Genesis (Written)

Genesis 3:7-13
Naked and Exposed

Introduction: Our last sermon closed with this verse – “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.” Before we go forward, let’s go back…back to chapter 2 –

“Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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.”

A question needs to be addressed and answered before we can move on. This is an issue that comes up many times in the remaining 1187 chapters of the Bible and needs to be remembered by everyone willing to accept the Bible’s overall premise.

The question is, “If God said that Adam would die on the day he ate of the fruit, then how could we be doing more sermons on the life of Adam, starting with today? Did God lie?”

The answer is, “No, God didn’t lie.” Well, if God didn’t lie and Adam didn’t die physically, then something else must have happened. From today’s passage on, even until this first day of 2012, man has been dead… spiritually dead. We are born dead and remain that way if and until Christ works in our lives.

Adam and the woman died spiritually the moment they ate of the fruit and all people are born into Adam, spiritually dead. This is the premise of the Bible – that all are born into sin and are thus separated from God at conception. The only thing that can correct this is a new birth – to be “born again” as Jesus declared.

Paul, in the book of Romans, explains this. Although he is writing about the Law of Moses, the same premise applies to the disobedience of Adam and the woman.

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸ But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. ⁹ I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. ¹⁰ And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. ¹¹ Romans 7:7-11

Paul says, “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.”

Death resulted from the law, even though the law coming from God was good. Our last sermon resolved this when we looked at how two things, both created in a “good” state, can produce evil. The law, in this case staying away from the tree of knowledge, acted on the deficient will of Adam and the woman.

This is what brought about death and death continues in man until this day. Apart from a rebirth, we will remain spiritually dead and separated from God for eternity.

Text Verse: Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. John 3:3-6

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. Covering Up

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 coverings.

Adam and the woman (I’m calling her the woman because she hasn’t yet been named – not as an offense to her. Eventually she will be called his wife, and then later, “Eve.”) Anyway,,, they had their eyes opened. They saw the effects of evil because they had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they suddenly realized their naked state.

They knew what it was to feel shame and they tried to hide the shame they felt. They did this by sewing fig leaves together. There are several things we can get from this one verse and deeds are the focus of the three aspects –

The first aspect is that they realized their sin because of their deeds. They had been given a law and they disobeyed it. Paul, speaking of the Law of Moses, said the following. I’m using his logic in a way comparable to what Adam did –

… as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law (for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified;) Romans 2:12, 13

Adam and the woman failed in the law they had been given. Their deeds testified against them.

In Galatians 3:11, he compliments this same logic –

But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “the just shall live by faith.”

I hope you are beginning to understand or are more fully able to comprehend what I explained in the sermon on Free Will from Genesis 2:16, 17. No one is justified by the law. Adam and the woman needed faith, but their deeds, which weren’t based on faith, are what brought about their pitiful situation.

The second aspect in sewing fig leaves is that they knew their helpless state. They relied on their deeds to make them to “be like God.” But even though this did occur – that they became like God, to know good and evil – it also made them less like God in another way. Their spiritual death at that moment and their works testified against them. This is amazingly similar to the dead church of Laodicea in Revelation chapter 3 –

Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked— ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.

Adam and the woman thought that they would gain everything and have need of nothing, but instead, like the church in Laodicea, they became wretched – creatures that would live a toilsome existence from the soil that would stubbornly provide for them.

They became miserable – creatures that would long for a return to the garden they had lost and who were destined instead to have trials, troubles, pains, and sorrows.

They became poor – creatures who no longer had the riches of heaven, but the thorns of the earth. They would no longer have the waters of life. Instead, their waters came from wells dug into the land and which needed to be drawn up by the strength of their arm.

They became blind – creatures without spiritual life or eyes to discern spiritual things. Instead, they would grope through a world of darkness and evil.

And they became naked – creatures that were exposed both physically and spiritually. Their nakedness testified against them then and it continues to testify against us even to this day.

Do you think it’s any coincidence that Jesus brings up these points to the church of Laodicea? No. God was speaking to them and is speaking to us that all the deeds in the world will do nothing for us unless they are done by faith.

The third aspect of their attempt to cover themselves is that they tried to make things right on their own initiative. In other words, here they have disobeyed, they’ve sinned, and they’ve seen their nakedness, and they tried to cover it with fig leaves. Fig leaves are unsuitable to cover a person. Here’s a few reasons why –

They aren’t strong enough for the task – a leaf can’t withstand the stress that’s applied to them. They aren’t durable enough for the task – they wear out as they dry and will fall to pieces quickly. They aren’t protective enough for safety as the material isn’t user friendly for the hardships we face.

Each of these points parallels our deeds in trying to obtain God’s favor. They aren’t strong enough to cover our sin. Our deeds cannot hold up to the stress of sin’s consequences. They aren’t durable enough for the task; temporary deeds can’t satisfy an infinite penalty.

And they aren’t protective enough for the safety of the person. The fiery darts of the devil, the internal struggles of sin, and the weakness of our souls cannot be overcome by deeds. Instead, they leave us in the same sad shape, or even worse, than we were in.

This pattern has been repeated countless times since sin first entered the world. We do wrong and we try to hide our wrong.

When Bill Clinton was discovered to have had an extra-marital affair, he lied about it and did what he could with his presidential powers to cover it up. He even went as far as publically mulling over what the definition of “is” is. He shamefully sewed fig leaves together in an attempt to hide his guilt.

In the same way, Jim Bakker, the disgraced TV evangelist was accused of offering a $265,000 bribe to a secretary in the ministry to cover up their adultery. He was also tried and convicted on charges of fraud, tax evasion, and racketeering stemming from his involvement in several illegal financial transactions during the construction of Heritage USA.

Even the first King of Israel, Saul, attempted to cover up his wrongdoing. When he found that his sin was exposed before God, he had the nerve to say to Samuel “I have sinned; yet honor me now, please, before the elders of my people and before Israel, …”

In contrast to these people, Job held onto his righteousness as a badge of honor and even compared his acts against the unrighteousness of Adam.

But whether it’s a politician, a minister, a king, or Job, whether we have done something amiss or not, we stand naked and exposed before the God who searches the hearts and minds of His creatures.

II. A Moment in Time

⁸ And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

It’s surprising how many theologians deny the literal reading of this verse. The LORD God, Jehovah Elohim – the God of Power and Perfection walked in the garden in the cool of the day – in Hebrew, the “wind of the day.” Adam Clarke gives us his comments on this passage –

“The voice is properly used here, for as God is an infinite Spirit, and cannot be confined to any form, so he can have no personal appearance.” In other words, He doesn’t believe God walked in the garden.

The main premise for people who follow the literal method of Bible interpretation is that we should be satisfied with the literal interpretation of a text unless very substantial reasons can be given for advancing beyond the literal meaning.

In the case of this account, the LORD GOD walking in the garden, there is no good reason to deny it being taken literally and there is the authority of God’s word that it should be. In other words, Jehovah Elohim really walked in the Garden of Eden just as He did when He met Abraham in Genesis 18; just as He did when He wrestled with Jacob in Genesis 32; just as He appeared to Joshua before the battle of Jericho; and just as He did on many other occasions in the Old Testament.

This same Lord God walked among His people after the Incarnation, when the Holy Spirit united with human flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the master of time and space and He walked in the Garden and elsewhere, appearing in His own history.

People speculate on how long it was before Adam and the woman actually ate of the fruit in disobedience. In one of my Bible classes I was asked this and my answer was, “Probably not very long.”

One Jewish commentary, which includes a timeline of all of history, says this, “On the very day he was created, man committed the first sin of history, transgressing the divine commandment not to eat from the ‘Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden, and mankind became subject to death, labor, and moral confusion.”

This seems to be validated by the term “the cool of the day.” It was the end of the day, the evening, that Jehovah Elohim walked in the Garden… plenty enough time had gone by for his innocent and precious creatures to have their eyes opened.

If this is so – if they really sinned on the first day they were created – it brings about an immensely profound theological concept and so I would caution you to take my personal thoughts here with a complete grain of salt and yet ponder them as if they were the choicest of fruits.

In Genesis 1, it said at the end of the sixth day of creation, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

If Adam fell before the end of the sixth day, and everything was very good on the sixth day, then God’s plan included His creatures to be complete and not lacking knowledge by the end of the sixth day. Is an innocent creature – one that doesn’t know good from evil – complete or not?

If the man was placed in the garden to worship and serve His Creator, could he do it without this knowledge? Personally, I would say not. And therefore the book of Revelation where we see the restoration of the Garden to creatures who have the knowledge of good and evil is even more significant than we might imagine!

Out of 7000 years of human existence which is 2,520,000 days, only 1 day was as it should have been and Oh! how we wait for the restoration of that perfect day.

I think this is supportable by God’s rest on Day 7. God rested from His labors on that day and the purpose of man was to enter God’s rest. Because this is so, then it makes complete sense that He was expelled from the Garden before the 7^th day.

Only when the fullness of time had come when Jesus was crucified and resurrected was man allowed to actually enter God’s rest. As it says in Hebrews 4:3, “For we who have believed do enter that rest…”

That Adam and the woman fell on the sixth day of creation is also supportable by the comment in Revelation 13:8 – “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, was “slain from the foundation of the world.” Sin is what necessitated the death of the Lord and therefore sin occurred at the foundation of the world – known to us as the six days of creation.

We look around us and see death, troubles, misery, and pain, but God sees a plan that will bring many sons to glory and one which is worth the cost to have creatures that can appreciate the greatness of His marvelous plan. Never underestimate the immense glory of what God has done and is doing in this on-going bubble of time and space!

III. Hiding Away

⁹ Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” ¹⁰ So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”

Man o man… nothing has changed in the last 6000 years. The Lord called to Him. “Adam… hellooooo Adam.” Where are you? Of course He knew where Adam was, but He was drawing him out in a tender manner, just as a parent would to their wayward child. Jeremiah asks this rhetorical question from the Lord –

Can anyone hide himself in secret places,
So I shall not see him?” says the LORD;
“Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the LORD. 23:24

The great King of Israel, David, tried to hide his own sin from the Lord after having slept with Bathsheba and then having her husband Uriah killed. Let’s take a few moments and read the account –

And the woman conceived; so she sent and told David, and said, “I am with child.” ⁶ Then David sent to Joab, saying, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. ⁷ When Uriah had come to him, David asked how Joab was doing, and how the people were doing, and how the war prospered. ⁸ And David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah departed from the king’s house, and a gift of food from the king followed him. ⁹ But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. ¹⁰ So when they told David, saying, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Did you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” ¹¹ And Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.”  ¹² Then David said to Uriah, “Wait here today also, and tomorrow I will let you depart.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. ¹³ Now when David called him, he ate and drank before him; and he made him drunk. And at evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house. ¹⁴ In the morning it happened that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. ¹⁵ And he wrote in the letter, saying, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die.” ¹⁶ So it was, while Joab besieged the city, that he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew there were valiant men. ¹⁷ Then the men of the city came out and fought with Joab. And some of the people of the servants of David fell; and Uriah the Hittite died also. …(And going down a few verses) When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. ²⁷ And when her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD. 2 Samuel 11:5-17 & 26, 27

David tried to cover up his sins with fig leaves but the LORD knew what had happened. Instead of working wickedness and trying to hide our shame behind foliage, Paul gives us a much better way of handling things in the book of Romans –

Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. ¹⁴ But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts. Romans 13:13, 14

Because what David did is so intricately tied to Adam’s account, let’s go back there and see the continued comparison – “Then the LORD sent Nathan to David.”

Nathan is the king’s prophet. Right here, can’t you hear the LORD calling Adam… “Aaaadam, Oh Aaadam.” But instead of Adam, the LORD is calling out to His beloved King – “David… Oh Daaavid.”

And he came to him, and said to him: “There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. ² The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. ³ But the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. ⁴ And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”

David listened intently to the account, this parable about his own sin being given to him by his prophet Nathan. He was the king and the one to judge legal cases. As he sat and listened, he wasn’t clueing in to what his own prophet, his mouthpiece of the LORD, was trying to tell him.

Who else would he be talking about? But just like Adam, he was secretly hiding in his own little garden. He was naked and covered in fig leaves, just like his first father.

And just like the Garden, the woman he had conspired with was securely hidden with him, behind the walls of his palace. “Oh, Zion is nice and comfortable and the LORD doesn’t see a thing.” But the LORD found Adam who was hiding in Eden and the LORD found David hiding in Zion.

The Garden of Eden means a “Garden of Delight” and Zion means a “Parched Place.” From one extreme to another, “the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.”

IV. Passing the Buck

¹² Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”

I get to do this a lot. Whenever I’m found out for some misdeed, I simply pass the buck to my Beauty. “It was all Hideko’s fault, can’t you see this. She made me do it, the little devil.”

Well, maybe not all the time…

But this is our natural proclivity. We blame our co-workers when things don’t go right at work. We blame our brother or sister when mom and dad find out the thing we did. We blame McDonald’s for making the coffee too hot when we stupidly drop it and burn ourselves. We blame the rich for our financial woes. We blame God for every bad thing that we can’t control. We love to point the finger and pass the buck to someone else.

Adam passed the buck and it landed at right Eve’s feet. But what is also included here is a bit more… “The woman whom You gave to be with me…” ha-issha asher nathata imadi

“The woman made me do it, but really, it’s Your fault. You put her in my lap. Things sure would have been better without her.” And this is the pattern of the unrighteous of human beings down through the ages. Not only do we pass the buck, but we somehow find a way of blaming God in the process.

This really is the mark of the unrighteous soul. This is what King Saul did when he disobeyed God’s order to destroy everything belonging to the Amalekites when he fought against them –

Then Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed are you of the LORD! I have performed the commandment of the LORD.” But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” And Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen, to sacrifice to the LORD your God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.”

Saul passed the buck on to God, “I did it because it’s what God would have wanted.” But this unrepentant attitude after being found out… the attitude which was so similar to Adam, wasn’t at all like David. How could the LORD call David “a man after my own heart” even after he committed adultery and murder? Let’s continue with David’s trial before the LORD –

So David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more! Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon.’”

V. Kicking the Can

Most of you have probably heard the term “kicking the can down the road.” We use this to say that someone who’s getting blamed for something turns around and blames someone else. In the world’s first cast of “kicking the can down the road,” the woman taught us how to do it.

Women have given us other firsts as well. After tedious research on the internet and elsewhere, I found 7 women who accomplished wonderful firsts – 1) Bette Nesmith Graham invented liquid paper; 2) Sixteenth century noblewoman Lady Mary Wortley Montagu discovered the smallpox vaccination; 3) Helen Greiner invented the first bomb diffusing robot; 4) Sarah Blakely, comedian turned entrepreneur, invented SpanX – in her case, I’m not sure if she ever left the field of comedy; 5) Margaret Knight invented paper bags… she didn’t invent paper or bags, but she did invent paper bags; 6) Marion Donovan invented disposable diapers; and 7) Hideko Garrett invented a workable method of turning a completely helpless soul into an effective dish washer and husband. All notable firsts…

Women accomplished all of these notable tasks, but our first mother, Eve, gets sole rights to “kicking the can down the road.”

¹³ And the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Adam was very careful to assign blame directly to Eve and indirectly to the LORD, but Eve – without missing a beat, turned around and blamed the serpent. Paul made sure to note in the New Testament though that kicking the can only goes so far –

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. ¹⁴ And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.

I appreciate Paul reminding of this. By the time we get to 1 Timothy, which is 55 books into the Bible, it can be tough to keep all these things in order.

In all seriousness though, this pattern has remained pretty much uninterrupted since it first occurred. It’s so easy to pass the buck and kick the can and it’s rare when someone will own up to their own failings.

In the case of King David, what did he do after he was confronted with his transgressions? He stood fast and took the heat –

¹³ So David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. ¹⁴ However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die.” ¹⁵ Then Nathan departed to his house.

Yes, sin has consequences and David paid for them in his family and in the many trials he faced, but because of his repentant heart and the depth of his emotions when confronted with his own sin, God favored him.

The 51^st Psalm is David’s heartfelt acknowledgment of his misdeeds and it has filled the souls of people for over 2700 years with a deeper understanding of the type of person God rejoices over in His dealings with the sons of men. When we sin, let’s be strong enough to admit it and to not attempt to cover ourselves with fig leaves and then assign blame when we’re found out. Rather, let’s openly acknowledge our sins and move on.

I’ll leave you with this final verse to remember tonight –

And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:13

Tragedy in the Garden

The woman was enticed and she ate of the fruit
She passed it on to Adam and he ate as well
He became the second willing recruit
And together they left a sad story to tell

Their eyes were opened to their exposed state
They realized that life in sin just ain’t so great

They sewed together figs to hide their shame
And made coverings that just wouldn’t suffice
The Lord questioned them about their hiding game
And they realized that sin just ain’t so nice.

“Where are you?” called the LORD. (Though he already knew)
“I was hiding because I realized something wasn’t right
I was afraid to answer, I’m naked … yes it’s true
And so I hid myself, like a shadow in the night.”

“Who told you that you were naked? What is this you did do?
Have you taken of the fruit which I told you not to eat?”
“It was the women who did it… the one made by You
She told me of it’s yumminess,,, and how it was so sweet.”

I thought it would be so good, but I guess I paid the price
I’m beginning to see that sin really ain’t so nice

“Woman, what is this thing that you have done?
Traded life under the heaven’s for life under the sun.”
Oh my LORD it was the serpent. He deceived me and I ate
And now I’m seeing that sin just ain’t so great.”

Oh God that we could take it back and undo what we have done
Life was wonderful under the heavens
But it’s terrible under the sun.

What can we do make things right?
Where can we turn to be healed?
How long will we be cast from Your sight?
How long until the grave is unsealed?

I have a plan children, but you’ll have to wait
Many years under the sun toiling in the heat
But I will someday open wide heaven’s gate
When my own Son, the devil will defeat.

I will send my own Son, the devil to defeat.

 

 

Genesis 3:1-6
Who is the Liar?

Albert Einstein said, “If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.”

Today we’re going to look at where truth was first called into question. Is what is true for you not necessarily true for me? Is truth even knowable at all? If truth is presented, how can we know if the elegant trimmings Einstein warned about have a subtle and cunning purpose of twisting it?

It’s scary to think that we can be manipulated so easily in life by words which sound correct, but which are so wrong. What we need to do is to think clearly, but in our society, clear thinking isn’t even taught anymore unless you get to the college level and even then it’s taught only as a single discipline and not as a general rule.

Proverbs says – “The first one to plead his cause seems right, Until his neighbor comes and examines him. (18:17)

If we attempt to use clear and rational thinking in a global warming class, we’ll probably get a failing grade. If we challenge a theory such as evolution, again… there’s a big fat F for you.

Our first parents were presented with challenges to the truth and they didn’t handle it very well.

Their choices, based on bad decision making have resulted in everything from Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler, to communism and fascism. Their bad decisions have caused us to lose little babies through death and spouses through divorce. What a sad state we’re in… all because of words of deception.

Introduction: Despite the depressing circumstances which surround the Fall of Man and all its subsequent woes, without the fall, we could never fully appreciate the greatness and the glory of God. There was no mistake in God’s plan then and there is no mistake in God’s plan now.

Everything each of us faces in life, including my own trials and frustrations, is known to God and will be used for His glory and for the benefit of those who He has called. If you can truly accept that, then what Adam and Eve did, shouldn’t make you kick at their memory and say “stupid, stupid, stupid.” Instead you can look on what occurred and say to God, “Oh God, how great Thou art.”

Text Verse: Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. James 1:13-15

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. A Cunning Foe – Twisting Things Around

¹ Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

Chapter 3 starts out with the tempter, the serpent, whom we later find out is the devil or Satan. He remains a part of the unfolding story of the Bible almost to the very end. Not until Revelation Chapter 20 is he done away with. He makes his entrance on the scene in the third chapter into the Bible and he makes his exit from the scene in the third chapter from the end of the Bible… the symmetry in the Bible never ceases to astound me.

In this verse, it says he “was more cunning than any beast of the field…” The devil’s cunning brings about an hugely complicated issue. If God created the devil and the devil caused evil, then did God cause evil? We’ll ask this question now and again later as we go on. The answer to this is one of the most important issues we can determine and nothing could be more relevant.

There is evil in the world, this we all know very well. The question is, “why?” Did God lose control of things or did God cause the evil? If either of these is the case, then we are at the arbitrary failings of an inconsistent Creator.

Augustine said “There is no possible source of evil except good.” Evil is simply an absence of good and this only comes from something else drawing it out of the good state it was originally in.

But whatever draws it out of the good state is something else that is good as well, because as Thomas Aquinas says, “Only good can be a cause; because nothing can be a cause except inasmuch as it is a being, and every being, as such, is good.”

What he means is that nothing can cause something unless it is a being and that every being God created was good at its creation. When we understand that, we see that good doesn’t cause evil which is contrary to itself. Instead it causes some other evil.

In the case of the devil, he was created “good.” However, something else which was good drew the evil out of him. What good could draw out the evil from the devil? The answer is found in Isaiah 14 and in Ezekiel 28. These passages are speaking of the King of Babylon and the King of Tyre, but the premise is the same as for the devil –

I established you;
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.
¹⁵ You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
Till iniquity was found in you. …
¹⁷“Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty;
You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; Isaiah 28:14, 15 &17

For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
¹⁴ I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High. Ezekiel 14:13, 14

The good which the devil saw in the rule and authority of God drew out the evil of envy in the devil. And his own beauty and splendor in comparison to others drew out the evil of pride. The good in God and the good of His creation drew out the evil.

What God intended for His creation is the good of the order of the creation. However, the good order of the creation requires that some things will fail – stars exploding for example, or trees dying to make mulch for new trees to grow. So God causes in things the proper order of the universe, and by the nature of that proper order, by accident, things corrupt.

It says in 1 Samuel 2:6 that “The LORD kills and makes alive.” But God didn’t make death for the sake of death. He made Adam alive and to live. Death however, is the result of justice which belongs to the universe based on the nature of God. This requires that sinners are to die. The result is that God is the author of the evil we know as penalty because God’s standards are immutable, but He is not the author of the evil which is fault. This can only come from a lesser being, a point we’ll clarify later.

Once he was corrupted through no fault of God, the devil went about his business of corrupting God’s crown of creation – man. Why would he do this? For the same reasons as we already explained, envy, boasting, and pride.

By subverting God’s authority over the physical world, he would gain rule over it, including man because man was given dominion over the other parts of the creation. He wanted to rule and be like God and this was how he could do it.

This is proven in the devil’s tempting of Jesus when he said, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.” Luke 4:6, 7

When man fell, the devil gained rule over the earth.

The first words the devil spoke to the woman came from a being perfectly described in the verse, “cunning.” He said to her –

“Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

But this isn’t at all what God said. What God said was, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,…”

The devil knew he couldn’t destroy man as he was because the natural order of things says that in order to die, one must sin. He also knew that if they couldn’t eat of every tree of the garden that man would be forced to sin because man needed to eat, so his question was a subtle attack.

“If you’re not forbidden from eating from every tree because that would result in death, then how could eating from just one tree result in death? Come on girl, think it through…”

As Matthew Henry said so well, “The divine law cannot be reproached unless it be first misrepresented.”

This is a really good lesson for all of us today. When we hear people telling us what the Bible says, we’d better check it out for ourselves. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of the prosperity gospel, idol worship, or a host of other things simply because the word is misrepresented to unsuspecting hearers.

Balaam was told by God that he couldn’t curse Israel, so he came against them by tempting them. The devil did the same thing. He had to tempt them to sin and once they sinned, they would be under his authority and would also die. As Jesus Himself said, the devil was “a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.”

If Adam, as the federal head of mankind, could be won, then all mankind was his. And the devil was going to do it through the woman while the man wasn’t present. She was created from him and was the weaker vessel.

Not only that, but if you remember from a previous sermon, women process information differently than men. In both problem-solving and reacting to stressful situations, the woman is the ideal target for the devil’s cunning work. By coming to her, he would have the position of working against her processing abilities in a way that wouldn’t work with the man.

And watch out Eve, the devil is coming at you in a way which will make you think he’s looking out with your best intentions. This is how he worked then and this is how he works now. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.” His tricks never change.

II. Subtracting From or Adding To

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; ³ but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

There are a couple things to consider in what the woman said to the serpent and what is said must be inferred, so please make sure you know that before I give you these thoughts. Let’s go back over what Chapter 2 records –

The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

&

Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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.”

What I’m going to say here is based on assumptions and I’ll explain each one as I get to it. What I just read from Chapter 2 is all that’s recorded for the points I’m making, so there is no proof that it’s everything that was said by God. In other words, I don’t want to make unfounded conclusions, only reasonable deductions.

The woman said, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden… This differs from Chapter 2 which says “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

If you notice the difference, the woman said they “may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden,” whereas the earlier verse says “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat.” Already her defenses have been weakened by the subtle attack of the devil. She has waffled on what God so clearly laid out.

Also, she said, “but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden…” Chapter 2 said “The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

There were two trees in the midst of the garden, not one. She simply noted that she couldn’t eat of the tree in the midst of the garden without making a differentiation between the two. Her defenses are showing the weakness of not processing what God had said and repeating it back in that way. What is good in her is being drawn out as evil or a “lack of goodness.”

Think of it this way. Your dad tells your brother that there are two women in a house down the road and that one is engaged and one isn’t and to leave the engaged one alone. Your bother then says to you, “Dad says you can have any girl in Sarasota as a wife, but leave that one in the house down the road alone.”

When the devil comes up and says, “Did your dad say ‘You can’t go out with any girl in Sarasota?’” If you answer, “Oh no, I can date any girl I want except the one in the house over there…” You have set yourself up for trouble. He knows very well there are two girls and he is only going to tempt you with the engaged one.

When God spoke to Adam, in Chapter 2, it doesn’t mean there weren’t more conversations with more details later, but remember the general rule – everything recorded is for our understanding of what happened and why. So, we can make the deduction that Adam told the woman what God said he and wasn’t as clear as he should have been or she simply didn’t pay attention.

Either way, if what is recorded in Chapter 2 is accurate, then what the woman said is inaccurate. If this is the case, then let’s review her errors –

God said they could “freely eat” but she said only that they “may eat.” This may seem inconsequential, but elsewhere in the Bible, the term “free” or “freely” is used to indicate divine grace such as in Romans 3:24, where it says “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

Paul could have said, “…justified by His grace” but he added in “freely” to indicate the superbly gracious nature involved in the gift. The woman left this out accidently or thoughtlessly.

A second omission is what I said a minute ago, “but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden…” There were two trees in the midst of the garden; the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge. The tree of life was not forbidden from them, only the tree of knowledge.

Assuming these are her words as she spoke them, this is a big error and one which proves the subtlety of the devil because later he never brings up the tree of life when he speaks to her, only the tree of knowledge.

And a third change is one which isn’t an omission, but is an addition. She said, “You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.” But Chapter two says nothing about touching the fruit. It only warns them not to eat it.

Admittedly, God could have told them on another occasion not to touch the fruit, but this would leave the account missing something important that’s added only by Eve. When we get to the next verse, we’ll see that the serpent never mentions “touching it” but only mentions “eating” and so for this reason, we can deduce that Eve added “touching” as a warning, possibly given by Adam.

The reason why this is important is because we are dealing with God’s word. The only words to this point which man has as his rule and guide of the faith are what we read in chapter two –

Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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.

That is Adam’s complete set of instructions for life. He and the LORD could have had ten other conversations about almost anything, but God has shown us that this is what was important to the account… and the woman has negligently misrepresented it. The lesson for us here is to remember Proverbs 30:5, 6 –

Every word of God is pure;
He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.
⁶ Do not add to His words,
Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar.

III. Mixing Truth with Lies

⁴ Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The serpent first says, “You will not surely die” or literally, “No dying you will die.” Lo mot te-muthun. This is a bald faced lie and brings the LORD’s integrity into question and is a direct challenge to His authority. The serpent denies that there is any danger in disobeying. It may be a transgression, but he says there won’t be any penalty.

The second thing the devil says is actually true, “God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The problem is that Adam and the woman weren’t told this and it was therefore something God held back for His own purposes.

The purpose of placing Adam and the woman in the garden was so that they could worship and serve Him. To the woman, being like God would mean that she and Adam would also be worshipped and served. Imagine her wheels turning over that one. The devil has tempted her with pride and he also has revealed something that God didn’t reveal to her… “What more has been kept from me?”

In Chapter 10 of Revelation, we read this –

I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire. ² He had a little book open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, ³ and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. ⁴ Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them.” (1-4)

Paul speaks of the mystery of the blindness of the Jews, the mystery of the church, the mystery of lawlessness, the mystery of the gospel, as well as other mysteries of the wisdom of God.

In all of these examples and so many more in the Bible, God keeps certain things a hidden from us for our good, in order to unveil His plan in His own timing, and to satisfactorily bring about what He determines. This was also the case with Adam and the woman.

Having the knowledge of good and evil was a mystery to them and the fact that they would be like God in this respect was kept from them for their own good.

By his cunning, the devil will undermine what he can’t actively overthrow. And this is the pattern he always follows. He gets people to doubt God first and then eventually to deny Him. He starts with skeptics and produces atheists.

He’s done it in people, he does it in families, he does it in societies, and eventually he even accomplishes his goals in seminaries and churches.

In people and families he does it through tragedy and death – maybe of a loved one. He calls God’s word and His goodness into question and eventually people walk away from faith all together.

In societies, he works against goodness and truth, bringing once God honoring cultures to apathy and eventually to destruction. In England, Charles, the Prince of Wales is planning a symbolic change of his title from Defender of the Faith to Defender of Faith when he becomes King.

He’s doing this to reflect Britain’s multicultural society. This would mean that the Supreme Governor of the Church of England would no longer be known as Defender of the Faith – meaning Christianity – for the first time since the reign of Henry VIII. Unfortunately, Defender of Faith means Defender of Anything and therefore Defender of Nothing.

In seminaries, the devil has taken great institutions, founded on the Bible and the gospel message, such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and so many others, and has turned them into bastions of secular humanism and worldly lies such as evolution and global warming.

And the devil has actively used these same lies in churches almost since the beginning. Within 1 generation after the time of Christ, the Lord wrote 7 letters to 7 churches, 5 of which had fallen partially or almost completely under Satan’s dominion. Today, once Christ honoring denominations are filled with homosexuality, supporters of abortion rights, and New Age spiritualism.

All of these examples have come about because people would rather follow the lies of the devil than the truth of God and His eternal word. In the end, only death will result from not following the clear word of God as He reveals it to us. Jesus tells us of the devil’s cunning in the book of John –

He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

IV. His Song Remains the Same

In our sermon on Chapter 2, verses 16 and 17, we asked the question, “Whence cometh evil?” The answer was from free will. The obvious question which arose from that, and which we didn’t fully evaluate or answer is that “If God created man with free will and free will is the cause of evil, then didn’t God create evil?”

We did mention that what occurred was done in innocence, but that really wasn’t a full explanation of the problem of evil. If it was, people wouldn’t argue over the issue, they would comprehend it.

The Bible says in 1 John 5:19, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” How did this come about and fit into God’s plan without God being the author of evil?

In order to completely understand this, we need to grasp what Thomas Aquinas wrote in the 13^th century. He said, “…evil never follows in the effect, unless some other evil pre-exists in the agent or in the matter… But in voluntary things the defect of the action comes from the will actually deficient, inasmuch as it does not actually subject itself to its proper rule. This defect, however, is not a fault, but fault follows upon it from the fact that the will acts with this defect.

Whether you got that or not, it is astonishingly profound – and the Bible in the book of Romans bears it out. “The defect of the action” – in this case eating of the fruit which is a defect of the action – “comes from will actually deficient.” What was deficient in Adam and the woman’s will? It was the lack of the knowledge of good an evil – they were in a state of innocence.

But was this God’s fault? No, Aquinas says it is “deficient, inasmuch as it does not actually subject itself to its proper rule.” What was the proper rule concerning their state of innocence? It was to obey their Creator and not eat the fruit.

When they disobeyed by using free will, was it because of a fault in them as created by God? No! It “is not a fault, (according to Aquinas) but fault follows upon it from the fact that the will, (meaning their free will) acts with this defect.” The blame is placed squarely and solely on man.

The “defect” as we perceive it was part of what was “very good” in their creation. Creating a man with no knowledge of good and evil is called a “defect” by Aquinas, but we could rename it a “lack.” Just because there was a lack, doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with it. When Adam and the woman acted against proper rule with this lack of knowledge, it resulted in fault (or sin).

And fault, as you know, resulted in death. Our text verse today can be understand far more clearly now –

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

Let me give you another example which may help with this. If the Bible is the Word of God, then its doctrines are perfect. But people disagree on issues – for example some say Jesus is God and some don’t. Only one can be true.

However, our lack of knowledge in understanding what the Bible says and then teaching it inaccurately is sin. But it’s not God’s fault. It’s ours. We have the instructions just like Adam did. Therefore, evil can result from two “good” things. “The defect of the action comes from the will actually deficient.” Wah lah.

Now you can see how God is neither the tempter nor the author of evil. The only way this could never happen is if God never created any other beings because what He creates is necessarily less than what He is and is therefore deficient in some way.

And we are now ready to evaluate our final verse of the day –

⁶ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

The devil seized upon the opportunity to draw out of the woman’s lack, meaning her innocence in knowing good from evil. When he did, he drew out of it disobedience which resulted in fault and this fault resulted in death…for all of us ever since that moment.

And the three modes of drawing out this lack? The first was the lust of the flesh, when she “saw that the tree was good for food.” The second was the lust of the eyes, when she saw that “it was pleasant to the eyes.” And the third is the pride of life, when she found it was “a tree desirable to make one wise.”

This one verse is the complete example of every sin that has ever been committed in human history. Any sin that you can recognize in yourself or in another will stem from right here. And how effective is it? The Apostle John warns of it in his first epistle 62 books into the Bible –

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 1 John 2:15, 16

Not only is this the prime example of worldly sin, but John addresses it in exactly the same order of categories as Genesis does, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It worked in Eden and it is still at work in each and every human soul today. But John gives us a remedy in his next verse –

And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

This brings us to another dilemma though. If this pattern of sin has infiltrated every human since Adam, then how can we “do the will of God” in order to abide forever? We already stand condemned. This is a destiny deciding thing and looks hopeless. But yes, there is hope. God hasn’t left us without a remedy. Enter Jesus Christ.

After his baptism, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan in exactly the same manner as the woman was tempted. Let’s read the account together –

Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry. And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” [This was a temptation of the flesh] But Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’” Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.” [This was the temptation of the eyes] And Jesus answered and said to him, “Get behind Me, Satan!For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.’” Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,To keep you,’ and,‘ In their hands they shall bear you up,Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” [This is the temptation of pride] And Jesus answered and said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the LORD your God.’”

During these three temptations, the devil twisted God’s word. He mishandled it and misapplied it in an attempt to subvert God’s work. At the same time, he used his same old tricks against Jesus, but it was Jesus who prevailed and the devil who failed. Jesus defeated the devil at his own game.

There are two ways open for each of us to “do the will of God and abide forever.” The first is to do what Jesus did every time he was tempted, to properly quote and apply Scripture to the situation. But the only way you can do this is to know what the word says. If you’re not reading and memorizing your Bible, you are setting yourself up for continual defeat.

But even if you’re well armed, it doesn’t take care of the other problem we all face. We’ve all sinned already. We’ve all failed the test. How can we “do the will of God and abide forever” if we’ve already violated the word of God? The answer is Jesus…

“This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” John 6:29

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2

Cunning and sly is our foe
He waits to set an evil snare
The serpent hisses his moves are slow
But when he pounces it’s a tragic affair

He searches for whom he may devour
And masks himself as an angel of light
He is an enemy of terrifying power
And to steal man’s soul is his delight

He is the accuser of the brethren
He is the one who appeals to our faults
He is the leader of every false religion
And the one behind disobedient cults

He engages us in mortal battle
And leads men astray like lowing cattle

The unsuspecting are easy prey
But the wise stand in safety of the Lord
Though he can easily ruin our day
He cannot prevail over the Holy Sword

Stand firm then in the Lord Jesus
Who triumphed o’er the wicked foe
By His blood he did purchase us
And in His strength and power we will go

Hail to the Lamb of God
On the serpent’s head He did trod

Though tempted thrice He stood fast
And gained man’s freedom from certain hell
At the cross it was finished at last
Once again with God we can dwell

Call on Jesus who will save your soul
When your accept the gospel story
Then through heaven’s gates you will stroll
Praising the God of everlasting glory

 

Beauty From a Rib
Genesis 2:18-25

If you kiss her, you are not a gentleman
If you don’t, you are not a man
If you praise her, she thinks you are lying
If you don’t, you are good for nothing
If you agree to all her likes, you are a wimp
If you don’t, you are not understanding
If you visit her often, she thinks it is boring If you don’t, she accuses you of double-crossing
If you are well dressed, she says you are a playboy
If you’re not, you are a dull boy
If you are jealous, she says it’s bad
If you aren’t, she thinks you do not love her
If you attempt a romance, she says you didn’t respect her
If you don’t, she thinks you do not like her
If you are a minute late, she complains it’s hard to wait
If she is late, she says that’s a girl’s way
If you visit another man, you’re not putting in “quality time”
If she is visited by another woman, “oh it’s natural, we are girls”
If you kiss her once in a while, she professes you are cold
If you kiss her often, she yells that you are taking advantage
If you fail to help her in crossing the street, you lack ethics
If you do, she thinks it’s just one of men’s tactics for seduction
If you stare at another woman, she accuses you of flirting
If other men stare at her, she says that they are just admiring
If you talk, she wants you to listen
If you listen, she wants you to talk

In short:

So simple, yet so complex
So weak, yet so powerful
So confusing, yet so desirable
So damning, yet so wonderful…

…WOMEN!

Introduction: If there were no other reason to disbelieve in the theory of evolution than the presence of women, it would be enough. No amount of random chance, no amount of adapting and changing, nothing in the equation could ever form women to be so bafflingly complex and yet as delightfully simple as they are.

Only an infinitely intelligent mind could give man such a wonderful gift, such a challenge to our patience, such a trial to our souls, such a delight to our eyes, such a knock in our hearts, such a knock on our heads, such a source of frustration, and such a well of delight. Only God could have created a woman. And he did it from a rib.

Now I love ribs from the grill and I like to rib my son about things. The veins in a leaf are known as ribs, and so is the molding on a vaulted ceiling. Sailboat hulls have ribs and so do airplane’s wings. If you alternate purl stitches with plain stitches while sewing, you’ll make a ribbed pattern. All of these have meaning and purpose, but nothing could compare to what God did with one of Adam’s ribs.

Text Verse: Her children rise up and call her blessed;
Her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many daughters have done well,
But you excel them all.” Proverbs 31:28, 29

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. It is Not Good

And the LORD God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” ¹⁹ Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
²¹ And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. ²² Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

“It is not good that man should be alone; – Lo tov hayoth ha’adam li-vado. God used the term “lo tov” to describe Adam’s situation. “It is not good…” Far too often, we try to justify why we can do it alone, but in the end, God created woman for man. The two fit together much better than one does all alone.

They compliment each other, they meet each other’s needs, and they fill God’s purposes for His creation. It is lo tov that the man should be alone.

Interestingly enough, these two little words, lo tov, prove the literal six-day creation account – at least from a biblical perspective. In Genesis 1, it says at the end of the sixth day that “… God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

If, in fact, everything was “very good” or tov meod at the end of the sixth day and it was “not good” that Adam was alone on the sixth day, then God must have created everything in six literal days. There is no other way around this. The biblical account stands or falls on a literal six day creation.

“I will make him a helper comparable to him…” – literally “a help answering to him, or one who answers.” This doesn’t mean God made a secretary for man, although that can be part of the equation I suppose. The woman was prepared by God to share man’s responsibilities, respond to him with love and understanding, and work together with him in serving and worshipping God.

As it says in the book of Ecclesiastes –

Two are better than one,
Because they have a good reward for their labor.
¹⁰ For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls,
For he has no one to help him up.
¹¹ Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm;
But how can one be warm alone? 4:9-11

Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field.

God created the animals, but as we noted in chapter one, God gave man dominion over them. The giving of names to the animals implies this dominion over them. In the first chapter of the book of Daniel, the King of Babylon renamed the exiled Israelites as he so chose, indicating his dominion over them –

Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king’s descendants and some of the nobles, ^… To them the chief of the eunuchs gave names: he gave Daniel the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abed-Nego. Daniel 1:4 & 7

In the same way, parents name their children, we name our possessions, such as a boat on the water, and if we start a company, we give it a name. Designating a name indicates dominion and authority over the thing which is named. God gave this dominion of the animals to man.

We do this even today. If we buy an animal and let one of our children name it, then the animal implicitly belongs to that child. In reality, we get to feed them, clean up their messes, and pay for the vet bills, but that child will always feel as if he is the owner.

In the case of God, man has no dominion over Him and so we can only ascribe titles to Him. Later in Genesis, Hagar, the Egyptian concubine of Abraham calls Him El Roi, the God who sees, but this isn’t a name, only a title. Any god with a name given by man is no god at all. And only the true God reveals or conceals His name as He so chooses. He revealed one name to Moses –

“I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name LORD I was not known to them. Exodus 6:2, 3

And in Revelation 12, He hides another name for Himself alone. It says, “He had a name written that no one knew except Himself.”

Because God’s name identifies His authority and dominion, we are to use it carefully and with respect. He is God and we are man. He is the Creator and we are His creatures.

But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

God brought all the animals to Adam and he was probably pretty impressed with every new creature that came his way. “Here comes a…a… I’ll call that a platypus, and look I’ll call that a wombat. This one… I’m calling this one a dog.”

“Lord, these are all so cool. I can’t believe the variety of life here! But God, there is something missing in me. All of these creatures have a friend to play with and despite all that you’ve done, I feel lonely looking at them playing together. There’s something missing from my heart and although I’m not sure of what it is, I feel it when I see the animals play.”

Just imagine Adam’s thoughts as he named the animals and looked around him. He was in the very presence of God and in the midst of God’s paradise – a garden of delight. And yet there was something missing in Adam that needed to be reconciled before God could pronounce His final blessing upon the work of the day, the work of creation, and the completion of His efforts.

After 27 years of marriage, I can tell you that I find my life lacking when Hideko isn’t around. She does the cooking, I do the dishes. She feeds the puppies, and I do the laundry. She does the comforting and I do the whining. We fit so well together that when she’s not around, my whining goes unanswered, my food is from a can, and the puppies… poor, poor puppies!

Since God gave Eve to Adam, no man has ever had a wife who fit so perfectly. As Proverbs says –

Who can find a virtuous wife?
For her worth is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband safely trusts her;
So he will have no lack of gain. 31:10, 11

I assure you, I found the virtuous wife.

“And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.”

The term the Bible uses indicates a deep sleep Adam was placed under. Nothing is said about how He did it, but today we can work ourselves to exhaustion, use anesthesia, or get into a boxing match with our best friend to achieve this type of state.

By putting Adam to sleep, it takes man completely out of the equation. If God consulted man, Adam might have asked for chrome bumpers or a built in attachment where he could place fishing poles. He might have said, “I want a helper that doesn’t talk too much.”

But God knew better than Adam that chrome bumpers would need polishing. On the other hand, women stay lustrous without any effort. He also knew that fishing vacations were a chance to get away from the woman and relax with friends and so He didn’t include the fishing pole attachment. And he knew that man needed to learn patience and to listen while the woman talked. And so Eve was prepared while Adam slept.

All joking aside though, whatever way God put Adam to sleep, it seems as if mercy was being granted during the first operation ever performed on a human being. Normally when we take something out of a body, we do it because it’s something that’s defective and can harm us… I won’t even go in that direction today, alright…!

Modern surgical procedures are for healing and removal of corruption. But instead of something defective being brought out of Adam, something close and personal was removed. At the same time it was also for a sort of healing just as would be the case in any modern operation. What God would make from the rib would be of the same essence as man, complimentary and yet different.

“Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman,” This was a deeply personal act which God performed. The word used for making Eve is the Hebrew word banah. In this account, the Hebrew letters which spell banah are Beth and Nun. Beth means a house and nun reflects an “heir” or the continuance of a generation. God took a part of Adam’s “house” and sculpted from it a comparable part so that the two would be able to continue on for the generations to come.

This continuation would be from their very life and every human today bears the marks of their first father and mother. As it says in Acts 17:26 – “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth…”

Everything in this account, even to the letters used, shows us that man is never fully complete without a woman and that woman, who came from man, is incomplete without the man. This is how God ordained things to be. She was created to help him and he is under the obligation to protect her and be devoted to her just as he would be to any part of his own body.

Paul explains this mystery in 1 Corinthians 11 –

For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man. For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man, in the Lord. For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman; but all things are from God. 8-12

A few weeks ago I called man, the Crown of Creation, but this was only fully realized after God made woman. We noted that God created from the least complex to the most complex and from what is least excellent to what is most excellent.

Woman, being formed after man, has a glory and an honor upon her that Paul notes in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 when he says that “woman is the glory of man.” As Matthew Henry notes, “If man is the head, she is the crown, a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation. The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined, one removed further from the earth.”

Together, the two of them form the pinnacle of God’s marvelous wisdom in the creation and the way He did it shows their complete interdependency on each other.

In the use of a rib to form the woman, it’s been said that “woman was not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

…and He brought her to the man.

Adam woke up feeling an empty spot in his chest just like he did before he went to sleep. The only difference was that he had a scar there too and the empty spot he felt was more than an emotion now. Something really felt like it was missing…

After yawning and looking around, you can just hear it… “Wow! Where did this come from?” I can just imagine what he thought when he saw the woman. “Man o man, o boy or boy.” One empty spot, the emotional one, was gone in an instant, and when God said that she was for him, his other empty spot was made full by her presence. Nothing was lacking. Everything was right.

“Oh Lord, this is so much better than chrome bumpers…”

What is it a father does in modern weddings? He walks the woman to her husband and presents her to him. And so God, as the Father of the woman, her Creator, “brought her to the man.” He gave his consent to the man to take this beauty and unite to her in the first wedding ever performed. And this wedding was in a state of complete innocence. As such, it was one of a kind in all of history.

“Never alone” with my wife by my side
What God has done has been done very well
A flood of emotions, like the rising of the tide
This woman is perfect for me, I can tell

A gift of the most beautiful kind
Sculpted and formed beyond imagination
Her beauty fills every thought of my mind
This is certainly the jewel in the crown of creation.

II. She Shall be Called Woman

²³ And Adam 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.”

It’s been noted that for every need, there is a fulfillment of that need. We get thirsty and there is water to fill that thirst. Likewise there is thirst because there is water. If water didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a need for thirst.

Fish need to swim in water and there is water for fish to swim in. In the same way, there are fish because there is water for fish to swim in. If the water didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be anything called fish.

Men need women and there are women for men to join to. And without a doubt, there are women because there are men. If man didn’t exist, then there wouldn’t be anything called woman.

God has filled every need with the answer to that need and God has made “needs” for the things He has created. We need sunlight and God has given us a sun. But God created the sun first and made us afterward. Everything fits so perfectly that all we can do is marvel at the perfection of His wisdom.

In my soul is a need to praise God and God has given me psalms, a mouth, and breath in my lungs to allow me to do that. But praise of God implies that there is a God. Praise God that God is God.

And Adam 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.”

Modern translations will often set this verse off in poetic fashion. The man was making a pronouncement, acknowledging that God had fashioned the woman from his very bones and flesh. The Hebrew word for “man” is ish and for woman is ishsha and despite a difference in spelling, the only real difference is the feminine ending of the word for female.

Therefore she is a she-man. We differ in sex, but not in nature. The woman was made from the man and she was made for the man.

Adam received from his Father the woman who was being presented from her Father. He created them both and determined every detail that would perfectly fill every void in each other. What one lacked, the other filled. Every need finds its fulfillment. And so it is, even to this day. The cycle of marriage goes on between God’s faithful in acknowledgement of His loving act of making woman for man.

III. Leaving Home

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

This verse sets the stage for the bonds of marriage which have followed down throughout the ages. A man “shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.” The word “joined” is the Hebrew word dabaq and indicates and action of “sticking like glue.”

Another time this term is used is when Ruth the Moabitess joined to her mother-in-law, refusing to leave her after the death of her husband, “Then they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.”

When it says the man shall be joined to his wife it is the man who joins like glue to the woman. He is the stronger vessel and he is the one who bears the responsibility to hold tightly to her. And if he demonstrates the kind of loving power reflected in this verse, she will naturally want to be held by him.

The woman’s responsibility isn’t negated at all though. “They shall become one flesh” indicates that this is a two-way union and that the bond in indissoluble.

When asked about the acceptability of divorce, Jesus referred right back to this account to remind the people that marriage is to be a life-long commitment –

“Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.  But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Mark 10:5-9

In Ephesians 5, Paul explains the connection between a man and his wife and that of Christ and the church. This mutual “give and take” relationship is reflective of that which is demonstrated by Him and which we should likewise demonstrate towards Him.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:22-33

As I said, the Hebrew word for “join” is dabaq and it indicates that the onus is on the man. Christ has promised to never leave us and never forsake us – accepting the onus upon Himself. It is He, the husband, who fills this role. But we are to give him the honor and glory He is due, deferring to Him that which is rightly His and submitting to His authority and headship.

When God breathed life into man, there was the intimate connection of God to man. That was lost through sin, but when God regenerates us with His Holy Spirit, that intimate connection is reestablished.

And it is the same with man and woman. A connection is lost between the two and a void exists until the two are joined again in marriage. What man lost in the rib, he regains in the wife. And man o man – she is so much better than a rib!

IV. Not Ashamed

²⁵ And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

When God created man and woman, they were naked and there was no shame – either vertically or horizontally. In other words, God created them in a state of beauty and perfection and there was nothing to cause them to hide from either God or each other.

Nakedness implies more than just shame though. It also implies that there was nothing that could harm them. The temperature would have been perfect, none of the animals were a threat, and there wasn’t even anything that could hurt their feet. They were naked, secure, and they were also unashamed.

I think this verse is specifically stated here to show us the contrast with the rest of the Bible where there is perpetual conflict with our bodies through the elements, from the animals, and also from the shame of our actions and the actions of others – both in front of others and in front of God. When shame is lost in people today, it reflects not just an unnatural state, but an anti-natural state.

I’ve seen a lot of my old school friends get divorced in the recent past. Some of them have been married between 15 and 25 years and they’ve decided to give up. One of them, a self-proclaimed atheist, said his wife had gotten fat and saggy after having three children and he didn’t like it. He was ashamed of her appearance.

What are you ashamed of in your husband or wife? If they’ve gotten old and wrinkly or gray, guess what? They got that way around you!

I know of a preacher who was in the Vietnam War and he got burned so badly that he looks almost like a monster. While he was in the hospital recuperating, another guy next to him was visited by his own wife. When she got there and saw how he was mutilated he was she took off her ring and threw it at him.

Later his wife came to visit and when she saw him – who was far worse off than the guy in the bed next to him, she hugged him and held tightly to him. More than thirty years later, she’s still holding tightly to him, despite his monstrous looks.

What is shame? In the end, it’s not a reflection of others, but it’s rather a reflection of oneself. In his great cry of repentance for the faithlessness of the Israelites, Nehemiah cried out to God, ashamed of their deeds as a people –

At the evening sacrifice I arose from my fasting; and having torn my garment and my robe, I fell on my knees and spread out my hands to the LORD my God. ⁶ And I said: “O my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to You, my God; for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens. ⁷ Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been very guilty, and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to humiliation, as it is this day. ⁸ And now for a little while grace has been shown from the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage. ⁹ For we were slaves. Yet our God did not forsake us in our bondage; but He extended mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to revive us, to repair the house of our God, to rebuild its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem. ¹⁰ And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken Your commandments, ¹¹ which You commanded by Your servants the prophets, saying, ‘The land which you are entering to possess is an unclean land, with the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from one end to another with their impurity. ¹² Now therefore, do not give your daughters as wives for their sons, nor take their daughters to your sons; and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land, and leave it as an inheritance to your children forever.’ ¹³ And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, since You our God have punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and have given us such deliverance as this, ¹⁴ should we again break Your commandments, and join in marriage with the people committing these abominations? Would You not be angry with us until You had consumed us, so that there would be no remnant or survivor? ¹⁵ O LORD God of Israel, You are righteous, for we are left as a remnant, as it is this day. Here we are before You, in our guilt, though no one can stand before You because of this!”

The shame Nehemiah felt is the attitude that God responds to with great mercy. Nehemiah’s shame was felt because of the intermarrying of God’s people with pagans. When King David’s adultery with Bathsheba was discovered, David acknowledged that –

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.

Both of these great men of God understood the contract between God and His people and the contract of a man and a woman. These contracts were broken and their shame was openly acknowledged.

Did you know that despite the life you’ve lived, Jesus will forgive your sins, no matter how great they are, if you will simply acknowledge your guilt?

For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. ¹¹ For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, ¹² saying:

“I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.” Hebrews 2:10-12

The author of Hebrews says that Jesus shared in humanity so that He could empathize with us. The very Creator of man – who lovingly gave him a wife, took on mortality in order to destroy death and restore us to Himself. When we call on Him, He is unashamed in calling us His brethren.

Because of this immense demonstration of forgiveness the apostle Paul turned around and returned the same honor to the Lord –

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes… Romans 10:16

Beauty from under Adam’s side
Formed from a rib near his heart
God made a woman with man to abide
Together a new life as one to start

She was formed as he lay in his sleep
God molded her specially for him
They would form a bond wide and deep
That would last till their eyes grew dim

Likewise God gave Christ a bride
When a soldier pierced His own side

Out came the blood which purchased us back
As He lay in death’s sleep for a spell
The devil thought he had won the attack
But Christ rose victorious over death and hell

The Bride of Christ has nothing to fear
The Lord her husband has reign over all
Nothing so precious, nothing so dear
As for the sinner on His name to call

Come unto me you who are weary and worn
And to your souls I will give you rest
By My Spirit you too can be reborn
Drink from Heaven’s waters, be eternally blessed

Enter the cross with me –

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. ²² Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

In this account, Adam was being used as a symbol of Christ to come. Just as God took a rib from the side of Adam while He slept, God formed His church through the death of His Son – His moment of deepest sleep. The soldier pierced His precious side and out came blood mixed with water. Two men with similar scars 4000 years apart – one received a bride of flesh and the other a bride of the Spirit.

If God was willing to do that for us, we should respond in kind by calling on His name!

Free to Will or Not Free to Will
That is the Question
Genesis 2:16, 17

If you remember Jacob Marley in Dicken’s classic, A Christmas Carol, he was the friend and co-worker of Ebenezer Scrooge who had died many years before and who returned as a ghost to warn Ebenezer. When Scrooge asked him about the chains he was bound in, he said this “I wear the chain I forged in life….I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

Marley acknowledged that he exercised free will to his own detriment. While studying quotes for this sermon, I was surprised to find the number of people on both sides of the religious spectrum that deny free-will. Believe it or not, even some atheists deny free will.

Talk about a contradiction in the thought process – how can someone claim there’s no God… nothing but the universe, and then deny that the choices they make belong to them alone? If the atheist doesn’t have free will, then Something must be directing him. If there is something beyond him, then no matter what it is, it is greater than Him. Atheism, at its core, is a mentally corrupt thought process.

For an atheist to ascribe his decisions to the interaction of atoms as I read in one commentary is to simply pass a red herring over the question. Either the will is free or it isn’t regardless of the make up of the decider of the decision.

And then there are the multitudes of Christians who not only deny free will, but who claim that people who believe in free will are enemies of God. W. E. Best said: “God’s character is maligned by every person who believes in free will.”

I have to ask, “How does free will malign God’s character?”

It’s hugely important to understand why we have free-will and to be able to defend it from the Bible. The reason is twofold. First, if man doesn’t have free will as Best claims, then God must be the ultimate author of evil. How someone can come to any other conclusion when reading the Bible is astounding.

And secondly, if we don’t choose Jesus as He asks us to, such as in John 3:16, then God is forcing us to love Him. It doesn’t matter how corrupt we are and how deep is the pit from which He pulls us, if He does it against our free will, then it isn’t allowing a demonstration of love and devotion on out part. And this is exactly what both testaments of the Bible expect from us.

RC Sproul, the modern Presbyterian theologian and free-will denier said once, “If intent is sin as when Jesus said, ‘he who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ then Adam fell before the fall, because he sinned before eating of the forbidden fruit by intending to eat it. So the question is, ‘from whence comes evil?’”

Yes RC, whence comes evil? If you deny free will, then that is a gigantic problem because God supposedly created everything good. I mean, if He created man already intent on evil, then you have a real dilemma. But that’s Dr. Sproul’s conundrum.

Thomas Aquinas, the 13^th Century Theologian says this about free-will “Man has free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain.”

Introduction: The Bible is as much a book of choices as it is anything else. Freewill is implied on almost every page and in every account it records. The verses which seem to deny free will, and free will deniers have a lot of them, need to be taken in the context of God’s sovereignty, His foreknowledge, and His love.

Text Verse: And the LORD said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Exodus 4:21
May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. The choice in the Garden

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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.”

Toba Beta wisely stated, “If there was no free will in men, then there is no sins. When sins happened, it was ‘free will’ that made them doable. This is true, unless God has predestined human to do and to have sins.”

RC Sproul, reads this account and can’t comprehend how Adam actually fell. He has a couple of reasons. First, he cannot accept that man has freewill. His doctrine tells him that man is incapable of doing anything good – a state known as Total Depravity. He misreads and misinterprets verses of the Bible which tell of our fallen state and our inability to fix the mess and equates that with an inability on our part to get out of the mess at all.

Secondly, he knows he cannot ascribe evil to God as no sound theologian ever would or could. And therefore he is left with his amazing and unanswerable question, “Whence comes evil?”

But this is a problem of the heart and a problem of conditioning, not an unfathomable mystery that only God can answer within Himself. Rather, it is a revealed truth contained in the verses we just read – “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat…”

Three points we have to think through are all revealed in this one verse.

Point 1: You may – Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat…

“Mi kol ets a-gan a-kol tochal, uh-me-ets a-da-at tov va-ra, lo tochal mimenu.”

There is a lot of information we can glean from this one sentence –

First, there were multiple trees in the garden and they were graciously granted to Adam. Second, man was given the freedom to choose. As it says, “You may freely eat.” And third, only after acknowledging Adam’s free will was he told what he couldn’t eat.

This verse contains the very first words ever recorded as spoken by God directly to man and it certainly indicates him possessing free will. You may eat. “May” indicates choice… and it’s neutral – in other words, you may or you may not – it’s up to you Adam. Snack on what you’d like except this one thing.

If I’m leaving my house with a sitter while I go on vacation, I might say, “Sitter, the refrigerator is full and you may eat whatever you want in that full refrigerator.” If I came back and the fridge was empty and I had given no other instructions, I could only say “Gee Sitter, you had a big appetite. You even ate all the dog food that I had in the Tupperware.”

And if I came back and the refrigerator was still full, I might think the sitter was good at restraining herself, but I at least offered the food to her.

Point 2: You shall not – “Shall not” indicates choice as well because the tree is there. Were “shall not” a choice, God would have put no tree there at all, or He would have made it inaccessible. Maybe He could have put a force-field around it or guarded it with cherubim like He would later guard the garden itself. In that case, God would have said, “You can not.”

What if I said to my house sitter, “Sitter, I’m only going to be gone for 2 days, so don’t eat the food in my fridge.” She still has the choice to eat it, but it would be out of disobedience and she would have to face whatever consequences I decided on.

If I wanted to make sure she didn’t eat it, I could put a lock on the fridge, leave nothing in it, or hire a security guard to keep her out of it. No matter what, unless I acted first, the implication is that she could use her free will even though she wasn’t supposed to.

Everything so far implies free will in man. God didn’t keep the tree from him, but simply warned him not to eat of it. Paul says in 1 Corinthians –

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. 1 Corinthians 10:13

God certainly gave Adam a choice in the matter and He also provided a way of escape. There was no burden beyond his ability to bear.

Point 3: The knowledge of good and evil. To finish our three points of this verse we return to the thought, “From whence comes evil?” What we need to do is to simply think these words through. “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.”

Man was given free will. From the context of what we’ve look at, this is absolutely certain. Those who deny this point have failed to come to the text with clear eyes and instead are wearing rose colored glasses as they teach and preach from such a clear and carefully worded statement from God.

However, this free will was given and exercised in a state of innocence. If he hadn’t yet eaten of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” then he didn’t have… well, obviously he didn’t have the knowledge of good and evil.

In fact, as well see in chapter 3 when we get there, two obvious things occurred when Adam ate of the fruit. First, he became more, not less like God – at least in one way – and secondly, he became aware of right and wrong –

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. (22)

Adam was told to not eat of this particular fruit or he would be punished. At the time, he was in a state of innocence – not knowing good from evil, but innocence, as I said last week, doesn’t negate guilt. And that brings us to our next major point today.

II. Disobedience is Sin and Sin Leads to Death

The great philosopher and author of last century, CS Lewis said this about free will –

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can’t. If a thing is free to be good it’s also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. … Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (…) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will – that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings – then we may take it [that] it is worth paying.”

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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.”

As I said, innocence does not set aside guilt. The speed limit on your way home tonight will vary from time to time and from place to place. When you first pull out on Midnight Pass Road, you’re not going to see a speed limit sign. So suppose you go 40 mph when you leave here. You might get a ticket because the speed limit is actually 35 until you get around a few turns and then it turns to 40.

If a cop pulls you over and says, “You were speeding,” you might try to defend yourself by saying, “but there was no sign posted from the time I pulled out onto MidnightPass until now.” Do you think he’s going to say, “Oh, well then, never mind – my bad.”?

Of course not! You are responsible to know the laws of the road and obey them. Your lack of knowledge doesn’t excuse your guilt.

What Adam did was in innocence because he had no knowledge of right and wrong. However, he had his warning clearly laid out for him – “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Just as every driver knows that a ticket waits for the speeder, Adam knew that death would come if he disobeyed God’s law.

This brings up a point that we shouldn’t miss though. Adam had never died and he had never experienced death around him. When he was told that death would result from disobedience, he had no way of understanding death’s implications.

If you tell a child that doesn’t understand death that they can die from something, they have no idea what you’re talking about until you explain it to them. Without the knowledge of good and evil, Adam could not comprehend death – the result of evil.

Again, this innocence towards death in no way relieves him of the consequences of guilt. Guilt comes about from disobedience and death results from guilt. James explains this in his small epistle which appears 59 books into the Bible –

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. ¹⁴ But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. James 1:13:15

Adam was placed in the garden and given instructions. When God placed the tree there that He wasn’t supposed to eat from, it wasn’t God’s fault if Adam disobeyed. God in no way tempted Adam. He created and therefore everything is as He purposes. And plus, He gave Adam the warning.

If he wanted to make every tree in the garden forbidden except one and that one tree could sustain Adam’s life, then that would have been fine. Instead, he allowed every tree but one. How much more is God clear of Adam’s sin?

On the other hand, if God made Adam the way He did, knowing that Adam needed to eat and drink in order to survive, and then He forbid Adam from eating and drinking anything at all, then God would be guilty of tempting Adam and forcing him into sin.

What if a mother said to her newborn baby, “You’d better not cry, baby If you cry, then I’m going to punish you.”? Mom would be guilty both morally and criminally of abuse. The same might be true about one of my sermons. I could say, “If I catch you sleeping, I’m going to punish you…” you might have a case against me.

But Adam had no case against God… not even a hint of it. As David wrote after his horrendous sin of murder and adultery –

Against You, You only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in Your sight—
That You may be found just when You speak,
And blameless when You judge.

III. One Command, and in the Negative

TH White in The Once and Future King said this – “There was just such a man when I was young—an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ.

Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people.”

The Bible is just a book of do’s and don’ts… I suppose you’ve heard this at one time or another. It’s not really. Instead, at least on these lines, it’s a book of choices. Do’s and don’ts are involved in many of those choices, but in this context the choices are set out for our good.

If there is a “do” it’s there to keep us following the right path. If there is a “don’t” it’s there to keep us from getting onto a wrong path.

When mom says to her son, “Don’t put that screwdriver in the wall outlet” she says it because she doesn’t want him to get hurt. When she says to her son leaving for the military, “remember to go to church on Sunday” she’s telling him this to keep him walking in a straight and upright way.

In both instances, the choice is his. If he wants to try the screwdriver in the outlet thing, he’ll wish he’d listened to his mom. And if he skips church and goes to soccer matches while stationed in England, he will eventually wish he had made church the priority. When his life wanders off into meaninglessness, he’ll hopefully understand why his mother asked him to go to church.

The book of proverbs is a lot like this. There are do’s and don’ts in there, but they are stated in the form of choices. Proverbs opens with these words –

The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel:
² To know wisdom and instruction,
To perceive the words of understanding,
³ To receive the instruction of wisdom,
Justice, judgment, and equity;
⁴ To give prudence to the simple,
To the young man knowledge and discretion—
⁵ A wise man will hear and increase learning,
And a man of understanding will attain wise counsel,
⁶ To understand a proverb and an enigma,
The words of the wise and their riddles.
⁷ The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
But fools despise wisdom and instruction. Proverbs 1:1-7

After saying this, Solomon pens 31 chapters of wisdom for those who are simply willing to listen and he contrasts them with those who turn away from his wise counsel. He says, “…the complacency of fools will destroy them; But whoever listens to me will dwell safely, And will be secure, without fear of evil.”

So do’s and don’ts aren’t all bad and they always imply free will. In the case of Adam, he had no do’s and only one don’t. In other words, a command that was in the negative. If this is the premise of Adam having eternal life in the Garden of Eden, then there must be a similar premise for returning to that Garden. If not, then there might seem to be a problem with the way God is dealing with His children.

One of the hindrances to understanding God’s favor of individuals is tied up in the Law of Moses. In those five books, meaning Genesis to Deuteronomy, also known as the Torah, there are 613 laws – a lot of do’s and don’ts.

If there are all of these laws heaped upon laws, then what God expects of us must be immensely complicated, even burdensome. I mean who can do all that stuff? And the LORD even said in Leviticus, “You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.”

And the penalties for failure… I mean if you slip up you can get beaten with rods, exiled from the community, stoned to death, and so on. Those aren’t just minor issues. And time and time again, right after receiving the laws, either individuals or groups turn around and break them.

Within just 40 days of receiving the Ten Commandments, Aaron and the people of Israel made a gold calf in place of God, thus violating the first two commandments. When they did, it cost 3000 people their lives. There are accounts of people being stoned for blaspheming God’s name, for breaking a vow of dedication, and for working on the Sabbath. Terrifying stuff.

What happened to Adam’s “one command which was in the negative?”

And what about the other side of the coin? David committed adultery and killed the lady’s husband and he didn’t get stoned. He allowed his children to get away with things that should have called for the death penalty and what… did God turn a blind eye?

And then when David takes a census of the people of Israel – admittedly, something he shouldn’t have done, God sends his destroying angel to kill 70,000 Israelites! How does that fit in?

Unless you understand the reason why these things occurred and how they fit into the greater picture of what God is doing, you might come to the same conclusion as some who call God an evil sadist. But this is the furthest thing from the truth and completely misunderstands what God is trying to tell the people of the world.

Free will.
Free will.

God is telling us about our choices, our free will choices, and what the consequences of them are. In the end, He understands our limitations and our faults – He created us.

And He understands the difference between those who love Him, and their internal struggles, like David, and those who either ignore or outright hate Him and act against Him in a high-handed manner. He understands the difference.

What is the reason that God could call David “a man after my own heart” and protect Jerusalem for David’s name sake even hundreds of years after he was dead and buried? It was because, despite his faults, despite his internal struggles, David loved God and understood His morally depraved state in the presence of perfect righteousness.

Paul explains the law, which David was under, and it’s over-arching purpose in the book of Galatians –

Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. ²² But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. ²³ But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. ²⁴ Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. 3:21-25

The law and all of its associated death and punishment was a tool, or better – a mirror – to get us to look at ourselves and see how desperately sinful we really are and that we needed something more to be right before God.

The law could never give life back to man. Just as Paul said, “if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.”

So what is it that even those under the law needed? They needed grace. And this is exactly what they got, once a year, on the Day of Atonement. The very fact that they needed a Day of Atonement meant that they could never meet the demands of the law. And where did the atonement come from? Did the sacrificed animals take away the people’s sins? No.

The book of Hebrews says that “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.” So think it through… if the Day of Atonement was God’s grace to the people and the blood which was shed on that day didn’t provide the grace, then what did? It was the people’s faith in God’s provision.

Back to Adam … what was Adam lacking from the tree? He was lacking the knowledge of good and evil. Is knowledge faith? No. Faith is faith.  Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And this is the evidence that God wanted from Adam – the surety of things not seen.

This is also what God respected Enoch for. And not only Enoch but Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rahab, David, and a host of others throughout history who were sure of what they couldn’t see.

Was Adam faithful about the promise of surely dying if he ate the fruit? No. Was the man who was gathering sticks on the Sabbath day faithful about believing God would provide for him the other six days? No. Was David faithful when he had Uriah killed after sleeping with Bathsheba? No.

Then why was the Sabbath breaker stoned and David allowed to live? Why are some treated differently than others? Some are examples of God’s justice. Some are examples of God’s mercy. Some are lessons of high-handed sin and some are lessons of repentant hearts. Each case is given to teach us of the many facets of God and the key to obtaining His favor – which is always faith.

And faith only comes – ONLY COMES – through free will. Forced faith isn’t faith. The book of Ephesians says this –

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. 2:8

The construct of these verses tell us that we are saved not by grace alone nor by faith alone, but by grace and faith together and that these are a “gift” of God. A forced gift – be it grace or faith or both – isn’t a gift at all. Rather, these are offered to us by God. They are unmerited and they are available to all. And that brings us to our final point –

IV. Your Choice

“Mi kol ets a-gan a-kol tochal, uh-me-ets a-da-at tov va-ra, lo tochal mimenu.” Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat…

Jim Butcher says this about your free will – “God isn’t about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He’s all about you making choices–exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won’t gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.”

One argument used by Dr. Sproul and most others who argue against free will stems from Paul’s comment in Romans –

There is none righteous, no, not one;
¹¹ There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
¹² They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”3:10-12

Their claim is that if there is “none who seeks after God” that we can’t freely choose life through Jesus Christ. Free will is nullified in humans based on this verse. But this quote of Paul comes from the psalms. It’s repeated in Psalm 14 and Psalm 53.

The fool has said in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt,
They have done abominable works,
There is none who does good.

The questions I submit to you are, “Are Muslims seeking God?” “Are Mormons seeking God?” “Are Jews seeking God?” The answer is “Yes.” The context of the quote from Paul which comes from the Psalms is speaking of the atheist – “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

The problem with people like muslims and mormons isn’t that they are lacking faith. The problem is their faith is misdirected. And misdirected faith is wasted faith. One can’t use Paul’s verse as an overall claim to deny free will. In fact, the opposite is the truth. One must freely deny God in order to deny God.

In our previous point I said that in the Garden there was one command and that it was in the negative and that “There must be a similar premise for returning to that Garden. If not, then there might seem to be a problem with the way God is dealing with His children.”

A similar premise? There is, you know. There is a similar premise for returning to the Garden. Paul lays it out in the book of Romans. In the Garden, there was one command in the negative and that command was based on faith. In Christ there is one request and it is in the positive. And it, likewise, is based on faith.

…that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Vs 9.

That sounds like two things, but it’s really one. If you confess Jesus as Lord, it’s based on the assumption that Jesus is alive. If He is alive, then God raised Him from the dead.

I am free to choose, this is known
Because to deny that I can
Is a choice of its own

Free will doesn’t claim the place of God
Instead it exalts Him when He judges
Wouldn’t it be rather odd
To blame on Him all of my life’s smudges?

Perfect and pure is my Savior
Undefiled are His ways
My free will is mine alone
To withhold from or to give Him praise

I can choose to be a fool
And deny He is God
I can follow Muhammed or Buddha if I choose
Or I can give Krishna a favorable nod

But I choose life, I choose Jesus
He alone destroyed the grave
And He is ever here with us
He alone is able, our souls to save

Great and worthy – behold the Lamb
Sacrificed because of our choices
Let us turn our souls to Him
And lets us to Him raise our voices

Thank You O God for the gift You granted
Grace and faith tied into one
Thank You for the greatest Gift
Thank You O God for Jesus, our Lord Your Son

Hallelujah and Amen
Thank You for Jesus, our Lord Your Son

 

Genesis 2:4-15
To Worship and to Serve

Some time ago, I started a through-the-Bible study class and we’ve gone slowly and methodically through each verse in an attempt to miss as little as possible, but while preparing for this sermon, I was stunned to see how much I missed in Chapter 2 of Genesis.

There are patterns and parallels which are wonderful to see and yet I’d never considered them until I looked more deeply into things in preparation for today. It makes me realize how immense God’s word is and how arrogant we can be to assume that we could ever understand everything that He’s give us in the pages of this wonderful book. An infinite mind is, after all, infinitely intelligent.

I chose the title for today’s sermon “To Worship and to Serve” based on a translation of verse 15 which is completely different than any translation you’ve probably ever read and yet it’s one which is more than likely correct based on patterns in the rest of the Bible, including the very last page in Revelation 22.

What was the reason God created man? Was it to work the ground of the earth as most Bibles indicate? Or was there a completely different reason which is actually reflected in the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s first tenet and which we’ve looked at before –

What is the chief end of man?
Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

If this is true, and it is, then it only makes sense that the Bible would proclaim this as well – and actually,it does.

Introduction: We need to remember that God is complete in and of Himself. He lacks nothing and therefore anything that He has created is a demonstration of His own goodness and should reflect His infinite worth. Man pursuing works doesn’t fit this particular picture very well and so what we need to do is look deeper into God’s intent for man in the Garden of Eden – the spot where God dwelt and fellowshipped with him.

Text Verse: Oh, worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness!
Tremble before Him, all the earth. Psalm 96:9

May God speak to us through His word today and may His glorious name ever be praised.

I. Man Became a Living Being

This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

Liberal theologians claim that Chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis are a completely different account than Chapter 1 and were written by different people at different times. Their claim is that the two accounts just don’t fit.

The obvious reason why someone would come to this conclusion is that they don’t want to believe that the Bible is really what it claims to be – God’s word to mankind. If different people wrote the two accounts, then by implication God didn’t author the Bible and it is just a book, like any other – full of myths.

Instead of this, all one needs to do is simply evaluate the chapters to see that they are merely a detailed insert into what’s recorded in Chapter 1. Imagine getting instructions for assembling something, say a computer. There will be general instructions of how to put everything together and then there will be separate instructions for specific parts – like the printer. Chapters 2 and 3 are simply these finer details inserted into the larger overview of Chapter 1.

Because this is God’s word, then the account is included to give us specific insights into something that must be rather important for us to know. A jillion unimportant details weren’t recorded, such as the height of Adam or the color of Eve’s hair. They’re not recorded because they have no importance to the story and no bearing on what would occur later. The name of Adam’s first puppy, which could have been Fido, is irrelevant…

Remembering this is a good lesson for each of us. When you’re reading the Bible, always ask yourself why a particular passage is included. If God included it, then it has importance to the plan and relevance to the story.

In the verse we’re looking at we see a new name of the Creator – the LORD God or Jehovah Elohim. In Chapter 1, only the word “Elohim” was used, signifying the God of Power – He’s the Creator. Elohim is what’s known as a “majestic pronoun.” Here in Chapter two, the title Jehovah Elohim or the God of Power and Perfection is seen.

Matthew Henry describes Jehovah this way, “Jehovah is that great and incommunicable name of God which denotes his having his being of himself, and his giving being to all things; fitly therefore is he called by that name now that heaven and earth are finished.”

We continue with verse 5 and onto 6…

…before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; ⁶ but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.

In what I just read, it appears that man’s purpose is to “till the ground.” From this verse it would seem hard to assume otherwise. Why else would tilling the ground be included here? And so, it’s from this perspective that later verses in the same account have been translated, even though there’s a large problem with this.

⁷ And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

A few weeks ago, we looked at what it meant to be created in God’s image. We bear His image mentally, morally, and socially, among other ways, but in this verse we learn that Adam consisted of both heaven and earth. Man was formed out of the dust and then the divine Creator breathed life into him.

This doesn’t imply that he or we are in any way divine, but that the life of man came from God, not by random chance. The spark of life which quickened the clay jar was none other than the breath of the Creator. The man has become a living being. He is the final act of creation. He is the highest form of what has been made. And he is fearfully and wonderfully sculpted.

From God’s hand and His breath
Is how man came to be
From an act of His wisdom and love
Man came not from the slime or from the sea
Nor from a meteor that rained down from above

In His image He created the man
And for His glory and praise
This was for us the original plan
To see Him face to face all of our days

To worship and serve in eternal peace
Was God’s intent for us from the start
Our days were intended never to cease
This was the desire of the Creator’s heart.

God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing on the first day of creation. Five days later, on the sixth day, He created His final and most stupendous work of art – in fact a masterpiece – out of the simplest and most common part of the creation, dust.

First there was nothing, and then there was dust. God took this “next to nothingness” material and after forming it, breathed His life into it. If we jump ahead just a little bit we’ll see that Adam disobeyed God and died spiritually at that moment. Because of this, the thing that made us most like God disappeared at that moment too. Isn’t that a humbling thought?

We walk around as if we’re pretty big stuff when in fact we are as close to nothing as the breath in our lungs. From the dust we came and to the dust we shall return… Without a new birth, our next to nothingness is all we have to live for. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

The dust of the earth is what man was created from; the most common stuff on earth. He didn’t use gold dust, He didn’t use silver dust, He didn’t even use zinc… Instead, he used the earth. And to this day we are of the dust of the earth.

Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians 15, but so does the psalmist in the 139^th Psalm. He says there, “My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”

We are so closely tied to the earth that David describes the womb in which we’re formed as eretz, or “the earth.” In the same way, Job calls the place where we’re going back to our “mother’s womb,” meaning the earth.

The word for womb in Hebrew is behten and is comprised of the Hebrew letters Beth, Teth, and Nun.

The meaning of the Beth is “house.” The meaning of the Teth is “mud.” And, the meaning of the Nun is “heir” as in continuance into the next generation. The womb then is the house where the one of mud continues on. Even in the word itself we see our lowly state. Mix a little water with the dust and you have the man…

On our own, we simply can’t get away from the dust from which we were created. We live by what it produces and when we die we will return to it.

However, and despite the unappealing material, the Bible says God “formed the man.” The Bible uses the Hebrew word yatsar and it implies a careful and attentive shaping of him. This same word is used in the books of the prophets when describing a potter shaping a bowl from the clay. In the case of man, the Latin phrase rings true –

Materiam superabat opus – “The workmanship exceeded the materials.” We marvel at the detail of a watch made of intricate tiny pieces of metal; we look with wonder at sand sculptures and finely constructed artwork of hand blown glass. And yet nothing man has ever made comes even close to the intricate beauty of the human form.

Thus the man became a living being. God shaped man into the form He determined and we are as He decided. In the New Testament Paul asks the obvious question –

Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Romans 9:20

Oh, but question we do! But God formed us for His purposes.

The book of John records two wonderfully beautiful parallels to the passage we’re currently looking at where it says, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life..”

“When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing.” 9:6, 7

And again…

So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 20:21, 22

This God, Jehovah Elohim, who created the heavens and the earth and who formed man out of the dust, breathing into him the breath of life, also formed new eyes for a man to see and gave the same breath again to His apostles in the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus, God incarnate, gave both instances as a confirmation of who He is and the power He displays in creation and in the regeneration.

II. The Garden of Eden

⁸ The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. ⁹ And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

After creating man – only after creating man – does it say that Jehovah Elohim planted a garden eastward in Eden. Eden means “delight” or “pleasure” and was, if man obeyed, a place not for work, but for a different purpose.

This is an important point to consider when looking at the previous verse that said there wasn’t yet a man to till the ground. This garden is something special and something intended for the man He formed. The ground which needed to be tilled was outside of the Garden, not in it.

If you stand back and look at the larger picture of the Bible, it’s clear that God knew before the fall that man would fall. And so the garden, despite being made as a place where God would fellowship with man, didn’t fill the entire earth. Instead, the Garden was a localized place of grace, of abundance, and of provision from God above, not from the ground below.

It was, as God knew from the beginning, a temporary place for Adam to dwell. This isn’t readily apparent though. In this verse the word “put” is translated from the Hebrew word sum, but as we’ll see in a little while, a different word is used later which is also translated as “put.”

Appreciating the garden meant they would need to leave the garden. This is how we learn to appreciate anything, by contrast. If there is no contrast, then we have no ability to appreciate our current state.

God knew that we would start in a garden and then be removed from that garden because of our interaction with, believe it or not, a tree. But God’s plan is that we are to be restored to the garden because of our interaction with another tree. The plan is so intricately woven and presented in the Bible that it’s almost beyond imagination. Everything fits so beautifully.

III. A Tale of Two Trees

The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Of the many plants of the garden, only two trees are named and there they were, right in the midst of the garden. And of these two trees, the fruit of only one is forbidden. As we’ll see next week, the LORD said to Adam, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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.”

More than a little is tied up then in these two trees. Choices are tied up in them, conditions are tied up in them, blessings and curses are tied up in them, life and death are tied up in them, the law and grace are tied up in them, and even the Lord’s Supper, our Holy Communion is tied up in these two trees.

As a choice:

The tree of life – you may eat of it.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil – you shall not eat of it.

It’s important to note that although Adam was told to not eat of this tree, the choice was still his. God placed the tree in the Garden when he could have simply not have placed it there at all. By placing it there then, it was possible for Adam to eat it even though he was told not to. Obedience is always a test of our priorities and allegiances.

**I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. Deuteronomy 30:19

As a condition:

The tree of life – Life is granted through its fruit.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil – Death results from its fruit.

**I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.

As a blessing and a curse:

The tree of life – you can live with me forever.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil – you will be separated from me. Admittedly, Adam had no idea what death really meant, but innocence dies not negate guilt. And death was to be the penalty for guilt.

**I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.

As life and death:

The tree of life – eat and live.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil – eat and die.

**I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.

As the Law versus Grace:

The tree of life – Eat and find eternal life – God’s grace; His unmerited favor.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil – eat it and be punished. As Paul says, “because the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression.” Romans 4:15

**I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.

As the Lord’s Supper:

The tree of life – Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. John 6:54

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil Believe and be saved, disbelieve and be dammed: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53) In other words, go back to the tree of life and by faith receive what God has given you.

**I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.

God set the parameters in Eden, He set them for Israel, and He sets them now for the world. Choose life. To me the most magnificent aspect of what He does though is that He gives man the choice.

IV. The Water of Life

¹⁰ Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. ¹¹ The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. ¹³ The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

The theme of the Water of Life goes literally from Genesis to Revelation and winds throughout both testaments. Right here in the Genesis account, we see that one river flowed out of Eden to water the garden and from there it parted and became four riverheads.

This is amazingly similar to the gospel message in which the Lord delights, and in fact, Eden as I said earlier means “delight.” From both the Garden of Eden and from His Gospel we see amazing parallels. The rivers names are Pishon, meaning “increase;” Gihon, meaning “bursting forth;” Hiddekel, meaning “rapid;” and Perath, meaning fruitfulness.

Each of these rivers came from one source and together they wound their way around the world. In the same way, the gospel comes from one source and yet it branches out into four different accounts – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each of these gospels reflects the glory of the Lord as was revealed in a vision of God to Ezekiel –

As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right side, each of the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and each of the four had the face of an eagle. Ezekiel 1:10

The Lion’s face is the Gospel of Matthew which describes Jesus as the King of Israel. This is also symbolized by the river Gihon which means to “burst forth.” Later in the Bible, the Gihon is where the king was anointed as ruler of Israel. In Ezekiel 32, the king of Egypt is said to burst forth (geeakh) like a lion or a sea monster. This is actually the root of the word Gihon.

The Ox’s face is the Gospel of Mark which describes Jesus as the Servant, the ox being a servant animal. This is symbolized by the river Pishon which means to “increase” which parallels Proverbs 14:4 – Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox.

The Man’s face is the Gospel of Luke which describes Jesus as the Son of Man. This is symbolized by the river Perath which means “fruitfulness.” Just as man was told to be fruitful and multiply in Genesis 1:22

And the Eagle’s face is the Gospel of John which describes Jesus as the Son of God. This is symbolized by the river Hiddekel which means “rapid.” The rapid nature of the eagle is noted in Jeremiah 4:13 – Behold, he shall come up like clouds, And his chariots like a whirlwind. His horses are swifter than eagles.

Together, these four accounts which stem from a single source go out to water the world with the knowledge of the Lord and to proclaim the Water of Life which was symbolized by the four rivers flowing out of the Garden of Eden.

In the first Psalm, we see that a person who delights in the Law of the Lord “shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.”

And from this we can learn a few more things about the rivers of Eden. They symbolized spiritual life but after the Fall of Man the rivers’ origins have changed. The Pishon is no longer flowing at all, symbolizing death. The Euphrates and the Tigris run through the lands which in the Bible are opposed to God – Babylon. These symbolize spiritual enmity with God.

Only one river flows out of God’s chosen land of Israel – the Gihon. If you know the size difference, there is no comparison. The Gihon is a small spring that it almost unnoticeable. This is comparable to what Jesus said in Matthew 7 –

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. ¹⁴ Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Though the Gihon is just a small brook today, it is symbolic of the wellspring of spiritual life in a world dead in sin; this, in opposition to the immense amount of water flowing through the rivers of apostasy and false world religions which is symbolized by Babylon. The 46^th Psalm says –

There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved;

This is represented by Jerusalem, the city which is in spiritual opposition to Babylon. Again, the psalms help us understand this –

By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept
When we remembered Zion. ² We hung our harps Upon the willows in the midst of it. ³ For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, And those who plundered us requested mirth, Saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
⁴ How shall we sing the LORD’s song In a foreign land?

The Jews exile from their home to Babylon is symbolic of our exile from Eden and God’s presence. The good news is that in the near future, Isaiah prophesied that “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

This is symbolically represented by the river which Ezekiel says will flow out of the south side of a future temple in Jerusalem. It will be the Gihon, which will “burst forth’ – just as its name implies – to bring the dead back to life. –

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and there was water, flowing from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the front of the temple faced east; the water was flowing from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar. ² He brought me out by way of the north gate, and led me around on the outside to the outer gateway that faces east; and there was water, running out on the right side. ³ And when the man went out to the east with the line in his hand, he measured one thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the water came up to my ankles. ⁴ Again he measured one thousand and brought me through the waters; the water came up to my knees. Again he measured one thousand and brought me through; the water came up to my waist. ⁵ Again he measured one thousand, and it was a river that I could not cross; for the water was too deep, water in which one must swim, a river that could not be crossed. ⁶ He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he brought me and returned me to the bank of the river.” Ezekiel 47:1-6

V. To Worship and to Serve

¹⁵ Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

Let’s look at how different translators of have worded this verse, but notice how each variation follows the same theme –

to dress it and to keep it
to take care of it and to look after it
to tend and keep it
to tend and guard and keep it
to tend and watch over it
to till it and to guard it
to cultivate it and keep it
to cultivate it and guard it
to serve it, and to keep it
to care for it and work it
to farm the land and to take care of it
to work it and to keep it
to work it and take care of it
to work it and watch over it
to work the ground and care for it
to work the soil and take care of the garden

If you noticed, despite the flowery changes in terminology, every one of these translations demonstrates work is being proposed for the Garden of Eden. If you look at the purpose of the Garden, this makes no sense. Earlier, in verse 5, we read that man was to till the ground. However, this was before God planted the Garden of Eden. Man was formed outside Eden and then placed there.

I quoted John Sailhamer last week, let me refresh your memory – “The man was ‘put’ into the Garden where he could ‘rest’ and be ‘safe,’ and the man was ‘put’ into the Garden ‘in God’s presence’ where he could have fellowship with God…”

The word for “put” in verse 15 is the word yanach, a completely different word than what was used in verse 8. Dr. Richard Howe of Southern Evangelical Seminary notes this about the word yanach –

“… the sense of the verb is causative, meaning that God ‘caused Adam to rest’ in the garden.”

If God “caused Adam to rest” in the garden, then why would man need to tend and keep it? Dr. Howe notes, “The problem with these translations is that the pronoun in the verse does not agree in gender with the word ‘garden.’”

The word ‘garden’ is masculine in Hebrew and so ‘garden’ can’t be the object of the verbs. Because of this, either this verse is an exception to the rule of the Hebrew language or the verbs aren’t referring to the garden at all and instead something else is meant.

Doctor Howe’s conclusion is that the verbs should be taken as abstract in meaning and that “The significance of “resting the man in the garden” is not to demonstrate man’s relationship to the garden, but rather to provide a setting for the story to demonstrate man’s relationship and responsibility to God.”

Therefore, his translation has an abstract meaning. Instead of “tend and to keep” he says they should be translated “worship and serve,” as both words are translated elsewhere in the Bible.

And isn’t this exactly what the gospel itself proclaims? We can’t in any way supply for ourselves our own good. Instead, Jesus is the One who supplies our every need. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

It wasn’t the garden to which Adam was responsible, but to God – to worship and to serve Him. Dr. Howe notes that, “Before the fall, Adam’s attention was directed upwards toward God.” He was to serve God through keeping His commandment and he was to worship Him through trust and obedience.

But “After the fall, Adam’s attention was directed downwards toward the ground.” Instead of looking to God for sustenance, he had to look to the ground. Instead of looking to God for eternal life, he would look to the ground as his final resting place.

The lesson here is that we also have a choice. We can look upward to God, to worship and serve Him as He determines, or we can look to the ground and attempt to have our own works justify us. In the end, the ground is a hard master, one of bondage and pain, but the Lord – Oh, the Lord is gentle and mild.

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

The Garden was lost to man, but through Jesus, it can be restored. In the Garden was a river of life. There was no curse – just the chance to worship and serve the Creator. Jesus promises the same to us on the final page of the Bible –

“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. ² In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. ³ And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him.” Rev 22:1-4

To worship and to serve the Lord our God
Eternal fellowship in a land of Delight
On hallowed soil our feet will trod
And the Lord shall always be in our sight

In His light, to walk and also to praise
The Lamb of God who was slain
Illuminated by His ever-glowing rays
No tears, no fear, no sorrow, no pain

Come to the waters and be restored
Drink and receive Grace from the Lord
Heaven’s door is open for all to go through
But you see it’s guarded with cherub and sword

So to pass through the gate, this you must do
It is the gospel, “Call on the Lord”

By faith in His work and by faith alone
Access is granted past Heaven’s sword
His blood was shed for your sins to atone
Again I beg you, call on the Lord

Again I implore you, call on the Lord

A while ago, I said that we learn to appreciate things through contrast. If there is no contrast, then we have no ability to appreciate our current state. Beauty ultimately derives from comparison; hence, the infinite beauty of the cross.

Let’s take a moment and Enter that Cross…