Genesis 2 - Mark Ralf

Genesis 2

PRAYER: Almighty God, you have given us your Bible for our learning, we pray that as we read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it, our minds will be renewed and our hearts set on fire for you. We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

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Last week we looked at Genesis 1 and this week we’re going to look at Genesis 2 – next week Declan will look at Genesis 3.

So a quick recap.

We may start asking a lot of questions about Genesis, (like dinosaurs etc ) but we actually find that as well as giving us answers, it starts asking us questions.

About God,

about ourselves,

and about our relationship with God.

Then we start to discover the purpose God had in mind when he chose to create the world.

In the Garden of Eden we see the world as God designed it to be. God’s people, Adam and Eve, live in God’s place, the garden, under his rule as they submit to his word.

God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule.

You may remember Claire and the kettle in our kitchen. The scientist can explain how the kettle is boiling in terms of physics but he is unable to tell us for what purpose or why the kettle is boiling? Making a drink or killing ants.

So the book of Genesis is addressing the big questions of why. Why is the world as it is? - The purpose questions.

Remember we said God is separate from the world. We won’t find him here or on Mars, in the stars or in the trees – or deep within ourselves. God is distinct from his creation.

But he has left his fingerprints and DNA all over his creation.

While God creates things from nothing, the best we can do is to rearrange stuff – however clever or imaginative we get.

Genesis 1 ends with God looking back at the end of the 6^th day and saying it is very good v31.

At the end of the 1^st 6 days there has been a little phrase - “And there was evening and morning – the sixth day”

Each day ends except the 7^th.

There is no end to the 7^th day – for the 7^th day is the day of rest.

God works in order to rest – he makes things in order to enjoy them

God is a God of fun - who enjoys holidays – who enjoys rest.

The goal of creation is rest that we might enjoy God forever.

So we get to chapter 2.

Within God’s creation, God creates people, Adam and Eve.

Chapter 2 brings the focus onto them.

They are to be God’s people – made in his image.

They are set in God’s perfect place – the garden made for them, perfectly adapted to their needs.

In that garden they are to live under God’s rule.

God’s people are found in God’s place under God’s rule.

Chapter 2 depicts God’s people (Adam & Eve) in God’s place (the garden) living under God’s rule – what a marvellous place it was.

Harmony in their marriage – the two becoming one. The whole of the foundation and basis for marriage is here in chapter 2 of Genesis.

Work is there – work is to be part of God’s perfect plan for mankind – as it was for God in the 1^st 6 days. Work is to be fulfilling. Work marks mankind as sharing the image of God - carrying out God’s rule over the world.

A Relationship with God – a beautifully intimate picture. Walking with God in the garden in the cool of the day. God speaking with them, them speaking with God – God mediating to them, teaching them, sharing with them the essential knowledge that they need in order to enjoy being his people, in his place under his rule.

Chapter 2 v15 God comes to Adam and Eve in the place called the garden of Eden. There the Lord speaks to man in v16 “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden: but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

That knowledge is a mark of God’s gracious provision for Adam and Eve. It’s not that he wants to be a spoilsport, or deliberately set unfair boundaries for them. He is giving them the knowledge they need to live in the garden safely. They would not know that danger unless God were to warn them of it – and being warned of it so that they can avoid it. They have all the trees of the garden to eat of except that one.

The teaching of God comes directly to them. It is the essential, profound and foundational truths that Adam & Eve and we need to understand.

These truths from Genesis form the background to the whole of the Bible story.

So what key points can we see:

KEYPOINTS:

Rule 1

In God’s universe – plan and purpose rule. Our world is not founded on chaos - it is based on rules. An experiment conducted in one place will work in another. The physical laws here operate on the moon and on mars. What a risk those first Apollo astronauts took. Suppose all the rules were different once they landed on another world. They assumed that the universe was consistent. They found on the moon they could bounce and jump to about the right height as they had calculated in the labs on planet earth.

Rule 2

Diversity and not unity is the name of the game. At the heart of God’s world is diversity and differentiation. Nowadays, lots of people say that everything is basically one. Philosophically that is called Monism. It means we are all one and the great spiritual insight to gain is that we are all one. The Bible denies that at the outset. It differentiates. For example: light is not dark, dry is not wet, male is not female and good is not evil. Things differ because God says they are different and he had made his world like that.

Rule 3

The material world, the stuff that we are made of, is fundamentally good – not fundamentally evil. We are not to suppose that everything of itself is fundamentally evil. The world is fundamentally good. It means that God is a materialist. He likes things – he likes making things and he likes beautiful things. So the Christian has to be a materialist. That’s not the same as materialism. We don’t believe that something is so valuable that it should become our God – that’s materialism. Everything in the world is to be accepted as a good gift from a good God – and that is reinforced in the New Testament.

Rule 4

Every person in the world matters. They matter because God is a person, they matter because they are made in the image of God – even the unborn, the aged, the disabled and the unlovely. Everyone in the world matters.

These truths are not self-evident. If you go back to the ancient world they were not widely believed and as I fear we will see in our society, as Christian foundations are undermined and overthrown, we will discover that these truths are increasingly questioned. We will have to recover these truths and restore Genesis 1 & 2 to its rightful place in scripture - and restore our confidence in it – because here God lays down the foundation truths for our understanding of who we are, where we live and why we were created.

BUT There is a problem. Do you recognise that world? Do you recognise that picture of marriage? If you are in work, do you recognise that picture of work? – where work is completely fulfilling.

Our world is a world of battered wives, broken relationships, abandoned children, frustration at work, disharmony within our world and of little knowledge of God.

Genesis 1 & 2 land is a marvellous world but it is a lost world.

It is a world we can visit in our dreams and write of in our poetry and even speak of it in our idealism. Many political idealists have dreamed of a new world. Even in our century we have seen the ideal of the communist experiment rise and fall. The dream of everyone taking what they need and everyone caring for everyone else’s needs. It turns into the cruellest most totalitarian regime the world has ever seen – depicted so well in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Even when the Berlin wall came down people became ridiculously optimistic that a new era of peace and goodwill would begin. Nor is an expanded Europe or aligning with America or any other political or human ideology. We are not living in Genesis 1 & 2 land anymore.

This is a lost world – you can visit in your dreams but you can’t live in it.

Our world is Genesis 3 land – and it is a very different world.

Declan is going to be speaking on Genesis 3 and the curse next week.

WE ARE GOING TO CHEAT…

Do you like detective stories – well don’t do what we are going to do.

Turn to Revelation 20,21 & 22.(the end of the story)

Here at the end of the Bible in chapter 21 we find a new heaven and a new earth. In terms precisely as we saw in Genesis 1 & 2, God now remakes his world. Genesis 1&2 land is restored. There is a new land, a new place. There are God’s people there and they live in God’s presence under God’s rule.

Chapter 22. Talks of the tree of life. The tree that they were banned from eating after they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – that tree is nowhere to be seen but the tree is back again in chapter 22. In v5 “there will be no more night – they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.” Sharing God’s rule in God’s place as God’s people.

All the consequences of Genesis 3 land are wiped away – no more tears, crying or pain. For all that old order has passed away. No more death because there is no longer any passing of the days – we are back to the seventh day – the day of rest that does not end.

In Chapter 22v3 – no longer will there be any curse. That is the hope, that is the prospect, that is the promise of God. It will happen when Christ returns.

But it will not happen before then.

We can’t experience these things yet – but they are promised and guaranteed by God with judgement.

For these final chapters also speak of a final separation of good from evil.

And so in the final chapters of the bible, rest is at last attained.

“Come to me” said Jesus “and I will give you rest”

Here is the rest of heaven – God’s people, again enjoying God’s place under God’s rule.

How does he pull this off?

How does God get from Chapter 3 of Genesis to chapter 21 of Revelation?

Is it scientific progress? NO

Is it socio-political reform? NO

‘ologies of various kinds? NO

Rev 21v22: “quote…”

How has God done it? It’s something to do with a lamb.

But who is the lamb and what is the relationship between the lamb and the one who God promised would crush the serpent’s head?
Who is this lamb?

What has he done?

When has he done it?
How has he done it?

How do we get our name in that lamb’s book of life?

How does God get from Genesis 3 land back to Genesis 1 & 2 land and even better as Revelation describes it?

That is the story of the middle bit of the Bible between Genesis 3 & Revelation 21.

By understanding the beginning and the end we can enjoy and appreciate the development of the middle of the Bible.

The story and the certain hope of God’s rescue plan through Jesus – so that we can once again become:

God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule.