Genesis chapter 2 and we'll start reading in verse 4. Genesis chapter 2 and verse 4. We'll read here just a few verses and have a word of prayer. Genesis 2 and verse 4 says, These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens and every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. And there was not a man to till the ground, but there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Dear Heavenly Father, be with us this morning. Lord, allow us to see the greatness, the majestic Garden of Eden that you created for Adam and Eve. And Lord, allow us to think upon your greatness and your majesty, as well as, Lord, thinking about when you come and return and eventually make a new heaven and a new earth, that we will dwell in a place that would be somewhat similar, yet better, in the garden of Eden, in Jesus' name, amen. Often in people's lives, starting out, people start out and they have their starter home. How many of you guys started out in a starter home? Maybe a little bit smaller, maybe a fixer-upper. How many of you guys started out kind of like that? But eventually, and sometimes, people fix it up and they stay there the rest of their lives. Though some people, then they say, I want to find my forever home, right? What is their forever home? And you know, with the prominence of shows like Fixer Upper, and HGTV, our forever home, our dream home. It's probably a lot bigger and a lot grander than maybe even our parents or grandparents ever thought of. Of course, add on top of that social media, you think, oh, I need new light fixtures. Those other ones just don't They don't look right. But people often dream of living in their forever home or their dream home. Or maybe you approach retirement age and you think, if only I lived in this state or that state or any other state than Massachusetts. You know, people are always looking, where's the grass greener? Where can I find paradise? This is even extent to people who are called expats. An expat is someone who doesn't live in their own country. So sometimes they say, you know, the country I grew up in is not even good enough. I want to go live in another country. You can go and look at, you type this into Google, you'll find an expat explorer survey. This is from 2021. They put all these different things in. Okay, where's the US dollar gonna be the best spent? And what's gonna have the less crime? And where can I find paradise? Or where can I find the best place to live here in this world and just relax and enjoy? Well, Adam and Eve, they were living in paradise, if you will. If you remember, a few sermons back, when God finished everything, He said, it is very good. So this morning, I want to, if I can, through God's word, explain and tell us and look, what did the Garden of Eden look like? What did it, what was there? and through that see the goodness of God, and then as I pray that eventually that we'll see this, and there's a lot of parallels within here to also the new heaven and the new earth, and kind of give you, if you will, a glimpse or a taste of what is that gonna look like? So let's start here in verse four. And I don't alliterate all the time, you may know that, but I do alliterate today, so if you're keeping notes, maybe it'll be easy today. But verse four, I wanna look at the person, the person, the person of the Lord. It says here, these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And you'll notice this theme throughout Genesis chapter two. It goes back and says, the Lord created, the Lord created. Once again, not to rehearse sermons ago, but we did not evolve. We did not just accidentally come up here. You're not a science experiment. God created this world. And you notice here, before this, we just had the term God, but now we have the Lord God. As I was studying this, one of the ladies from Ladies Bible Study came in and was talking about this exact word here. You'll notice in your Bibles, it's a capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Sometimes Lord is not spelled like that. It's spelled with just an uppercase L and then lowercase O-R-D. But here is a particular word that would have been different in Hebrew, and what this term means is Yahweh, and it carries with it two main ideas. First of all, it says here, it carries the idea that He is self-existent, or this is where we get the term, I am. Remember Moses at the burning bush? Who am I gonna say sent me? He says, I am. We notice this in the I am statements in the New Testament, but it's a self-existent one. Also carries the idea here that he is redeemer and this redemption is connected to his holiness and his hatred for sin. And if you remember who's reading The book of Genesis. Who wrote the book of Genesis? Moses. So the children of Israel would have been the first people that would have been reading this, and when they would have seen that word, they would have immediately thought of, I am. The one that sent Moses. They would have thought, Redeemer. The one that redeemed us out of Israel. Sorry, redeemed us out of Egypt. And so you notice that even in this beginning here, you see this idea of Lord, the person who created this wonderful place of Eden. The person, it was the Lord, self-existent Redeemer. Then next, we look at the provision. Go down to verses eight and nine. It says here, the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and he put man whom he had formed. And verse nine says, And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So you notice not just the person, but you notice the provision. There was food. Look at this, it says, Every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. He provided food there. Adam and Eve, and I mentioned this before, at the time were vegetarians. There was no eating of meat because nothing died. Nothing at this point could die until sin entered into the world. But he provided food. Could you imagine with me? How many of you enjoy fruit? How many of you enjoy fruit? Okay, how many of you enjoy vegetables? How many of you have not ate a fruit or vegetable in the last week, okay? All right, okay, I see someone back there. I'm not gonna name names, okay? But, I mean, just, and once again, not that we're gonna rely on our imagination, if you will, but just a little bit, think about eating the freshest fruit you could. the best fruit you can. Sarah enjoys buying fruit a number of times, and sometimes we get something like, eh, that doesn't taste really good. Eh, that's not ripe, and of course we live in a day and age where we're able to, they manufacture or preserve stuff though, so we can eat fruits out of season, and oftentimes it doesn't taste as good as when it's in season, But imagine, the best fruit, the best vegetables, just always in season, right there to eat and enjoy. And he provided it. Not only did he provide food, but he provided water. Come down in verse 10, it says, And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from hence it was parted and became into four heads. And I'll read these verses here. It says here in verse 11, and the name of the first is Pison, and that is which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of the land is good, and there is Delium, and the onyx stone, and the name of the second river is Gion, and the same compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia, and the name of the third is or, yeah, we'll go with that. And that is which goeth towards Assyria, and the fourth river is Euphrates. And so he provided water. You notice that there was no rain back in verse 5, and there was this water that would come out of the ground, if you will, to water all the plants. But he provided food and water. This was a perfect place to live in. Everything was provided. I know some of you have recently gone on a cruise in the past year, and I've never gone on one, but you go on the cruise and everything's provided. I hear these stories of, oh man, you just go in and they'll give you whatever, a burger, here's a burger, pizza, here's a pizza. All-inclusive, if you will. Well, here in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lacked for nothing. They had good food. They had water. And then you notice here that this whole thing was sustained by God. If you look back at verse 6, it says, And there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. I know people garden and it's a lot of work. Here, God's more or less providing everything that is going on here in the Garden of Eden. And it's the best of the best. Not only did he provide food and water, but you notice these resources in verses 12 and 14, you notice there's gold and there's onyx. It won't take the time to turn over there, but in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 28 has a reference to Eden, and it talks about even more precious stones, such as the beryl, and onyx, and jasper, and sapphire, and emerald, and carbuncle, and gold. There's all these wonderful resources and we don't know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden, okay? People will guess and people say, well, you know, if you do this, you think about it this way. The point is, if someone says they know exactly how long Adam and Eve were in the garden, they're pulling it out of their brain, okay? Because no one knows, but you can only imagine that these natural resources would have been used to eventually build and make things. We live in a day and age where people talk much about resources, right? We don't want to deplenish our resources. Maybe you've ever seen an old mine. How many of you guys have ever been in like an old mine, maybe gold mine, coal mine? Where maybe, hey, we're digging and there's gold, there's gold, there's gold, and then, hey, no gold. We diminished it. If you're ever in Kentucky, you can actually go kayaking in a limestone mine underground. If you've got claustrophobia, you would really enjoy that. But there's these great resources there. And you might say, okay, that's, yeah. But understand that everything that God has made, He's made this perfect, good, innocent world. You might notice here in verse 12, Bedellium or Delium, here in verse 12. And if you're like me, you say, now, what exactly is that and what is that for? So what this was, was a fragrant resin that was produced by a number of trees. and often is used in myrrh and perfumes. It's to be said to kind of smell like cedar. I don't know if you've ever walked, and this is really kind of spoke to my heart personally, but you ever walk in a wood shop, you smell that wood, and you know, kind of maybe reminded me of that a little bit. Out here we have, in the woods, we have some Concord grapes. Maybe you walked through an orchard before and you can smell the sweetness in the air. I know when they came in, I get to basically the playground area where the outdoor shed is. You can just smell that sweetness in the air. I mean, could you imagine living in a place where it's just, man, it just smells good. It smells wonderful. There's great food. There's great provision. There's water here. Just imagine that, if you will. These same things that are talked about here, God talks about them in the new heaven and the new earth. Often we kind of take time to think, well, what's eternity gonna look like? And because we have a poor depiction of them in TV, we often maybe think, oh, we're gonna be up in the clouds and it's gonna be, you know, we're gonna be floating or whatever. Or you might even think, man, I'm gonna be playing a harp or something. And you know what it's really gonna be like? Now heaven in the terms of where we will go once we're dead here is not what I'm going to describe to you, but what I want to describe is the new heaven and the new earth. Where are we going to spend eternity at is going to be very similar to what Genesis 2 is. The book of Zechariah in chapter 14 and verse 8 says this, Zechariah's talking about that in this new heaven and the new earth, there's gonna be an abundance of water. There's not gonna be any more drought. Revelation 22, 1, talking about here the water of life, it says, I don't know what they've been doing here in Palmer the last few days, but our water has been a little murky lately. And I know sometimes you go to different places and it's like, oh man, this water tastes funny. But in the new heaven and new earth, there's going to be an abundance of water, there's gonna be pure water. You might even have seen ads on TV where, hey, support us, we want people in Africa to have clean drinking water. That's not gonna be an issue in the new heaven and the new earth. So there's gonna be an abundance of water. Of course, going back to this idea of the tree of life in the new heaven and the new earth, if you go over to Revelation, it talks about there's gonna be a tree of life and it's gonna bear different fruits in different months. And so the parallel to the Garden of Eden and the New Heaven and New Earth are quite similar. So, it's going to be a perfect world that we are going to live in. So you notice the person, the Lord has made this. You notice the provision here. Take your Bibles and let's look at some of this in Revelation 21. Let's keep your finger there in Genesis, but let's look at some of these verses in Revelation 21 and 22. And let's look specifically here at, trying to not get this out of order, where we've been going, but let's look at Revelation 21 and we'll start reading in verse 18. Revelation 21, verse 18. So we talked a little bit about the natural resources. Well, what's going to be in heaven? Revelation 21, or not heaven, but in the New Earth, sorry. In the New Earth, Revelation 21, 18 says, And the building of the wall of it was jasper, and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second satisfier. And then it goes on to say, the third, Let me try to pronounce this one. Caledon and the fourth emerald. And it goes on through all of these. And these are the gates of the city. And you go, are the walls of the city, the foundations of the city. And then you notice here in 21 says in the 12 gates were 12 pearls. And so you see these natural resources that are there that are similar to the resources mentioned in the Garden of Eden. Go down to Revelation 22 and verse 2. We already read 22.1, but we'll read Revelation 22 and verse 2. This is talking specifically here in the New Jerusalem. It says, "...in the midst of the street of it, on either side of the river, there was a tree, or the tree of life, which bared twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." Notice here, there was a tree of life in the Garden of Eden. There's a tree of life here in the new earth. God's main purpose is that he would redeem us through salvation, and then he would redeem this world and give us a new place to live in. And I hope this stirs up to think, man, what would it be like to live there? What would it have been like to live in the Garden of Eden? Now, we're not going to talk necessarily today about how Adam and Eve sinned, but just think about it. We can go through more verses here where it talks about no more pain, no more sickness, no more tears. But just while you're there in Revelation 22, look at verse 3. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. Sin will be dealt with. And so it's not just a restoration of physical items, though it is. There'll be no more sin, no more curse for eternity. So you might be thinking, man, if I only got my forever home, if I only lived here, I only lived there, that would be perfect, that would be paradise. Sad to say, that's not gonna be perfect, that's not gonna be paradise, but there is A perfect paradise, if you will, coming again. And this, of course, is after the tribulation, after the millennial reign. This is at the very end of time that we would walk about in a perfect earth. And just as God provided everything there in the Garden of Eden, God will provide everything there in the end of time. And not just that, but then God also, he's provided us a way for salvation, a way to make sure we will be going into that new heaven and the new earth. And that is why there is no more curse. So these are just some attributes that are about the guardian that oftentimes I think we maybe just glance over and don't really think about it. Like, yeah, we know it was perfect, but this place was great. The best food. He had water. I mean, he even put air fresheners, if you will, in it. You know? The great resources. And so let's talk a little bit here, not just the person, the provision, but also the place. I'm gonna have Andrew put a picture on the screen here. So if you go back to Genesis, if you will, Genesis chapter two, verses 11 through 14. Genesis chapter two, verses 11 through 14. And you notice that there's several rivers listed here. And these rivers kind of tell us possibly where it would be. And so, once again, no exact science here. So we'll start reading in Genesis 2, verse 11. It says we have four rivers, Pison, and then in verse 11, if you go down to verse 13, Gion is second, and then verse 14, You have Hittikal, this is talking about the Tigris River. Some translations might even have Tigris there. And then in the fourth one is Euphrates. And so, Pisan and Gion, we don't really know where they were or what they were. We don't have them today. If there is any correlation of why this doesn't fit with what's today, it's because there's something that majorly happened in Genesis 6 and 7 called the flood. And so this is describing how it was at the time. But we do have the Tigris River and the Euphrates. And so where they both kind of intermingle, because there was one place in these four rivers that came out of it, is either here, are here. So you can kind of notice this is kind of the area of Mesopotamia. Some people have called it the Cradle of Life. This kind of area here in Iraq and near Iran. And so this is where, once again, it's not an exact science, but this is kind of thinking where would the Garden of Eden been? And this would have been the two locations that most experts talk about it being, once again, in between Genesis 2 and today, there's been, obviously, the flood in Genesis 6 and 7, and then, obviously, as time changes, geography changes, just along with that, even after the flood. And so, this is kind of the place of it, There is very fertile soil in these areas where things grow. And so that would also kind of correlate a little bit with scripture. But this is just to put a little nugget in your mind, once again, just kind of picture maybe where it was. And so I appreciate Andrew putting that on there for this thing. And then, so we have the person of God, the person of the Lord, the provision, the place, and then we also have the purpose, and we talked about that last week. In Genesis 2, verse 15, it says, And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And we talked about this, about the purpose, but if you notice, one of the verses I read in Revelation 22 gave us a purpose. Revelation 22 three says, So our purpose today is to glorify God, right? To fellowship with him. We will still have a purpose in the new earth, and that will be to glorify God and to serve Him. And once again, this is gonna be all eternity. This is not just a little bit. This is not a mythological, just living in the clouds thing. It's gonna be a physical world with physical things. And like I said, it'll be much like the Garden of Eden. Even as we kind of interact today and interact with nature, somewhat it will be similar but yet perfect. And I hope that through this that you could see that God's purpose and God's goodness is that He is great and good in all that He does. And He is a provider. And you can see these attributes of God that they will be the same thing at the end of time. We often don't think about that, right? We often kind of just, well, I don't know what it's gonna be like, but it'll be what it is. But much like we dream about that dream home, right? Or much we dream about, hey, when I retire, I'm gonna move wherever. How often do we sit and think and dream about eternity? And think about, and not to say, man, I'm gonna get, you know, sometimes people think about it like, whew, you know, Lord, come quickly, it's getting bad out here. I think that's kind of a wrong attitude, a little bit, but to think, I will be living in a perfect place. I'll be able to worship my savior face to face. And we know, and we'll read in a few weeks in Genesis chapter three about how Jesus would come, or not Jesus, but God would come down and commune with him. But just think about it, how great it's going to be, how magnificent it is. But as we think about the Garden of Eden and we thought about the person, we thought about the provision, we thought about the place, we thought about the purpose, there was also There's also a problem or a probation, sorry, let me call it the probationary period. And I'll explain this more in two weeks when we talk about the fall of man. But notice verse 16 and 17 here in Genesis 2, 16 and 17. It says, And the Lord God commanded man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. Remember, I don't know what all fruits were there or not there, but I would imagine that, I mean, they would have dozens and dozens of items to eat. Verse 17, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And though in this garden of Eden that was perfect and made by the Lord and given provision and given a purpose, there was for God's glory, this probationary period, and like I said, this is just to tease it out. We'll look at it in two weeks when we get to Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve have the capacity to do good and make the right choice. They also have the capacity to make the wrong choice. Like I said, we can't understand the mind of God of why he would, you know, some people say, why even have the tree there? And I can't explain the mind of God. But during this probationary period, Adam and Eve were able to enjoy this great Garden of Eden. We know the end of the story though, right? We know what happens. We don't know how long they lived there, but it's just sometimes interesting just to think of what it would have been like. I mean, we think about this world, right? I mean, every Sunday we have prayer requests. We have hurts. We have sorrows. Our bodies break down and get old. The items that we have break down. We look around and maybe we think, oh man, look at the price of eggs. Should have invested in those years ago. We look and say, you know, there's different people, we'll talk about different things. Are we going to run out of this resource? Are we going to run out of that resource? Will they ration this? Will they ration that? We very much know every day we live in a broken, fallen world. But one of these days, We'll live with Christ in a redeemed earth. And it is going to be wonderful. And it is going to be amazing. And it is going to be, not to use too much of a cavalier term here, but it's going to be awesome to return or to go and live in that paradise. But there was sin. And there is sin, and because of sin we're all sinners. I don't know where you're at this morning, but I'm sure, like I said, every one of us know that we live in a broken world, and every one of us recognizes we are a sinner. And that sin is against a holy God. And just like God will provide or provided back then, God provided a way for us to go and live with him in eternity. About 4,000 years after Genesis 2, God sent his son, Jesus Christ, holy God, holy man, to come and die on a cross for our sins. The Bible says, he who knew no sin became sin for us. He came and died on a cross for you and for I. The Bible also says, for God so loved the world that he gave. And God loves you and God loves me. And he gave his son to die on the cross. But the Bible says, whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That passage goes on to say that if you don't believe, you are condemned. And that condemnation is to spend separation from him for all eternity in a place called hell and eventually a place called the lake of fire. I look in this room of maybe 80, 90 people. Maybe you've been here decades. Maybe you've only been here a handful of times. I ask you, have you trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior? Have you called upon Him and asked Him to forgive you of your sins? I talked a little bit about the new heaven and new earth. Are you 100% sure that you know you will spend eternity with Christ? If not, I pray that you come talk to me afterwards, in the back, or wherever I am, or talk to someone else, maybe someone that you know here, and get that settled. It's not by our works, it's not by anything we can do, but it's by the precious blood of Christ. Not only does He want to redeem this earth as we talked about this morning, but He wants to redeem our lives, and He does that through His blood. And so, if that's you, and you have questions more about that, please see me. Those of us that are Christian, I pray that this could be just something we can dwell on. Often the Bible talks about the importance of meditation, and not meditating as what people think it is today, but meditating on thinking on God's truths. Hope is you think on God's truths that it could be comforting and encouraging and also exciting to think about spending forever with Christ in a place that is wholly perfect. Let's close in a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, I pray that you would bless us. Lord, I pray that you would allow us to walk with you. Lord, allow us to meditate on this. Lord, I pray that you would continue to work in and through us. Lord, as we thought about your character this morning, we thought about some of these truths, Lord. Lord, that we will spend an eternity with you. Lord, I pray that It would make us to just look at your character of your goodness and your greatness and your provision. Lord, I pray if there would be anyone here that is unsaved, Lord, I pray that they would get that settled this morning with every head bowed and every eye closed. If you're in here this morning, you say, man, I don't know if I will spend eternity with Christ. I'm not going to embarrass you. I just want you to slip your hand up so I can just Know who you are and then I can have a That I could just be praying for you. I said I won't embarrass you So if that's you this morning, just slip your hand up and say I don't know that I'll spend eternity with Christ From the testimony that's in here this morning Lord The ones in here Say that they will spend eternity with you Lord. I pray that you would just Draw us close to you and allow us to live for you in Jesus name Amen.