The Lavish Goodness Of God

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Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

0:11Well, this morning we resume our Genesis series by looking at the rest of chapter two. And if you're just joining us for the first time, maybe you're watching online, we we're trying to move through the entire book of Genesis, so consecutive expository preaching. And so today, today we get to look at chapter two. Would you join me as we pray Now, father in heaven, we want you to speak through your words so that we would see what you have to say to us this morning. So help me to speak as though I am speaking the very oracles of God and by your spirit, apply that to every heart, to every mind, to every individual, young and old, so that we would see more of you and love you more deeply.

1:04We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. When Stephanie and I, my wife, first moved to Minnesota, we considered buying a house in South Minneapolis in the Phillips neighborhood. And so this was in 2008, right during the housing market crash. And so you could get a hundred year old house for pretty cheap, relatively. So we'd walk into these homes, a hundred year old houses, and they would be foreclosures. And so they were just a total and complete wreck, trash everywhere, holes in the wall, grime, stains and smells. But if you could look past all the debris, all the gunk, you, you would see that these houses had gorgeous original woodwork.

2:00They had rich architectural details and beautiful craftsmanship and all hardwood and old world charm. And, and often we, we would stand in those homes and just think, ah, I wonder what this looked like in its heyday. I, I wonder how beautiful this house was before all the disrepair. And Genesis two gives us a glimpse of God's good world before the fall. Remember that Genesis is intended as a sermon for the people of Israel. It's to shape their identity and it's to shape their worldview. But as Israel hears chapter one, it was good. It was good, it was good, it was good. It was very good. They are wondering what happened to creation.

2:59Israel experienced a very different world than what we saw in Genesis one. They were slaves in Egypt, toiling under the hot sun, engaged in backbreaking labor seven days a week under the threat of an Egyptian task master with his whip. They, they labored constantly just for their basic sustenance. The, the mention of the rivers in, in our passage don't remind Israel of the Lushness of Eden. It reminds them of the massacre when their baby boys were thrown into the Nile by Pharaoh. And so Israel is wondering what went wrong in the midst of all this. And next week, Andy is gonna show us in Genesis three what went wrong. But this week, Genesis two sets the stage or provides the context for the fall.

3:59And our passage this morning hones in and shows us that God's creation was indeed amazing and magnificent and wonderful. It was spectacular. God has outdone himself in creating this amazing, beautiful world in which we get to live. And this truth that we'll look at this week makes the fall of next week even more tragic and devastating and confounding, doesn't it? Genesis two wants us to see that Adam and Eve's sin is not because somehow Eden wasn't good enough. It's not because God somehow held back what was good from his people. Instead, our passage reveals the lavish goodness of God. And, and so what our passage does in Genesis two, four through 25 is it zooms in on the account of creation.

4:59It transitions from the creation of the world to now man in the garden. Now, some people, when they read Genesis two, they begin to struggle. 'cause it seems like this parallel second creation account that has some details that, that almost seem contradictory. And, and I think what this does is it misunderstands the intention of the author. The narrator is giving us this poetic account that gives special attention to the creation of Eve in the Garden. If I told you how I met my wife and eventually married her, I, I wouldn't begin chronologically like on August, you know, 30th 2000, I, I met her and we had this first conversation which was consistent of the, I I wouldn't, I wouldn't give you all those details. I I, I would tell you the drama of how it unfolded, how she was struck by my handsomeness, right?

5:59I I would tell the story w with with drama in it. And, and that's what Genesis two is doing. There's a little too much laughing when I mentioned to my, I'm just kidding. So our, our pa our plan this morning is to walk through this passage making observations along the way. There are three main scenes in our passage that will guide us along. And the first is this God's generous provision in four to 14 God's generous provision verses four to 14. Look with me at verse four again. It says, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, there's a chiasm at work here where it talks about the heavens and the earth.

6:44They were created, they were made, and then now the earth and the heavens. And the first thing I want us to notice is this word, generations or account. This serves as the skeleton for the entire book of the book of Genesis. Genesis two, four to 4 26 is one literary unit that tracks the history of the first family on the face of the earth. And, and commentators are kind of a little bit all over the place on this, uh, there are 11 occurrences of the word generations. And so some people see 12 divisions, kind of the first section from one, one all the way to two, three. And then the other, other 11 mentions of generations. Some people see 10 because in Genesis 36, there's two mentions of the generations of Esau and still others see five divisions by collapsing some of them together, the the main thing I want you to see is that generations, that word that shows up 11 times in the book, links the entire book together as it traces Adam all the way to Joseph. And ultimately, as we see through the rest of the Bible, to the offspring of the woman.

7:53The second thing I want us to notice is what is God called here in Genesis two, four? Look at your Bible. You see capital l o r d, and that is the translation of Yahweh, God's personal covenant name, and, and it's Yahweh, Elohim, Lord God. This appears 20 times in Genesis two and three. I think this is a really big deal because what it's doing here is God or Elohim conveyed God's kind of transcendence as the sovereign king. And yet Yahweh communicates Israel's close covenant relationship with him. And what we're seeing unfolded in Genesis two and three is this intimate relationship the first humans experienced with God.

8:44My kids at home don't call me Steven. They don't call me Pastor Steven. They don't call me Mr. Lee, they call me dad. It would be weird if they called me anything else. Why? Because we have a intimate personal relationship. That's what's being conveyed here. Every time you see Yahweh, Elohim, it's trying to point to this intimate, intimate relationship that humanity has with God. So where do we see God's generous provision, the sovereign creator and sustainer of the entire world. The one who made everything and everything in it is in relationship with his people. Now verses five to seven show us God's intimate involvement in his creation.

9:36You see, verse seven, then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. All of these point to God's intimate involvement in creation, these anthropomorphic descriptions of God, a as though he had human attributes that this idea of breathe into his nostrils suggest the very intimacy, uh, of a kiss. God is the potter who is getting his hands dirty in, in shaping a vessel out of clay. He breathes into the very nostrils of mankind. And this is very similar to what we see in Ezekiel's vision of dry bones in Ezekiel 37. You can read it there, but in this vision, the bones are brought to life by the inb, breathing of the very breath of life, God is the source of our every life and breath. Acts 1725, Paul says to the men of the opus, God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

10:48And so what we see here in Genesis two is this reminder that despite all of our problems and our trials, God has graciously given each and every single one of us. The Breath of life. Job 1210 says in his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind. Or Job 33, 4, the spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. So again, we see God's lavish and gracious provision for his people. We take 12 to 20 breaths every single minute, and we take 20,000 a day and every single one of them is given to us by God so that we might have life. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

11:47Now verses eight and nine, describe this garden and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the East. This is verse eight. And there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the site and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, Eden refers to the broader area within it is this garden, this paradise that is to become man's habitat. And Eden is full of trees that are pleasing to the eye and that are to provide food for Adam. Why does the narrator include all of this information?

12:29If we've already gotten some of it in chapter one, why, why does he tell us this information? Again, I think it's this, it's to set the stage for how tragic it will be when Adam and Eve disobey God. What we're supposed to see in this is that God is not stingy, he is not tight-fisted, he's not withholding anything good from mankind. He's not depriving Adam. God gives Adam life and breath and a garden and life-giving work, which we'll see in just a moment. Bountiful food and even the tree of life, the the picture that's being portrayed for us is this bountiful provision. Now in verse nine, we're introduced to this tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

13:16The tree of life suggests that those who eat of this fruit from this tree will result in continued life, not because it's a magical tree, but because God grants life. So it's all ultimately from God. The the tree of knowledge, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil suggests that the eating of its fruit will confer a, a certain type of knowledge that will coincide ultimately with death. We'll see that in just a moment and we begin to see that the narrator is introducing this tension into our texts, that there's somehow good and evil when up to this point in creation. There is no evil in this account.

14:00There's this mystery that is being introduced that isn't fully resolved until Genesis three. Now in, in Genesis two, 10 to 14, he tells about these, tells us about these four rivers that flow out of Eden. And you can see that there's four different ones and we don't know exactly kind where Eden's located because two of these rivers we don't really, uh, know anymore. But this description portrays Eden as this rich and bountiful garden with this fertile, fertile, flowing waters. It's the opposite of a desert wasteland. It it's rich with foliage and well watered and even filled with precious metals.

14:38Do you see that gold deum, onyx stone? Again, what we're supposed to see is that creation is extravagant and lush and plentiful. But there are clues in this text that Eden is much more than that. Eden is God's garden sanctuary where his presence dwells with mankind. Well, where do I get this? In verse 15 it says that Adam is to work and keep the garden, which is what the priests were to do in the temple. Those same words often sometimes translated they were to guard. And then Israel's tabernacle both and the temple had wood carvings of trees. And then the, the temple was overlaid with gold and onyx stone decorated the priestly ephod and the breastplate.

15:26We see this in Exodus 28 and and we see gold and onyx in the garden as well. So, so the picture that's being painted for us here is that Eden is where God dwells among his people. Where do we see God's generous provision? God's people not only get all that they need for life, not only do they get breath, not only do they get a garden, not only do they get lavish waters and foliage and fruit, they get God himself. God's presence dwells among his people. Now what I wanna do is now look at the second thing, which is God's guiding prohibition. In verses 15 to 17, God's guiding prohibition, verse 15 says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. We mentioned that earlier. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Now, two things we see here, the gift of work and the prohibition to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. First the man is to work and keep the garden.

16:42He's not this passive spectator, but he's been given an assignment in the garden. And that means that work is not this cursed condition, but it's a life-giving reality. One commentator says, life without work would not be worthy of human beings. Adam not only has a relationship with God, not only a garden to live in, not only food to eat, but he gets meaning and purpose to his life.

17:13Now, in the midst of God's bountiful provision, you may eat, surely eat of every tree God gives one prohibition, 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. Now, this doesn't mean that Adam was immortal. If he had only eaten of this tree, only God possesses immortality one Timothy six 16. What it probably does mean though is that Adam, if he had not eaten of the tree, of the knowledge of good and evil and just eaten of the tree of life, would've passed into eternity without dying. Enoch or Elijah, John Calvin says, his earthly life truly would've been temporal, yet he would've passed into heaven without death and without injury.

18:08Now, how should we understand this prohibition? Isn't it good that man knows the difference between good and evil? This is actually Solomon's request when he's asked, when ask me for whatever you want, power, money. He says, who am I to rule this? People I I don't have the wisdom. Help me to discern between good and evil. And, and so I i isn't this supposed to be a good thing? The reason this was prohibited is because it was to seek wisdom apart from God, apart from trusting and obeying God. It's an act of moral autonomy to say, I know what's good for me and I'm going to choose that. Apart from what God has said, uh, one commentator says, this tree, speaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn't forbidden because it was evil. Rather it was evil because it was forbidden.

19:14God had put this tree in the garden to give Adam and Eve the opportunity to live out genuine faith and obedience. And what we see even in this is that God relates to man as a moral being. He gives them a loving command, instructs him to obey, tells him of the consequences if he disobeys. This is no different, uh, than what parents do with children all the time. Honey, that's the stove. That's a fire, that's an electrical outlet. Don't touch the command. Don't touch. It is not a curse. It's a blessing. And then if a parent doesn't instruct their child, we would say, you're being negligent. And so God is giving a gracious prohibition to his people.

20:05To eat of the tree is to disregard God and to live apart from his will and to live apart from his word. And yet, isn't that our great temptation for each and every single one of us? We're tempted to live according to our own wisdom. Uh, we're tempted to disregard God's design for, for life and for flourishing and for gender and for marriage and for sexual intimacy. We're tempted to live by by trying to figure it out all on our own. God, I got this. I don't wanna pray about this because you might call me to do something else. I just wanna do what I wanna do. I've already decided this is the great temptation of our hearts is that we live according to our own self-made so-called wisdom.

20:59We're we're, we're tempted. I think often to think God doesn't know my situation. If he only knew, if he only knew how I felt. If he only knew how lonely I feel, if he only knew how hard this is, then he would change his commands. And that's just not true. God is not withholding from us. Good. This is what we need to see it. It might have been easy for Adam and Eve to say, well, we ate of the fruit because we were lacking. We we needed more. This garden just wasn't enough. And so often that's how we live in our sin. We say, I know better than God. And what we're supposed to see in Genesis two and in all of life is that God is generous, he is good, and he is not withheld anything that we need for life.

22:02And godliness, our world testifies that kicking against God's design, God's will, God's word, God's wisdom will not ultimately lead to life and to joy and to flourishing. And so in our text this morning, there's a call to heeded God's word, to seek God's wisdom to live according to his will and to his word. So where do we see the lavish goodness of God, the gift of work and even this guiding prohibition to teach Adam to obey and to live. Now the third section, God's gift of marriage verses 18 to 25. In all the things that we've seen, there's been this repeated refrain of good and good and good.

22:56And the first thing we notice is not good. Then the Lord God said verse 18, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Creation is good and very good, but here we read not good for the first time. So what is it that's actually not good? It's not that Adam is lonely and needs someone to entertain him. He has work and food and a garden and animals and he has God himself. But God says God is the one who says it's not good because Adam is lacking a corresponding counterpart. He's not going to be able to fulfill the creation mandate. Adam doesn't know it's not good, but God declares it.

23:46And so God says, I will make him a helper fit for him. Uh, the word fit there is suitable. This complimentary counterpart, someone equal in worth and dignity, sharing the same personhood, a a fellow image bearer and yet similar and dissimilar in all the right ways. And God calls the woman a helper, which many read this and think of it as disparaging helper means to provide aid and support and is often used of actually describing God. Psalm 46, God is our refuge and strength a very present help in time of trouble. Psalm 1 21, I lift my eyes unto the hills from where does my help come from? It's speaking of God.

24:37God is the one who protects and helps and delivers his people. It has no negative or subservient undertones. But what God does now is he prepares Adam to be able to receive and value eve. So he initiates what I call operation name the animals, right? He puts him to sleep out of the ground. The Lord God formed every beast of the field. Every bird of the heaven brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature that was its name, the man gave names to all livestock, to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So before he puts them to sleep, he has 'em name all the animals. And and so Adam, he he, he's studying them, he's looking at them and he begins to exercise his dominion and authority over the animal world by naming each and every single one of them.

25:32Platypus, aardvark, lemur, giraffe, right? And and they come to him willingly. Adam doesn't become their lunch, he discerns their characteristics. And in the process, Adam begins to realize there is none that corresponded to him. God is preparing Adam to value his helper. And so now he puts him to sleep. In verse 21, Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. So divine surgery takes place and he takes from his rib and crafts that in to a woman. I often wonder, do men have one less rib than women? No, they don't.

26:32But what this is trying to underscore is that the unity of mankind all comes from one source, woman comes from man. And every man will be born of woman Puritan. Matthew Henry writes with this wonderful poetic eloquence. The woman was not made out of his 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 to his heart to be beloved. There's this beautiful complimentary fittingness between man and woman. If Adam was just lonely, God could have given him a golden retriever. If he just needed friends, he could have given him a bunch of dudes, right? But no, Adam needed a helper suitable to fulfill the creation mandate. And Eve is perfect for Adam.

27:34And Adam is perfect for Eve. And as Eve glistens with the do of creation, perfect embody and soul, she's presented to Adam to become his wife. The first marriage God gives away the bride. And how does Adam respond? This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. What he says at this point is, finally at last God, you have outdone yourself in making this woman the very first words that come out of mankind in the entire Bible is a man praising his wife in poetry. These are the very first words recorded. That man ever speaks it. It's poetic, wonderment, intermingled with explosive joy.

28:33This is not unlike a wedding. Whenever I get to do weddings, I get to stand up front next to the groom and he just has the goofy grin on his face and we just tell him, don't lock your knees 'cause we don't wanna pick you up off the floor. And then you see the bride walking down for the first time and all of her splendor and beauty and he just has the goofy grin on his face and he's like, let's get this done. Like before, she changes her mind, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Adam is noticing something. She's not like that. Platypus. Thank God she's not like that. Lemur, this is the same stuff as me.

29:14There's something gloriously similar and dissimilar. There's a play on words. Here she shall be called Isha because she was taken out of ish God presides over this very first wedding ceremony as a pattern for all humanity. One man and one woman deviation from God's design, which we'll see later in Genesis, even with polygamy, will lead to heartache and brokenness. What what we see here is that man is created from the dust of the ground, that there's a ordering that's at work and he's placed into the garden. And so then he's to work and to keep the ground. The woman is made from the man. And so she is to be his helper.

30:06The way in which they were created points to their wider work that they have been given. This isn't saying in every instance, but in general the man in the wider world of industry and dominion over the earth and and women in the nurture of the inner world of the home. Now this isn't to say what man or women can or can't do, but Genesis two establishes the very pattern of creation that later on Jesus and Paul will both quote Genesis 2 24. We have differences not only in our bodies, which our world wants to deny, but we have differences in our tasks. And yet we are complimentary in those differences and we need one another in order to carry that out. Now, Genesis two teaches that marriage is God's pattern for the family.

31:05God's lavish goodness is revealed in the gift of marriage. And yet I know I'm speaking to a very diverse audience. We have people who have never been married, who, who perhaps will never be married. We have people who are divorced. We have people who are widowed. We have people who have unwanted singleness and people who are still holding out hope and praying that God would provide. And I know that this is an area of great pain and heartache. Jesus was never married and he was not incomplete. And so what we want you to hear this morning is that you are not incomplete. If you have never been married, you are not lacking.

31:47You are not missing out at one level. We want you to know that you are seen and known and loved by God. And yet verse 24 is pointing this picture to the pattern of the family and of marriage. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. There's this very clear leaving and cleaving to form this new family unit. Marriage reprioritizes, our former familial commitments, our loyalties to our parents are displaced to some measure in some measure by our new loyalties to our spouse. In Moses Day, it wasn't the man who left his family, but it's often the woman who left her family.

32:38Like in the story of of Rebecca and Isaac. She left her family from a far country to come and to be with Isaac with his family. So there's just this broader picture, this metaphorical kind of leaving and cleaving, you don't have to move out of the city, but you have to have new familial commitments because you've established this new family unit. A. And while I know that there are many issues within marriages where husband or a wife have not learned to leave and cleave, I think the bigger problem in our world today is that people just aren't getting married anymore. Uh, that there's more delayed marriage. I, I looked at some statistics.

33:16Adults 18 to 34 who were married fell from 60% in 1978 to 30% in half. In 2018, adults 25 to 50 who have never been married, quadrupled in 1970, from 9% to 35% in 2018. And so it's very counter-cultural today to get married and to have kids because it's part of God's good design. Most of us are products of the marriage of our parents. Marriage is a good thing and it's under assault in our world today. It's being redefined as between any two people, regardless of their sex as long as they want to commit to one another. And soon there's this movement for polygamy. They call 'em throughs. Three and couples put together then all sorts of other sexual deviancy that is coming.

34:18And yet we see by creations designed that man and woman become one flesh for the very purpose of fulfilling the creation mandate. And so male and female bodies testify to the biblical design for marriage and intimacy. As much as we wanted to deny nature, we cannot deny biology. If if you show me a nation that's comprised solely of same-sex couples in one generation, it will no be no longer. And that's by design. You need a man and a woman to be able to have children. Genesis 2 25, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Verse 25 highlights the wonder of this pre-fall state.

35:06They don't know shame or guilt. They're naked and unashamed. Nakedness often in the Bible is associated with guilt or humiliation. And Adam and Eve don't experience any of that. They stand before God with joy and nothing to hide. So our passage reveals that our generous and lavish God gives us a world of good to enjoy. That's the main point of our passage, our generous, our lavish God gives us a world of good, so good to enjoy. Creation is a bountiful world. It's full of his good gifts. The earth is good, the garden is good, marriage is good. Male and female complimentary and in their differences, that's good. And God is good.

36:01God is present among his people. When I was studying Genesis two, preparing for the sermon, it just made me think, oh, how sweet would it be to have lived in that paradise? Like how good would it have been to just have lived a little while before the fall longing for Eden? It would be nice to have no shame. It would be nice to have life, life-giving work without the thorns and thistles. It would be nice to have a sinless marriage. It would be nice to have abundant provision. Just go outside and honey crisp apple, fresh off the tree. It would be nice to have lavish and bountiful blessings. It would be nice to have a world without sin and sorrow and suffering, wouldn't it? It would be nice to just stroll in the garden, to have God sidle up to us and to have a conversation.

37:06But we know what happens in Genesis three, don't we? And yet, for all those who are trusting in Jesus right now, we don't have to wonder. We don't have to long for we don't have to imagine such intimacy. We have it now in Christ. In the midst of a great broken groaning world, Jesus looked out on his people, sheep without a shepherd, and he laid down his life. He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of Christ. Jesus paid the cost for us. And in his death, the curtain between the Holy of Holies split in two. And now we have a restored relationship with our father in heaven This morning.

38:01You don't have to wonder about Genesis two and the garden in the Eden. You have access to God in all of his fullness. Dwell on this for a moment with me. We get God, we don't have to wonder what it would be like oh to to just have a conversation with the Father in the garden without shame. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We've been washed clean. We can go to the Father. And we don't just call him Yahweh Elohim. We now call him Abba Father. We sidle right up into our father's lap and we say, oh God, let me pour out my heart before you. We have a relationship at an even more intimate level with God this morning.

39:01If God is for us, who can be against us? Who will separate us from the love of Christ, how will he not with Jesus graciously give us all things. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil gave way ultimately to Christ crucified on a tree. And then revelation tells us we will eat of the tree of life once again. We will take of that fruit and we will eat to our hearts content. And in that final day, we will not be naked. No more of these old rags. No fig leaves, no animal skins will be clothed in the white linen robes that Jesus himself has given us. The robes of righteousness that will signify your a rightful guest at the marriage Feast of the Lamb.

40:09You belong here because you're not naked. You're not clothed in rags. Jesus himself by his shed blood gives us his robes of righteousness. And that's what we wear to the wedding feast. And he says, your home. Home. So Jesus is making all things new and he's coming soon. Oh, I can't wait. Let's pray. Father, awaken in our hearts, longing for you, and then help us as we go from here to be those who don't neglect this intimate relationship that we have. Oh, but that we delight in it, that we call upon you, that we enjoy it. Oh, we thank you for your many good gifts, including the gathering of the Saints here this morning cause us to love you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Genesis 2:4-25