The Garden of God

Gen. 1 is like a wide-angle lens. It takes in the whole scope of God’s creation. Gen. 2 is like a telephoto lens—it zeroes in on man.

There’s something you should know about chapter 2. It really ought to begin in verse 4. If you look at the first 3 verses of chapter 2, you’ll see that they really belong to the end of chapter 1. The chapter and verse divisions in the Bible were added to the text back in the Middle Ages. And sometimes they were added haphazardly, so that they fall in the wrong places. They are not inspired! This is one of those occasions.

The first 3 verses of chapter 2 actually belong to chapter 1. They tell us that God rested on the seventh day because his creation was complete. They finish the story of creation week.

Chapter 2 zeroes in on the creation of man and woman. I want to begin at verse 4 and look at what God did for Adam—this man he created. What kind of relationship did he have with Adam? How did he provide for Adam’s needs? Let’s look at the text…

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

Notice the way verse 4 begins – “This is the account” – you’ll see that phrase ten times through the book of Genesis. In Hebrew, it’s just one word “toledot”. Each time, it introduces a new section.

• Gen. 6 – this is the account of Noah

• Gen. 10 – this is the account of Noah’s sons

• Gen. 11 - this is the account of Terah, the father of Abraham

• Etc.

Whenever you see that expression in Genesis, it tells you that you’re moving on to a new subject.

When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens—and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground—the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

If we were to sum up the message of this section of the book of Genesis into one brief statement, it would be very simple. It’s the message that people matter to God. God not only made us; he cares about us. The proof is that he provided for us.

Some people think that God is distant and remote. But the God we meet in Genesis 2 is anything but that. He not only created Adam, but he provided for Adam’s most important needs. In fact, we learn that God gave Adam the four important things in life that every human being needs:

1. Security - God gave Adam a place to live; a place to call home

2. Significance - God gave Adam a job to do; a service to perform

3. Moral boundaries - God gave Adam a command to obey; a set of guidelines to live by

4. Relationship - God gave Adam a partner, a helper, a teammate, a companion

1. Security - God gave Adam a place to call home

Genesis 2:8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

God planted a garden in the east, in a place called Eden. Notice that the garden itself was not named; but it was located in a place that was named—a place called Eden. The word Eden in Hebrew means “delightful”. It was a delightful place.

I don’t know how many of you are gardeners, but I want you to try to imagine what kind of garden God would plant. Have you ever seen the beautiful gardens in Niagara on the Lake? I’m sure that Niagara on the Lake would look like a landfill compared to this garden that God planted. It must have been absolutely breathtaking in its beauty.

And this was the place God made for Adam to live. He deliberately placed Adam here. The word “put” in verse 15 is actually a very special word in Hebrew. It comes from the word “nuah”, which means “to settle, or to rest”. So it has the connotation of being at peace; of dwelling in security and safety.

All of us need a place to call home—a place where we can feel safe and secure and sheltered. And God knew that this was one of Adam’s needs and so he “settled” him in this garden.

Now you ask: Do we have any idea where this garden was? Was it a real place? Did it have an actual geographical location?

Well, verses 10-14 give us some specific geographic coordinates. Moses tells us that it was in the east, and that probably meant the east from his perspective as he wrote the book of Genesis on the Sinai peninsula. But he also goes on to pin down its location further. Look at v. 10…

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Two of these rivers are known to us today—the Tigris, and the Euphrates. They flow through Mesopotamia—the present day nation of Iraq. But what about the other two?

Verse 13 says that the river Gihon “wound through the entire land of Cush”. Later on in the Bible, we are told that Cush is the land of Ethiopia, which is located in East Africa. So the Gihon had something to do with East Africa. The word “Gihon” means “to gush forth”. Perhaps the Gihon is another name for the Nile River, because the Nile river has one of its headwaters in Ethiopia, and every year it floods – it gushes forth with the rainy season in East Africa.

But that leaves the river Pishon still a mystery, at least until recently. Ten or fifteen years ago, an Arab geologist from Boston University was working in Kuwait and made an intriguing observation. He noticed that there were many pebbles of granite and basalt to be found in Kuwait, even though neither of those rock formations was present in that land. The nearest granite and basalt formations were in the mountains way over on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, about 700 miles away from Kuwait. How did all those pebbles get over to Kuwait?

This geologist began to consider the possibility that maybe there once was a river that brought those pebbles to Kuwait. He began to study satellite photos of the Arabian Peninsula and gradually he was able to discern from the rock formations that there was a line that resembled a riverbed faintly traced across the peninsula from east to west. There is certainly no river there today—Saudi Arabia is covered with sand and is one of the hottest and driest places on earth.

The geologist requested that the Space Shuttle use its ground imaging radar to scan beneath the sand dunes. Sure enough, the radar map revealed a 650-mile long dried up riverbed under the sand dunes. It was a pretty big river—in some places it was 3 miles wide.

This river once flowed all the way across the Arabian Peninsula and emptied into the Persian Gulf, but it has been gone for many thousands of years. Could this have been the River Pishon?

Genesis 2 tells us that the river Pishon wound through the land of Havilah where there is gold – the word Havilah means “the sandy place”. The greatest source of gold in Saudi Arabia comes from a place called Mahd edh-Dhahad—the “Cradle of Gold”. This is located in the Hijaz Mountains about 125 miles south of the city of Medina. There is still a large gold mining operation there today. And that gold mine is right next to the headwaters of that ancient river. This indicates to me that Eden was a real place.

The word for garden in Persian is the word “pairideza” from which we get the word “paradise”. It literally means a special place with a wall around it.

You have to understand that the first people who read Genesis were the Israelites who were wandering in the wilderness of Sinai - one of the most inhospitable, ungarden-like, deserts in the world. From that day to this the Middle East has been a dry, arid place. That’s why the people of the Middle East have always had a special fondness - almost a reverence for gardens.

In the 700’s, when the Moors invaded Spain from North Africa, they built some very beautiful gardens. Outside the walls were barren, scorching sands and searing dry winds, but inside was a paradise. The focal point of a Moorish garden was water. Water ran in channels down the center of the garden, and danced in fountains and little waterfalls. Beneath the branches of fruit trees, there was cool shade, the perfume and color of flowers, the songs of birds, and the gentle sound of splashing water. It’s no wonder they thought of it as a paradise.

So God gave Adam a beautiful, secure home in which to live. And this is something we need as human beings. We need the security of a home. There is nothing worse than being homeless. Think of the refugees who have been forced out of their homes and have to flee for their lives. Think of the homeless people on the streets of our great cities.

God knows that we need a home, and he has prepared an eternal home for us. In John 14, Jesus said…

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

When God gave Adam a home, he didn’t expect him to just string up a hammock and while away the time doing nothing.

2. God gave Adam a job to do. He gave him an assignment; he gave him a mission. And in so doing, he addressed the second basic need that we have as human beings – our need for significance.

Genesis 2:15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

The word for work is the Hebrew word “abad”. It means to labor, to serve—and here is something very significant—it also means to worship. When Moses went to Pharaoh, he said…

(Exodus 8:1) This what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.

And the word for worship is the very same Hebrew word that is translated “work” here in Genesis 2:15. So what am I saying?

I’m saying that God created us to work; to be productive, and that our work is an integral part of our worship. You can’t say “Well, I work 40 hours a week, and then I go to church on Sunday and that’s when I worship.” Just like Adam, our work is part of our worship.

We tend to divide life up into compartments— we have a secular compartment and a sacred, or “spiritual” compartment. And we think that all the things we do in the secular compartment – our jobs, our leisure, our recreational activities, our finances, our homes, our cars, our vacations, our hobbies – have very little to do with the sacred compartment – our church activities, our personal spiritual life. But that dichotomy is a fallacy!

From the very beginning of humanity, God intended work and worship to be essentially one and the same thing! You say, How in the world could that possibly be? How could me sitting in an office pushing paper for forty hours a week be considered worship? Or working on an assembly line putting widgets together? How could that have anything to do with worship?

Do you want to know a secret? It has everything to do with worship! When you work, you are productive, and you are doing something that God created you to do. And in the way you do it, and in your attitude toward it, you bring glory to God. You are saying “God, thank you for giving me this work to do. Thank you for giving me the ability to do it. Help me to make this world a better place in the way that I do my job. Help me to make great widgets. Help me to fill that paper with meaningful, helpful information. Help me to treat my customers and my fellow workers and my supervisors with love and respect, because they are made in your image. You see? That’s how work becomes worship. And when we approach our work in that way – as doing it unto the Lord – it gives us a sense of significance and mission and purpose that we can find in no other way.

This is where Adam would find his significance—in working for God, in serving God. It was not just working for the sake of working—that’s not what gives us significance. It was working for God—working as a steward.

A lot of people today – many Christians even – look on their work as some sort of curse. They hate their job, they hate their boss, they hate their customers. And they feel frustrated and resentful, and they can’t figure out how any of it relates to being a Christian.

Let me tell you that work isn’t a curse. Remember, God gave Adam a job to do long before Adam fell. Work isn’t a result of the fall! As human beings, we are created to work and it is in our work that we find our sense of significance. But this is totally against what our culture tells us. Our culture tells us that it is in NOT working that we will be truly satisfied.

Have you ever visited a marina where they repair boat engines? You’ll notice that they have a number of outboard motors on test stands. And each of those motors is standing in a 50-gallon drum of water. That’s because when you run a marine engine, it has to be in water.

If you take that engine out of the water and run it for any length of time, you’ll burn out the motor. That engine has been designed to work against the resistance of the water, and the water lubricates and cools the motor.

In the same way God has created us, as human beings, to run against resistance. He has created us to work. Now this is just the opposite of what the world thinks. The world thinks “wouldn’t it be wonderful if we didn’t have anything to do?” People dream of winning the lottery so that they can quit their job and sit around with their feet up for the rest of their lives. But the people who actually do that end up miserable.

Leisure is not the goal of our existence. It was never God’s plan for us to sit around doing nothing. If you remove work, you end up destroying yourself. That’s why many people die soon after they retire. There is no more work to do. They have no more reason for living—they have lost their sense of significance. So they begin to break down physically. Wise is the person who stays active in retirement.

God put man in the Garden to work it for Him, and working for God is an act of worship, and it is how we find our significance.

3. God gave Adam moral boundaries:

Genesis 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

God gave Adam tremendous freedom when he placed him in the garden. He could eat from any tree that God had planted, and I’m sure that the fruit was delicious. But Adam’s freedom was not unlimited freedom. God placed a restriction on him. He gave him liberty, but he gave him liberty within limits. He gave him a moral boundary.

A lot of people have speculated on what kind of fruit was on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Was it an apple? Was it a pomegranate? Was it a grapevine? What was so special about that one tree?

I think getting all wrapped up in questions like that causes us to miss the point. The tree itself may not have been unusual, or had any special properties. It was significant for what it represented. It was like a door with a sign on it that warns you of danger beyond that door.

One day I was in a public building in a stairwell and I came to a door that said “Do Not Open This Door”. So what did I do? I opened the door. And all kinds of alarms went off and people came running. The door in and of itself wasn’t so special; it was what resulted from opening the door that made it special.

When God put that one tree off limits, He was really saying to Adam “Look, this is a test. I’m giving you a moral choice here. You can obey me and trust me, even though you may not understand why I’m telling you not to eat of that tree.

“Or, you can go ahead and disobey me and eat that fruit. But if you do that, you will be saying that you don’t really believe that I know what is best for you. And if you do that, you willbe severing that relationship of trust and dependence on me. And if you go down that road, you are going to reap devastating consequences. But the choice is yours.”

God set the boundaries, but he didn’t take away Adam’s freedom to choose. He gave Adam freedom within limits.

Psychological studies have shown that in the raising of children, freedom without limits produces insecurity. Parents who do not spell out clearly where the boundaries are—parents who never impress upon their children the consequences of the choices they make, and who never let them experience those consequences—such parents raise children who wonder whether anybody really loves them.

We matter so much to God that He gave us limits. He says that there are certain things that we can do that will hurt us, that will be harmful to us, indeed that will even destroy us. And because He loves us, He doesn’t want us to do those things.

God wasn’t jerking Adam around here. He didn’t make up this rule about the tree just to bug Adam. He didn’t give Adam that boundary in order to annoy him. He loved Adam. That’s why he gave him limits.

Children who are raised in an environment where the limits are clearly spelled out and lovingly enforced are children who learn to be secure, well-adjusted, and successful.

So far, we’ve learned that God gave Adam:

1. A place to live - he met his need for security

2. A job to do - he met his need for significance

3. A command to obey - he met his need for moral boundaries

But there was still one thing missing. Look at verse 18…

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

All the way through chapter 1, God was looking at his creation and saying “It is good…it is good…it is good…” Until here, when he observes that man is alone. And he says “That is not good. I did not create man to be alone.” And so he does something about it.

4. God gave Adam a partner.

Women, you are God’s solution to the very first problem in human history. But before you get too puffed up about that, just remember that you were the cause of all subsequent problems!

A few years ago, a friend of mine went to Israel. He was still single at the time and he went alone. He stayed on a kibbutz and hitchhiked all around the country. He walked alongside the Jordan River and stood beside the Western Wall of the Temple. He drank from Jacob’s well and sat on the shores of Galilee. In telling me about it later, I’ll always remember one thing he said. He said “I just wish that I could have had someone special there with me to share it with.”

This is how Adam was feeling in the Garden of Eden. “I wish I had someone special here to share this with me.” Companionship is one of the most fundamental needs of humanity. We need relationship.

Verse 20 says “for Adam no suitable helper was found.”

So God did something about it. He created a woman to be a companion for him. I think it rather significant to notice that God didn’t create another man. God didn’t create Steve; he created Eve. Because Eve, as a female, was someone who met Adam’s deepest needs for relationship and partnership and love.

We’re going to talk more about Eve next week. But let me just conclude this week by saying again that the theme of Genesis 2 is the theme of the whole Bible. People matter to God, and so God provides for people…

John 3:16 says “God so loved that he gave…”

But Satan wants us to believe that God doesn’t love us, so we’d better take matters into our own hands.

• We’d better go out and try to find our own sense of security.

• We’d better try to find some way of feeling significant – whether through the things we own or the people we control or the accolades of others.

• And we’d better not let ourselves be hemmed in by any moral boundaries, because then we’d lose our freedom.

And for all of human history, we’ve been swallowing that line. We’ve been trying to make ourselves happy and fulfilled by relying on ourselves to get our deepest needs met. We’ve turned our backs on God and gone our own way.

Maybe there’s an area of your life this morning where you are following that strategy. You are trusting in your own power, in your own resources to “fix” whatever is wrong – a problem you’re wrestling with, a frustration you face, a failure you’re finding it very difficult to deal with.

I want you to remember that you matter to God. And that area of need in your life matters to Him as well. Just as God took care of Adam’s needs in the Garden of Eden, he wants to take care of your needs today. But you’ve got to be willing to let him.