THROUGH THE BIBLE: Genesis 2..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Please open up your Bibles to Genesis Chapter 2. Genesis Chapter 2, so we reach the part of our service when we're going to be doing corporate reading of Scripture.

This time we're going to be reading Genesis Chapter 2. Last week we started with the Bible, Genesis Chapter 1. I'm going to be reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible, but before we start reading the chapter, there's something very important. Because of the limitations of time with this section of the service, I'm going to give you just so you have in your mind when we read the chapter, Here we approach to the finish of the completion of the work of creation that the Lord has started in chapter number one. This chapter is going to be divided into two different sections.

The first three verses are going to speak of the consummation of the finished work of creation, specifically the seventh day. But then, from verse 4 onwards, the author of Genesis is going to go back to day 6, and he's going to give us, in light, a little bit more understanding of what happened on day 6. Okay? So, having that in mind, let's just read the Scripture together. This is the Word of God, Genesis chapter 2.

It says, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation. That is the finish of day seven. Now verse four starts going back to day six.

It says these are the generations of the heavens and the earth and the earth 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 had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land, and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the men of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the bread of life, and the men became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the men 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 it became four rivers. The name of the first is Pyshon. It is the one that flowed around the whole length of Havla, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Dillium and onyx stone are there.

The name of the second river is the Gaihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole length of Kush. And the name of the third river, it is the Tigris, 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 it and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you might 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. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the men said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of men. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And the men and his wife We're both naked and we're not ashamed. That is the reading of the words of God. Amen.

It is a huge challenge that we have here, just 10 minutes to explain a whole chapter. But beloved, if there's something that I want you to have in your mind from this whole thing that we're doing is, first of all, that when we're reading Genesis, as I said last week and when we came together, we are not reading the beginning of the history of humankind alone. But we are not reading the beginning of creation alone. But beyond that, what we are reading, it is the beginning of the story or the history of redemption. Look, there is a sense, because we're humans, we think things one after the other and we reach an outcome.

But in the mind of God, the outcome is already decreed. The outcome of the result is already predestined and defined. And that which happens in between is just means that are pointing towards the outcome that He has defined. So when we read scripture, when we read this beginning of Genesis, that's what we're witnessing. We're witnessing not only the beginning of history as we know it, but beyond that we're witnessing the beginning of history of redemption and how God actually decreed that that was going to happen.

Chapter number two then, it says, a very important link in between the history of redemption or the story of redemption in the six days and the full. And as I said in the beginning, here we have two days in life. Day seven in which the Lord rested and then here the author of Genesis is going to give us light into what happened on day six of creation. Now there are two things I want you to remember about day six. Day six, it is the pinnacle of creation, right?

We know that man was created on that particular day. But from this chapter two, there are two things that I want you to have in your mind every time that you think about the sixth day of creation and every time that you think about chapter two of the book of Genesis. These two things I want you to have in mind. The first one, it is the Garden of Eden. In chapter one, the author is telling us that God had made men and women.

He created them in some image and likeness. And here, in chapter two, we have an insight into something additional that is given. The author says that God planted a garden, and that garden is the Garden of Eden. Now, what is that garden? What should we understand about that Garden of Eden?

Now there are many things that we can say about that, but two things, or two initial points that I want you to notice. First of all, that the Lord God was walking in the midst of that garden, and that God had communion with men in that garden. We know that because in Genesis 3a it says that God was walking in the garden. So this garden is not only a place where there is fruits and there is everything that they needed to eat, but beyond that, it is a dwelling place of God, where God was dwelling with the man and the woman that He had created after His own image and likeness. This Garden of Eden, it is a dwelling place where the presence of God was there.

Second thing, from the purpose of men or the task that it was given to men by God, we can conclude certain things about the garden. God says to men that you are to work and to keep the garden. Before, in Genesis chapter 1, he has said that you are to have dominion over the whole creation. And now in the garden, he says that you are to work and to keep it. These two words, work and keep the garden, are very important, beloved.

These two words in Hebrew are used exactly in the same way to reference the work of the priest in the temple. The temple or the tabernacle or the temple that we see later on in the development of the Old Testament, It is the dwelling place of God. It is the manifestation of God towards his people. And then here the author of Genesis is telling us that this garden is where God is and the purpose of those who are in that garden is to work it and to keep it. If you read Numbers 3, Numbers 4, and Numbers 5, you will see that the mission that is given to the priest is to work and to keep the sanctuary.

These two words are used interchangeably to say that. The priest was supposed to do the ministry of the temple. That do ministry of the temple, it is exactly the same word that is given here to Adam. So Adam is not a farmer only. Adam is not only a person that was supposed to cultivate the garden and just to preserve it and just do farming in the garden.

He had a priestly function within that garden. And something that is involved in this work and keep it, it is not only to preserve it, but also to protect it. Adam was supposed to protect that dwelling place of God, not only to preserve under the commandment that it was given to him, but also to protect from outsiders. In Numbers 3 and Numbers 5, when these words are used, the priest, Aaron, and his sons, they are given the mission not only to preserve the temple, but to protect from outsiders and to put them to death if they are coming to the temple. This was the mission that was given to Adam.

Adam was a representation of that priestly ministry that was gonna be given to Israel. So therefore, this Garden of Eden, it is the dwelling place of God where he communes with men and men supposed to obey and to submit to God the creator by extending that garden and then protecting it and keeping it as a priest. But now I want you to notice something very important because in chapter number one, when we were going through the different days, God said everything was good, everything was good, everything was good, that he saw that everything was good. But when we come here to chapter two, speaking of the sixth day, God says that he saw that men was alone and that that was not good. He says that man was by himself and that that was not good.

Now, pay attention because here we're in the context of day 6. We haven't reached the end of day 6. We know from chapter 1 that in the end of day 6, God said that it was good. But now here we're in the middle of day 6. We're in, I don't know, at some point in day 6.

And then God says that it is not good that man might be by himself. He says in verse 18, Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. But then the author of Genesis is going to equate the loneliness of Adam with the action of having someone that is going to be a company or a help. It says, I will make him a helper fit for him. So the solution for that lack of goodness, which is that man is just by himself, the solution to that, it is that I'm going to make someone that is a fit help for him.

So that means that the completeness of man, if you want to put it that way, that the completeness of man in his purpose of keeping and protecting the garden, it is by having next to him the person that was going to be created or made from one of his race, woman. Now we know that when all of this creation happens, man and woman, they are made after his own image and likeness. Then the Lord says, it is good. Now the purpose, now look how beautiful it is here because the glorious covenant of marriage, it is established here in Genesis number two. And it is not only a companionship of a man and a woman, but rather the purpose that those two have in light of their relationship with God.

Their marriage or the institution of marriage has meaning in and of itself in light of the purpose of God in the Garden of Eden in this particular case. Now, He was the woman alone, the only one that it was going to be of companionship to men. Animals were brought to him, to Adam, to name them, but he did not find a companion that it was fit for him. And it is only the woman that becomes then the company for men that it was suitable for the purposes that he had. The Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden, it is the dwelling place of God.

And then the companionship of the woman is that which fulfills, so give completeness to the man to fulfill, that which he is required to do within the context of the Garden of Eden. It's then when day six is finished, that day seven arrives, and then the Lord says that everything was completed, and that he rested. Time is not sufficient to say the preciousness of this, but the author of Hebrews says that those who have faith in Jesus Christ, they enter the rest in a similar way that God entered the rest when he completed the works of creation. Beloved, rest, the garden of Eden, and marriage are types or shadows of Jesus Christ and his work of redemption. It is by being Jesus Christ that He comes and dwells among us, that we become the temple of God, that God dwells in us individually as a church, and then the church of Jesus Christ becomes the pillar and the foundation of truth, the house of the living God, the dwelling place of God.

And now His marriage, that which foreshadows or foresees the relationship of the church and the relationship of Jesus Christ Christ being the husband and the church being the wife. And it is also by the finished work, it is by the finished work of Jesus Christ that all the works that we cannot fulfill are completed and therefore we can enter into rest. God completed His works of creation. Jesus Christ, on behalf of us, He completes the works that were required of us, and He fulfills the covenant that we cannot keep, and therefore, when we are united to Him, we are recipients of the rest that is found only in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, it is our rest.

Jesus Christ is the one who has given us access to the dwelling place of God. And then in Revelation says that when time is finished, that when the consummation of things comes, that the heavenly city will come from above. that God will dwell with his people, that there will be no tear, there will be no death, there will be no sin, that he will be God to his people, that we will enter into that resting place, and the glorious union of Christ and the church, the glorious wedding of those two will be consummated. And then we will understand that all of this was pointed to the glorious person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen?