I'm not Ken Ham, but it looks like David's trying to have some fun here, which is fine. But I am thankful for answers in Genesis, right? And yeah, and I've been consulting that a lot. And yeah, so just wanted to talk about not only answers, but questions that we can ask each other. And so the introduction question last week, was how was your weekend of rest? This week, I want to ask, how was your work week? I know it maybe looked different for many of you who are retired, but I'm sure you got other things to do besides work, right? Were there some rough patches and tough stretches, right? I had a few days, bad days myself. I feel like I'm coming down with something, but that's part of being a parent, right? Now, if you get stuck, How do you get yourself motivated to work better and harder? I used to have posters of Michael Jordan on my wall, right? He's not the best motivator for a 5'8 high schooler, and I couldn't really jump past 10 inches, so I gave up on that dream. But maybe I should have just had more motivational quotes instead. Alas, it's too late for me, right? But maybe not for you. Maybe like Lucas, you know, you can be an athlete someday. So I collected a few quotes for us. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer, Albert Einstein. I don't know, I think Einstein's pretty smart, but anyway. Don't watch the clock, do what it does, keep going. Sam Levinson, that's a good one, I like that. Going to the sports world, finally. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. Vince Lombardi, right? Sounds good, but we must always test such axioms with scripture. And what I find in scripture is that God has something to say about work just as he says something about rest. It's found in the earliest chapters of the Bible. We'll see in Genesis 2 how foundational work is to humanity and the world. Now before looking at today's passage, I'd like to make some preliminary comments as usual. I think that'll help us as we go through it. There's three of them. First has to do with the arrangement or the structure of Genesis. The second with the authorship of Genesis. The third concerning anthropology, the study of man in Genesis. First, here's something about the arrangement of the book. Last week we began Genesis 2. We looked at the first three verses. We finished our coverage of the creation week. And as we pick up from verse four, we begin a new section. The way we know a new section begins here is this. There's a very important phrase throughout Genesis. It's a phrase and it contains a key word, toledot. Toledot means history, account. or records of generations. And it's paired with the demonstrative pronoun, this or these. So here's this phrase, this is the total adult, or these are the total adult. Since it occurs 11 times in Genesis, we have 12 sections. I'll be sure to point out each time we see it. And look here, right? The first time we see the phrase is in Genesis 2.4, where it begins, this is the history. This is the tall adult of the heavens and the earth. So then Moses is signaling that Genesis 1, 1 to 2, 3, or in the first opening section, the new second section begins in Genesis 2, 4. Okay, so that's my comment on the arrangement of Genesis. Here's a word about its authorship. Because of the way Genesis divides, shifts gears, changes tones, zooms in and out in perspective, uses different names of God, Elohim in one part, Yahweh, Elohim in another. Some claim that the book's a patchwork of different authors arranged into one work by someone different and later than Moses. You may have heard something called J.E.D. Peace Theory. And they say that this final editors, someone who lived long after Moses, so they think Genesis 1, 1 to 2, 3 was written by a group of leaders about 1,000 years after Moses, while another group, especially fond of God's name Yahweh, wrote 2-4 onward, about 500 years after Moses. Now, I won't spend too much time refuting this proposition. That's probably better for like Sunday school or separate Bible study, but this is a matter of your faith in God's word. Do we believe in divine revelation and inspiration more than some evolution of religion? Do we have more confidence in the education of Moses than the scholarship of European liberals? If so, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that Moses wrote all of Genesis. It's safe to assume this. You're in good company. The other Old Testament writers assume Moses wrote Genesis. Jesus did, Paul did, most people throughout history did. Now, there is a legitimate question here, why does Moses refer to God as Yahweh Elohim, Lord God from Genesis 2-4 onward instead of just Elohim, God as before? Well, Moses is allowed to add some variety to his own writing, but to be more specific, he likely wanted to stress the intimacy God enjoys with man. With the use of God's covenant name Yahweh, Lord in all capital letters, we have a more personal account with mankind. The Israelites, the original audience of Genesis, would have picked that up immediately. Elohim, creator of the universe, is near us as Elohim Yahweh. That gets us to the issue of anthropology, the study of man, and this issue relates to a question about Genesis 1 and 2. Why did Moses decide to narrate the creation of man twice? Why have two accounts of day six? We can't avoid this question. Somebody at Ligonier's Ministry compared these two accounts to maps. Imagine a comprehensive map of all the major roads in Maryland, 95, 695, 495. That's similar to what we see in the first part of Genesis. But then say there's a more detailed city map. Take Elkridge, for example. See all the finer details of Washington Boulevard, all the branching smaller roads, Montgomery Road, Marshall Lee Drive, parks like Rockburn, schools like Duckett's Lane Elementary, the neighborhood of this church, which is called Timberview, Thomas Viaduct, and the Patasco River. It'd be hard to see all that in a bigger state map. A smaller city map is what you need to study your immediate surroundings. Similarly, we have here a detailed account of day six for mankind's benefit. This time around, we observe man's creation with man in the central position. This is not flattery, it's true. We who are made in God's image are central to the history of heavens and earth. That's so amazing. We're not just cosmic accidents. Now, no wonder David remarked later in Psalm 8, 3 to 4, when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him? So these are the preliminary remarks concerning arrangement, authorship, and anthropology. Let's get to the verses for today, Genesis 2, 4-17. Unlike most weeks, I'm not going to read the passage all at once. I'll read a few verses at a time as I go. Now, the division of today's passage is fairly simple. I observe two parts, verses 4-9 and 10-17. In each of the parts, Moses begins with some stunning scenes of the beautiful paradise. but perfect as it is, there's need for work. Whether it's the uncultivated field or the untended garden, there's the right man for the job, and that right man is Adam. The first in verses four to nine, we have the need for groundwork. The one to do the groundwork is the worker from the ground, literally. I mean that the word man, in Hebrew, adam, is related to the word ground, In Hebrew, adamah. So here we find in this cluster of verses, Adam and adamah together, the man and the ground. Secondly, in verses 10 to 17, we have the need for garden work. Man's been put into a garden, he shows up to work, but he's awaiting further instructions. So after describing the river of Eden, Moses tells us God spoke and we learn that there's more to man's life than physical labor. There's also the spiritual labor to obey God. Man must be mindful of the life and death consequences of his moral choices. We consider two truths from these two sections. I like to call them human job descriptions. First, God created man for ordinary work, that's verses four to nine. Secondly, God commanded man for moral work, that's 10 to 17. First, God created man for ordinary work. Verse four goes, this 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. Moses begins this section speaking broadly of creation. The day you see in the middle of verse four is unlike the days we saw earlier in Genesis. This day is general in meaning. not limited to 24 hours. Notice how it does not have an ordinal number attached to it, first, second, or third. So the noun day here stands in parallel with history, just as the verbs created and made are also parallel. Next in the first half of verse five, Moses rapidly zooms into the details. He's going to speak, he's going to speak specifically about a specific day, day six. There was a time before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. Now some look at this and say, hold on. How can you say that there's no plant or herb of the field on Friday? Didn't God create all vegetation of land on day three, Tuesday? Then we read in chapter one, verse 11, that God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit of the tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself on the earth, and it was so. But what's going on here? Well, the plant and the herb mentioned in day six are not the same as those mentioned in day three. What are they then? The plant of the field and the herb of the field are what Mark Futado, a commentator, calls wild shrubs of the steppe and the cultivated grain. If you read that in context, these two types are the result of two things, the work of mankind and the fall of mankind. Work of mankind and the fall of mankind. So with the mention of these field plants, Genesis 2.5 is just setting the stage, anticipating what will happen later in the same chapter and what will happen in Chapter 3. Look ahead and you'll see the parallel with Genesis 3.18. I shared this one time while going through a Friday evening study. It's Genesis history. It's an insight from an Italian Jewish scholar named Umberto Casuto, and I summarized it in this slide. I mean, you don't have to know Hebrew, but you can just see, hopefully, with the different colors there, the parallels here. So as you know, in Genesis 3, God is declaring the curse of man's work. Man will work to eat the herb of the field. I just mentioned, it's the edible cultivated grain. But what makes that work frustrating, difficult, and back-breaking are the plants of the field. These plants of the field that rise as the wild shrubs of the steppe, thorns and thistles. Again, here in Genesis 2.5, Moses, is anticipating what's to come later. The created man will work to cultivate the herb of the field, wheats and oats, right? The cursed man must deal with the plant of the field, thorns and thistles. Moses continues his narration in the second half of verse five, and all of six. I can share that with you later, but I have to go on here. 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. Again, someone needs to till the ground and work the soil. As for irrigation, a mist went up to water all vegetation. Up to this point, God has not sent rain on earth. Some argue from this that God didn't send rain until Noah's flood. So there's this view that from Genesis 2 until Genesis 7, which spans about 1600 years, there was no rain. They cite as proof text Hebrews 11.7, where it says that Noah was divinely warned of things not yet seen. But I do not think no rain until flood is a necessary conclusion from here. Things not yet seen might only refer to the unprecedented global flood Not necessarily rain, but my view is that there's no rain up to this point in the narrative in Genesis, but there was rain between day six and before the flood, and for additional support. I'm not a geologist, but it's obvious that rain is integral to the water cycle, right? Granted, it's hard to know everything about the world before the flood, the climates and the environments, but there's no reason to deny there was rain. One more question, what about the appearance of the rainbow after the flood? Isn't Genesis 9 the first time we hear of the rainbow? Well, it's possible that rainbow existed before Noah, before God made a sign of the covenant. God has used preexisting stuff as new covenantal signs. Circumcision existed before Abraham and the patriarchs. Baptism existed before John the Baptist and Jesus. So I don't see an issue here with rainbow existing before the flood. Okay, Moses gives us the necessary background in verses four to six, but there remains the need to till the ground, so God solves the problem himself. Verse seven goes, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed it into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. Notice now how verse seven ends with the familiar phrase, living being, it's nefesh kaya, Nefeshkayah was used to describe all creatures of sea, sky, and land. So then what makes mankind different from all other creatures? What makes them the highest form of life? We saw it back in chapter one, verse 26 to 27. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Likewise, chapter two also tells us something unique about man. We get a close look at this image bearer. We see God at work at the potter's studio, creating the male. Later we watch him at the surgical operating room, creating the female. He starts with the male here, Adam. Notice how here in verse seven, They're basically two parts to a man, the visible and the invisible. The visible portion is described before the comma, the man of the dust of the ground. That's our skin, bones, organs, blood vessels. Human anatomy is a wonder. It's a wonder, isn't it? So it's a lot more complicated than, you know, what we make, anything we can make here. But then if not, If that's not complex enough for you, we have the invisible part of our being. God animates the man of dust by breathing into him. The breath of life, the breath of life enters his nose and fills his lungs. There's a special intimacy, care, and love here that far exceeds the way he created the other creatures. Now, it's true that you can subdivide the invisible part of our being just as we do with our visible parts, right? There's a case for trichotomy, man is spirit, soul, and body based on 1 Thessalonians 5.23 and Hebrews 4.12. I mean, you could go further and say we're tetrachotomous or pentachotomous, three or four invisible parts to go along with the body, heart, mind, soul, spirit. But at the very least, we are dichotomous, and for practical purposes, we'll stick with that. We are of dust below, yet having us the breadth of life from God above. That's what makes us both like and unlike all the earthly creatures. So God saw the need for work, he created man for work, put him in the place of work. Verses eight to nine goes, 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. We have this beautiful garden with verdant trees and delicious fruit. In particular, there's the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. These are literal trees. There are obviously something more, but they are definitely literal trees. As you see in Proverbs, the tree of life can be symbolic. But note also that something can be both real and symbolic. There is real water in baptism, real bread and wine in communion, but they also symbolize greater things. Like to say George Washington is a virtue, like he symbolizes America. Well, he was a real person, right? So what makes the two trees special? Is there some chemical properties in them? Are they like aloe vera health-promoting bioactive compounds? Are the fruits brain food? Or are they like the fountain of youth with some magical properties? Who knows? The main point is that these two trees are anticipating man's test of obedience. Will he choose life with God or knowledge without God? We now see that God not only created man for ordinary work, Other human job description, he also commanded man for moral work. Before we set up the test of morality, we have to get past verses 10 to 14. Now a 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 Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good, but Delium and the 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 Hidakel. It is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. The level of detail here strongly suggests a real literal garden. The name of one river, Euphrates, invites speculation. Maybe we can pinpoint the original location of Eden. But with the garden destroyed by the flood, I'm not sure whether that's possible. What we do know is that how the garden was watered, it's obvious that God provided a perfect environment for man's home and work. Yahweh Elohim puts man in the garden and puts man to work. Moses makes that clear in verse 15. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. So we talked about this in the Sunday school this morning. Tending probably has to do with cultivating, serving. Keeping it has to do with protecting and guarding. But I want to talk a little bit more generally. We should pause and see how in this perfect world before the fall, work was God's idea. I know some of us really dread work, right? It's difficult. But work itself, before the fall of man, before this fallen world, it was God's idea. We're built for work. Work is good for us. Consider this quote from an author named Tim Keller. He wrote a good book on this topic. Work is as much a basic human need as food. Beauty, rest, friendship, prayer. Without meaningful work, we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. People who are cut off from work because of physical or other reasons quickly discover how much they need work to thrive emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Think about that for a few moments. Think how depriving ourselves of honest work can be harmful to yourself and others. And of course, you know, We have to also redefine how the world sees retirement for many of us. Is it just sitting around and going on vacations all the time? No, we're meant to do work that is good, work that is for God. Of course, that's a challenge. We have to think about what that's going to look like after we retire from our nine to five. But know that you'll be doing much better, spiritually, physically, emotionally, by doing what God has called us to do, to work. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians warning them, not working at all and being busybodies lead to disorder. The problem was so bad that he told believers to withdraw from such ones. He gave them this principle, if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. That's in 2 Thessalonians 3. Of course, work is not the sole reason we live, and we should not make work our idol. But our main job is to fill the earth, subdue it, dominate lesser creatures. So the first job ever created was the gardener, and God has employed mankind. But another key thing to note here is this, not only should we work hard, have good work ethic, be good at work, we should work hard to be ethical, work at being good in character. Not only pursue accolades and advancement in our careers, pursue holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Again, even before the fall, God commanded man for moral work. You see it in verses 16 to 17. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, 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. Again, this is a literal tree like all others. Definitely more than a tree. It may have had natural or supernatural qualities in its root and fruits or not. We just don't know. But we do know for sure the consequences of eating from it and find it significant that the first time we hear of death is in a perfect world. God speaks of death in a garden full of life to a man that's not even a day old. Now somewhere in that garden is also the tree of life, but in Genesis 2, there's more emphasis on the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So we see that a perfect environment does not exclude the possibility of temptation and the need for faith in God. Don't say God didn't warn you. The first time we hear of death, we see the word repeated for emphasis. In Hebrew, a common way to say surely, certainly, or absolutely is by repeating the verb with one of them in what's called the infinitive absolute. We do something similar in English. Politician Winston Churchill, never give in, never, never, never, never, right? Author Joseph Conrad in The Heart of Darkness, the horror, the horror, right? Some random realtor, location, location, location. Well, here, God is literally saying in verse 17, in the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall die, die. We're not talking about physical death, but spiritual death. Adam and Eve died spiritually immediately when they sinned. They died physically later. It's the same with us. We worry about physical death more than the spiritual death, but physical death is more secondary. Spiritual debt is what dooms us. We know that's what's about to happen in the next chapter, okay? But for now, stop and appreciate these truths. Not only did God create man for ordinary work, he also commanded man for moral work. So we see in the job descriptions that both are part of human experience. Both works apply whether we live in a perfect world or a fallen world. We must not only work, we must also obey. We must work with our hands and our hearts. We all know how the story continues. Mankind fell. It is through this one man, Adam, that sin entered the world, and death through sin. Does death spread to all men? Because all sin. We are like Adam, and we act like Adam. We all become evildoers, workers of iniquity, as a fallen sinner in a fallen world. You know, something's missing, and all is vanity. Even a great king like Solomon could only say, you know, he probably felt like he, in a sense, he felt like a little god, right? I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done. and on the labor in which I had toiled, and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind, there was no profit under the sun. And what's worse than no profit is this, the wages of sin is death. There's a payday coming for our transgressions. Together become unprofitable, even great and powerful nations before God are as nothing. It says in Isaiah 40, 17, they're counted by him less than nothing and worthless. All who sin will die in sin. Those who die in sin will surely die, be excluded from God's presence in heaven. We praise God that he didn't leave us like this. There is good news. Creation of Adam anticipates new creation in Jesus. In Romans 5, Apostle Paul juxtaposes Adam and Jesus Adam was a type of him who is to come. Through the first man, Adam's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation. Through another man, Jesus' righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in the justification of life. Whereas by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous. What is specifically is this obedience of Jesus? While Adam disobeyed God in Eden, Jesus prayed, God's will be done at Gethsemane. Though he was a son, not just the son of man, but the son of God, he learned obedience by the things he suffered. And unlike first Adam, the second Adam didn't suffer because he sinned. Jesus never sinned. Rather, he suffered in our place as our substitute. He went to the cross to pay the penalty of sins that we should pay, There he declared his work of redemption finished. He greeted his last, he was buried, but on the third day he rose, Christ rose from the grave. He presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs. He was seen by his disciples for 40 days, and then he ascended to heaven, and someday he'll return to judge all mankind. This good news of Jesus calls for our response, we must repent, Turn from evil works and self-righteousness. Turn to Christ and trust in him only for eternal life. It's a free gift. You cannot earn good standing with God through good works. God saves us by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. For those in Christ, we look forward to his kingdom. Someday he will behold him as the Lord of heaven. And then as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. In the new heavens and the new earth, we'll have access to the tree of life in the paradise of God. We'll see the pure river of water of life clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. The promise is for those who overcome the world by faith in Christ. But we're grateful that it's not our works that secure us a place in paradise, in new heaven, You earned, so who pays for that fare? So we're gonna look at our last hymn in the bulletin and sing that. Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul. Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole. No other work save thine, no other blood will do. No strength save that which is divine can bear me safely through. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for just the truths, the wonderful truths in your word that you created us for a purpose. It's not something we need to find apart from you. Lord, it's in the design. It's in the original setting. And even in this fallen world, we know that we're created for work, good work. And we are saved also to do good works prepared beforehand. And Lord, we just thank you for redemption to the second Adam, to the last Adam, your son Jesus Christ. And Lord, though we failed in our morality, we're thankful for grace and forgiveness. And Lord, as we face a new week of work, whether it's at home or whether it's at work, workplaces or some other places, we pray that we would do that well out of gratitude that we have for your grace and mercy. Pray that you would help us to obey you, again, not to earn our way to heaven, but because we've been given heaven, that we should be faithful to you here on earth. So we thank you for the purpose we have, for the love we have from you, that you are intimate and you love us, you gave us life. Pray that we would use each moment of our lives to glorify you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.