The Creation Of Man And Woman - Parts 2 & 3 Series

Dr. Bradford Reaves

Crossway Christian Fellowship

Hagerstown, MD, USA

www.mycrossway.org

View this and other messages at: https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/channels/8118

I want to go back for a minute and review my message from last week. This is so incredibly important, especially as we move on next week into the fall of man.

First, I showed you how some have erroneously reasoned that Genesis chapter 2 is some kind of epilogue to Genesis chapter 1 or another version of creation. We learned that, unlike western thought which is more linear, Hebraic thinking will often circle around after a narrative to zoom in on an important thought and this is the case with Chapter 2. Moses, the writer of Genesis, is taking us deeper into Day #6. All of Genesis Chapter 2 after the Sabbath discourse, is a more detailed event of Genesis 1:26-31.

Now, the other thing I shared with you is how God created everything man needed to thrive in creation and specifically the Garden. We’ll go a little deeper into that today, but what I wanted you to see is that everything in creation was in perfect order for man to live and live abundantly. We didn’t have to till the land or plant a seed to survive; that came after the fall. That’s the meaning of verse 5; that the ground was not yet cursed.

God also gave man full dominion over God’s creation on earth. As the pinnacle of creations, man was appointed as managers, if you will, over God’s beautiful creation. It was man who relinquished that dominion over to Satan, by the first sin. Through that, Satan became a perverted viceroy of this world.

And listen to this, we continue to relinquish that dominion today through our sin and rebellion. We subjugate our family, our lives, our jobs, our churches, our marriages, whatever it is through our continued transgressions and wherever we fail to place Jesus as Lord of our life.

So there are a few more important points in Genesis Chapter 2 that I want to cover today and then we will go pretty deep into Chapter 3 and we’re going to pick it up here at verse 8 with the description of the Garden

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Genesis 2:8–17 ESV

8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

I. Man’s Location

Now, there’s a much we could get into here, but I want to focus on what is central to my point - that man surrendered his dominion and continues to surrender his dominion under the deception of Satan. God created all the vegetation needed for the earth on day 3:

Genesis 1:11–13 ESV

11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And in all of this, God planted a garden for man to live. This was not just a beautiful garden like Jerry and Brenda have in their backyard, or a park. This was an expansive area of lush constant fruit-bearing trees. There were two special trees here, look at verse 9: