Original Paradise – Genesis 2v4to24

Sermons Archive - Greenview Church

Let me start with a question for you. What’s your idea of paradise? If you could freeze paradise in a snapshot, what would be in the frame? Would paradise be a beach house with sort of endless sunsets every night out of the front window? Or would paradise be a picture of you in a comfy chair reading your favourite book with only quietness for company? There’s a stadium not so far from here whose fans nickname it paradise. Would paradise for you be a football ground with you celebrating goal after goal year after year? Or would paradise quite frankly be something a little less couth? We think of in some cultures where the vision of paradise is an endless harem of pleasure.

(1:04 – 1:33)

Would that be your vision of paradise? Well, whatever your vision happens to be, I want to direct you this morning to the Bible’s vision of paradise. And we’re going to see that it’s much deeper and much better than the visions we tend to have. In Genesis 2, we rewind the clock to the original paradise.

(1:34 – 1:54)

And what’s in the picture? It’s not a beach or a book. But what it is in fact is God, humans, and creation living in perfect harmony. Paradise is everything being in its right relationship and being in its right place.

(1:56 – 2:05)

And it’s God who brings this about. As you’ve seen in this series, God is the hero of the creation story. He’s the initiator.

(2:06 – 2:27)

And we’re going to see that only He can craft the paradise picture. So let’s explore this picture of paradise, which I think ultimately points us to the paradise to come. It points us to heaven and stirs up within us a longing for a relationship with God, for knowing Him.

(2:28 – 2:54)

We’re going to look at three roles God plays in Genesis chapter 2. The first one is God the craftsman. God the craftsman in verses 4 to 7. Verse 4 kicks things off. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

(2:55 – 4:06)

Now that phrase there, this is the account of, is a really important phrase in the whole book of Genesis. It comes 10 separate times. And it’s kind of like a chapter heading.

Genesis has like 10 chapter headings, if you like, throughout the whole book. And like a chapter heading, these headings introduce what follows. Quite often the chapter heading is to do with a person.

So sometimes it will be, this is the account of Adam, or this is the account of Noah. And then you’ll learn more about Adam or Noah and their family line. Here, this first one, it’s a little bit different from the ones to come.

The chapter heading is, this is the account of the heavens and earth when they were created. So the chapter heading is, the created heavens and earth. We might think, well, didn’t we get that in chapter 1? Yes, but now we get a lot more detail about what was created.

(4:07 – 4:40)

In particular, the camera zooms in on the creation of man, verse 7. The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground. So this is a rerun of chapter 1, but it’s not an exact repeat of chapter 1. In chapter 2, we zoom in and we zoom down, and the camera hovers over one man in one garden. This is really a rerun of day 6 of creation.

(4:42 – 5:07)

And as we come close, what we see is God at work. In fact, we’re going to see throughout this chapter that God is the first worker in the Bible, and He’s forming a man, which could be translated, quite literally, that could be translated, He pottered. He pottered a man.

(5:09 – 6:17)

Think of a potter, skilfully and intimately shaping a lump of clay, taking something unattractive and without purpose, and crafting it into something beautiful and functional. Well, that’s what God does here when He potters us. And He doesn’t stop there.

He then breathes into this man His very life. That’s obviously a life-giving moment. But it’s also, you’ll notice, a face-to-face moment.

He breathes into his nostrils His life. It implies a face-to-face relationship which God is going to have with human beings. And in some ways, all of this, this kind of crafting imagery is a big contrast to chapter 1. Where God’s transcendence, God’s up-above-ness was emphasised.

(6:19 – 6:56)

In chapter 1, the kind of picture is almost of God sitting aloft in the court of heaven, dispatching His Word like a king over a kingdom, and things just happening down below. But now complementing that picture, we see in chapter 2 that the God on high now stoops low and gets His fingers in the dirt. It’s no accident that in chapter 1, God is simply called God.

(6:57 – 7:05)

God is kind of like God’s title. It’s the Hebrew word Elohim. It’s God’s role, if you like.

(7:06 – 8:15)

And in chapter 1, that’s the only designation for God. God is Elohim. God is the transcendent Creator.

In chapter 2, He is still called that, but there’s another designation that starts to appear. Did you notice from chapter 2, verse 4 onwards, He is called the Lord God. See that? It’s double-barreled.

The Lord is not so much God’s title. Think of it as God’s personal name. Think of it maybe as God’s first name.

Some people translate it, they pronounce it Yahweh, Yahweh, God’s name. Translated here, the Lord. Because God is not an inaccessible Creator.

He wants to be known personally. He is Yahweh Elohim. He puts His fingers, as it were, in the dust and the dirt of the earth.

(8:17 – 9:42)

By the way, isn’t that really humbling? I don’t know how grand your ideas are of yourself this morning, but in the end, human beings are just dust. There’s a reason we say at funerals, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It’s because it’s accurate.

We may have this grand status over creation, but at another level, we’re just part of creation. We’re the dust of the earth. Man is literally an earthling, and yet we are dignified dust, crafted by divine fingers, needed by the earth that we live in.

Notice verses 5 and 6 that the world needs man. There’s no shrubs or plants. Presumably, this is because there was no one there to cultivate them, to enable them to generate their harvest.

And there’s no rain on the earth at this point. There’s only streams coming up from the ground. But if there was someone who could take that water and manually irrigate the fields and the dry places, then you see that land could have potential.

(9:45 – 10:22)

I think the point being made by this imagery is that the earth can’t reach its potential without man. It needs a farmer. It needs a worker.

It needs a human. I recently heard a comedian on a radio show, and he was asked for, you know that thing they do, what’s your most unpopular opinion? You know, something that up until now you’ve been afraid to say. And the comedian said, my most unpopular opinion is that earth minus humans would be better.

(10:24 – 14:52)

Earth minus humans would be better. Well, he’s right to infer that humans have misused our world, but he’s also dead wrong in that man is not dispensable or so inconsequential. God crafted humans with His personal touch.

God breathed His very life into us, and that gives us an incalculable importance as human beings. Every human being is incalculably important, including you, because God is the craftsman of us. And so, this is where Paradise begins with God the craftsman.

But then secondly, we move on to God the gardener. God the gardener in verses 8 to 17. Now, notice how it continues, verse 8, now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east.

So, God the craftsman now becomes God the gardener, right? It’s not Adam who starts the gardening thing. God plants the garden in the east in Eden. Eden seems to be the kind of wider area, but within it, there’s this garden that God creates.

And then He places the man that He has formed within the garden, giving Adam the starting place from which to begin his tasks. Remember Adam’s tasks from chapter 1? He is to rule over the earth, He is to subdue the earth, and He is to fill it with the image bearers of God. And He’s to start that task from the garden of Eden.

The garden’s kind of like a home and a workplace rolled into one. I think it’s Google in America that has this incredible headquarters in California. I think it’s 12 acres, and there’s this sort of huge circular building, a huge big circle.

But in the middle of the big circle, they basically have planted a forest, a huge garden full of trees. And just imagine working in that environment. You sort of slide open your door, and you just walk out into a forest for the morning catch-up meeting.

Not a bad place to work. Well, this is that kind of working environment. Verse 9, the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.

So, Adam has all the stuff that he needs, but notice this is not just functional and practical. It’s not just a garden to help him survive. There is also here much that is beautiful and enjoyable.

This will become an important point when we get to chapter 3, because the forbidden tree was not some super attractive tree in an otherwise dull garden. No. All the trees, we’re told here, were pleasing to the eye and good for food.

Even still, there are two trees that the author of Genesis draws to our attention at this stage. Moses directs our attention to the middle of the garden, where towering up from the soil is the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, two trees. Now, when we get to chapter 3, and we’re going to be looking at that over the next two Sundays, next week and the week after, God willing, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will take centre stage and not in a good way.

(14:54 – 15:36)

So, if you don’t mind, we will leave discussion of that tree till next week. But what about the tree of life? Is the tree of life some kind of magic tree, where if you eat its fruit, you’ll keep on living? It’s kind of got magic apples or something. Well, you could read it that way, I suppose if you read this very literally.

But I suspect it has more of a symbolic value. And I say that because of what we’ve learned in the rest of the Bible. We know from the rest of the Bible that eternal life doesn’t grow on trees.

(15:38 – 16:55)

Eternal life in the Bible always, always, always comes directly from God. So, I don’t think this is a magic tree, but the tree stands in the middle of the garden as a sign and symbol of God’s presence and life. And it symbolises the fact that man at this stage has access to that life and access to that presence.

Of course, when he’s not allowed to eat from the tree, it’s really symbolising the fact that he no longer has communion with God. And so, the tree tells us that life comes from God and that it flows out, this life, it flows out to the world. Notice that the very next thing we then learn about, verse 10, is a river, a river that flows from Eden.

Now, just by the by, there’s lots of interesting details here, but I just find this kind of interesting. If the river flows from Eden, then presumably the garden itself must have been on some kind of hill, right? Because that’s where rivers always begin. They begin with mountains, they begin with hills.

(16:55 – 17:27)

Now, it’s implicit here, but we’re going to see in the rest of the Old Testament that Jerusalem and the temple are built on a hill, Mount Zion. Anyway, this river flows down, and out from Eden, and separates into four headwaters, four rivers. Now, a couple of these rivers we can confidently identify today, and a few of them we don’t really know their location.

(17:29 – 19:35)

The point I don’t think is to try and work out the coordinates of Eden. The point is that God was present in this garden, and that His life was flowing out to the four corners of the earth. I think that’s the significance of the four rivers, right? So, life starts in the garden because that’s where God is especially present, but His life is flowing from there to the ends of the earth.

The rest of the Bible picks up on this overflowing river. In the book of Ezekiel, the temple has a river flowing out from it. And in the book of Revelation, in the new Jerusalem, there is a river flowing from the throne of God down the middle of the great main streets, all coming from God.

This is not telling us about drinking water or, you know, how things looked in Eden. It’s telling us that life flows out to the ends of the earth from God Himself. See, God is the gardener, and He’s filling His garden and His world with life and splendour and resources.

There’s a mention in verses 11 and 12, there’s a mention of gold. This place is splendid. It’s spectacular.

In fact, what this garden really is, is a temple. And there’s lots of clues that that’s the case. You know, if you know the rest of the Pentateuch, you’ll see all the connexions.

You know, later on, you’ll find that the temple is laden with gold. It’s splendid. You’ll find inside the temple itself that there’s a candlestick, which most people think is a picture of the tree of life from Eden.

(19:37 – 20:09)

The temple like Eden will be entered by the east gate, and the temple like Eden will have attendants who serve in God’s presence. In fact, in verse 15, when the man is told to work the garden and take care of it, I’m reliably told that that exact phrase is used later in the Bible of the temple priests. The temple priests were to work and take care of God’s temple.

(20:11 – 21:05)

See, in chapter 1, human beings were kings, remember? Rule over creation. But in chapter 2, the image is more that humans are priests. They’re to serve in the presence of God, and they’re to kind of be coworkers with God.

It’s interesting as well that that little, that phrase there, take care, work and take care, that could be translated, it could also be translated guard, work and guard or keep the garden. It’s not just that Adam is to work the soil and farm, but there’s this element of protection and safeguarding. It suggests that an intruder might be lurking perhaps, that watchfulness might be required.

(21:08 – 22:11)

But to watch over the garden, Adam must first of all watch over his own soul. The man who is God’s co-gardener will need to listen and obey the one who has planted the garden. Which brings us to the famous prohibition.

And I don’t know about you, but it’s kind of easy for me to sort of rip verse 17 out of its context, and to wonder if God is being just a little bit of a killjoy by introducing one command in paradise. And yet as we’ve read this in the flow, we see that’s not the tone of this at all, is it? As verse 16 reminds us, Adam is free to eat from any tree in the garden, and every one of them is pleasing to the eye and good for food. God, if you like, has set out a buffet, and there are 999 Michelin star dishes.

(22:13 – 22:30)

He’s only said that there’s one dish they mustn’t touch. That’s hardly over the top. Andy will be speaking tonight, Andy McDonald, on work, which is one of the themes, the sub-themes that run through this chapter.

(22:32 – 23:27)

But one of the features of modern work is the amount of rules, you know, the endless seemingly prohibitions and policies and procedures, right? I mean, you guys know this, you know, there’s a policy for this and a policy for that, and there’s literally hundreds of guidelines for any new employee to follow. Yet in the garden, there’s not hundreds of guidelines. There’s not even a single policy document.

There’s a single instruction, a single tree that is put out of bounds. God is not a killjoy, but God is God. The one tree becomes the one test to see if Adam will treat God as the one God.

(23:29 – 23:58)

If Adam turns away from God, the God of life, then death will be inevitable. At this stage, though, everything is rosy in the garden. Well, just about.

We’re going to see that there is actually one thing still missing from the original paradise. And that brings us to our third and final point, God the matchmaker. God the matchmaker.

(24:00 – 26:31)

And you’ll notice that it’s God Himself who identifies this lack, verse 18. God says, it is not good for the man to be alone. Now, I think sometimes I’ve misread this.

It actually doesn’t say that Adam was lonely. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. But verse 18 is not Adam’s observation of the situation.

No, this is God’s objective view of things. And God is saying that in every respect and in many respects, it is not good for Adam to remain alone, for Adam to fulfil his task of ruling and developing the world and being fruitful. He cannot remain alone.

Just as God is a community, as the triune God. So, Adam needs his own community. He needs a helper fit for him.

It’s important to note that helper, by the way, is not a demeaning term. In fact, throughout the Old Testament, do you know who’s most often called a helper? God is most often called the helper of His people. One person, I think, brilliantly describes this by saying that the woman is not so much man’s servant, but she’s more like the cavalry coming to Adam’s aid, helping him to fulfil the task that he’s struggling to fulfil by himself.

And it’s vital that there is suitability for this. Why does Adam name the animals in verse 19? On one level, it shows Adam’s authority over creation, because when you name something, it implies authority. But at the end of verse 20, it’s clear that something else has come out of this naming parade.

No suitable helper was found. As Adam surveys all the creatures, it becomes clear to him that none of them would be a suitable companion to help him fulfil the task. God already knew this, of course, but perhaps Adam himself needed to realise this.

(26:33 – 28:38)

And only when this need is seen does God then provide the solution. Adam falls into a deep sleep, and in another act of intimate, hands-on divine work, God creates the woman from the rib of the man. Now, the Bible commentator Matthew Henry has a kind of quite a famous quote about the rib, and if you’ve been around church, you may have heard it before.

It goes like this, the woman is not made out of Adam’s head to top him, not 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. Matthew Henry is an absolute smoothie, I think. That’s really good.

I need to take some notes on that and use that. But it is right, isn’t it? Eve is made out of Adam’s side to be bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. This rib thing is not a trigger for demeaning jokes about women.

It’s the opposite. Adam, in awe, speaks the first proper poem in the Bible. The exclamation is, at last, at last, a creature that is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She is like Adam, yet not identical with him. He names her. Interestingly, he names her, which I think does indicate a kind of functional headship, a kind of functional leadership in marriage.

(28:39 – 29:05)

And yet, they are also clearly equals, as their similar names suggest. He is man, she is woman. In Hebrew, it’s ish and isha.

It’s stressing. They’re not the same, but they are phenomenally similar, and they are equals. This lays the foundation for marriage in the rest of the Bible.

(29:07 – 32:36)

Later, when Jesus talked about marriage, He went back to Genesis 2. This was His base text. And what do we learn from this passage? Well, we learn that God created the marriage relationship, God saw the needs, God built the partner, and God brought the woman to the man. God actually was the very first father of the bride, right? The very first father of the bride is as He brings the woman to the man.

God is the matchmaker here. And in being so, God brings back together what originally was together. This union in marriage is actually a reunion, and it’s the basis for leaving your parents and then becoming one flesh.

Now, the one flesh thing, of course, it obviously has a sexual dimension to it, but it’s also more than… That’s just the physical expression of the union. Marriage is a partnership at the closest possible level. In fact, partnership maybe even isn’t the right word.

It’s being permanently stuck together as one, and as such, it is therefore meant to be permanent. This contrasts sharply with the modern view of relationships, which is so often short-lived and superficial and self-serving. Yet marriage doesn’t exist for us to simply satisfy our own personal desires.

If we go into marriage with that mindset, we will soon be disappointed. Marriage is about living out your oneness, and marriage is about together forming a fruitful partnership that blesses others and blesses the world and glorifies God in the world. Marriage is an outward-looking, fruitful partnership.

And let me just say something to people who are single and who are not married this morning. If you are not married, as far as I can see in Scripture, it is also your purpose to be fruitful as well. And although nothing is quite the same as marriage, I think the principle also holds for you that we cannot be fruitful alone.

As human beings, we glorify God as we live in community, whether that’s the community of the family or the community of a friendship or the community of the church or a ministry team. We might be single, but we’re not meant to be living life alone as we go through life. There’s something important here about companionship and partnership, I think even beyond marriage.

But whoever we are, whether we’re married or single, we should value marriage, not seeing human marriage as some kind of divine salvation. It’s not like in the movies, you know, that’s the salvation we’re looking for. No.

(32:38 – 35:33)

But on the other hand, not underestimating the foundational value that marriage gives to all society, the blessing it is to all of us. Isn’t it striking that the creation account finishes with a marriage? Why do you think that is? You ever thought about that? Why is it that the two chapters of creation, why on earth does it end with a wedding, right? It’s kind of a strange turn. But of course, creation itself will need a marriage to be redeemed.

And that marriage is not Adam and Eve’s marriage. That marriage is not any marriage that you may enter into. It’s Christ’s marriage.

Marriage, of course, in Genesis foreshadows the gospel. When we find ourselves unable, like Adam, to be the fruitful human beings we’re meant to be, God brings us another Helper. Jesus is our at last.

At last, here is the one we need. And at the same time, Jesus is also like Adam. I think He’s like Eve here in one sense.

He’s also like Adam. As He exclaims to the church, you are My at last, despite our sin and imperfection. I will love you with an everlasting love, so that we can be in a relationship like Adam and Eve in the beginning that is totally at ease in one another’s presence.

That’s the kind of relationship Jesus wants to have with us. Notice in that final verse, verse 25, the strange note that, well, it’s not really strange, but the man and the woman were naked, and they felt no shame. Why are we being told that? It’s evidence that they have nothing to hide from each other, and they have nothing to fear from each other, isn’t it? This is a glimpse of the paradise that existed before sin distorted it.

And it’s the paradise that we can enjoy again if we will pledge ourselves at last to Jesus. See, the house by the beach and the joy of jumping up and down with the supporters or whatever it is, the base pleasure, it’s all pointing to something greater that we were made for. We were made for a relationship with God, who is Yahweh Elohim.

(35:34 – 36:11)

And how is that possible? It’s possible because God has put his hands into the dirt. And even more than that, in the person of God the Son, God actually became the dirt. Jesus took on the clay, the humanity he shared in it, took it to the cross, experienced death so that you and I could enjoy a face-to-face relationship with God.

(36:12 – 36:20)

Friends, the cavalry has arrived. Our great Helper has come. Amen.

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