I can do this in this many parts.
I can do this in this many sections. And then as you're teaching,
in the midst of your teaching, or in the midst of my teaching,
I don't know if you do this, or in the midst of your learning, because learning
happens before teaching. But oftentimes when I'm teaching,
learning happens instantaneously for me. And I'm like, wow, I
miss that. Okay, I'm gonna go back to that.
And wow, I miss that, I'm gonna go back to that. And that's true
for everything that we've ever learned in Scripture, everything I've
ever learned. So we could literally be forever and ever and ever
in a particular book of the Bible. And we're not gonna go all the
way through Genesis before we get into Timothy, but I wanna
at least get through the fall and at least get to the place
where we start looking at, at the world that we know after
the flood. And then we'll be in the New
Testament for a little while, then we're going to come back. And so eventually, I would
love to preach through Genesis in its totality, in little pieces. But I say all that because, beloved,
there is no way that my mortal mind can plan what God is going
to show us in this text because there is no such thing as an
exhaustive commentary on Genesis. There's no person who's ever
said everything that needs to be said about Genesis. But there's
plenty of things that have been said that have missed the point.
Missed the point. And I'll repeat myself today,
because it's just week seven, and you know, Pastor Jesse preached
last week, and I really appreciate that. It was a blessing. And
yet, sometimes we forget week to week to week to week what
we've learned. So I'll repeat some things in my introduction that'll get
us back all on the same page and prepare our hearts and minds
logically to see the next step. But more importantly, I pray
that by the power of the word of God, it'll prepare our hearts
spiritually to behold the goodness of Christ, to behold the goodness
of God, to behold the person of the gospel. One of those things
is to remember that we are not to take science of today and
to come to the Bible with science of today. We're not to interpret
scripture through the lens of scientific discovery. It's an
extremely bad way of looking at Genesis. Extremely bad way.
It doesn't mean that we can't see things that God has taught
us in His Word and see scientific discovery and go, look at that.
But when we do it the other way around, it is to say that God
needs it. That God is revealing Himself
through other means other than His Word. And that's not the
case. It's not the case. God is not
in the business of revealing Himself through scientific discovery,
through poetry, through philosophy, through great minds, through
weak minds, through acts of power. He reveals Himself in the fullness
of all of His glory through the person of Jesus Christ who was
written of by Moses, who was written of by the prophets, who
was written of by the judges, who was written of by the kings,
who was written of by the apostles, and now here we are. We read
them and we learn them. And there are instructions given
in the scripture, but we are to pay attention solely to the
instruction of the New Testament. For in the New Testament, we
find as the Christians, as the church, we find what we are to
be about, what we are to be doing, how we are to be thinking. And
so when we go to Genesis then, we do take a filter with us.
We take the filter of Christ. We take the filter of the apostles'
teaching, which is authoritative and inerrant. as is Moses' teaching,
because it is all the teaching of God, but without the apostles,
without Christ, without the fullness of the glory of God, face to
face, we will not see what Genesis is trying to say. We will not
see anything, but we'll see the mystical, and then we will imagine
all sorts of things, and there's one true way of finding heresy,
and that is to approach the Bible with imagination. There's one true way of finding
ourselves bogged down in the ditches that don't matter, and
that is when we come with a new idea concerning who God is and
what He's trying to say. Now, that doesn't mean that the
same old, same old ideas that we've heard for millennia are
true, because obviously the Israelites did not understand, and obviously
the Jews did not understand, and obviously many of the Gentile
converts, supposedly, the supposed converts, or so-called converts,
did not understand, and they continued to embark on this mission
to try to convince people otherwise, and what did the apostles do?
They wrote letters to correct that stuff. and we have them
today and we can be corrected. There's nothing new under the
sun, we can be corrected. So as we come to the reality of this text, when we begin to see
who Christ is in Genesis, when we have been shown by the mercy
of God through His Word who Christ is from the apostles. When we
read John's Gospel and we see that John starts out with an
illusion, not illusion, allusion, a look back to Moses, to the
creation of Him. When we see Paul writing to the
church of Colossae, when he talks about the power of Christ, which
is the Word, His ability to just decree, and it is, for He is
God. that He upholds the universe
by His power, and that all things were created for Him, as Paul
writes of the Hebrews, and that through Him all things were made.
We then can learn from this text that there is a God that is displaying
His power through the creation of the world, and that is insignificant
in and of itself, except that it points to the power of God
in redemption. Because unlike the gods of myths,
unlike the gods of men, to have power to make something is worthless,
except that it is all glorious, that it is all perfect, that
it is all good, and that is the atheistic charge continually. As long as I've been alive, since
probably I was 16 years old, I've heard this charge. How can
there be a good God and there be so much wickedness in the
world? Because that is the decree of God, that is the purpose of
the good God of heaven. That He created the world, and
in its creation, He ordered it, and He purposed it, and He created
life in it, and then out of that life, He put humanity in it,
and out of that humanity, that humanity left unto itself would
do nothing but destroy itself, so only God can create true life
that is good, and only God out of chaos can create order, and
only God out of death can create redemption. I said in the very first week,
seven, eight weeks ago now, I said in Genesis 1, you don't have
to turn there, we're going to go to Genesis 2 today. But I
said in Genesis 1, where it says in the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth. The earth, verse 2, was
without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering
over the face of the waters. I mentioned that there is some
poetry there, that there is poetic rhyme and meter. And if you were
to go and look, not that you have to, not that Hebrew is even
important, it's not even important to biblical scholars in the context
of shepherding. You don't have to know it, you
don't even have to be able to approach it. But it is nice to know that
I can go and look and that I have enough tools, not enough verbal
chops, but enough tools to go and look and see what this says.
And there have been some really interesting things that I've
learned through the years. When Robin and I first married, we
joined a, I don't even know what it's called
now, but we joined an organization so that we could take Hebrew
classes from rabbis. And that was very difficult.
I think we lasted two weeks. Like, yeah, no. It's just not
in my, it wasn't in my ear then, you know. It was different, and
reading differently, and the symbols, those aren't letters.
What are those things? I mean, it was just so different. So
different. But it always sounded beautiful.
And I've heard Hebrew-speaking people read the Hebrew of Genesis
1 and 2, and there's specific words there, tohu va'vohu. And that is without form and
void. And it's written in such a way
that it is poetic when you hear it. And I'm not going to try
to do it for you. Go listen. Look it up somewhere. Listen
to a true Hebrew-speaking person read the original language of
Genesis 1 and 2. It's amazing. So it's written
in a poetic style in its original tongue. It was written and these
words, tohu, vavohu, are to rhyme and they're supposed to give
the reader an understanding of something. A literal translation
of Genesis 1, 1 and 2 would be, or Genesis 1, 2 would be, now
the land was wild and waste and darkness was over the face of
the abyss. And if we look throughout the
Old Testament and we see the use of these words in Deuteronomy
32 and Isaiah 45, we see this idea and being descriptive and
the idea of tohu vavohu being chaos and disorder. Chaos and
disorder. I remember as a child, I found
an old chemistry set, me and my cousin, in my grandma's closet. And we thought, the first thing
we thought when we saw that, we could blow something up. And
we did. We set the yard on fire and a
few pecan trees on fire. It was not a happy day. But that's
all we wanted. We just wanted to create some
kind of explosion. And we did just that, and we
exploded a little pile out in the yard, and it... It's a wonder
it didn't get on us. I don't even know what it was.
I couldn't tell you. Just a bunch of powders and chemicals and things. We
just mixed it together, and we kept mixing until it boomed, and it
worked. We created fire, but it was out
of order. So just to put something out
there that it works, There's some worldviews, one of which
is called panentheism, that teaches that there is a cosmic force
that we would call God, and he was the instrument, or it was
the instrument of creation, because it takes something powerful to
do that. But he sort of went poof, and everything became, and he
spun it into being, and he just sat back and watched it work.
Well, I love tops. Do you like tops, spinning tops?
I love tops. If I had the time to waste and
the money to follow, I would probably buy some of those really
high-end tops that just spin and spin and spin. It would be
so cool. And what's really cool about
it is that you can get them all spinning together, but what happens when
they touch each other? There's a reactionary thing there. There's
some physics going on there, and it's violent. Well, God did
not create the world and just hope that it went into order.
He put it into order. He put it into order. So we should
understand this in the beginning as chaos and disorder. The waste
should be understood as uninhabitable. When we think of wasteland, it's
a place where people can't live. And each of these things should
help us remember that before there was something, there was
nothing but God. And each of these words show
that there was nothingness. And Genesis 1 establishes that
only God can and only God did make something out of nothing
and that only God can order that that He makes. And only God can
make everything good according to His purposes and by His power. And ultimately, this is a picture
of the gospel, as you'll see. As you'll see. So God makes things
and God prepares a place for that those things and God then
on the things that He makes prepares a place for other things that
He makes and then through that God gives life. That's what we've
seen in Genesis 1. God prepares a separation of
things that He makes and He separates waters and in those places He
separates land from water and He prepares a place. so that
on those places He can create living things, and then He creates
living things, and those living things are able to perpetuate
continuity. I know that's redundant, but
they're able to continue to grow and to thrive and to replicate
themselves. They become fruitful and they
multiply, and life is there, and God created all the necessary
means and purposes for life to thrive in this world. Why did
He do that? Because only God can create the
necessary conditions. for us to have eternal life.
That's the point. And we talked last week about
the image of God. We talked about the image of God and God gives
life to all things. The creatures and the bugs and
everything have the breadth of life in them and then man has
the breadth of life in him and that's what we're going to look
at this morning. And then God declares all these things good,
but the question then that's always on my mind is that what
is good? What is really good? And I think
two or three weeks ago we even went to the Gospels and we looked
at the rich young ruler who called Jesus good. And Jesus responds
with an incredibly quick theological punch. Why do you call me good? For only God is good. See, from
childhood I remember learning in preschool the blessing. Remember the blessing? God is
good, God is great. Or God is great, God is good.
It's got a rhyme, right? Let us thank Him for our food.
Something like that. Then I had a great-uncle who
says, rub-a-dub-dub, thank God for the grub. You know, that
was a good rhyme. So we're taught to pray that
God is good. I was like, why did I even say
that? Because we're taught that. Culturally we're taught that.
God is good. But then the question is, what is good? Because we
could easily argue, well, God has created the world, and it's
going to hell in a handbasket, and everything's so evil, so
where's this good God? Well, God is showing, and God
is purposing, and God is pointing to the fullness of His glory,
that only He can take that which is chaotic and make it true and
good and live forever. Because there is nothing but
God who can establish life. The oath that doctors take is
to do no harm. Because they have an undercurrent
in their desire to be physicians or surgeons or whatever it may
be to help life, to grow and to continue to keep people healthy
so that they may live an abundant life. The Scripture says that
the only place that abundant life is found is in Jesus Christ.
So even in, listen, even in the great idea of wanting to preserve
life and it should be something that we do. It's only temporary. Eternal life, by definition,
is not temporary. It's forever. God is good. God alone is good. We talked about the goodness
of God. We looked at several reasons why He is good, but one
of those that I want to come back to today as we get into
chapter 2 is that God is sovereign. Let's go to chapter 2 of Genesis.
God's sovereignty is good. Thus the heavens and the earth
were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day
God finished the work that He had done, and He rested on the
seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed
the seventh day and set it apart, because on it God rested from
all His work that He had done in creation. 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 the
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 Pishon. It is the one that flowed around
the whole land of Havilah, where it is gold. And the gold of that
land is good. Bedellium, an onyx stone are
there. The name of the second river
is 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 the Assyria. And fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and
put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. And
the Lord 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 do eat of it,
you shall surely die. I'm going to stop. We don't have to get into Eve
today. Because honestly, we're probably not going to get into
all that. There's a lot there. That's what I'm saying, there's
a lot there. But why? Why did Moses, by the Spirit,
why did God write this down this way? Why did he want to bring
the Tigris and the Euphrates into it? Of which we are all
probably somewhat familiar. Why? I don't know. Except to
shock the systems of the people reading it going, Now, this isn't
a fairy tale. These are real places. But God is sovereign. God said,
let us make man in our image. Let us make them in our likeness. And we've said already that nothing
in creation had anything to do with His existence. I mean, think
about that for a second. This is the way the Lord said
it. Let us make man in our image. Let us make man in our likeness.
See, this is God working by Himself alone. Creation had nothing to
do with it. There was no particles or things
or substance that God had to work with in order to create
man, create humanity. God had already created the land
and the dirt, so out of the dirt He created man. Somebody calls us a dirt bag,
we should say thank you. Thank you very much. Not only are we
dirt, but we're water. And we return to that. We return
to that. But here is God alone working.
Yet He works in the plural, and He works in the plural in this
context, not because He's talking to any other thing, not because
there's other beings present. And He's saying, hey guys, let's
work on this together. No. It is God alone doing the
work. It is God alone in His power
creating all things. And God is Father, Son, and Spirit. Three are one. Now this is a mystery, and it's
supposed to be a mystery. It is something that God reveals
to us through His Word. It's something that the Spirit
of God settles our hearts in so that we can rest in the reality
of it without understanding the intricacies of it. So that means
by faith we understand that God created the world. But the reason
that I bring that out is because there are many times in Scripture
and every time we see the plurality of God speaking, He's always
talking concerning the Father, Son, and the Spirit. He's always
talking of Himself in three persons equally, uniquely, specifically
at the same time. Not different times, not different
seasons, not different disciplines, not different forms, not different
modes, but there is an eternal God who is eternally the Father,
eternally the Son, eternally the Spirit, and neither the Father,
Son, or the Spirit or the other. The Father is not the Son, and
the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Son of
the Father, and vice versa. They're distinct persons. But
all of the Godhead, God Himself, is at work and alone in the work
of creation. And therefore, in this way, He
is also alone in the work of redemption. I want you to hear
that. As God is alone and sovereign
in the work of creation, it is to start the trickle of the great
sea, the flow of the great river, of seeing that redemption is
all of God. You hear it said, historically,
all of God, all of grace. Yet we have distorted that in
our humanity. We have distorted that in our imagination. Brothers
and sisters, we distort the Word of God. That's what we do. We
distort everything. We change things because we think
so much about them. Yet God does not change. His
power does not change. His purposes do not change. His
decrees do not change. And I know that a lot of folks
come back with that, well what about these, we look at the narrative of the
Old Testament when God did this and then God did that, and God
did this and then God said that, or blah, blah, blah, and blah,
blah, blah. So God is interacting with humanity,
but He's not changed His design. He's not changed His decrees.
He's just interacting relationally throughout history that it may
be recorded for us. And we'll see some of that. But
God alone is sovereign in salvation. Salvation is not offered to anyone. Salvation is not an option. Salvation
is not a decision that people make. Salvation is a decreed
work of God that the world was created for so that Jesus Christ,
the God-man, the true image of God in all of his essence as
God and also as man would be the one who satisfies the wrath
of God for the elect. and that Christ died on the cross
and His death satisfied the wrath of God forevermore against the
people whom God has known before the foundation of the world. So the Lord, the God, and all
the persons of the Godhead are at work, doing and working and
creating as one God for His own personal glory and purpose. Now
we've seen in Genesis 1, we've gone through all these God said
and God said and God said, then God did and then it was. And
this is something that we need to understand. This is also poetic
in its construction. It's almost like a song, if you
will. God does, God says, God does, and there it was. God says,
God does, and there it was, you know. It's like the stanzas,
if you will. And so when we think about this, and we've learned
about the decrees of God, that God gets His way because He said
that it shall be. God is not changing. So if God
is sovereign in all that He does to give life, then God's sovereignty
in creating life is only for the purpose of showing that He's
sovereign in giving eternal life. That's the reason Genesis exists,
so that we know that God is sovereign and powerful to give life. So
if He's the one that created it all to start with, He's not
a panentheistic God He is a sovereign God who rules
accordingly. Remember, God decreed to create
everything from nothing. God decreed, remember, the order
out of chaos. God decreed the point of rest,
the Sabbath rest, is the point of it all. The point of it all
is that we sit down and we wait and rest with Him. We're satisfied. We're finished. We're not trying
to earn anything or build anything or work anything. Friends of
mine who are in architecture and engineering have a hard time
with this reality. That there's not going to be
anything to build, not going to be anything to design in the
new heavens and the new earth. Why would there be? And that
everything that God has and that we have done here will be destroyed.
I said that one time when a young man literally just about burst
into tears. That's why I went into engineering, so that I could
have longevity in what I build. It would outlive me. You're ruining
my life dream, man. He received it, but it broke
his heart. Beloved, what we build on this world, this earth as
we know it, is temporary. God's not going to correct it.
God's not going to massage it. The scripture says that God is
going to destroy it with the blink of an eye, and with the
blink of an eye, recreate it. Perfect and suddenly. Now, you
don't tell me that that is not a picture of regeneration. That's
not a picture of the new birth. That's not a picture of what
the Spirit of God does in creating a person to see the truth of
the gospel. The point of it is to rest. God
decreed, so we remember that the central image of mankind
is Jesus Christ, the God-man. The image, the only true image
bearer of God is Jesus. He is the fullness of God in
the flesh. So we are just small little shadows
of who Jesus really is. Because He took on flesh as we
are. We're not supposed to be. exemplifying
this divine rule here on earth. That's not what the instructions
of Genesis 1 and 2 are all about. But yet I can go to my own library
and pull four volumes right now about the rule of God in human
hierarchy and monarchy and government. And what does Paul say? Let the
government, the government that's been put in place by God, just
submit to it. Quit making a big deal. We got
bigger things to worry about than worrying about freedoms. that aren't really being taken
from us. I've got believers that live
in Afghanistan that I can't contact right now. They probably won't
survive the month. I promise you they won't survive.
I'll never see them again. Missionaries, I don't know if they're there
or not. It's over. We ain't got no problems in America
in comparison. God is sovereign in that. He's
sovereign in that. The image of God is not about
creating theocracies, creating nations
who stand and rise and fall with godliness. God has purposed,
just like the mountain to fall into the sea, God has purposed
all nations to fall into the sea. He's never promised to save a
nation, He's promised to save His people, a nation of priests. God decreed life, and God decreed
death in His sovereignty, and that alone is His doing. It teaches us that there is no
one but God who can do this. It teaches us that there is no
one but God who can reveal such goodness. God has created death
and created life in His decrees. He's purposed it. But yet God
alone is the only sense of perfection. He's the only image of righteousness.
He's the only absolute good that ever is or ever will exist. So if we are to be good, then
we must be credited with the goodness of God. We must be created
in a very real way into the image of God, and that is what glorification
will do. That is not what some people
would say is sanctification in this life. No, we set apart our
lives as much as we can as we grow and mature in grace. We
stop speaking like we shouldn't, and we stop punching people,
and we stop cursing at people, and we start loving and serving
people. We do grow, but oh, we're only just a hair away from falling
right back into it. So there'll be no measure of
righteousness with me or you in the context of glory, where
God will look at us and say, now how good have you been doing?
Let's measure you up because we will all fall short of the
glory of God. And the only way that we do not
fall short of the glory of God is that our righteousness is
not of us. It's outside of us, it's imputed to us, it's alien,
that's what Paul says. It's an alien righteousness.
So our goodness is not in how well we live, That's just celebration. That's just thanksgiving. That's
just worship. That's just joy because of who
Christ is. But our goodness is in who Christ
is. Christ is our goodness. Because
only God is good. So therefore there's nothing
in this world that is good except that God has declared it good. David, Bathsheba, Uriah, you
know the story. Nathan comes in, tells David
the story about this man who had all the sheep that he could
afford and more sheep than he could count. And he saw this
one sheep that his neighbor had and he took that sheep. David
slams his fist on the table and stomps his feet and snorts and
slobbers and says, who is this man? Let's go kill him and put
him in prison. And Nathan says, you are this
man. And David tears his clothes and
screams and cries out to God and says, oh, against you and
you alone, God, have I sinned. He knew what he'd done. Now,
why do I say that? Because God writes this concerning
David during that season of his life when he was killing men
to cover up his adultery. This is a man after my own heart. God declared David good in the
midst of horrendous deception and high disregard of absolute
responsibility as the king. Crazy, isn't it? It's very crazy. How is David good? Because God
declared him so. Well, how can God declare something
that is not good, good? and be just, because He takes
the goodness of the God-man, His Son, and credits it to the
not-good of His people. And He takes the sin of His people
and credits to the Righteous One, who is His Son. And then
He destroys His Son in their place as a substitute. Beloved,
this is why it's called good news. We've been given the substitute
in order to live. All the conditions are met. God
is sovereign in His working of the Gospel. He created the world. He created humanity. And we need
to remember that God's promises in Scripture have sometimes a
dual meaning, just as blessings and just as conditions do. Temporal
things illustrate God's promises to His elect and His power to
provide rest and joy and peace and prosperity and life. as well
as to show His power alone can effectuate and fulfill these
things. And each time creation is left with a condition, it
will fail. Each time that which God has
made, if God is not the single sole power source behind it,
it will fail. Sometimes we see promises in
the temporal promises of Scripture. We're not to look at them and
think, well, God, those are eternal promises. God has not promised
to create a nation of Israel and to keep it perpetually. God
has not promised to keep the Promised Land and a certain sect
of people perpetually. God has not promised to keep
giving Abraham children. There's a picture there of Christ. That is the eternal end of it
all. So blessings and curses and life
and death and prosperity and power are all part of God's showing
that He alone can create good things and empower goodness and
He alone brings wrath and destruction. He alone is doing all that is
taking place even in our present day. Everything that is happening
is by the power and the purposes of God. So in Genesis 2 now we have this
creation of this creature called man. And we fully formed through
the reading of this text and just sitting still in it. You
notice that it's not didactic. It's not like, and then God did
this because of this and this is the theology behind it. It's
a narrative and it's poetic in its construction so it's to illustrate,
it illustrates who God is. And so we have to just stop for
a minute. We have to just pause and see it and just listen. How do we listen? By the word
of the Lord. So we're so familiar with the New Testament that this
starts to make sense, right? Which is why it's odd for me
when people start reading the Bible for the first time, they
read Genesis. Because it's in the beginning. That's just the
way. That's punny. But we fully formed and purposed
in the text that God's purpose of creation is good because God
said it was good. Yet it was not good because creation
in and of itself had no head. Had no gardener. Had no one to
oversee it, no one to keep it healthy, no one to continue to
work it. So what God has put together
needed more than just itself to exist and continue. It needed
God for sure and God alone could keep it. So the image bearer
of God and the shadow of it, the one who is to point to the
true image of God and the fullness of God, Jesus Christ, is humanity. So God creates man and then out
of man He creates woman. And in this creation, His eternal
purposes will unfold more. And so there are about 9 verses. Well, there's actually 11 verses.
Verses 4 through 15 here that we see God describing the things
that He has created. Trees. But if you take the tree
and, you know, the verbiage of trees and vines and waters and
fruit and all that kind of stuff and you pull them out of the
ESV, it's probably over 800 references. A lot of them in the New Testament
too, Jesus uses it a lot. Vine and all these things. So
there's something big to deal with in Genesis where God talks
about trees. And He's done some stuff. Man
is put into the garden, which is a place of rest, a tabernacle,
if you will, a worshipful place where God and man can coexist
in unity, where God has created the vegetation of the world to
reproduce itself in such a way that would provide food for humanity
and that man, if he tends it well, can take that food, harvest
it, and eat and live forever. But if he doesn't eat and tend
to things as God has provided, then he will die. So man is put in the garden that
he might keep it. The condition on keeping the
garden is on the creature. Have you ever not cut your grass
for three weeks? Have you ever gone to a property that you don't
visit much and then you go back a month later and it looks like,
I mean, is a giraffe coming out of here? Especially during the
summer. So God has created the garden
and everything in it, and everything in the garden will supply life-giving
food in a perpetual or self-producing manner for humanity. And so He
puts man in the garden. And the creation that God has
made will be fruitful because God decreed that it will be fruitful.
It will do that which it was prepared to do and created to
do. And so then man also will be fruitful as we'll see next
week. He will multiply. But there's
something interesting about trees and their relationship with humanity
in the context of Scripture. Now, this is where we can come
from science or biology and come back to the Bible through that
lens and go, wow, this is pretty neat. Do you know, without oxygen-breathing
creatures, trees would die, right? Because we breathe oxygen that
trees give off, and then the carbon dioxide that we breathe
out, trees take in, and so there's this sort of mutual benefit there. But in this garden, trees live
without man. The man die without trees. So God has given the trees and
then the rest, the resting in the garden is God's doing. He
has provided a place where man can sit forever and rest and
bask in the glory of God. Now see the picture? It's temporary. I don't think
it lasts a day. I think before the sun goes down
on the first day of creation, Adam and Eve have fallen. Now
that's just my thoughts. But I really believe it. I don't
believe it was long at all. It wasn't weeks and months. It
surely wasn't months. So God's presence and power is
required in this symbol, in this shadow of being in this garden,
in this temple, in this place with God's provision of life.
Man must stay connected to these trees and eat of these trees
in order to live. This is a symbol, this is a picture, this is a
shadow of the presence of God. This is a shadow of the sovereignty
of God who created all things that it might live and is the
only one who can do this and is the only one who can bring
redemption. This is the first picture of gospel. that we see
in the Bible. That man will live if he stays
connected to that substance that God has alone provided. So it's a picture of the gospel,
but it's not a perfect gospel, because it's not going to last.
God's presence and power is required for man to live. God's effectual
mercy and the gospel and the grace of His power is effectual
for eternal life. Just think about it. You'll see
it. So then Adam came from the same
place that the trees came. Adam came from the dirt. The
trees came from the dirt. So what's the difference? The
purpose in which they were created. The form in which they were given.
God created the dirt, and God out of the dirt created the trees,
and God out of the dirt created humanity. So we're nothing but
dirt, clay, in the hand of our Creator. So here, Adam came from
the same ground that the trees came from. And Adam lives because
God created him to live. God breathed into him the breath
of life. Adam was not alive. He was just
a clay vessel. He was just a sculpture, if you
will, without the breath of life. We are dead. without the breath
of the life of the Holy Spirit. We are dead without the promise,
the eternal love of God for His people. We are dead, we are nothing
but dust without the mercy of God. And God gives life to Adam and
Adam lives because of God and then God has decreed that man
cannot remain alive without the trees, without the food that
comes from the trees. In the picture of the trees and
the trees in the garden, there are many, but in the center of
the garden, God has identified two specific trees that I don't
think were any different than any other tree there. I think
God just cut them out and said, don't touch these. Don't eat
from these. You have the trees next to them.
You have the trees around them. You have all the trees that you
can see. You eat and you live. You see? You eat and you live. And if you eat of these trees
out here, you will live. But if you eat of either one
of these trees, you shall die. What were the trees? The tree
of life. Ironic, isn't it? Don't eat of
the tree of life or you will die. Does He say that? No, He
doesn't say that. He only says, don't eat of the
tree of knowledge. What is the knowledge of, good and evil?
He says, surely you may eat of every tree in the garden, but
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for
in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. Now think about
that for a second. Now see, as I spoke there, I
spoke a falsehood on purpose. Because it is the narrative that
most of us are taught. I think you must have heard it.
I lied to you. And we just accept it. The lie
was that God told them not to eat of the tree of life. He never said that. As a matter
of fact, after the fall, as we'll see next week, after they eat
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He says, I
will take them out of the garden lest they eat of the tree of
eternal life and live forever. It's not like God was trying
to keep them from dying. That was His point. They weren't going
to eat from that tree. Because the tree of life is just
like, I believe, every other tree out there in the context
of the promises of God to live forever is conditioned upon God. But when it's conditioned upon
man, what man does is he seeks alternatives. And man would rather know more
details and have more knowledge so that he could be closer to
being like God in power rather than just rest in the sufficiency
of God's power. Now you tell me where the history
of the church is not eat up with that. You tell me what some of
the things that we've been dealing with over the last eight months
in some of our personal situations is not that same sin. God has made a promise. And then
He put man at work in the garden of promise, in the garden of
life. And man, by the hand of God, has everything he needs
to sustain himself forever by the hand of God. This is called
providence. Providence includes the sustenance
of life. God's providence reigns across
all of creation. And God's providence gives water
to dry places, and rain to parched places, and vegetation to deserts,
and the list goes on and on and on. And the reprobate and the
elect eat of its bounty equally. As a matter of fact, I would
argue that sometimes the elect suffer more. Because we all share in the suffering
of Christ. We're persecuted. And thus we sometimes miss the
providence of God for life. But in our death, we get everything. So this promise of God, this
providence of God, this is both real and spiritual. And the spiritual
is the true. Real means tangible, physical,
touchable. So in this real tangible, physical,
touchable garden, with this real human person, God is walking
with Him. Jesus, the Son of God, is walking
with His created being in the creation that He had made and
He's making promises that point to Himself becoming like the
creation so that one day He will make Adam good forever in Himself. as the tree of life, as the bread
of life, as the living water. Listen, listen to Jesus teaching
in this. The bread that comes down from
heaven. What is the exodus about? The exodus is still now God taking
this world and creating a people and these people then have not
fulfilled their conditioned, their part of staying in the
promises of God and instead have gone to try to find more joy
somewhere else, more life somewhere else, better bread and another
bakery and God put them into slavery for 500 years in Egypt
and then God promised that He would give them Eden. He would
give them rest. So he takes them out of Egypt
by the work of his power through a murderer as their leader, who can't even
speak well, so he sends his brother to speak on his behalf because
he cannot speak well. Moses didn't say these things.
Aaron said these things. You see that when he spoke to
Pharaoh. Aaron spoke. Moses stood. Because Moses couldn't
speak. We don't know why. He was too
scared. Speech impediment, whatever. Maybe he sounded like Elmer Fudd
or Porky Pig. I don't know. Either way, God sent him prepared. And then he takes them out of
Egypt, puts them into the wilderness, taking them straight to a land
that someone else occupied, but God had promised that they could
have it and they would live in joy and be fat and happy and
excited and full. And what do they do? Complain! Because God, in a sense, brings
trees to grow every morning to give them food called manna,
this spiritual bread that laid on the ground and perished by
noon. And they'd rather have the death
of Egypt and its milk than the promise of life in God. This is what the truth of the
human condition really is. And beloved, I'm going to tell
you right now, it was true of Adam before he ever took that
fruit. It was true of him. He'd rather
have that tree of knowledge than the promise of eternal life.
He'd rather sit on his own understanding than rest in the sufficiency
of the power of God who created all things. Because until God
sovereignly creates us to be glorified, we will always choose
the flesh. God gives life. God creates. And humanity tends to the garden. And in this, there's a little
bit of the image of God in that God is overseeing life. But ultimately, it points to
the true image bearer, who is Jesus Christ. In closing, I want
you to think about this. Let's go to Psalm 1 together.
I want you to see the picture that the psalmist paints here. And look at the similes and the
imagery. Blessed is the man who walks
not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law
of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Now
we know, according to Paul, what the law of the Lord is, and it
is the righteousness of Christ. Romans chapter 3 clearly shows
it. The righteousness of God, though
it is, what, shadowed by the law and the prophets? It's just
a shadow, the righteousness of God revealed through Jesus Christ.
But this man who delights in the righteousness of God, who
delights in the promises of God, who delights in the purposes
of God, you see that? What is the law except to show
you what will kill you? And to show you that without
God's power, you will die. God didn't say if you eat of
it. God says when you eat of it.
Because God had decreed that Adam would eat of the tree. There
was no opportunity for Adam not to eat the tree because God had
decreed that he would eat the tree. They didn't pull one over
on God. It was in Adam innately to desire
knowledge. It's in us. But look at what the psalmist
says. He, this man who delights in Christ, who delights in the
righteousness of God, who delights in the promises of God, who delights
in the life-giving sovereignty of God, he is like a tree. He
is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit
and its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does,
he prospers. The wicked are not so. But they
are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked
will not stand in the judgment. And in other words, they will
not stand up. They'll be brought to their knees. Nor the sinners
in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of
the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. This
is an amazing little psalm that we like to use to our children
to scare them. But it's not a scare tactic.
It's a gospel glorious promise. that when we stand because of
the power of God in the congregation of the righteous, which has not
happened yet, when we stand in judgment, it's because we are
not guilty, when we stand being declared perfect, it's
because God has made us that way. This is the point. God alone can create anything
He wants and call it good. And he can call good anything
he chooses because God has the authority and the power to establish
the goodness that is required through His own image. And the
only person that has established that goodness is Jesus Christ,
the righteousness of God. So the Genesis account, again,
seventh time I've said this in eight weeks, is about Christ. It's about the sovereignty of
God in the giving of the Son to be redeemer, to be life giver,
to be the tree. Jesus uses the same analogy.
I am the vine, you are the branches. If you cut yourself away from
me, you have nothing. I am the bread of life. I am
the living water. But what happens in spiritual
people? When I say spiritual people and
religious people, what happens in their minds when they hear
that? They think to themselves, there's got to be more. So what is Jesus telling me to
do? Follow Him everywhere? Yeah, He's commanded us to do
that. But that following Jesus everywhere won't grant us eternal
life. We must be counted in Him. We must be given to Him. He must
be our head. He must be our husband. We must
be His body. Because if we're not, when His
body was killed on the tree, then His death wasn't effectual
for us. When His body was laid in the ground, His death was
not powerful for us if we weren't found in Him. How are we found
in Christ? Because God, who out of nothing
created everything and brought it into order, that life may
exist upon it, showing that He alone can sustain life and that
no created thing can ever establish its own eternity. God, that God,
that Sovereign, that Power, that Gospel is our only hope. And
faith is hearing that promise, seeing it as the tree of life,
and not seeking some other knowledge to come along beside it, some
other further distinction to further separate us in our own
selves to make us closer to Christ. We are either in Him or we are
not in Him. He is our life or He will be
our judge. Are you resting in the person
of Christ? Are you satisfied in the sovereignty of God? Beloved,
this is good news. It's not scary, except that you
sit here, find yourself outside the camp. That's what we'll talk
about next week. Outside the garden. Outside. But for those whom God gives
ears to hear, it is beautiful. It is pleasant. It is glorious. It is joyful. Because He establishes
us in Himself. powerfully. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, for your
gospel, for the good news of your sovereignty, Lord, for the
person of Jesus Christ, in whom we find all of our worth and
in whom we see the fullness of all that you are. So Lord, as
we continue to think about these things, Lord, help us to see
that which Scripture can teach us in this context. Help us to
read this, Lord, through the lens of the apostles. Father,
don't let us get bogged down in so many things that aren't
necessarily vital, but help us to see the whole picture, to
back up and look at the picture of Christ in this account. And Lord, I pray that you give
us clarity as I continue to go through this section over and
over again in the weeks to come. And Lord, that when we get through,
we can worship. Truly knowing that it is not
even because we understand all these little things. But Father,
it's because you have granted us the understanding that Jesus
Christ has given himself as a ransom for your people. And that when
we can sit still and we can hope only in Christ, it's because
you have granted us such a great faith. Because we belong to you. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.