Genesis 2:4-25

Read Genesis 2:4-25 in NASB Genesis 2:2-25 continues the creation account by taking an even closer look at the creation of man.

Adam
Man was made from dust. Dust has no ability to have life on its own. Dust will just return to dust. This shows us that we have no ability to produce life on our own. When God made man, he breathed His life into dust.

Then it says that God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden. The use of garden imagery plays off of a Mesopotamian ritual of putting an idol in a garden and letting the gods animate it. By God placing A man in the garden, it is saying that God made man to be a tangible image of Him.

There is a reason that the first man was named Adam. Adam means red. It is a reference to the fact that he came from dust.

The trees in the garden were types and shadows of good things. The two trees in the middle represent the choice Adam had to make. There has been debates over whether the two trees are literal trees or not. That is a non-essential issue.

Adam was told to cultivate the garden. This means that everything would be maintained is Adam just believes in God for eternal life.

God continues this thought when tell Adam that he is free to eat from any tree, but he must not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If Adam eats from the tree, he can be sure that he will die.

This is the command of God. It has always been the command of God. The command of God is not something to do. It is a precept, or the way God sets the order of things. For example, gravity is a precept that everything gets pulled towards the earth. We all live our lives from that precept.

God’s command is the truth that He alone is the source of eternal life. God cannot force anyone to accept eternal life. That is why death is the consequence of seeking eternal life apart from God. Such a belief system is called the knowledge of good and evil because it causes people to judge things good and evil as pertaining to life.

The truth is that nothing in this world is good and evil. Nothing has any effect on eternal life. We don’t judge life by how it seems to go. We judge our lives based on having the life that raised Jesus from the dead. Eternal life is a quality of life that comes outside of time. That is why Ecclesiastes 3:14 says that nothing can add or take from what God has done. The thing to what God has done is give us eternal life.

A Helper
After God have Adam His command, God made a helper for Adam. This helper was his wife, Eve. She was a helper in that Adam could love her the way God loves him. This would let Adam see how God loved him.

The woman came from Adams rib. The Hebrew word for rib can also mean an inner beam of who we are. The woman came from the inner most part of Adam. This actually shows us how the Church came from the inner most part of Jesus.

The man leaves his parents to be with his wife. This is a type and shadow of how Christ left his divine nature and became a man to be with his bride, the Church.

Adam and the woman were naked and felt no shame. Their nakedness was the inability of their flesh to produce life. They felt no shame over the fact that their flesh could not produce life. As great as that was, someone wanted them to reject God’s life as a free gift so that the would die.

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