Pre-Fall Man: Lavishly Supplied

Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to, Genesis chapter 2, Genesis chapter. 2 for our time of study. In God's word, this morning. If you want to give a title, to the message today, it would be, Pre-fall man, lavishly supplied.

Pre-fall man, lavishly supplied. in our next section of Genesis 2, we'll learn about pre-fall man, lovingly directed, and then in the next passage, we'll see pre-fall man beautifully helped. as God provides a help meet, for him. But today, pre-fall men lavishly supplied, we'll be looking at verses 4 through 9.

I was reading an interesting news story, this past week regarding something that happened last, Saturday. A group of tourists were on a tour bus in Iceland. last week and they were visiting various tourist, sites in Iceland and they stopped near a volcanic canyon in the southern highlands of Iceland on a Saturday afternoon, last Saturday afternoon. There was a woman on the bus, one of the tourists who took the opportunity of that bus stop to get off the bus and to change her clothes and to freshen up a bit.

When she and everyone else returned to the bus, her fellow tourists did not recognize her as being the same woman. So as far as they were thinking, the woman who had gotten off the bus had wandered away and had not yet returned. When the bus was about to leave, the tourists notified the tour guide that the passenger was missing. They gave out to everyone on the bus a description of the missing woman, and the woman herself heard the description, but she did not recognize that the description was of her prior self before she got off the bus.

So they all formed, this is a true story, they all formed a search party and helpful woman that she was, this woman joined in the search for herself. The news report ended with this paragraph. oh, I, it's not on there. OK, my bad.

It's not on the slide, but let me read it to you. About 50 people searched the terrain by vehicles and on foot. The Coast Guard was even readying a helicopter to help, but the search was called off at about 3 a.m. When it became clear that the missing woman was in fact accounted for and searching for herself.

I, I laughed when I read that story and then investigated to see if it was really true and to the best of my ability, it was true and it actually happened. But then I was left pondering, how does something like this happen? It happened because this woman was not paying close enough attention to the description of herself that was being given. And she had forgotten what she looked like in her prior state before she changed her clothes and freshened up.

Consequently, she ended up spending hours looking for herself when she did not need to. Sadly, the same is unfortunately true for many people today. who are searching for themselves, and they have not found themselves because they aren't paying close enough attention. To the Bible's description of them.

Actually, the Bible provides us with a two-fold description of ourselves. The Bible describes man in his post-fall state. And the Bible provides a description of mankind in his pre-fall state. And in our passage today, we find the beginnings of this detailed description of man in his pre-fall state.

If you really want to know yourself, you must first come to grips with what mankind was. Before the fall. If you want to find yourself, you should study Genesis 2 very carefully. This passage will bring vividness to that vague, ancient memory.

That we all have of something that has been lost, of something that we were destined for, of something that we once were in Adam. Understanding this is essential to knowing how much we have changed, how much has been lost, and what it is. That God longs to bring us back to. We will never recognize ourselves truly nor truly appreciate our fallen condition until we first understand what mankind was in his pre-fall state.

And our passage today will Help us with this in a tremendous way. We come this morning to Genesis chapter 2 and verse 4 to a verse that begins, it's a break in the action. It begins a new section. In, in Genesis, Moses has told us the story of the seven days of creation in chapter 1 and the 1st 3 verses of chapter 2, and he finished that in Genesis chapter 2 verse 3.

And having done that, what he begins to do, beginning in verse 4, is he backtracks a bit and zeroes in on something that God does at some point of day 3 of creation, and then also several things that God did on day 6. of creation. Genesis chapter 2 verse 4 serves as a title to what follows. Literally, the text reads this way.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day or in the time period that the Lord God made earth and heaven. actually, the Greek Septuagint translation of this verse says these are the Genesos. from which the book Genesis, that's where we get our name, our title for this book, Genesis. The Geneseos of the heavens and the earth.

This expression, these are the Geneseos, the generations. This is the first of 11 times that we see this heading in the book of Genesis. in this case, I'm not going to read off all the cases, but there's a number of times where we see this, and if you're going to study the Book of Genesis, you want to make note of all the occasions where This type of title occurs. In this case, in Genesis 2:4, Moses' words serve as both a fitting conclusion to what has preceded it and a great introduction to what follows.

And his goal is not simply to tell us how the heavens were generated, the heavens and the earth were generated. But also to tell us what was generated from the heavens and the earth. He aims to tell us how from one standpoint, man in his physicality was generated from the earth, and then how Eve was generated from him. In this section we will see how it is that Adam was formed by God from the dust of the ground, from the stuff of earth.

Adam physically was made out of earth stuff, so he is a son of the earth in that sense. And Adam was created by God, and so he is the offspring of God or a son of God. As Luke in his genealogy refers to him as in the New Testament. So what follows this title in verse 4 is the story of Adam and Eve, whom God created in the day or during the time period when he was creating the earth and heaven and all that was in it.

We're going to notice here in verse 4. and in the verses that follow, if you see in verse 4, it says in the day that the Lord God made heaven and earth, this is the very first reference that we see in the Bible to the name Jehovah, which is the personal name for God. In fact, the expression is Jehovah Elohim. In the Hebrew text.

Up to this point of the story, the word for God has always been Elohim. Now, it is Jehovah Elohim. The name Jehovah Elohim is used throughout all of chapter 2 and throughout all of chapter 3 with the exception of when the serpent is conversing with Eve. That's the only time we don't see in these two chapters God referred to by his personal name, Jehovah.

Elohim. Overall, we see Jehovah Elohim 20 times in chapters 2 and 3 as opposed to just Elohim that we saw a little over 20 times in chapter 1. commentators speculate as to why there is a name alteration here, why the writer has moved from Elohim to now referring to God as Jehovah Elohim. Genesis, here's the reason why it's very appropriate.

Genesis 1 is the full creation account of the entire universe and it is more general in the telling. God spoke and it was done. But here, beginning in chapter 2, verse 4, and what follows, the story takes a more personal turn. It's more personal in the telling.

In chapter 2, God is directly forming man from the dirt of the ground, and he breathes into man's nostrils, the breath of life, making him a living soul, and God is also seen in these verses making a garden for and providing for man. We're going to see in the verses to come how this whole story provides us a more personal depiction. Of God. And so his personal name in these verses is most appropriate.

Now what's interesting also about this passage, beginning in verse 4 and then as we get into verse 5, is that it doesn't just say, just launch in and say God created man out of the dust of the ground. Instead, in verse 5, what we see is that Moses in writing this presents a problem first. In fact, he presents a fourfold problem which God solves in specific ways. Beginning in verse 5, Moses takes us back to a point in day 3.

You might want to mark that in your Bible. If you try to fit what's happening, beginning in verse 5, with the creation account, this, puts us somewhere inside of day 3. God has just separated the waters from the dry land. We know that from chapter 1.

And at some point after that separation of the land and the waters had occurred, God called the dry land Earth, the waters he called the seas, and it's roughly at this point that the details of verses 5 and 6 would fit. And so let's read. This passage beginning in verse 5. The text says now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground, but a mist used to rise up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.

Now, moving on to day 6, then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, and there He planted the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground, the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the word of God, and may God help us to Understand his word today.

Now, let me, before we go any further, let me, issue a, a warning, regarding this passage. I want to warn you in advance that this text, especially verses 5 and 6, are painfully difficult verses to interpret. One writer has rightfully said that every square inch of these verses is a battleground. I have been preaching here at Cornerstone for 23.5 years, and I can easily say that this passage that we're going to look at today is in the top 5 most difficult passages that I have ever studied in order to preach to this, congregation.

There are several different ways of understanding the vocabulary of these verses, the grammar of these verses, and the logic. Of these verses. What I'm going to do this morning is to give you the product of my very best efforts, as an imperfect man, an imperfect interpreter in understanding, this passage. Normally to preach to you, it takes about 15 to 17 hours to cook the meal that gets delivered to you.

This week, 34 hours. and we won't even be able, there's a lot I'd love to say, but we're limited on time. So there, there are some things that took 2 hours to research that only get 20 seconds in this sermon. so I just want you to know in advance, some of you have studied this passage and there's a number of difficulties and we're not going to be able to get into, to all of them, but we are going to try to be faithful to what God says and do our best.

the first part of this message is going to feel a little bit tedious, but I want you to encourage you to put your thinking caps on and try to stick with me. I've had to work hard this week, so, I want you to be willing to work hard with me, this morning, OK? I know you guys, and I know you love the word and you're willing to do that, and that's what I love about this congregation. In verse 5, Moses, here's how I want us to approach this.

Moses sets things up in verse 5 by essentially describing a fourfold deficiency that existed at this point of creation at some point inside of day 3 after the land and the waters were separated from one another. This is actually a negative verse. We see the word no 3 times and not one time. and Moses is going to lay out for us the deficits, and let's look at each of these deficiencies.

First of all, there were no wild uncultivated plants in the earth. Verse 5, now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth. The Hebrew word that is translated shrub in the New American Standard. seems to speak a plant life that grows wild as a result of rainfall.

This word is found elsewhere only in Genesis 21:15 and Job 30:4 through 7, referring to a desert shrub that grows on its own. Without human cultivation. As one writer says, the word here refers to the wild vegetation that grows spontaneously after the onset. Of the rainy season.

All it takes for this to grow is rain. For this plant to grow, it needs no human cultivation. So at this point of day 3, there were no wild shrubs growing, but that's not all. Look at the second problem or deficit.

There were also no plants requiring cultivation that had yet sprouted. Verse 5, and no plant of the field. Had yet sprouted. the Hebrew word that is translated plant here in the New American Standard, as, one resource suggests, is not to vegetation in general, but to agricultural produce.

It refers to cultivated grains like corn, wheat, barley, or rye. These are plants that grow and flourish as a result of human. Cultivation. Now, you might want to write down a reference right by that this word, and that is Genesis 1:11.

Some say this is referring to a plant that doesn't show up until after the fall, but this very Hebrew word shows up in Genesis 1:11 as being something that God created and brought into existence on day three of creation. So this is a pre-fall. Plant that is being referred to, but it is a plant that doesn't grow on its own but requires human cultivation. So let's sum up.

So far, Moses has told us two things that are lacking at this point of day three, uncultivated plants that grow on their own without human tillage, and also cultivated plants that require human cultivation, like wheat and corn. Moses uses these two plants to represent probably all plant types that fall into one of these two categories, cultivated plants, uncultivated plants, and all of such things were lacking at this point of day 3. Moses now, having told us these two deficits, now tells us two more deficits that serve to explain the first two deficits.

Deficit number 3.

He says, here's the reason, and yet also here's the third deficit at this point of creation, and that is that God had not yet sent rain upon the earth. He says, for Jehovah God at this point of creation, on day 3 had not sent rain. Upon the earth. In other words, Moses is telling us that at this point of day 3 of creation, God had not yet caused the phenomenon of rain to fall upon the earth.

But there's something beyond just rainfall that's lacking. Observe what Moses says next, and this is the 4th deficit, and that is there was no man to cultivate the ground. Verse 5, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. There was no man to work the ground in order to prepare it for planting in an organized way that would be conducive to domesticated crops growing.

So in summary, take a look at this slide. This is the logic of the passage as it seems to be unfolding. In the way that I'm understanding this, Moses is telling us there is a twofold lack at this point of creation. There are no cultivated plants and no uncultivated plants, and I, there's a typo there.

So there are no uncultivated plants and no cultivated plants. Are you with me? So that's what's lacking at this point. The reasons are.

Twofold. There is no rain that has been sent yet at this point of creation, and there's no cultivator to cultivate, the, the ground. The earth lacks rainfall at this point and the earth lacks a cultivator at this point. so you're tracking with me so far?

Yeah, OK. Now, if you're tracking with the passage up to this point, you probably feel like you're being set up for something. That you're being set up for a two-fold solution. To this lack, and that's exactly what seems to happen beginning in verse 6.

Beginning in verse 6, we will observe how God addresses these deficits by supplying a means of watering the ground and creating someone to cultivate the ground. God is going to supply water to water the ground, and He's going to supply a cultivator. All right? And he's gonna do that in the verses that follow and several more things.

And so this is the way we're gonna structure what we're doing this morning. We're gonna look at 7 acts of God, beginning in verse 6, that God engaged in by way of creating and providing richly for man and the 1st 2 of these acts is God is addressing the deficits. That we have just been looking at in verse 5. The first act of God, based on how I'm gonna suggest that we understand verse 6, is that God caused a mist to rise from the earth and water the ground.

God caused a mist to rise from the earth and water the ground. It says in verse 6, but a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. Now here's where things get really challenging. If you're using, for example, the New American Standard and even other English translations, well, first of all, just looking at the New American Standard, you see the words used to.

You can disregard those words. Those are not in the Hebrew text. The translators are making an interpretive decision there, but we don't find those words in the Hebrew text. So just maybe underline them, just so what to do, with that.

I'll explain why that's important in just a moment. Now, following the lead of most English translations, the New American Standard. Translates verse 6 as something of a parenthetical explanatory comment. The basic gist is God had not yet sent rain upon the earth, but there was at that time a mist that would rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.

Some of your translations instead of saying mist will say streams, and I'll get to that in just a, a moment. But they take it as parenthetical and explanatory. No rainfall, but hey, there was a mist at that time where there was no rainfall, there was a mist that would water the surface of the ground. While grammatically that makes sense, the biggest problem with it is that it leaves us confused.

Moses has just said that there was no stuff growing because there was no rain to water the ground, but then based on this translation, he turns around and says, but hey, there was a mist or a stream that was watering the whole surface. Of the ground And that leaves us confused, right? If you ask someone why aren't any plants growing here and they respond by saying, well, because it never rains here, but there is a mist or a stream that rises up and waters the whole surface of the ground.

You would probably be confused and say, If the ground is being watered, then you haven't really explained to me why no plants are growing here.

Do you guys understand the difficulty there? Now because of this difficulty, some commentators suggest that rather than taking verse 6 as a parenthetical note, that we should take verse 6 as describing something that God caused to happen in the sequence of events in order to address the deficit described in verse 5. In their view, here's what's happening. In verse 5, Moses is telling us that there were no plants growing because there was no rain on the earth at that point in time.

And so in verse 6, Moses tells us that God solves this problem by causing a mist to rise and to water the whole surface of the ground. One writer who takes this view says that the aim of verse 6 is to show how the deficiency of water mentioned in verse 5 was met. As I said earlier, some translations take the Hebrew word. that is translated here missed and they translated as streams.

How many of you have a translation that says streams? Raise your hand. OK. I'm, I'm personally persuaded by those who would say that it should be understood as myths, so you can at least make a note in your Bible that that's an alternative translation.

In fact, I'm even open to the suggestion of some commentators who would translate this Hebrew word. As rain cloud. OK. there's a handful of commentators.

one of the guys, wrote a Hebrew grammar that I remember using, when I was teaching Hebrew at the Master seminary, a wonderful scholar, and this is his suggestion and others would agree with him. And so in their interpretation, they would translate this verse in this way, verse 6, so he, Jehovah God, made a rain cloud to come up and it watered all the surface of the ground. But either way, let's at least lock our minds onto the idea of mist. What makes the word for mist honestly hard to understand.

And interpret is because it only shows up one other time in the Old Testament. Normally it's nice when you're like, what does this word mean? If it shows up 100 other times in the Bible, well then you can look up those verses and get a feel for the context and understand the meaning of the word. This word only shows up one other place in all of the Old Testament, and that is In Job 36:27.

Look what Job 36:27 and 28 say, for he, God, draws up the drops of water, they distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds pour down and they drip upon men. Abundantly. At least in the Job passage, we see the clear connection of this Hebrew word to abundant rain. What's interesting is the ancient translation of the Old Testament, the Greek Septuagint.

In Genesis 2:6, they translate the Hebrew word as spring, actually. But then when the Septuagint is translating this passage in Job, they translate this word as cloud. go figure. This is tough.

This is challenging. but I think it's, at least in, in my way of thinking to understand this is mist is a perfectly sensible way to understand this term. In their commentary, Kyle and Delich, say that the Hebrew word here in Genesis 2:6 refers to vapor that falls as rain. If their interpretation is correct, and I'm inclined to think that it might be, then what we have here is perhaps the beginning of rain itself from which we may infer, therefore that it rained before the flood.

If their interpretation is correct, rain was first sent by God on day 3 of creation. You say, well, I, I always thought the Bible taught that it didn't rain until the flood. where you got that? From Genesis 2:5 and 6 and the way that that is interpreted, but technically, all that verse 5 has to be saying is that at some point here up to day 3 of creation, there had not yet been rain.

That's all that needs to be said here based on this understanding. so day 3 is the day that God introduces rain and sends rain, or at least a mist upon the earth. Another writer says that what we have in this verse is the rising of the mists, their condensation and the regular falling as rain, watering all the surface of the ground. Now, one other thing to mention real quick, this sentence in verse 6 could be understood with mist as the subject.

in fact, that's what the new American standard does. A mist would rise from the earth and water the ground. But the Hebrew text would also allow for God to be the subject of this sentence and for the verb to be causative active, and mist is actually the direct object where it would be translated this way. So he, God, caused a mist.

Or a rain cloud to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. So verse 5, no rain. Verse 6, God addresses that problem and he causes rain to fall. If you want to try to put the pieces together with the creation account in chapter 1, we can say that the mist or the rain falling.

In verse 6 of chapter 2 is happening on day 3 of creation in conjunction with God speaking the words, let the earth bring forth vegetation. In Genesis 1:11. Meaning that when we read in Genesis 1:11, God speaking the words, let the earth bring forth vegetation, perhaps we can imagine as he's speaking those words it raining, or at least having just rained, and the earth sprouts all of this vegetation in obedience to God's command. So based on this understanding, God addresses the lack of rain problem by causing a rain cloud or a mist to rise from the earth and water the ground.

that's the first part of the solution to the deficits, OK? No uncultivated plants, verse 5, no cultivated plants. Why? 1, because there was no rain that had been sent yet and there was no cultivator.

Verse 6, God causes rain or a mist to rise to address the lack of water problem. Verse 7, God creates the cultivator. He creates man who would cultivate the ground. This is the second aspect of the solution to the deficits described in verse 5.

And we know that God created man to be a cultivator because in verse 15, God puts man in the garden to cultivate. It says in verse 7, then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. By the way, the tedious part is over. All right?

and we're gonna work through these points, these acts of God at a more rapid clip at, at this point. So what we see in verse 7 is the second and final solution to the deficits described in verse 5. No cultivator in verse 5. Now in verse 7, God addresses this lack by creating the cultivator.

And the text says that God formed man of the dust from the ground. We lose a little something in our English translations of this passage, literally, let me read the text, this way. The Lord God formed Ha Adam from the dirt of Ha Adama. A good English equivalent to bring out the similarity of those two terms would be the Lord God formed the earthling from the dust of the earth would be a good English equivalent to that.

the verb that is translated form is actually a beautiful word. It's used several times in the Old Testament to describe the work of a potter, and that is clearly the picture here. God is the potter who is taking the stuff of earth, and he is forming and fashioning man. I love watching potters do their work.

I like watching videos of them, doing their work. I love watching them take a lump of clay and turn it into something beautiful. The process almost looks magical to me. The lump of clay almost seems to be a living thing as it's responding to every touch of The potter.

This is exactly what God is doing here. If we were watching Him, we would see him taking a mound of dirt and begin to form that mound of dirt into a skeletal structure and then internal organs and then the skin and then the facial features, the nose, the eyes, the lips, the fingernails, the toenails. We would be riveted by the artistry of it all. It is touching to see God so personally involved in the creation of man in this verse.

Everything else, God speaks. And it comes into existence, even things that were, that came out of the stuff of earth like vegetation or animals, God spoke and they came into existence, but here we see God forming man in a very personal way using the materials of the ground. And then after forming man's body, the text tells us that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life. This shows closeness.

Tenderness and intimacy. One writer says it this way, God's breathing into man here is warmly personal. With the face to face intimacy of a kiss and the significance that this was an act of giving as well as making and self-giving at that. This isn't just God making, it's him giving of himself and of his breath to man so that man would become a living soul.

The same writer goes on to make this observation. Hence, even at our making, the pattern of God so love that he gave is already visible. The same God who here is giving his breath to man will later give his son. For man and give his spirit to man as well.

What a God we have. The text tells us that God breathed into his life, into his nostrils, the breath of life and man became a living being, a living soul. The result of God's creative forming of, of Adam and breathing his own breath into Adam is that Adam became a living being. God has done something infinitely more wonderful than any potter could ever do.

He's just created a living being. Imagine Michelangelo sculpting the statue of David and then breathing into that statue and it coming alive. That's what God did. He, he fashioned Adam's body and we, if we were there, we would see this lifeless physical entity and God breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and suddenly he becomes alive.

How all of the angels observing this would have been dazzled by the artistry and the power, the life-giving power of God at this moment. This is how man came about. This is how man was started. According to the Bible, he was formed by God from the dirt of the ground.

There's an incredible mixture here of dignity and lowliness at the same time. It is both exalting and humbling. Man is made from the dirt of the ground. That's humbling.

Yet we see that man is made by the personal involvement of Jehovah God who formed him in a very personal way. And God personally breathed into man the breath of life, and we see in chapter one that God made man in his very own image and likeness. There is exaltation. And there is lowliness here.

The story of mankind is truly a story of someone rising from the dirt. To become a ruler who has dominion over all of the earth at this time. But now that God has created man, look at what God does next. He doesn't just create man and say, wow, look at that, that's amazing and I'm done.

No, God has a generous heart of love. He does a third act in this passage, and that is God planted a garden in Eden for men. It says, and the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in a place called Eden. The Lord God planted a garden.

the word that is translated garden here in the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament is translated as paradesos, from which we get our English word. Paradise. Indeed, this garden was a paradise. He planted this garden toward the east.

This could mean that the garden opened up facing the east, facing the sunrise every morning, or it could mean that the garden was planted toward the east in relationship to where Moses' readers were, meaning that the garden is somewhere east of Israel. Either way, notice that the garden was located in Eden. The word Eden speaks of pleasure and delight. The verb form of this word means to be delighted or to take delight in something.

Nehemiah 9:25, you can write that reference down. Nehemiah 9:25 speaks of God's people enjoying God's provision in the land of promise and how they delighted in God's great goodness and that word delighted is the verb form of this word Eden. In Genesis 18:12, Sarah says, shall I have pleasure? And she uses this root word for Eden.

In Old Testament times, someone who was an Adina was a pleasure seeker. So God plants a paradise garden in a place of pleasure and delight. And then look what he does next. He creates man, he then makes this paradise of a garden in a place called pleasure.

And then he, 4, places men into that garden. It says in verse 8, and there he placed the man whom he had formed. There, he placed the man, creates Adam, creates this paradise of a garden in a place called Pleasure, and then he takes Adam and he puts him in this place of delight. And pleasure.

This is the heart of God. This is His will for man whom he has created. God's will for man is man's consummate happiness and joy. God did not create Adam and then put him in a wilderness.

He put him in a paradise that was located in a place called delight. We see here that God is not against pleasure. The devil would love to convince you and me that God is against our joy, happiness, and pleasure. We see here that God invented pleasure.

This is the invention of pleasure. The creation of pleasure, God invented pleasure. In fact, he did 3 things. He created man with a capacity to enjoy pleasure, then he created a place of pleasure to match.

That capacity that he put within men. And then thirdly, he placed man intentionally in that place of pleasure. This is the heart of God. For man, no one is more committed to your eternal happiness and delight than God is.

He is most glorified when we are most satisfied. And delighted in Him and with what he lovingly, generously provides for us. Look at what God does next. He puts man in the garden, and then when Adam is in the garden, God does 1/5 thing.

God caused every good tree to grow in the garden. It says, and out of the ground, the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food. One notable aspect of the garden, according to this passage was its trees. Here the text tells us that God didn't just cause a few trees to grow, but the text says he grew every tree.

Literally, the text says the whole of trees. In other words, there was a wholeness or a completeness in God's provision of trees. Nothing was lacking. Every imaginable tree that might be needful for man's sustenance and delight, God caused it to grow.

He spared no expense, as it were. He did not leave anything out. There was a wholeness, a completeness. And this is not simply God saying, man, what is Adam like?

I should study him and figure out what he likes and whatever I discover that he likes, then I'll condescend to his taste and I'll create trees that he might find delightful to eat. That's not what's happening. Actually, God created Adam with certain capacities for pleasure to taste and enjoy food and to be nourished by food, and now God is creating trees that will match the needs and the taste that he created Adam with. He also created Adam with a certain Aesthetic sensibility.

And now he's creating trees that also match that artistic sense that he put in Adam. God caused trees to grow that are pleasing to the sight. pleasing to Adam's sight, just looking at the trees would meet a need in Adam in the same way that us looking at a beautiful sunset or lofty mountains would feed something in our own soul. There would be plenty in this garden, not only to nourish Adam's body, but to nourish his soul.

As he just stares and enjoys the sight of what God has created. What we learn here again is that God isn't just committed to providing man with pleasure and truest happiness. He actually created within man a capacity for pleasure and an appetite for pleasure, and then he provides man with that which matches this God-given capacity and appetite. Pleasure is the will of God.

For his creation. It was his will for Adam, it is ultimately his will for you, your deepest and most fundamental longings and desires were actually put in you by God. And those longings within you are in and of themselves evidence that there is something out there that matches them perfectly. And that is God and what God provides.

That thirst you have. That nothing can seem to quench. That hunger that you have deep within you that nothing can seem to satisfy, God gave you that hunger. He created you with that thirst, and only he can satisfy it.

You can only find satisfaction in him. Moses moves on and tells us of 1/6 act of God in providing for man in this garden, and that is of all the trees that he caused to grow, he caused a particular tree to grow called the Tree of Life, and that is act number 6. God causes the tree of life to grow in the middle of the garden. says, and there was the tree of life that God caused to grow also in the midst of the garden.

As if God's provision of artistically beautiful trees and great tasting and nourishing trees in a paradise garden located in a place called pleasure, as if all of that was not enough, God causes to grow another tree called the Tree of Life, and he puts this tree in the very middle of the garden. If man eats of this tree, he lives forever. His enjoyment of this garden would never end. We know from what God says in Genesis 3:22 that this is a tree of life in the sense that it gives life to those who would eat it.

God specifically says that if Adam and Eve ate of this tree, they would live forever. This would either be by partaking of the tree one time and thus living forever, or by partaking of it in an ongoing way and being sustained in eternal life. Either way, what we do know From what the text is saying is that man was not inherently a self-sufficient, self-sustaining, immortal being. He would have eternal life only as long as he made use of the available means that God had provided, and one of those means was the fruit of the tree of life.

If only Adam would reach out and take of its fruit. God did not want this tree to be hard to find or hard to reach. He did not bury this tree in some out of the way spot in the garden that Adam might never find. The text says that God caused this tree to grow in the very midst of the garden, which would mean that he put it in a place very prominent, very central, and easy to find.

This is how badly God wants Adam to enjoy his gift of eternal life. This is also why God was not content to leave his Son, who is our source of eternal life in heaven, and say good luck finding eternal life. He sent him from heaven to earth. He sent him into this world.

This is why God lifted him up on a cross for all of us to see. This is why Christ commands those who are his people to go into all the world and to tell everybody about me. He wants everyone to hear about Him. and to believe in him and have eternal life.

He does not want to be hard to find or hard to reach. And here at the very beginning, we see the heart of God displayed. He takes the tree of eternal life basically and he puts it in the middle of the garden. But alongside of that tree, there's another tree that God caused to grow, and that is the 7th act of God, and that is he caused the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

To grow He caused the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to grow. We're gonna be encountering this particular tree a couple more times, in, in chapter 2 and 3. So we're gonna unpack a little more about this tree the next time that we are in Genesis. But let me just say at this point, that at the very least, just take away this, that the knowledge of good and evil.

represents a wisdom that was God's unique possession. A wisdom that man was not supposed to have, a wisdom that man was supposed to trust God with. We know that God possesses the knowledge of good and evil because after Adam and Eve partake, God says they become like one of us knowing good and evil. So God possesses this wisdom, the knowledge of good and evil.

Man was not supposed to possess this knowledge. He was supposed to trust God with this knowledge. In a nutshell, this tree that we'll say more about in the coming weeks was not simply put in the garden to be a test of obedience. It was put there to provide Adam a tangible way to display his contentment.

His humility and his complete trust in God by giving him something to abstain from. And say, God, whatever this knowledge of evil is, God has it, and I will trust Him with that knowledge and be content to have a relationship with the one who has all knowledge. So this is the beginning of man in his natural, original, pristine, pre-fall state. God has lavishly provided for man a place to live.

He's furnished that place with beautiful and nourishing trees. He's provided the means by which man can enjoy eternal life, and he's provided man with an opportunity to display his contentment, his humility, and his trust in God. This is not the end of the story. There's greater blessings to come that we're gonna see as chapter 2 unfolds, and then we're going to see the awful fall that occurs in chapter 3.

We've covered a lot of ground. This morning, in fact, we started our sermon in Iceland. And we have ended in Eden. We started in verse 5 with deficits, and we end with God's lavish provision.

God is clearly one who is a fixer of deficits. And he can fix your deficits, and in the place of your deficits, God. Can put lavish abundance. Where right now there is emptiness in your life, and he can satisfy your soul with pleasure.

Let's look to the Lord and just ask Him to Help us to see his heart, the same God whose heart is displayed in these ways and these verses, that's the God we get to relate to. If you've never believed in Jesus, this is the God you get to believe in right now, and to cry out to for salvation and be brought into relationship with Him. Let's pray together Lord, we thank you for just your amazing love. Your amazing love.

Our deficits are so deep, as Bill Payne said earlier in our service, we're broken people. But we are broken people full of deficits who have found our completion in Christ. You placed Adam in a garden, you placed us in sight of Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and relationship and love and power and freedom and righteousness and healing. You've put us inside of him.

And he is He is all that our soul needs. He is the perfect match for all those cravings and longings that we have deep within us. He's the one that those cravings were designed to drive us toward. You are a good God.

You are a fixer of deficits, and you can fix ours. You are a generous God, you don't just give to us, but you give overwhelmingly abundantly. As Jesus said, I didn't come so that you would have life, but so that you would have life even more abundantly, overflowing life, to where your cup is running over. God, if there's any here today who have, they've never turned to you, Jesus and said, wow, this, this is the savior for me.

This is the one I want to put my trust in. I pray that you would touch their hearts and awaken them to your beauty, your love, that you would draw them to yourself and right where they're seated, Lord, that they would just cry out to you, say, Lord save me, Lord save me and make me your child. We thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to the Lord this morning, Lord, we ask that you would receive the funds that we give and do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus.

Our great Savior, in whose name we pray, and all God's people said, Amen.