Transcription
This is the Bible show. Welcome, folks, to another episode of The Bible Show. My name is Sam Casten Smith. I'll be your host. Joining me is Will Bushman, and we are continuing our series in the early chapters of Genesis. Today, we're going to get into chapter two, which is a continuation of creation, but it's also getting us into the Garden of Eden, when God rests on the seventh day, and a couple of other things.
So, uh, last time, we talked about Genesis 1. One of the things that we talked about was how Genesis is not given to us as a science textbook. Uh, one of the frustrating things about Genesis is the moment you say that book of the Bible, everybody thinks creation. And only two chapters out of a 50-chapter book are given to creation. The rest of this book is talking about God's relationships with people. In fact, from Genesis 12 all the way to Genesis 50, it's God's relationship with four generations of one family and his covenant with them, which is telling you what God really values: relationships, relationships, and covenant, and promises. So, you want to know what Genesis is all about? It's God's faithfulness to his people. And the first two chapters are no different.
So, we talked about last time how all of creation is anticipating the gospel. This is a God who brings order out of chaos, light from the darkness. He overcomes, and he brings beauty. And he takes that which starts dark and without form and everything else to where, by the end of chapter 1, you everything is very good, right? Well, in chapter 2, we get a closer picture. God says, "Okay, now I'm going to, I'm going to highlight, I'm going to zoom in on my relationship with creation." And it starts with the seventh day where he rests. And that's not a throwaway line. We're to take something from that that can be very valuable to us if we apply it in the way that the scripture intends.
So, let's jump right into chapter 2. It says, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished." So, the six days of creation are over. "And all the hosts of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done." What do you, what do you make of that? I mean, obviously, the first question always is, like, did God have to rest? Is he too tired? Was this just an exhaust in six days and now God is just like, he's got to catch up, like, like we do? Yeah. Is he one of us? Yeah. If you tell me you need to go rest, it's because I'm tired. I've, I've spent too much, and it's time I need to lay down and replenish. What's the problem with that? If you claim that's what God's doing, then he's not God. Yeah. He's not God. He's an infinite being who doesn't have, like, limited supplies of energy. He is infinite in all of his attributes. So, he has infinite energy, right? So, he's not resting because he's tired. The sense that we're to take away from this is he's just made man on the previous day. He's made Adam and Eve. And, and now he's in relationship with them. He's looking back at everything that his hands have just made, all the things that he has spoken into creation. And when it uses that word rest, which is where the, the Jews come up with, they have the word Shabbat, which is like this real rest where everything stops. What it's saying is God is taking a moment to really enjoy his creation. He is looking at Adam and Eve and he's like, "Okay, I'm going to stop moving around and doing, and I'm just going to be. I'm going to enjoy you. I'm going to look at the trees and the streams and all of the beauty and the color and everything else that I've brought into being, and I'm just going to enjoy the labors that I have performed and just bask in it and take it in." It's because it's not so much about the doing and the making. Now is the time to enjoy and just be with one another. And see, stop and smell the roses. Yeah. That's right. That's it. You're stopping and smelling the roses.
And so, when God comes to us with the fourth Commandment, where he tells Moses on Mount Sinai, the fourth Commandment, you know that you are to then rest on the Sabbath, right? You're to make it holy, set it apart. What, you know, what's revolutionary about that is every other religion, particularly in the ancient world, would come to people and say, "Your value is only, only in what you can produce for gods, for the gods." Right? So, slave away. They, they had no Sabbath. You work seven days a week. You worked as long as it took for your Pharaoh or your king or your God. And your value was only in what you produced. And here comes the Hebrew Bible, and what does it say? Stop. You have God coming to you saying, "Stop working." Where's your ultimate value? I want you to stop. Put all that away, and I want you to just come be with me. Which is telling you that God finds more value not from what we produce or what we do. You know, he's God. He doesn't need our labors. But he really values our relationship. And so, that should, that should give us a new identity. You know, so much of us, we work and work, and we spin ourselves into anxieties over what we're producing and, and whether we're worthy and all these things. And God's like, "No, no, I don't want that. Stop. Put that aside. Just come be with me. You want to know where you're valuable? It's just being with me, resting, and enjoying my creation, and being in relationship with me and enjoying your family." So, stop a moment because your value is not in what you do. Your value is because you belong to me. Now, that is the gospel, right? God doesn't love you because of your circumstances or your performance. God loves you because you're His. And what He's saying to you is, "Stop trying to find your identity in what you do, in your performance, and just come be with me." Because you want to know where your real value is? It's in your relationship with me.
There's a lot we can take from that, right? And I think early on, it's not, I mean, still no sin, right? This is before sin enters into the world. That's right. So, later on this chapter, we're going to talk about the value of works. So, we're not just going to say, "Hey, just rest all the time." You know, because God says work matters. But I love that that's the pattern that he starts out with. That rest is included in it. It's not reactionary to be like, "Man, these humans really get after it and kind of get confused about what work is." He's saying, "No, like, this is the healthy rhythm for all of us just from the outset." That's right. That's 100% right.
And then it says, "So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation." And so, if you know the Hebrew Bible, what day is the seventh day? Saturday. Saturday. It's not Sunday. But you're like, "Wait a minute, Christians, we are, day of worship is Sunday. Why do we do it different?" Like, if you go up to a Jew, they go to synagogue, like their holy day starts on Friday night. They go to synagogue, like Saturday, and then the Sabbath ends on Saturday night for them. For the Christian, we say, "We wake up on Sunday morning and we go to church." Why? It's not the Old Testament Sabbath. But what happens in the New Testament? Why, why does this all of a sudden become our Sabbath? It's because in the New Testament, when you find Jesus, you find so many references where he is saying that he is making a new creation. You're a new creature in Christ. Revelation says that he's bringing about a new heavens and a new earth. "Behold, I make all things new." So, everything is about him bringing about a new creation. And if there's a new creation, when did he accomplish that work? When did he finish the work? On the morning of the resurrection. And so, when did that happen? That's Sunday morning. And so, then Jesus rests from his labors, from his labors on the cross, from his labors in the grave to pay for sin and atone for all that stuff and to conquer death. And on the morning of Sunday, the Lord's Day, the day of resurrection, we have a new creation that is now finished and accomplished, and Jesus rests. And so, we celebrate Sunday as our Sabbath because it's the even more important creation that is now finished. The work is done. You are made very good in the eyes of God because of what Jesus did. And now he rests. And so, that becomes our holy day. And the space for that in the rest is so we can think about those kinds of things. It's not just, "Just sit around." You can sit around. I'm not going to define everybody's Sabbath for them. But the purpose is to free up your mind from the normal things of life to be able to rest in the cross and the resurrection of who Jesus is. Yeah.
And it's crazy to me, and we, we've done episodes on rest in the past, but it's crazy to me that we take the fourth Commandment that says, "Hey, you know, this is, this is a holy day. Do not work on this day." And we're like, "Oh, man, another rule." And it's like, "Wait a minute, like, God is calling you to stop, to just enjoy Him and enjoy His creation." And we still grumble about that, like it's a burden that He's telling us not to work because we're so compulsively needing to create and to do. And God's like, "No, like, calm down. Your value in my sight is defined more by being with me than running around and creating things." It's, it's like the Mary and Martha paradigm where you see in the Gospels, where Martha's in the kitchen and she's running around, she's doing all these things, and Mary is at His feet, just sitting there, soaking Him in and enjoying Him and all that He offers. And what does Jesus say? She, Mary has chosen the better thing. It won't be taken from her. And that's the, that's the perspective on Sabbath. God wants you to be with Him and to stop striving all the time.
Okay, maybe other than the first three Commandments, do you think the Sabbath is the, in the modern world, is the most broken commandment out of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? I mean, there's definitely more Sabbath breakers than murderers. I think coveting would be pretty high up there. Okay. Yeah. Lying. Okay. Maybe we see those as wrong, though. Yeah. We're pretty angry. I mean, if, if hatred and anger your brother's murder, like, we're pretty good at that too. Like, we're broken. Yeah. But we point out that that, like, if, if somebody's really angry, as a group, we're like, "You should stop that." Yeah. Or like, "Hey, you seem to be lying a lot." Like, that's an issue. Where Sabbath, no one's called me out on the Sabbath ever. Yeah. That's true. I'll, I'll say this, it's the most tolerated. So, like, if somebody's coveting and it's like, "Oh, I want, I want your coffee mug." You know, we're like, "Well, that's not healthy." Or lying, or stealing, or cheating on a spouse, like, we still look at that. You're like, "Adulterer is bad." Yeah. But if you're going into work on Sunday, that's become like a, yeah, you know. So, so somebody he works seven days a week, he never takes time off to enjoy his family and to enjoy God and to rest and to, like, we look at that and they're like, "Oh, wow, he's really ambitious. Good on him." Like, that's where our culture's moved. And it's like, "No, you need to stop." Yeah. Overwork as a badge of honor. Work. That's right. Like the hustle, the ambition, this whole thing. Like, "Hey, somebody else is grinding. If you take one day off." Mhm. Yeah. Which is, which is a shame because it destroys people. I mean, it really does. Like, we look at this generation that is so anxious. Why, why are they anxious? What am I going to make of my life? I've got to climb the ladder. I'm not doing it fast enough. What do people think of me? And da da da. Everything is in, "What do people think of my performance? What do they think of what I'm producing?" And God is coming with the remedy here, saying, "I, I just want you." Like, imagine if we really believed that deep down in our heart that we're valuable just because we're His. Yeah. First and foremost, more over than than what we produce. So, so God is laying this pattern again, another gospel pattern that we find in the earliest chapters of Genesis. Your value is found in resting with the Lord.
And so, then in verse 4, it says, "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. And the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." "When no bush of the field was yet in the land." Now, I believe that this is talking about the Garden of Eden. It would have to be, because in Genesis 1, remember, when did the plants come? Early on, day three. It's day three. So, now we're talking about after day seven, when God has rested. And he says, "When no bush of the field was yet in the land." Now, I believe that that is going to be talking about, even though the Hebrew word is, is, I think, *arets*, which is the Earth, it's like, in that particular land, the Garden of Eden, God, that's like, it's like a fertile field, ready to go. Okay. So, you're implying that some people would read this and say the timeline's off. Yeah. Okay. They would say, "Makes more sense. Wait a minute. In Genesis 3, it says the plants came up. And now it's saying there's no bush in the field." Like, so, so already, we've got a contradiction in the first chapters. And as you see, it's this is leading to planting a garden in the East. Which, so, it's saying you have this fertile soil. God is about to plant a garden. And so, but it's talking about that land when there's no bush of the field that was yet in the land. "And no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was coming up from the land and watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature."
Okay, so you're given some clues about how Adam is made. And all of these are going to be very instructive for the rest of scripture, right? Why would God make Adam from the dust of the ground? What is that telling you? What is dust like? If you walk around in your house, you know what most of the dust all around your house is? It's unwanted. It's dead. Oh, it's dead skin cells. Dead skin cells. Which is kind of gross. But dust is death. All through, even modern day, like dust. You know, if you throw dust at somebody in the scriptures, you know what that means? "I want you to die." If I sit in dust, or I'm a sackcloth and ashes, putting dust on my head, it's like, "I deserve death," or "I'm as good as dead." In modern day, we had a song in the 1980s, which, you know, I appreciate that decade's music. I've heard it. You do this. "Another one bites the dust." Which means what? You're out. Like, you're over. You're dead, right? You've been defeated. Beat the competition. That's right. You know, Job talks about the dust. It's always emblematic of death. And here, God, he could have made you out of anything. He could have made you out of water. He could have made you out of tree bark or something. He goes to dust, which is saying God has made you from the very dirt of the ground. There is nothing at all noble about this. Like, it is utterly worthless. It's the lowest thing. It's associated with death. What makes you valuable? The next part. And he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. You want to know, like, you're just dirt until God breathes into you. Why are you valuable? God, and, and of yourself, you're just dirt, right? I, I remember our pastor, uh, Tom, talking about how foolish racism is. I was hoping you'd bring this up because I kind of know. No, no, I don't know what he says. I just know he says something about it. And I always thought, but he was like, "If you ever look at the skin of mankind," and you know, I don't think he's making a scientific argument here, it's just a poetic one. But he's like, "If you look at the skin of mankind, it's all the colors of the dirt of the ground, right?" Like, you, you have, you know, sandy colored, you have dark, you have red clay, you have all the different colors that you find of the dirt. And that's the colors of humanity. And how foolish racism is that, like, you're boasting of your dirt. Yeah. Like, "We came from dust. We're going to dust." What happens in between? Why are we making big? That's right. Like, you're gonna brag about this, the color of this. Like, everything's going back to the dust, the same place it came from. Why are you boasting of that? The only thing that uniquely sets you apart as valuable is the fact that one, you're made in the image of God, which we learned in chapter one. But here, God has breathed life into you, which means He's the source of your life. He is the owner of your life. He gives you His image. Everything that's sacred and set apart about you comes from Him. So, what do you have to boast about? Nothing. Nothing. I guess you can boast if you know God. But that's it. That's it. That's, I mean, and Paul says that, "I'll boast in nothing else but the cross of Christ." Like, everything that I have to boast about, He has given to me. All of my talents, eyes, everything about everything that He's given me, everything is from Him. I have nothing to boast about. And so, Genesis 2 is coming to you saying, "Don't, don't try. You're dust. Like, you're dirt. You have nothing in yourself to boast about apart from the fact that God has looked at you and shown favor to you and given you life and given you abilities and talents and made you in the image of God." That has set you apart from all the creatures of the world. That's what makes you special. So, while you're incredibly valuable, it's nothing for you to brag about. You see how that humbles you? And it's, it's brilliant.
So, there's three things about man that we know about his creation. One, he's made in the image of God, which is, you know, that anticipates the gospel, right? We're made in the image, we, we sin and we mar the image, and Jesus has come. He, he comes in the image of the invisible God. He dies on a cross. He gives us His righteousness. And what He's doing, in a sense, is restoring us into the perfect moral image of God once again, so that we're acceptable in God's sight. So, we bear the image of God. The next one is, we come from the dust, which means also this points to the gospel and resurrection. Why? Because if the dust is always in emblematic of death, that means that when God first made you, even the creation of Adam is a picture of resurrection. When God takes death and forms it into new life. And then, what, what is Genesis 3? The next chapter says, "From dust you came, to dust you return." Should you freak out about that? No. Why? Because God knows how to bring life from the dust. He's going to make the dust new again. And so, even that is pointing to His resurrection power and His power to redeem. And the next one, where it says that He breathes life into the nostrils, that's an interesting thing. In, in, in the New Testament, Paul is going to come in his epistle to Timothy and he's going to say that "all scripture is God-breathed," right? Which means what? If you're, if Adam's life came from God's breath, and the New Testament comes and says, "Hey, all, all scripture is God-breathed." What is it telling you? Where do you find life? If you are dead in your sins and trespasses, if you are spiritually dead, where are you to go to find life? Well, you go to the Word of God. It is God-breathed. It's like that. It's the same when Jesus comes and He's introduced in the New Testament as the Word. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It's referring to Jesus. Well, in Genesis 1, you find, "And God said," and things come to be. "And God said," and things come to be. "And God said," and things come to life. So, God's word always brings new beginnings. If Jesus is God's word, what is He coming to bring? Life. Life. A new beginning. So, the gospel brings new beginnings. His breath brings new beginnings in life. Everything about this is pointing you toward the gospel and a redemptive end. It's, it's beautiful how He's doing this.
So, verse 8: "And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, there it is, in the East. And there he put the man that he had formed." Now, it's, it's interesting that he creates the man from the dust and puts him into this garden that he formed. Remember, um, in the last chapter, what is the command that's given to Adam? The very first command, the great cultural mandate, that you're to go out, you're to be fruitful, you're to multiply, you're to fill the Earth, and do what? And subdue it. Which means it's not subdued. So, then God takes this uncultivated Earth that's all outside the garden, but then He plants the Garden of Eden, and it's beautiful. It's made according to His design. It's got all the fruitful plants and everything else that's beautiful. And He places Adam there. And it's like, "Hey, Adam, you, this is a starter kit. You're going to now take this garden that I've placed you in, and I want you to expand its boundaries until the garden design overtakes the whole Earth." And He wants Adam to participate in the work and the project. Which, by the way, is still our project. Yeah. Ours is different. We'll learn that next chapter, right? We're still to be gardeners that take the beauty of God's design to the ends of the Earth.
And so, it says, "And out of the ground the Lord made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the Tree of Life was in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." What, what question jumps to mind there? Why'd you put those there? Yeah. Why, why put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil there? Yeah. Like, why even give them a chance? So, this is, this is something you'll have to tune in next week, oh, to hear the answer to that. But God is absolutely doing this for a very beautiful reason. So, you have two trees in the middle of this garden. And listen to to how it's described, okay? Ready? So, you have two trees in the middle of the garden, God dwelling with man. Got to pay attention to this. Allow this to paint a picture in your mind because it's going to be really beautiful what comes out of this.
In verse 10, it says, "A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden." So, you have this river that sourced out of Eden, where God and man dwell. And between the two trees, and there it divided and became four rivers. So, what do we know about Eden? If it's the source of rivers, it's on a mountain. It's on a mountain. So, there's gravity flow, right? For four rivers to come out, it has to be on a mountain. Ezekiel refers to it as Mount Eden. So, we know that this is a mountain. So, now you have God and man and two trees and a river flowing down from a mountain. And it says, "The first, the name of the first river is the Pishon. It's the one that flowed to all around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. There is also precious stone, and onyx stone. Or there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It's the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush." Which is down in Africa. "And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river, the Euphrates." Now, we know for sure where two of those rivers are sourced, and it's like, southeast of the Black Sea, like Eastern Turkey, and that area. That's where the Tigris and the Euphrates come up, still to this day, on a map. And so, they think that would be where the original Garden of Eden would be, which is lost, you know, it doesn't still exist anymore. But so, now let's put together the image. We're on a mountain, the river flowing down, God dwelling with man on top of a mountain, two trees, and there's jewels there, and it's gold, and it's, it's really beautiful, right?
"And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall surely die.'" So, I want to pause there for a moment because everything that you see that is in Eden is anticipating how the story ends. Okay? In heaven, if you were to go in heaven and you were to look at what heaven is like, let me describe it to you and see if this sounds familiar. Revelation 22:2 says that the heavenly city is fertile, yielding forth "12 crops of fruit every month." So, there's trees bearing fruit. It's plentiful, right? Okay. Okay. That sounds familiar. Revelation 22:1 says it's home to the "River of the Water of Life flowing from the throne of God." That sound familiar? Okay. And we know, by the way, also that the heavenly city is called Mount Zion. Hebrews 12:22. So, okay, we've got a mountain, we've got a river that flows that brings life to the ends of the Earth, we've got the trees that are bearing fruit. That's great. What else do we know about it? Well, Revelation 21:19 says that it's decorated with "every kind of precious stuff." That sound familiar? That's just like we just heard with all these different stones that are going and gold and everything else. Revelation 22:2 says this, that the city features the Tree of Life. But what does it not have? Tree of not good and evil. The, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It doesn't have a Tree of Death. But this weird thing happens in Revelation 22, which is confusing because it says the Tree of Life grows on either side of the River of Life, which means it's got, like, a root system or something under the river, and it's got trees coming up. So, both of these trees that are emerging are the Tree of Life. So, you hear the echo there. Here's a mountain with a river and stones and gold and God dwelling with man, which is the next thing. Revelation 21:3, "God himself will be with them and be their God." It's telling you that heaven is a restored picture of Eden.
Okay, so then the question becomes, okay, in Chapter 2, we see this picture of Eden, it's the mountain and all the stuff, right? But then the next chapter, man rebels against God, says, "We don't want you anymore." The fall, the world, man's soul is marred, he becomes rebellious against God. And yet, at the end of the story, you get all the way to the end of the Bible, in the New Testament, and it ends with us in another Edenic paradise. Yes. How did we get redeemed? And what God is doing, it's so amazingly beautiful how He does this. As He paints the picture of another mountain in between. You ready for this? Mhm. All right. Let's take it. We've got a mountain, right? Sound familiar? Where God comes and He dwells with man again. Except this time, He's going to be hung on a cross. He's betrayed. And by the way, just like He'll be betrayed in a garden in Genesis 3, Jesus will come into this Earth. And where is it that He's arrested? In a garden. In a garden, once again. And the first time, He'll station a sword and say, "You're not allowed to come into the Garden of Eden." But in the Mount of Redemption, He says, "Put away the sword." And He goes to a different mountain, Mount Golgotha. And on that mountain, He's hung on a cross, in between two trees, on a mountain. And there He takes all the sin of the world, all of the reasons why we were thrown out of Eden. He says, "I'll take the blame for all of that. Give it to me." And He dies. He faces the wrath of God. And when the Roman soldiers come up to Him, it's really beautiful what God is doing here. And they pierce His side with the spear. What, what's, what's unique about what happens when His side is pierced? Blood doesn't come out. The blood and water, right? So, you have blood, which is for the atoning. You have the image of water, which is probably the blood serum that's coming out, that's clear. And it starts flowing out. And it's like atonement and cleansing. But what is the message? Okay, we have the mountain, we have God, we have the two trees, we have all the life, right? He's referred to as as the Bread of Life. He is the Tree of Life Himself. Right? Eat of Him and you'll live forever. When He is pierced and out comes this flow, we're to think, "Okay, wait a minute. Back in Eden, when the flow came forth down the mountain, it brought life to the ends of the Earth, all four corners, four rivers going in different directions. In heaven, the River of Life that brings life to all of, of heaven." What's happening on the Mount of Crucifixion? God is taking the photo negative of those paradises. And He's taking the, the most devastating, dark suffering to Himself on a different mountain. That is the photo negative, so that you can be restored to heaven. In all the ways that this is being described, all the ways that Calvary is described, it is that Jesus is taking the anti-Eden. It's the anti-heaven. It's the place of utter suffering so that you can be restored to paradise. All those details, no accident. Yeah. It's amazing that God was going to end up in a garden with His people, no matter what. That's right. Like, one way was a lot, lot more obstacles in Jesus dying, but that was the goal all along. Like you said, He's got a relationship.
All right, so we have that picture set up. Then the next, the next verse, verse 18, because all of this is is saying, "Hey, everything is anticipating a resurrection. Everything's anticipating the redemptive story." Which means that God is not out of control in all this. He is a sovereign author. He is writing a beautiful story. And in verse 18, you get to one of the, one of the purest, most obvious nods to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's before sin has even entered the world. Verse 18: "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'" And it's like, why, why didn't He just make a pair of them to start with? Right? Mhm. Like, we're told in Genesis 1, remember all the last episode, "according to their kinds, according to their kinds, according to their kinds." When God made giraffes, He made two of them. When God made zebras, He made two of them. When God, like, He's always brought them together in pairs. But He made Adam alone. Why? And I think it's because He wants Adam to recognize the lack. You know, it's not good for man to be alone. Adam is sitting around watching all of these creatures that have something that's very similar to them, except the other gender. And Adam's like, "I'm different." Yeah. He's looking around. "I don't have one of those." And God looks at him and says, "It is not good that man should be alone." You want to know why? Because you're made in the image of God. And long before creation ever came into being, the Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has spent all of eternity in relationship. You're made in His image, which means you're made to be in relationship. And so, He looks at him and says, "It is not good for man to be alone." That's the first thing in all of creation where it says God said it's not good. Long before sin comes into the world, God says loneliness is not good. You're made to be with other people in relationship. And He says, "I will make him a helper fit for him."
All right, so there we've got all kinds of cultural sirens going off. How do you feel about Him saying, "I will make a helper fit for him," and it's talking about a wife? I'm cool with it. Yeah. Me too. Because also, He calls the Holy Spirit the Helper. Yeah. And the Holy Spirit's fully God. So, that's right. Helping is not a bad thing. Then, Holy Spirit is our Helper, and that's certainly not a demeaning title. So, the, the Hebrew word there is *ezer* or *ezer*, and like you said, there's plenty of times in the Old Testament where that's referring to the Spirit of God. Like, not a demeaning title whatsoever, but it's like a completing. You make me better. I make you better. This is a helper that brings out the best in you. And what it's saying is, when God gives man the woman, it makes the man better. When God gives the woman man, it makes the woman better. Like, we are meant to complement one another and to make each other better. That's the design.
So, it says, "Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them." Now, why would He do this? So, now you have to think, and this is, who knows how long this took? But now you have Adam who's sitting there all alone. And now God's like, "All right, now I want you to experience this." He's been told the problem. Now he lives it. That's right. "Here's Mr. and Mrs. Giraffe. Here's Mr. and Mrs. Sheep. Here's Mr. and Mrs. Lion." And he's got to name them all, right? And so, he's going through the list. And he's, he's, it's reinforcing this idea. You don't have a Mrs. There's no Mrs. Adam. Yeah. Feel the lack. Feel the lack. And God is doing this lovingly so that Adam will appreciate when he does have that mate. And so, he's sitting there naming them all, what they would be called. "And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him."
So, now the Lord goes into motion. You ready? So, the Lord God would now pause for a moment because if, if you didn't have the rest of the story, or if you've never heard the rest of the story, what would you assume God wants to make another person? What would you assume that He does? Just makes another person from the dust of the ground. Yep. Did the first time? Get some more dust. Take two. Might have been. Boom. I mean, that's the, what you would expect. So, then you, you should immediately have all of the alarm bells going off, going, "Why is He changing up like this? What, why does He make, why does He make the woman differently than He made the man? Like, there has to be something going on here." And so, we're told, "The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man." Now, hold on. Wait a minute. Why, why that? You know, that this is where the person who came up with, uh, what's it called? Anesthesia. Anesthesia. This was his inspiration. Where you could be put into such a deep sleep that you would not feel the pain. It could cut you up. Yeah. So, this is actually what they wanted to find out. Is there such a twilight deep sleep that you could be into where you would not feel pain? Because God is going to put him into a deep sleep. "And while he slept, took one of his ribs." The, the word there is not necessarily ribs. It's like a substance of the side. Probably a rib. But it could have been, you know, a love handle. Or Adam didn't have love handles, or whatever. "And closed up its place with flesh." So, now, now I want you to stop for a moment and think. Hold on a minute. Before sin ever entered into the world, God comes to this sinless man, who has done nothing wrong, and says, "Okay, for you to have a partner, for you to have a bride, I'm going to cause you to go into this really deep sleep." Though you've done nothing wrong, and I could have just picked up dust from the ground, but I'm going to wound you. I'm going to open your side. And out of a bloody wounding, I'm going to make a bride for you." Say what? Yeah. Again, if you don't know the rest of the story, this is so bizarre. It is crazy bizarre. But it's one of those things where we've heard this so many times, we never stop to think, "Why would God do that?" And there's a number of things that, like, leap off the page here. Like, for example, what does Jesus say the greatest form of love is? What? "No greater love does man have than this, that you lay down your life for your brother." That's it. That you lay down your life for your friend. Well, what does that mean? That means that the greatest form of love comes through sacrifice. We know that to be true. When you have a friend who loves you when things are easy, that friendship's a millimeter deep. But if you have a friend who is with you through the pits of hell, that person is so precious to you because that love is not cheap. That is a precious love. The love of Christ to give His life, to suffer, to lay it all down, is a love that humanity can barely comprehend. And here you have God saying, "Okay, I'm going to form the first marriage. I'm going to bring it about. But I'm not just going to make it and say, 'Oh, here, I'd like to introduce you, Adam, to your new pile of dust that I breathed into, and I would hope that you guys have a happy life.'" He's like, "No, no, no. I want you to sacrifice. You're going to be wounded. You're going to have a scar. I want you, I want this relationship to cost you something." And, and a world before the fall, yeah, that means that costly love is a beautiful thing. It's not a broken thing. That's not a, that's not a broken world thing. But before the fall, God takes the sinless man, and a garden, puts him into a deep, deep sleep, where this expression in the Hebrew is sparsely used. It's rarely used, but it's likened to death. His side is wounded. And from the bloody wound, God makes a bride. Who raises the sinless man up? Here we go.
"And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man." So, He's raised the man up now. "And the man said, 'This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.'" So, now let's, let's think about that whole story. If you're not already putting it together, God says, "I want to find a bride for my Son, right? My creation, my Adam, a helper, a helper, right?" Rather than just scooping up and making an independent thing, I'm going to take the sinless man. I'm going to put him into a deep sleep. I'm going to wound his side. From the bloody wounding, I'm going to create a bride that's fit for him. That's important. Mhm. Then I'm going to raise him up in a garden and I'm going to present him with a bride. Does that ring any bells? Yep. That's the gospel. Yeah. What does God do with His Son? I mean, the whole story, it ends in Revelation, by the way, with just like we talked about, it ends in Revelation 21 with God saying that the Church of Christ, the New Jerusalem, is coming down from heaven as a bride prepared for her husband. What does that mean? That means that the whole of creation is pointing us to the to the ultimate climax where we are set apart to become the bride, as a whole, of God Himself. And so, how does He tell Genesis 2? Hm. "I would like to find a bride. What's this story going to look like?" Well, I'm going to take the sinless man and put him into a deep sleep like death. I'm going to wound him. From the wound in his side, sound familiar? I'm going to pull out a wounding and I'm going to purify from that wound a bride that is perfect and fit for the hand of Adam, for the hand of Jesus. And I'm going to raise him up in a garden to present him with this bride that's now fit for him. That's not an accident. This is screaming, singing the gospel before the fall ever happens. What does that mean? It, it means that God is a sovereign author who's got this whole story figured out. He is not surprised. He's not reactionary. He is telling a story that is the most beautiful story that could ever be told. And He is ordaining it. And all these micro stories on the way to Jesus so that you can see His heart is so absolutely laser-focused on what He's ultimately going to do through Christ for you.
And by the way, when it says that He's seeking a helper suitable for Him, think about that metaphor now. Who is the helper that is going to be made suitable for Jesus? Us. You think on that for a moment. Because there will come a day, okay, when you are a suitable helper to Jesus. That means Jesus isn't going to take a dog. We're not going to be up in heaven with Him going, "Oh, yeah, them. Like, I guess I'll settle for them." Do you know what the Bible says repeatedly in the Epistles? That you are going to be a partaker of the divine nature. What? That you're going to be a partaker of His glory. John, in his epistle, says that "when you see Him, you will become like Him." Paul writes about how you're going to be transformed from one degree of glory to another for all of eternity, starting at the moment that you come to Christ. Which means this, that forever, every morning you wake up, you're going to be a little bit more like God, growing in your capacities, growing in your love, and all of His attributes, and becoming more like Him. Never being infinite, but always becoming more like Him. You will be a helper suitable for Him. And just as Adam, when he receives from his wounds a bride, and he just marvels and rejoices, "Look at this! This is a woman, bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh." Jesus is on that day going to be like, "This is a bride, Spirit of my spirit, one with me, inseparable. She shall be called my church, right? For she came out of my wounding." That's the metaphor. That's beautiful.
And then He says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father or mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." That's pointing to what we will have with Christ. We will be made one. The Bible talks about that repeatedly. "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." Which also doesn't last long. Yeah. That for them, it doesn't last long. The next chapter, they blow it. But there's going to come a day when you won't know shame anymore. When you won't have to cover up. There's, there's going to come a day where you experience the freedom of having a God who looks at you in all of your sins and faults and blemishes and scars and everything else, and they are washed away forever. And the only thing that you get when you look at your God is doting. And He is so exhilarated and thrilled to be able to call us His bride. And He just beams with delight and sharing Himself with us for all of eternity. And we grow from one degree of glory to another, every day, reaching new limits of who He is, never being able to exhaust His limits, but always growing in our capacity to enjoy Him more, love more, joy more, experience of Him forever and ever and ever. And that is the pattern that's being laid up in Genesis 2. That you see with man alone, we squander it. Adam can't rescue his bride. His bride can't rescue him. We need God. God is the one who's going to come and make sure that this story is not just fulfilled in a beautiful way, but that it's redeemed into something, as we'll see next chapter, that is far more beautiful and glorious and wonderful than Adam and Eve could have ever dreamed. At the end of next week, we will be thanking God for the fall because of what Jesus has done. Believe it or not. Is wild. Yeah. He's a sovereign God, and He's an awesome Savior.
Wait, I have one question. Yeah. I wanted to ask this a while ago, but you, I could tell you were getting into something. The string was out. Yeah. Know, you were getting into something. I knew, I knew what it was. I was like, "This is not the time." But did Adam sleep before this? I think so. I think so. So, like, had he ever known what it was like to fall asleep? I think so. Yeah. Like, is he going to bed every night? Yeah. I think so. I mean, if you think about how long it would take to name all the animals and everything else, like, I don't think this is day seven. God's resting, and Adam blows it on the seventh day. Like, I think they had had some time before. Okay. Everything blew up. So, you think he was sleepy? Mhm. Okay. I just wondered. I think so. Why not? Jesus sleeps. He's not fallen, right? I mean, that would make sense. Jesus needs to rest. Yeah. But wasn't that his? Yeah. He, I mean, he doesn't have a fallen nature there. I think I think sleep is a good thing. I agree. I, I wish I could get more of it. Me too. You got little ones, and I'm just messed up. So, um, anyway. Okay, that's all I had. We can wrap this up now. Fun to think about. All right. Anyway. All right.
So, I want to remind you that in addition to the Bible Show, we also have other channels that we would love for you to become subscribers of. As Will is pointing to the mug, "Under the Hood" is one. That's a show where we get into archaeology and history and bring kind of like historical color to stories of the Bible that make, make them come to life. Uh, and that's one of them. We also have a, a show called "In God We Trusted." That looks at worldview issues and modern cultural moments and gives kind of Christian commentary in what the Bible says about different issues like that. Would be something we would love for you to check out as well. And that's "In God We Trusted." Yes. Not "In God We Trust." We couldn't get that, obviously. Yeah. That was gone. So, thoughts at the end. That's important. Yeah. We need re, we thought we need revival. You know, we used to be, you know, a nation where our trust was placed in God. We look to God for all sorts of things. We need to get back there. So, right. We're using past tense with the hope that someday revival will hit. We will be a nation that that falls in love with the Lord all over again. So, anyway, I want to thank you for watching. Join us next week as we go into probably, ironically, one of the most beautiful chapters of scripture, which is about the fall of man, Genesis 3. When you see how Christ redeems the ugliest chapter of scripture, it is glorious. So, join us then. [Music]