Perfect Environment;
Sufficiency; Volition
The
environment in which God placed the man, vv. 8-17. “And the LORD God planted a garden
eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the
ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that
is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst
of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” This is the
beginning of perfect environment and the beginning of the dispensation of
perfect environment which extends from the creation of man to the fall. It is
in this time period that we see the responsibility given to the man that would
be the testing issue for this particular dispensation. We get the name “perfect
environment” because God in His goodness provides a perfect environment for man—perfect
in every possible way. We have seen the creation of the man in verse 7, and now
God creates a place for the man. He had created the overall environment in
Genesis chapter one, i.e. the environment of the earth itself and all of the
earth’s systems—the biosphere, the atmosphere—but now God creates a specific
environment for man, which is a garden. In Genesis chapter one God created the
plants and the trees at the end of the third day. God had created all the tree
kinds on the third day, and now He is going to take the seed (it doesn’t say in
this text that he created bara or asah) from the trees He had
already created and began to design the immediate environment for the human
race. We are told in v. 8 that the action is performed by the LORD God, Yahweh Elohim. He
plants a garden, and here the Hebrew word is nata’, which means to
plant, to establish, to fix, to stretch out. It is the normal word which was
used for planting trees or a vineyard and it was used metaphorically for the
planting of a nation, such as the planting of the nation Israel. Just as He
planted the nation Israel He is the one who planted the garden and established
the first volitional test in the garden of Eden. “And the LORD God planted a garden toward
the east in Eden.” A slightly more literal rendering is “He planted a garden in
Eden from the east.” So Eden is a larger area and as a sub-section there is a
garden planted and it is designated as being in the east. If we look at the
passage in Ezekiel 28 which describes the fall of Satan it says that “You were
in Eden, the garden of God.” So the term “Eden,” then, is tied in that passage
to the garden of God, not to what we call the garden of Eden where Adam and
Isha were placed. God has Eden, and this is a place where God dwells on the
earth. We can go through a lengthy study on the dwelling of God on the earth.
He dwells in the garden. He continues to dwell and places the cherubim outside
to guard the path to the tree of life—they prevent man from entering Eden. He
finally removes Himself and His presence from the earth before the flood. Remember
it is not until after the flood in Genesis nine that God establishes or
delegates judicial authority to the human race. If we are correct that the
population on the earth prior to the Noahic flood was at least two and a half
billion, maybe double that—the reason it was so large is that there were as
many as nine generations living at one time—who handled judicial operations.
Judicial operations in Scripture are usually indicated by the use of the word “sword.”
The only sword in the first three chapters of Genesis is the cherub placed
outside the garden. So apparently God directly and through His angels governed
and exercised a judicial function before the fall.
That
is based on very skimpy evidence but there is the statement in the KJV, “And
the LORD said, My spirit shall not
always strive with man …” Genesis 6:3. The word translated “strive” in the KJV
is a hapax legomenos, a technical term for a word that is used only one
time in the literature. It is very difficult to work out what a word means if
it is only used one time because word definitions are determined not by a
dictionary but by usage. Dictionaries simply reflect word usage. When we look
at cognate languages such as Ugaritic, Phoenician or Akadian, the word that is
used there in Hebrew and translated “strive” means to dwell. So God says He is
not going to dwell with man any more and He removed His presence at the time of
the flood. His presence comes back in Exodus when He indwells the tabernacle
and is enthroned among the cherubim over the ark of the covenant. Then His
presence leaves or departs when Israel goes negative. Ezekiel sees the vision
of the Shekinah (dwelling presence of God) glory depart, and it returns at the
incarnation. Then at the incarnation there is a departure at the ascension, the
Holy Spirit returns, and then in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit He sets up a
temple in the believer’s body for the indwelling of Jesus Christ. The indwelling
Jesus Christ is going to leave at the Rapture and return at the second coming
when He is personally going to rule and reign during the Millennial kingdom.
So
God dwelt in Eden, and somewhere on the east side of Eden God plants a garden
for the habitation of man. “And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that
is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst
of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, v. 9. Notice that God places the man He had formed
in this garden and caused to grow everything that is pleasing to the sight and
good for food. They key word there is “every.” God is not skimpy with His resources;
He is not one who withholds any good thing from His people; and out of love God
provides everything and beyond everything that man needs. This verse forms a
basis for developing a theology of aesthetics. Aesthetics is a word for beauty.
God is not a God who simply makes things because they are functional, but He
creates things that have beauty and are attractive to the eye. He doesn’t just
grow trees that are good for food, there is an aesthetic pleasure to the trees
and they provide everything that is necessary for food. He goes beyond that.
All categories of fruit were available, and vegetables because man was a vegetarian
at this point, and He doesn’t just supply a few things, He supplies an
abundance.
Then
we are told also, “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the
tree of knowledge of good and evil.” We will come back to this.
1)
Sufficiency
means there is enough to meet a situation, there is enough to accomplish the purpose
or task.
2)
Sufficiency
may imply barely enough, but enough is enough. But throughout Scripture God’s
grace is always characterized by more than enough, abundance.
3)
Prior
to the fall sufficiency came from God’s love. His love provided a sufficient
environment for the human race.
4)
Sufficiency
after the fall comes from God’s grace. Grace is the expression of God’s love to
someone who doesn’t deserve it, someone who hasn’t merited it.
5)
Love
is the point of contact, therefore, between God and man before the fall. Justice,
then, becomes the point of contact after the fall.
6)
Illustrations.
God’s provision of manna to the Jews when they are leaving Israel. He always
gave them enough. In the New Testament when we see Jesus feeding the 4000 and
the 5000 we see the miracle of the loaves where He feeds them and there were 12
full baskets of food left over. He gave more than enough. God’s grace is
sufficient but it frequently gives an abundance, an excess.
7)
God’s
sufficiency is abundant to all in salvation. Salvation is not for believers
only, which is a heretical doctrine of hyper-Calvinists called limited atonement.
1 Timothy 2:6; 4:10; 1 John 2:2; 2 Corinthians 5:14. The death of Christ provided
salvation for every member of the human race, even those who reject Christ.
8)
The
sufficiency of God’s grace extends to believers in all areas of the spiritual
life, especially in the arena of testing. 2 Corinthians 9:8; 12:9.
Our
conclusion we arrive at is that God provided a perfect environment that
supplied everything that man would possibly need for his daily sustenance and
provision. This would include not only the physical environment but also the spiritual
environment and the information. God is going to give Adam all the information he
needs, which doesn’t mean He gave him everything he could possibly know. There
is a lot of information that God could have given Adam but He didn’t.
Sufficiency means He gave him everything that he needed so that he could
accomplish the task, and then as the Lord visited him every day He gave
additional information. But from the very beginning He gave Adam and Isha all
the information they needed. That means it wasn’t up to Adam to figure out if
what God said about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was really true.
In
the center of the garden, in the same general vicinity, God planted two trees:
the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The idea of
the tree of life is found in numerous scriptures, e.g. Proverbs 3:18, referring
to wisdom personified as a spiritually mature woman. “She is a tree of life to
them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.” The
analogy is between wisdom personified as a woman, wisdom which is Bible doctrine
and the application of doctrine, wisdom as a tree of life. So there we have the
idea of not simply extension of life, because a believer would have ongoing
life, but here it would have to do with the quality of life that comes from the
application of wisdom. Proverbs 15:4, “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life:
but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.” There it is not talking
about the eternality of life but about the quality of life when there is no
gossip, no slander, no sins of the tongue. Revelation 22:2, “In the midst of
the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life,
which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the
leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” The idea there is not
healing from sickness but of that which positively promotes strength and
health. So the idea here is that there will be a tree of life and somehow that
contributes to the quality of life in the eternal state. In Revelation 2:7, “He
that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him
that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst
of the paradise of God.” An overcomer is not someone who believes, an overcomer
is a believer who has applied doctrine and advances to spiritual maturity. There
is a special reward for mature believers. They have access to the tree of life.
Other believers, believers who are failures, do not have this same access. So
it has something to do with the quality of life, not simply the extension or
eternality of life throughout eternity. “In the midst of the paradise of God,”
so this is in a special area within heaven that is open to access from mature
church age believers. The tree of life also remains in the cultural and historical
memory of the human race and pops up in many different near-eastern cultures. So
in the garden the tree of life provided life, but the real test comes from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis
2:10, gives us a geographical description of how God provides for the garden.
This is, as well, tantalizing in terms of an understanding of the physics
involved in the natural environment on the earth. “And a river went out of Eden
to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.”
Again we see this distinction between the garden itself and Eden. We see in
Revelation 21 that there is a river of life which flows out from the throne of
God in the new Jerusalem. We have the same parallel there; the river flows out
of the throne of God and then it divides into four rivers. There is no place on
earth today where there is this kind of action. Rivers converge, but what we
see in Eden is a diversion: water coming from one source and then splits and
goes in four different directions, and it waters the earth. A lot of people spend
a lot of time speculating, getting into this passage and trying to figure out
where Eden was located. If we believe in a world-wide flood at the time of Noah
and we are consistent with understanding the hydrodynamics of such an event,
then we have to admit that there is no way that we will ever find the garden of
Eden. The geography of planet earth is radically different after the flood from
what it was before the flood. The river of verse 10 divided and became four
rivers. “The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole
land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is
bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the
same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the
third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And
the fourth river is Euphrates.”
We
don’t know where Havilah is, we don’t know what river Pishon would have been,
but we are told that there was an abundance of gold there. This tells us again that
God provided a tremendous amount of natural resources for man—valuable metals
and other resources that could be developed and used by the human race as they
were exercising the dominion mandate to go out and to control this planet that
God put them in charge of. Gold also tells us that apparently there is a value to
gold that is implicit and recognized by man as being one of the most valuable
commodities we can have. Cf. Psalm 19, which tells us that God’s Word is to be
desired more than fine gold. So gold has an inherent value. God has created certain
metals and precious stones that are inherently valuable. Ultimately that will
form the basis for economics. Verse 12 is a passage which is difficult to
translate and understand because we don’t know exactly what bdellium was or
what the onyx stone was. The bdellium mentioned could either refer to the resin
from a tree or from a jewel. The jewel had an amber tone to it and so the resin
from certain trees picked up that name because it reminded them of the color of
the jewel. It most likely refers to some form of precious stone but we don’t know
exactly what it is. Nobody knows what the onyx stone is either. This is
reflecting an environment prior to the flood that is completely foreign to the
environment after the flood. The thrust of this is that God provides a beautiful
and attractive environment that is filled with a remarkable array of natural
resources that the man can develop under the guidance and authority of God as His
representative on the earth. The second river is the Gihon, and we have no idea
what river that is. It flows around the land of Cush. Cush is the name later on
used for Ethiopia, but that doesn’t mean that is what it referred to initially.
The name of the third river is the Tigris, and it flows east of Assyria, and
the fourth river is the Euphrates. Notice this is translated in the present
tense. It is not really in the present tense, it is added to make it look
readable in English. It is really talking about the way it was before the fall.
Verse 15, “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” God puts man there [it is the word for rest], indicating that man can relax and rest in the perfect environment that God provided for him, and he can relax and rest in carrying out God’s mandate. God’s mandate doesn’t mean that he is going to be a farmer. He is not there to cultivate the garden and farm the garden. There are other meanings to those words that indicate that this is a temple type of environment and they are carrying in a priestly function. These words are loaded with worship overtones and with the overtones of serving in a temple.