Pre-Fall Man: Lovingly Directed

Yeah, well, great to see all of you here today and good to be back with you after. being away last week at the college, career retreat, got to hang out with, about just under 60 of our, young people, here at, at Cornerstone and work through Psalm 139, but, just a thank you to all of those who put together that retreat and for the way that you welcomed, my wife and I. how many of you were at the retreat? OK.

Just to let, I still have the band, OK? I'll be cutting it off today, but, this was to get into the dining room at the retreat. So every time I've seen this, this week, been thanking the Lord for you guys and the time that we were able to spend together last weekend. This is a wonderful ministry in our church and just some of the most exciting things that are happening, are happening in the lives of our, our young people who I know God is gonna use in a, in a great way and it was a blessing to be able to, be with them in the fellowship, together with them last weekend.

Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis 2. We're going to be getting back today to our study of the Book of Genesis, and as we continue in our study of this book, we come to Genesis chapter 2, and, I would like for us to be looking at verses 10 through 17. And if you want to give a title to the message, it would be Pre-Fall Man. lovingly directed.

We're continuing to just get a A good glimpse, a good picture of man in his pre fall state and we're gonna see God providing, directions, for, Adam in our passage, today. Let me start with this. when I was a, a kid, probably about 8 or so years old, well, all the years I was growing up, our family would go to Amarillo, Texas to visit, my mom's parents and as kids, we loved being at our grandparents' house because there were tons of places to explore. And things to explore in, in their house.

And I remember one day my younger brother and I went exploring in our grandmother's medicine cabinet. And we, as we were sorting through everything in her medicine cabinet, we came upon what looked to us like a chocolate candy bar. It had one small square broken off on the corner of it, but the rest of it was left and cleanly wrapped, and we could not for the life of us understand why our grandmother would start eating a candy bar and then stop. Who does that, we wondered.

Did she not like it? We asked ourselves. my brother and I, showed the candy bar to our mom and we asked if it would be OK if we Partook of this candy bar and my mom basically said, absolutely not. That's medicine for your grandmother.

Don't eat that, she said. Put it back and leave it alone. My brother and I put it back, but we did not believe our mom when she said. To us that this was medicine for our grandmother.

so dreams of that chocolate bar, filled our heads for the rest of that, day, and that evening, my little brother and I went back to our grandmother's, medicine cabinet and I took the chocolate bar out of the cabinet. I broke it in half. And I gave half to my brother. And I ate the other half.

We ate the entire. A candy bar in one sitting, half and half. We did not realize at that moment that that was a chocolate laxative bar. Designed to help Grandma stay regular.

So how do, how do I say this delicately, in a morning service? let's just say that I went to bed that night and about an hour later, I awoke with a start, with the most violent rumblings in my intestines. I jumped out of bed and knowing that I did not have one second to spare, I raced toward the bathroom. Only to be confronted with a closed and locked bathroom door.

Because my little brother was already in there. I could hear him crying. I was yelling for him to get out. My mom woke up from the commotion.

She did not even have to ask what was wrong. She knew. long story short, my brother and I had the most miserable night of our lives that evening, taking turns in the bathroom, through the night. We learned several important lessons, that night.

And one of the things that we did learn and that we did realize that evening. Is that our mother, my mom was not being mean to us and withholding that chocolate bar from us. She was actually loving us by telling us not To eat it. And I've thought of that incident along with another, a number of other incidences throughout my childhood as I have studied our passage for this morning in Genesis 2.

My mom loved me. She and my dad provided for me and my siblings many things while we were growing up, but one of the things that was a part of their loving provision for us were commands and prohibitions. And in this case, she gave To me and my brother a prohibition, and we disobeyed it and we quickly learned how her prohibition was an expression of her love for us. This morning in Genesis 2, we go back to the moment when God delivers his first commands to mankind.

These are the first commands in human history, commands that Adam ended up disregarding, leaving him in need of salvation. Ever since. God made lavish provision for Adam in the garden and included in that lavish provision was his commands that we're going to see today, instructions as to what Adam is to do and what he is to not do. We saw a few weeks ago in Genesis 2:4 through 9, how God had lavishly supplied Adam with a lush garden.

that the Greek Septuagint calls paradesos, from which we get paradise in a place called Eden, which means delight. So a paradise garden in a place called delight, and he provided trees that were pleasing to the sight and also good for food. And on top of that, we saw how God caused two trees to grow in particular, the tree of life, which gives eternal life to the one who eats it, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In our passage today, we're gonna learn more about what God provides for Adam, along with the set of instructions that he gives to him.

So let me just read the passage to you this morning. Beginning in verse 10. Now river flowed out of Eden to water the garden and from there it divided and became 4 rivers. The name of the first is Picon.

It flows around the whole land of Havila where there is gold. The gold of that land is good. The Delium and the Onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Guihon.

It flows around the whole land of Kush. The name of the 3rd river is Tigris. It flows east of Assyria, and the 4th river is the Euphrates. Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. This is the word of God, and may God help us. To understand his word this morning.

Here's how we'll frame things as we work our way through the passage. We're gonna observe seven acts of God to preserve and to nourish and to direct Adam's life. We all heard last week in Mike's phenomenal message that God is the giver of life. We sang about that even, this morning in our singing time, God is a huge advocate for life, for Adam's life, and we're gonna see that demonstrated in our passage today.

7 acts in total of God to preserve and to nourish and to direct Adam's life. Act number 1, we find beginning in verse 10, where we see that God provided water to nourish life in the garden. God provided water to nourish life in the garden. Verse 10, now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden.

The author here is telling us two things. He's telling us where the water came from and what its purpose was. He tells us that the water flowed out of Eden, a place of delight, and its purpose was to water the garden, obviously so that the trees and the plants and the animals of the garden and man could have what they needed to grow and to have their life wonderfully sustained. God has made every tree that Adam would ever want to look at and be pleased by and also every tree that would be good for food.

Here we see him ensuring that these trees would be well watered and that the plants would be well watered and that Adam would have all the water that he needs. It's good news. It's really good news to have a river flowing into such a garden where Adam. Lives.

Without water, we all know that there is no life. At least physically, with water, there can be an abundance of life. I think I read somewhere the human body is what, 60% water, something close to that, an apple is 80% water. a water bottle has 100% water in it.

But water is needed for life, right? And not just to drink but in everything that we would partake of, if life is to flourish in the garden, there absolutely must be water in abundance and so God arranges that he thinks of everything and from flowing out of Eden into this garden is a wonderful supply. Of water. There's a second thing that God does to preserve, nourish and direct Adam's life, and that is God caused the water flowing from Eden to cover a very broad area.

We learn in verse 10, the text says, and from there it divided and became four rivers and goes on to explain where those rivers went off to and something about. Some of those locations. Normally, folks, rivers are, are combinations. This is something that commentators brought out as they looked at this passage that normally rivers are combinations of smaller rivers and streams that come together to a particular point.

It's unusual that there's like a main body of water here that then in and of itself branches out. Into smaller rivers and streams, but this is what is happening here. Clearly, this is abundant provision of water for the garden. So much provision.

From the Lord in this water that it broke up into four rivers that flowed from the garden and ended up covering a huge swath of land downstream. This is extravagant, abundant provision from God, providing water. It's hard to know actually when you read these verses, what all of these rivers are and it's hard to know if this passage actually is simply a pre-flood description that Moses is inserting into the narrative or if this is Moses actually speaking post-flood, trying to explain to people in his own day the exact rivers and their locations.

It actually very well could be.

That Genesis chapter 2 verse 4, all the way through chapter 4 verse 26 was written. By someone pre-flood. maybe even Adam or somebody else who got some of this information from Adam, and then it is adapted by Moses for inclusion in the book of Genesis. It could be that when the text says in Genesis 2:4, this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, that Moses is alerting his readers to the fact that I'm inserting this material from a pre-flood source.

so that you have the history of not only these events, but even the history of the record of these events going back to creation. So it could be that this is not necessarily a record that Moses is writing as he goes, but a pre-flood record that goes back to creation and Moses is including it here. Commentators actually are divided. On this and honestly, I don't have a clue which way to go with this.

If these descriptions though are written prior to the flood, then we realize that we can't go looking for these exact rivers today in our post-fall world. The geography, the topography of the world underwent radical changes as a result of the flood. It would make sense though. That even after the flood, you think about Noah and the members of his family and all of their memories of a pre-flood world, it would make sense that after the flood, the names of these rivers and locations were remembered and bestowed upon certain rivers and areas that seemed to approximate in appearance and in location.

Some of that location and appearance of rivers and so forth prior to the floods. So the Tigris and the Euphrates River as we know it today might not be where the Tigris and the Euphrates were. In the pre-flood world, the rivers Guihon and Picon have no modern day equivalent that commentators can confidently point to and say this is what it is. The region of Havila has been associated with Arabia.

and Kush has been associated with modern day Ethiopia. We even find connections like that in the Old Testament. But again, these are loose associations that may not represent where Havila and Kush were in the pre-flood world. Does that make sense?

Henry Morris says, says it this way, in case you're wanting to take this information and go find the Garden of Eden. He says those who have tried to identify the Garden of Eden as in the present Tigris Euphrates region failed to realize that these pre-flood rivers in the Genesis account were completely obliterated by the flood and have no connection with their counterparts in the present world. That might be a little bit of an overstatement. There might be some connection, but he may very well be right in what he says here.

What is clear is that whoever wrote these descriptions that Moses is including in the narrative here wanted the readers to know that there was plenty of water flowing into the garden and that it branched out from there into four rivers that covered a huge swath of land. One gets the impression that God intended for Adam's descendants to migrate from the garden along these rivers and the direction they flowed and thereby populate the world from there. So if that's the case, what we have here is God not only making provision for Adam in the garden, but he's making provision for human civilization to follow as migrations occurred from there.

Future generations would have the benefit of those rivers.

There would be valuable stones. Like gold and onyx and dellium that await discovery. the wording of the passage indicates that God had many blessings in store for man even beyond what was inside of the garden itself. And everyone in a pre-fall world, for example, pre-flood world would know that they're being ultimately provided for.

By a river that descends from a place called Eden, which means delight, the delight of the heart of God. So God provides water for the garden and then above and beyond that, an extravagant abundance to preserve, nourish and direct Adam's life. There's a third act of God that we see in this passage, and that is that God settled man in the garden. of Eden.

In verse 15, the text says, then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden. God took the man that he created and placed him inside the garden. He creates this paradise of a garden enriched by a river flowing from Eden. And God then makes man and then takes the man that he created and he puts man in this garden, right in the midst of this abundant provision that God has made in the garden.

It's interesting and you might want to make a note of this, that the word translated, put in the new American Standard is a different Hebrew word than the word we see in verse eight where it says God placed the men. In the garden. This is a different word. In verse 8, it just means to put something somewhere.

This Hebrew word literally means to rest, rest. It has the idea of settling down. This word is used in Deuteronomy 3:20 to speak of God providing Israel rest in the land of promise so that they don't have to wander through the wilderness anymore. So a good translation of this statement would be that God took the man and settled him and made him at home.

In the Garden of Eden. God would have taken Adam, put him in the garden, showed him around and said, this is home. You can stay here. This is where I want you to live.

God has plans to fashion for Adam, a wife on this day along with all the covenantal responsibilities that are going to go with that. Adam and Eve will have children. Adam will cultivate the garden and keep it as we're gonna see in a moment. God does not want Adam to be a restless wanderer who is wild at heart.

He settles Adam in this place where he will live as a communal man with much to enjoy and have covenantal responsibilities in this place that is called home. I love the fact that God did not leave it to Adam to grope along and find his way to the garden. He could have done that. God could have created the garden, created man, and then left it up to Adam to find the garden for himself.

But God doesn't do that. He takes Adam. And he puts Adam. settles him into this garden that he has prepared for him, and that's what God has done for you and me, right?

He didn't just send his son to be our salvation and then leave it up to us to find him. God actually takes us and he puts us. Inside of Jesus Christ. Jesus says, no one can come to me except the Father draw him.

So it is the Father that takes us and brings us to Jesus and puts us inside of him and says, Welcome home. This is your home, you can settle here inside of my grace. Observe what God does next to preserve and nourish and direct Adam's life. God assigned man the task of cultivating the garden.

He put him at home, settled him into the garden to cultivate and to keep it. God obviously would have communicated to Adam that he wanted Adam to cultivate. And to keep the garden, this garden obviously would not be reaching its own full functionality without man in it. The garden needed a man.

To tend to it and to keep it. The word that is translated cultivate is a translation of the Hebrew word that literally means to serve, to serve. This would entail work on Adam's part as he cultivated the ground. The word keep has the idea of caring for and tending to, assuming responsibility for and even guarding.

There's an element of guarding here. We'll find out in chapter 3 that there is something to be on the alert for. In this garden. This implies something about the garden, as beautiful and perfect as the garden was, it needed cultivating and keeping, so God puts man in the garden for the garden's sake.

When you read Genesis 2, an account like this, you get the sense of two things. Number 1, God created the man for the garden's sake, and he created the garden for man's sake. Man would be able to thrive in the garden, and the garden would best be able to thrive with man in the garden. The earth needs man and man needs the earth.

We see here in the language of the passage that cultivating the ground was not a post-fall task assigned to man. work was something that Adam was to do before the fall, as one writer says, even before the fall, man was expected to work. Paradise was not a life of leisured. Unemployment.

So let that sink in. and Genesis 3:23, it's interesting, and this is, this is where it can get confusing for people. We're told that God sent a man, from the garden to cultivate the ground. And some people read that and say the task of cultivating the ground is a post-fall task, but when they say that and come to that conclusion, they're ignoring the fact that that word translated cultivate in 323 is exactly the same word.

That we see in our passage today in chapter 2 verse 15. The only difference is that after the fall, Adam is cultivating a cursed ground. But before the fall, Adam would be cultivating an uncursed ground that would happily yield up to Adam anything that Adam wanted it to yield up. But just know that work, occupation, is a pre-fall entity.

So I just want to encourage you, embrace your work, whatever it is. Be a good employee wherever you work, serve others with your job. Work is not a part of the curse. Even though sometimes it may feel like it is.

A sinless world would have involved man working. In a dazzling array of occupations with human ingenuity manifesting itself in, in countless ways. You're actually, when you do work cultivating the ground as a gardener or just whatever occupation that you are engaged in, you're connecting to something very ancient about yourself. When you do your work with all your might and it traces all the way back to here.

So God puts him in the garden to do this work. To cultivate and keep the garden. Look what else God does to preserve, nourish and direct Adam's life. And if you like to eat, you will love this.

Number 5, God commanded the man to eat freely. of the trees of the garden. He commanded the man to eat freely of the trees of the garden, verse 16, and the Lord God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the garden, you may eat freely. This, as I mentioned at the outset, is actually the first command from God in the history of human civilization.

There's actually a command back in chapter one where God says be fruitful and multiply, but that was given after Eve was formed from Adam's sight. He's speaking that to both of Adam and Eve, but here in chapter two, she has not been created yet. That's coming in the next few verses. So while this is maybe not the first command on the pages of scripture, it is the first command in the chronology of human history and it's definitely the first time we see the word for command.

In, in scripture. And let me just talk about this for a moment, the fact that God commands the man here indicates that There is to be a relationship where God gives commands and directions and man is to listen to those directions, and to give heed to them. To reject this arrangement is to reject something very basic about being human. God didn't just leave it to Adam, create them, here's the garden, here you go.

And what, you got a lot to learn and I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you space, and I'm gonna give you freedom to figure it all out. He didn't do that. He said, I'm going to instruct you. I love you.

I provided this for you, and I will give you instructions, I will give you commands, and you will follow them. That's part of what it means to be human. We are created by God, who provides for us and who directs us with his instructions and commands. And so Adam needed instructions and you need directions also.

We all need to look to God for direction and we should love his commandments and his prohibitions. Young people. Believe it or not, you need directions. You need people in your life to give you commands and prohibitions.

It's easy as a young person to want the freedom. To figure things out on your own without any direction from any authority. Just, it's easy to just want your space. And a young person's attitude is often, mom, dad, please provide for me with clothes and money.

And shelter and all the food that I want to eat, but don't provide me with directions. I don't need that. I'll figure things out on my own. By your actions, you may be saying to God, God, I'll take the bounty of your earth and all that it provides.

Please give me air to breathe and please give function to every organ of my body. Please give my body 2 million red blood cells every second of the day. And I will happily take such things from you, but please, I don't want your directions. Don't give me commands.

Don't tell me. What to do My counsel to everyone, but I'm targeting this at young people, is don't do that. Don't do that. Your parents already tried that.

And they would be happy to tell you how that worked out for them. That's why we have come running to Jesus for forgiveness and for healing from our brokenness. If you are a young person, I would just call upon you to love direction. To cry after wisdom and recognize that you need it.

As Solomon says, I love this in Proverbs 4:7, the beginning of wisdom is get wisdom. That's the beginning of wisdom. I must get wisdom. It's to recognize that you need wisdom from God and from others and from your parents and wise is the young person who cries for wisdom.

who seeks after direction and who values it as gold and silver, and God here and giving commands to Adam, it, it's not like God provided all this provision for Adam and then yeah, he gave him commands. No, the commands are a part of his provision. His loving provision for Adam. This is part of the gold and the silver that God is wonderfully providing for Adam.

Ultimately, in this passage, God gives Adam two commands, and the first, it may surprise you, is a positive command. Often if, if you go up to the average person and say, what's the first command that God gives in the Bible? People immediately think, don't eat. It's the negative, it's the prohibition.

But here we see that it's a positive command. The Lord commanded the man, and he said, of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat. Literally of every tree of the garden, you may, comma, eating, comma, eat. He uses the verb twice, which was a convention in the Hebrew language to denote emphasis.

God is saying this emphatically to Adam. There's actually two ways of understanding the emphasis here. The first way is to understand God as communicating his passion for Adam eating of the trees. God is saying, I most emphatically am telling you, Adam, that I want you to eat of every tree of this garden that you want to eat of.

You will bring me great pleasure if you eat of these trees. This is the way a good host speaks. A good host doesn't just offer food to his guests, he offers food emphatically. To his guest, right?

Sometimes you find yourself at someone else, this has happened to me, and they They offer you food. But you wonder, do they really want me to eat their food or are they just being nice? You ever been in a situation like that? But if, if someone says, hey, can I make you something to eat?

And you're like, no, I'm good, and they're like, oh, OK, thanks. and then they move on, OK, that helps me to know they didn't really want to do this, But if someone says, no, please, I insist, let me make you something to eat, and they won't hardly take no for an answer. Then that's a pretty good indication they really want you to eat of what they're providing. That's a good host.

That's the way a good host is. This is part of what God is doing. He's saying, you're home, Adam. I'm settling you here, and he's saying, please, I insist, I really want you to eat from the trees that I have provided for you here.

There's another thing God is saying here by way of emphasis, by the way that he words this, and that is he's telling Adam the manner in which he wants Adam to eat. One way of translating this expression is eat freely, and that's what the new American Standard does, or eat abundantly with this idea, the translation would be of every tree of the garden you may eat sumptuously. Gorge yourself is the idea. Of the language here.

There's nothing worse than being over at someone's house. And you've eaten, and yet you want some more food and it's sitting there on the table, but you don't want to look like a pig and take seconds, especially if no one else is. There's another piece of chicken on that plate in the middle of the table and you're like, I really want to go after that right now, but is that OK? With the host.

That's not the way God is here. He's commanding Adam, not just to eat, but to eat sumptuously, to take seconds and thirds and fours. Adam will never have to worry if he gives heed to this command about displeasing God by taking too much fruit from his trees. He will be able to eat with full, luxurious abandon.

God's like, see what I provided for you. Feast, gorge yourself freely of all that I have provided for you. God is the consummate host here to Adam. This is the host that he is to us who are in Jesus.

He says to us in Ephesians 5:18, and we see this language everywhere, be continuously being filled by my spirit. God's will for you is fullness. His will for Adam was fullness, feasting on what God had lovingly provided him. This first command is positive, it's not a prohibition.

It's a command, a feast. If Adam would have just obeyed. This command perpetually and kept feasting on the trees that God had commanded him to eat, which would have included the tree of life. Adam would have never been hungry enough to even want to eat from anything else, from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If years ago, my mom, Upon seeing mine and my brother's interest in that chocolate bar, would have put us in the car and drove us to a convenience store and bought each of us 5 Snickers bars. And then commanded us to feast on those chocolate bars, we probably would have never eaten our grandmother's chocolate bar. Now I'm realizing this whole thing is her fault for This is good therapy for me, by the way, so. But God is commanding Adam to feast.

That's the heart of God. I hope you feel the heart of God here. He's like, Adam, I got a command for you. All right, what is it?

Gorge yourself. See all this that I provided for you, feast sumptuously on all of this bounty that I have provided for you. Look at the next thing God does to preserve and nourish and direct Adam's life. God prohibited man from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He says, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, he says. So, this is a part of his instruction to Adam, a positive command and a negative, eat freely of the trees that I am giving you to eat and do not eat of this one tree, which is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now we've already learned earlier in this chapter that this was a tree that God actually had caused to grow. He caused all of the trees of the garden to grow in this garden, and that would include this tree, and it would include the tree of life and every other tree.

This tree is here, not by accident, but by divine design. It is obviously a tree that God put here with the intention that it come with a set of instructions which are found in this passage and the instructions are simple, don't eat it. Leave it alone. Notice, God does not tell Adam to chop the tree down.

Hey, while you're cultivating, get rid of that tree. Chop it down. He doesn't tell Adam to burn the tree. He doesn't tell Adam to build a high wall around the tree.

He doesn't tell Adam to uproot it or to rail against it. No, this is a perfectly accessible tree. That we learned earlier is actually in the middle of the garden. Along with the tree of life, and God caused this tree to grow in the garden, and God has only one instruction regarding this tree, and that is you shall not eat of this tree.

Eat of every other tree, but do not eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God tells Adam the name of the tree, and he tells Adam not to partake of it. The literal language of the prohibition is what Hebrew grammarians call permanent prohibition. There's two different ways of giving a command in Hebrew.

One is like if your kid wants a cookie before dinner, you as a mom might say don't, don't eat those, and you're just meaning don't eat them right now before dinner. And so they have a way of saying that in Hebrew, but then there's a way. Of delivering a command which means never do this. That's what we see with the negatives of the 10 Commandments.

That's what we see here. God is delivering a permanent prohibition. He's not just saying don't eat this today. He's saying don't ever eat from this tree, ever.

Now pay close attention to the wording here. This is, this is not the tree of evil, nor is it the tree of good and evil. It's the tree of the knowledge. Of good and evil.

Just as the tree of life would have imparted eternal life to someone who partook of that tree. So this is a tree of knowledge in the sense that it would impart knowledge to anyone who ate of its fruit and that knowledge is the knowledge of good and evil. And so that begs the question, what is the knowledge of good and evil? we'll talk more about this when we get into chapter 3.

Let me just say, two things that we can know for sure about what is meant by the knowledge of good and evil. Whatever it means, whatever it is, we know two things for sure about it. Number 1, 1st of all, we know that God possesses it. God possesses it.

We know this because in Genesis 3:22 after Adam and Eve partook of this tree, God Himself says man has become like one of us knowing good and evil, clearly indicating that God possesses the knowledge of good and evil. So whatever it is, it's a knowledge that God possesses. We also can know with easy certainty that whatever the knowledge of good and evil is, It would make man like God in a way that man should not be like God if man partook. Of this particular tree.

And again, that's why in Genesis 3:22, after Adam and Eve partook, God says man has become like one of us knowing good and evil and implied and that is, we, God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, we possess the knowledge of good and evil. And now because man has partaken of this tree, he, like us, possesses this knowledge. We clearly see here by God telling Adam, don't partake. That man was not supposed to be like God in this respect.

Man was created in God's image to bear God's likeness. We saw that in Chapter one, but he was to bear the likeness of God only in certain respects. But man was not to bear God's likeness in this respect. Man was to be content with allowing God to have the knowledge of good and evil and for man to say, I will not, I will be content without that knowledge that God possesses.

The word good represents anything consistent with God's will. And the word evil represents any violation of the will of God along with anything that comes as a consequence of that violation of God's will. God knows what both of those are like, and he did not want Adam to know what evil and all of its fallout would be. So here's the deal.

If Adam had never theoretically partaken of the fruit of this tree, he would have always known. That there's such a thing as evil. He would have inferred basically three things from just the name of the tree itself and from God's command. A, there is such a thing as evil, B, God knows what it is, and C, God does not want me to know.

What it is. So the questions before Adam would be, am I OK with God knowing what evil is and me not knowing what it is? And me just trusting him when he tells me not to eat of the tree. Do I feel like I have to know everything, or am I content to leave infinite?

Knowledge to God. Am I OK with finite limited knowledge and leaving infinite knowledge to Him? Am I content to have finite knowledge myself? But have a relationship with the one who has infinite.

Knowledge. Am I willing to trust this God who knows something that I don't? Am I content with the knowledge and the blessings he does lavish on me? Or will I insist on having what he's withholding?

From me. Does that make sense? Some people say that God put this tree here as a test for man. I don't know that I want to argue with that.

I just want to suggest that that probably doesn't do full justice to God's wisdom at work here. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not simply put in the garden to be a test of whether man was going to obey or disobey. It was put here in this garden to provide Adam a tangible way to display his contentment, his humility, and his trust in God. If Adam and Eve would have left the tree alone, This perfectly accessible but untouched tree would have forever stood as a monument to their trust in God.

And their contentment with what he had provided them and their recognition of him as the only one entitled to the knowledge of good and evil and if that tree was left untouched, even though perfectly accessible, how that would have enraged Satan. That man would have chosen not to do something that he himself had done We'll unpack more of this in the weeks to come, but God says, Adam, I want you to feast sumptuously on all of these trees, but this tree right here, I don't want you to partake of this ever.

And that leads to the 7th and the final act of God to preserve and nourish and direct Adam's life, and that is that God warned Adam that he would die if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. See, this is God's love.

He's not, he doesn't just say don't partake, but he says if you do, here's what's going to happen. On the other side of that. Even looking back, if my mom would have sat my brother and I down and just said, here's what's going to happen if you partake of this chocolate. Bar, here, let me give you, let me give you an idea of what's gonna happen that would have been helpful to us.

God doesn't just say, don't partake and just trust me. And abstain because I told you to abstain. No, don't partake. If you do partake, here's exactly what's gonna happen.

And the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. God's language is as emphatic here in the Hebrew as it was when he told Adam to eat. He says in the day that you eat from it, you will certainly Emphatically, I'm telling you, you will certainly die. God loves Adam.

God wants Adam to experience life to the absolute fullest. That's why he has provided for him so lavishly. That's why he warns him not to partake of this tree and informs him that the day that he would do so, if he chose to do so, he would die, and God is saying, I'm telling you this because I don't want this. To happen To you.

In order to appreciate God's warning here, we have to appreciate the degree to which Adam and Eve were alive before the fall. they walked with God, they had a relationship with Him, they lived in childlike innocence with one another. They were naked and didn't know it. They had no shame, they had no cynicism.

Adam and Eve lived in full transparency with one another. They had daily full access to the tree of life. And God is saying, this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, don't eat of this, because if you do, all of these blessings. will come crashing down.

What God fully means by His warning here, the day that you eat from it, you will surely die is a topic that theologians debate. we're gonna get more into this in, in chapter 3. And we're gonna let God explain in chapter 3, at least aspects of what he means by this warning and even let ourselves hear from the rest of scripture on this, but at the very least, from chapter 3, we learned that this warning at least means, Adam, if you partake of this tree, you will immediately be separated from me, which is spiritual death.

There will be an immediate loss of innocence.

There will be immediate expulsion from the garden. And there will be immediate loss of access to the tree of life, and with that loss of access to the tree of life, death would begin working in Adam's body and ultimately he would return to the dust. from which he came and God is seeking in these commands to protect Adam from this fate, and so he says, don't eat. My will for you is don't eat of this tree.

If you do, Death will certainly come on the very day that you partake. All of these acts that we have seen this morning are demonstrations of God's love for man. We have the same God today that Adam had his attempts to nourish and protect, preserve Adam's life. God provides water, trees, food and abundance, a lush garden, and he also gives these instructions and commands to Adam.

There's no bigger advocate in your life and in my life for our life than God. He gives us everything we need for life and for godliness. He gives us His Son Jesus Christ, who died and was raised so that we might have not just life, but Jesus says abundant life in the Gospel of John. And among the provision that God gives to us are his commands and his prohibitions and his warnings.

Do you see God that way? Do you see God In this way, the stakes are so high in your life and mine, they're gonna come when one of us is standing before a holy and a just God, and we're gonna give an account to him. God takes everything you think, every word you speak. So seriously.

Because he created you to live in relationship with him. That is his design, and he gives you commands, and there are many commands, but what, part of his commands to us is come to me, enjoy my provision in Christ, delight in me, feast on my provision for you, provided for you in Jesus Christ, feast on my word, feast on the privilege of access. To me in prayer, feast upon fellowship with my people, feast on the righteousness of my Son and the grace in which you now stand. If you have believed in Jesus, feast sumptuously on these things, be continuously filled with them.

God doesn't just come to you in the morning and you're like, give me some direction for the day and God says, here you go, here's my command, abstain from sin. Abstain from sin. But that, don't do that, don't do that. Yeah, yeah, don't do that.

I know you're thinking that, don't do that. That's not, that's not the heart of God. Yeah, he does give us prohibitions because he loves us and he knows certain things are going to kill us spiritually, but read the Bible and see the large heart of God delivering. Such commands like he gives to Adam to feast upon him.

If you, if you've never believed in Jesus up to this point, if you've never come to Jesus, I was sharing the gospel with somebody just this week and, and they're investigating Christianity but they're not there at a point where they're believing in Christ, but they're studying the Bible to look for what they need to do. That's, that's just so natural to the human condition. What do I need to do? What are my duties?

I was able to tell him what I'm telling you that it's not about what you do. At the center of our faith is good news of what Christ has done. And what, you say, come on, pastor, just give me a command. I need a command.

Tell me something to do. Well, I'll let Jesus give you a command. The command he gives in John 7, he stands up at the great feast. And he says, you want a command from me?

Here, here you go. If anyone is thirsty. Let them come to me and here's the command, drink. And out of his belly will flow rivers of living water.

Just as water flowed into the garden and then branched out in many different directions from there, Jesus is saying, if you come and you drink of me. I will not only pour the water of my spirit into you, but it will overflow in a million different directions and touch the lives of other people. Have you ever known anything of that fullness, or is everything you've been drinking from leaving you more and more empty? You drink of Jesus, he doesn't just promise to bring you back to a garden paradise, he promises to turn you into a garden, where his river of life flows into you and then branches from there.

In many different directions. If you want to go to heaven when you die. Come to Jesus and drink. Believe in him as your Lord and as your Savior.

And as your thirst quencher. Have you drank from Jesus? Have you ever come to him? And said, you will be what I will feast on.

For all of eternity, and I believe in you as the ultimate quencher of my soul's hunger. And my thirst. If you've never done that before, will you do that today? Even right where you're seated, will you come to Jesus and believe in Him?

I promise you won't regret that choice. Let's pray together Lord, I stand before this audience this morning as someone who's made so many sinful decisions, stupid decisions where I have partaken of things that I lived to regret. But I have never regretted partaking of Jesus. No one ever regrets that.

And I pray that if there's a thirsty soul in this room, Lord, That you would Through your spirit. Just take them and put them inside of Jesus. And that they would drink. And satisfy their soul's thirst.

And experience the satisfaction that only Jesus. Can provide I'd like to ask every head to continue to be bowed and every eye closed. I just want to ask a question to help in praying. This is all I will ask.

Because I know God's spirit is working. We've prayed for this service, folks. We've prayed for people to be saved. People to be brought to Jesus.

If you're here in this room and you are drinking from Jesus and crying out to Him for salvation and believing in Him right now, for the first time, With every head bowed, every eye closed, could you just let us know that by raising your hand? Today I am believing in Jesus and making him my Lord and my Savior. Can you let us know? Just raise your hand and then you can put it back down.

Lord God, we thank you for your work and our hearts. For your kindness, your grace, your lavish abundance that you provide for us, you are such a good God. What is not to love about you, dear Jesus? You do not just give to us of what you have, but you give to us of yourself, and there is no Lord like you.

We pray, Lord, that You would work a deep work in our hearts as your people. That we would be Feasting more sumptuously than we often do. That we would be done with the lesser things of this world and feast upon you. And I pray for those in this room, Lord, whose hearts you're touching.

That you would draw them to yourself, and that they would come to know the satisfaction of their soul's thirst that only you can bring. We thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you. we ask that you do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus and for the spread of this amazing good news. In his name we pray, and all God's people said, Amen.