Genesis 2:4-17
And that covers God’s creation
of the entire cosmos. And now in this next unit, chapter
2, verse 4, to the end of chapter 2, this is God’s creation, His
intimate creation of man. We’re just going to read up to
verse 17, chapter 2, starting in verse 4. when they were created in the
day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. When no
bush of the field 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 going up in the land and was 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. And the Lord
God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put
the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord
God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight
and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst
of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it
divided and became four rivers. It is the one that flowed around
the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of
that land is good. The Delian and Onyx Stone are
there. The name of the second river
is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land
of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tyrus, which
flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and
put him in the garden of Eden to work 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 that you
eat of it, you shall surely die. I want to cover six particular
points in this message this evening. First, I want to cover the apparent
problem in Genesis 1 and 2. People say that there’s a contradiction
in the creation account there. Second thing I want to cover
is the place that God puts man in the Garden of Eden. What is
this garden place? Third, I want to see the production
of Adam. God forms Adam from the dust. Fourth, I want to see man’s properties. What is man? What is he made
of? Fifth, I want to see the parallel between creation and
new creation that we see in the Old and New Testament. And then
sixth, I want to see the purpose for which God created People have often said that there
is a contradiction here in Genesis 1 and 2, saying that these two
chapters present to us two different creation accounts. If you were
to put them side by side, it appears that there are certain
things that happened on a particular day in Chapter 1, and it’s a
little bit different in Chapter 2. So it might seem like there
is a contradiction between these two chapters, but you have to
understand that there is no contradiction. in Genesis 2. What we have to
understand is that when Moses writes these two chapters, he’s
writing from two different perspectives, with two different emphases. One perspective, in chapter 1,
is that he’s giving a panoramic, eagle-eyed view of creation.
And it’s a chronological order, beginning in day 1, ending in
day 7. So it’s God’s creation of all things. heavens and the
earth, right? It’s a panoramic view of all
things. But in chapter 2, it’s as if he zooms in a little bit,
and he’s focusing on not the creation of the animals, but
the creation of man, right? He’s focusing on that relationship.
Particularly, he’s focusing on day He’s the great God of heaven
and earth. He’s the creator of all things. Well, in chapter
2, he’s focusing God’s eminence. And you can see that in the change
of his name of God, right? In chapter 1, he uses Elohim,
right? It’s a title for God. But in
chapter 2, you see he uses this phrase over and over and over
again, the Lord God. This is God’s personal name.
And so you see that God is personally interacting with man. creation of Adam and Eve later
on in chapter 2. So there is no problem, there
is no contradiction, it’s just two different perspectives and
two different emphases in these two chapters. And then we also
have the place, right? When God creates man, he puts
him in a place called And in verses 8-14, Moses gives a vivid
description of this particular garden. Again, in verse 8, it
says, And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east,
and there he put man whom he had formed. And out of the ground
the Lord God made the spring of every tree that was pleasant
to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst
of the garden tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” And then he
goes on to describe how a river flows out of Eden, and it covers
these different lands. One of the questions we might
have when we come to this text as 21st century Christians is,
do we know where this place is now? Do we know where the Garden
of Eden is? The answer to that is no. We
don’t really know precisely. where the Garden of Eden is.
And commentators such as John Calvin and other commentators
have said that it was likely due to the alteration of the
Earth’s surface in Genesis chapter 6. What happens in Genesis chapter
6, 7, and 8? The Flood. So there was likely
an alteration with the Earth’s surface that kind of changed
things up a little bit. Also, we see that there is one
source of water that’s going to both the Tigris and the Euphrates
rivers. What we see in modern day, that
there is no single source of water that is going into both
of these two locations. And so there has been some changes
due to the flood in Genesis chapter six. But though we don’t necessarily
know the precise location, we know the general location of
the Garden of Eden. We see that the mission of Assyria
and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers indicates that Eden was
probably somewhere east of Palestine, in ancient Mesopotamia. That’s
the general location, but we don’t know the exact location.
But, though we don’t understand or don’t know where the exact
location is, we do understand from Genesis 2 and Genesis 3,
as well as the rest of the Bible, that Eden was a very, very special
place. It was a special place. It was
a place of beauty. Every tree that is pleasant to
the sight, that is good for food, it was there. It was a beautiful
place. It was also a place of pure delight. If you think about
the name Eden, it literally means delight. This place was paradise. It was a place of beauty. But
more importantly and primarily, it was the place where God dwelt
with man. That’s the most important thing
about Eden. It was the place where Heaven man. I argued back in my lecture
about two or three weeks ago that I believe that the Garden
of Eden is presented in the Bible as the first temple of sorts. Now, it’s not literally a temple
structure. It is a garden, right? But it
functions like a temple. What is the purpose of a temple?
It’s the place where God meets with man, right? Obviously, there
are no sacrifices, but we see that Where is the entrance to the
Garden of Eden? It’s in the east. If you go to
the tabernacle, to the temple later on, all the entrances are
in the east. When Adam leaves sin, what has
God placed at the entrance of the garden? The cherubim. When you walk into the holy It’s as if cherubim are guarding
the holy place. We also see that there’s a water
source going out of Eden. And we also see in Ezekiel 47,
this picture of the new temple, and water is issuing out from
underneath the temple. So it’s talking about Eden of
sorts. And so Eden is presented as the
first temple. It’s the prototype from which
all other temples will be made, 1, that God created man in His own
image to rule over all the earth, and now here in Genesis 2, we
have a zoomed-in look at God’s intimate creation of man. And it says here in verse 7,
that 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 That word formed there is pretty significant. The word
formed has the idea of a potter who carefully forms a piece of
clay. That’s kind of the picture that
we get. He’s forming an artistic masterpiece as it were. And Job
kind of alludes to this in Job chapter 10 where he says that
He’s speaking of God. He says, “‘Your hands fashioned
and made me,’ verse 9, “‘remember that you have made me like clay,’
verse 11, “‘you clothed me with skin and flesh “‘and knit me
together with bones and sinews.'” The picture that we get is that
God is creating a masterpiece from the ground, like a potter
forming a piece of clay. That’s what we get from that
word, formed. He forms them from the ground.
That is meant to be a humbling truth. We’re formed from the
ground. We’re not some semi-divine heavenly
beings, but we are creatures of the dust. That means that
we share the same biological life as the animals. Have you
ever thought about that? We share the same biological
life as animals. Because in verse 7 here it says that we were created
from the ground. But then later in chapter 2,
verse 19, it says, Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed
every beast of the field. So we share the same biological
life as animals. That’s not to say that we are
an evolved species of animals like Darwin believed. Far from
that. But it is to say heaven, and your pet dog, you
are closer to your pet dog.” It is to say that we are not
like angelic creatures. We are not heavenly beings. We
are creatures from the dirt. And that’s a humbling truth.
Abraham will later say, as Abraham was approaching God, in Genesis
18, verse 27, he says, “‘Behold, I have undertaken to speak to
the Lord It’s very interesting to note
that scientists say that over 99% of our body’s mass in its
current state consists of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium,
phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. So this is a production of man. This is God’s creation of man.
When we consider the subject of God’s creation of man, there
are really two ditches that we can fall into. One ditch is that
man is just an evolved ape, and that he has no inherent value
because he’s not created in the first place. That’s kind of closer to what
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe. We
don’t believe either one of those. The Bible rejects both of those
ideas. The Bible says that we are creatures
from the dust, just like owls, squirrels, your pet dog, so on
and so forth. But that man is also distinct
from the animals, and that he’s made in the image of God. You
see in Genesis chapter 1, when God creates the animals, He creates
them after their own kind. That’s what he says over and
over again. But when he comes to man, he says, let us make
man in our image. Man is distinct. He’s separate
from the animals. But nonetheless, he is a creature
of the dirt, just like the animals. Creature of the dirt. But though
creation of man has much in common with the animals, we both share But God’s creation of man also
distinguishes from the animals. Look again at verse 7. It says
that the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground,
just like He did with the animals. And then He says, And He breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living creature. I love the imagery here. The imagery of God blowing the
breath of life into man. suggest a special connection
between the Creator and the creature that is made in His image. There’s
a special connection between the Creator and the creature.
It is to say that man is God’s special creative work. Particularly,
it’s the special creative work of the Holy Spirit. He breathed
the breath of life, the Ruach. The Holy Spirit created man,
a special creation. It says the same in Job 33, verse
4. It says, The Spirit of God made me, and the breath of the
Almighty gives me life. Do you remember Genesis 1, verse
2? It says, The Spirit hovered over
the face of the deep. Do you know what the Holy Spirit
was doing at that time? The earth was lifeless. It was
void. Darkness was over the face of
the deep. He’s bringing life out of nothing. That’s what he’s
doing. And the same thing is happening here. Adam is lifeless.
He’s bringing life where there is no life. That’s what the Holy
Spirit does here. And so, with God’s creation of
man, He forms his body from the ground, and then He breathes
into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living creature. Or that word is also nefesh,
which can also mean soul. He became a living soul. Which
leads us to our fourth point. Properties. What is man? What
are we made of? What are we? And we see here that man is not
merely his body. God makes more than just the
body. We see in verse 7 that man is
composed of both body and soul. Man is both body and soul, as
if the man became a living creature, nefesh, soul. I think this is
important for us to understand about ourselves. We are not just
our bodies, and we are not just our souls. of body and soul. That’s what makes us a person. We’re body and soul. And you
see people who will put so much focus on the human body in terms
of its beauty, in terms of its strength, in terms of its ability.
I think of NBA stars who spend their whole life conditioning
their bodies, putting their body through such agony to do what
they have to do. Think of Hollywood stars who
get plastic surgery just to make themselves beautiful, and they
forget that they have a soul, an eternal soul, that will live
on forever past this life. It reminds me of what Jesus says
in Matthew 16. He says, For what will it profit
a man, if he gains the whole world in terms of his body, and
forfeits his own soul? So you have people who overemphasize
the body and neglect the soul, but also, on the other side,
you have had people who have put so much emphasis on the human
soul that we’ve neglected and abandoned the body. I always
think of medieval theologians who viewed the body as a hindrance
to the Christian life. That the human body, unfortunately,
John Calvin, great contemporary, said that the human body is the
prison for the soul. I think I have to disagree with
Calvin there. I don’t know. Our bodies are
part of God’s good creation. When Genesis 1-31 says, He was
very good, you know what was included in that? Your body.
Human body is very good. Which also makes sense, because
when God saves man, when God redeems His sinful people, He
does not merely save our souls from eternal death. He doesn’t
merely save our souls from eternal damnation. What else does He
do? He redeems our bodies, right? That’s what we call the resurrection. God redeems the body. So, at
death, what happens is that our souls depart from us, and they
go to God to be in His presence, and our bodies go into the ground. That’s what happens. Ecclesiastes
12.7 says, “…the dust returns to the earth as it was, And the
spirit returns to God, who gave it. And if you think about it,
because God created us, both body and soul, that’s what we
are. Body and soul. When that happens, that’s an
unnatural thing. That’s an unnatural thing. Whenever you read obituaries,
I sometimes read obituaries, and it says that someone, such
and such, died of natural causes. Don’t ever believe that. Nobody
ever dies from natural causes. Death is an unnatural thing.
Sin is an unnatural thing. For the body and soul to be ripped
apart like that, that’s an unnatural thing. What we see in God’s recreation
of all things, He’s restoring it as it was meant to be, where
in the resurrection, both body and soul meet together again,
just as it was meant to be. It’s a beautiful thing. God redeems
both. and soul creatures affects the
way that we understand ourselves. It affects the way that we understand
ourselves. Let me give an example of that. Consider for a moment
those who are depressed. It’s a very common thing in our
day and age to be depressed, and sometimes those who are depressed
just have no idea We attribute it to spiritual
things. We attribute it to sin in our
life. We think of David and how he
sinned before God in those psalms where he’s crying out to God
and his bones are wasting away because of his sin. David is
depressed in those psalms. So, oftentimes, we will solely
attribute someone’s depression to the sin in their life or something
spiritual in nature. But we understand that we are
body and soul Sometimes, something like depression
can stem from living within a fallen human body. Sicknesses can cause
depression. Hormonal changes can cause depression. Other kinds of physical conditions
can cause depression. And likewise, the soul can affect
the body, but also the body can affect the soul. That makes total
sense because they’re one. It’s the same person. But also, likewise, our thoughts,
our belief systems, what we believe about God, what we believe about
ourselves, our feelings, our attitudes, all these things can
influence our emotional state, and so on and so forth. That’s
why I think Proverbs 17.22 says, a joyful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. That’s why you see And so, because of this truth,
God created man, Adam in the beginning. He created you and
I as body and soul creatures. We, as Christians, care for both. We care for our souls. How do
we care for our souls? Primarily, we care for our souls
by placing our souls in the hands of Christ. Augustine once said
that our souls are restless until they find rest. That’s how we care for our souls. Well, on a day-to-day basis,
Peter says we need to abstain from the desires of this world
which wage war against our souls. We do that by fighting sin. We
do that by getting into God’s Word. We care for our souls by
doing these things. But not only that, but we also
care for our bodies. We, as Christians, should care
about the human body and how we should treat it, what we should
put into it. We should be concerned about
our health, the strength of our bodies. And so we should go on
walks, or if we’re able to, runs, or so on and so forth. We should
care for the body however we can, because, again, God created
us body and soul. Paul says we should glorify God
with our bodies because our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. It’s a good thing to remember. Fifth thing I want us to note
here, so that’s the properties of man, we’re body and soul,
but fifth thing I want us to note here is the parallel between
the creation of the first man, Adam, and God’s creation of a
new humanity, the new creation. And so again, we read in Genesis
2, 7, that God formed Adam from the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life and that man became What we find, when we go throughout
the rest of the Bible, is that when God creates a new humanity
by the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, it is described
in ways that are similar to Adam’s first creation. Let me give you
one important example here from the Old Testament. Think about
Ezekiel 37. We all know Ezekiel 37, or at
least we should know Ezekiel 37. is brought to this valley. He
sees a valley full of dry bones that are just utterly lifeless. These dry bones represent Israel’s
spiritual condition. They are dead in their sins.
They are in exile. They need to be resurrected.
They need to have a new life. That’s the condition in which
they’re in. And God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones
that they may live. And that breath, ruach, may come
into them, that they may come to life. And Ezekiel’s description
here of these bones rising again to new life is very similar to
Genesis 2.7. And if you’re reading, I’m not
sure what translation you have, if you’re reading ESV, NIV, you
can see a very clear parallel between Genesis 2.7 and Ezekiel
37, verse 5 and 9. But it’s actually much more in Genesis 2.7 and Ezekiel 37.
So if you have your notes, compare these two passages. Ezekiel 37 says, verse 5, Thus
says the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will bring upon you
the breath of life. Does that sound familiar? Genesis
2.7, I will bring upon you the breath of life. Verse 9, Then
he said to me, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man,
and say to the breath, says the Lord God, come from the four
winds of Obreht, and breathe upon these slain, and let them
live.” So there’s a very obvious parallel between Genesis 2-7,
God’s creation of Adam, and God’s recreation of a new humanity. So as with Adam, God first forms
the body, and then He breathes life in him. God forms the body. He puts bones
and flesh together to form a body, and then He breathes life into
it, just like He does with Adam. Ultimately, it’s a picture of
a new creation. It’s a picture of what we call
regeneration, in which every single one of us was dead in
our sins. Think about Adam. Before the
breath of life came to Adam, Adam was complete. There’s no spiritual life, there’s
no love for God. There’s sin, there’s deadness. That was true
of you and I. And so God, by His sovereign
work, through the Holy Spirit, when we heard the Gospel, breathed
life into us. And you came to life like that.
It’s really, truly a miracle. You were dead in your sins, and
then the Holy Spirit came into your life, opened your eyes to
the Gospel, and that Gospel of Christ, crucifixion, the cross
of Christ, was no longer foolishness. Paul is going back to the Old
Testament. He’s pulling these ideas from Ezekiel 37, and he’s
talking about God’s restoration of man. So, going on a little
bit further, we see something very similar at the end of John’s
Gospel. In John 20, verse 21, Jesus gives
what is essentially the same as the Great Commission. He says
in verse 21, “…as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending
you.” said this, He breathed on them. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
Genesis 2-7. And He breathed on them and said
to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. And so just as God, in the beginning,
breathed life into Adam for him to fulfill the commission of
filling the whole world with image bearers and subduing the
earth, so in the new creation, Jesus breathes upon His disciples,
gives them His Holy Spirit so that they may fulfill a great
commission, and fill the whole earth with those who are made
in His image. This is new creation language. And also, consider this. Adam was the recipient of this
life. Adam was completely passive in
this process. God breathed life into him. He
was the recipient of life. And by the way, this is the only
place in the New Testament that I’m aware of that explicitly
quotes Genesis 2-7. Look at this. He says, Thus it
is written, the first man Adam became a living being. The last
Adam became a life-giving spirit. Adam could only receive life,
but Jesus is the one who gives life. Adam couldn’t pass on life
to his posterity. What could Adam only give to
us? His sin and His condemnation. We receive that from Adam. All
those who are in Christ receive what? Life. The Holy Spirit. He’s able to pass that on to
His posterity. All those who are in Christ have the Holy Spirit
and have eternal life through Him. So as the greater Adam,
He’s the one who bestows that life. He not only receives it,
but He bestows it upon us. So He is the greater Adam. He is the one who ushers in I want to list four purposes
for which God created Adam. The first one is this, it’s work.
I’m not sure if you have a pen, but this is a fill-in-the-blank.
First reason why God created Adam was to work. And that’s
intriguing to note because our culture really doesn’t like work. Our culture really sees work
as the result of a fall. not as something that was established
first in creation. And you can see that. We don’t
view work as that which glorifies God. We don’t view work as joyful
toil. We don’t view work like that.
We view work as, I’m working for the weekend. We even have
songs that say that everybody’s working for the weekend. That
song is from the 80s, beyond my time. But our music sings
about that. We also have movies that talk
about this. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen
the movie, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? There is a song in that
movie. It’s called Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was a song that was originally
written by a man named Harry McClintock. And the song, it
celebrates cigarettes that grow on trees, handouts that grow
on bushes, and so on and so forth. The dogs’ teeth are made of rubber.
So criminals can get away with just about anything. And it says
within that psalm that there are no shovels, there are no
picks, there are no axes, and they quote, hung the jerk that
invented work. And if we think about that, that
would put the noose around God’s neck, right? Because God’s the
one who created work, right? There is no jerk here on earth
that invented work. No, it was invented by a good
God. work with his hands, with his
feet, with his mind. God created our bodies to work. Genesis 2.15 says, “…the Lord
God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work
it.” It’s very clear when we read the Genesis 2 narrative. When no bush of the field 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.” Verse 6, “…and
a mist was going up from the land, and was watering the whole
face of the ground.” So now God is bringing water upon the lands,
and now things are going to start springing up, right? Right when things are about to
spring up and things are going to need to be cultivated, it
says in verse 7, “…then the Lord God formed the man from
the dust.” So right when things were about to come up, right
when work was about to be necessary, that’s when God formed the man. So it’s very clear from Genesis
that God created man to work. And there’s something very satisfying
about work. Remember you complete a day’s
work, There’s a certain achievement about that. There’s something
that feels good about that, and that’s right. That’s good, because
that’s what God created us to do, to work. So that’s the first
thing that God created Adam to do. The second is this. God created
Adam to protect. He created Adam to protect. If
we look again at Genesis 2.15, it says, “…the Lord God took
the man and put him in the garden to work it and keep it.” It was to guard from anything
that was harmful and to guard from anything that was unclean.
Just as a side note, a couple of weeks ago I also argued that
if Eden was a temple of sorts, I argued that Adam was the first
priest. The only other place where we
find these two words, work and keep, it’s only one other place,
only one other book in the Old Testament. It’s the book of Numbers.
It’s always attributed to the Levites who guarded the temple. But Adam was to guard the temple. What is Adam to guard the temple
from? Well, God knows there is at least
one harmful thing on earth, and that is the serpent. Adam is
to guard the garden from the serpent, and Adam ultimately
fails in his responsibility. But nonetheless, God calls him
to guard, and God calls as kids. For those of us who are married,
whenever we hear a sound down the living room, we don’t hand
the bat to the wife. We take the bat ourselves, or
we take the gun, or I have nunchucks in my house with Bruce Lee on
it. I’m going to take care of business.
I probably won’t be able to do much with that, but nonetheless,
we’re the ones who have to take care of business. I actually
heard John Piper one time, he gave an illustration, he said,
Even if your wife has a black belt, you still have to go first. You’re gonna go get beat up first,
and then your wife’s gonna take care of business, but you still have
to be the one to go out first to protect the house. But that’s
why God created man. To work it, and to keep it, to
guard it. So the third thing that God created
man to do where God specifically says to
Adam, He says, You may surely eat of every tree in the garden,
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat. For in the day that you eat of
it, you shall surely die. It’s important to note that that
command is specifically given to Adam. Eve is not here yet. She does not come out to sea
until verses 21 and And so it is implied here, I believe, that
Adam was to take this command from God and to communicate it
to his wife, Eve. In a sense, he was to instruct
her and to lead her in God’s Word. And he does that. I believe that Adam actually
did that, because we can tell in Genesis 3, verses 2-3, She messes it up a little bit,
but she quotes it almost verbatim. How did she know that? Adam communicated
it to her. One of the purposes of man, a
married man, is that he’s to lead his wife, especially in
the sense of God’s Word. He’s to wash her, to water the
Word. The great marriage passage in Ephesians 5 says, Husbands,
love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up
for her. that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the
washing of water with the Word.” That’s one of our primary responsibilities
with our wife. We lead them in the Word of God. We wash them in the Word of God.
And then fourthly, and I would say most importantly, what Adam
was created for was communion. Communion. in the garden. And you get that
sense when you read Genesis 1-3, that the man and the woman were
created to have fellowship with God and to walk and talk with
God. You see, God doesn’t talk to
the animals, perhaps because He won’t talk back to them, but
He talks to the man and to the woman. God walks in the garden,
He spends time with the man and the woman. God created us us, and so that we might be with
Him. And of course, Adam sinned, lost
the presence of God. But eventually, God would choose
a people, Israel, and He would command the people of Israel
to build a tabernacle. And as I said in the beginning,
that tabernacle was meant to reflect the Garden of Eden. There’s three parts in the Temple.
There’s the Most Holy Place, and there’s the Holy Place in
the Outer Court. Eden, so to speak, is the holy
place, most holy place. That’s where God dwells. And
you have the garden, right? That’s where the tree of life
is. That’s supposed to be the holy place. And the rest of the world is
like the outer court. So, when God tells Moses to construct
this most holy place and put the Ark of the Covenant there,
He says concerning that most holy place, Exodus 22, verse
25, or 25, verse 22, he says, there I will meet with you. There I will meet with you, just
like in the beginning. God intends to dwell with his
people. God created us, body and soul,
to have communion with us. Your body was made for God. Your soul was made for God. You were made for God. It’s an
incredible truth to think about. We are not satisfied in anything
else unless we find our satisfaction in God, because that’s what we
were created for. Communion with God. So let me summarize Genesis
2 like this. Genesis 2 is a humbling and an
exalting truth. It’s humbling because it shows
that man is created from the earth. We are not semi-divine,
but it’s also exalting in the sense that Thank you that you have breathed
new life into us. But we confess to you that we
do not deserve that. We were dead in our sins and
our trespasses. We thank you for that. We thank
you for your kindness. We thank you for the love of
Christ.