1 Genesis 2: Preaching Teaching

Paradise!

Today we are going to talk about how to live in paradise.

If you were in the garden before sin would have entered the world how would you have lived?

Would you have sinned?

What would it be like?

Last week we looked at Genesis one and my hope was that we would leave thinking wow what an amazing God we have and serve. That we would just stand in awe of God. Today we are going to look at creation again from a different angle, we are going to see man living in the garden of Eden and interacting with God.

But read with me:

Genesis 2:1-3 “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”

What I love about this is that when he finished creating it was completed. One of the things that I love most about Christianity is that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he said it was finished, it is complete. There is nothing you can do to earn salvation, you can only receive the finished work of Jesus. I am going to heaven not because I am a good person but because I have by faith trusted in God’s great gift in Christ. I am complete because of what Jesus did on the cross on my behalf.

Now we are going to look at creation from a different angle, a closer look at God and man’s interaction in the Garden of Eden in Paradise.

Genesis 2:4-6 “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.”

Genesis 2:7 NASB95

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

verse 7 is one of my favorite verses, that God formed us out of nothing with such tender care, he is the master artist and from the beginning he created us so that he could bless us.

One of the big themes of Genesis is BLESSING. The reality is that God wants man to live under his blessing. Even when man blows it as bad as he can God is always reaching out wanting us to receive his blessing.

Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible The creation of man 2:4–17

Man, therefore, is a combination of dust and divinity.

In one sense we are just dust, when we die we will literally go back into the ground and on the other hand we will live eternally because we were fashioned from the very hand of God, we are in his image.

So here man is literally in paradise in a relationship with God who wants to bess him like more than we ever know.

Intro-My wife loves to garden.

What is the closest you have been to paradise on earth. Maybe a trip or a vacation or something.

Cancun

The Little’s had my kids.

My sister and I went on this jet ski ride and I felt completely free. And even to this day my sister remembers my smile. It was paradise.

Walk with my wife

Was with the majority of my family

I was actually looking at going back to Cancun when prices were dirt cheap but in the little fine print it said you would be COVID Tested and if you failed you were stuck there for 14 days, not a bad deal except I have a lot of kids and whoever was watching them may have disowned me.

Today we are going to look at the garden of Eden, and as great as Cancun was

Food

I want to answer two questions today so we can live for God.

Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible The creation of man 2:4–17

“The destiny of the human creation is to live in God’s world, with God’s other creatures, on God’s terms.”

I want to answer two questions today so we can live for God.

How do we live for God?

1. We embrace worship as our primary purpose (2:8-17).

We were created for worship

We all worship something.

When I lived in Arkansas you would be shocked how many people would worship a razorback.

Jesus says this in John:

John 17:3 ““This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

What do we need to know about worship?

Worshipping God is what we were created for.

You and I were created for worship.

Genesis 2:8 NASB95

The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.

Could you imagine being in a garden where sin had not yet come into reality and you were with God. There were no barriers to your relationship with God you had direct access to him.

We were created to honor and glorify God, to know him intimately.

This is why someone can be so successful in the worlds eyes and be so empty because they are not doing what they were created to do, it would be like driving a car by putting coffee in the engine.

Genesis 2:9-14 “Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.”

What do we need to know about worship?

It is more than a song.

Worship is a song but it is so much more than a song as well.

Genesis 2:15–17 NASB95

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

We see four ways that we are to worship. IN other words there is a way that we are to worship.

cultivate

keep

Remember I did not cultivate and keep our garden well on my own. Cultivate and keeping are not the end they are the means to the end to worship God.

Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible The creation of man 2:4–17

God put man in the garden where he could be safe and rest and where he could have fellowship with God (cf. 3:8). His primary responsibility there was to worship and obey God rather than to cultivate and keep the garden, as many English versions state. Adam served and thereby worshipped God by tending the garden.

Eat freely-Many times we see God as wanting to make our life restrictive but what God really wants to do throughout all of the Bible is bless us.

Lock in on the word enjoy God! You know what our problem is, we don’t enjoy God enough. Could you picture you are at an amusement park and your parents tell you, here is your problem, you are not enjoying this amusement park enough.

We will see that Adam and Eve go onto sin and I wonder if they had a problem enjoying the garden as much as they should have.

SURELY DIE, this death deals with both a spiritual death and physical death.

Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible The creation of man 2:4–17

It is likely that spiritual death and physical death are not being thought of as separate, so that the one involves the other.”

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We will dig into this more next week but I wanted to touch on the fact that death was a consequence.

I was talking to Kenny this week and he is a chaplain in the military and also a shop teacher at Pearland high school and the reality is that Kenny can live a life of worship as a shop teacher just as much as he can as a chaplain.

How are you doing embracing worship for the purpose you were created for?

How are you worshiping God right now?

Did you know that this is what you were created for?

Are you enjoying God right now?

How do we live for God?

2. we define marriage from God’s Word: Life long Oneness (2:18-25).

While we were in Cancun with my parents, mom, dad and my sister were there, my brother had just left, but when we ate it reminded me of the family dinners we had growing up. One of my favorite things as a kids growing up in a household were both parents worked and we played a lot of sports, mom went to school for a season, so we were busy, was our Sunday night dinners. Those memories will be etched in my head forever. We definitely did not have a perfect family growing up but looking back on my childhood it is one of the greatest blessings in my life to have a mom and dad who have been together and were commited to each other and to raising us through good and bad.

Now our society has a lot of different definitions of marriage:

Some say it is a:

Man and Woman

Man and Man

Women and women

2 women and a man

Some say it is whatever you want it to be, if you want to marry your dog that is a marriage.

Some people think marriage has no value, when Heather and I were about to get married there was a student who told me just move in together to see if it works.

But how was marriage originally defined in the Bible.

Man and women for the glory of God.

What do we need to know about marriage?

Community does not happen without it.

Genesis 2:18 NASB95

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

Could you picture never having a relationship with another human being. We would not be God’s image bearers. God is love. If there is no one to love we cannot bear God’s image.

Think of a time when you were lonely. God’s plan is not for anyone to live in a life of loneliness.

Genesis 2:19-20 “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.”

This was a problem. God knew Adam needed community. People long for community. Think about all the things people will do because they want community.

Fantasy Football

Crossfit

Community is not possible without marriage.

What do we need to know about marriage?

It is a gift from God

Genesis 2:21–22 NASB95

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.

Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible The creation of woman 2:18–25

God took Eve from Adam’s side (Heb. sela’) to be his companion, not from his head so she would dominate him or from his foot so Adam could tread on her. He fashioned her to be a suitable companion for Adam. Then He presented her to him as a gift.

God did all this work and he gave man a great gift.

December 6, 2003 when God allowed me to marry Heather, it has been the second greatest gift I have ever been given.

Genesis 2:23 NASB95

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”

As I think about my marriage and others who I have married it is amazing that we can take one of the greatest gifts ever given to us and instead of us seeing it as a blessing we begin to look at it as a curse.

We are to receive our spouse as a gift from God for a lifetime.

Our marriage partner has the greatest ability to help us

2:18 Adam’s creation was not complete because he lacked a “helper” who corresponded to him. This deficiency led God to pronounce Adam’s condition “not good.” God not only evaluated Adam’s condition, He also rectified it.152

“In Judaism, from the very moment of origins of the Jewish people, marriage was considered to be the ideal state.”

Constable, T. (2003). Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Ge 2:18). Galaxie Software.

How do you view marriage?

Do you view marriage as a gift from God?

What are some experiences or sources from your past that keep you from viewing marriage as God does?

What do we need to know about marriage?

It is meant to be characterized by harmony and intimacy.

Harmony

Genesis 2:24 NASB95

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

Heather and I’s first fight after our 3 day honey moon.

But my whole life my parents were the greatest influence in my life, and all the sudden I am married and now the person I am clinging to is not the parents I have always clung to.

Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible The creation of woman 2:18–25

Here the ideal of marriage as it was understood in ancient Israel is being portrayed, a relationship characterized by harmony and intimacy between the partners.”

Intimacy

Genesis 2:25 NASB95

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.