01-14 The Garden of Eden--Part 3
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Genesis 2:9, 15-17
Genesis 2:9, 15-17
My Favorite Illustrations Willard Johnson on the Bible
Willard Johnson on the Bible
Generations follow generations—yet it lives.
Nations rise and fall—yet it lives.
Kings, dictators, presidents come and go—yet it lives.
Torn, condemned, burned—yet it lives.
Doubted, suspected, criticized—yet it lives.
Damned by atheists—yet it lives.
Exaggerated by fanatics—yet it lives.
Misconstrued and misstated—yet it lives.
Its inspiration denied—yet it lives.
Yet it lives—a lamp to our feet,
a light to our paths,
a standard for childhood,
a guide for youth,
a comfort for the aged,
food for the hungry,
water for the thirsty,
rest for the weary,
light for the heathen,
salvation for the sinner,
grace for the Christian.
To know it is to love it;
To love it is to accept it;
To accept it means life eternal.
That poem expresses the profound impact of loving, be guided and directed by the Word of God. That impact is expressed by the psalmist in Psalm 119.
He loves the Word: 47-48, 97, 113, 127, 140, 159, 163, 165, 167
He delights in the Word: 16, 24, 35, 47, 70, 77, 92, 143, 174
He longs for the Word: 19-20, 40, 131
He waits for the Word: 38, 43
He finds joy in the Word: 111, 162
He esteems the Word: 128
He stands in awe of the Word: 161
Having this mindset regarding God’s Word should result in a simplicity of trust that would translate into obedience to Scripture. Obedience really is at the heart of God’s desire and purpose for man.
5 ‘Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;
On the occasion of Saul’s disobedience regarding Agag and Amelekites:
22 Samuel said, “Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.
In Jeremiah—the theme of God’s desire for obedience and judgment upon disobedience:
23 “But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.’
13 “Now therefore amend your ways and your deeds and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will change His mind about the misfortune which He has pronounced against you.
46 “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?
15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
3 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.
28 But He said, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
God has always desired the obedience of those He has created for His own glory—it has always been that way. We find the simple truth in a beloved hymn:
Logos Digital Hymnal Trust and Obey
Author: Rev. John H. Sammis
Composer: Daniel B. Towner
Tune: Trust and Obey (Towner)
Scripture: Gen 5:24
1 When we walk with the Lord
In the light of His Word
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will;
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
2 Not a burden we bear,
Not a sorrow we share,
But our toil He doth richly repay;
Not a grief or a loss,
Not a frown or a cross,
But is blest if we trust and obey.
3 But we never can prove
The delights of His love
Until all on the altar we lay;
For the favor He shows
And the joy He bestows
Are for them who will trust and obey.
4 Then in fellowship sweet
We will sit at His feet
Or we’ll walk by His side in the way;
What He says we will do,
Where He sends we will go;
Never fear, only trust and obey.
Chorus Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, But to trust and obey.
This was the responsibility given to Adam when he was created.
Review:
1. Man’s Nature
1. Man’s Nature
2. Man’s Environment
2. Man’s Environment
3. Man’s Responsibility
3. Man’s Responsibility
15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
There’s much that the image of Adam cultivating and keeping of the garden of Eden stirs in our minds. And much of it comes from your own experiences of working and tilling in a garden—after all, you’ve probably been been busy already in your own gardens. But I don’t think this is the only imagery Moses intended for us to think about when God put man in the garden and gave to him his responsibility.
For 1 thing, after the curse God:
23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
For Adam to work the “ground” is said to be the result of the fall—evidently the consequence is an irony of reversing man’s original purpose. “Cultivating and keeping” the garden are not a comparison to “cultivating the ground.”
Moses is very deliberate in the words he chose to use to describe man’s responsibility. The 1st word “cultivate” refers to “tilling the soil” or more broadly of the service one renders to another. This “service” when rendered to God incorporates the idea of worship:
12 And He said, “Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.”
This is the word that describes the duties of the Levites with reference to the tabernacle and temple later on.
The 2nd term “keep” carries the basic idea of “exercising great care over, to do carefully or diligently.” The word also expresses the careful attention that should be paid to the obligations of laws, statutes, covenants, etc...
This is how the word is most often used:
19 “For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.”
32 and you shall be careful to do all the statutes and the judgments which I am setting before you today.
The 2 words are used again by Moses when describing the Levites:
7 “They shall perform the duties for him and for the whole congregation before the tent of meeting, to do the service of the tabernacle. 8 “They shall also keep all the furnishings of the tent of meeting, along with the duties of the sons of Israel, to do the service of the tabernacle.
God’s charge to Adam when he put him in the garden was to exercise great care over the garden but only as an expression of worship and obedience (cultivate & keep—just as well translated this way—accord to Umberto Cassuto Late Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem).
What a very simple responsibility—to worship God and to obey His voice. That’s what God wanted from man when He created him. But it didn’t take long to be interrupted.
7 “Even the stork in the sky Knows her seasons; And the turtledove and the swift and the thrush Observe the time of their migration; But My people do not know The ordinance of the Lord.
(observe=keep/obey)
28 But He said, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
The Trees
The Trees
Now, of course the garden was filled with trees—but there were 2 in the middle of the garden (vs 9; 3:3) seems to indicate they may have been next to each other (or close proximity).
Tree of Life
Tree of Life
This tree appears several times in both OT & NT:
Gen 2-3;
Prov. 3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4—all of these Proverb passages should be understood as using the phrase “tree of life” metaphorically
7 ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.’
2 in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city.
19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.
Life was at the center of the garden and eating the fruit would result in continued life(see Gen 3:22). Adam needed this gift imparted since he was not intrinsically immortal. Only God is immortal
16 who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.
Calvin explained: “His earthly life truly would have been temporal; yet he would have passed into heaven without death, and without injury.” Maybe that’s what Enoch encountered:
5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
This tree has been the subject of much debate (some very interesting) representing differing interpretations as to the nature of this “forbidden tree.”
Some have suggested that it was poisonous—so to eat the fruit would result in death—by the way not an apple.
Others believe this is a figure of speech—that “good and evil” covers “everything.” The result would be that to partake of the fruit of this tree would bring knowledge of “everything.”—including omniscience. That is simply not the result of Adam’s experience. He sees only in part and knows only in part.
Some contend that this tree was representative of prying into nature’s secrets that God did want to divulge. Others said Adam was amoral (devoid of any sense of good or evil) but after eating became a moral being. Still others have said the knowledge is sexual (to know=intimacy). For support they appeal to Gen 3:7
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
Lastly, it seems to me that the best, simplest interpretation is to say that the knowledge of good and evil indicates moral autonomy.
Kent Hughes says:
Genesis—Beginning and Blessing Man’s Responsibility (vv. 9b, 15–17)
The temptation to eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” was to seek wisdom without reference to the word of God. It was an act of moral autonomy—deciding what is right without reference to God’s revealed will.
The Instruction
The Instruction
2:16-17
God’s first instruction to Adam was both permissive and prohibitive. It should be said that God’s original purpose was for man to worship and obey God while enjoying the perpetual rest that he had entered until sin interrupted that rest.
The Permission
The Permission
What a vast, bountiful, marvelous, benevolent, gracious gift God gave Adam.
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 2
From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
Nothing that Adam needed, that would sustain his physical life, that would sustain spiritual life had been withheld from him. The first man truly had a remarkable freedom to enjoy the fruits of God’s creation.
But alongside the permission was:
The Prohibition
The Prohibition
“but...” Remember the responsibility to worship and obey. The prohibition was not to be questioned, it was not to be bargained with (how many have tried to bargain with God). The condition for enjoying God’s blessing was always the matter of obedience. There’s similarity to what Moses told Israel:
15 “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; 16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. 17 “But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it.
The Consequence
The Consequence
To disobey and eat of that fruit would bring the certainty of death. “you will surely die” and with that judgment, consequence, curse or whatever you want to call it—the rest of Scripture begins to unfold this reality from the time Adam ate until the day of consummation in eternity.
There is a solemn emphasis in “you will surely die.” An absolute certainty would become the wages of Adam’s sin should he choose the path of disobedience (Satan wanted to deflect this certainty…).
Victor Hamilton
The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17 2. One Garden, Two Trees (2:8–9)
What is forbidden to man is the power to decide for himself what is in his best interests and what is not. This is a decision God has not delegated to the earthling. This interpretation also has the benefit of according well with 3:22, “the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Man has indeed become a god whenever he makes his own self the center, the springboard, and the only frame of reference for moral guidelines. When man attempts to act autonomously he is indeed attempting to be godlike. It is quite apparent why man may have access to all the trees in the garden except this one.
Application
Let me come back to this thought that God promises blessings for obedience and a curse for disobedience. God wants you to trust Him about what He revealed to you. He wants you obey Him out of reverent love.
There are so many ways that we are ever being tempted to be morally autonomous today. We see it in the world around us, it is like it was for Israel:
8 “You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes;
6 In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.
2 Every man’s way is right in his own eyes, But the Lord weighs the hearts.
This is the problem…and what comes next in the quest for moral autonomy is what Isaiah expressed:
20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes And clever in their own sight!
God still wants us to worship and obey. This simple truth (from our vv today) ought to cause you to do 2 things by way of application:
1. Be Mindful
1. Be Mindful
of your relation to God. He is the Creator and you are the creature. Believe it or not—b/c of our fallenness we confuse this at times.
3 Know that the Lord Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
1 O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord, Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. 3 For the Lord is a great God And a great King above all gods, 4 In whose hand are the depths of the earth, The peaks of the mountains are His also. 5 The sea is His, for it was He who made it, And His hands formed the dry land. 6 Come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. 7 For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness, 9 “When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work. 10 “For forty years I loathed that generation, And said they are a people who err in their heart, And they do not know My ways. 11 “Therefore I swore in My anger, Truly they shall not enter into My rest.”
Because He is the Creator he has absolute authority over us and His is the prerogative to command—ours is the responsibility to worship and obey.
2. Be Dependent
2. Be Dependent
Dependency on God for everything is the fruit of obedience. Dependency is not just for things necessary for physical needs (though God is faithful to provide). It also includes a dependency on Him for our spiritual needs. This trains us to look to God for what is in our best interest (rather than leaning on our own understanding). We look to God (specifically His Word/revelation) to define for us what is good and evil, righteous and unrighteous, what is truth and error.
It is a great temptation for us to establish our wisdom apart from God’s Word and to decide for ourselves what is right without God’s revealed will.
I go back to that hymn: Trust and obey...