. That would leave you with a very bad ending. Graciously, The LORD God was ready and able to will a third-part: eternity after our temporal lives. It is too easy to lose sight of eternity, as I tell you about the beginning of time. But you must understand, eternity was never out of the mind of The Creator.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, an empty waste, with darkness covering the surface of the watery depths.
Some have difficulty seeing this description of chaos as a creation of God and have, therefore, speculated a gap between the two verses. They suggest that the battle in heaven between Michael and his angels with the dragon and his angels occurred between verses 1 and 2.
Revelation 12 tells you that the dragon and his minions were cast down to the earth. And since we understand that chaos is the enemies’ goal, this is a reasonable speculation. But if that battle happened between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, it was before my creation. I can only report the thinking of others.
What you may see in the rest of the creation story is that God was bringing order out of chaos, establishing purpose, and instituting relationships.
Now I’ll be telling you of creation, but not in the chronological order of Genesis 1, and not with a focus on the material. I want you to see the creation of order, purpose, and relationship. So I’ll be giving you the story in an order which I hope helps you see God’s planning.
In verse 3, God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. That was the evening and the morning of the first day (Gen. 1:1–6). The day began at evening, sunset. Jews continue to keep that original time design, evening as the beginning of the day, to this very day.
A second consideration I’d like to share with you is that those of an Eastern mind-set, Hebrews in the time the Scripture was written, will tell you that Westerners think too narrowly of creation. You ask “how;” they ask “why.”
So I’ll put more emphasis on the “why” aspects of creation, because those of us from the East do. As you listen, you’ll hear that every created thing was ordered and given purpose and relationship. That includes you!
Now we’ll go to day four. God returns to His creation of day one—light. God said, “Let there be lights in the heaven to divide the day from the night; let them function for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years, and to give light upon the earth.” And so it was. God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also, to give light, to rule, and to divide the light from the darkness. God pronounced it suitable; that was day four, evening and morning (Gen. 1:14–20).
Notice the order, purpose, and relationship between the lights and the day and night. The lights were to divide and signal. You might also be interested to know that the seasons, days, and years in Genesis 1 suggest holy seasons, holy days, and holy years yet to be identified.
On day seven, God would ordain the first Holy Day. Holy Seasons and Years, like Holy Days, were/are for remembering what God has done and for anticipating what God has said He will do. The means of signaling these days, seasons, and years were put into place on day four, while only the first holy day, Sabbath, was established in this first week. The others would come much later.
On day two, God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” So the firmament came into existence, dividing the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. God called the firmament “sky” (Gen. 1:6–9).
Ever wonder about the waters above the sky? The “canopy theory” proposes that the waters above the sky were an ice canopy connected to the earth’s poles, which dissolved in the flood. Such a canopy1 would have kept the sun’s rays from reaching the earth’s surface unfiltered. Those who propose this theory suggest that this would have slowed the aging process of all things, perhaps preventing the fermentation of fruit. Could explain a lot, don’t you think? Noah’s drunkenness may have been the result of this “new” fermentation process after the canopy melted.
On day five, God returned to the creation of day two—the sky with the waters above and below. God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly and swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly over the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” So God commanded the waters to bring forth all the creatures of the sea and the sky, after their kind. God saw that it was good, and He blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the waters and the air.” That was evening and morning of day five (Gen. 1:20–24).
The waters “created” sea creatures and air creatures. The water’s and sky’s purpose was to be habitation and sustenance for these creatures. The creatures were given the purpose of fruitfulness. They were to produce and care for an ongoing creation—their offspring. Remember that command to the creatures; you’ll hear a similar command again.
Back to day three, when God said, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, so that