We'll turn now to Genesis chapter 1, which
we were considering in the last two studies.
We considered, towards the end of our last
study, how God made man in his own
image on the same day as the animals,
and it is only that fact that he
was made in God's image which separated him
from the animals.
And unless we keep that before us, it's
very easy to descend to the level of
the animals.
We considered that.
We saw that God blessed them, verse 28,
commanded them to be fruitful, multiply and fill
the earth and subdue it, rule over it
and over all the fish of the sea,
etc.
And we also saw that God gave man
only vegetables and food and fruit to eat,
verse 29 and 30.
For all human beings, for man and woman
and also for all animals, God had given
only the vegetables and fruit to eat.
And then it says God saw all that
he made and, behold, it was very good.
We saw that, that at the end of
every day, God inspected the work that he
did and examined it and saw it was
good.
And then at the end, when he has
created man and woman, he says it's very
good.
And just like we said in the beginning
of this chapter, in the beginning, God, that's
the way it should begin in our lives,
in every area, that in every aspect of
our life, in the first place, in the
beginning, should be God.
Likewise, there's something else we can learn from
this chapter, and that is to do what
God did at the end of every day.
What did God do at the end of
every day?
He examined all that he had done.
And that's a good example for us to
follow, to examine all that we have done
and said and thought, our attitude, our motives,
at the end of every day.
Every day, he examined one day at a
time.
It's a tremendous example for us.
That's written there, right at the beginning of
the Bible, so that we can see whether
it is good in God's sight, whether God
can look at what we have done during
the day and whether he can say, good,
very good.
We see that, we saw when we studied
the first three verses, there's a picture here
of, just like the earth gave unto judgment,
a picture of man's fall and how the
Holy Spirit and the word of God moved
upon that judged earth and remade it beautiful.
And we saw that this is a picture
of our sanctification, too, how God wants to
remake us from our fallen condition.
And there we have also something we learned
from chapter one of Genesis, that God didn't
do it all in one day.
He could have remade it in a moment.
That would have been no problem for God
at all.
But he did it stage by stage, little
by little by little by little by little,
till the work was complete, teaching us that
is how he works in us also in
our sanctification.
We read the path of the righteous, Proverbs
4.18, is like the shining light that
shines more and more until the perfect day.
That is when God completes his work.
Or as it says in the New Testament
in 2 Corinthians 3.18, that the Holy
Spirit transforms us from one degree of glory
to another.
That is like saying, one day, second day,
third day, fourth day.
We can say just like in that first
week, God had a particular plan to be
accomplished each day.
And for example, the making of light, that
wasn't planned for the second or third day,
that was planned for the first day.
And the making of the fish, the bird,
that was planned for the fifth day.
We can say from that too that God
has a plan for our lives too.
Jesus said, sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof, Matthew 6.34. And God intends
in all the evil that comes to us
in one day, that we overcome it through
the power of his Spirit, so that a
certain transformation can take place in our lives,
on that particular day.
That's what he's planned for that day, just
like he planned different things for the six
days.
In our case, it's thousands of days, because
we've lived for many years.
But God plans something for each of those
days.
That's why Jesus said if anyone wants to
come after him, he must take up the
cross every day.
It's a daily matter.
There cannot be a single day that I
can miss out on taking up the cross.
Just think if God had left out one
day and done nothing in one day.
There'd have been a big gap there in
creation.
Maybe the fish and the birds wouldn't have
been on the earth.
Every day something has to be done.
And so it is in our sanctification too.
That's why we need to value every day
and every trial that comes to us every
day.
We need to see all the people and
circumstances that come across us every day as
something that God wants to do.
And this is why we say that for
us in the Church, the meeting is not
the important thing.
It's the days between the meetings.
And why do we place so much emphasis
on our life at home?
Because every day we are at home.
We're not even in our office every day.
For some people, two days in a week,
they're not in the office.
But every day we are at home.
And there is where God allows circumstances, people
living in the home, and situations and circumstances.
There we need to keep Genesis chapter one
in mind and see that God is seeking
to do something in me today, so that
when it is written at the end of
the day, the evening and the morning or
the first day, that something has been accomplished
in that twenty-four hour period, that God
wanted to accomplish, that I haven't wasted that
time by yielding to temptation, by not cleansing
myself from filthiness of the flesh and spirit.
If we can be gripped by this, we
can come to that end, finally, that God
desires, the completion of the work that He
wants to accomplish in us.
We read here in chapter two, verse one,
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished,
and all their host.
Think if that can be said about us
at the end of our life.
Like Paul said, I have finished my course.
Jesus said, Father, I have finished the work
that You gave me to do.
When He died on the cross, He said,
it is finished.
God always does a finished work.
We see that right in the beginning.
He didn't do a work half and then
forget about it.
That's man's way.
And you see how unlike God, men are.
You see that with children.
You give them a task to do, even
if it's to do their beds or tidy
up a room, they'll do it half and
go off.
That's man's way.
And this irresponsible, unfaithful attitude to ordinary earthly
tasks is typical of the fallen race of
Adam.
God, it is not like that with God.
And we are not considering in Genesis chapter
one some highly spiritual things God was doing.
God was doing very down-to-earth earthly
things, we can say.
He was making something on this earth, earthly
things He made in six days, teaching us
the sanctity of earthly work and the importance
of a finished work in whatever we take
up to do.
Jesus said, He who is faithful in little
things is faithful also in much.
And it is in the little things that
we are tested to see whether we will
complete a task entrusted to us.
If something is entrusted to you in the
church, you have to take it and complete
it.
That's the spirit of God.
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed
and finished.
And we know, as we considered, that Jesus
and Paul also could say that at the
end of their life.
And by 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.
It's not because God was tired when it
speaks about entering God's rest.
In Hebrews chapter four, this verse is quoted,
if you turn to Hebrews four, in the
New Testament, verse four, for He has thus
said somewhere concerning the seventh day, and God
rested on the seventh day from all His
works.
And verse nine, there remains therefore a Sabbath
rest, a seventh-day rest for the people
of God.
What is that?
The one, verse 10, who has entered His
rest has himself also rested from his own
work as God did from His.
Let us therefore be diligent to enter that
rest, lest anyone fall through following the same
example of disobedience.
It's obvious that all believers don't enter into
that rest, because he's writing to believers.
He's writing to believers and saying, Dear brothers,
let us enter into that rest.
In other words, you haven't entered into that
rest just because you are born again.
There is a rest for the people of
God.
Jesus said, Come to Me and I will
give you rest.
It's all coming back to this seventh-day
rest.
And it says here that, verse three, Genesis
2, 3, Then God blessed the seventh day
and sanctified it, it says here.
Because in it He rested from all His
work which God had created and made.
Two things.
He created something and He made something.
And He rested.
And notice the word here, sanctification.
Sanctification and rest go together.
You see that right in the beginning of
the Bible.
God set apart that day, and He rested.
And in our life, too, sanctification and rest
always go together.
That's why it says in Colossians 3, 15,
Let the peace of Christ be the referee
in your heart.
In other words, when there is some unrest
in the heart, there is some area in
which you are not sanctified.
Because sanctification and rest always go hand in
hand right from Genesis 2, 3.
He sanctified it and He rested.
Where there is sanctification, there is rest.
Remember this.
Always, when there is unrest, irritation, whatever may
be the crime that other people outside of
us have committed, it still proves that we
need sanctification.
If only I can take this as a
simple thermometer.
Whenever the thermometer, the mercury in the thermometer
goes above that minimum, that normal temperature, there's
fever.
Sometimes little, sometimes much.
In the same way, whenever there is unrest
in the heart concerning anything, concerning anyone, it
indicates there is a lack of sanctification in
our life.
Maybe your husband does something wrong or your
wife does something wrong.
That may be.
Maybe they are criminals.
Maybe they are very evil.
But when it produces unrest in your heart,
it's best you forget about your partner and
work out your own salvation at such a
time.
Because you need sanctification.
They may need more sanctification than you.
That's besides the point.
The point is you need sanctification also because
you are so troubled.
You are so much at unrest.
We can do good things and be at
unrest.
For example, Martha, when Jesus came to her
house, was working and working and working in
the kitchen.
But she was at unrest.
She was at unrest concerning her sister.
Why is my sister like this?
You can be at unrest concerning another sister.
Why another sister does like that and doesn't
do like that?
Or why God has dealt with another brother
or another sister like that?
And that unrest proves that you need sanctification.
So sanctification and rest go together.
So we need to enter into that rest.
We need to enter into that rest, as
we read in Hebrews 4, meaning that, it
says in Hebrews 4, let us strive diligently
to enter into that rest.
Hebrews 4, let us fear and let us
strive diligently, which means that it's not something
we can enter into easily.
We have to fight a battle to enter
into this rest.
To enter into that rest means that I
come to the place where another person's actions
and words do not cause unrest in me,
do not cause me to be all worked
up and irritated.
Then I have entered into God's rest.
Until then, I have not entered into God's
rest.
I have to fight to enter into that
rest.
And if each time I get into unrest,
if I can fight that battle, I can
enter into that rest one day.
Let us, brethren, fear, lest we waste our
earthly life only confessing our hope.
And at the end of 20 years God
gave us, we're still confessing our hope, not
entered into rest.
Brothers and sisters, we need to be wholehearted.
In Hebrews 4, where it speaks about the
seventh day, we know that it also speaks
about entering into Canaan.
And we know that God wanted the children
of Israel to enter into Canaan two years
after they left Egypt.
Two years, that's the time God gives.
Two years.
Have you heard the truth for two years?
You should have come into rest by now,
otherwise you're not wholehearted.
You're not wholehearted.
If it's taken 10 years, you're 20 percent
hearted.
And if it's taken 15 years, even less.
Two years, you should enter into rest.
We must apply that rule to ourselves.
Be wholehearted and radical so that I finish
with confessing my hope and say, Lord, by
your grace I've entered in.
I will not allow any of these things
to disturb me.
Why could God enter into rest?
Because He could look at everything that He
had made.
He had made it.
He had made that on the first day.
He had made that on the second day.
He had made that on the third, fourth,
fifth, sixth day.
And it was all very good.
And when we can also look at it
in the same way, that all these things
around me, God has made it to work
for my very best.
And this God has made, and that God
has made, and that God has made, and
that person, and that circumstance, and that thing,
exactly like God made in those six days,
God has made all these things around me,
and I can say, like God, it's very
good.
Then I come into rest.
I cannot come into rest until I can
say, like God, it is very good.
That's the meaning of Romans 8, 28.
All these things.
It's not Judas Iscariot who made it, and
that fellow who's causing me some trouble, and
that troublemaker there, and that difficult person, and
that awkward circumstance, and that person who made
a mistake.
Those are all unbelieving believers.
And my brothers and sisters, the sad thing
is, I've come to see that even in
our midst, after ten years of listening to
the word of the cross, there are believers
who are still so far away from that
rest.
So far away.
We've spoken umpteen times on Romans 8, 28,
and they haven't come to believe that every
single thing you can say, it is very
good.
That is for me.
Very good.
Very good, very good, very good, very good.
Everything we can inspect of all the things
that are happening around us, all the people
who come our way, all the circumstances in
our home and say, very good, very good,
very good, very good, there will be rest.
Sure.
It's when I cannot say very good, I
think God didn't have a hand there.
That was that person, that person, this troublesome
child of mine, that difficult neighbor of mine,
that difficult partner of mine.
My brothers and sisters, if you are like
that, I say there's very little hope.
Very little hope, unless we are radical and
get rid of this wretched disease that we've
inherited from Adam, and see that everything is
very good, then we enter into rest.
There's something else also we see here.
It's a picture of grace.
That God made man towards the end of
the sixth day.
And though it was God's seventh day, it
was man's first day.
Because he had just been created a few
hours before that first day began for him.
So we can say that for Adam, his
Sabbath was on the first day.
He didn't have a seventh-day Sabbath.
He had a first-day Sabbath.
The very first day of his life was
a Sabbath.
We can say he entered into the benefits
of God working for him for six days.
And he entered and enjoyed the light, and
the earth, and the trees, and the fruit,
and the vegetables, and the animals, and the
sun, and the moon, and the stars, and
the fish, and the birds.
Who did all that?
God did it all, and man just entered
into that and enjoyed it.
And that's the picture of grace.
And we need to see the difference here
between grace and law.
Because the law says, if you turn to
Exodus chapter 20, Exodus 20, and verses
8, 9, and 10, remember the Sabbath day
to keep it holy.
Six days you must work, and the seventh
day you shall not work.
It's the Sabbath of the Lord.
Because, verse 11, in six days the Lord
made, not created, but remade, the heavens and
the earth, and rested on the seventh day.
Notice what the law says.
Work for six days, and then you'll get
one day holiday.
Grace says, you take your holiday first, and
then come and work.
Let's have, in other words, God says, it's
very important to see this distinction.
If only we can be gripped by it,
I believe it will deliver us from the
spirit of the law under which the vast
majority of believers labor, and struggle, and get
condemned.
What is it?
The law says, God wants you to work.
What work are you doing for him?
What are you doing for God?
Have you given up your job?
Have you given up your money?
Have you gone off to some difficult place?
God wants you to work for him.
Six days you must work, and then we'll
think of some rest for you.
But grace says, what God did for Adam,
first of all, I want to have fellowship
with you.
Adam, I don't want your work first.
I want your fellowship.
Let's have a day of fellowship first, and
from that fellowship, you can go out and
work in the garden for the remaining days
of the week.
But it must begin with fellowship.
That's what we read in Genesis 2.
Adam's first day was a day of fellowship
with God, and fellowship with his wife.
Fellowship with God and fellowship with his wife,
not work, but fellowship with God and fellowship
with his wife.
Think of that.
Think of what God planned for man, so
different from our human ideas of religion.
Most of so-called Christian religion is law,
law, law, because man thinks he's a servant.
Under the law, man was a servant.
But the Lord says, I don't call you
servants anymore.
In fact, He calls us sons.
And the father wants fellowship with his son,
not work, first of all.
A son will work for his father, but
fellowship first.
It's fellowship that a husband and wife need,
more than the wife working for the husband.
That's the difference between grace and law.
And we see that right at the beginning
of the Bible.
When man fell, then God had to keep
him under law for a period and finally
teach him about grace.
But grace was intended to bring man back
to the beginning.
Back to the beginning means back to realizing
that fellowship is more important than work.
What you do for God is not as
important as your fellowship with God.
If you don't fellowship with Him, all your
work for Him is useless.
Your fellowship with Him is primary, and that's
what we learn in the story of Mary
and Martha.
What was Mary having?
Fellowship.
What was Martha doing?
Working for the Lord.
And the Lord rebuked Martha and said, You
are doing such a lot of work for
me, but that's not what I'm interested in.
Mary has chosen the good part.
That's the one thing needful.
That's grace.
And we need to see that.
It's very important to see it because that's
got something to do with sanctification.
Sanctification doesn't come out of working.
It says, what did we read in Hebrews
4?
We have to seize from our works like
God did from His.
We got to seize thinking that work is
what God wants from me first.
Fellowship.
God does the work.
I enter into it.
Then I can work for Him.
That's how it is in Calvary.
Jesus did that work and said it is
finished.
I enter into that and I'm justified without
doing a single work.
I'm justified.
My sins are forgiven.
I have become a child of God.
Then I can go out and serve the
Lord after I come into fellowship with Him.
But in the law, it was not like
that.
The law said, you keep the commandments, then
you can have fellowship with God.
Quite the other way around in grace.
If we can see that difference, it'll deliver
us from a lot of bondage.
And it's all there hidden in the first
two chapters of God's word.
Verse four.
This is the account of the heavens and
the earth when they were created.
That is Genesis 1 verse 1.
In the day that the Lord God made.
That is verses 2 to 31 of Genesis.
Earth and heaven.
Notice the difference there again between created and
made.
Now, I just want to say one thing
before we go on to the rest of
chapter.
The six days of work are also a
picture of the 6,000 years of man's
history from the time that Adam was created.
Now we are running to the end of
the 6,000 period of man's history.
One day is with the Lord.
It's a thousand years, it says in 2
Peter 3.
So we can say that in God's six
days are now running out.
And the seventh day is coming.
The seventh day will be the 1,000
year reign of Jesus Christ on earth when
there will be perfect rest and peace.
No war, no poisonous snakes, no wild animals.
That will be the seventh day.
It's all pictured there.
The whole history of man, as it were,
is pictured there in Genesis chapters 1 and
2.
Now we can go on in verse 5.
Now no shrub of the field was yet
in the earth, and no plant of the
field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God
had not sent rain upon the earth.
Now here it is describing in detail what
God did on the sixth day.
He first gives you a outline of what
God did in seven days, and then the
writer gives a greater detail of how, what
happened on the sixth day when man was
created.
He says there was no man to cultivate
the ground.
This was by the end of the evening
of the sixth day, and the morning had
not yet come.
The second part of the sixth day had
not come.
No man had been created yet.
Everything else was finished.
And there was no rain, but it says
a mist used to rise from the earth
and water the whole surface of the ground.
Maybe something like dew would fall upon the
ground and water it.
And it's possible, though we can't be certain
about it, that there was no rain on
the earth perhaps until the time of Noah.
Because that's the first time we read that
rain came upon the earth, and this is
probably another reason why when Noah said that
it's going to rain, nobody believed him, because
they said, rain?
Are you crazy?
Man's been living for 2,000 years nearly,
and there's been no rain?
You're talking about rain.
That's what they told Noah.
Rain.
2,000 years we've been going, now you're
talking about rain.
That's exactly what people say today.
2,000 years the church's been talking about
the coming of Christ, nothing's happened, and one
day suddenly the rain came.
And one day suddenly God's judgment will also
come.
But it says here, the Lord God had
not sent rain upon the earth, verse 5,
but a mist used to rise from the
earth and water the ground.
Then the Lord God formed man of dust
from the ground.
And he didn't pick up gold.
He picked up ordinary dust.
And it's just something interesting which I want
to point out to you, that the Hebrew
word which is translated here as dust is
also translated in Nehemiah chapter 4 and verse
2 as dusty rubble or rubbish.
And again in Nehemiah 4 verse 10 as
rubbish.
When they were building the wall, the people
in Judah said, there is much rubbish here.
And it's exactly the same word which is
used in the Hebrew.
It says there in the margin of Nehemiah
4, 10, or dust.
We can say that God made man out
of rubbish, so that we have a proper
evaluation of all of this body of ours.
And then you see the folly of man
putting a garland of gold around this garbage
bin.
Have you seen people putting gold around the
garbage bin, decorating the garbage bin in their
house with gold and lipsticks and painting all
the edges?
No, we were not created for things like
this.
The reason why God made man out of
dust, out of that which is the most
worthless thing on earth, dust.
Who will pay money for dust?
It's so that we realize that we are
earthen vessels.
But it is the one living inside.
It is the transformation of the person inside
which God is after.
Otherwise our body is made of the same
dust as the animals.
You ask the doctors, they'll tell you that.
The functioning of the human body is exactly
the same as functioning of all the animals'
bodies.
Same thing, the same dust.
God made man out of dust.
And we read here, breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life.
That is what made man different from the
animals.
He made animals from the dust.
But here God formed the man.
He took a personal interest, which means he
was interested in this body of man.
It's not that this body is unimportant.
What I'm saying is, we must remember that
this body is made out of worthless dust,
but God formed it.
Jesus said in Hebrews chapter 10, A body
hast thou prepared for me.
Lo, I come to do thy will, O
God, in this body.
That's why God formed a body for Adam.
And we can say God has formed a
body for you and me.
The question is, what do you have done
with that body in all the years that
we've lived?
He breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, and man became a living soul.
We can say that God breathed into him
a spirit.
And what do we have there in verse
7 then?
A body.
God breathed a spirit into him, and man
became a living soul.
And so we see there, man is a
trinity.
Body, soul, and spirit.
That's why God said, Let us make man
in our image.
The angels are not trinities.
The angels are only spirits.
But man was made in God's image.
Man is a trinity.
Body, soul, and spirit.
And we see that in verse 7.
And what God breathed was a spirit.
And it is in that spirit that we
now have a conscience that tells us about
God.
And even unconverted people have that conscience that
tells them about God.
That's why even in the remotest jungles among
barbarians, you'll find them, these people who have
gone out and discovered these lost tribes and
peoples, they've discovered they're religious.
They worship a stone or the sun or
some tree or something.
They're religious.
But nobody's ever found a religious monkey or
a dog so far, anywhere in the world,
because this spirit is not there.
It's a spirit that makes man aware that
there is a God.
And God breathed into him.
We are reminded of how, you see, there's
a lot of similarity between this old creation
and the new creation.
Just like the old creation was completed, God
breathed into Adam in the beginning of the
new creation.
We read on the first day of the
week, Jesus came into the midst of his
disciples, and he breathed on them and said,
receive the Holy Spirit, John 20, verse 22.
Way back there, God gave Adam a human
spirit.
That was the old creation.
Now in the new creation, Jesus came and
gave his disciples the Holy Spirit.
And, verse 8, the Lord God planted a
garden toward the east in Eden, and there
he placed the man whom he had formed.
It's God who made a home for man.
It's very encouraging for us to remember that.
Man didn't go to God and say, Lord,
I need a place to live in.
God was concerned.
Man needs a place to live in.
And he gave him a home.
And that home was not a palace.
It was a garden.
Some people think only a palace would be
the best place to live in.
God gave Adam something far better than a
palace.
He gave him a garden.
He planted a garden.
He made that home and gave it to
Adam.
Do you believe that God loves you as
much as he loved Adam?
Is he interested in providing a home for
us?
According to your faith, be it unto you.
God saw the need of a home for
Adam, a place to live.
Great encouragement for us.
We can go to God in faith and
say, Lord, you're the one who saw Adam's
need for a place to live in.
Do you see my need, too?
He certainly does.
If you have faith, God's never disappointed a
man who has had faith in him.
The reason many people do not receive is
because they do not believe.
They insult God by thinking that God's not
bothered about their accommodation problem, God's not bothered
about any of their difficulties.
Therefore, they live and die like miserable animals
when they could have lived as glorious sons
and daughters of God if they only had
faith.
God, who saw Adam's need, sees my need.
Secondly, we read here in verse 9, out
of the ground the Lord God caused to
grow every tree that is pleasing to the
sight and good for food.
I want to tell you that there is
an attractiveness that God has placed in creation
and a sense of beauty that God has
placed in us because that's part of his
image.
Don't think that beauty and attractiveness is evil.
God didn't make all of this earth in
black and white, white sky and black grass
and black trees.
He could have made it all like a
black and white picture.
He didn't do it.
You look at the colors in the sunset
or the colors in a flower garden and
you can't imitate it.
Look at the beauty there is in creation
and that is in a fallen world.
Think how it must have been before man
fell.
I just mention this because I see some
believers who think that spirituality is to be
sloppy.
To be badly dressed is spirituality.
That's not true.
You're not divine when you're like that.
No, there's a beauty in creation and God
expects his children to be neat and tidy,
I'll tell you that.
There's neatness and tidiness which is part of
God's nature and that's something we've got to
really acquire more and more.
Pleasant to the sight.
God knew that black and white won't be
pleasant to the sight so he made so
many colors so that it'd be beautiful for
man to look at.
For whom was it?
Who was the one whose sight God was
interested in?
He wasn't bothered about the lions and the
dogs looking at all these colors.
I don't think they're bothered about the colors.
He wasn't worried about the angels.
They don't have eyes.
They're only spirits.
He wasn't thinking about himself.
He was thinking of man.
When he put that sunset there, he thought
of Adam and said, Adam will love to
see that.
When he put all these colors in the
flowers, he said, Adam will love to see
that.
He thought of Adam.
He thought of Adam just like a father
planning for his son.
Think of that.
And remember the word of God is true
in Zephaniah 3.17. He's silently planning for
you in love.
He is.
He silently planned for Adam in love, a
home, beauty in creation, and good for food.
That's another thing.
You know these taste buds that we have?
God made them.
The devil didn't make them.
And there's nothing sinful about enjoying a good
meal.
There's nothing sinful about enjoying tasty food.
God made those taste buds, provided I'm not
a slave to them.
There's nothing sinful about enjoying it.
He made things that are pleasant to the
sight and good for food.
The only thing is man's abused all this.
That's another thing.
But it is God who made all these
things pleasing to the sight and good for
food.
There's an attractiveness in creation.
And the tree of life also good for
food.
I just want to mention something else here.
God who provided a place for Adam to
dwell in also provided him food to eat.
God knew that man needs food to eat.
He's interested in that also.
So we see a second thing that God
provided for Adam.
He provided him a place to live in,
a dwelling place.
And secondly, he provided him food.
And good food.
And food that was attractive.
See that?
See the goodness of God there?
That God's interested in our food.
Give us this day our daily bread.
That's what Jesus taught us to pray.
God's interested in it.
And the tree of life also in the
midst of the garden.
And the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil.
And a river flowed out of Eden to
water the garden.
And there it divided and became four rivers.
And that was water for man to drink
and to water the garden.
The name of the first is Thyson.
It flows around the whole land of Havaila
where there is gold.
And the gold of that land is good.
And I thought of that verse.
And I thought, gold's good in heaven.
But here on earth, it's a snare.
When we get up to Eden, we can
say that again.
The gold of that land is good.
Now on earth, people fight for it and
it's evil.
The Delium and the Onyx stone are there.
Precious stones.
God made them all.
And the name of the second river is
Gihon.
It flows around the whole land of Cush.
The name of the third river is Tigris.
It flows east of Assyria.
The fourth river is the Euphrates.
Which perhaps gives us an impression, an indication
rather, that the garden of Eden must have
been somewhere in that region which is now
known as Iraq.
Somewhere there.
It was on this earth.
And the location is identified by these rivers
and that place.
That's the place out of which later on
where Babylon was built.
The Tower of Babel was built there.
Ur of the Chaldees is in that area
from which Abraham came out.
And then we see something more.
And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
Verse 15.
Then the Lord God took the man and
put him into the garden of Eden to
cultivate it and to keep it.
Here's the third thing that God gave man.
What have we seen so far?
God gave him a home, a house, the
place to live in, I mean.
God gave him food.
And God gave him a job.
It's God who gives people jobs.
See, these are the things people are occupied
with on the earth.
And all these things are here.
God providing them all for Adam.
A place to live in, food to eat,
and a work to do.
And it wasn't to sit and read the
Bible.
It was a very ordinary, down-to-earth
work called gardening.
Before sin came into the world, God was
trying to teach man the sacredness of earthly
work.
Don't think that's something, oh, that's earthly work.
I must sit and read the Bible and
pray.
Yeah, there's time for that.
But God gave Adam a work to do.
Even before sin came into the world.
Never forget that.
The only thing that happened after sin came
was that God told Adam, now you're going
to perspire like anything when you do this
work.
Before that, he didn't perspire.
Now he perspires when he works.
But he still had work to do.
Even before, God gave him a job, a
specific job.
And said, your job is the gardener of
Eden.
And you must cultivate it.
You can't just lie down lazily there and
say, this is paradise, everything will grow by
itself.
No.
He was given a job to cultivate it.
And it says here, a second thing, to
keep it.
And the word there in the Hebrew is
to guard it.
To keep it means to protect it.
And in that word, you get the impression
that there is an enemy here, who wants
to spoil this garden.
Otherwise, why should you use the word guard
it?
You don't guard something unless there are enemies
or decoys around.
And that word keep means to guard.
He gave Adam a twofold job, cultivate it
and guard it.
That's your job.
You're the gardener and you're the watchman.
So we can say that God gave a
twofold job to Adam, to be a gardener
and a watchman.
You don't think of those jobs as very
big jobs these days.
Think of the type of job God chooses
for his children.
Gardeners and watchmen.
Simple, ordinary jobs.
And that's what we see there in verse
15.
And then verse 16 and 17.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,
from any tree of the garden you may
eat freely, but not from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil.
You shall not eat, for in the day
you eat from it, you shall surely die.
Here's something else that God gave man.
What's that?
A commandment.
It's another thing God gives man.
He gave man a place to live in.
He gave man food.
He gave him work to do.
And then he gave him a commandment.
He gave him a law.
And that's what we need too.
God gives that also to us.
The same God of love who gives us
food and home and job.
And these things, of course, people fast and
pray for.
But when it comes to this fourth one,
we don't find many people fasting and praying
for Lord commandments.
Any more commandments, Lord?
Any more commandments?
Like people pray better house, Lord, better job,
more food, more money, more commandments.
See how blind man is that he doesn't
put commandments also in the same category as
home, job, food, commandments.
That's also the gift of a loving father.
We need to see it in its proper
perspective.
God was not making an animal.
He was making one in his own image.
And if this one thing was left out,
if he only gave him a home and
a job and food, man would have been
an animal.
It's this commandment that lifted him up above
the level of the animal.
God could have given a place to live
in for the animals, food to the animals,
work for the animals, but couldn't give a
commandment to the animals.
And there we see God telling him not
to eat of this tree of knowledge of
good and evil.
We can think about that later on a
little more, but basically what it means is
that God did want man to have the
knowledge of good and evil resident within him.
He wanted man to get that knowledge of
good and evil from God.
What I mean is, supposing you want to
know what is good and what's evil, Adam
would have to go to God each time,
Lord, can I do this?
And God would say, yes, you can do
that.
And another time, maybe a few minutes later,
you've got to go back to God and
say, God, can I do that?
God would say, no, you can't do that.
But what the devil was trying to get
Adam into, we'll see that later, was to
get him out of this perpetually having to
go to God all the time.
No, no, no, no, no need of all
that.
You just eat this and you'll have all
the knowledge of good and evil inside you.
You don't have to go to God, you
don't have to consult Him about anything.
You know everything yourself.
You know what's good, you know what's evil.
You make your own decision.
And there we see how man has been
living all these 6,000 years, making his
own decision.
He doesn't have to consult God about anything.
That is the essential difference between the tree
of life and the tree of knowledge of
good and evil.
The tree of life is God Himself, that
I have to live in perpetual dependence on
God.
In other words, live by faith.
The tree of God, I've got all the
knowledge stacked up in my head, and I
can live by that.
There's a danger even of Bible knowledge becoming
like a tree of knowledge of good and
evil for us.
This is good, that's evil, I've gone to
enough meetings, I've stacked all the knowledge in
my head, now I don't need God, I
don't need the Holy Spirit.
It's very dangerous.
God doesn't want us to live like that.
He wants us to live in perpetual dependence
on Him.
That's the meaning of faith.
Anyway, that's just the reason why God said,
you shall not eat from the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, because in the
day you eat thereof, you shall die, meaning,
when you stop living by dependence upon Me,
you shall die.
But if you want to live, you must
live by faith.
The righteous will live by faith.
And then, the Lord God said, it's not
good for the man to be alone, I'll
make him a helper suitable for him.
Here's another thing God made for man.
A woman, a marriage partner.
Now, let's list all the things God's made
in this chapter.
Home, food, job, law or commandment, and a
partner.
Think that God is interested in all these
things for us.
It was God who saw Adam's need for
a home and gave him a garden.
It was God who saw Adam's need for
food and created all the trees for food
before He made Adam.
It was God who saw Adam's need to
do work and made a job for him.
It was God who saw Adam's need for
commandments, if he's to be a son, and
made commandments for him.
And it was God who saw Adam's need
for a partner in life and gave him
a partner.
If only we can have faith instead of
being so unbelieving in all these areas.
And when you come to Genesis chapter three,
towards the end of Genesis chapter three, you
see one more thing that God made, which
is not necessary in Genesis chapter two, and
that was clothing.
In Genesis chapter two, they didn't need it.
Perhaps there was some glory of God that
was over their bodies, which is like their
clothing, but they lost it the moment they
sinned.
And then they needed clothing.
Fallen man needed clothing.
And we read in Genesis three that God
gave them clothing also.
So what are the things God gives man?
Food, clothing, shelter, job, marriage partner.
And the whole world is interested in these
five.
There's one more thing, commandments.
And we can never be sons and daughters
of God unless we value those commandments as
much as we value the other five.
And until we learn to seek God as
much for his commandments as we seek God
for the other five.
But let's remember this, that one who is
a son of God has a right to
expect God to provide all these for him,
like he provided them for Adam.
Very blessed to see it.
And out of the ground, verse 19, the
Lord God formed every beast of the field
and every bird of the sky and brought
them to the man to see what he
would call them.
You see, the beast and the bird were
also made from the same dust that Adam
was made.
And whatever the man called a living creature,
that was its name.
Verse 20, And the man gave names to
all the cattle and to the bird of
the sky.
Have you studied a little bit of biology
or zoology in your school days?
I never did.
But I see some of the books, some
of our children study now.
Think of even remembering the names of a
few birds and animals.
And here was Adam giving those names.
This one's going to be called a lion.
This one's an elephant.
This one's a tiger.
And he didn't mix them up.
He didn't forget.
Oh, did I give that name before already
too?
No.
I just mentioned that to show you what
fantastic mental powers Adam had.
Tremendous mental powers to be able to give
a name to every bird and every animal.
And he never got two of them confused.
That's just to teach us the tremendous power
of this brain that God gave Adam.
And just like when Satan fell, God didn't
take away his powers, when Adam fell, God
did not take away those tremendous mental powers
that man has.
Of course, it's degenerated in 6,000 years
quite a lot because of sin and many
other reasons.
But still, man's mental powers are so great.
In fact, this whole world of hypnotism, magicians,
is a mixture of this human soul power
in the mind plus demonic power.
The devil encourages man to develop his mental
powers.
A lot of heathen people in yoga, they
seek to develop these mental powers so that
they can do things which appear absolutely supernatural
to other people.
It is the development of these powers, it's
the development of the soul, killing the spirit,
crushing the spirit, like a cancer.
You know what a cancer is?
A cancer is a good cell in the
body that suddenly becomes sick.
And one mark of a sickness is it
becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger
and bigger and crushes out the life out
of all the other cells.
When a man becomes like that in the
body of Christ, he's a cancer.
We got to operate on him and remove
him.
And the same way, when the soul can
become like a cancer, develop the mental powers
so much, so much, so much, so much,
so much, even in a religious way, then
finally there's no place for the spirit, there's
no place for God.
It's a human religion and it's one of
the best counterfeits to the devil.
Bible schools develop it in Christianity and yoga
develops it in Hinduism.
The development of the mind and the spirit,
the heart, that's ignored.
There's just something that gives us an idea
of the tremendous powers that Adam's mind had.
And the fall did not take away those
powers.
It's diminished a little, but we got to
be careful about this intellect, this fantastic intellect
that we have inherited from Adam.
Beware of it.
And it says here that man looked at
all these animals.
It's very interesting that it says here at
the end of it, but for Adam there
was not found a helper suitable for him.
I don't know whether he was looking, which
one shall I marry?
And all these ones are going by.
He says, not one of them is suitable
for me.
And we know from the New Testament, that's
the picture of Christ in the church, that
Jesus looks at all these human beings who
call themselves Christians, going past him like the
animals went past Adam.
And he sees these Christians so earthly-minded,
just like the animals, occupied with the things
of earth, just like animals, all fighting for
a bone, fighting for this, fighting for that,
running after earthly things.
And like Adam says, next, next, next one,
next one.
Jesus says, next one, next one, next one.
And they all pass by.
But finally, it says, God gave Adam someone
who had the same nature as him.
And that is what God is going to
give Jesus Christ, a bride who will not
be earthly-minded like the animals, but who
will have the same nature as him, who
will not weep when earthly things are lost
or broken, who will not rejoice when they
get some earthly things.
That is the mark of earthly-mindedness, to
weep when earthly things are lost or broken,
to be happy when we get earthly things.
That's the mark of earthly-mindedness.
No, God says, next, next, next, next, next.
And then he picks out one out of
a million who is heavenly-minded, lives on
earth, but is heavenly-minded.
His interests are on things above.
Think of that.
The Lord caused the deep sleep to fall
upon Adam.
And that's the picture of the deep sleep
that Jesus was put to on Calvary's cross,
where he died.
And out of his side, he took one
of his ribs.
The side of Jesus was pierced with a
spear, and the blood flowed out and closed
up the flesh of that place.
And from that rib, from that broken heart
of Jesus, came the bride.
From that rib, the Lord God fashioned a
woman.
He built a woman, it says in the
margin.
Why does he use the word built?
Why not made?
Because it was to be a picture of
that church, which is going to be built
in later ages.
He built a woman, a picture of the
church.
And he brought her to the man.
He says, here is your bride.
None of these animals.
Here is the bride.
Brothers and sisters, it's good for us to
close there, to think of what that means
in relation to us.
We who call ourselves as those who are
longing to be the bride of Christ, think
that God is preparing a bride one day
to present to his son.
Say, here is your bride, a people whom
I have tested on earth.
They are not earthly minded.
They are heavenly minded.
Don't ever think, my brothers and sisters, that
just because we understand the new and living
way, we come to see a sea, that
we'll be in the bride of Christ.
No.
I go up to God and say, Lord,
I went to see a sea.
He may say, next.
That's no qualification.
He say, I know where you went, but
I also know what you were interested in.
I saw what you were interested in all
your life.
Don't tell me which assembly you went and
sat in.
I saw what you were interested in day
after day after day after day of your
earthly life.
I saw what you were interested in.
Next.
Think of that after hearing all these wonderful
things.
Think that we can miss being a part
of that which God is speaking to make
us.