WHY IS THE WORLD THE WAY IT IS?
"GOD MADE MAN FOR RELATIONSHIPS"
GENESIS 2: 5-25
INTRODUCTION
While you may not have ever experienced the tragedy of Judy Bucknell’s
life, all of us know that life can be lonely. There is a yearning in all
of us to be connected to others and that yearning is seldom satisfied.
Dr. Larry Crabb in his book "Connecting" says,
"(Connecting) is what we most want, what we most lack, what
we most fear will never be ours. The deepest urge in every human heart
is to be in relationship with someone who absolutely delights in us,
someone with the resources we lack who has no greater joy than giving
to us, someone who respects us enough to require us to use everything
we receive for the good of others, and because he has given it to
us, knows we have something to give. The longing to connect defines
our dignity as human beings and our destiny as image-bearers."
This pervasive loneliness that afflicts us as human beings was not a
part of the original creation, though the desire to be connected is. Genesis
2 shows us where this desire to be connected comes from and what a "connected"
life looks like. In this chapter we will see why it is that living in
relationship to God, living with Him, connected to Him is the only certain
foundation for a happy life.
MAIN POINT
Life goes better with God because…
I. God is the source of all life (vv. 5-14)
When you begin reading Genesis 2: 5 you are immediately struck by strange
statement. We are told that what follows is the account of the creation
of the heavens and the earth in the day God created the earth and the
heaven. Now, I thought we just finished reading about the creation of
the heavens and earth in chapter 1? What is going on here?
Have you ever seen a map of a large area, like the state of WI and then
it will have a highlighted square in the map labeled "enlarged area"?
Then there will be a more detailed map of that highlighted area off to
the side of the large map. It helps you to fix the detailed map in the
bigger context. That is exactly how Genesis 2 relates to Genesis 1. In
Genesis 1 we have the very orderly description of the creation of the
entire world. In Genesis 2 we have the description of the creation of
man and woman. It is a more detailed look at Genesis 1: 26-28. As a result,
Gen. 2 is not careful about getting the sequences of creation straight.
It summarizes most of what chapter 1 details and is very detailed in its
description of God’s creation of man and woman.
Another thing to note about Genesis 2 is that it is only half of a larger
story. Genesis 2 & 3 form a whole unit of thought. It is the story
of how we got into this mess. There are actually 7 scenes in Genesis 2
& 3 and they show how the perfect creation of God was destroyed by
man. But today we are going to talk about just the first 2 scenes that
are in chapter 2. These two scenes do not merely give us information about
how God created but as I said earlier, they aim to persuade us that life
goes better when lived in God’s presence because, first of all, God is
the giver of life.
Vv. 5 & 6 are a summary statement of the conditions that existed
prior to or at the creation of man. There are a variety of opinions as
to what they are actually describing and we don’t have the time to get
into it. If you are interested you can ask me later.
What I want you to notice is the ways that the life-giving ability of
God is highlighted in verses 7-14. First, in v. 7 God, acting like a potter,
takes some dirt and forms man and then he breathes the breath of life
into his nostrils and so man lives. Here we see God as the one who initiates
life, who causes it to begin. In Ezekial 37 there is a remarkably similar
use of the divine breath. The nation Israel is pictured as being but a
collection of skeletons scattered across a valley. God tells Ez. to preach
to the bones and when he does God causes flesh to grow on the bones and
then he breathes life into them by His spirit. Here is Genesis God is
the giver of physical life but this is a foreshadowing of His power to
give spiritual life.
Second, in vv. 8-9 we see that God plants a garden and puts man in the
garden. What do we find out about this garden? Most of the description
of the garden is very enigmatic and mysterious. We can observe several
things about it however. It is a place of beauty. It is a place of abundance.
It is a place of security. But, because of the many parallels between
the language used here and the language used in describing the tabernacle
that God commanded the Israelites to build as his dwelling place among
them, it is mostly a place where God dwells. John Sailhamer says, "…the
point of the description of the garden is to show the glory of God’s presence
through the beauty of the physical surroundings." Where God is present,
life is poured out and sustained. Listen to this description of the heavenly
Jerusalem from Rev. 21 and 22: "The wall [of the new Jerusalem] was
made of jasper and decorated with every kind of precious stone….Then the
angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing
from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street
of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing
twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month."
Heaven is heaven only because God is there. Man began his life in a place
specially made by God and specially inhabited by God. All those who belong
to Christ will live for eternity in the same place. The point of this
is that man is most fully alive when he lives in God’s presence. Here
is where we began and this is to be the place we most earnestly desire
to go. Life is found only where the life-giver lives.
Now, where is Eden? How do you get there? The description of Eden, especially
of the rivers, is designed to tell us two things about where it is at
and how to get there. First, Eden was a real place. The concrete, specific
geographic descriptions are aimed to inform us that Eden was a real place
and that the 2nd Eden is a real place. Second, no one since
Adam and Eve has ever known where Eden is located. Only God knows where
it is and how to get there. There is a foreshadowing in this description
of Eden. Everyone who has ever read this text knows they are not in Eden.
The description of Eden is supposed to cause a yearning in you to go there,
because that is where God lives and he alone possesses life.
ILLUSTRATION: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" Richard
Dreyfuss is obsessed with building the sculpture of Devil’s tower and
then sees it on TV and knows that’s where he must go. He is relentless
in his pursuit, nothing will stop him.
If God is the giver of life and living in his presence is the place you
will find life, doesn’t it make sense to be obsessed with getting to the
place he dwells? "Whatever it takes to know Christ and live with
Him, I’ll do it", is the cry of every Christian. Don’t you want to
go back to Eden, to the place where life is given and nourished?
Life goes better with God because…
- He’s the life giver and
- Because…
II. God made us and so knows what we need (vv. 15-25)
A. We need to trust, serve and obey Him (vv. 15-17)
In v. 15, the author continues his story after having described Eden.
He tells us he put man in the garden to work it and serve it. The Hebrew
word he uses for "put" is different than the one he uses in
v. 8. In v. 8 it is a very common word, in v. 15 it is a very specialized
word. It is used in two ways. First, it describes putting the nation in
the land of Canaan where they will find rest (Dt. 12:10, "But you
will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord your God is giving
you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies
around you so that you will live in safety."). Second, to describe
the dedication of something in the presence of the Lord (Dt. 26:4, "The
priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it down in front
of the altar of the Lord your God.").
Next, the words for "serve" and "take care" are repeatedly
used together to describe the work of the priests in the temple where
they serve God and take care of the articles of worship.
Then in v. 16 we have both a promise and a warning from God that closely
parallels the numerous promises and warnings found throughout the OT.
Adam is enjoined to trust God to provide for all of his needs and to trust
his judgement to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Obedience to God is always an act of faith. This is true of all obedience.
On many occasions my children have asked to go do something and after
I have gathered information on what, where and with whom they are going
to do this thing I have said no, they can’t go. When they ask why, I’ll
tell them my reasons and end with saying it’s because I love you and think
this is best. Now, they don’t always agree with my reasoning and still
want to do it and may actually protest that I’m not being fair or complain
I never let them do anything or some such thing. At such times I have
been known to say to them, "Look, you need to live by faith. God
made me your father. I love you. I have your best interests at heart and
am not merely doing this to make your life miserable. So, you need to
cheerfully obey me by trusting God who made me your father and my love
for you."
This is exactly what God does with Adam and with us. He says, "Here
is everything you will need for a happy life, I’ve provided it all for
you. However, there is one tree I don’t want you to eat from. It’s called
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t eat from it, because
if you do you will most certainly die." So Adam must choose to trust
God’s judgement and love and do what he’s commanded.
What is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? It was a fruit tree,
of what variety, we do not know. To eat from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil was to assert human autonomy from divine revelation.
In other words, to eat was to declare, "I know better than God."
To eat from it was to say, "God doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The way to a fulfilling life doesn’t lie in doing what he says but rather
in doing what I think is best." So eating from this tree is an act
of unbelief and rebellion. It is shaking your fist in God’s face and saying,
"I’ll do it my way, because my way is better than your way."
God is the only one who knows what is good and what the "good life"
looks like. To not seek to live according to what he defines as good is
to pursue death. God made us to live all of life in relation to him, trusting
him for all, doing all our work as service to him, taking care of our
part of the world for him, trusting his directions for living and so delighting
in obedience to him. This is what we were made for.
An obvious application to our lives here is the necessity of knowing
God’s ways. There is only one way to find out what God wants and that
is through knowing what is in this book. You and I must be obsessed with
knowing God’s revealed will if we are going to be able to trust him and
obey him. He has spoken and he has not stuttered. Giving attention to
reading and studying and memorizing this book is an act of faith. It is
believing that God made you to trust, serve and obey him, that this is
the most certain path to joy. I get up each day and read this book for
one simple reason. I need God. The only way I am going to find him is
by paying attention to what he has to say. I think most of you in here
would agree with me that you need God. Then won’t you pay attention to
him by reading, studying and memorizing this word? We bought pew Bibles
so you can follow the sermon. There are note taking outlines to assist
you in understanding what I’m saying. We have small groups available where
you can meet with others to discuss God’s word. There are a number of
us that would love to sit down with you personally to talk about God’s
word and to answer your questions. I beg you to love yourself enough to
seek God in his word and so learn to trust him, serve him and obey him
in greater ways, because this is the most certain way to find life.
Life goes better with God because…
- He’s the life giver
- We need to trust, serve and obey Him and
- Because God made us and knows that we…
B. We need a relationship with a partner like us, but different
(vv. 18-25)
Verse 18 contains one of the most startling statements in the whole Bible.
God has made man and placed him in a perfect environment to sustain human
life. Man is living with God in perfect, unbroken fellowship. Yet, in
verse 18 God looks at man’s situation and says it’s not good. This is
meant to arrest your attention. After having declared creation good 5
times and very good 1 time in chapter 1 this statement that there is something
wrong in God’s world is amazing. What is not good? Man is alone, even
though he is with God.
These verses are a gold mine. I want you to see three things in these
verses.
- First, the need to be related to other people is God given
- Second, what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman
- Third, what it means to be married
The first thing to notice here is that it is not good for man to be alone
and so it is good for man to have a helper suitable to him. There is a
need within each of us that is God ordained, to live in connection with
another. To be human is to need to be related to another human being.
Not just another like me, but one who compliments me, one who is like
me but yet different from me. One who will join with me in the life and
work that God has ordained for me. Notice that God does not immediately
create woman. First he brings all the animals to man and man names them.
The animals are like man in that they too are made from the ground and
are living beings, just like man (vv. 7 & 19). But, as man names the
animals, we find out two things. First, man is superior to the animals,
he has authority over them because he gets to name them, just like God
named creation in chapter 1. Second, there is no helper suitable for man
among the animals. God creates the need in man and then shows man there
is nothing in the created world that will meet the need. Then God takes
action to supply what man lacks. This is the pattern of God’s relation
to his people. He creates a need, shows us we cannot meet our need and
then he supplies what we need.
The second thing to notice is that in this passage God is defining maleness
and femaleness. We live in a culture that has told us what it doesn’t
mean to be a woman and what it doesn’t mean to be a man. Few of us have
any idea of how to answer the questions, "What does it mean to be
a man? What does it mean to be a woman?" Paul Jewett in his book,
"Male and Female" says this,
"Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth;
it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person. As the self is
always aware of itself as an ‘I’, so this ‘I’ is always aware of itself
as himself or herself. Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up
not simply with our human being but with our sexual being. At the
human level there is no ‘I and thou" per se, but only the ‘I’
who is male or female confronting the ‘thou’, the ‘other’, who is
also male or female."
Do you understand what he is saying? He is not talking about sexual feelings.
He is talking about who you are as a person. You are male or you are female,
always and at all times. Everyone you relate to is either male or female.
It is necessary then to understand what it means to be male and female.
Now we live in a culture that has abandoned any hope of defining maleness
and femaleness. This has led John Piper to observe in his essay, "What’s
the Difference?",
"Confusion over the meaning of sexual personhood today is epidemic.
The consequence of this confusion is not a free and happy harmony
among gender-free persons relating on the basis of abstract competencies.
The consequence rather is more divorce, more homosexuality, more sexual
abuse, more promiscuity, more social awkwardness, and more emotional
distress and suicide that come with the loss of God-given identity….Little
help is being given to a son’s question, "Dad, what does it mean
to be a man and not a woman?" Or a daughter’s question, "Mom,
what does it mean to be a woman and not a man?" A lot of energy
is being expended today minimizing the distinctions of manhood and
womanhood. But we do not hear very often what manhood and womanhood
should incline us to do. We are adrift in a sea of confusion over
sexual roles. And life is not the better for it."
We don’t have the time for an extended look at this but let me draw your
attention to the facts of the text. Last week I told you that in chapter
one we found out that man and woman have equal value, equal dignity, equal
standing before God, and are equally important in God’s plan for human
labor. However, what we discover in this chapter is that while equal in
value men and women are different in function and role in the family,
society and church. There are two ways this is demonstrated in the text.
First, God defines the woman as a "suitable helper". She is
like man in that she is human. She is unlike man in her role in the work
of caring for creation. She is the helper. The word does not imply that
she is less capable or important but rather that the man is the leader
and she is the follower. He initiates, she responds. He is responsible
for the way in which they fulfill their God-ordained work, she is responsible
for gladly submitting to his leadership and providing the help man needs
to fulfill his responsibility. The authority of man over woman is shown
also in the fact that he names her in v. 23, in the same way he named
the animals. What I’ve just said for some of you are fighting words. I’m
going to touch on these matters at least two more times in the next two
weeks as I show how sin has perverted and destroyed this beautiful, complimentary
relationship between men and women. As I have talked with women about
these issues over the years I have discovered that most of the hostility
is the result of a misunderstanding of what is meant by the words authority
and submission. Let me encourage you to pick up Piper’s essay in the library
if you are interested.
The third thing to see in here is that the creation of man and woman
is the basis of marriage. After Adam finds no helper suitable for him,
God puts him into a sleep and takes out one of his ribs and builds the
woman. He then brings her to him and Adam, in a poetic outburst he declares
he has finally found what he has been looking for, one who corresponds
to him and who will be his companion and helper in the life God has given
to them. Then in v. 25 Moses says, "For this reason…."
Because it’s not good for man to be alone and because woman is
a helper suitable for man the man shall marry the woman. I’ve talked with
hundreds of young men and women who have tried to tell me that marriage
is merely a social custom and living together is just as good, if not
better than marriage. I have been told there is no reason to be married.
This verse defines marriage. It also shows why the only "good"
way for a man and woman not related by birth to live together is in a
marriage covenant. First, marriage is the creation of a new social unit,
distinct from the families of origin of the man and the woman. Marriage
has not occurred until the social customs of the culture are followed
for the establishing of a new family unit, independent of the parents
of the man and woman. Second, marriage has not taken place unless there
is a vow, a promise and the actions that demonstrate that promise to be
united to this person for life. Man is to stick like glue to the woman.
This is a passionate commitment to be loyal to this person for life. Third,
marriage means that the man and the woman are one flesh. This is not merely
sexual union, though that is the physical expression of the reality, but
it is the recognition that there is now a shared life. A life that is
more united than that shared between parent and child or brother and sister.
There is a level of intimacy and unity that is experienced in no other
relationship on earth. This is God’s intention and will for marriage.
Now I need to say something to my divorced friends. Jesus quotes this
verse when responding to some religious teacher’s inquiry regarding divorce
and says "Therefore, what God has joined together let man not separate."
God’s perfect will is for one man and one woman to be married for life.
God made marriage and God makes every marriage. Divorce is always the
result of human sin. Notice, I did not say that divorce is always sin.
The Bible permits divorce for two reasons. First, in the case of sexual
infidelity and second in the case of an unbelieving spouse abandoning
a believing spouse. Notice, I said the Bible permits it. God never commands
divorce. It is always the result of human sin. Now, if you are divorced,
what should you do?
First, if you were the victim, if your spouse abandoned you through infidelity
or abuse or by just walking out then I would call you to go to Christ
as your healer, defender, and refuge. If you sinned by getting a divorce
then I call you to go to Christ as the Savior of every sinner who will
repent and trust in Him. Tell him you know you called evil what he called
good and called good what he calls evil. Trust him as your Savior and
as the one who is able to give you new life. Confess your sin to a trusted,
mature Christian friend and seek the forgiveness of those whom you sinned
against, your ex-spouse, your children, your ex-in-laws. In either case,
affirm in your heart and in the way you live that marriage is good and
a good plan from a good God.
Now for my single friends. God calls some to a life of singleness. Virtually
everyone will live as a single at some time in their life. Paul quotes
this verse in his discussion of marriage in Eph. 5 and says this, "For
this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be united
to his wife and they will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery,
but I am talking about Christ and the church." My single friend,
you think you will never get to experience the unity and intimacy this
verse describes. However, you need to know that there is a day coming
when you will experience this intimacy in the great marriage of Christ
and his church, when he comes again. The best of marriages here are only
a shadow of the blessing being connected that awaits every believer in
Christ when he comes. You can begin to experience something of this intimacy
within the fellowship of the church. The psalmist says that God sets the
lonely in families and primarily he does this in the family that is the
church.
Life goes better with God because…
- He’s the life giver
- Because God made us and knows that…
- We need to trust, serve and obey Him and
- We need a relationship with a partner like us, but different
© Copyright
2000 John Swanson.
You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material
in any format provided that:
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If you would like to post this material to the web, or if your intended
use is other than outlined above, please contact River Hills Community
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