Chapter 2

Verses 1-3, the Sabbath.

Verse 1 – a summary of chapter one.

Verse 2 – three words need underlining: “ended his work.” This is the true meaning of Sabbath: God ended His work, and having ended His work He rested. God rested because there wasn’t anything else He could do for man in innocence. Everything that could be provided for man in status quo innocence was provided and there wasn’t another thing to be added to it. God will rest until man sins. Once man sins then God works again—salvation. Sabbath means God rests because He has provided everything necessary for man. It did not mean originally that man does any resting; that isn’t the idea at all. The idea of the Sabbath is a memorial to and a recognition of the fact that God provided everything for man and that man can add nothing to it. That is the principle of salvation. The principle is grace: God does all of the providing; man simply rests in what God provides. From Genesis 2:2 to Exodus 16:23 there is no reference to the Sabbath—over a period of 2,500 years or more.

In Exodus 16 we have another reference to the Sabbath, and we have Sabbath under the Mosaic law. There were three Sabbaths under the Mosaic law: a) Every seventh day, which is Saturday; b) Every seventh year the Jews were to rest and not work; c) Every fiftieth year there was a super Sabbath called the year of Jubilee. (All of the holy days were also called Sabbaths: the Passover, unleavened bread, first-fruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Tabernacles. Most of them occurred on Sunday or some other day of the week).

Why were the Jews required on Saturday to cease from work? The Jews were required to observe the Sabbath every Saturday so that they would remember grace. When you sit down and do nothing it reminds you of grace. The “no work” concept was to remind them to keep jogging their memories, that they could do nothing for salvation, that they could only rest in what God had provided. The Sabbath was a way of preaching the gospel to them. The Jews failed in all of their Sabbaths because many of them were not born again. They missed the boat of the Sabbath and, as a matter of fact, they turned the Sabbath which was the memorial to the grace of God into a totem pole for legalism. When the Mosaic law was abrogated by the death of Christ in the bringing in of a better covenant [Epistle to the Hebrews] the Sabbath went right out the window. So that today there are only two Sabbaths left. Both of them existed before the Mosaic law; both of them existed during the period when the Mosaic law was in action; both of these Sabbaths continue to exist at the present time. The first of these two Sabbaths is found in Matthew 11:28 (remember that Sabbath means rest). That rest is that God has provided everything in salvation and we simply rest in what He has provided. Our resting is very simple: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” This is a once-and-for-all rest, the rest that will last forever—eternal life. Then there is a second rest for those who believe. This is a perpetual rest in time—Hebrews 4:1-3, a rest for every moment of phase two. It is the faith-rest technique. God has provided promises; we rest in them. God has provided doctrine; we rest in it. Always the Sabbath is a memorial to the grace of God and only Satanic doctrine will distort it into something else. The distortions continue to the present time through series of confusions and false teaching. Matthew 11:28 is the eternal Sabbath; Hebrews 4:1-3 is the temporal Sabbath, the moment-by-moment Sabbath.

Verse 3 – the sanctification of the Sabbath. The word sanctified means to set it apart. We have to understand to what it was set apart. It is was set apart to the principle and the doctrine of grace. The principle of grace in the Sabbath is: only God can work for man’s benefit. Man can never work for his own benefit and achieve lasting results. Only what God provides is eternal; only what God does is eternal. Therefore anything that man provides or does is temporal and does not survive. The Sabbath, then, is a reminder that what God does is perfect and permanent. What does God do? Salvation, and this is also permanent: doctrine of eternal security applied.

Verse 4 – this particular context, Genesis chapter two, describes the beginning of the history of the human race. We are going to have a complete account of man, his creation, and the separating of the woman from the man. They came into the world in one package and God performed an operation which separated the two of them. The separation of the two of them was necessary for perfect environment. They could not be in one package because man was lonely and not aware of the existence of the woman until she was separated from him. She was separated from him so that he could become aware of her and therefore could be joined to him. As long as man was lonely he didn’t have perfect environment, but once the woman is taken from him and separated from him then no man is complete without the woman. The woman completes as well as compliments the man.

We should be aware of the fact that even as then so now angels watch the human race because angels learn the grace of God from the human race, and fallen angels also learn their doom from the human race—1 Corinthians 4:9; 6:3; 11:10; Ephesians 3:10; 1 Timothy 5:21; 1 Peter 1:12. All of these passages tell us that angels are watching us today and angels were watching our first two parents in the garden.

Question: Did God create sin?

1. No. God is not the author of sin and God is not the author of temptation—James 1:13. Not only does the scripture directly state that God did not create sin, and that God cannot tempt to sin, but take a look at divine essence. God is sovereign: He wills not to sin. He is absolute righteousness; He can’t sin. Absolute righteousness plus omnipotence means that God doesn’t even have the ability to sin. Justice: He cannot sin by being unfair. Immutability: He can’t change and become a sinner. Eternal life: He will always be sinless and perfect and never could be anything else. God did not and could not create anything that was evil. Everything that God created in its initial stage was perfect and wonderful. Therefore, if man sins he must do so from his own volition. It is incompatible with the nature or essence of God to have anything to do with sin. When man came from the hand of the creator he did not have an old sin nature. Man acquired the old sin nature through negative volition.

2. Man was free moral agent, he had absolute free will. When God created man He created him with an independent volition. He could exercise his volition independently of God or he could choose the will of God. Why did He do so? To resolve the angelic conflict. The angelic conflict started over the free will of Satan—Isaiah 14, Satan said five times, “I will.” When he finished he had acted independently of God. The first sin in the universe was committed by Satan, the sin of negative volition. The only sin that man could commit in innocence was negative volition; he could not commit any of the sins that we can commit today, except one—negative volition.

3. So far as man is concerned sin came from outside of man. Sin originated with Satan and Satan passed it on to man through the same thing that man had—free will or volition.

4. Just as Satan was a free moral agent so Adam was a free moral agent, created in innocence. Innocence means he was neither holy nor sinful.

5. There are two co-existent forces which started the civilisation bowl: the essence of God and the essence of God. God is sovereign; man has volition with a positive and a negative pole. These are co-existent forces that began when the civilisation bowl began. When God breathed into man the breath of lives [pl] immediately there were two factors co-existing on the earth and they still co-exist—the sovereignty of God and the free will of man. The only place where the sovereignty of God and the free will of man can meet and be compatible is at the cross. From that point on man enters into phase two or the Christian life whereby the issue is always, ‘Am I doing the will of God?’ The whole Bible is written so that we might know and understand when we are in the will of God and when we are not, and if not in the will of God how to get back into the will of God. The will of God is determined by the Word of God, but the will of God starts in 1 John 3:23. The doctrines of the sovereignty of God and the free will of man are wheels that interpret but never collide. Both exist.

6. The sovereignty of God gave man free will. God sovereignly bestowed this independent volition on man—because of the angelic conflict. This freedom of will and/or divine institution #1 gave man the right to choose for himself even in contradiction to the will of God.

7. Such a choice as Adam made is against God’s will. God is against sin, it is not His will for man to sin. The choice was made against God’s will and the emphasis of this context is to present in detail the environment, the essence of man, the test of man, and why God rested. In other words, from verse 4 to the end of the chapter the question: Why did God rest? Because everything was provided, and what does man do with having everything?

Notice the reversal in verse 4—“heavens and the earth” is the first part of the verse, but in the last part of the verse “earth” comes before “heavens.” This

verse contains an official Hebrew title, and chapter two should actually begin here. The word generations means posterity or the development of generations. The subject now: the history of posterity. This title does not describe the origins of the earth but it is a title that introduces what happens after the heavens and the earth were restored.

“when they were created” – create something out of nothing; “in the day that the Lord God made” – our second word, asah, means made something out of something that already existed. So we have original creation here and restoration.

“Lord God” refers to Jesus Christ. Lord is a Hebrew word, Jehovah; God is Elohim, a plural word. Lord always refers to personality in the Godhead—there are three. Sometimes Lord refers to the Father, sometimes to the Son, and sometimes to the Holy Spirit. God always refers to essence. There are three persons in one essence.

Verses 5-15, God’s provision for man in innocence. Verses 5 & 6, God’s provision for man’s food. The first principle of the civilisation bowl is grace. Man did nothing to earn his food; man did not deserve his food; man did not have to work for his food, everything was provided by God. Food was provided on the 3^rd day of restoration—Genesis 1:11, so that three days later when man became a living soul he could start eating immediately. The original food of man did not depend upon rain or human agriculture or any human activity.

Verse 6 – only after man sinned did it become necessary for man to work for his food. The means of preservation of vegetation before man sinned was mist which was entirely provided by God and it came from inside of the earth. Analogy: Just as man receives his physical food from God, so he receives his spiritual food from God—grace.

Verse 7 – when man came on the earth he was called a trichotomous being: body soul and spirit. “And the Lord God formed man” – jatsar, which means outward form, moulding.

“of the dust of the ground” – dust is not dirt or solid clods of earth but the immaterial, the unseen part of the ground. In other words, the chemicals in the soil. Upon death the soil receives the chemicals back. The word for ground here is adamah, and it means the red earth. This is why Adam received the name Adam, because it means taken from the earth. The body which God provided was a tent, a shelter for the soul and the spirit.

“and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives [pl.]” – the word lives in the plural refers to the soul and the spirit.

“and man became a living soul” – he became self-conscious. Self-consciousness is a factor of the soul.

Verses 8-15 – man’s environment. The word Eden means the garden of delight. It was the sum total of perfect environment. Note: As long as man has volition perfect environment can never be the solution to man’s problems.

Verse 9 – “every tree that is pleasant to the sight,” those which provide aesthetic response, stimulation by looking at a tree, by scenery. Perfect environment includes perfect scenery, and these trees that were pleasant to the sight stimulated man in the realm of his soul. He appreciated them and enjoyed them.

“and good for food” – for the physical part of man.

“and a tree of life” – Mentioned again in Revelation 22:2,14; and finally, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” At the time that Adam was on the earth the tree of life was God’s provision for man’s perpetuation—not living forever but perpetuation of perfect environment and innocence. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a test of volition. There was only one way in which man could sin in perfect environment and that was through his volition by partaking of one tree. There must be a test for volition and this can be correlated with the angelic conflict.

Verse 10 – “and became four heads.” In other words, it became four great rivers.

Verse 11 – “The name of the first is Pishon,” which is the Hebrew word now for canal, “that which surrounds the whole land of Havilah where there is gold.”

Verse 14 – “Hiddekel” is the Tigris.

Verse 15 – “to dress it” means to dominate it and to guard it. Man is not working yet for food. That word tells us that there is an enemy in the earth. The word means to guard it from hostile forces—Satan and his angels. Man had responsibility to guard this perfect environment and the enemy of perfect environment is Satan.

In verses 16 & 17 we have divine institution #1 which is the basis of all human freedom, volition, brought to our attention. This tells us that man could eat if he wanted to. But here is a commandment to test man’s volition: “Thou shalt not eat of it.” There was only one way that Adam could sin in the garden. It was impossible for him to sin in any way except to eat from this tree, and even that would not have been a sin without this statement: “thou shalt not eat of it.”

“for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” – four words erroneously translated here. The Hebrew says, “dying thou shalt die.” There are two words, the first is a participle which should be translated “dying.” Then it has a finite verb, “dying thou shalt die.” The word death is repeated. The participle refers to spiritual death; the finite verb refers to physical death. Spiritual death is the basis of destroying fellowship with God; physical death is a result of spiritual death. Man is perpetuated by eating of the tree of life which perpetuates him in innocence but once he disobeys God—negative volition—and sins the tree of life will be shut off to him, he will not be perpetuated because he cannot be perpetuated in status quo spiritual death and have fellowship with God. In the day that Adam eats of the tree he is dead then—spiritually. “The wages of sin is death” does not mean physical death, it means spiritual death.

Verse 18 – “not good that man should live alone.” Man’s loneliness is not in the realm of fellowship with God. God says he needs fellowship of a like kind, and this anticipates the woman.

“I will make him an help meet for him.” The words “help meet” in the Hebrew means a helper of the same species. Someone of the same species who compliments you, who compliments you, who implements you and therefore helps you.

In verses 19 & 20 there is a little parenthesis to indicate that man dominated the lower creation but did not find his fellowship from lower creation. The fact that man named all of the animals and species indicates that he had a perfect vocabulary.

Verse 21 – introduction to the second divine institution. “And the Lord God” is a reference to Jesus Christ; “caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her to the man.”

Man has something missing: the rib. He gets the rib back through marriage, through fellowship with the woman. Note that the woman came into existence while man was asleep. The woman was not created from the dust of the earth as Adam was but she was built from Adam’s rib. The principle is carried out in marriage that the woman is a part of man and only completed in him.

Verse 22 – “… he built a woman, and brought her to the man.” This was so that he could name her. The woman was built to respond, she is the responder of the human race.

Verse 23 – “This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”—this is part of me. He recognised his wife right away.

“she shall be called Woman”—ishah, which means part of man, belongs to man, implements the man, and so on; “Because she was taken out of Man [ish].”

Verse 24 – “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother.” There were no fathers and mothers when this was said. So why was it put in before there were in-laws? Because the greatest danger to a marriage is that the marriage will depend upon or allow the in-laws to interfere. One the children get married the parents must stay out of it, despite any troubles. No in-law has ever straightened out anything, they only make matters worse. Once the children get married the parents have done all they can for them. The greatest attack on the divine institution is still the in-laws.

“and cleave” – the word means to cling. But you cling mentally before you cling physically; “unto his wife” – the man clings to the woman. This means the man initiates the love in the home; “and they shall be one flesh” – marriage.

Verse 25 – “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” – ‘not ashamed’ is confused or disappointed.