40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 5

Episode Date: February 15, 2015

Eve From Adam and Forbidden Fruit

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 Welcome to Episode 5 of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I am here again with Brandon Hanson and Chad Bird. And we are going to be continuing our journey through Genesis here. And where are we at? Where have we fallen, Chad? Well, we left off last time talking about the rich imagery of the tree of life, talked a little bit about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as well. And today we want to get into the creation of Adam and Eve and talk about the significance of that, but also the significance of what they foreshadow.

So we're going to get into how the atom that we see here is a foreshadowing of a future atom and also how Eve herself is a foreshadowing of something as well. So that's where we're going. All right. I have an ice cream in my mouth. All right, man. Very good, very good. Well, let's get started here.

If you're listening and you have a copy of the scriptures close by Feel free to kind of follow along here We're in Genesis chapter 2 And we're going to pick up here with a couple of verses Verse 15 in just a second But I want to go back to verse 7 And make a comment about it as well Verse 7 is where it says

The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. What I think is important to note about that is the material from which man was made and what that means for who exactly we are as creatures. Because God didn't simply speak us into existence. He didn't simply say, let there be man. Instead, he formed man out of that which he had already created. So he takes this preformed material, the dust, and from dust, he makes us.

And to jump ahead a little bit, when he forms woman, he doesn't simply say, let there be woman. Instead, once more, he takes something which already exists. He takes an element of creation, and he takes the rib of the man. And from that, he builds the woman who will be the suitable helper and partner of the man. Now, the reason I think that's significant is because it hammers home something that we've talked about before and that we'll continue to talk about because it's an ongoing theme in the Scriptures. And that is that when God deals with us who are creatures, He deals with us, He comes to us, He works among us through the things of creation.

God is a very physical deity. I think that's something that we cannot stress enough. We are people of flesh and blood. We are people of this earth. We are not spirits. We are not souls. We are those who are part of this creation, formed from the very dust on the ground. And so when God comes to us to interact with us, to bless us, to speak to us, to give us his gifts, he always comes to us through the stuff that we were made of, through the things of creation.

We'll unpack that this evening, but I want to point that out because of its significance. And you see this not only in the New Testament, but also in the Old Testament, that God is attaching His promises of forgiveness and healing and restoration to things like blood, the blood of sacrifices, to things like flesh, like the flesh of the sacrifices, to things like bread, the bread of the presence that's found in the temple, or to the manna in the desert, or to the water of the Jordan River, like in the cleansing of Naaman. He is a God who is not ashamed of his creation. He is a God who loves his creation, has formed things like

dust and bread and wine and water and body and blood. He has formed these and through these he continues to come to us just like he formed us originally from the dust of the ground and from the rib of Adam. So he starts out with these materials, and from them he makes us. And he put Adam, he forms Adam, and then if you look down at verse 15, he gives

Adam something to do. It says, the Lord God took the man and he put him into the garden of Eden. And my translation says to cultivate it and to keep it. It's interesting to look at the two Hebrew verbs that are used there. Literally, it's to serve and to keep, to avod and to shamar. That is why Adam is placed in the Garden of Eden. Now, the reason I find these particular verbs so significant is

because they are often connected with the work of the priest in the temple or the tabernacle. They are there to serve and to keep, to avod and shamar. So you can think of Adam as kind of this priest that God has placed within a temple, which in this case is the Garden of Eden, and there he is to serve and to keep. These are the vocations that God has given to Adam. But there's a problem. And this is the first occurrence of something in the scriptures that even in this time before sin is said to be not good. Verse 18, the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone.

Now, you remember from chapter 1 that over and over we have God making things and saying they were good. So God made this on the first day, and it was good. God made that on the third or the fourth or whatever day, and it was good. And then at the end, he says that he looked on everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. So in this good, in this very good creation, all of a sudden we have this jarring statement that God says it is not good for the man to be alone, which I think is very instructive for us because it makes us ask the question about what was lacking. If it wasn't good for the man to be alone, then what good did God desire to create in order that it would be good, in order that Adam actually would be as God desires him to be? And you guys give me your thoughts on this as well. Just in thinking my way through this statement, I can think of three ways, minimum, in which it's not good for Adam to be alone.

The first is that if Adam is alone, he can't make children. He can't propagate the human race. So man by himself cannot produce the children that God desires for him to have. So there's an impossibility of man having children and grandchildren and continuing the human race unless there is another. So it's not good for that reason. But it's also not good because Adam was made in the image and likeness of God. but God himself is not a unitary being he is a trinity of persons

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit so for Adam to reflect the image and the likeness of God by himself is really an incomplete picture of exactly who the reality is that he's representing But if Adam has another who is like him and who is in this intimate relationship with him, even though it's not a perfect analogy, it is a better picture of what it means to be in the image and likeness of God.

That is to be in communion with those who are like you, sharing the same shame nature. But to take it even a step further, I think it's not good for Adam to be alone because ultimately what you have represented in the union of Adam and Eve in their marriage is a picture of the relationship between the new Adam, Christ, and his bride, the church. So unless Adam has a spouse, unless Adam has a wife, he is an incomplete picture of who Christ has come to be for us. Not just a savior, but also a husband, a husband to the one that he has espoused to himself, the church. So without an Eve, we can't really see the church. We can see the second Adam, but we can't see those who receive the blessings of that second Adam. So for all of those reasons, and for any others that you want to add, I think that God said it's not good,

because I want there to be a more complete picture of what it means to be not only human, but also to be a living prophecy of what God desires to do in his work of salvation in the future. Yeah, the picture of the church is exactly what I think we see here. And we have to remember that this isn't like God's plan A, and then Israel is God's plan B, and now the church is God's plan C, and hopefully he'll get it right this time. This is all flowing out from one stream.

We see God's act of continuing on and on and on through many different pictures throughout the redemptive history, God's history, his story of himself and what he's doing for us. So this is all playing out from the beginning, till now, till the end, in this way that the church has confessed, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forevermore. Amen. We've got this marriage at the beginning, picturing the marriage of God to Israel, his chosen people, picturing the final marriage of Christ and his church. A perfect union. And this is what we have in the beginning that will once again be in the end. Like in verse 24 through 25, it says,

Therefore man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. They weren't ashamed because there was this perfect union, So united were they together between themselves and God that there was no reason to be ashamed of anything. And in the end, in Christ, through his act of redemption, saving us from our sin that we have fallen into, we will be restored as a perfect bride, no longer needing to be ashamed of anything, fully united once again with God, and this is God's perfect plan from the beginning that we see playing out here.

poetic words of Adam. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. As we are in Christ, we are bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh, and we are the church because we are in Christ. Yeah, that's a fantastic way of kind of bringing together the whole biblical story that you see that is laid out here in outline form, if you will. What you see in Adam and Eve, in the creation of Adam, and then especially the creation of Eve, the building of Eve, literally, from the rib of Adam,

is a picture of almost everything. You have the picture of God's work of salvation in forming the church from his very own side and uniting that church, all of us, as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. And then even a picture of the eternal marriage feast of the Lamb and his kingdom, which has no end, that John talks about in Revelation. it's amazing to me how often when John writes Revelation it's like he's it's like John is writing Revelation but he's got a copy of Genesis

open in front of him and he's looking for images and language and stories from Genesis that he can draw on to describe how the end because Genesis is already has packed within it the end times

so you see the beginning already from the perspective of of the end what i was thinking when you were talking about that was uh anyone who's a c.s lewis fan a narnia fan as uh as i am actually i'm such a narnia fan that back in the day when people used to you know when when people would ask if i was a calvinist or an arminian and i didn't like to answer that question and i wasn't a lutheran yet this is a long time ago so they'd say are you a calvinist or arminian i'd say i'm a narnian but um anyway uh but one of the things i was thinking about you know in narnia in the narnia books they refer to the children that go into narnia as sons of adam and daughters

of eve and uh as much as christ is the the son of mary so mary is the mother of god equally so eve is the mother of god as well without without eve there is no incarnation that jesus is a son of eve and without without an adam and an eve there there is no there is no line of david there's no line of anything um and so there's there's this there is something there if we're talking about christ and like in the end and like what what the old testament is saying about christ is one reason that god can say it's not good for man to be alone is because an alone man means no no incarnation it means no no word made flesh the verse that i was looking for is actually in in uh in chapter 3 verse 20 because here we have a uh the giving of a name it says now the

man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of, well, sometimes it's said mother of all the living or mother of all life. Now, this is fascinating because this is right after the fall. But nevertheless, Adam names Eve as this life giver, this mother of life itself. And I think he speaks there as a prophet because he sees, based upon what God has told him in verse 15, that it will be from the woman that the seed will come who will crush the head of the serpent who has deceived them and led them into the sin in which they now find themselves. So Eve is There is a direct connection Between who Mary is

And who Eve is And not just kind of a negative connection But also a positive one as well So lots of good stuff there And I want to kind of flesh this out some more As we work our way through a few more of these verses back in chapter 2,

just to kind of get back to the story and then to kind of follow where these lead us in the rest of the Scriptures. I think it's important to note that God made Adam wait. He didn't simply just right away create Eve for Adam, but he made him wait. He brings all these animals to Adam. I can just kind of imagine Adam's face

as God brings each of these animals to him to find a helper suitable for him. He brings a cow and a camel and a goat and a dog and whatever else that Adam gives names to. But each of these who had been already formed are unsuitable for him none of them are the compliment that he needs he gives names to them he exercises defined authority on earth by giving them names but none of them are going to be one that is suitable that that matches who he is because they don't share they don't share his

nature and then it's a i'm here at verse 21 when we see how god makes eve it's impossible for me and i hope for for uh for our listeners as well it's impossible for me to read verse 21 of Genesis chapter 2 without thinking of the crucifixion of Christ and His burial and resurrection. I said in the very first podcast that what I ask of each chapter of the Old Testament is how

in these words is Jesus talking to us about Himself. And in verse 21 of chapter 2 of Genesis, what I hear christ telling us loud and clear is look at this verse in light of my death burial and resurrection that verse 21 in genesis 2 says so since there wasn't a helper found for adam so the lord god caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman

the rib which he had taken from the man. Now think about what happens at the crucifixion of Jesus. Here you have the new Adam who has come to restore us to that innocence and holiness and righteousness which we lost originating from the fall of the first Adam. And in the moment of his death, his side is opened up

by a Roman spear. And from that side flows out blood and water. You cannot think of blood and you cannot think of water in connection with the death of Christ without thinking about also the way that Christ gives us life. How do we receive life from Christ?

Well, we receive life from Him through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. We receive life from Him in the water of baptism. And we receive life from Him as He gives us His own blood to drink in the Lord's Supper. So what do we receive in the church?

How do we receive life in the church? We receive it really from the side of Christ. In His water of baptism, in the blood of His Supper, He gives to us Himself. and as himself he creates his bride, the church. So when you read Genesis chapter 2 and the creation of Eve from the side of Adam you really see here foreshadowed already

the creation of all of us as Christians as part of the church from the side of Christ as God causes his own son to fall into the deep sleep of death and from his side he brings forth the blood and the water that forms a new Eve the church who is bone of Christ's

bone and flesh of his flesh so there's a there's a crucifixion and resurrection richness to the making of Eve from the side of Adam

I don't know if you guys want to add anything to that But when I see this, when I see God causing a deep sleep to fall upon the man, I cannot see it except in light of the cross and the empty tomb and the supper of our Lord and the baptismal font where the church is formed. yeah i one thing that you said that that i really like is you you said um that god builds eve from adam and so uh and and i was thinking that as you said that um how yeah that's true he built her from adam and so he builds his church from christ and so you have you have it you have both there so that there's a direct there's a direct correlation between the building of of woman from man and then the building of uh his bride uh from himself from literally his flesh and blood as he

as he gives to us over and over again in the sacrament that he he sanctifies and makes holy and brings to life over and over again in this life through his body and blood, and he builds his church this way. So he's a building God, which is pretty awesome. Yeah, it is. In fact, that word is used for the first time here in the whole creation account, this idea of God building something. He makes, he creates, but this is the first time that he builds.

And the materials from which he builds is none other than the very side of the man which he's made. So there's this – and that's why Adam can say this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh because he recognizes in Eve the reflection of himself. Now, just think about what that means for the church. we get we get so mystical sometimes where we have a we have an inner mystic that's like always trying to get out and we think that god you know creates life or new life or regenerates through through all these you know these spiritual things and he does but those spiritual things are attached to things that you wouldn't think they're attached to that and you know this is like we're saying where he doesn't he does not ashamed of his creation he uses create his creation attaches

things promises to his creation to remake his creation uh all the time and so you're not you don't you don't uh you don't come into new life by you know sunlight hitting you just right as you're driving down the freeway with the right song playing on the radio and then you feel something and you're like you know i think i've been born again uh that's not that's not how that happens but he attaches it to these ordinary things like the flesh and blood of christ which he then attaches to other things like bread and wine and like and he he does this uh this is just very it's not a weird thing it's just very consistent with how god operated as we see from the very beginning that he does this yeah there's a there's a beauty to god's consistency

because we don't have to always wonder is god going to change something is he all is he all of a sudden going to begin working in some new spiritual mystic way. No, he's going to be the same God that he's been all along. And the beautiful assurance we have in that is that we know exactly where God is found for us. We don't have to work ourselves up into some sort of spiritual frenzy so that we'll know we're close to God, so that we We can feel God within us. I know exactly where God is found. I know exactly where I can have an intimate, physical, as well as spiritual encounter,

tangible encounter with God. I can feel the water of baptism washed over me. I can eat the bread of the supper and know that I am consuming the very body of God. I can drink the wine of the Supper knowing that I'm consuming the very blood of God. How can you get more intimate? How could you get more united to God than that? Than taking him into your very self so that you are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. So the Lord's Supper is this union of Christ and his bride in this most intimate, physical manner.

And that's why Paul can say, I was looking here at Ephesians chapter 5, you know, Paul kind of catches this by surprise. He's talking about husbands, he's talking about wives, and how a man leaves his father and mother, cleaves to his wife, And then he says, this mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church. So yeah, he's talking about husbands and wives, but really, ultimately, he's talking about the husband who's Jesus and the wife who is the church. The church is bound to our Lord inseparably As bound to him as a head is to a body

As bones are to other bones As the blood flowing through our veins is connected to all the rest of the blood in us That's how close we are to Christ Because he's not only become one of us in his incarnation He has put himself into us in the supper as well as in baptism. And he continues to work now the same way that he's done all along. He's a God who is interested in his creation and gives us gifts in his creation. How are we doing on time, Daniel?

Boy, we got about eight or nine minutes left. Eight or nine minutes left. All right. Very good. Anything else you guys want to say about chapter two before we shift gears a little bit into – we won't be able to get very far, but at least get a couple of verses here into chapter three. One thing I was thinking about when you were just – this isn't really in regard to that, but piggybacking on what you were saying about knowing where God is found. It's interesting when Jesus is on the scene, specifically in the Gospel of John, in the first chapter, it talks about this. And the first disciples are telling other people about him.

One of the things that they say is, come and see. We found the one that Moses and the prophets wrote about. Come and see. We found the Messiah. Come and see. We can do the same thing. What they do is they bring people to Jesus. and we we think that somehow that we're trying to tell people about some god that's far off or

whatever but that's not that's not it uh we we know where he's found and so we can say to say to people you look at you are you do you want you want god do you want to know where god is we'll come and see and you take them to the altar it's it's the same thing i know where he is he's right his flesh and blood are right there because i think one of the arguments would be like well they can do that because he's right there in flesh and blood well i'd argue that he's right there in flesh and blood in your church yeah that's that's that's a great that's a great point he's not christ is not hidden away in the heavens he's not somehow uh you know so separated from us that uh we have to climb up this this celestial ladder in order to find him no he's he's right

here he's where we can come and see we can taste and see where he's at i guess we have a we have a few minutes left so we can at least begin to talk about chapter 3, which is probably one of the most well-known parts of Genesis, because this is where we have the temptation and then the fall as well as the promise that God is going to send one who will crush the head of the

serpent so uh just to at least uh look at the first few verses here it uh it starts out interestingly enough with the description of the serpent uh and there's a there's there's kind of a there's kind of a tie in here between a word play between uh the end of chapter two in the beginning of chapter 3 in the Hebrew, there's a play on words between the fact that the man and his wife were both naked and that the servant was more crafty. It says in the Hebrew that the man and the woman were arumim, but the servant was arum. So there's almost, if you were listening to this in Hebrew, there's a connection between these two verses, it pulls us from one story

into the other. Now this serpent is, in this particular part of the Scriptures, never identified as the devil. But later on, especially in Revelation, he's called the serpent of old, or the dragon, the one who leads leads mankind astray. But I do think it's interesting that

the devil chooses to operate the way he does. And I think this is very instructive for us. When the devil makes his move, he does actually what he continues to do for the rest of our history. He is there to lure us into lies and into rebellion and into evil, not directly, but through the mouth of another. So, in this case, he chooses to use an animal, a serpent. In plenty of other cases throughout the scriptures, he employs the mouth of false prophets.

in order to speak his words. So he's the kind of deceiver who doesn't come at us directly, but chooses to come indirectly. And in this case, he chooses to employ a serpent to say what he has to say. And I think it's also interesting that when he begins to speak, we automatically realize, or we should automatically realize, that Satan is in the business of aping God.

Satan cannot create. All he can do is imitate. So he's always trying to imitate God. He's trying to ape God in such a way that he deceives us into thinking that what we're doing is okay because it's sort of righteous or sort of like what God would have us to do.

It's interesting that the tactic that he uses here to deceive Eve and then also to deceive Adam. Because notice what he says. He says to the woman in verse 1, Indeed has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden. He doesn't come right out and say, Hey Eve, why don't you consume the fruit

of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Instead he approaches this in a roundabout way. By pretending to quote God, when actually he's twisting God's word to say something completely different. And also, notice the way in which he describes, by means of this question, God as one who, at least he begins to do so, God is the one who is holding out on Adam and Eve. Indeed, as God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. Is God the kind of God who is holding out some good from you? Who's not giving you everything that he should be giving you?

So automatically Satan begins, he uses another to speak his words. He twists God's words around, and he tries to begin to plant within Eve's mind this idea that God is somehow holding out on her, that he's not a good and gracious and super-abundant giving father, but that he's kind of the deity that holds something back from Adam and from Eve. and the woman unfortunately she makes the mistake that we often make at least in our heads and in our hearts

as we face temptation she engages in conversation instead of immediately rejecting the temptation she enters into the conversation with the tempter And when that happens, the devil has almost accomplished half of the work already because he's begun a conversation in which he is able to perpetuate it and bit by bit to gain the upper hand. The woman says, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it lest you die. now what Eve says here

is partially accurate but she adds a couple of interesting twists to it because in chapter 2 when God gave these instructions God never told them that they couldn't touch it

he told them they couldn't eat from it but he never gave them the instruction that they can't even touch it So what is Eve up to? Is she putting words in the mouth of God? Is she already beginning to maybe believe that what this serpent has said is true, that maybe God is a God who's holding out on them?

He won't even let them touch the tree? And it's interesting also the way that she puts the punishment. She says, you shall not eat from it or touch it lest you die. It's almost a weakening that's taking place here because God in chapter 2 had used extremely strong language. In verse 17, he says that if you eat from it, in that day that you eat from it, you shall surely die. In the Hebrew, that's a construction where the verb is sort of repeated twice. It's like you shall dyingly die. You're going to be real dead, in other words.

And once Eve gets around to, in this conversation with the devil, to talking about the threat, she waters it down, if you will, lest you die. As if it's not quite as serious a threat as originally was given. And the devil seems to suspect that this is the time for him to boldly step forward and say what he has to say. At first, he questioned, did God really say that you shouldn't eat from any tree in the garden? And now he jumps forward with this bold declaration,

you surely shall not die. For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So he's moved from suggestion, getting Eve to question God's word, to a full contradiction of that word, saying, in essence, God has lied to you. God is holding out on you. He doesn't want you to be like him. And that is what you desire.

That is what you need. What you need is above and beyond what God has promised to give to you. That's the way in which the temptation begins and then transitions until he finally begins his frontal assault against the woman. As you're saying that, I think of the – talk about her saying we can't even touch it, which God didn't say. And you think about the Pharisees building the hedge around the law, which they think strengthens the law but in fact weakens it. and so they say they build a hedge around it and make a billion rules well you we got to keep the sabbath well let's see well you know you can't carry around anything that weighs more than a fig that'll keep you from breaking it and so what you do is you you place all kinds of other

mini laws that sort of protect the main law and if you if you don't commit these things if you you'll never be able to reach out your hand and even touch the actual law but this never this doesn't result in upholding the law it actually weakens it which is what turns out to happen with eve when she does the same thing well we can't eat from it tell you what let's we won't even touch it we won't even touch it and all of a sudden it's not you shall surely die it's lest you die and that's that's that's what happens when you put when you put laws in god's mouth yeah that's a that's a great point and uh it's it's what uh it's what what continues uh we we think that by making more laws, especially making more of these man-made laws, we're

actually going to improve the situation. We only make it worse, and that's exactly what happened to Eve. That's what happens to us as well. When we attempt to strengthen God's law by adding more laws of our own, all we end up doing is destroying the very purpose of the law to begin with, which is lead us to repentance into grace. The law, in this case, that the woman added, led to her downfall. And the laws that we add will do the same. They'll lead us to the downfall of despair or hypocrisy or whatever it might be. But they certainly aren't going to help us. Well, we're out of time. So that's a

wrap on this episode as well. So thanks, everyone, for joining us on this. And we will be back next week this one might have been we'll see what happens when i edit this this might be 46 minutes in the old testament but that's all right those are those ones are free we'll see you guys next week