40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 4

Episode Date: February 10, 2015

The garden of Eden and two good trees.

you are listening to a podcast produced and distributed by christholdfast.com please visit christholdfast.com for additional resources this is 40 minutes in the old testament Well, thanks for joining us for Episode 4 of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I am Daniel Emery Price, and I am with Brandon Hanson and the main man here, Chad Bird. What are we looking at this week, Chad? Hey, Dan. We're going to get right back into Genesis Chapter 2. We were a little bit into it last time. these first three verses, finishing up the creation account, but that's going to be our

focus for this podcast, is looking at a specific part of the creation account. We're going to be looking at the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and then the creation of man and woman. So that's the plan for tonight. Alright, sounds good. See, something we do on 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is we don't uh we don't shoot the crap too much because it's 40 minutes so we just get we just it's it's all killer and no filler so take it away man all right let's do it the uh so if you're

if you're following along either just listening or if you're if you're uh sitting where you can look at a copy of the scriptures then you can turn to genesis 2 uh verse 4 is where we'll be starting. We talked last time about how the creation account in Genesis 1 really bleeds over into chapter 2 and doesn't really wrap up until verse 3. So we're picking it up here at verse 4. As I think I mentioned last time, really what you have in Genesis 2 is not another creation account. What you have is a focusing in on one or two particular aspects of the creation account that we heard in Genesis chapter 1. Genesis 1 is kind of the whole overview.

This is everything that God made in the first six days, and then he rests on the seventh day. And then what we have in chapter 2 is where there's a very narrow focus upon the Garden of Eden, and specifically within the Garden of Eden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then the place of Adam and Eve within the garden and what God bestows upon them, what he gives to them, and then what he also calls them to do.

So that's what we're going to be taking a look at today. So just to get us started here a little bit about the Garden of Eden itself, Well, it's interesting, first of all, to note that if you're looking at verse 8 of Genesis 2, it says, The Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden. So it seems as if we talk about the Garden of Eden, but actually the garden itself seems to be an even smaller place within the larger area of Eden. So, in this garden is where God specifically plans to put Adam and Eve, along with the trees and the animals and the other gifts that God has given to us. And the first thing I think that we need to note that becomes very obvious right away here, but then also begins to be obvious through the rest of the Old Testament and into the New Testament as well, is how even though God made everything, And even though he made the whole world and gives the whole world to humanity as a gift, still within the earth he chooses a specific place to set aside, to set apart as that place where God desires to give his blessings.

So there's what I like to call a locatedness to the gifts of God. It doesn't just say to Adam and Eve, everything is yours. Here's the whole world. You can be wherever you want to be. You can live wherever you want to live. He says to them, here is Eden, and within Eden is a specific place, the garden. And this is what I have located for you. In fact, I have given you the trees that are in the Garden of Eden to be there for you.

This locatedness is important because even after the fall into sin, we continue to see this throughout the rest of the narrative of the Old Testament. even before you had a tabernacle and a temple God would locate his presence in connection with certain altars Abraham would build an altar Isaac would build an altar and that is where God would reveal himself to them and then once you get into Exodus and the construction of the tabernacle and then throughout the rest of the Old Testament the temple or the tabernacle is

the specific place where God continues to locate His gifts. So it's as if God doesn't want us looking around and wondering where exactly can we find God. He doesn't simply say, well, I'm everywhere, even though that's true. God is omnipresent. He is everywhere. God wants us to know exactly where He can be found, where we can come to Him, where He wants us to be, where we can have this face-to-face interaction with him well for adam and eve was in the garden of eden for the israelites

it was at the tabernacle or the temple which as we talked about last time was what was a perpetuation of the good creation now what about now we have this in the old testament we have the garden of eden we have the temple we have the tabernacle where where specifically has god promised to be for us, who are Christians. Well, he's made that very clear in the Gospel of John. God is found for us in only one place, one specific location. That's the only place where we can find God, and that's in Christ.

Because he is the temple. He is the one who became flesh and tabernacled among us. And that's why Paul can say that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ. Luther would often stress the fact that there is no God apart from Jesus Christ. The only God that we have is embodied in Him. So that, as Jesus tells His disciples in the Gospel of John, He who has seen Me has seen the Father. So he is the revelation of the Father.

He is the Godhead embodied. Only in him do we come into the presence of God. So he is our continuing tabernacle. He's our continuing temple. He's our continuing Garden of Eden. And where he is, where he is located himself, is where we come into the presence of God. So when we come to wherever Christ is for us, then we come into a garden. We come into Eden.

We come into a tabernacle. And he's promised to be with us in his word. He's promised to be with us in his baptism. He's promised to be with us where his supper is celebrated. This is where Christ is present for us. So that is where we come into paradise. It's where we come into the tabernacle or the temple is where God has located himself in Christ. So I think that's an important thing to stress from the beginning is that in all of creation, God chooses Eden, and within Eden he gives a garden, and that's where he places Adam and Eve so that in this locatedness they might know where to find him.

Now this gets even more beautiful and just saturated with grace when you kind of unpack this a bit more because what you see throughout the rest of the Old Testament is that very often in the Psalms as well as in the Prophets, zion or jerusalem whatever you want to whatever you want to call it the holy city is described with eden like terminology so in the prophet ezekiel for instance or in in some of the psalms when zion is described as the abode of god where god dwells with his people it's described as the place that not only resembles the Garden of Eden, but perpetuates the Garden of Eden. Now to take this a step further, if you think about

Zion or if you think about Jerusalem, the Holy City as the place where the Garden of Eden continues in this world then think about what that means as far as the crucifixion of Christ comes

full circle there because Christ comes as the second Adam he comes to not only undo the work of the first Adam but to give us even more than we lost in the first Adam

so he comes to restore creation He comes to make us the way that he wants us to be, and he does that climactically in his crucifixion, which takes place immediately outside of Zion, outside of this holy city, which throughout the rest of the Old Testament is described in Eden-like terms. So when God comes to grant us salvation, when he comes to undo all of the work of the fall and to give us even more than we lost, he accomplishes this within the geographical boundaries of where everything started. He dies at Jerusalem, right outside Jerusalem. In fact, he says that that's where he has to go to be crucified. He can't be crucified in Galilee or anywhere else. He dies there. And to kind of put the cap on this, in the Gospels,

it says that the place where Jesus was crucified is called Golgotha, which means the place of the skull. And the church fathers in particular, And this continues throughout the Reformers as well. We see this in Luther also. They understood the place of the skull to be not some kind of skull-like geological formation, but rather the place where Adam's skull was buried so that Christ is crucified in the very place where Adam himself was placed in the earth. And that's why in many of the ancient icons that you'll see, if you look under the cross, you see a skull and crossbones. Well, the skull and crossbones belong to Adam, and Christ is the one crucified over him in order that he might bring life to Adam and to all of Adam's descendants.

So the place of the skull is the place of Adam's skull because Jerusalem was understood to be the place where Adam was buried because it continued to be the location connected with the Garden of Eden. So that's a lot to put out there. Hopefully it was making sense. I don't know if you guys have any reaction to that. But for me anyway, it's always been a beautiful picture of the way in which the scriptures themselves give a unified witness to how God works in this world and brings about a new creation in Christ. Christ as the second Adam is – I've always found that to be one of the more interesting things in sort of the way redemption plays out.

A lot of times we view Christ dying sort of like to give us this clean slate or this second chance, but it's not like that at all. it's instead it's uh just as one man who perfectly represents all of us does what all of us would do and we all inherit his sin and and his guilt and are sinful from that point on the exact same thing happens with one man's righteousness and that's it's just it's amazing that and it's not it's not just hey you have a clean slate so you know try again or anything like that you know it's not a do-over it's a done you know that's and that's there's a big there's a big difference between christ dying so you could have a do-over and christ dying so it can be finished so it's over with at that point he has perfectly represented you taking all your sin and giving you i mean

this is what active righteousness is all about in the life of christ that he goes to that why not just show up and die if it's just about sin it's not just about sin it's about doing all the things that we couldn't do it's about christ uh withstanding temptation in a fallen world out in the wilderness uh and doing it perfectly where adam couldn't withstand temptation in a perfect garden and christ christ does everything that he could that he didn't do that we couldn't do this is why he lived and then gives us that and it and that's why it's done it's done at that point we can't add to it it's it's over with and so we're perfect yeah it's really it's it's a beautiful portrait for us of what of the fact that grace alone is what saves us so it's not

as if christ provides us the example by which we can through self-effort achieve salvation but like you say it's a done deal and by our incorporation into this new adam we become part of the the new humanity which he which he brings about in fact that the the fathers would often speak of a third race when talking about christians there were jews and there were gentiles and when christ came he brought about a new humanity so they talk about a third race being being the the christians those who are united to this second adam so there's a there's a lot that can be said about the garden of eden and in fact we're going to and and the the typology there of the first adam and the second adam and we're actually going to get to a little bit more of that as we as we move

along but uh when you think about the garden of eden think about some of those things that we've that we've talked about that it's the place where god locates his gifts for adam and eve and it's also this uh this picture for us of the tabernacle of the temple of really the the whole work of christ which he accomplishes for us by his by his crucifixion and resurrection so let's let's also uh since we're talking about the uh the garden of eden let's talk about the trees that are in the the garden of eden and to to start out i think it's it's significant for us to point out something which very often we we just pass over and that is that one of the the first things that god mentions in the uh the account of genesis 2 is the fact that he is concerned about what people eat

Now, you would think that that would be a major concern. Aren't there a lot more important things that God could be talking about rather than simply eating? Well, maybe there's not. Maybe if you talk about eating and drinking and hunger and thirst, you're really getting to the core of what it means to be a human. In fact, maybe we don't think about this enough. We don't generate food inside our bodies. We don't generate liquid inside our bodies. All of what sustains us in terms of food and drink comes from outside ourselves.

So if you think about this, I was talking about this just this morning when I was teaching a Bible class. that our bodies when they're hungry or when they're thirsty are preaching a sermon to us our bodies are preaching a sermon to us every time the stomach growls or every time our our our mouth is dry and we need a drink that's a sermon and the sermon is that God has created us to be those who cannot survive without food and drink, which comes from outside of us. So God is constantly in the process of giving us life by giving us food. He's always giving us life by giving us drink. And all of this comes from external, from something external to us. and this is the way that god made even adam and eve this is this is not a condition of being

sinners this is the way that adam and eve were as well from the very beginning we were created as those who receive life in terms of food and drink from god from something outside of us so you know when you're when your kids tell you they're hungry or when you yourself are hungry you're expressing part of what it means to be a creature of God that life comes from outside of us and that life takes the form of food and drink so when we see in Genesis chapter 2 that from the beginning God is concerned about what man is going to eat

then maybe we ought to be concerned about that as well maybe in fact what we eat and what we drink and our hunger and our thirst is indicative of what it means to be those who are the children of God, those who receive life from him. So let's, kind of with that as the way of thinking about this, look at these trees that God gave in the Garden of Eden. I'm looking here at verse 9 of Genesis 2.

It says, So you have the Garden of Eden that's full of trees. You've got all sorts of trees to choose from. They look good, they're pleasing to the sight, and they taste good. They're good for food. But in this garden, we have two particular trees that are singled out. The tree of life, also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now I want to talk about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil first, and we'll get more to this when we get into Genesis chapter 3.

But I think it's accurate to say that this tree is named the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because of the future event. That is to say that this is the tree by which Adam and Eve would learn through rebellion against God's command to know good and evil. To know good and evil means this, that Adam and Eve would learn to know the good they had lost and the evil they had gained as a result of their disobedience. So the name, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is so named because of what was going to happen in Genesis chapter 3. And I think another thing, another important thing to point out about this tree as well as the tree of life is that the reason these trees were what they were was not because they had some kind of natural capacity to bestow the knowledge of good and evil. or natural capacity to bestow life. They were what they were because God's word had declared them to be that. So the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it wasn't a poisonous tree.

It wasn't a tree that somehow the fruit in it would create havoc and all sorts of evil in the lives of those who ate it. It didn't have some sort of poison inherent in it. It had God's command attached to it, his prohibition attached to it, and it was that word that made the tree what it was. It was the same with the tree of life. This wasn't a magical tree. This tree bestowed life because God's word was connected to it. So you have the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I think it's interesting that this tree specifically has this word of God attached to it, which we see later on here in chapter 2. It says, The Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden ye may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat. For in the day that ye eat from it, ye shall surely die. Now, when you think about Adam and Eve's situation, really, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was for them a gift. Because it was here that they could, by holding fast to the word of God, they could worship God. So their worship of God was connected with their receiving and responding to the word that God had attached to this particular tree.

So the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was kind of like their temple or their church or their pulpit or their altar, however you want to think of it. This was where they could gather in order to give worship and thanks to the God who had attached his word to it. We often think of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil very negatively, as if it was a scary thing, a dangerous thing, some sort of curse upon Adam and Eve. It wasn't. It was simply given to them with a word attached to it so that in believing that word and in keeping that word, they could worship the God who had given them that word. And for that reason, it was a gift to them. It was a means by which they could respond in worship to the God who had placed that tree in the garden and attached his word to it. Isn't this like the same mistake that we make with the law sometimes where we look at the law and think that the law is the problem as if the law wasn't good, that it didn't come down as a good thing from God? And so because we break it, we're like, well, the law is bad.

And it's like, no, no, the law is not bad. You're bad, but the law is good. so much like that you know the the tree and the you know the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that that's not that's not bad uh if you eat from it you're bad that's your that's your problem but like that you can't blame the tree i see i see you see that happen sometimes with the law you know we all just law bad gospel good in reality it's law good you bad gospel good news for you that's how it works yeah that's a that's a great analogy to make uh uh god gave this tree to them as a as a gift it was the tree was the tree was was good there was nothing that was

evil about the tree uh evil came about as a result of disobedience to the word it's it's the same way with the law uh there's nothing wrong with the law there's nothing evil about the law evil comes about only when the law is not kept so but uh the the tendency of sinners of course is to blame god or to to blame whatever god has attached his word to instead of accepting responsibility and confessing confessing their sins for breaking for breaking the word which is which is what we'll see adam do in a little bit exactly yeah breaking it and then and then blaming god as well as as well as his wife for uh for his own failure so you have the the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we will see that much more in uh in genesis chapter three so we also have the the

tree of life that uh is in the garden and we we don't learn not only about the tree of life here at the beginning of chapter two but it also comes up in the end of chapter three which we'll look at in just a second. This tree is amazing. You could write a whole theology, in fact, a whole Christology about the tree of life. And it occurs not only here, but also in a couple of other portions of the Scriptures, which we'll take a look at as well. So I want to spend just a few minutes talking about the significance of this tree. Now, I guess an initial question that always has come to my mind is, well, Adam and Eve are already alive so why do they need a tree of life they're they're living creatures so if this tree is to

bestow life then what what exactly are are they receiving and i think i think the answer to that is pretty clear at the end of of genesis chapter 3 uh the this is after adam and eve have consumed the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and have been confronted by God and God has pronounced his curse upon the serpent and he's spoken both to Adam and to Eve. It says that, I'm looking here at verse 22 of Genesis 3. It says, then the Lord God said,

and this is some of this kind of inner Trinitarian speech, God talking to God. He says, Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So, God, after the fall into sin, he says to himself, man has become like one of us knowing good and evil if he takes from the tree of life now

in the state in which he is in and eats he will live forever so in order to prevent that from happening God sends him out from the garden of Eden now even though on the face of this this is a punishment, is a curse I see really God acting out of fatherly, divine mercy and compassion here because if you think about our life in this sinful world and our lives as sinners, there's so many things I don't like about myself.

There's so many things I don't like about the people that I'm around, that I work with, that are in the world. There's so many things about the world that are wrong. I don't want to live in the situation that I'm in now forever. I don't want to live as a sinner forever. I don't want to live in a sinful world forever. I don't want to be like the book Tuck Everlasting where they drink from the fountain of youth or whatever it is and can't die. I want to die, not anytime soon, but I want to die eventually. I don't want to live perpetually in a world which is full of hurt and pain and chaos and evil.

I don't want to live in a body that is getting sick and that is always giving in to temptations and suffering the consequences of that. I want to have a truly new beginning in which I am just the way that God wants me to be. And that's what I have promised to me in the resurrection. I'm telling you right now just so I don't get in trouble. People aren't going to bust up the emails. I realize – I know what the context of this text is before I cite it. I'm just using it as an example. All right.

That being said, a seed does have to go into the ground and die. This is true. Obviously, Christ says this about himself, but it's true for all of us. There is no resurrection of Lazarus without a death of Lazarus. There's no resurrection of us without death. This is how it works. Jesus doesn't just go to the cross and suffer. He goes to the cross and dies, and then there's the resurrection.

And so it is with us. so it is with us so it is with us in fact um yeah i mean jesus says that about himself but paul says that in first corinthians uh 15 about all of us as well we are we are all like uh that seed if you uh that which you sow does not come to life unless it dies so we all have to die we have to be buried in order that we might be resurrected and come to the end the goal for which god intends us so paul says i believe it's the first corinthians where he says all things belong to you and he includes in that list of all things that belong to us death itself but there's good news there's there's even better news uh when you look at at the tree of life elsewhere

there's a i guess the way that i think of this is kind of like a triptych uh a panel with with three different uh parts to it and the triptych here is comprised of genesis and then ezekiel and then john's revelation when we're talking about the tree of life so we've looked here at genesis we have the tree of life which was which was for adam and eve in order that by eating it they might receive this super abundant life from god they were cut off from that but what happens of the tree of life. Well, it's not lost. It's simply placed into a different locale and different promises

are attached to it. And we see this in the 47th chapter of Ezekiel, which is one of my favorite chapters in the Old Testament. It's a beautiful portrait in Old Testament terms of what God does for us in Christ. And we don't have time to look at it in great detail, but I'll summarize it for you, and then I'll read a couple of verses. Ezekiel is describing for us the end-time salvation which we will have in the Messiah. And he's doing this in Old Testament terms by talking about the restoration of the temple. And in chapter 47, he's brought to the temple, and out of the side of the temple he sees this trickle of water.

and he begins to follow it along. At first, it's only ankle deep, and the farther it goes along, it gets deeper. It's knee deep, and then it's waist deep, and then it's so deep that he can swim in it. And it all originates from the temple, from the presence of God. And this river is no ordinary river because when it goes down into the Dead Sea, it actually heals the waters of the Dead Sea. It desalinates the Dead Sea, and it becomes a fresh water. And then looking here at verse 12, it says,

By the river on its bank, on one side and on the other, will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. and their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing. So Ezekiel sees these miraculous trees growing along the banks of this miraculous body of water that originates in the sanctuary, that originates where you have the presence of God. Now keeping all that in mind, if we turn to the last chapter of the scriptures,

Revelation 22 We have John completing this picture for us He's describing the new Jerusalem And he says He, that is the angel The angel showed me a river of the water of life Clear as crystal Coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb

In the middle of its street And on either side of the river Was the tree of life bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Now, if you can listen to all these voices at once, listen to the voice of Genesis and Ezekiel and then John in Revelation.

What you have described for you, especially Ezekiel and John, is the restoration of what we lost in the garden of eden so john and ezekiel both see salvation flowing out to us into all the world from god and from the lamb enthroned within their temple but the way that they describe this is amazing they describe it in terms of water and in terms of trees and in terms of of eating and leaves giving healing so the water that flows from the presence of god everywhere it goes it heals it it gives life the trees that are there are bearing fruit every month their their their fruit is for food and the leaves are for are for healing now think about this in terms of what the

gospel is this is this is the way in which the old testament preaches to us what we have in christ And what we have is water that vivifies us, that gives us life, that washes away our sins, that heals us. And that water is flowing from the very presence of God. And that water is nothing other than the waters of baptism, which washes us clean, which gives us life, which heals us. But we don't just have water. we have these trees, these trees that bear fruit and that heal us, that give us food. The way I picture this is every time we go up to the altar, you can picture the tree of life growing out of the altar and its branches hanging over full of fruit that we can pick and eat. And

in consuming that, we consume life itself. It's none other than a picture of how our Lord feeds us even now he feeds us in the supper that is given to us he feeds us the fruit of the cross and in eating that fruit we are receiving the life that flows directly from the lamb of god and as god does this to us he brings us back to the place that he wants us to be he he restores So the tree of life is a beautiful portrait of what God desires to give to us. He desires to give life to us, and He gives life to us as we eat. He feeds us so that in eating these gifts of God, we might consume life itself that comes from him. It's a tremendous promise that shows us how God's gifts are rooted in the things of creation

so that we as creatures might taste and see that God is good to us in Christ. There's an interesting passage in Luke 17, verse 6. after the apostles said to the Lord, increase our faith, the Lord said, if you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree or sycamore tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey you. This is often pointed to as an impossible feat. You can't plant a deep-rooted tree.

No matter how deep-rooted that sycamore tree actually is, you can't plant it in a body of salt water and we see this we see this river of life coming out and desalinating the the seed and so it is through this faith which God gives us

that through this faith that God gives us that the impossible can actually happen, the impossible that there can be life again where there is only death as a possibility for us otherwise yeah that's a that's that's well that's a great comment and it uh it fits perfectly with

what what ezekiel describes for us and in his vision god is the one god is the god of reversals he's the one who reverses death into life he changes salt water into fresh water he uh he changes uh us who are lost into his into his children all right well that's that's a wrap And you can email us at ChristFullFast at gmail.com if you would like. And you can go to ChristFullFast.com to check out articles written by us three and other guest bloggers as well. There's other podcasts, other resources, sermons, and all kinds of stuff. So please go check that out. And please go to iTunes and subscribe and rate and review 40 Minutes in the Old Testament.

We'd really appreciate that. So until next week, God bless. Thank you for watching.