All right, if you will please turn with me in God's Word to Genesis Chapter 2. This morning, as we continue the sermon series on the primeval history of the book of Genesis. We'll be looking again this morning at Adam and the account of Adam's life in the Garden of Eden. We'll be again looking at Genesis chapter 2 verses 8 and 9 and then also picking up verse 15 this morning. If you found your place there, please stand for the reading of God's word today. Let us pray. And now our God is, it is only your spirit that can reach hearts and teach men truly the things of the spirit. So as we prepare, Lord, to hear your word and to receive the word preached, we ask that your spirit would be here with us. to work through this word, to reach us, Lord God, in whatever way in which you see that we need to be reached this morning. We thank you, God, for your continued effort to reach us and the prevailing work of your Holy Spirit in our lives and in this world. We pray this all in the name of Jesus. It's in his name we pray, amen. So Genesis chapter 2 this morning, again, I'm going to be reading verses 8 and 9, which we've looked at already, but then also adding verse 15 this morning. So listen now to the word of God. In Genesis chapter 2, verse 8, 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. And then verse 15, and then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. So as the book of Genesis opens, Genesis chapter 1, the eternal God creates something out of nothing. And that something is a world. At first empty, Without form, the creator then speaks into this void and by the power of his word, he begins to bring an ordered cosmos out of this primordial chaos. In the six days of his creative work, God lays the fundamental pillars of this new world. Light and darkness, heaven and earth, land and sea, plants and animals. But as we have observed, the world is not complete without God's final creative act on the end of day six, and that is the making of men. Made to bear the creator's image, as a race of earthly kings to rule this lower realm of the earth as God's vice regents, human beings as male and female, are commissioned by the blessing of their creator in Genesis 1.28 to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it and to have dominion over all other creatures of the earth. And so as mankind's story begins here in Genesis 2, God places the first man, Adam, in the flourishing garden of Eden. to experience and to enjoy the ideal conditions of life on earth as it is meant to be everywhere. And as we hear God appointing Adam in Genesis 2.15 to tend and keep this Garden of Eden, so it appears that man is there made to be a gardener. But some see more here in Genesis 2.15 than just a gardener in a garden. Some students of the Bible have seen Eden as a garden temple and Adam as its high priest. And that's an idea that I want to present and develop this morning. So there's three things that we're going to be doing in the sermon today. First, I'm going to review with you the significance of the temple and the priesthood just in the Bible generally. And secondly, I'm going to show why some scholars see the Garden of Eden as a temple and Adam as its first priest. And then thirdly, we're going to follow this theme of garden priest from Adam to Israel and finally to its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ and the church. That's a lot of material for one sermon. I could have divided this material into several sermons, but I decided no. I was just going to give you the fire hose in the face this morning. If you're taking notes, you're not going to want to try to write down everything that I'm saying today. The details are going to come fast and furious. But if you take it all in, I think it will make an impression upon you and you will get the big picture and hopefully have a deeper appreciation of our savior. this morning. So we began first by reviewing the significance of the temple and the priesthood in the Bible. First, the temple. In the Bible, the temple is a house of worship. A house of worship. It's a place where men go to worship God in this world. And in worship, to meet with and to commune or fellowship with God. In the Bible, it's God himself who has ordained that there should be this meeting place, this temple. And it's God who provides the blueprint for it. But also in the Bible, it is particular men chosen by God who are the ones who build the temples. So Moses built the tent form of the temple of the Lord, which we call the tabernacle. And later, King Solomon built the more permanent temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. And I'll note here that in the New Testament, Jesus Christ is in many ways associated with the temple. He appears in the temple of Jerusalem as a child and then also often as a man in the course of his ministry. It's while in the temple in Jerusalem that Jesus refers to his resurrection body as a temple. Jesus himself is said by his apostles to be the builder of the true temple of God and also its cornerstone. And Jesus' church, that is the fellowship of his followers and each member of that following are also said to be a temple of the living God. So clearly in the Bible, the temple is a rich symbol of gospel truths. But the main point here is just to note that in the Bible, the temple is a house of worship. As for the priest, in the Bible, a priest is a temple official who leads others in worship. Temple official who leads others in worship. The priests in Israel were called and sanctified by God himself to this holy service, and they were charged with the care of his temple. When people came to worship, the priests of the Lord would meet them at the door of the temple, they would lead them into God's presence, and they would instruct them in the ways of God's worship. The priests in Israel obtained the knowledge of what was acceptable to God in worship by the careful study of God's Word. And so an important part of the way that priests led others in the worship of God was by this knowledge preventing unclean things and forbidden practices from entering into the temple and defiling its worship. So we see in the Bible that the worship of God only went well in Israel when the priests of the Lord were knowledgeable, when they were faithful, and when they were on their guard. The second point then this morning from there, is to look at why some people see the Garden of Eden as a temple and Adam as its priest. A temple is a house of worship. A priest is an official who leads others in worship. Why do people see Eden as a temple and Adam as a priest? Three points here. The first thing is the emphasis on temple worship in the Pentateuch. the emphasis on temple worship in the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch is the name for the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. All five of these books, known collectively as the Book of Moses, were written by Moses as he was preparing the Israelites to enter into the land of Canaan. And one thing you will notice when you read the Pentateuch is the sustained emphasis on Israel's worship of the Lord God. And why is that emphasis there? It's because Moses knew that Israel's success or failure in the land of Canaan depended on it. Upon entering the land of Canaan, the cultic practices of the Canaanites were to be abolished. And in their place, the Israelites were to establish and maintain the rightly ordered worship of the Lord, their God. And that is emphasized throughout the penitentiary. So the book of Exodus. This is explained in the in the dramatic Sinai episode, how Moses received. The law from the Lord himself on Mount Sinai, including the instructions for the tabernacle of meeting and how under the direction of Moses and the Holy Spirit, The Israelites built this mobile temple of the Lord before leaving Canaan. Many of you have felt yourself suffering through chapters full of detailed descriptions of the tabernacle, right? That's the emphasis. The book of Leviticus, which is the central book of the Pentateuch, is what? It's the handbook. of the Israelite priesthood, instructing them in their temple duties and in the acceptable ways of worshiping the Lord. It's a central focus of the Pentateuch. And then finally, Moses himself explains to Israel in the fifth book, the book of Deuteronomy, that the Lord was not going to prosper them in the promised land if they were not careful to maintain the purity of his worship. And so the Pentateuch serves together as a body of literature designed to go with Israel into Canaan to reinforce this critical point. So the point is this, that since the Garden of Eden narrative in the book of Genesis is the introduction to the Pentateuch, it would not be surprising to find Moses already here laying the groundwork for this emphasis on Israel's temple worship. And what more impressive way to begin than to depict the Garden of Eden itself as a temple and Adam as its first high priest. Second point. And that is the obvious Edenic features of the Temple of the Lord in Israel. The obvious Edenic features. So Old Testament scholars have discovered striking parallels in how Moses describes the Garden of Eden here in Genesis 2 and how he describes the tabernacle of the Lord later in the books of Exodus and Leviticus. So as you approach the tabernacle from the West, as you would the Garden of Eden, You'd enter into this sacred space and find that the temple of the Lord was engraved with Edenic emblems, fruitful trees, a cherubim. Those images were everywhere inside the temple. Within the inner sanctuary, you would see that everything in the temple was was covered with precious metals and jewels, with which we're told here the riverbeds of Eden sparkled gold and the onyx stone in verse 12. And the temple of the Lord in Israel even smelled like Eden in that bdellium mentioned in verse 12, burned on the altar of incense. and prominent in both the Garden of Eden and the Temple of the Lord were the twin symbols of life and the law. The twin symbols of life and the law. First, the symbol of life. Near the inner sanctuary in the Temple of Moses, there was a lampstand that was fashioned to resemble a living, blossoming almond tree. which was tended day and night by Israel's priests, and its light shone continually upon the loaves of bread in the tabernacle, which represented the 12 tribes of Israel. So this was a temple emblem of the blessed life of God's people in the land. And it corresponds to the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. And then the symbol of the law. As you entered into the inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies in the Mosaic Temple, behind the veil there sat the Ark of the Covenant, on which two cherubim stood watch, and in which was kept the stone tablet upon which the Lord had engraved his Ten Commandments. So this was the temple emblem of God's holy law, and it corresponds to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. So in looking around in this manner, the parallels between the Garden of Eden and the Temple of the Lord are too striking to ignore. Either God designed the Temple of the Lord to resemble the Garden of Eden, or Moses described the Garden of Eden in terms of the Temple of the Lord. This observation begs the question, either way you look at it, if the Garden of Eden is to be seen as a primeval temple sanctuary, and apparently it is. Where's the priest? The holy official, called and sanctified by the Lord, instructed in the law of God, guardian of the holiness of this place and its worship. Where's the priest? That brings me to the third point, and that is the priestly description of Adam's work in the garden. Notice in verse 15, Moses says, then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And we think, garden, to tend and keep it. But the words tend and keep are in Hebrew, the words abad and shema. Abad means to work or to serve, And shemar means to guard, protect, or attend. And as Old Testament scholars have long noted, these two Hebrew words, abad and shemar, are the same words used by Moses in tandem later in the Pentateuch to describe the duties of the Levitical priests. So for instance, Numbers chapter 3 verse 8, as the Lord sets aside the tribe of Levi for the priesthood in Israel, he says, quote, they shall attend to all the furnishings of the tabernacle of meeting and to the needs of the children of Israel to do the work of the tabernacle. Attend to Shemar, work is above. Again, later in Numbers chapter 18, verses 5-8, the Lord says to Aaron, the high priest, and you shall attend to the duties of the sanctuary and the duties of the altar. that there may be no more wrath on the children of Israel. Because I myself have taken your brother and the Levites from among the children of Israel, they are a gift to you, given by the Lord, to do the work of the tabernacle of meeting. And therefore you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood, for everything at the altar and behind the veil, and you shall serve." Again, attend is shemar, work and serve is abad. It's the same description. So I see there's a very strong case to be made that in the time of Moses, Israel was meant to see Adam as more than a mere gardener. Being made the son of God and bearer of his image, the first earthly king and father of the human race was stationed in the Garden of Eden as a temple to serve as its high priest. as Michael Morales says, to gather all creation into the life-giving presence and praise of God, and as leader in this holy place, the temple, to preserve the purity of God's worship according to His holy word. And the Israelites surely would have sensed that if Adam's priestly role in the garden was anything like that of the Levitical priests in Israel, then a great deal was riding on his being faithful in that duty. Because as Moses taught them, forcefully, God is not going to prosper the human race in the earth if we are not careful to maintain the purity of his worship. And if that's anyone's responsibility, according to the Bible, it's the responsibility of the priests. So that brings us to the third part of the sermon this morning, then which is following the theme of garden priest from Adam all the way to Jesus Christ and his church. And I'm going to take four steps in getting from here to there. So first, as the descendants of Adam, mankind was meant to be a race of priest kings in the world. We formerly said that man was to be a race of kings. Now I'm developing that further and saying that mankind was to be a race of priest kings. Listen again to the blessing with which God commissioned the human race in Genesis 128. He said, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And so, as we've noted, dominion indicates the ruling power of kings. And now, if we're right in also seeing Adam here as a high priest in the garden temple, then mankind was meant to be not just a race of kings, but of priest kings. Whereas Peter calls the followers of Christ in 1 Peter 2.9 a royal priesthood, priest kings. And this idea of priest-king is one that appears again in the Bible in the lives of men like Melchizedek. He was a priest-king. Solomon was a priest-king. And of course, ultimately, Jesus Christ is a priest-king. So the Garden of Eden has its starting place. Adam, the first priest-king, is commissioned by God to fill the new world with the rightful rule and worship of the Lord God. So like the great river in Eden that overflowed its bounds and watered the surrounding lands, so Adam and his wife Eve were to start a family and raise a godly seed. And when their grown children began spilling out of their garden home, they were to settle in other places in the world. And everywhere that they went, the children of Eden's first parents, also as priests, were to take the worship of Eden with them. to tend and keep the garden of God. That was their work. And so to always practice and preserve the holiness of God's worship wherever they should live. And in this way, as the human race multiplied and prospered by God's blessing, the whole world was to become as the garden temple of Eden under the reign of the race of men. As people worshiped and walked with the Lord God everywhere, even as Adam, their first father, did in the garden where God first placed him. The second step. When Adam failed as a high priest of the garden, and he did fail, the Lord chose and called Israel to be a nation of priests, calling and leading the world back to the worship of God. When Adam the priest fell, his descendants did leave Eden and were scattered throughout the earth, but not to walk in the ways of the Lord. Corrupted by sin, the worship of idols flourished among men. And because of the failure of its priest-kings, God's world was plunged into the spiritual darkness of false religion. And so the Pentateuch was written to tell the story of how the Lord God then chose and called one people the descendants of Abraham, to become like a second Adam in the earth, and as an Edenic priesthood to lead the rest of the human race back to God and back to his worship. So this is why when the Lord had brought the Israelites out of Egypt before giving him his law at Mount Sinai, and by covenant constituting them a people, he said to them in Exodus 19.6, all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So while the tribe of the Levites was later chosen to officiate as priests in the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, in a broader sense, every man, woman, and child in Israel was called to be a priest unto God. And altogether, the Israelite nation was commissioned to serve as God's priest to every other nation under heaven. So Canaan was the Israelites' garden of Eden. And on Mount Zion there was the temple of the Lord, which they tended and kept. And the hope of Israel, invested in Israel, was that by their faithfulness and that of their kings, that all nations would be drawn to the holy light of this good land to receive new life and the wisdom of God's law from this new Adam. called Israel, restored again by its priestly ministry to the true worship of the world's creator. Third step. But Israel also failed. Failed the world in the same way as the first time. but God was not done. And so then God sent his own son, Jesus Christ from heaven as the last Adam, the last Adamic priest who would finally lead the world back to Eden. After the Pentateuch, the rest of the Old Testament tells how Israel as a corporate Adam failed as the first Adam did. Rather than leading the world in the worship of God, the Israelites and their kings instead followed the world and in doing so fell back into idolatry. And so we're finally exiled from Canaan, even as Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. But the promise of a coming Messiah from the line of the Davidic kings survived Israel's fall, and centuries later, at the appointed time, God sent his own beloved son onto the earth. It's he who is the true hope of Israel, the High Priest of the New Covenant, and as the Apostle Paul calls him in 1 Corinthians 15.45, the last Adam. Jesus Christ, by his obedient life, sacrificial death, and triumphant resurrection, has prevailed where every prior Adam failed. prevailed to reconcile God and fallen men that all who believe in the Son should not perish in their sins, but turning from idols back to God have restored to them everlasting life. And so ascending to the Father's right hand and pouring out His Holy Spirit upon His church, Son of God, this priest-king and ultimate Adamic figure reaches out into a world in darkness and has begun now to gather and lead people as his people back to the life and the law of Eden, to true happiness and man's high purpose, which is to worship God in holiness. I pause here to note one of the effects of seeing Eden as a garden temple is that the rivers flowing from the garden, described here in Genesis 2, are now seen as rivers flowing from a temple. Not just rivers flowing from a garden, but rivers flowing from a temple. And that's significant because over and over again, Israel's prophets foresaw that in the last days, out of the temple of the Lord, from before the throne of the priestly king, who reigned there, a great river would flow and bring life and healing to the peoples of the earth. The prophet Ezekiel saw this Edenic river, its waters flowing toward the eastern region, going down the valley, entering the sea and healing the waters so that everything living that touched those waters should live. For they will be healed, Ezekiel said. Ezekiel 47, 9. And every living thing will live wherever the river goes. The prophet Joe also saw a coming day of Edenic restoration. In Joel 3, 18, when the mountains of Israel would drip with new wine and the hills flow with milk, when all the brooks of Judah be flooded with water, all of which Joel traced back to a life-giving fountain that flowed once more from the mountain temple of the Lord. And finally, the prophet Zechariah saw this same Edenic river too in Zechariah 14, 8, living waters. He called them, again flowing from Mount Zion, half toward the Eastern Sea, half toward the Western Sea. A sure sign to Israel, he said, that the Lord, whose name is one, ruled as king over all the earth. And so this vision, what all these Old Testament prophets foresaw, the Apostle John also described. On the Isle of Patmos, in a vision of the New Jerusalem, He says, as he's describing what he's seeing, quote, a pure river of the water of life. This is Revelation 22, one. Clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. For they are the temple of the new heavens and the new earth. In the middle of its street and on either side of the river, John says, was the tree of life. So we know where we are, right? which bore 12 fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. It's the same vision. So you get the picture of the Old Testament and new. A latter-day garden temple in which is the tree of life, and a glorious priest like Adam who sits upon the throne, upholding God's law, and a river flowing from before him, that is restoring life to a perishing world, transforming the land all around him back into the thriving Garden of Eden. And I ask Christians, what is that river? What did Jesus say at the Feast of Tabernacles? In John 7, 37, the Son of God stood in the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem and cried out to the worshipers there, saying, quote, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart, that is the heart of the Savior who has come, will flow rivers of living water. Living water. It's a reference to the prophecy of Zechariah. Those rivers, John said, those waters are the waters of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the high priest and temple of the new covenant from which the Spirit now flows to our world, to all who believe in him, and furthermore to Lelah. Where do you think it's leading us? Back to Eden. Back to the Edenic conditions of life as it was meant to be. Back to God. Back to the joyful worship of the Lord our God and walking with Him in the cool of the day. Back to a blessed communion with God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son. This is the triumph of the last Adam. the world's savior, and he has come. And that brings us fourthly and finally to this last step, to know that Jesus Christ, as the last Adam, now sends his spirit unto and calls his church also to be a priesthood of believers in the world. The church also is to be a priesthood of believers in the world. This is the final point and also the conclusion. The faith of Christians is instructed in spiritual matters through the symbols of the Bible. In Christian theology, rather than being extracted from those symbols and the symbols discarded, should continually return and resort to those symbols as an accurate and vivid way to think and speak about the gospel of Jesus Christ. What is heaven? What will it be like? It's a garden, like the garden of Eden. What is Christ's body? in which he died and rose again, in which he now reigns. The body of Christ is the temple of the Lord, the place where we worship God wherever we are in the world. What is the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out now upon the church since Pentecost? It is a great river. The river of living, healing, reviving spiritual waters that now flow from the Father and the Son in heaven to believers like us all over the earth. Picture these things as God describes them to you in the Bible and you possess religious symbols by which to think and speak rightly about divine truths. And as you're seeing in this sermon series, some of the best and brightest of these biblical symbols are introduced to us in the Garden of Eden. These same Edenic symbols are invoked again and again and further developed and enriched throughout the Old Testament into the New Testament and continue to be commended to us all the way to the final vision of the new heavens and the new earth in the book of Revelation. And so today we particularly bring into view this one, which we also think is an Edenic symbol, and that is the figure of the priest. Where is the priest in your theology? Who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God? He is the last Adam, and as the last Adam, High Priest of the Garden of Eden. leader of the world in worship, who will finally bring about the ideal conditions of garden life throughout the earth. Jesus Christ is that priest. And who are we as his church? We Christians are the spiritual children of the last Adam. And as such, We are a royal priesthood of believers. That's what Peter taught the Christians of the first century and first Peter to nine, saying, you are a chosen generation. So I could say the same thing to you all this morning as Christians that Peter said to the Christians in the first century, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood. holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. That's who you are. How is it helpful to the church to see and to think of itself as a priesthood? The holy order of priests in the earth, tending and keeping the ever-expanding Garden Temple of God in the service of the last Adam. I would put it this way. As Christians, we don't follow the world. That's always been the failing of our priests, is following the world. We don't follow the world. We follow Jesus Christ. That's what it is for us to be his disciples. But it's precisely in following Jesus Christ that we are leading the world. Because the disciples of Jesus Christ are a priesthood of believers, and that's what priests do. They lead other people in the worship of God. That's why God calls and sanctifies them. That's why they are where God puts them in the earth, doing what God has appointed them to do. Priests are there in the garden, there at the temple door, to lead others in the worship of God. Preserve the sanctity of that worship according to God's Word. Christians, the river of God's Holy Spirit now flows from Christ in heaven through us onto a dying world. And we, the members of Christ's Church, are now the light of Israel, drawing all nations to the worship of the Lord, up the mountain of God, where men will discover again there the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, when we break bread on the Lord's day, when we and our families observe the holy standards of God's law in our neighborhoods. We're not just being Christian. We're being priests. That's my point. We're reaching out. We're overflowing into the lives of others. We're bearing the healing waters of Christ's resurrection life. unto the thirsty, fulfilling God's house by His blessing with His children, and ultimately filling God's world with His praise. I could certainly talk about these things in the more technical language of Christian theology and Christian ministry, and there's ways in which that's helpful. But these Edenic symbols are just as accurate and far more beautiful and inspiring, I would say. So I'm encouraging you to see it this way this morning. Make use of the symbols that God develops and commends to us in his word, including those that are first introduced to us in the Garden of Eden. And let's see what a difference that might make in how we do what we're already doing. So what are we, Christians? What are we saying? What are we seeing this morning? In some, we are a priesthood, a believer. Now following Jesus Christ in our generation and in so doing, leading the world in the worship of its Creator. And by God's grace, eventually leading the world back to the Garden of Eden. As the followers of Jesus, this is what we do. Shall we pray?