What Happened to the Creation of God?
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness…. 9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 And …. God saw that it was good…. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout [i]vegetation, [j]plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after [k]their kind [l]with seed in them”; and it was so…. ; and God saw that it was good…. 14 Then God said, “Let there be [r]lights in the [s]expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;…. and God saw that it was good….. 20 Then God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth [ac]across the face of the [ad]expanse of the heavens.”…. and God saw that it was good…. 24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after [ae]their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after [af]their kind”; and it was so…. and God saw that it was good…. 26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the [ai]sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 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 [aj]sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.” …. 31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.
Six times in the creation story God looks over what He has made and declares that it was good. The Hebrew word for “good” here is “to-wb.” And it means what we think it means. When you call something good, you mean that it is “good” in every way. It is good and pleasant to look at, it is good in that it works the way it is supposed to work, and that work is also good. It is good in that it is pure, unmixed with anything bad. Six times He says that about what He has made.
And when He has finished creation on the sixth day, His crowning creation is humankind with their classification as “the image of God,” their position as caretakers of the animals and the earth, and the basic relationship between man and woman being one of cooperation, oneness and love. And it is then that He looked at the whole diorama and called it “very good.” And it was.
But the title of my message today is “What Happened to the Creation of God?”
Because, if we look at the world today, there are many things that we would say, “that is not good.” We could look from the atmosphere to the oceans to the land to the work of mankind and find a lot that we believe is far less than perfect. Regarding the weather, we have droughts, extreme cold, and floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. The earth itself offers up volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Plants and crops are often difficult to grow, animals can be ferocious and instinctively attack kill and eat, not only other types of animals, but even their own. And to top it off, mankind seems to be far removed from reflecting the “image of God” for which he was created. They destroy, molest, pollute, and abuse creation. They take with no regard for the future. And their worst actions aren’t even in how they treat the rest of creation. Their worst actions are in how they treat each other. War, violence, murder, rape, slander, theft, beating, anger, verbal and physical abuse, and abandonment just begin the list of how people treat each other.
And that doesn’t even delve into what we find in the created relationship between a man and a woman. The very worst of heinous acts often happen behind the closed doors of the home.
So, “What Happened to the Creation of God?”
It once was “very good.” Now it is often “very bad.”
Well today we are going to begin answering that question from the Bible. And the short answer to the question “What Happened to the Creation of God?” involves five things that we’ll explore. 1. The Garden. 2. The Law. 3. The Serpent. 4. The Fall. 5. The Curse. Well, in order that you can fully understand all five of these things, we are going to unfold this story as it is told in Genesis chapter two.
Prayer
“What Happened to the Creation of God?” Before we go down the dark path that mankind went down, I want to remind you of what they left behind. We already summarized that all of God’s creation was “very good.” But God did more than simply create man and set him down on the wilderness of the earth. He placed man and woman in a garden.
I. The Garden.
Genesis 2: 8 And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9 And out of the ground Yahweh God caused to grow every tree that is desirable in appearance and good for food;
4 things about the garden.
A. God created a paradise within the paradise of His created world.
Wikipedia: “A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature.
Think about this; God had already made the entire earth into this pristine, beautiful array of nature and animals. The animals were plant-eaters. There was no fear between man and animal. The world was humankinds petting zoo. And the plant life, at that time, was unencumbered by disease, drought, and thorns. There were no extremes of temperature. The whole world was “very good.” But God wanted to give mankind more. He created a planned space for the provision of human needs, and for beauty. If Eve wanted some grapes, she wouldn’t have to search far and wide for them growing wild in the garden. There was a red, and green grape vine in the garden. If Adam wanted a handful of almonds to eat, or a tomato to put in a lentil soup, it was all there. And they could gather a bouquet of flowers of every variety, right there close at hand.
Water was readily available. Four rivers converged near the garden. And the beauty wasn’t confined to growing things. Gold and precious stones could be found in the nearby land of Havilah. It was all close at hand. And the beauty of the animals coexisting with Adam and Eve was there. That’s the first thing we learn about the Garden.
Now, God did make two special trees that He placed in the garden.
B. God created two special trees.
9 And out of the ground Yahweh God caused to grow every tree that is desirable in appearance and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now, what are these? The tree of life is only spoken of literally four more times in Scripture. The idea of a “tree of life” is used poetically in the book of Proverbs. But the literal tree is referred to two times in the early chapters of Genesis, and it reappears in the book of Revelation, in heaven. It is described as…
A tree whose fruit you could eat and live forever. In heaven it is said to yield twelve different kinds of fruit, and that its leaves were for healing. God planted that in the Garden. Man was allowed to take it. It was not forbidden.
God gave them a tree that would keep them healed, and so, as long as they had access to that tree, they could physically live forever in this perfect place. But, after Adam and Eve sin, God prevents access to it.
But there was a second tree that God placed in the middle of the garden. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What do we know about this tree?
1. They knew its name; “The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
2. God commanded them not to eat its fruit or they would die. That’s all that God says. We’ll get to that more in a minute.
3. The serpent told Eve that she wouldn’t die, but her eyes would be open, she would be like God, knowing good and evil. But remember, this is Satan talking, and he is a liar.
4. When they did eat the fruit, their eyes were open, they knew they were naked, they experienced shame for the first time.
What else does Scripture tell us about this tree? Nothing. The tree is never mentioned again in Scripture. So, we only know the name of the tree, we only know what God said, “You will die if you eat it.” Satan said, “No, you won’t. You’ll become wise.” And we know that their eyes were opened to their nakedness.
Which begs the question; “Why did God put that tree there in the first place?” “Why did God allow Satan into the Garden?” Well, that’s a deep question. But I think it goes back to our being created in God’s image. God has the freedom to choose. And He always chooses what is right. He created us in His image, so He created us with the freedom to choose.
There were two special trees in the garden, the tree of life, and really, the tree of death. If there were only one tree, there would be no freedom to choose. That’s how God has always operated. When God gave Israel His law, He said this through Moses.
Deuteronomy
30:15-19
"See, I have set before you today life and
good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways,
and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may
live and multiply; and the LORD your God will bless you in the land which you
go to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are
drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that
you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in
the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. I call heaven
and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that
both you and your descendants may live;
Doesn’t that sound familiar? I have set before you a choice; the tree of life and blessing, the tree of death and cursing. And as Joshua would later say to the nation of Israel, “choose you this day whom you will serve.” God put two trees in the Garden.
So, this is the place where God put mankind. In a beautiful garden, with the freedom to choose. But what else did God give Adam and Eve?
C. God gave humankind an occupation.
Not only did God give mankind dominion over the earth and the animals, he gave them a job.
15 Then Yahweh God took the man and [n]set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
You know, I am so glad about this. There is one thing that I learned during the whole Covid lockdown. I can’t just sit around day after day, week after week. I need something to do. Something purposeful to do. I think that is how we were created. We weren’t created to just wander around a garden eating, sleeping, and recreating at our leisure. God gave us a job to do.
Now, what kind of job was it? Well, the implication is that it wasn’t the soul-sucking, back-breaking labor that many have to do today. That was part of the curse, that our strenuous labor would bring a very small yield. Instead, their labor brought a great and rewarding yield. You might wonder what their labor would have looked like. Well, they were gardeners, and wildlife managers. They didn’t have thorns, and disease, and death to deal with as we do. But they worked in the garden as any of us would.
They had plants to keep cut back and pruned. They had soil to aerate. They fruits to harvest.
We really don’t know for sure how long they were actually in the garden before they were cast out, but if they had stayed, they could have been employed in planting, irrigation, fertilization, and even cross-pollicization, the domestication of animals, gathering eggs, milking cows, feeding animals.
But the point is that God gave them a job to do. What else did God give them? What else was a part of God’s provision in the Garden?
D. God gave man a companion and a future family, clan, tribe…
Chapter 2
18 Then Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper [o]suitable for him.”
21 So Yahweh 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.22 And Yahweh God [t]fashioned the rib, which He had taken from the man, into a woman, and He brought her to the man.23 Then the man said,
“This one
finally is bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; This one shall be
called [u]Woman,
Because this one was taken out of [v]Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Chapter one is a summary of God’s creation of man and woman, chapter two gives us greater detail about how it happened. But remember what God said to man and woman after He created them in chapter one.
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. Right after He makes them.
Some people tell the story of Adam and Eve as though they were not sexually intimate until after they sinned. This leaves you with the impression that the innocence of the Garden of Eden involved no intimacy between Adam and Eve. That idea misses the truth of Scripture. God commanded Adam and Eve, at their creation, to be “fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” That’s the same command that God gave the animals in Genesis one. Part of the perfection of the Garden was the intimate relationship between man and woman.
Why is this important? Because it tells us another blessing that God gave mankind in the Garden of Eden before sin entered the picture. He gave them a zoological garden, an occupation, companionship, intimacy, and the blessing of building a family, then a clan, then a tribe, eventually a nation, that could live in this state of bliss.
God was providing everything needed. Now, that is a summary of the garden. Let’s turn to the next part of the answer to our question; What happened to God’s creation?
II. The Law.
15 Then Yahweh God took the man and [n]set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
So, remember that God set two special trees in Eden; the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And He told Adam that he was not to eat of the tree of knowledge, or he would die.
Now, almost without exception, when this passage of Scripture is taught, the preacher or teacher will say, “God gave Adam and Eve only one rule, and they broke it.” I’ve said it before in teaching this passage. But I got to thinking about that this time as I studied these chapters again, and I realized that God gave more than one rule to Adam and Eve. He actually gave them six rules. We don’t think of five of them as rules, because they are positive, not negative. They are “Thou shalts,” not “Thou shalt nots.” What were those rules? Some we’ve already considered.
A. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”
I’m not going to belabor this point, but Adam and Eve were commanded to procreate. And within the confines of the perfect physical world of the Garden of Eden, with no curse of the pain of childbirth, and no limits on resources, this was not a negative command. There’s a second positive command.
B. “fill the earth and subdue it” “have dominion over the earth”
And with no fear or hostility between man and beast, with no human or animal eating the other, and with the earth yielding its abundance easily, this command was also a positive command to manage the abundance of God’s world.
C. 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given to you every plant yielding seed that is on the [ak]surface of all the earth, and every tree [al]which has the fruit of the tree yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
This is an interesting command. It’s another positive command. “Eat all these plants and fruits.” Notice a couple of things. First, He says that they can eat every plant and fruit. He didn’t have to point out the poisonous mushrooms, because there were no poisonous mushrooms, or anything else. Every plant was good. The animals are given the same food sources. Now also notice something else. I call this a command because it is implied that there are things that you are not to eat. But He phrases it as a positive. He doesn’t go around saying, “Don’t eat rocks. Don’t eat dirt. Don’t eat animals.” He simply says, “all the stuff that grows from the earth, you may eat.” And here Adam and Eve are like children. They didn’t even consider animals as food.
Do you remember when your children first realized that hamburger came from cows, bacon from pigs, and chicken from chicken? Before they knew that, even though they ate hamburger, bacon, and chicken, they didn’t see a cow, or a pig, and think, ummm, I bet you are tasty. They were innocent. Adam and Eve did not yet have that knowledge, so all God had to say was, “Here’s what you can eat.”
It’s only later, after sin enters the picture, that God began laying down rules about what to eat, or not eat, in the animal kingdom. What other law did God give?
D. Remember the seventh day.
2 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 And [a]on the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He rested from all His work which God had created [b]in making it.
He blessed and set apart the seventh day.
Now, notice something. There is no command here to Adam and Eve to observe a day of rest on the seventh day. There is simply a statement here that God set the seventh day apart as a day to remember that God finished His creation on that day. Now it is probable that Adam and Eve and their descendents did follow this seven-day week cycle with a day of memorial on the seventh day. This account of creation would have become an oral tradition passed on from Adam to his children, grandchildren, and on.
But, if you read the Scripture, from here in Genesis all the way to the story of Moses, we don’t find any of the patriarchs observing a day of Sabbath rest. There’s nowhere that Noah, or Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob are mentioned to have observed a Sabbath day on which they didn’t work.
When did the command come?
Now when you get to the nation of Israel, as slaves in Egypt, it’s possible that they were following a seven-day week when Moses returned to Egypt with his message that God would liberate them. It would seem that the seven-day week was already known when the Passover was instituted. Probably from their memorial of the creation week.
Exodus 12: 14 ‘Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to Yahweh; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as [a]a perpetual statute. 15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall [b]remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that [c]person shall be cut off from Israel. 16 Now on the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you; no work at all shall be done on them, except what must be eaten [d]by every person, that alone may be done by you.
At this time, God gives a further command that the Sabbath should also be a day with no work. Later, at Mount Sinai, Moses receives the law of God that specifies that Israel was not to work on the seventh day.
But again, I don’t believe that this would have been some sort of legalistic requirement for Adam and Eve, but rather a day to remember. There’s no indication in Scripture that it ever became a “law” until the time of Moses.
But there were three more things that were definitely commanded.
E. “cultivate and keep the garden”
15 Then Yahweh God took the man and [n]set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
We’ve already described what this meant. But suffice it to say that this too was a joyous employment for Adam and Eve. The next command
F. “leave father and mother and cleave to your wife.”
22 And Yahweh God [t]fashioned the rib, which He had taken from the man, into a woman, and He brought her to the man.23 Then the man said, “This one finally is bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called [u]Woman, Because this one was taken out of [v]Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
We’ve already talked about how God created the marital relationship between one man and one woman to be the basic and cornerstone unit of human relationships. The intent is that no other relationship, outside of the one with God, would take precedence over the marital relationship. Husbands, your loyalty and devotion is first to God, and then your wife. The same is true of wives.
Now, initially, of course, Adam didn’t have to worry about this command. He couldn’t cheat on his wife. He had no mother or father, sister, brother, cousin, friend, neighbor, or coworker that he could prioritize above his wife. Eve was all that there was. God had made it simple. And that really is a good picture of what was implied by this command.
We’ve covered the garden, and now this completes “the law.”
G. “you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
16 And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
So, here’s the sum of this commandment. There was a tree in the middle of the garden that God told Adam and Eve not to eat from. We are told nothing about the fruit of the tree. Traditionally some have said it was an apple tree. Some Jewish traditions said that it was a fig tree. That really is irrelevant. It was the fact of their disobedience that brought the later curse. But there is an important question that we need to consider. Here’s the question. What is the knowledge of good and evil? There have been all kinds of speculation about this. Some have stated that “the knowledge of good and evil” was just a way of saying, “the knowledge of everything.” I don’t subscribe to that notion, because whatever happened when they ate of the tree, was passed on to us. And, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think anyone has that level of knowledge.
Others have tried to relate the fruit of the tree to sexual knowledge. That before Adam and Eve ate the tree, they were sexually pure and innocent of even sexual desires. I have a problem with this interpretation, because Scripture doesn’t make that connection, and it doesn’t condemn all sexual desire, only that desire which is outside of God’s parameters. It also ignores the fact that God told Adam and Eve to be “fruitful and multiply” before they ate of the tree.
The best understanding that I can arrive at is summarized well by a certain Jewish tradition.
Wikipedia
In Jewish tradition, the Tree of Knowledge and the eating of its fruit represents the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before that time, the two were separate, and evil had only a nebulous existence in potential. While free choice did exist before eating the fruit, evil existed as an entity separate from the human psyche, and it was not in human nature to desire it. Eating and internalizing the forbidden fruit changed this, and thus was born the yetzer hara, the evil inclination.[11][12]
Now, let me bring all that together. What it means is that before Adam and Eve ate the tree, they didn’t have the knowledge of good and evil. They had no evil inclinations. We really don’t know what this looks like. Some people will say that we should look at babies. Babies and little toddlers are innocent. They don’t even know what evil is. Baloney. Think about the law of God. Thou shalt not steal. Would you say that a baby or toddler has no inclination to steal? They have no inclination to take what belongs to someone else? You say, “Well, they don’t know it belongs to someone else.” No, because they think that everything that they want, is theirs. And they will let you know it’s theirs. You have to teach them that everything isn’t theirs.
God’s commandment says, not to strike and hurt people. “Oh, babies and toddlers are so innocent. They wouldn’t hurt anybody.” Really. There’s a reason we put soft toys and plastic toys in a daycare. Because toddlers wail on each other. And the ones who don’t are the ones who have been taught.
We have no living examples of what this looked like. We can’t imagine any person we know or have known who had no inclination to do evil. But just imagine. Eve has made an avocado salad for herself. She goes to wash her hands in the stream before she eats it. Adam comes along. He sees Eve’s avocado salad. He’d like an avocado salad to eat. Does he go and eat her salad? No, because he has no evil inclination. He thinks, “That is obviously Eve’s salad.” He doesn’t even think of taking it, hiding, and eating it himself. If he were a baby or toddler, it would already be in his mouth.
They don’t an evil inclination. They don’t become loud, angry, and violent because they don’t even think of that as an option. They don’t have a mean bone in their bodies. They don’t look at each other with judgment, or at themselves with shame, because those thoughts are not even there to access.
That is what “the knowledge of good and evil” was. I would almost compare it to how animals act. They do what they do instinctively. Animals don’t sit around and discuss the morality of this or that action. They will do what they are “programmed” to do until they are trained otherwise. Now, I am comparing from lesser to greater. I am not trying to say that Adam and Eve were just mindless beasts. But before Adam and Eve had that knowledge of good and evil, they didn’t have a thought of good and evil, they only knew to do what came naturally. And what came naturally was good. They didn’t even know to call it good. It just was what was.
That was the state of Adam and Eve in the Garden, before eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Why is this important? Because today we have a sinful nature. And because sin separates us from God. The wages of sin is death. Spiritual and eternal separation from God in a place called Hell. Sin is the disease. But you can’t be cured of the disease until you know what the disease is. God offers the cure.
III. The Serpent.
IV. The Fall.
V. The Curse.