The Garden Of Delight & The Fall Series

2:1-3

So God rested on the 7th day.

The Hebrew actually means God "ceased" from the activities of the past six days - and possibly then settled in to the creation He had made, receiving refreshment from it.

The Law codified the Sabbath as a day of rest and the Jews came up with all kinds of rules and regulations that made it a ridiculous show of legalism rather than a celebration of God as in control or the universe and our lives.

Jesus fulfilled all of the Old Testament Law, including the Sabbath - now we don’t have a Sabbath day, we have a Sabbath life:

Heb 4:9-11 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.

The rest of Chapter 2 at first glance seems out of place - we just had the creation account. Well, in a way you can look at Chapter 1 as God set forth the function of the creation. In chapter 2 He reveals the result of the creation - a closer look.

Read 2:4-7

God is setting the stage, zooming in on more details in the creation. At the point when the earth was created, but no vegetation - either wild or for food - had come up because there had not yet been rain or flood - that’s when God created man. Its possible this means only cultivated food crops - because there was no one to tend or eat them.

The idea of "dust" is just the powdery, dusty stuff that lies around. Somehow God molded us like a potter molds clay - and the active ingredient was his breath. This wasn’t a one time thing, either - God breathes the "breath of life" into everyone who is born. Now did God actually pull up some mud and make us like a pot? Not necessarily - but He did make us out of the same elements as the earth - our bodies that is - but our spirits came from God - and all life belongs to Him - He can take it away if He wants (of course Adam didn’t know that then).

How old was Adam on the day he was formed? He was only minutes old but looked like a grown man. God put into him "age dating factors." This is one of the things people use to say that God could indeed have created the earth thousands, not billions of years ago - because He could have created it with age dating factors already built in.

Read 2:8-14

God planted Eden. "Garden" here is like Busch Gardens - not our backyard variety. Eden had a huge water supply - enough for four rivers. Where was Eden? Everyone’s got their theory. Two of the rivers mentioned we know of: the Tigris and Euphrates between Iraq and Iran. The other two - the Pishon and Gihon we don’t know. Some scholars suggest the Garden existed near the Black Sea - recent satellite imagery found an old "fossil" river in Central Saudi Arabia that flowed to the place where the Tigris and Euphrates meet near the head of the Persian Gulf. They further state that a river that runs south from Iran, the Karun, is actually the Gihon River. If this is true - then the Garden of Eden is located under the waters of the Persian Gulf just off the coast of Kuwait.

"Eden" means "delight" - God intended from the very beginning to bless man - its us that messed up His blessing.

In this Garden God planted two very important trees - the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Life would not have meant "one bite and you live forever" like in Tuck Everlasting - but the idea of "perpetual life" or "open ended life." So as long as you kept eating it you wouldn’t die.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil comes into the story in the next chapter - but suffice it to say that the idea here is "discernment." That Tree granted the ability to tell right from wrong, good from evil - something young children lack. It could be called "The Tree of the Knowledge of Evil" because that’s really what it did. So why didn’t they just eat from the Tree of Life? Probably because they didn’t know they needed to. We do - because we know all about death.

Read 2:15-17

God gave Adam a home, a job, and provision. He was a gardener. It’s interesting, though. God told Adam to "work it and take care of it." The meaning of these two Hebrew words is not precise - and I won’t go into all of the details, but basically although I’m sure he did some pruning and the like - the primary purpose suggested here is that of a caretaker, even a priest, caring for a sacred space - the place where God dwelt. The same words are used in Numbers when speaking of the priests caring for the grounds around the Tent of Meeting.