Bible Study: Genesis 2
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good Morning
Let’s share any Prayer Requests and Praises Reports.
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Let’s pray
Text: Genesis 2:1-3
Text: Genesis 2:1-3
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
In this section we find that these words affirm that God had completed His work.
Four times it is said that He finished His work, and three times it is said that this included all His work.
In this passage we also gent the idea that God sustains His completed creation...
This is echoed in Hebrews 1:3 which says:
3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
So, God did not complete creation and leave us alone as some Theists believe...
Our God is in a constant state of upholding all of creation.
God rested from His works of creation....
That it true...
But He continues to work in providence and (after sin entered the picture) in redemption too...
We can see this in John 5:17:
17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
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Another important point to note is this...
God did not rest due to weariness or tiredness...
The effortless ease with which everything is done in Chapter 1 suggests otherwise...
Rather what we see in God resting on the seventh day is that He establishes the pattern for man’s work cycle...
God only modeled the need for rest for us to truly understand the importance of it.
Later, the command to rest on the Sabbath found its basis in the creation week as shown in Exodus 20:8–11:
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Let us keep in mind too what Jesus said about the Sabbath...
We can find this in Mark 2:27 which says:
27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
There is a benefit to resting on the Sabbath but at the same time it is not mandated as we see in Colossians 2:16:
16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
So, our Christian liberty gives us freedom in how we can observe the Sabbath and we are not to judge others for holding to a different practice than us.
The same goes for celebrating holidays and fasting...
We have freedom in how we practice these things.
So, the truth found in Colossians 2:16 makes it clear that the Mosaic “Sabbath” has no symbolic or ritual place in the New Covenant.
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In fact, the church even began worshiping on the first day of the week to commemorate the resurrection of Christ as we see in Acts 20:7:
7 On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.
The Sabbath also foreshadows the eternal redemptive Sabbath rest we will have in the future as seem mentioned in Hebrews 4:3–10:
3 For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’ ” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.
4 For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.”
5 And again in this passage he said, “They shall not enter my rest.”
6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience,
7 again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.
9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,
10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
We see Jesus talking of this eternal rest in Matthew 11:28 too:
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Text: Genesis 2:4-9
Text: Genesis 2:4-9
4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,
6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The term “Mist” in verse 6 of our passage would be better translated as “flow”...
It indicates that water came up from beneath the ground as springs and spread over the whole earth in an uninterrupted cycle of water.
After the fall, rain became the primary means of watering the earth and allowed for floods and droughts that did not exist originally.
Rains also allowed for God to judge through floods and droughts.
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Verse 7 adds detail to the original statement of the creation of man Genesis 1:27 which said:
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
The word “formed” in our passage is the same language we see in Scripture used of God as the potter and represents God’s activity in shaping each person as we see in other passages like: Job 10:8–12:
8 Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether.
9 Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust?
10 Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese?
11 You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.
12 You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit.
The words “man” and “ground” are actually a wordplay in Hebrew...
“Man” in Hebrew is “adam”...
And “ground” in Hebrew is “adamah”...
This shows man’s close connection with the ground, and underlies Paul’s later teaching that the first Adam was fashioned in a natural body for an earthly existence.
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The word “breathed” represents the Holy Spirit’s creative activity...
Here God breathes life—physical, mental, and spiritual—into the one created to bear His image.
While human beings have much in common with other living beings, God gives humans alone a royal and priestly status and makes them alone “in his own image.”
We see similar uses of this language in Psalm 104:30:
30 When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
And also in Ezekiel 37:14:
14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
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The order of creation that is mentioned in our passage with man being created first is also found in 1 Timothy 2:13:
13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve;
In fact it is this order of creation that is one of two point Paul uses to explain why women are not to serve as pastors or teach theology to men...
For context this is the whole passage: 1 Timothy 2:12-1 Timothy 3:2:
12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve;
14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
1 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.
2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
The passage goes on with further qualifications but it should be noted that many unfortunately do not place the ending of 1 Timothy Chapter 2 and the beginning of 1 Timothy Chapter 3 together...
This is unfortunate as chapter and verse breaks are not infallible and simply meant to help us quote reference Scripture...
So, the original audience would have read the whole letter in one sitting and easily seen the connection to what Paul says about women teaching men and who is qualified to be a pastor...
Paul, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit made it clear that the reasons a woman was not to serve in any theological teaching role over men or serve as a pastor is due to the creation order (so, the fall of man can’t be blamed) and the fact that Eve was the one deceived.
Hermetically speaking it is impossible to get another interpretation based on Paul’s clear teaching...
That whole teaching is based on Genesis Chapter 2 and that is why individuals who don’t believe in a literal interpretation of the Genesis account can easily adopt erroneous doctrines...
And that is why a church with a female pastor is a sure sign of a church going apostate.
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Now the exact location of Eden is unknown...
If “toward the east” was used in relationship to where Moses was when he wrote, then it could have been in the area of Babylon, the Mesopotamian Valley...
This would make sense as the Babylonians called the lush green land from which water flowed “edenu”...
Today, the term “oasis” describes such a place.
So, God provides a suitable environment for the man by planting a garden in Eden, in the east.
The name “Eden,” which would have conveyed the sense of “luxury, pleasure,” probably denotes a region much greater than the garden itself.
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In Verse 9 we see both the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil...
The Tree of Life was a tree with special properties to sustain eternal life.
It was placed in the center of the garden, where it must have been observed by Adam, and its fruit perhaps eaten by him, thus sustaining his life.
Additionally, such a tree, symbolic of eternal life, will be in the new heavens and new earth...
We see this from Revelation 22:2 which says:
2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has its name due to how it was a test of obedience by which our first parents were tried, whether they would be good or bad—obey God or disobey His command.
Text: Genesis 2:10-14
Text: Genesis 2:10-14
10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.
11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.
12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.
13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush.
14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
In verse 10 the phrase “out of” is to say “the source,” and likely refers to some great spring gushing up inside the garden from some subterranean reservoir since there was no rain at that time.
The locations of these rivers are uncertain...
We need to keep in mind that this represents a pre-Flood geography which is now dramatically altered...
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In verse 12 the word “bdellium” is a gum resin...
This refers more to appearance than color, i.e., it had the appearance of a pale resin.
The reference to gold and onyx also suggests that the land is rich in resources...
These materials are later associated with the making of the tabernacle and temple.
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“Cush” in verse 13 could be modern-day Ethiopia but again due to the pre-Flood geography we are uncertain.
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The general description of the river that flowed out of Eden dividing into four rivers implies that Eden had a central location.
However, as we said before, in spite of the very specific details provided, however, Eden’s location remains a mystery.
Text: Genesis 2:15-17
Text: Genesis 2:15-17
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
In this arrangement we see in our passage, God voluntarily offers life to humankind...
However, He demands obedience to His command.
The first Adam, representing all human beings, and fails to obey...
This will bring death upon all of humanity.
However, the active obedience of the last Adam, Christ, representing the elect, satisfies God’s demands and earns for them eternal life...
We see this in passages like Romans 5:12–19:
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.
14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.
16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.
17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
And we see this in passages like 1 Corinthians 15:45–49:
45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.
47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
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In verse 15 I would like you to notice the words “work it” and “keep it”...
That is proof that work was an important and dignified part of representing the image of God and serving Him, even before the Fall...
Work in an of itself is not part of the curse of the Fall of Man.
So, man has been created to find fulfillment not in idleness but in a life of rewarding labor in obedience to God’s command.
Work is instituted before the fall and is part of God’s good creation, indicating that labor itself is not part of the curse on creation after the sin of Adam and Eve.
Lawful work is a good thing, and though we presently struggle against difficulties that attend our labor in this fallen world, things will not always be this way.
The effects of the curse will be removed from creation, and we will enjoy blessed labor in the new heavens and earth.
Another point that should be made is that the Hebrew behind the term “keep” (which is sometimes rendered as “guard”) also entails the notion of protecting it against enemies.
Elsewhere, this word is sometimes used to describe the duties of those who served within the tabernacle and further parallels between the garden of Eden and the tabernacle...
This suggests that Adam is to be guardian of the garden sanctuary.
However, Adam failed in his role...
When the Serpent came and spoke to Eve...
Adam was right there...
He just did nothing to protect his family and guard the garden.
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So, after Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden, this task of guarding the garden is given to the cherubim.
The term “surely die” that we find in verse 17 has the basic idea of separation.
It can mean spiritual separation, physical separation, and/or eternal separation.
At the moment of their sin, Adam and Eve died spiritually, but because God was merciful they did not die physically until later.
So, the phrase “in the day” should be understood to imply fixed certainty rather than absolute immediacy.
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Text: Genesis 2:18-20
Text: Genesis 2:18-20
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
When God saw His creation as very good, He viewed it as being to that point the perfect outcome to His creative plan.
However, in observing man’s state as not good, He was commenting on his incompleteness before the end of the sixth day because the woman, Adam’s counterpart, had not yet been created.
The words of this verse emphasize man’s need for a companion, a helper, and an equal.
He was incomplete without someone to complement him in fulfilling the task of filling, multiplying, and taking dominion over the earth.
This points to Adam’s inadequacy and not to Eve’s insufficiency as it says in 1 Corinthians 11:9:
9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
So, woman was made by God to meet man’s deficiency.
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Verse 19 when it says “now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast” it should be understood that this was not a new creation of animals.
Animals were created before man on the fifth and sixth days.
Here the Lord God was calling attention to the fact that He created them “out of the ground” as He did man...
However, man, who was a living soul in the image of God was to name them, signifying his rule and dominion over them.
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As we talked about previously in our study...
The act of naming is an act of discerning something about the creature so as to appropriately identify it and also an act of leadership or authority over that which was named.
There is no kinship with any animal since none was a fitting companion for Adam.
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The word “helper” has to do with the creation order.
Again, man is formed first, giving him social priority, and the woman is later given to him as a helper.
Additionally, the term does not imply that the helper is either stronger or weaker than the one helped...
Remember the Holy Spirit is also called our helper.
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So, what we are seeing in this section of our study is that Adam is being prepared for God’s gift of Eve...
Adam is becoming more and more aware of his loneliness and lack of companionship.
He is realizing he needs a wife who is not just her husband’s clone but someone who complements him.
Text: Genesis 2:21-25
Text: Genesis 2:21-25
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
The gift of the first bride presents marriage before the fall and so provides the foundation for the laws against adultery and is a model for marriage and the basis for government in the home and church
Additionally, we see marriage as a type of Christ’s relationship to His church as seen in Ephesians 5:22–32 which says:
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
30 because we are members of his body.
31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
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Back in Genesis 1:26-27 which says:
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
The focus was on their gender distinctions as male and female.
Here, in Chapter 2, the focus is on their social relationship as husband and wife.
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The term “one of his ribs” could also be rendered as“sides,” which would including surrounding flesh and make sense why Adam says “flesh of my flesh” in addition to “bone of my bones”.
Divine surgery by the Creator presented no problems and this act would also imply the first act of healing recorded in Scripture.
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So, we see that the marital relationship was established as the first human institution.
The responsibility to honor one’s parents does not cease with leaving and the union of husband with wife, but does represent the inauguration of a new and primary responsibility.
The term “hold fast” or “joined” carries the sense of a permanent or indissoluble union, so that divorce was not considered.
This is the language of covenant commitment.
Humans are never more like the covenant-keeping God than when they pledge themselves in covenant to one another.
Marriage pictures God’s relationship to His people.
The phrase “one flesh” speaks of a complete unity of parts making a whole, i.e., one cluster, many grapes or one God in three persons…
It is Aaphrase pointing to the profound solidarity of the marriage relationship.
Thus this marital union was complete and whole with two people.
This also implies their sexual completeness.
One man and one woman constitute the pair to reproduce.
The “one flesh” is primarily seen in the child born of that union, the one perfect result of the union of two.
The singular and total commitment involved indicates that God has intended from the beginning for marriage to be monogamous.
So, permanent heterosexual monogamy was and continues to be God’s design and law for marriage...
Therefore, divorce is a deviation from God’s design in creation...
As Matthew 19:3-8 says:
3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”
4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,
5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”
8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
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Finally we see that with no knowledge of evil before the Fall, even nakedness was shameless and innocent.
They found their complete gratification in the joy of their one union and their service to God.
With no inward principle of evil to work on, the solicitation to sin had to come from without, and it did.
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Please consider this article titled “ORIGINAL SIN” found in the Reformation Study Bible:
It is commonplace to hear the statement, “people are basically good.”
Though it is admitted that no one is perfect, human wickedness is minimized.
Yet if people are basically good, why is sin so universal?
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It is often suggested that everybody sins because society has such a negative influence upon us.
The problem is seen with our environment, not with our nature.
This explanation for the universality of sin raises the question, how did society become corrupt in the first place?
If people are born good or innocent, we would expect at least a percentage of them to remain good and sinless.
We should be able to find societies that are not corrupt, where the environment has been conditioned by sinlessness rather than sinfulness.
Yet the most dedicated-to-righteousness communes we can find still have provisions for dealing with the guilt of sin.
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Since the fruit is universally corrupt we look for the root of the problem in the tree.
Jesus indicated that a good tree does not produce corrupt fruit.
The Bible clearly teaches that our original parents, Adam and Eve, fell in sin.
Subsequently, every human being has been born with a sinful and corrupt nature.
If the Bible didn’t explicitly teach this, we would have to deduce it rationally from the bare fact of the universality of sin.
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Yet the Fall is not simply a question of rational deduction.
It is a point of divine revelation.
It refers to what we call original sin.
Original sin does not refer primarily to the first or original sin committed by Adam and Eve.
Original sin refers to the result of the first sin—the corruption of the human race.
Original sin refers to the fallen condition in which we are born.
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That the Fall occurred is clear in Scripture.
The Fall was devastating.
How it came to pass is open to dispute even among Reformed thinkers.
The Westminster Confession explains the event simply, much in the manner that Scripture explains it:
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Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory (Westminster Confession 6:1).
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Thus, the Fall occurred.
The results, however, reached far beyond Adam and Eve.
They not only touched all mankind, but decimated all mankind.
We are sinners in Adam.
We cannot ask, “When does the individual become a sinner?”
For the truth is that human beings come into existence in a state of sinfulness.
They are seen by God as sinful because of their solidarity with Adam.
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The Westminster Confession again elegantly expresses the results of the Fall, particularly as it relates to human beings:
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By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.
They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.
From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions (Westminster Confession 6:1–4).
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That last phrase is crucial.
We are sinners not because we sin.
Rather, we sin because we are sinners.
Thus David laments, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5).
Closing Prayer
Closing Prayer
Please join me one more time in prayer.