The Beginning of Man

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 89:1-18

Psalm 89:1–18 ESV

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.” You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.’ ” Selah Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones! For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him? O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you? You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them. The north and the south, you have created them; Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name. You have a mighty arm; strong is your hand, high your right hand. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you. Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your face, who exult in your name all the day and in your righteousness are exalted. For you are the glory of their strength; by your favor our horn is exalted. For our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel.

Scripture Memorization

Genesis 50:19–20 ESV

But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Scripture Reading: Galatians 5:16-24

Galatians 5:16–24 ESV

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Sermon:

Well once again, and as always, good morning church.

I was certainly glad when they said to me let us go and Worship in the house of the Lord.

Well, this morning, we turn our attention to Genesis chapter 2. We will be looking at in effect. The first half of Genesis chapter 2, verses 4 through 17. And what we’ll be exploring is the particular and beautiful explanation and telling of God’s creation of man.

Before we dive into this text, I want to sort of show you something that we’re dealing with, and this is what you will talk about in detail in Grace group, but I just want to give a sort of foundation as to what we are dealing with in Genesis 1 and 2, and what’s going on here?

Genesis 1 1 if you remember starts. In the beginning, God created the heavens. And the. And the way we should read Genesis 1 1, I think, is a sort of an overarching statement. It’s the thesis statement if you will and Genesis 1, 1, is a culmination of of all of God’s creative work. It’s a statement God created the heavens and the Earth, and all that’s in him and all that there was. God created it. God did it. So we have God created the heavens and the Earth. In Genesis, 1 1 speaks of this entire time frame. Genesis 1: 2 through 2:3 Takes Genesis 1, 1, and then gives us all the detail. Right, so God created the Heaven the Earth. Well, how did he do it? Well, let’s take a look.

First, he separates the the light from the darkness. Then he separates the waters. Then he creates the the land and all of the the vegetation on the land. Then he makes the Sun, the moon, and the stars, The next day is the birds, and the fish. The Sixth Day he gives us all the creeping things that creep on the face of the Earth and man, and then on the seventh day God rests.

Thus the heavens and earth were created, and the whole host of them.

God created the heavens and. The earth One time frame in Genesis 1:1 - 2:3. This is what that time frame looks like.

And then in Genesis 2, 4. What we have is a going into detail of what in particular has happened on the sixth day,

So time frame wise it looks like this: Genesis 1, and then in the middle of that zooming in on one particular day, we have Genesis 2.

These are what are called overlapping narratives. Again, you’ll talk about this in detail in Grace group. But I don’t want us, even before you read this— for you to think: “well, didn’t God create man on day six? Why is God creating man again.” He did. What is happening here is as if we stopped and thought, OK God created man on the sixth day, but HOW exactly on the sixth day did God create man? in genesis 1 it said “God said...” as a summary, a spark notes edition of man’s creation if you will. Today we get to read the whole novel..

So we’re zooming in on the sixth day of creation now. Genesis chapter 2, starting in verse 4.

Genesis 2:4–17 ESV

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. 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, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 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. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 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. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 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.”

These are the words of the Lord for us this morning. Let’s open with a word of prayer.

Dear Lord, we do thank you for today. We thank you for your word given to us that we might know you and hear from you. And ultimately, that we may know us as your creatures whom you created to glorify you to give you all glory, honor, and praise.May you work in our hearts? May we see you more clearly? May we be drawn unto you as we study your word. It’s in Jesus name that we pray. Amen

Another little contextual note about Genesis. We start with in Genesis chapter 2, verse 4. These are the generations of the heavens and the Earth, and something you’ll note I’m just going to tell you this now, and we’ll just see it for the rest of the time that we are in this book of Genesis.

That phrase “these are the generations of” is a signal that we’re moving into a new section. So, Genesis 1, 1 through 2, 3 were sort of the the prologue of the Book of Genesis, and so 2, verse 4 marks the beginning of a new section, “The generations of the heavens and the Earth”, So to look quickly ahead: just to show you this.

If Genesis 5, 1, this is the book of the generations of Adam. If we go to Genesis 10, 1, these are the generations of the sons of Noah. The Book of Genesis uses the phrase “the generations of” to Mark a new story basically. So, here is the new story.

And in this new story, we are seeing the “generations of the heavens and the Earth”. What Moses is telling us here is this is the beginning of all of Mankind’s history. the generations in some sense of everyone who’s walked on the face of the Earth are beginning starts here.

Genesis 2:4 ESV

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.

from the beginning. God was there doing these things. And here, at the beginning, we are introduced to a very special and beautiful and wonderful Act of Creation. We open here this section. as God Makes man.

God Makes MAN

This happens, We read,

Genesis 2:5 ESV

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,

We get a little timing thing going on here and again. Don’t get so overwhelmed and confused. but wait on day three. Isn’t that when God created vegetation. But here, it says, there was no vegetation in the land, and that’s when God made man. Was it the third day or the sixth day?

There is an explanation. It gets a little technical. I’ll give you the short short versions. There is vegetation. There was no... “Agriculture” in English. We have different names, right? There’s there’s sort of the Wilderness, and then there’s Farmland and the Wilderness is created on day three. Farmland... we’re not there yet. We know this because there’s no man to work the ground, so we’re dealing with something a little different here. But so the timing is, there’s there’s still a little bit of... if we want to go back to Genesis 1 language tohu and bohu. Some formlessness, some voidness God is dealing with here.

So, what does God do? Verse 7, here’s where it gets important.

Genesis 2:7 ESV

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.

Above all other created things. Above all other Creatures. MAN is created by God in a special and particular way. I mentioned when we went through Genesis 1 that there’s a lot of different ways and opinions. There’s a lot of things that people say about how we should read Genesis 1. And there is, I believe, room underneath the umbrella of people who believe in the Bible to have some differing views of How exactly genesis 1 panned out. Was it six literal days? Was it day age theory? Is there a gaps like there’s room, I believe, for a range of beliefs here? There is one place that I believe we must be very, very, very careful, and a place where I will take a firm stance. And that is. Man as created being.

Man did not. Scripture teaches. Evolve. From lesser life forms. If you want to believe in some sort of theistic Evolution where God creates all the creatures by this form, the way he chooses to create the living creatures is by way of evolution, That’s, that’s fine. But MAN must be special. Because scripture says that man is special.

For which of the creatures did God say? I formed him out of the dust, and I breathe the breath of life into him? None.

Of which is the creatures just to go back to Genesis. 1 did God say, let us make this creature in my image, none.

The creation of man is special, and it’s importantly understand this because as we get to the New Testament, the scripture is very clear. The reason we need Jesus is because we had Adam. We need Paul talks about this a lot and You can read it in Romans. we needed a second, Adam, right? That’s Jesus Christ. To get to the second Adam, we have to have the first.

We have to have Adam created here, and so, how does God make man? He gets the dust of the earth. He collects it together. What does this look like, I don’t know? He gets the dust of the earth together. And then, in this dust, this formless, lifeless dust God breathes life. And and in the instant of God breathing life. Now, man becomes a living creature, a special, unique, and beautiful Act of God’s creation.

So, why is man better than dogs and cats and hamsters? And all these other creatures? well the short answer is that it is because none of them Get a Genesis 2 story. They’re all a Genesis One story. that’s just the Beasts. That’s the creatures. That’s how God made them. That’s fine, and special, and when we think about it, Scripture teaches us that even those created beasts give God glory, but man gets this special, beautiful Act of Creation whereby God in his Sovereign power, Grace, and goodness breathes life into man who is created in God’s image. So, you are special, and are then tasked with a very special role in giving God all glory honor and praise.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made. These are the generations of the Heaven and the Earth. Are you a human being alive on Earth? then this is true of you. God formed you, he created you. You have breath in your lungs. You have life in your body You have movement and goodness flowing in your spirit because God made you. That’s the point. We are not Accidental. We are not just a random chance occurrence God in a particular and beautiful way created.

and what is the chief end of this man that God created in this special way? we are to glorify God and enjoy him forever!

And then, after making man. God gives to man. A special gift. God makes man. And then God plants. A garden.

God Plants a GARDEN

Genesis 2:8 ESV

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

God plants a garden as a precious and wonderful gift to man. God looks at man, the the Pinnacle of his creation. He looks to man and says, now, because I have made man, I will give to man a gift. He gives man a garden. And is a beautiful and wonderful garden it is. God causes in this Garden verse 9 to spring up every tree that is Pleasant to the sight, so it’s beautiful to look at. And then he gives us every tree that is good for food.

So just to be clear: It meets man’s needs in Beauty and Splendor, and it meets man’s needs in providing goodness for him. God gives man the PERFECT gift. he could have just given man a beautiful garden. And there are many gardens in this world that are beautiful, but they don’t provide food, right? We’ll go sometimes when we go to, like, Albuquerque, you can go to the zoo, the aquarium, you get a ticket Zoo, Aquarium, and Botanical gardens. And it’s wonderful to walk around in the Botanical gardens in the beautiful garden. They have different trees here and different things there. You know, else they have to have in this Garden? They have to have a food court. Because none of the plants there, though they are pretty plants, they are not good for food.

On the flip side… you go to a farm right, you could go to. The pumpkin patch. And it’s cool, and there’s some beauty. There’s definitely not... It’s definitely not as beautiful as a Botanical Garden, but there’s food there. There’s pumpkins and corn and other things that you can eat...

The Garden that God plants has, every tree that’s beautiful. And every tree for food, it is the most beautiful, wonderful garden. But before we go too far, there is some foreshadowing of the trouble to come… we’re given a hint of the trouble that is to come. We will get to this in a couple weeks, but note

Genesis 2:9 ESV

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.

This is a full Garden, nothing is missing. God has taken care of everything in this Garden. It is beautiful to look at. It provides for man, and then we get this picture of the abundance of the garden.

So verses 10 through 14. Tell the Four Rivers flowing out of the Garden of Eden. Now, on one hand, this is important contextually. As the people are reading it, the sort of geographical issues in the land they were entering, this is saying that those are gods Rivers that surround this area. This is know that God is Sovereign. There’s partially that.

But for our purposes today this is what I want you to hear: If you have ever… by show of hands. Anyone who’s ever driven over the Mississippi River? Desiree had never driven over the Mississippi River until couple summers ago when we drove over to Tennessee. Sorry. And she was shocked at how huge and massive the Mississippi River is.

If you’ve ever seen the Mississippi River it is next level. we’re used to like, here comes the, the Rio Grande, the Great River, and then you drive over a little bridge, and you look over. And there’s no water half the time. And that’s the Grand River. If you’ve seen the Mississippi? That’s the the Grand River.

But how do we get to the Mississippi River? Well, there are countless rivers and streams that flow into the river. And so the Mississippi River. Is a such a huge and Powerful River because it has so many rivers flowing into it, and then this one river flows into the Gulf of, I guess, the Gulf of America now.

And, and that’s how this works. Many rivers become one, and that one can be abundant.

The picture that is given to us. In Genesis 2, 10-14. Is it a river so more so much more powerful and wonderful and important than the Mississippi River? Because instead of four rivers coming together to make one Great River, you have the greatest River ever that is so great and so powerful and supplies so much and is so perfect that it is able to be divided in four and those four rivers are still huge and important.

The fancy term here is it is a picture of God’s super abundance that exists in the garden. The garden that God plants is the most beautiful, wonderful, most abundant, greatest. most Restful. most Important place. And the twist is this: God made it for man.

He causes the trees, the beautiful, and the useful, the the wonder-ful and the the food-full. He creates this Garden, he plants man in it, the river that flows from this Garden is so well equipped that it can supply four more rivers and those four more Rivers. Just one of those Rivers has as it sort of picture. Beautiful stones, gold, and Onyx, and all of that. The power of that one River stems from. Just a quarter of the power of the first one. All the land, all of this stuff, the Tigers, the Euphrates, all of this, owe their power to God in his goodness. That’s the point here. Because the garden that God makes to plant man in is perfect.

It is perfect for man. It’s perfect for everything that he needs. So, God makes man God plants, a garden and God plants man in the garden. God planted a garden, and then there he put the man whom he had formed. That’s verse eight, so God plants a garden, He plants man in the garden. But God gives man more than just A garden.

God gives man...

Okay, so God makes man. He plants him a garden. We could say that God gives man a garden to live in. But then, in verses 15 and 16 and 17. God gives man some very important things, and these become the foundation for a lot of what’s going to happen. The first thing God gives man verse 15. Is a job.

… a JOB

Genesis 2:15 ESV

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

I mentioned a few weeks ago… for Those of you who go to Grace group… We we talked about dominion. Dominion shows up in chapter one.

Genesis 1:28 ESV

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

And so I mentioned in grace group that Part of the reason why I didn’t want to cover this when preaching through Genesis 1 is, there was too much, but also because this Dominion thing is going to come back up again.

Here it is. One chapter later. God takes man. He puts him in the garden, and he gives him a job. What is the job? to work the garden and to keep the garden. To tend to the Garden. We will also see God also has another, gives man another job, It will come up. In verse 19, he has to to name every Beast. He has to call them by name, thus giving him more dominion over the creatures. We’ll talk about this next week. But just note we have a job.

From the very beginning. It was good for man to work. A bit of trivia for you: Is work A result of man’s sin? The answer is no. Because mans job comes here in chapter 2 long before mans fall in chapter 3. So, when you’re sitting there working? And you’re beginning to think, oh man, I wish Adam hadn’t sinned because then I wouldn’t have to work That’s not the point. Work is certainly harder because of sin. Work feels pointless and fruitless and difficult because of sin by the The Sweat and blood of your brow you shall eat bread... We don’t get to work in that Beautiful perfect and wonderful garden anymore… So yeah You have to work after sin, and it is hard but before the fall, there was still work and it was good!

Man was to work and keep the garden. Another way we could say this is that man was To tend to the precious gift that God had given. to him to hold fast to it to to to take care of it to to Fashion it to use it in the way that that would glorify and honor God and be useful and wonderful for man.

God says. Here’s your garden, and it’s yours to Take care of it. Treat it well. Work it. The tree that brings food... work in the tree that brings food help form the tree that brings food and then harvest the tree that brings food the tree that is beautiful. Use your strength and might and gifts man to take and make that tree that is beautiful and help it to be even more beautiful.

Keep it work it. The garden is yours, you have, man, A job.

To this day. We have been given a job. By God. And much like man where the job is to keep it and work the the garden, or job now is to call people to repentance so that theyt can enter into the rest that the garden had once promised. Our job Has changed a little. We don’t work and keep the garden, because in fact, we’ve been kicked out of the garden. Our job is more important in many ways now. We’re to preach the gospel. And though there might be different ways and roles and things that this looks like, we still have a job.

God has still given to man a job. It is to preach the gospel to All Nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded… That is our job. We still have a job. Just like man in the garden, it was good and right for man to work in the garden. It’s good and right for us to work now and above all else we need to be about the business of sharing the gospel.

Because God didn’t just give man a job. He also gave him a command.

… a COMMAND

The Lord God commanded the man, saying. There are two sides of this, both marked in the English by the word “Shurely”.

Genesis 2:16–17 ESV

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 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.”

There’s something fascinating that goes on here to give you just a little bit of a Hebrew lesson. We have the words like Shurely, very verily. I say to you. And some of those words kind of exist in Hebrew, but there was another way that you would get across the thought that This is super duper duper important.... It was so important, you would say it twice.

If you were to read the Hebrew and go dissect this passage in the Hebrew, what it actually says is. You may “eat eat” of every tree of the garden. Right. This idea of eat is where we get the English “You shall surely eat”. It’s like you can definitely 100 eat this. Every tree, every tree it is yours to eat. The command here is that you may enjoy the fruit of the garden that God has placed you in, and in fact, you should you, you surely “eat, eat” So go forth and “eat, eat” of it.

Do it well and enjoy this precious gift “eat eat”, except for one tree, because if you eat. Of that tree. It’s not “eat, eat” it’s “die, die”. When you get to the end, it says in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. It’s, it’s God comes to man, and he says you can eat of this tree. You can eat eat of this tree, but but this one, this tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, this one if you eat of it. You won’t just die. You will “die die”. You will be dead dead. Don’t do it. This is a solemn. An important. And Powerful. Command.

26:35

You have a job tend and keep it while you are doing your job tending and keeping you can eat of every tree. This tree that is Pleasant to the site and every tree that is good for food. Every gift that I have given you. But even as God made it in verse 9, he’s causing these trees.

26:54

There is a distinction that is important to make. And above all else before we can get into the weeds of what is the tree of knowledge and Evil? How do we do that. Did it look like an apple? before we dive into that? Know this. It ultimately doesn’t matter because God’s the one who made it. God is The one who planted the garden and God said these trees... You can have them all… But this one is NO GO. if you eat, you wil DIE DIE so do not eat this one this one.

And look. We got to be careful. When I was doing my run through of this sermon and trying to get across how bad it is, this die die, you shall surely die idea I said, in empasizing this beware and do not even touch it! but that is NOT what God said, and eve will get herself in trouble using that same exact language. He didn’t say, don’t touch it. But even us in our mankind. Ways we begin to think and add and change the command. Listen to the command of God, all the commands of God and ONLY the commands of God and here it is simple: Don’t eat. That’s what he said. Everything else you can eat eat this one, don’t?

Just listen to God in his command. Don’t make it more, don’t make it less. Hear God’s words, hear his command. You, O man, who were crafted and created formed from the dust with the breath of Life, breathe into you by The Sovereign King of Heaven, the one who planted for you a garden springing with every good tree that is beautiful to see and good to eat from… included in this Garden were the Tree of Life, the tree of the knowledge, Good and Evil, this super abundant River that provides everything you will need. so much that you could divide this River in four, and it still meets your needs. God provided for you. He cared for you.

He gave you a job.… You should do it.

He gave you a command. You must obey.

The writing of Genesis 2 shows us who we are. We are Gods. And he is the one who is able to command us and tell us what is right and what is wrong and what we should do. It’s not for us to decide. Adam In This Moment did not get to come to God and say, you know? I don’t like the garden you made me. I wish I had a better one. He doesn’t get to come to God and say, you know, I know you gave me every tree that’s good for fruit, but I don’t like these. I want a different one. He doesn’t get to come to God and be like, you know, this command you gave. It’s too much. I, I have to make sure I don’t eat of this tree. What a burden. The job of man? Is to work and keep. And to obey every command of God. So too for us.

Here is your job. Work... keep... And obey The commands of God.

Let’s pray.