Good morning. How are you all doing today? Blessed. Amen.
I like to start our services every week by saying welcome to anybody that's here in our sanctuary,
if you're visiting us for the first time, whether it's the first time ever or you're back after a long time,
or if you're watching us online for the first time, we want to say welcome to all of you.
We're so glad you're here to worship with us today.
I am Pastor Nathan, and before we get started, I'm feeling great. Thank you so much.
I have a little bit of a lingering cough, but I'll try and turn the mic off if that happens.
But today we are taking communion together. So hopefully everybody here in the room, you did get the communion cup as you came in.
If you're online, I want to encourage you guys to get your communion emblems ready.
We will be partaking of that together at the end of service.
But this morning, we are moving from the grand overview of creation to a more zoomed-in focus, if you will,
on really what is the pinnacle of God's creation, humankind, man and woman made in the image of God.
And in that, we're also transitioning from a picture of God as the almighty, transcendent,
all-powerful, eternally existing creator to seeing God as a personal, concerned for His creation, caring, loving God.
In Genesis chapter 1, as we studied through that chapter, it was really a chronological picture of creation, a chronological outline.
You know, we looked at how in the beginning, God, and then we went through that chronology,
looking at the seven days of creation where God created the heavens and the earth.
He created all life on the earth, all in six days.
And then we saw in the very beginning of chapter 2 that He rested on the seventh day.
Now, in that overview of creation, right, because we don't get every single detail of everything God did,
it's really just the important parts.
But we saw in that that humanity there is presented as God's crown jewel of creation.
We are His wonderful creation. We're the pinnacle of His creation as humankind.
And so there at the end of chapter 1, to keep the narrative chronological,
only a general description of the creation of man and woman was given there.
We were told that they were made in God's image.
We were told that they were blessed with fertility to procreate and to subdue the earth and fill the earth.
And then we were told that God gave them rulership, that they were to subdue all of creation,
that all of creation was under man's authority as He was under God's authority.
And then in the end of it, we saw how God took great pleasure in His creation.
As He said, it is very, very good.
He was so pleased with the balance of His creation, with the perfection of His creation.
And we looked at that word when it says there in your Bibles that He called it very good.
That word good meaning everything existed exactly as it should,
able to perform its function exactly as it should.
And really it points out an important thing in our world today.
You know, a lot of people still are purporting a humanistic view of creation,
and it just accidentally evolved from this to that and this to that.
And the Bible paints really a starkly different picture,
that everything was intentionally created, intentionally designed,
made the way it's made on purpose, with intention behind it.
And so what we ended up with there is a perfect everything.
No sin, no wickedness, no evil of any kind,
just a perfect God in fellowship with His crowning creation in a perfect paradise.
Well, Genesis 2 starting in verse 4,
we revisit this matter of the creation of humankind in a topical way rather than a chronological way.
And we'll talk about that when we get into the study.
From verse on in chapter 2, it's really a greater focus on the sixth day work of creating man
and commissioning man and really just demonstrating love to man.
And it shows us this wonderful picture of God's care and God's provision for humankind.
God loves His creation. He loves you.
He loves you so much.
And we're going to see what everything was meant to be in the very beginning,
how our relationship with God was meant to be,
everything that God wants us to know about Him and His love and His care and concern,
how it was meant to be in the very beginning.
And that's the focus of this account in Genesis chapter 2 I want to look at this morning.
And then, too, it's important to study through these in detail because it sets the stage for Genesis chapter 3,
which is the fall, and we'll get to that in a couple weeks.
But first, we're going to worship God.
We want to spend time praising Him and celebrating Him and just expressing our love to Him.
You know, for those of us that know Him as our Lord and Savior, He's changed everything.
He's changed our lives, not just here on earth, but He changed our eternal destiny.
We're so grateful for that.
And one of the ways we get to express that,
and one of the ways we like to open our services before we get into the meat of the study, is worship, to praise God.
And so let's pray, and then we'll get into it.
Father, we love You so much.
We thank You, God, for everything.
Lord, as we studied through the book of Revelation, we saw the hope, the future,
the perfect paradise, the new heaven, the new earth, all that is awaiting for those who know You as their Lord, their Savior, their God.
And then, Lord, as we've begun Genesis, it's just been such a neat picture to see your heart,
to see your thought from the very beginning as you created the entire universe and created the earth, all in perfection,
and then created us to have a relationship with You, to know You.
And, God, from the very beginning, You have shown us, Lord, in Your Word, how much You desire to have a relationship with us,
that we would be close to You and You would be close to us.
And, God, we see in this chapter we're going to study today, Lord, how much You provide for Your creation.
God, You really bless us more than we deserve, but, God, You don't love us because we deserve it.
You love us because You choose to, and we're so grateful, God.
So, Lord, bless us today as we look at the creation of man and what that means to us.
But, God, be blessed as we worship You, as we give You praise, Lord, because You are so worthy of all of it.
We love You, and we thank You.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
We are in Genesis chapter 2.
We're going to be looking at verses 4 through 17 today.
And verse 4 of Genesis 2 is really where this second account or this account of chapter 2 begins.
It's kind of really where chapter 2 should start, in my opinion.
But some people read this account, this second account of creation and the creation of man.
They read it and say, oh, it's a different creation account or it's an account of a different creation.
And there's some details we're going to be going through that cause people to think that.
But it's an inaccurate understanding to think it's an account of a different creation.
Genesis 2, like I said in the intro, is just simply a zoomed-in topical focus on day 6 with a special focus on the creation of man.
It really is going from Genesis 1, the cosmos, to a garden in Eden in the east.
It's the idea of God switching from His account of creating order from chaos, going from chaos to order,
to God's creative activity in supplying what His beloved, pinnacle, crowning, achievement, creation, man and woman need.
That's really what this focus is all about.
So read with me in verse 4, we'll pick up the narrative here.
It says, these are the records of the heavens and the earth concerning their creation.
At the time that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, no shrub of the field had yet grown on the land,
and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not made it rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.
So this section we're looking at today, it begins with just a quick snapshot of creation, right?
Chapter 1, we had this chronological account, but Chapter 2 here, as it's revisiting the creation story,
it just really quickly says, you know, there was a creation.
But what it's focusing on here is not so much the chronology of things, it's focusing on topics.
It's focusing on the conditions that existed that God addressed in creation,
but we're going to see that he really only focuses on the details that pertain to man and the creation of man.
And so he's focusing on really kind of what wasn't there and what he provided as a part of his creation.
And the idea here is he's simply pointing out some particular moments during creation that happened in the overall narrative
that again, as I said, apply to the main focus of this account, which is the creation of man.
So verse 4, he says, at the time the Lord God made the earth and heavens, right?
That's just at the time, right?
That word time is referring to a span of time.
It's not referring to one moment or one day, it's just going at the time, right?
And there was a time when God created everything and it took place over the span of seven days.
But at the time, what does he point out?
Verse 5, no shrubs of the field had yet grown, no plant of the field had yet sprouted,
for the Lord God had not made it rain on the land.
You see, some people that think this is a separate creation or it's a different creation, right?
They get into all these weird theories that there was a pre-edemic race and so there must have been a first creation
and then there was a second.
And all this stuff that I really don't see that the Bible supports, they say if chapter 2 is just about day 6,
that's the focus, and then you go back to Genesis 1 and you see that vegetation was created on day 3.
Well, the Lord God just said there was no shrubs of the field, right?
And they go, that doesn't line up.
Well, verse 5 effectively is referring to the conditions of creation prior to day 3.
That's all it's doing.
It's just saying at the time the Lord God created the heavens and the earth,
there was a moment where there was no plants, no vegetation.
And it's really that no shrubs and no plants of the field had grown yet is the idea.
And the reason those shrubs and plants had not grown yet, he tells us, because it had not rained yet, right?
This is just topically, again, referring back to day 2.
You remember on day 2, God separated the waters below from the waters above and created a sky, right?
We looked at that when we studied through there.
And at this point, what he's topically referring to is that water above had not yet come down as rain, right?
So it's not conflicting with chapter 1.
It's just topically highlighting moments.
Now, that idea of the waters above are seen by some people.
They interpret it as in the beginning there was this canopy of water vapor surrounding the planet,
almost like a force field of water.
And this theory is called the canopy theory that some people have in the idea of creation.
And what the idea is is that when God separated the waters below from the waters above,
those waters above surrounded the earth.
And it created like a greenhouse effect on the earth.
And that's why the earth was so lush and just so green and just this paradise that we see the picture of.
The idea is that in the beginning, before the flood and other things, that there were no deserts.
There were no polar ice caps.
Like the entire planet was this lush, perfect paradise.
People that support the canopy effect also say that this canopy vapor, this water above,
is what supported some of the pre-flood phenomenon like humans living 900 years, right?
They also purport that that canopy was where the five and a half months of rain came from during the flood, right?
We were going to read in the flood that it rained for five and a half months consistently.
Well, where did all that water come from?
They say that up in this water canopy, all that water vapor fell to the earth, and that was part of the flood.
And so, and then again, they'll go, so with this canopy being gone, you know,
all the radiation and stuff that was filtered out by this canopy was now hitting humans.
And that's why human life spans rapidly declined.
You know, there's the kind of idea that we know that, you know, you get sunburned too much.
You could get skin cancer.
You could get all that stuff.
And so, canopy theory, they go, before the fall, before the flood, people live forever, right?
But when that canopy was gone, so on and so forth.
The reason I bring that up is just because some people will argue that point and dispute those ideas.
They say, you know, it couldn't possibly be that.
And this is one of those things like we talked about when we went through Revelation.
Was anybody there?
Oh, you were there, right?
Okay.
Well, Bel, we'll talk to you after to get all the details, right?
None of us were there.
So all we have to go off of is what God gives us in His Word, right?
And God's Word isn't, it doesn't say specifically one way or the other.
There was a canopy.
It just says water above, water below.
So we're left to take the details of God's Word and we interpret.
But it's nothing we should be dividing over.
It's nothing we should be arguing about.
No, I can't fellowship with you.
You're one of those canopy weirdos.
It might have been a canopy of water.
It might not have been, you know?
So also, you know, it tells us when it's pointing out at the time God created the heavens and the earth, there was no plants.
There was no plants because it hadn't rained yet.
And then it says in verse 5, and there was no man to work the ground yet.
That's the context of this section.
That's the context of what the author has given us here.
It's all about man and man's creation and man's commissioning.
But again, for those that argue this point, you know, I would just say that when you look at what it says here in verse 5,
it doesn't tell us how long before man, there was no shrubs and no plants, right?
So those that argue, no, it's happening right now on day six when He's created man.
It doesn't say that, okay?
So this account reconciles with chapter one without issue.
And again, because it's not a chronological event, this is a topical recollection.
But why are these few details included instead of others, right?
At the time God created everything, there's no plants.
Surely there was a lot of other stuff happening during the creation of the heavens and the earth.
Why does He focus on that?
And again, it's because the focus of this chapter is all about man.
As we study through this chapter, we're going to see that there will be a garden in this place called Eden
where all manners of plant and vegetation are going to grow.
And man will be placed in that garden.
We're going to be told to work that land and to watch over that land after its creation.
And so the context, the point, the purpose, the setup of all of this here is that at a point during time
when God made the heavens and the earth, there were no shrubs and no plants,
that man is going to be watching over because there was no rain to water those plants,
and man wasn't on the scene yet.
But then when you read that, you go, well, how could Adam possibly fulfill God's call on his life, right?
God's going to put him there to work the land.
How could he do that?
Well, verse 6, we see one of the first elements of God providing for man,
providing for what he's going to call man to do.
It says, but mist would come up from the earth and water all the ground.
There was no rain, so God provided the water that the plants would need to be cultivated.
Now, that word mist, it could mean a thick, like low to the ground, dewy fog, right?
Canopy theory people, they go, oh, there was still an evaporation cycle, you know, condensation cycle.
But the word could also be rendered as a stream, right?
The idea of an overflowing river or flooding riverbanks, that type of thing,
or even natural springs that bubbled up from the ground.
So, but the idea is that God provided the water for the lack that existed at one point in creation.
So God provides the water, he provides what is needed, this beautiful picture, the idea here.
And really what I think this whole account is about and focusing on is, guys, God provides for those he loves.
He provides.
He provides for the needs he's going to expect us to do even before we're there, before we exist.
God provides.
If God calls you to something, God is going to provide the gifts, the talents, the resources,
the means with which to fulfill what he's called you to do.
And so we see that in the very beginning here.
Now, verse seven, the author then skips over all the other creation details and we go right to what took place on day six.
It says, then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust, from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils,
and the man became a living being.
So that's what this account is all about.
That's what this chapter is about.
God's creation of man and God's relationship to man.
And we get to this point through a very subtle but incredibly important point that is made seven times in this chapter.
It's a point that permeates all of scripture.
It's who our God is.
It's the character of God.
You see, he mentions in this chapter over and over and over the Lord God.
Did you guys notice that?
It's seven times in this chapter he switches from God in chapter one to the Lord God.
What does that tell us about God?
What does that tell us about his relationship to us, his creation?
Well, again, if you remember back in chapter one when it mentioned God, it would say God spoke, God said, God said it was good, right?
That word there is Elohim.
That's a Hebrew word that is a plural word referring to a singular entity, right?
When we saw God say let us make man in our image, it's one God.
But there's a plurality inside God and that's what we call the Trinity.
That God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit.
They're co-equal.
They're co-eternal.
And they're different from each other.
But in essence, they're one God together.
And yeah, our brains go, I don't understand how that works.
Well, that's what makes him God and not us, right?
But the Bible uses this.
And so in chapter one, this word Elohim referring to God, the Godhead, God in his transcendent triune, almighty power and being creator of everything,
we switch in chapter two to him being called the Lord God.
And in Hebrew, it's Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh Elohim.
Now, Yahweh is the personal covenant name of God.
That's the name of God when we're talking about the fact that he wants to know you personally and he wants you to know him personally.
That he's not this distant cosmic God that created the universe, but he knows how many hairs are on your head.
That he knows every thought you think.
He knows everything about you.
And he wants to be in relationship with you.
That's what this word Yahweh talks about.
So the God, although mighty deity beyond comprehension, Elohim, relates to you,
desires that personal relationship with you, and provides everything needed to those that he has made promises to.
That's what this word means.
And so this point was just very subtly introduced there into this chapter.
It started in verse four, then the Lord God made the heavens and the earth, and it repeats it all the way through.
This theme actually runs through all of God's word.
That he is a personal God who wants a personal relationship and to provide for those he's made promises to.
You see, he provides the covering for Adam and Eve after the fall.
They sowed fig leaves together.
God sacrificed an animal and gave them skins to cover their shame.
He provides deliverance from Egypt, which is a symbolic type of the world and sin.
He provides his law that man would learn that relying on their own self-determination is inadequate.
In the wilderness, he provides food and water that they would not starve.
He provides access to the promised land.
And it's always according to his ways, according to his terms.
And this goes on and on and on through the Old Testament all the way until you get to the New Testament, right?
Where God comes in the flesh and he lives a perfect life, providing for us an example of how we should be, how we are to live.
He provides the ultimate example by dying on the cross.
As we're told in the Bible that no greater love has anyone than this to lay down their life for their friends.
And he provides that example to us.
Ultimately, providing for us the atoning once for all sacrifice for every sin you and I have ever committed and ever will commit.
And he did all that by dying on the cross in our place, providing a fully satisfying of God's justice and wrath against sin.
He provided that.
So this section gives us a glimpse at how things were supposed to be between man and God.
The relationship that we were intended to have between his creation or him as our creator and us as his creation.
But it's the beginning of the story that carries all the way through scripture that not only was this how it was supposed to be, but it can be again.
It can be again.
It can be restored.
And that's when we get all the way through the New Testament and Jesus and all that that is about.
But right here in chapter two of Genesis, in the very beginning, we see this all powerful, almighty, all knowing creator of everything, Elohim.
Who says, yeah, but I desire to know you personally.
I desire you to know me personally because I'm not just Elohim.
I'm Yahweh.
I'm Yahweh Elohim.
So know me.
Let me know you.
Give your life to me.
And we see all of that in that name, the Lord God.
So the details of God's creation of Adam in this one verse really demonstrate God's great personal love and care.
It's highlighting that aspects of that Yahweh personal covenant name of God.
You see, it tells us there that the Lord God formed the man out of the dust.
The word formed means to mold or to shape intentionally or carefully.
It's a word in the Hebrew that that would typically be used to speak of an artist, a master artist creating his masterpiece.
Right. We know that we look at certain paintings today and we go, wow, you know, that's a masterpiece.
We look at different types of art and we go, we we admire it because it's so perfect.
It's so well done.
Right. That idea.
And so when it says he formed man, it doesn't mean that he just kind of like whatever, whatever poof man.
But he was careful.
He was intentional.
He made all the systems within us work together perfectly.
Remember, he said it was very good.
Exact existing exactly as it should.
He made everything about us to be absolutely perfect.
And God or the word of God goes on to use pictures like God is the potter.
We are the clay. Right.
You're familiar with that one where it's that idea of him molding and shaping our lives.
And again, the picture here and we've had this repeated a couple of times just in these first two verses of Genesis is that man is no afterthought.
Man is no accident of evolution.
We're not just some random collection of gases colliding together, turning into some ooze.
And then that ooze bumps into other ooze.
And it was like, hey, let's make something living and poof fish.
And then fish says, I want to crawl out of the water.
They poof animals and animals says, you know, and then be like, oh, oh, oh.
And then becomes man.
And, you know, that.
No.
Man was intentionally.
Purposefully created.
And we are the intentional creation of the infinite mind that designed everything that exists.
And so he formed us out of the dust of the ground.
Right. I've been talking a lot about how special we are.
We are the pinnacle of God's creation.
We're the crowning jewel.
We're what everything was leading up to.
But lest we be prideful, never forget.
Man was made from the dirt.
You're made of dirt.
All right.
We haven't gotten a woman yet.
So, guys, I'm really singling you out right here.
Okay.
Man was made from dirt.
Before you start thinking you're all that and, you know, how important you are and how amazing and all that,
don't forget that you're made of dirt.
What makes you special is everything God is and what God does.
Right.
And it also speaks to the fact that this physical body we have, it's just a vessel.
Right. It's a vessel.
It's no different metaphorically than an empty jug without water.
Right.
You can see a jug and go, whoa, that's a masterpiece.
Right.
And the human body is a masterpiece.
And it's a wonder absolutely.
And it's beautiful to behold in its design and function.
But what is it that really makes this dirt suit special?
It says he breathed the breath of life into his nostrils and the man became a living being.
That's what makes us special.
You see, man is more than just the dust of his appearance.
And again, what humanistic thinking tries to do is say, oh, no, man's just, we're just an animal.
We're just nothing.
We just live and then we die.
And humanistic thinking tries to reduce this glorious creation of God to, it's just a meaningless nothing.
But no, man is more than just the dust of his physical substance.
He is made in the image of God.
Now, when it says the man became a living being here, it's interesting because that is the same exact Hebrew word.
Used in Genesis chapter one, verses 20 and 24 when it's referring to the animals.
Right.
Now, in Genesis one, 20 and 24, the same Hebrew word is rendered in the English living creatures.
And what the Hebrew word means at its base route is any living thing with voluntary movement, circulation and respiration.
So in chapter one, verse 24, when God said, let the earth produce living creatures.
The creatures were produced of the earth or out of dust, if you will.
But man is oh, so different than the animals.
Oh, so different for man is the only living creature that was made in the image of God.
What makes us different from the animals and really supreme over the animals is that God himself breathed life into man.
Unlike anything else he created.
Animals, he said, let them come up from the earth.
But us, he personally fashioned our body and then breathed life into us.
That word breathed, it is a warmly personal, beautiful word.
It's the idea of the face to face intimacy of a kiss.
It's the idea of just the most intense personal moment.
It also is referring to the significance of the fact that this act was an act of self giving, self giving.
What that means is God breathed some of himself into us.
It doesn't mean we're gods or anything like that.
But the spark of life we have, God breathed that into us.
That ties into that concept that were made in his image.
Some of what God is, God granted into mankind.
It's a beautiful, beautiful word.
And it's incidentally unique to humans.
It's unique to humans, not with any other living creature that exists within our physical universe.
And then what did he breathe into us?
He says the breath of life.
That word breath is the same word that is used of the Holy Spirit throughout the whole Bible.
In the Hebrew language the word is ruach.
That means spirit.
But it also means breath.
It also means wind.
And then when you get to the New Testament the word is numah, which means spirit, breath or wind.
And so when he says the breath of life here, he created man by providing his own breath.
Or to use the other definition of the word, his own spirit.
To then bring the spirit of man to life.
To a sense of living that transcends animals and creatures in every way.
Humans are alive in a way no animal is.
And people argue that because sometimes your dog can look like it's smiling at you, right?
They go, oh, he has emotions.
They're so real, right?
One of the things that always was funny to me, and I don't mean to put anybody on blast here with this,
but the culture that we got into in the last 20 years is people say, no, we don't want to have kids.
So they would get a dog.
And they would treat it like their child.
And I get that.
I love animals.
I really do love animals.
I grew up with them.
But they're an animal.
They're not a person, right?
The way we are.
And the idea is that when this physical vessel dies, this dirt suit that God gave us that is so beautifully complex
and a masterpiece of creation, when this dies, we will live on.
We will live eternally.
God gave us some of himself in that sense, whereas he is eternal.
He gave us a spirit that is eternal.
Now, what that does mean from a point of interpretation, I'm sorry, but I don't think our animals are going to be in heaven.
Some of you are like, dang it, I'm done.
Don't want to be a Christian no more if, you know, Sparky can't go with me.
But that's just a side point here.
But the idea is that we are a living being as opposed to just a living creature.
And I see that rendered here in the CSB.
It's a very subtle point here.
But we are a living being with a spirit, with a soul, with a body.
We are made in the image of God, which means we are a Trinity like our God is, our creator is.
And we see this in 1 Thessalonians 523 where Paul says to the people he's writing to,
May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Isn't that beautiful?
God loved us that much to give us that life.
Now in verse 8, we now see his commissioning of man.
Verse 8, it says the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed.
Verse 15 kind of restates this too where it says the Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and to watch over it.
So the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, provided a perfect place for the perfect man he created on a perfect earth in a perfect universe.
He provided the perfect special and unique life in his image so that we would have perfect fellowship with him, our creator, right?
Our spirit connected to his spirit.
He provided man with a perfect responsibility, right?
Work the land and watch over it.
That means to cultivate it and to maintain it.
You remember those shrubs and plants that he pointed out earlier in the chapter?
Those shrubs and plants, those words refer to bushes and herbs like cilantro and thyme and all that kind of stuff.
It's the idea of plants that have flexible stems as opposed to plants that have like rigid, woody components like trees, right?
These shrubs and plants are specifically the types of vegetation that thrives when cultivated and maintained.
And that's why this was the detail he included topically going we're not going to talk about all creation.
I'm going to tell you at some point in creation those plants that God was going to have man, they didn't exist and God provided them.
But hey, in order to be in order for them to grow and be cultivated, maintained, they need water.
But there was no rain yet.
So God made the mist come up on the land.
And then God created man, this beautiful creation, and then put him in the garden to work and to maintain it.
So Yahweh Elohim did all of this.
That's what we're learning here.
That's what we're seeing.
He did all of it.
He provided all of it so that man could do what God was going to commission him to do.
But the idea is man did none of it.
God did all of it.
Man did none of it.
So it tells us that the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east.
Notice that the garden is not named Eden.
The garden existed in a place called Eden.
And it says in the east.
Now, I believe Moses wrote these books, and I believe the Bible very clearly supports that.
So this was written by Moses.
And we believe that it was written probably when Israel was wandering in the wilderness.
And so as the author, it's from the perspective of his location.
Right?
So east of the wilderness is the place he's referring to.
Now, the location of this garden, east of Moses when he wrote it, nobody knows where it's at.
Right?
There's all kinds of speculations.
We'll touch on that in a little bit.
But verse 9, it tells us the Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food.
And then this important detail, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So again, there's no conflict with chapter 1 here because it doesn't indicate when God caused the trees to grow.
Right?
I thought God created all the vegetation on day 3.
He did.
Right?
So the beginning of this phrase, the Lord God caused in the original Hebrew language, it actually suggests the Lord God had caused.
So again, it's just topically referring.
And we get this picture, though, that there's this beautiful garden that God created.
It's amazing.
These trees that he built in the garden among the shrubs and the plants were just, he says, pleasing in appearance.
They were desirable to look at.
They were just beautiful.
And they produced good food.
And so Adam had food and pleasing surroundings.
He was made in the image of God.
God had literally kissed life to him.
And he was the perfect sovereign, human sovereign of all creation under the authority of God, his creator.
He had God's blessing.
He had God's presence.
Bonhoeffer said about this, Adam speaks and walks with God as if they belong to one another.
Personal relationship.
Beautiful fellowship.
And then, like I said, he shares these little details.
He created all the trees and these two specific ones.
We'll come back to those.
Verse 10.
A river went out from Eden to water the garden.
From there it divided and became the source of four rivers.
The name of the first one is Pishon, or Pishon, which flows through the entire land of Havila where there is gold.
Gold from that land is pure.
Bedelim and Onyx are also there.
The name of the second river is Gihon, or Gihon, which flows through the entire land of Kush.
The name of the third river is Tigris, which runs east of Assyria.
And the fourth river is Euphrates.
Now, again, this is pretty specific geographical details here.
And people have tried to use this interpretation to try and pinpoint where the Garden of Eden is.
And yeah, it is pretty specific, right?
You know, there's this river and there's this river and all that.
But again, we're not supposed to find the Garden of Eden.
I don't believe it's available.
Some even think it's not on Earth anymore.
I think if the garden even was discoverable, we would turn it into a theme park and charge for admission.
Right? That's what we would do.
And, you know, besides there's this flaming sword there.
And, you know, nobody really knows where the land of Havila is.
Nobody really knows where the land of Kush is.
Kush could be like in Ethiopia.
Some think it's northwest up in kind of the Iran area.
But we do have two rivers today, right?
The Tigris and Euphrates.
We could find those on a map.
But the problem is, is there's no guarantee that those are the same rivers, right?
Like, people rename stuff from old names all the time.
So they might not be the exact same rivers.
But it's an interesting thing to conjecture on.
And some people think if you look at the rivers, you go down into the Persian Gulf.
The Persian Gulf wasn't always as big as it was.
So the water is maybe covering the garden.
Don't know.
There's really nothing down there that we found about or found or has been, you know, reported.
Some people think that the Garden of Eden was actually north in Turkey.
Because the Tigris and Euphrates rivers actually flow this way into the Persian Gulf.
They don't flow this way.
So anyways.
And then on top of that, you know, when the whole earth was flooded and everything changed,
the whole geography of the earth was radically different than it originally was.
So we don't know where the garden is.
And there you go.
So verse 15.
The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.
And the Lord God commanded the man.
You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
For on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.
So God provided the universe.
He provided the earth.
He provided the land.
He provided the potential within the land for plants to grow.
He provided the water.
Those plants would need to be cultivated and maintained.
He provided the garden.
He provided these trees.
He created man, placed him within it.
And then you go, well, what did the Lord God provide here?
What was it was provided to man in these two specific trees that it points out?
I believe it's one of the most significant expressions of love that you can possibly give to somebody.
Free will.
Choice.
God provided free will and choice to man in these two trees.
You see, God wants a loving personal relationship with mankind.
He wanted that with Adam, his creation.
He wants that with us today.
But if he made Adam to love him without the choice not to, well, that's not love at all.
That would just make Adam a robot, right?
That would just make us robots.
That wouldn't be love.
That would be domination.
And so as God wanted to have this loving relationship with his creation, God wants us to choose him.
He wants us to be in relationship with him, to choose to love him, to choose to obey him,
to be in that and really in order to draw us onto himself and to receive what he has for us,
he demonstrates his love in so many ways.
And what we see here is in the very beginning of creation, all that he created for man,
he said, look, here's this planet, here's everything you need.
And God said, enjoy it.
Right?
That's a pretty sweet deal.
You didn't make it.
Just enjoy it.
And this included work.
Right?
Work wasn't cursed or became a cursed burden until after the fall.
It was a pleasant thing.
It was enjoyable.
Man loved it.
This is so great.
I get to cultivate this and God's with them and they're just like, oh, this is so cool.
And man's like, whoa, what's that?
And he's like, oh, that's a such and such plan.
Oh, it was just this beautiful relationship.
But choosing God is only a choice if there was something else to choose.
And so God provided these two specific trees.
Now, in his instruction to man, he leads with permission, right?
Partake of everything in the garden to your heart's content.
Eat as much as you want.
You could eat from any tree.
Adam could partake of everything, including the tree of life.
And that's the tree that was introduced in verse nine with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now, some people go, well, what would eating from the tree of life do, right?
Biblically, it seems to have something to do with Adam's originally intended immortality.
The same type of immortality we'll have in the new heaven and new earth that we see in Revelation.
Where I get that is in Genesis 322 after the fall, it says, the Lord God said,
since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,
he must not reach out and take from the tree of life and live forever.
So it could be speculatively that Adam's physical body was intended to live forever with his soul and with his spirit.
And this fruit was somehow part of it.
I don't know exactly because it doesn't tell us.
But the idea that this fruit was a part of that longevity is supported by the fact that after the fall,
it tells us that the curse of sin brought death to our bodies, right?
Death didn't exist per se before that.
And that was because we're barred from the tree of life.
We were kicked out of the garden.
And then when you go to Revelation, what do we see?
God gives us a new body, a heavenly body, one that is probably like the one we originally had, that it was eternal.
You know, that this whole idea of us partaking of the fruit of the tree of life and being in fellowship with God,
it has something to do with our immortality.
We see it in Revelation 22, verse 2.
In the new heaven and the new earth in New Jerusalem, it says,
the tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing 12 kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month.
The leaves of the tree are for the healing of nations, and there will no longer be any curse.
Right? What was the curse? Death.
That was the result of the fall tied to this tree somehow.
And then in Revelation 2, 7, Jesus says, the one who conquers,
I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God,
a right we originally had, but was lost in the fall.
And so God gives us permission.
Freely eat. Freely eat.
I've provided it all for you.
Freely partake of all of that.
But then this choice was paired with a prohibition.
And the prohibition was simply this.
The choice was to whether or not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Right?
I've given you everything.
Just don't do that one thing.
Don't eat from that tree.
And in that, what we see is God provided choice.
God provided choice.
He also provided the consequence. Right?
The day you eat of that tree, you'll surely die.
And then, you know, we're going to get into this in chapter 3,
but the idea of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
it was an act of moral autonomy.
It was Adam and Eve saying, we want to gain wisdom without regard to God's word.
That was really what it was.
We don't need God. We don't need to listen to him.
We don't need his word. We don't need him to tell us what to do.
We don't need to depend on that.
We could do it ourselves.
We could get wisdom ourselves.
Today, people call that moral relativity. Right?
What's true for you is true for you.
And then we look at our world today and we're like, well, where has that gotten us?
Right? We can't even define what a woman is anymore.
Well, great wisdom, man.
So anyways, chapter 3, when we get to that, we'll see that, you know,
they made the wrong choice.
There was a choice. Love God, obey him, or do it yourself.
Mad made the wrong choice, but ultimately what we see is through Christ, humanity gets a second chance, if you will.
Mankind gets a second chance, if you will.
And only God is the one that has the right to determine what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is evil.
God is the one that gets to do that, nobody else.
So not only did he provide all these things to Adam, provide the life, provide the free will, provide the choice,
provide the consequences, he also provides the definitions in his word.
What is good? What is evil? We don't get to decide that.
God gets to decide that.
When we disagree with God, we're wrong, not him.
And that's why we have his word, so that we would know him, his character, and what he wants from us.
And really, only God is the one that has the right to determine the consequences of defying him and denying him.
And so that's as far as we're going to get into the chapter today.
But, you know, why the focus on God's provision, right?
That is what I see through this chapter, is just God providing, God providing.
Why did Moses write this with a focus on that?
I believe Moses wanted to teach his readers this most important characteristic about God, right?
We talked about Almighty God creating the universe.
Now I want you to understand Israel as we're wandering in the wilderness, who your God is.
He's personal. He wants to know you. He wants to have a relationship with you.
He cares about you. Right? In the very beginning, look what he provided for man.
It might have been because they were complaining about the manna God was providing from the skies, right?
We're going to get to that in the wilderness.
God's like, okay, I'll provide food for you. Just wake up every morning, it's there.
I don't like it. It's like, whoa, right?
But God will provide it. He wanted us to understand that.
He wanted them to see that. He cares for you. He loves his creation.
He's not aloof. He's not distant. He didn't start evolution. Boop, push play and leave.
He's intimately connected all the time, regularly.
That in the beginning, originally, we had this personal, loving, intimate, two-way relationship with our Creator.
This relationship where he provided for Adam the way a loving father provides for their children,
just to bless them, just to see them smile.
God loves to see his kids smile. He loves to bless us.
And then we get mad when he doesn't bless us and we're just being disobedient punks.
He doesn't bless.
You know, there's a relationship we're having here.
Little James at my house who I get to play bonus grandpa to.
You know, I just, I, I, parents have always said this.
You don't understand God until you have a kid, you know, and I never had children.
But I've got to be involved with a lot in my life.
And I get now that whole idea that he's learning, he's growing, he doesn't understand certain things yet.
He could be radically annoying and, oh, my gosh, stop grabbing everything off the table.
And, you know, and why are you trying to kill yourself every two seconds?
But none of that matters.
Because what I live for in that moment is just to see him smile, just to see him turn around and smile.
And he's figured out that when he's about to do something wrong and you go, don't, he goes.
I'm like, bro, OK, do whatever you want. Right?
It's wow.
And that's how God is with us. But Adam blew it.
Adam broke that relationship, lost it. He had the whole garden before him.
He had everything he could want provided in abundance.
He could eat from the tree of life and partake of all that it promised him.
But instead, he chose to disobey God's word, disregard God's provision and do the one thing God said not to eat of the tree.
He was expressly forbidden from eating from.
And as I mentioned, that was Adam deciding to be autonomous, willfully disregarding God's revealed will.
He went to seek wisdom on his own terms.
And yeah, he obtained the knowledge of good and evil.
Congratulations, because it ultimately killed him.
And it brought this curse that's been on mankind ever since and a curse on all the creation that God created for him to rule over.
But the beautiful truth, the hope is that by contrast, Jesus Christ, the second Adam that the Bible explains him to be,
it says, lived by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.
He did it right. He lived every second of his earthly existence in radical dependence on God's word.
He believed God's bare word submitted to his heavenly Father's will.
That idea is when God said, do this, it wasn't a situation of like, well, I don't know.
It was just like God said so, therefore it's true, I obey.
And in time, in time, he went to the cross to die in our place for our sin,
the sin that we've inherited from the very beginning to provide for us a means of regaining all that God originally provided for his creation.
That eternal life forever in joyous fellowship with him, with all our needs eternally supplied,
free from this corrupted body of sin and death, free from the temptation and seduction of sin,
free in paradise, regained in perfect fellowship in the presence of our Creator.
But today we still have that choice that Adam had.
And it's not a choice about eating from this tree or that tree, you know, specifically.
It isn't about doing good or bad.
The choice today that we have is whether or not to put our trust, our faith, and our dependence in what the Lord God has provided for us now.
Jesus Christ, God the Son, the atonement for our sin.
If we choose that, all the promises of our Lord God, the promises that the Lord God has covenanted with his people,
the promises that he says, if you trust me, you put your faith in me, these will apply to you.
A new heart, a new nature, a new life, now and forever.
If we make the right choice, those are ours, now and forever.
But if you don't, if you don't choose Jesus today to submit your life to him,
if you metaphorically say that one thing that you told me not to do, deny God, right?
I'm going to do that.
I'm going to go at it on my own.
I'm going to do it alone.
If you choose to live by your own wisdom, outside of God's word, then you're going to receive God's promises too.
But those promises are promises of judgment, promises of eternal separation from God in hell forever, paying the price for your own sin.
But that's not what God wants.
That's not what God intended in the beginning.
That's not the relationship he desired to have from us.
He's loved you since before this universe was created.
And he provided for you to have a restored relationship with him 2,000 years ago.
And there's no other name under which man can be saved but the name of Jesus Christ.
There's no other way to restore that original, personal, loving, intimate, two-way relationship with your creator.
But by putting your faith in God the Son, the creator that came to this earth to live and die for you.
And when you do that, we are restored partially now, but ultimately in complete fulfillment to what God originally intended for us.
I'm not even going to say bow your heads and pray.
If God is speaking to you this morning before we take communion together, if God has been speaking to you about his desire for your life,
to restore your life, to bring back purpose and meaning to your life.
If you've heard God's word and you realize that you're not just an accident of evolution, you're not just a spark of consciousness with no purpose,
but you are a very special creation loved by the God of this universe.
And you desire to have that restored relationship with him, not just now, but then to know you're going to go to heaven when you die.
Back into the paradise he intended for you.
It comes through putting your faith in him.
It comes through receiving Jesus Christ.
It comes from having the spirit that he originally gave you that died in the fall and is dead because of sin,
and then have it be born again and connected back to the spirit of God.
He wants to do that in your life now, but you have to exercise your free will.
You have to say, God, I recognize everything you say about me.
I know I'm a sinner, but please forgive me. Please come into my life.
That's getting saved.
Anybody in this room, if you want to do it, I just want you to raise your hand where you're seated and let me pray with you.
Because God will save you today.
God will change your eternal destiny today.
And I want to pray this prayer with you. So just raise your hand if you want to do that.
If you're watching online and you want to receive Christ this morning, simply let us know in the chat,
I want to receive Christ.
Because not only are we going to pray with you, but we want to give you some resources to help you on this relationship you've started with your creator.
So if you're online, just let us know in chat.
And anybody in this room, just raise your hand where I can see it and I will pray with you today.
All right.
Father God, we pray.
Lord, we pray for those that don't know you.
We pray for those that are enslaved by their sin, thinking that they're free.
We pray for those that are living a life of hurt and disappointment and all that sin brings into this world.
But God, have come to the place of recognizing that you bring freedom, that you bring hope,
and that God, we enter into that through faith in you.
And so God, we pray for all of those that know they need you, that they would pray right now.
And if you know you need Jesus Christ, just pray with me.
Say, God, I know I've sinned. I know I need you.
Please come into my life. Be my Savior.
Please forgive me of all my sin.
Please forgive me of all the sin I've ever committed and ever will commit.
Wash me clean.
Restore the joy of fellowship with you, my creator.
I trust you.
Teach me how to live for you, how to depend on you, how to shine for you,
that I would be able to share this hope with others that don't know you.
Thank you for loving me so much.
In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
All right, we're going to close today with communion.
And you know, communion is that time that we have as the church
to specifically remember what he provided for us.
Right? He provided everything.
We gave it up. Then he provided the means to regain it.
And he gave us that in his death.
It's remembering the death of Jesus on the cross.
That's what communion is all about.
I didn't get a communion thing.
Anybody want to throw one out? No, don't throw it at me, please.
Thanks, brother.
You got it? All right, thank you.
So if you got one of these communion cups in the room,
if you've never seen it before, there's like two tabs on the top.
There's a very thin plastic tab and a thicker plastic tab.
If you pull back the very thin one, it will reveal the cracker
that's in the top of the cup here.
Now, when Jesus took the bread, it tells us in the gospels,
it says he gave thanks and he broke it.
And he told his disciples, this is my body, which is for you,
and it's provided for you.
And he said, do this in remembrance of me.
You know, our bodies, our perfect bodies that God created for us,
that he breathed the breath of life into,
that had a perfect spirit and perfect fellowship with God,
in the fall, it was all corrupted.
When man disobeyed and ate from the tree he wasn't supposed to eat of,
his perfect righteousness was lost.
And as I've been saying, to regain that fellowship,
to regain that relationship, to regain that place,
where we would just walk with God and talk with God
and be in his perfect presence one day,
only a perfect atonement could pay the price to regain that.
And that's what Christ did when he gave his body on the cross
for you and me.
He atoned for our sin.
He satisfied God's wrath, God's judgment.
And as a man who never sinned in any way, Jesus was perfect,
he willingly gave himself that you could be forgiven,
that I could be forgiven.
And he did it all to pay our penalty,
to fulfill that justice of a holy God for our sin.
It's his body given for us.
It's his body given for you.
It's his body given for me.
That paid the price to restore our eternal life with God,
to restore that possibility of fellowship with our Creator again,
to be with him again one day.
And when we put our faith and trust in his death for our life,
although this body of sin and death will still die,
the salvation of who we really are is secure forever.
And we thank God for that,
because we couldn't do it ourselves.
It was only him.
Let's pray.
Father, we're so grateful that you died for us.
God, from the very beginning,
I believe, Lord, in the very moment where you contemplated all that
you were going to do in a split second,
seeing everything from the creation of the universe,
the creation of earth,
the creation of man,
the creation of woman,
the fall,
and everything, your plan to fix it
and to make it so that we could come back to you, God,
all in the instant you saw all of that,
you chose to do it.
Instead of saying, no, I'm not going to create mankind,
you loved us enough to risk the opportunity of us denying you
that we would have the opportunity to have relationship with you.
And God, surely we did deny you as a people,
and you made the way for us to come back.
We thank you so much.
God, it was your body given for us
that we would have the hope that when we die,
we would be restored to how we originally were created to be.
We thank you.
We thank you, God, that you did something we could never do
by satisfying the justice, the wrath against the sin in this world.
We remember.
We receive it, Lord.
Let's partake together.
And if you're in the room and you have the communion cup,
just pull back that thicker tab very carefully.
And in the Gospels again, when we read that Jesus was with his disciples
in that upper room, it tells us that he took the cup.
And he said, this is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this in remembrance of me.
The old covenant was one where we were covered.
We had a band-aid over our sinful nature,
our sinful ways.
It was temporarily covered by the blood of goats and lambs.
But it never really changed our heart,
restored our heart to a place it originally was,
one connected with God with a desire to love him and to serve him.
But when Jesus came and shed his blood on the cross,
that perfect blood, it wasn't just covering up.
It was a new covenant.
Because if you do this and you trust me, you are saved.
You are washed clean from sin.
There is no more stain.
That's how God sees us through the blood of Christ when we receive him.
It meant a permanent, once for all,
satisfying of the wrath of God against our sin forever.
He provided that for you.
He gave that you would be saved.
He gave that blood that would wash away all the effects of our sin
so that what was once provided for us can be restored to us.
God did that for every single one of us.
Only God could do it. It's amazing.
And you, he said he did it for his greatest creation,
the joy that was set before him.
You.
The thought of having a relationship with you again,
that's what took him to the cross.
And in him we receive all that God wanted for us
and all that God wanted with us in the beginning.
We remember the blood that was shed.
That opens up the access for us to be reunited with our creator.
Let's pray.
Father, we are so grateful that you shed your blood.
God, the body, your body that you gave for us, Lord,
that was brutalized, that went through everything on the cross,
that was what our sin deserved.
And you took it on yourself.
But then, Lord, you shed your blood
that we wouldn't only avoid getting what we deserved,
but then we would be able to get something that we definitely don't deserve.
That you made a new covenant.
You made new promises with your people that, as we trust in your sacrifice for us,
that relationship we had in the beginning would be restored.
And that, God, we would have the hope that one day when this physical body dies,
we will enter into eternity with you
in the bodies we were meant to have,
forgiven, saved, free from sin,
with perfect joy and perfect fellowship.
God, we thank you so much for that.
It was something we could never do on our own,
and yet you provided it for us.
We love you, and we thank you.
Let's partake together.
Well, I pray God blesses you all as you just seek to serve him and to know him more.
I pray God continues to reveal himself to you in all things and in all ways.
I pray that we don't forget the relationship that God fought for and paid so much for.
The relationship that is given to us because of what he did,
our restoration and fellowship with God our creator,
that we never take that for granted,
that we never consider it something cheap
because it is the most precious thing.
It is the most beautiful thing.
And so walk in that. Dwell on that. Remember that.
When you're down, when the devil's beating you up, say,
No, I'm a child of God. God loves me. God forgives me.
When the devil says, Oh, you deserve to go to hell because of what you just did,
what you just thought, we say, Yeah, I was wrong.
Then we say, God, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.
And he does every single time. How beautiful.
So I pray you guys are blessed.
Remember, we got so many opportunities coming up to let people know
about these wonderful truths. Take advantage of those things.
Let's close in worship and praise him for who he is. Amen. God bless you.