Genesis: AUTHORITY
Study The Word: Genesis 2:4-25
Pastor John Weathersby
Sunday October 16, 2022
Notes/Not a Transcript
Last week, Pastor John worked through the creative narrative and said that God takes non-life and brings life forward, citing:
2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
I hope this describes you. John said, only God can drive the plow into the rugged heart of man – I pray that He has done that work in you.
When that happens, when you become a new creation, the tree of Psalm 1, planted by the water. When God, the hound of heaven, has gripped you, you become enemy number 1 of Satan – the enemy of man. The accuser, but as Jesus said:
Luke 22:31–32 (ESV)
31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat,
32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”
Jesus Himself the advocate we see in1 John 2:1-2,
1 John 2:1-2 (ESV)
Christ Our Advocate
1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
What does any of that have to do with Genesis 2:4-25? Perhaps you’re wondering.
Let’s glance at it here quickly and reflect together, and let us be people who study the word deeply and richly. Ultimately, I hope you are encouraged by our study today and excited to explore the rich word of God and unswayed by claims against scripture – instead being firmly rooted and convicted in what scripture is and excited to plumb its depths.
Genesis 2:4-25 (ESV)
4 These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,
6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Catch it yet?
Think back to last week. We studied with Pastor John Nicholas from Genesis 1:1-2:3, and that studied the creation, from formless earth through 6 days of creation in 2:3, the 7th day – rest.
Now look again at verses 4-9:
4 These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,
6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Francis Shaffer asked in his book Genesis Space, and Time, “[…]what is the least that we must make of Genesis 1–11 in order for the rest of the Bible to be coherent and true?
I love this question!
Does it feel bad at first? Think about how we tend to want to stretch genesis to describe all origins and all fine details of creation. Genesis doesn’t work to do that. It works to show that
2 Peter 1:3 (ESV)
3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,
2 Timothy 3:16–17 (ESV)
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Understanding the origin of scripture is God and not a sloppy complication of Man’s thoughts is essential as we learn that inside Shaffer’s framework, all we must know in Genesis 1-11 is consistent with the Devine power of God that gave us all we need, and 2 Timothy.
I’ve heard time and time again people saying that scripture is handed from person to person and full of error – if that is true, how can we trust 2 Peter and 2 Timothy’s promises? Genesis 2, starting in 4, is one of those places people attack the word, like satan questioning the integrity of God’s word. Why is the creation mixed up here?
Let me shortcut us to an answer: Genesis 1:1-2:3 are chronological, and 2:4-25 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1’s account and a deep dive on day 6. You have to try to press hard on scripture and treat it like we do no other text. To say this breaks the Bible. But people would do that, and we should not be surprised. That’s satan’s oldest trick:
Genesis 3:1–4 (ESV)
The Fall
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,
3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
The argument would go Genesis 2:7, talks about Man’s creation, Genesis 2:9 talks about the creation of trees; and 2:19 creation of land animals which they would say is out of order with Genesis 1.
A careful read of better translations will help resolve the issue here.
LSB, ESV, NIV in Genesis 2:19 will read, God “had formed.” The text uses a tense called pluperfect, which sounds cool, sounds fancy simply means:
Denoting an action completed prior to some past point of time specified or implied, formed in English by had and the past participle, as in he had gone by then; past perfect.
Perhaps some of the confusion comes from readers in KJV, which would read:
Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them (NKJV).
So we have this second account, this zoom-in on some days, and the details. We noted that there is a zoom-in on the creation of man, the crown of creation. Here we learn more than Genesis 1 provides,
Genesis 1:26–28 (ESV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 2, zooms in:
Genesis 2:7 (ESV)
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
We also see the creation of woman:
Genesis 2:19–25 (ESV)
19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
23 Then the man said,
“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.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Notice something there? Who was the mother and father Adam and Eve would leave? This is why we study the Word!
God is giving a creation account AND foretelling through creation how we are to live.
Genesis two isn’t a second creation account. Genesis two is a drill into creation to get a greater understanding and understand the fuller implications of creation.
Note the different names for God across the two. Consistently in Genesis 1, we see God is Elohim. In Genesis 2:4, we read LORD God, Yhwh Elohim. The use of LORD Yahweh is first found here in Genesis 2:4, a rule of the first mention in scripture that says that when understanding a topic, word, or matter of doctrine, scripture’s first mention is most transparent and most helpful. Exodus 12:1-13 introduces the idea of a substitute sacrifice, leaving the father and mother in Genesis 2, paving the way for Matthew 19:5/4. We only see it joined like this Yahweh-Elohim in Genesis 2:4 – 3:24 and again in Exodus 9:30. Yahweh Lord over His people who He loves and cares especially for is the all-powerful and knowing Elohim Creator God; what a wonderful picture of not just creation but it’s crowning purpose in man and his ultimate redemption.
Exodus 12:1-13 (ESV)
The Passover
1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.
3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household.
4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb.
5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats,
6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.
7 “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it.
9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts.
10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.
11 In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.
13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.
Matthew 19:4-5 (ESV)
4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,
5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
Exodus 9:30 (ESV)
30 But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.”
With the Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 accounts, we see the powerful God of creation, the 6 day format, and covenant with man and an involved God through the two perspective telling.
This isn’t an error. It is a mind-bending picture of our Covenant God’s rich depth, and so I echo the question from Shaffer:
What is the least that we must make of Genesis 1–11 in order for the rest of the Bible to be coherent and true?
There I was, bobbing around on a boat in the sea of Galilee, and a man shared an impactful story. It was a bit of a southern-living redneck story, and it went like this.
He had the chore of taking out the trash at night after dinner in their country home. If you know country living, you know how this goes, when you go out at night, it’s country-dark.
He was afraid of the dark. And he walked as tough as he could to the can, put the trash, and ran back as hard as he could. And his dad asks him, why did you run? He said because I can’t see out there, and I was afraid. His dad told him, but you’re safe because you can’t see, but I can see you, and I won’t let anything happen to you.
That story resonated with me, my grandparent’s house was just like that, and I’d have to go out to feed peanut the dog. It was dark, so I got it.
I think of that story when I think of Genesis 2 and the rehashing of the creation story. I’m comforted knowing it’s a zoom-in on day 6, and that there is no error. But more than that, I’m comforted by my conviction that all scripture is God-breathed. And as John MacArthur said once on the Bible and Science, the one who made it all doesn’t have to wait for discoveries to know how things work. He made it and put it into motion. He knows it is round, not flat, and God was unbothered when the world would have said that was insane.
2 Timothy 3:16–17 (ESV)
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
D.A. Carson said, on our need for cautious skepticism
“Not that many decades ago, phrenology and eugenics were both almost universally espoused and commonly practiced. They were, after all, ‘scientific .’Today they are equally universally dismissed.”
Interestingly I was recently traveling to Brussels (as John likes me to drop casually) and took a picture of a phrenology display that I saw as just walking down the sidewalk.
I am sad that traditional evangelicalism and mainline denominations have reduced the study of scripture, doctrine, and God to be a disappointing chicken soup for the soul. The study of God is rich and, when understood and marveled at, makes the claimant of main against God look like the intellectual toddler and simpleton they are. Church, I beg you, please do not let flat and baseless claims against scripture capture and carry you away – study the word.
Pray, Observe, Apply.
