A Sermon by Rev John Haverland

Sermon 7 of 19, on Genesis 1-12

Scripture Readings: Genesis 2:4-17; Revelation 21:1-4, 22-27, 22:1-6

 

 

Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

Theme: God created Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden to enjoy it, work in it and live in loving obedience with him.

Purpose: To show that God intends us to enjoy his world and work in it out of a relationship of loving obedience.

Some of you have planted gardens around your homes. You thought about how you wanted to lay it out. You chose certain varieties of trees and shrubs and decided where you wanted to plant them. You picked out what flowers to put in and where. You planned out the shape of the lawn.

This sort of planning is going on all the time. Many of the cities and towns in our country have beautiful gardens. Town planners and landscape designers have thought carefully about the layout and shape of the city’s gardens and about the plants and trees they wanted to put in. They have produced magnificent and beautiful places for us to enjoy, often with lakes and streams and small bridges and walkways.

Today we are going to look at this story of how God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, and we will see that God put him there to live with him, to enjoy the garden, and to work in it.

Chapter 2 verse 4 begins a new section of the book of Genesis. We know this because of the phrase, “This is the account”. These words occur 11 times in Genesis and each time they mark another part of the book. Each time they introduce another movement in the story, another development in the account of what happened.

“This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.”  Now we have already had an account of creation in chapter 1. Chapter 2 retells this story; but it is not a mere repetition of what has already been said. Rather it focuses on one aspect of the creation and goes back over that giving us much more detail.

You could compare it to the inset of a map. Sometimes you will get a map of a whole area or city and then you’ll get an inset that gives you a blow-up of one section of the map — often it will be of the inner city area. If you look at that box you can see that section in more detail. This is what we have in chapter 2 — we are given an expanded account of what was described in 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”  Chapter 2 gives us a close-up of how God created Adam and Eve.

In this sermon we are looking at how Adam was placed in the garden and in the next sermon we will consider how and why God created Eve. The first thing we want to notice here is that:

1. GOD CREATED MAN TO LIVE WITH HIM

In verses 4 and 7 we are told that when God had created the earth and the heavens he then made man . First God made the earth and put everything in place, and then he put Adam in the world he had made. He made the world so he could put us in it. The creation of Adam is the climax of creation. In chapter 1 Adam is the pinnacle of the pyramid of creation; in chapter 2 he is the centre of the circle — everything in the world revolves around him.

Notice how this account is utterly opposed to the theory of evolution. In Genesis Adam does not appear at the end of a long evolutionary process; he does not gradually evolve from ape-like ancestors as the school biology books teach. No, God created him on the sixth day of creation. He formed him out of the dust of the ground. He created him fully made. He did not make him a baby or a little boy; no, he was created as an adult male, fully grown.

After God had made him from the dust of the ground he then “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life “. Without the breath of God in him Adam was just a body. We are reminded of this when we see the body of a person who has died; there is no breath in them, no movement, no life. Yet a living person is more than just a body; we also have a soul, or a spirit. We are living human beings — and that life comes from God; he gives it and he takes it away.

Psalm 90 speaks of this: “You turn men back to dust, saying, ‘Return to dust O sons of men…’ You sweep men away in the sleep of death” (Ps 90:3,5). But we are running ahead of ourselves in describing death; the focus here is on the life God gave. Adam became a living being.

God created us to live in relationship with him. One indication of this is the change in the use of God’s name. In Chapter 1 Moses described God with the Hebrew name Elohim which refers to God as the Almighty One, God the Creator. In chapter 2 Moses used the name, the LORD God, Yahweh Elohim . Yahweh describes God in his relationship to his people; it describes the covenant God, God as he relates to us. That’s what this chapter is about. God created us so we could know him, love him, serve him, live with him, talk to him. God created us for a purpose.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism opens by saying, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” This is why you were made. This is the only way to find meaning and purpose and fulfilment in life — to know God.

At school you will study biology and learn about your body; at university you can study anthropology and learn about people and their cultures and customs; or you can study psychology to help you understand the human mind; or you can study sociology to understand human behaviour. But for a complete and biblical understanding of who we are you must study theology — you have to see yourself in relation to God and you have to see yourself as God sees you; that is, as people made in his image and created to know him and love him.

Do you know God like this? Do you believe he made you? Do you know him personally? Are you living in a relationship with him? Do you love him and trust him? Do you listen to him speaking in the Bible and do you talk to him in prayer? This is why you were made. This is the purpose of your life. God created us to live with him.

Secondly, we want to see that God created us:

2. TO ENJOY THIS WORLD

We know this because God planted a beautiful garden. In verse 8 we read that it was “in the East”. This tells us that it was a real garden in a real place. The book of Genesis is telling us the story of what happened in the beginning, a true story. This is a record of the early history of the world; all this happened at a particular time and in a particular place.

The garden was watered by a river that separated into four rivers. Usually various smaller rivers will come together to form one major river; here there is one river that then forms into four others. Two of these we know — the Tigris and the Euphrates — and they are often mentioned in the Bible; but we don’t know about the other two — the Pishon and the Gihon. Nor do we know the exact location of the rivers so we can’t identify exactly where the Garden of Eden was. It was probably located around the borders of modern Turkey, Syria and Iraq, an area that is acknowledged as being the beginning of civilisation. But the geography and landscape of that whole area would have changed dramatically after the flood.

The garden was full of trees — “all kinds of trees” (vs 9), a great variety of different species of all different colours and shapes. Trees are what make a garden. Think of the trees around your home and farm, or those in this city/town. God made trees that were “pleasing to the eye and good for food”. Some were beautiful to look at and others were very useful, producing delicious fruits or nuts.

God planted this garden . He is the Great Creator. He applied all his imagination and creativity to making this a beautiful place for Adam to live in. It was a garden of colour and beauty. It had form and structure and yet also variety. It was well balanced and pleasing to the eye. It was astounding, breath-taking in its splendour.

God planted a garden that was so lovely that no picture can capture what it looked like. You could compare it to taking photos of beautiful places you have seen on holidays — those photos are lovely but they never capture the beauty of the scene you saw — it is always much better than the photo!

God made all this for us to enjoy . He not only created us to enjoy him , but he also created us to enjoy the world he had made. “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (2 Tim 4:3). We have much to be thankful for living in this country. God has given us mountains to climb, forests to walk in, grass to lie down in, flowers to brighten our homes and gardens, trees to offer shade, rivers and lakes and harbours to swim in and sail on, as well as some of the most splendid scenery you will find anywhere in the world — all for our enjoyment.

Is that the way you see the world? Is this how you enjoy it? Do you receive all this with thanksgiving to God? Do you thank and praise him who made all this and who has given it to you for your pleasure?

God created us to live in relationship with him.

God created us to enjoy the world he made.

Thirdly, God created us:

3. TO DO A TASK

He gave Adam a job to do — he gave him work. He placed him in the garden “to work it and take care of it” (vs 15). He was to cultivate plants and tend the garden and look after it. The Lord did not want him to be idle; he wasn’t just to stroll around the garden arm in arm with Eve all day. He could do some of that, but not all the time, because he also had work to do!

That work was not difficult or strenuous. There were no weeds in the Garden of Eden. Plants and trees did not get out of control. When he did his job he did not work up a sweat or strain his muscles; nothing ever went wrong and his work was never frustrating or boring. Rather, it was satisfying, enjoyable, fulfilling, pleasurable, a delight to do!

Work is part of the creation mandate; it is another creation ordinance (like the Sabbath day of rest); it is part of the structure of creation. Non-Christian religions do not see work in this light. The ancient Greeks, for instance, despised manual labour and thought the only worthwhile occupations were to be a philosopher or a poet! But Genesis 2 describes work as a good thing and a gift of God. It is part of our wider task of subduing the earth and exercising dominion over it.

Your work is not merely a means of making money to support yourself or your family. Nor is it merely a place where you can evangelise and witness about the Lord Jesus. No, your work itself is honouring to God. Every Christian who is occupied in a useful area of work is serving the Lord. Every Christian is in “full-time Christian service” because each one of us is serving the Lord in the place he has put us.

One of our hymns expresses this very well:

“Fill thou my life O Lord my God,
In every part with praise,
that my whole being may proclaim
thy being and thy ways…
So shall no part of day or night,
from sacredness be free,
but all my life, in every part,
be fellowship with thee.”

Is that how you see your work? Is this your perspective? Is this how you approach your job? Do you see it as worthwhile? Do you do it as to the Lord? Do you see it as a means of serving him? Is this your perspective on your work, whether you are a mother at home, or a student at school or university, or working in an office or classroom, or in a factory or on a building site or around a farm? Are you living all of life before the Lord, in fellowship with him and for his glory?

God created us to live in relationship with him, and to enjoy the world, and to work in it for him. Tragically, many people in this world do not do this: they do not know the Lord, they do not praise God for the privilege of enjoying the world, and they do not work in it for him. We know that this is so because of the fall into sin, described in Genesis 3.

The Lord gave Adam and Eve a test of obedience that centred around the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were given a free choice about whether to eat or not eat. God gave them a mind to think matters through and a free will to make decisions. They could choose to obey God or to disobey; to follow his commands or to go it alone; to submit to his will or to rebel against him.

They chose to go it alone — they thought they knew better than God — and so they lost that original position of being holy and righteous. Paul explains this in Romans 5: “…sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (vs 12).

But even before they were put out of the garden God told them of his plan to set things right. He promised to send his Son to bear the punishment for sin, to die on the cross and to rescue all his people from their slavery to sin. The whole Bible is the record of how God has worked out this great plan of salvation through Jesus Christ.

And the closing chapters of Revelation describe the restoration of the original perfection and beauty of the first creation. But it is more than a restoration — it is a renewal and a re-creation. It involves a progression beyond that first world God made. There is development in the plan and work of God in the history of the world.

His work began in a garden; it ends in a city.

It began with two people; it will end with a multitude that no one can number.

It began with the creation of the heavens and the earth; it will end with a new heaven and a new earth.

It began with one Tree of Life; it will end with many Trees of Life lining the banks of the River of Life that flows from the throne of God and the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city (Rev 22:1-2, Eze 47:12).

All of this will come about through the great work accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God, who is reigning and will reign forever. In that world to come we will live in perfect fellowship with God; we will enjoy the beauty of a new earth; and we live and work for God’s glory for all eternity.

Amen.