This morning, I also want to take us back to the very beginning of the Scriptures.
We're going to spend our time and study this morning as we consider the Garden of Eden, both what we learn about it in the Old Testament and what we learn about it in the New
Testament.
As you take a moment to grasp
what scripture tells us about creation.
Let us settle one thing.
Man's theories on the existence of this planet, the universe and everything that surround us, might hold up quite well if they dismiss a lot of facts.
That's why they're theories.
But the reality is that there was someone who was present
when it occurred.
And that someone told us how it occurred.
And some will say, the account in Genesis 1 and 2 is just uh cobbled together from some ancient myths and different ideas and it shares some some symbology and some other things
with other concepts that have floated around ancient history and ancient humanity and there's not really a whole lot of fact in it.
It is important for someone to grasp that the creation account isn't exclusive to Genesis 1 and 2.
That if someone were to deny the creation account, they wouldn't just be denying or saying, know what, Moses was a little mistaken.
He only had a few ideas from his upbringing in Egypt.
ah we can dismiss chapters one and two and move on.
Or maybe it was just, ah you know, reinterpret a day to mean something a day doesn't mean.
But if you were to pause and consider, if you dismiss Genesis 1 and 2, the creation account itself is reiterated, re-emphasized, and testified to in every major section of
the Old Testament and in every major section of the New Testament.
It is testified to by Christ Himself.
It is
emphasized from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, if you deny Genesis 1 and 2, you have denied the entirety of Scripture and the very Son of God.
So no, you can't get out of Genesis 1 and 2.
You can't describe Genesis 1 and 2 as a myth unless you're willing to deny the very existence and word of Christ himself.
But our focus this morning is on the Garden of Eden.
The Garden of Eden is described in Genesis 2 beginning, and if you were to think about Genesis 1 and 2 by way of a framework,
What you should think about is in Genesis 1, Moses is talking about the process of creation.
And he gives it in two cycles.
There is a cycle of the first three days, and then there's a revisiting of that same cycle in the last three days.
But in Genesis chapter 2, you open with really the closing of the cycle or the process.
We read in verse 1 of chapter 2, "'Thus the heavens and the earth and all the hosts of them were finished.
And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all the work which God had created and made." If you were to really think hard about where the
chapter break should be, it should be right there.
But that's not where people who publish...
uh the text, put it.
uh But that's the end of the process, seven days.
And in verse four, you have the beginning of the telling of the history of the creation from a different perspective, not a reiterating of the same seven days, but drawing
forward a different point.
Because now,
Moses is not going to describe the creation of the world and everything in it.
Moses is going to describe God at a much, much narrower level dealing with the creation of the place where Adam and Eve will be put.
Okay?
So it's not contradictory, it's not separate, it's just focused differently in chapter 2.
And in chapter 2 is when we find the discussion of the Garden of Eden.
We read beginning in verse 4, is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens before any plant of
the field was in the earth, before any herb of the field had grown, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth and there was no man to till the ground.
But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being." Moses isn't contradicting what he just
said when he described the days of days four, five, and six, and the creation of the dry land and the plants, and then the creation of the...
air and the sea animals and then the creation of the land animals and on day six the creation of man.
He's not contradicting that.
He's retelling it from a different description to give you a picture.
And so he describes God creating man.
He describes God bringing out of the earth that had nothing on it, that which he placed on it, which was this garden that he is going to describe and everything that fills the rest
of the earth.
But then verse 8, we find the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.
And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
As you look at this you're going to see a number of things, and I'm going to find my notes wherever I put them here.
utilize those as we go along.
But uh in this text you're going to see a number of things described.
You find in verses 1 through 3 the finishing of the work that's described in chapter 1.
You find in verses 4 through 7 man's creation.
Here, reiterated again.
Then in verses 8 and 9 you find this picture of the glory that God placed man in.
We have a description of the world being created.
We have a description of God filling the earth with the things which He created, but then we have a narrowed focus to the place called Eden.
This garden where God placed man.
And that God placed man here and put him here.
and that out of the ground the Lord God, verse 9, made every tree grow that is pleasant in the sight and good for food.
So as you were to picture, if you were to picture the garden, imagine the best orchards, imagine the best forests, imagine the best cropland, imagine the best of everything, and
then imagine God places Adam in that garden.
Everything that was perfect, everything that was pleasant, everything that was good was within his reach.
And God placed Adam there and God placed humanity there, but in the midst of the garden, God placed two trees.
Sometimes we think of a tree in the midst of the garden.
That's not what the text says.
There are two trees described in the midst of the garden.
There is the tree,
of life, and there is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden.
And of one they're allowed to eat, and of the other they're told not to eat of it lest they die.
In the garden you have this plentiful existence.
You have every good thing you could ask for.
every good thing that you could want to sustain life.
And you have this tree that when you eat of it, if you read the rest of the text down to the end of chapter three, you're going to find that if you eat of it, you live.
Verse 10, we find the location described.
Now, something you need to appreciate when Moses is writing this record, because he's writing it by inspiration, he's writing it by the delivery of the very message from the
Holy Spirit to God, or from God to humanity, is that Moses is describing it in current-day Israel terms
to give them a perspective on where God placed the garden, but not necessarily describing it from the perspective of where everything was in the days of the garden.
You say, Aaron, what do you mean?
I mean there was a flood that happened between those two events.
There was a flood that occurred that covered the entire earth as described in Genesis chapter 6, 7, and 8 and changed the very landscape and nature of the entire planet.
So as Moses describes four rivers and you go, wait a minute, I've looked at the map and I don't really see how those rivers interconnect.
I don't know exactly where Moses is talking about.
Well, that might be because the rivers aren't exactly where they were in the days of the garden.
And yet, Moses is giving you a description, some of which with rivers that we actually know where they exist and we know where they are today, we just don't necessarily know
what path they followed then.
But he's writing it for the readers who know where the rivers are now, in his day, not for Adam and Eve, because they're not gonna read Genesis.
They're dead and gone.
So as you're reading the descriptions, bear in mind, you're combining both the events of the original time period and an understanding being written so that the people in Israel
and the people who have departed out of Egypt and the people who are in the wilderness when Moses writes the book can understand what he's writing about.
So we notice here in verse 10, now the river went out of Eden to water the garden.
And from there it parted and became four riverheads.
The name of the first is Pishon.
It is the one which skirts the whole land of Havila where there is gold.
And the gold of the land is good.
Bedelium and Onyx stone are there.
The name of the second river is Gihon.
It is the one which goes around the whole land of Kush.
The name of the third river is Hittikel.
It is the one that goes toward the east of Assyria.
The fourth river is the Euphrates.
Now some things that we do know.
Many historians will tell us, and many common archaeological experts will tell us, that the heart of Africa is the birthplace, the cradle of humanity.
Out of Africa came the apes that turned into humans that migrated across the planet.
The scientific term for that is nonsense.
And God said by inspiration through Moses that the cradle of humanity is where the Euphrates is.
Interestingly, it is the same land from which Abraham will come.
It is the same land from which many of the events throughout the Old Testament will come.
It's not, by the way, the land of Moses.
Moses lived in Egypt.
Moses then lived in Midian.
Moses went back to Egypt and Moses isn't talking about the land where he was from.
He's talking about the land God said humanity was from.
So as you consider the location, we know approximately the general area on the planet
where people were originally from.
It's the region around Babylon.
It's the region we now currently call Iraq, Iran.
It's that region of the planet where humanity was originally from, not Africa.
But then again, people didn't suddenly walk through the woods and go from apes to being humans either.
So.
You've got to check the sources and their reliability.
So you consider the location.
But then consider as well as Moses gives the record, he describes the crown of creation.
Moses as he writes the second account isn't just describing the events, not the process.
That was chapter one.
Now he's describing a focused bringing together of
humanity.
The delivery of humanity onto this planet from which the beginning of this record will go until Christ returns and until the end of Revelation is given.
And we read in verse 15, then the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and to keep it.
There was something different about Adam
than all the rest of creation.
And it is described in the nature that God gave to Adam.
You go back to chapter 1 and you read in chapter 1 verse 26, then God said, and I love the point that was made this morning about the fact that every time you read that word God
here in this text you're reading plural.
Then the Godhead said, Let us, there's that plural again, let us make man in our image.
According to our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and every creeping thing
that creepeth on the earth.
So God created man in his own image.
God created something that was uniquely and significantly different from everything else that He created.
Oh, did God use the same biological structures that He had created in other things?
Yeah.
Did God use the same concepts and the same atoms and the same nature from which flesh was created in other forms?
Yes.
There was something different about this creature because this creature wasn't an animal.
This creature was a man and God said he was different.
God said he was different because he shared something in his nature not with animals but with God.
And so God placed Adam, according to verse 15, in the garden with a responsibility to tend and to keep the garden.
Now, if you grew up like I did, hating gardening, because every time you planted anything in the earth, the only thing you could grow was weeds, and you had to spend all your time
pulling the weeds out of the garden, you can appreciate the fact that Adam didn't have any weeds to pull.
when he tended and kept the garden that God had made.
The weeds came later, we'll get there.
But then notice verse 16, let me go back, verse 16 and verse 17, God set some rules in the garden.
In our lives as humans, we're never going to get away from rules.
They come about just about as soon as we enter the world and they're going to continue as long as we're alive.
And in the garden,
God gave some rules.
Verse 16, the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, by the way that included the tree of life, 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.
God said, here's one rule.
Don't break it or else.
One thing you can't Everything else you have.
Everything else is freely yours.
Everything else is at your command and at your demand.
One thing you can't have.
And like history ever since then, humanity manages to break the one thing they can't have and ruin everything.
But God said, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.
But then consider the completion.
Beginning here in verse 18, we read, the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.
I will make him a helper comparable to him.
Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them.
And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
So Adam gave names to all the cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field, for Adam, but for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
One of the unique things that you see in a description of the garden is that every creature was there.
It didn't mean there weren't creatures everywhere else, it meant that there was a representative of every creature there.
Some people will question, they'll look at the science and they'll look at the fascination, especially young people, fascination with dinosaurs, and they go, where are
the dinosaurs?
In the Bible!
They're there!
You read about them.
Go read about Behemoth in the book of Job.
Go read about Leviathan in the book of Job.
They're there.
Adam named them.
That's why when I had AI generate that image, I said, I need a dinosaur in the background.
Because they were there.
And notice, Adam goes through the process of naming the animals.
Adam is a very poor representative of a caveman.
Again, humanity and all their wisdom and archaeologists and all of their intelligence would argue and say, there's a period of time in which humanity was really a little bit
just above the grunting level, not very good at pictures, they sketched on the wall, that's how we know things about them, they were just beginning to get access to fire, but
the language wasn't a thing yet.
There are a lot of intelligent people in the world today.
I would challenge that none of them would probably compare to the intelligence of Adam.
because God said day one of his existence here, name every animal.
And we can't hardly remember the names of our children and get them right.
We'll call them the dog's name, the cat's name, somebody else, the cousin's name, the uncle's name, but we can't even hardly keep our children correct.
And yet Adam names every animal day one.
Yeah, little bit above grunting.
So God brings every animal before Adam, every land animal before Adam, every bird before Adam.
Adam names them all, but there's nothing like Adam.
And so God, having demonstrated his point, says, verse 18, and the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.
I will make him a helper comparable to him.
Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them.
And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
So Adam gave names to all the cattle, to all the birds of the air, to every creature or every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and he closed up the flesh in its place.
Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man." Now, some might suggest
Oh, this is all fantasy, this is all myth, there's not a lick of history here.
Now, if you were to say that, turn over to Matthew chapter 19.
and beware what your words declare.
In Matthew chapter 19 and in verse 1, it came to pass when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.
And a great multitude followed him and he healed them there.
The Pharisees also came to him testing him and saying to him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?
And he answered and said to them, have you not read?
that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said for this reason shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become
one flesh so then they are no longer two but one flesh therefore what God has joined together let not man separate now either Jesus was ignorant and he wasn't
or Jesus was mistaken and he wasn't or Jesus happened to have been the creator that actually made them and he was and he told you how he did it and he reiterates the
Pharisees how he did it because notice what the text says the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and he brought her to the woman
or to the man and Adam said this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man therefore a man shall leave his father
and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh." What passage does Jesus quote to prove what is the truth on marriage and specifically in the context
marriage divorce and remarriage?
He goes to the text where he establishes exactly what he did in creation.
So, the command is given.
and that command is concerning marriage.
A command to separate from a father and a mother and to be joined to a wife.
There's the account of the creation of the garden.
But then consider the contention in the garden.
And we're gonna move a little bit faster as we go through this.
But the contention in the garden, we turn to chapter three.
Now the serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field.
which the Lord God had made and he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Right here in verse one we've got the creature that we find in the garden.
There's something in the garden with Adam and Eve and this particular creature is one that speaks to the woman.
We truly understand that this is not a creature
as God made it.
This is a creature being used by someone else, and Christ will make that very clear in John chapter 8 when Jesus will tell us that the devil, Satan, was a liar from the
beginning and a murderer.
So in Genesis chapter 3 verse 1 we're reading of the actions of Satan on utilizing a creature out of the garden.
The woman said to the serpent,
We may eat the fruit of the tree of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest
you die.
Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die.
For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." The serpent comes to the woman and deceives her.
Paul will testify concerning that.
He will state that the reason why the man is the head over the woman is because the woman was first deceived, but also he will state that the man was created first.
Now, if you deny creation, you deny the Apostle Paul.
But Eve will correct to a degree Satan's statement.
She'll reiterate the statement that God made, except she adds something to it.
God said, don't eat of it.
She said, don't eat of it, don't even touch it.
But Satan says, no, no, no, no, that's not how it's going to happen.
So verse 6, you have the corruption of the garden.
the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise.
She took of its fruit and ate.
She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
Sin entered the world.
and the garden was corrupted.
Everything before that point was good.
Everything was as God had made it, but corruption entered the world.
In verse 8, we read about the companion that was in the midst of the garden with them.
In verse 8, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the
trees of the garden.
Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you?
So he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
There was a companion that would come to them in the garden and it was God.
God would walk with them in the garden.
God would communicate with them in the garden.
Yes, these grunting beasts that can barely talk.
God was communicating with them in the garden.
God spoke with humanity and God spoke with Adam and God asked Adam, are you?
And Adam knew what he was asking.
But then you also find the consequences.
Beginning in verse 11 and going down through verse 24, God begins to describe the results of the action, the consequences of the action.
But I want us to focus on the last part of the chapter in verse 20.
And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.
Also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them.
Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us to know good and evil.
And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from
which he was taken.
So he drove out the man and he placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life." God
moved Adam and Eve out of the garden.
God placed them outside the garden and did not allow them back in.
Some might question and ask, what happened to the garden?
We don't know.
And we get to be satisfied with that answer.
We don't know!
We know that in Genesis chapter 6, flood came.
We know that the face of the earth was changed when that occurred, but God doesn't reveal to us anything else about the garden.
Now, there are references to it.
There's metaphors concerning it.
There's lessons given about it and from its uh description.
until the book of Revelation.
Revelation chapter 2 and in verse 7, God as He is writing to the seven churches of Asia Minor will write to the church at Ephesus, He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit
says to the churches, to him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
God created a garden.
God placed that garden with humanity.
God placed in that garden a tree from which if you ate you would live forever.
And God said after sin entered the world, man can't have that.
Man can't live forever on this earth.
But Christ came to deliver life and to have it more abundantly.
And God told the church at Ephesus if they will repent and they will make their lives right,
They can leave this life faithful to God and dwell with Him forever and dwell in a place where they will have eternal life.
And the picture that's painted here in a visionary book is of the Garden of Eden.
So in chapter 21 of the book of Revelation through the end of the book of Revelation, you have a picture painted, a visionary picture of a heavenly place.
the kingdom of God, the bride of Christ, where life is eternal.
And there in chapter 21 in verse 22 we read in the book of Revelation, I saw no temple in it.
For the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
The city had no need of the sun or the moon to shine, for the glory of God illuminated it.
The Lamb is its light.
And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and their kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.
Its gates shall not be shut at all by day, there shall be no night there.
They shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it, but there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who
are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
And he showed me a pure river of water of life.
clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb in the middle of its street and on either side of the river was the tree of life which bore twelve fruits, each
yielding the fruit every month.
The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations and there shall be no more curse.
But the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it and His servants shall serve Him.
They shall see His face and His name shall be on their foreheads.
There shall be no night there.
oh They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light and they shall reign forever and ever." Now, Revelation 21 and 22 is a visionary picture, but it's
a visionary picture from an Old Testament event to tell you
that God has a place prepared for you.
Jesus told his disciples, I'd go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I'll return again to bring you where I am.
Now, if that was the case, consider this as we close.
Before Adam ever existed, God prepared a place for him.
God took care of every need that he had.
God presented him with a solution to every problem that he had.
God prepared a place for him.
And as the scripture closes, God tells every Christian that's willing to be faithful unto death and receive a crown of glory, I have a place prepared for you.
And the eternal life, which was once available in the garden, is now available.
forever with God.
If you're ready this morning to enter eternity, then take great comfort in the fact that God has prepared a place for you.
But if you're here this morning and you're not prepared for eternity, perhaps you are in your sins, you are deceived, you are confused, you are uncertain of what God would have
you to do.
Well, God has made it clear.
The question is, will you understand?
The question is, will you open the book and actually look into the Scriptures to understand what God would have for you to do?
He invites you to do so.
He invites you to open the book.
The end of the book of Revelation ends with an invitation.
The bride and the spirits say, come.
Jesus says, come.
and take the water of life freely.
If you have need of the invitation of God to put on in baptism His salvation, to be added to the church, the bride of Christ, to be a part of the body that will be glorified in
eternity and live with Him forever, you can do that this morning.
You can be born as a child of God, and you
can one day spend eternity in a place that's described like the garden, that is the very presence of God.
If you have need of the invitation, why not come now as we stand and as we sing.