1. God provides a place (2:8, 10-14)
2. God provides a promise (2:9, 16-17)
3. God provides a purpose (2:15, 19-20)
4. God provides a partner (2:18, 21-25)
We’re looking at a fairly long passage tonight, and you’ll notice that the last part covers God’s creation of Eve. There are about a million different ways I can get in trouble with this passage, but I’m not going to. Instead, I will tell you of the two views available to us—the man’s view and the woman’s view. The woman’s view of creation is: God made the man, looked at him and said, “I can do better than that.” And He made the woman. The man’s view is: God made all the animals and man and then He rested. And then He created woman. And nobody has rested since. I will let you judge between the two.
GENESIS 2:8-25
As I studied this passage, I had one of those moments. It was one of those light bulb moments when you notice something in a passage that you’ve never noticed before. I noticed that the structure of this passage is very unique. It’s very unique in that one verse introduces, not the section it’s immediately in front of. It introduces the following section. Now, I don’t know why that is. If anybody figures it out, let me know. I’ll keep studying it and if I find out, I’ll let you know. Anyway, that structure will reflect in the way we read the passages tonight. We’ll read the introduction and then the passage it introduces. All kidding aside about the two views of creation, two views of about God are evident in the world today. There is one view that says, if there is a God, He doesn’t care much about me. He doesn’t care about what goes on in the world today. The Bible makes it very clear that the creation around us is sufficient evidence that there is a God. Creation is evidence there is a creator. The ones who deny God have to purpose in their heart to deny Him. They have to close their eyes and close their minds. They have to force their will to deny the obvious. But even if they open their eyes a little bit and acknowledge the possibility of God, they will say He created and that’s it. They will go so far as to say there might have been an intelligent designer of the universe, but that’s as far as they’ll go. It’s the old picture of God as an impersonal clock maker. Years ago, He made the universe like a clock. Then He wound it up and left town. They say He doesn’t have anything to do with us today. He’s not involved. That’s one extreme. The other extreme rightly says that God is involved. But they go off the deep end in how they say He’s involved. Instead of being an impersonal clock maker, He’s your own personal Santa Claus. They think the only reason God is there is to provide for their every wish and desire. Prayer is like an Aladdin’s lamp. If you rub it the right way, out pops God ready to grant your wishes. Well, the truth is obviously between the two extremes. God is not Santa Claus. But neither is He distant and removed from His creation. He provides for His creation. To be more specific, He provided His creation for His crowning creation. By providing for Adam in the Garden, God showed that He is concerned about our needs. He is concerned enough about our needs that He gave us everything. And by giving us everything, we can be sure that God still will meet our needs today. Tonight, I want each of us to be thankful for what God has provided us and praise Him because of it. In order to do that, we’re going to look at four need-meeting provisions of God. The first need-meeting provision of God is that He provides a place. Look with me in verse 8, then skip down to 10-14.
GENESIS 2:8, 10-14
God provides a place. We all need a place, don’t we? I remember my first assignment in the Air Force. My wife and I got engaged while I was in tech school, training to do my job. I went on to the Azores while she finished her last year of college. That gave me plenty of time to get things set up for her to get there. The first thing on the list was getting a place to live. I thought it was great. When she got there, she cried for a week. Maybe it had to do with the orange indoor/outdoor carpet that ran through the apartment. I thought it was a cool place. I thought I was doing my job as a new husband in providing my bride with a place. But I didn’t do too well. On the other hand, God went overboard in providing Adam a place. He planted him a garden. And the picture there in verse 8 is that He led Adam to it personally. It’s almost the picture of the groom lovingly carrying the bride over the threshold of her new home. A home without orange carpet. There’s no way Adam could have been disappointed, because the Garden was beautiful. It had four rivers in it. Think about it, four rivers for one man. Now picture where Moses was when he wrote this. He was in the wilderness. The first thing the Israelites complained about when they left Egypt was that there was no water. Water was a constant problem throughout Genesis. Isaac dug wells all over the place looking for water. Water was scarce then just as it is in many parts of the world today. But look at how God provided for Adam. He gave him four whole rivers full of water. We know where two of the rivers are today. The Hidekel is another name for the Tigress. And of course we know about the Euphrates River. Both of them run through modern day Iraq. We have no idea what the other two are. Some say the Gihon is the Nile and the Pishon is an ancient riverbed in what is now the Saudi Arabian desert. It’s really anybody’s guess because the terrain is so radically different because of the flood. Besides, speculation like that doesn’t really matter anyway. What matters is that God provided a place for Adam. And He provided a magnificent place for him. It reminds me of the place God has prepared for us. Yes, He provides for our needs today. But that’s not the place I’m talking about. In John 14:2-3 Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.” Verse 12 of our passage in Genesis says that the land was full of gold and jewels. The place Jesus is preparing is described as having streets paved with gold. The place God prepared for Adam was flowing with life-giving water. In John’s vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22:1, he said, “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Adam had an abundance of life-giving water. We will have an overflow of the water of life. Our place today is important. Whatever our place is today was given to us by God and we should be thankful. But we should be equally thankful if it is taken away. In this present world we live in—post fall, pre heaven—God has promised to provide for our needs. And He calls for us to be content with the provisions He’s given us. Like Paul in Philippians 4, whether we abound or are abased, we should be content. But we can remember that this isn’t our home. This isn’t our forever place. Like that original place in the Garden, our forever place will be the best God can provide. But not only does God provide a place, He also provides a promise. The second need-meeting provision of God is that He provides a promise. Look with me at verse 9 and then 16-17:
GENESIS 2:9, 16-17
God provides a promise. It’s cold out and it’s been cold out for a while now. As a matter of fact, it’s been below freezing for several days. Has it been cold enough that you’d walk out on a frozen pond? Say we were up north and it had been below zero for weeks. Would you walk out on a pond up there? You’d probably feel pretty safe. But what if somebody put up a sign that said, “Danger thin ice”. What would you think then? I’d probably think that if it had been below zero for weeks, there’d be no way the ice would be thin. I’d think the sign didn’t know what it was talking about. I wouldn’t have much confidence in it. But it might be different if a person was out there and said, “I promise you that if you go out on that ice, you will fall through.” Then I wouldn’t just be making an evaluation on the ice. I’d be evaluating the one who made the promise. God provided Adam with a promise. He told him, “If you eat of this tree, you’ll die.” Now why would God do that? Was His rule completely arbitrary, or did He have a reason for giving it? His reason was to establish the fact the He is God and Adam wasn’t. As God, He is the one who establishes the rules. And as God, He is the one who makes promises and is always faithful to fulfill them. How could He have established those two facts with Adam had He not given him a rule? And given him the opportunity to obey or break the rule? He couldn’t have. We get hung up on the tree and what kind of a tree it really was. Was it a real tree? What kind of fruit was it? Was it an apple? The most ridiculous one I’ve heard was some of the really old commentators said the tree was symbolic for sex. That’s crazy. It was a real tree and it had real fruit on it that wasn’t an apple. But the tree isn’t the point. The point is that God gave Adam a boundary and told him not to cross it. Over the next couple of Sunday nights we’ll talk about what happened when he did cross it. But God gave Adam a boundary and told him not to cross it. If you think about it, what happened there in the Garden is the same thing that happened all throughout the Old Testament. God gave a law and told people not to break it. By giving the law, God proved that He is God. But that’s not all. Paul told us that the law is a schoolmaster. In other words, the law shows us that we’re sinners in need of grace. In need of a Savior. The law not only proves that God is God, but by showing us we can’t obey it, it shows us that we aren’t. God gave Adam a law. Attached to that law was a promise. As a matter of fact law isn’t law unless it comes with a promise. If somebody that I trusted promised me that I would get a ticket the next time I sped down 460, I probably wouldn’t speed. God promised Adam what would happen if he broke God’s law. He told him he would die. The original reads, “And dying you shall surely die.” That was a promise that we’ll see over the next couple of weeks how it was fulfilled. But suffice it to say that God gave Adam a law and backed it up with a promise. God provides a place and a promise, but He also provides a purpose. The third need-meeting provision of God is that He provides a purpose. Look in verse 15 and 19-20:
GENESIS 2:15, 19-20
God provides a purpose. We get this crazy picture of what paradise would be like. Our picture of paradise always seems to come with a pool and a lounge chair. We seem to picture paradise as a place where you lay around all day and don’t do anything except soak up air and sunshine. We need to relax sometimes, but a whole existence of that wouldn’t be paradise. It would be laziness. And God didn’t create us to be lazy. He didn’t create us to be His pets. He didn’t make us to lay around all day and just be around to eat and be petted. He created man and gave him a purpose. The first thing He did after He led Adam into the Garden was to give him a job. He gave him something to do. But it wasn’t just anything. It wasn’t just busy work. It was a real purpose with real responsibility. Imagine you’re a young kid. Your dad has a 1965 Corvette that he completely restored from the ground up before you were born. All you know is that it’s been under a tarp in the garage your whole life. That car is cherry. It’s restored all original and is worth a fortune. Then on your 16th birthday, dad hands you the keys. He hands you the keys and says that all you have to do is take care of it. You would probably wash and wax that thing every day and it wouldn’t seem like work. Now, taking care of a classic car can be hard work, but what a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when you pulled that car out in public. Now, picture God walking Adam into this wonderful, beautiful Garden. He shows him all the beauty and all the variety. And then he hands him the keys. He says, “Adam, it’s yours. Just take care of it.” Verse 15 says he was to dress and keep it. The word for dress is simply the word for work. He was to work the land and tend to the Garden. But God didn’t just make him a gardener. He gave him responsibility. It was his responsibility to name all the animals God had created. By the way, this shows that Adam wasn’t a club-dragging, mouth-breathing caveman. As a matter of fact, it shows that Adam was a whole lot smarter than most of us. My family wasn’t even able to come up with a suitable name for our cat, much less for all of the animals. Adam had to be personally involved with each of the animals in order to name them. And God gave him that ability. He gave him the wisdom and discernment he needed to accomplish the purpose God had for him. God called him to a purpose, gave him the gifts to accomplish that purpose, and trusted him to fulfill his purpose. Doesn’t He do the same thing with us today? He has given us a purpose to love Him and love one another. He’s also called each of us to more specific purposes like preaching, teaching, spreading His Gospel, helping people, and giving. He gives us those purposes, and then He gifts us accordingly. And then He trusts us to fulfill the purpose He gives us. God provides a place, a promise, and a purpose. Finally, He provides a partner. The fourth need-meeting provision of God is that He provides a partner. Look at verse 18 and 21-25.
GENESIS 2:18, 21-25
God provides a partner. I think there are more Adam and Eve jokes than there are stars in the sky. But the fact remains that God created Adam first, then He created Eve. Look at what all Adam had. He didn’t need to win the lottery. He didn’t need to hit it big in the stock market. He had it all! Everything that existed was there for his use. Every plant was there for his food. Every river was there for his water. Every animal was there for his personal pet. And he didn’t have to clean up after them. Best of all, God Himself was personally with him. But God looked at Adam and saw that he wasn’t complete. He had plenty of stuff to rule over. He had all of creation for that. His need to rule over something wasn’t what was unfulfilled. Neither was his need to be ruled over. God was personally with Adam and walked with him in the Garden. That was certainly a loving relationship. But that relationship was couched in the fact that God is God and Adam wasn’t. Remember, that’s why God gave him a law. It’s also why God gave him the animals. To show Adam a picture of what it meant to have dominion over something. Adam had a relationship with God, but God had dominion over him. Adam ruled over creation and God ruled over Adam. Those were healthy relationships, and that’s the way things are supposed to work. But even though that’s the way they were supposed to work, Adam wasn’t complete. He still had a need. He had a need for a true relationship of equals. He needed a helpmeet. That word helpmeet comes from two words. When used in this sense, the first word means a helper—a partner. The second word means corresponding to, or parallel to. So, when God created Eve, He created her as a partner for Adam, equal and adequate to him. As the old saying goes, God didn’t take Eve from Adam’s feet that he might walk all over her. He didn’t take Eve from Adam’s head that she might rule over him. But He took her from his side that they might go together as partners. Now, there was an order to their creation. Adam was created first and Eve was created from him. That simply lays out the order of responsibility in the home. It speaks nothing of personhood or competence. Personhood and competence are completely equal in God’s eyes. Offices and roles are different, but we are equal partners in this thing called life. And we are completely equal in our standing before God. That can be seen in verse 25 when they were both naked and unashamed. They had no shame because they had no guilt. They had no guilt because they had no sin. But that will soon change. It will change and become as it is with us. They will sin, just as we have all sinned. We were born into sin and have all committed sin. At one time or another, none of us have been able to say we were completely exposed before God and unashamed. God knew that, that’s why He gave us one final provision. It’s not found in this text, because Adam and Eve didn’t need it yet. They were naked and unashamed. But not us. Are you able to stand completely exposed before God tonight and be unashamed? He has given one more provision that will allow you to. 1 John 4:10 says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” He loved you. He sent His Son for you. He provided propitiation for you. Not only did He provide you a place, a promise, a purpose and a partner, He provided you propitiation for your sins. Have you accepted His provision tonight?
