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Blessings and Boundaries, Part One

Genesis 2:8-17

The Good Life

What does the “good life” look like for you? Maybe its lots of children, a nice house, plenty of money, good health, deep and maturing friendships, lots of great sex, a fulfilling career, endless amounts of cheetohs and video games, stacks and stacks of books, Christmas music played year-round.

We often conceive of the “good life” as a life full of material blessings while ignoring spiritual realities. The Bible’s picture of the good life is more balanced than ours. In the first couple chapters of Genesis, we see a portrait of Paradise, a picture of the good life. We see the way things were, the way things were meant to be, and the way they will be again.[1] The good life of Genesis 1-2 is God blessing his people with spiritual and material abundance. In the beginning, God gives Adam and Eve himself and he gives them an extravagant Garden. They get God and a Garden.

But he also gives them something else, something we don’t usually consider part of the “good life.” Along with these blessings, God also gives them boundaries. God blesses their socks off with material and spiritual blessings, but he also tells them to not eat from one particular tree. God’s blessings came with boundaries.

The “good life” in paradise didn’t exclude obedience to God’s word. Part of enjoying God and his stuff was honoring his rule over their lives.

God is Mighty and Merciful

In our text this morning, Genesis 2:8-17, we’re going to see what happens after God created the first man, Adam. The main theme of this text is God’s extravagant blessing toward man and his sovereign rule over him. There are blessings and boundaries.

This connects with the picture of God that we saw last week in 2:4. God is Yahweh Elohim, the “Lord God.” Genesis 1 was focused on God as transcendent Creator. Genesis 2 is focused on God as imminent Creator. The God of the Bible is both high and low, both holy and accessible, both outside creation and inside creation, both far and near. He’s to be feared and enjoyed. He’s Creator and Redeemer, Lord and Savior.

What does it mean that God is both mighty and merciful, both powerful and gentle? It means he’s able to deliver us from our sins and difficulties, and that he enjoys doing so. If he were only mighty but not merciful, he could save us, but he wouldn’t want to. If he were only merciful but not mighty, he would want to save us but wouldn’t be able to.

In Jesus, we see these two realities merge beautifully. Jesus is the image of the invisible Yahweh Elohim. He’s both Lion and Lamb, both omnipotent and gracious. He can rescue you, and he wants to.

Genesis 2:8-17

In 2:8-17, God puts Adam in a well-watered Garden that has two special trees. He says he can eat from any tree except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If he disobeys, death will be the consequence.

In this text, we’re going to see one garden (v. 8), two trees (v. 9), four rivers (vv. 10-14), two rules (vv. 15-17), which all leads to one hope that all this points us to.

One Garden

In verse 8, we enter into the place where God’s blessings toward man will be found, the Garden of Eden. This garden is “in Eden,” a Hebrew word meaning “delight” or “pleasure.” It can also mean “a place of abundant waters.” Life and blessing spring up around water. Even today, most major cities are along a waterway. Dallas is an unusual exception to this!

This “garden in Eden” is meant to be understood as a real place, not a symbol. Moses, the author of Genesis, says that Eden is “in the east.” He’s writing from the perspective of a Hebrew situated in Canaan, so Eden would be to the east of Canaan, toward the Tigris and Euphrates valley, as indicated by the naming of these two rivers which are said to flow out of the garden. These geographical markers let us know that the narrative is meant to be read historically, not symbolically.

The end of verse 8 says that God put Adam in the garden after he made him. Last week we saw how God intimately and carefully created Adam out of the dust of the ground (v. 7). The first thing Adam saw when he opened his eyes for the first time was God’s face as he breathed his breath into him. Then the first thing God does is take him and put him into a garden of abundance and safety and beauty. This means that the first thing that Adam learns about the character of his Creator is that he’s good. He sees that his Creator carefully crafted a place for him to live. His heart is filled with the love of God. His heart rejoices in the provision and generosity of his Maker.

Loving trust toward God is the default position of Adam’s heart. Do you see how far we’ve fallen! Now we’re born with hating and doubting hearts toward God. We don’t believe that he’s good and we don’t want to live under his care. This is why God must give us new hearts in order for us to live with him again.

The Garden as a Sanctuary

The Garden is portrayed as a center of blessing for the whole world. Four rivers flow out of it to nourish and bless the world (vv. 10-14). But the Garden is also portrayed as a sanctuary. It functions as a place where God’s people meet with him and enjoy fellowship with him.

We know this because of the numerous parallels that exist between Eden and the later tabernacle and temple. Here are seven of these parallels: First, the presence of God is in Eden and in the later sanctuaries. God doesn’t live in the Garden, but he meets man there (3:8). Second, after the fall, cherubim guard the garden (3:24), and pictures of cherubim decorated the curtains of the tabernacle and the walls of the temple (Ex. 26:31; 1 Kgs. 6:29). Two cherubim also sat on top of the ark of the covenant in the inner sanctuary. Third, in the center of the garden is the tree of life, and in the center of the tabernacle and temple is the menorah, or the branching lampstand, made to look like a tree (2:9, 3:22; Ex. 25:31-35). Fourth, the pair of Hebrew words in God’s command to Adam, that he should “work and keep” the garden (2:15) are only used in combination here and in Numbers to describe the duties of the Levites in the tabernacle (3:7-8, 8:26, 18:5-6). Fifth, the river that flows into the garden and out into the world bringing life and blessing foreshadows the river that will flow out of the temple in the new Jerusalem that sweetens the Dead Sea (Ezek. 47:1-12). Sixth, Eden and the tabernacle and temple are entered from the east (3:24; Ex. 25:18-22; 1 Kgs. 6:23-29). Seventh, gold and onyx stones are mentioned in 2:11-12, and these are used to decorate the later sanctuaries and priestly garments (Ex. 25:7, 11; 28:9-14). And bdellium (a special kind of gum or resin from a tree) shows up again in Numbers 11:7, where manna is compared to it. Some manna was kept in the tabernacle.[2]

The point is that Eden becomes a prototype for later sanctuaries. The main difference is that, in the tabernacle and temple, only one person could go into God’s presence once a year. In Eden, Adam and Eve related to God face to face on a regular basis without fear or shame. What was lost in their disobedience was free and full access to God.

Adam is Priest, King, and Prophet

The Garden is a sanctuary, so Adam is meant to be understood as a priest in a garden-sanctuary. But, as we’ve discussed before, he’s also a king made to rule God’s world on his behalf. Interestingly, in ancient Mesopotamia, kings created and kept extravagant gardens. The gardens that King Louis XIV created at Versailles is a good modern example of this. Kings did this to show that they’re able to bend and shape nature according to their will.

Gardening is thus a royal vocation, so the role of Adam as a gardener portrays him as a royal figure. Interestingly, after Jesus rises from the dead and Mary finds his tomb empty, John tells us that she turns and sees him but doesn’t know that it was Jesus. The text says that she “supposed he was the gardener.” Then Jesus speaks and she realizes it’s him (Jn. 20:11-16). N. T. Wright notes, “It wasn’t, after all, such a silly mistake for Mary to think that Jesus, the true Adam, was the gardener.”[3]

Adam is a king-priest worshipping and ruling in a garden-sanctuary. But we can go a step further and say that he’s also a prophet. God gives him his word in verses 16-17 that he must then pass on to his wife Eve after God creates her. He receives a word from the Lord that he must announce to others. The first Adam, like the last Adam, is a prophet, priest, and king.

God’s Extravagance

In verse 9, we’re given more information about the garden, and we learn that there are two trees in the center of it. The first part of the verse says that God made “all kinds of trees” (NIV) grow there. These trees were both beautiful and delicious, “pleasant to the sight” and “good for food.” God wanted to bless Adam’s eyes and his stomach. God wants to bless his people with aesthetic beauty and tasty food.

The impression we get here is that God is not stingy. The Serpent’s claim in 3:1 that God said that they couldn’t eat of any of the trees in the garden is unfounded. His claim that God was holding back from them is a flat out lie. Unfortunately, he was successful in fooling them.

Has he fooled you too? Do you assume that God’s goal is to make your life miserable? Do you believe that God wants to curse you rather than bless you?

Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (Jn. 15:11). David says that in God’s presence “there is fullness of joy” and at his right hand “are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11). God’s aim in the world is that his name would be glorified through the gladness of his people. He gave Adam and Eve abundant evidence that his aim was to bless them, not curse them. He was after their delight and joy and pleasure in his presence. His aim is to bless you with abundant life in Jesus, not in more stuff or better health or great relationships.

God’s gift to Adam and Eve was a glittering garden full of life and beauty and food and safety and meaningful work and, most importantly, a face-to-face relationship with himself. When the serpent comes along in chapter three, they can’t use the excuse that they were deprived. God didn’t hold back. He gave them everything they needed and more. And they still struggled to trust him. Sounds like the story of my life, and maybe yours.

Two Trees

Verse 9 says that there were two trees “in the midst of the garden,” the “tree of life” and “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” What are these trees and what are they doing in the garden?

Some take them as metaphorical, as symbols for the things they hold out, “life” or “knowledge of good and evil.” But since chapter three clearly indicates that Adam and Eve saw, touched, and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (v. 6) and that cherubim were sent to guard the entrance of the garden so that Adam and Eve couldn’t eat from the tree of life (v. 24), these trees are meant to be understood as literal trees.

The Tree of Life

It’s not entirely clear what purpose the tree of life has, but 3:22 indicates that if Adam and Eve were to continue to eat from it, they’d live forever in the fallen world in their fallen state. The tree thus seems to be the source of continued life for Adam and Eve in the garden. The tree’s power to convey life didn’t come from some inherent property it had, but from it’s Planter, the Author of all life. Eating from this tree regularly would keep Adam and Eve alive. Its fruit would’ve enabled mortal man to live forever.

This means that Adam and Eve weren’t created with immortality. As Paul says, God “alone has immortality” (1 Tim. 6:16). Immortality is intrinsic to God alone. He has no beginning or end. All humans have a beginning, so we’re mortal. But when Jesus returns, all those who belong to him will “put on immortality” so that “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:53-55).

In Revelation 22, the tree of life shows up again in the new Jerusalem. It says that “the leaves of the tree were for the healing (or health) of the nations” (v. 2). In the new heavens and new earth, God’s people will never be cut off from life again. We’ll live forever as we’re nourished by the tree of life.

The only way to get there is through persevering faith in the Lord Jesus. Jesus told the church in Ephesus, “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7). Those who endure in loving and following Jesus will receive what Adam and Eve lost in the Garden, access to the tree of life, access to the life-giving presence of God.

Something of this life can be experienced here and now. The book of Proverbs says that wisdom is “a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed” (3:18). The result of a righteous life is a “tree of life” (11:30). Godly desires that are fulfilled are “a tree of life” (13:12). And, “A gentle tongue is a tree of life” (15:4). Our actions and desires and words can result in life, a blessed life. Those who eat up God’s wisdom are eating from the tree of life and extending it to others.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

The second tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is the pivotal tree in the narrative. What Adam and Eve do with it determines their destiny.

It’s not entirely clear what this tree is or does. But there are some clues. 3:5 and 22 suggest that eating from this tree will give Adam and Eve something that only God should possess. The knowledge that this tree confers is meant to be an exclusive feature of God, to be possessed by God alone, not man.

Some have speculated that this is a sexual knowledge or the capacity to make moral judgments or an advanced knowledge just short of omniscience. But these options don’t explain how obtaining such knowledge would make them like God or why God would forbid such knowledge?

It seems most likely that what this tree bestowed was a divine wisdom. Proverbs links the tree of life with wisdom. But the proverbs also say that true wisdom is independently possessed by God and should be sought after by man. Proverbs 2:6, “For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” Proverbs goes on to say that the only way to get wisdom is through “the fear of the Lord.” 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and 15:33, “The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.”

The point is that wisdom is only obtained through a humbling of ourselves before God, recognizing that his ways are right and good, listening to him and applying his word to our lives. Trying to obtain wisdom apart from God’s revelation is to act with moral autonomy. This is what Adam and Eve must not do but is of course what they did. As one commentator describes it, “(Adam) was not content with what was given to him, and desired to obtain more. He did not wish to remain in the position of a child who is under the supervision of his father and is constantly dependent on him; he wanted to learn by himself of the world around him; he aspired to become in knowledge, too, like God.”[4]

This tree represented wisdom that only God was meant to possess. By eating it, the first couple obtained something they weren’t supposed to have, and because this wisdom was obtained unlawfully and because transgression against God’s law carries the penalty of death, they would die. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Their autonomous action would lead to their deserved destruction.

The Lampstand and the Law

These two trees are comparable to the two things in the tabernacle that represent the life and law of God. The tree of life is represented by the lampstand, or menorah, shaped like a tree. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is represented by the law of God written on the stone tablets inside the ark of the covenant.

Israel’s life was centered on the life and law of God. And so was Adam and Eve’s. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the two trees being in the center of the garden symbolized that God was supposed to be the center of Adam’s world. “Limit and life,” he said, were in the “middle of paradise around which Adam’s life revolves.”[5] God gave Adam blessing and boundaries, both for his good.

The First and Last Adam

The first Adam obtained something of a divine reputation through disobedience (3:22). But the last Adam, Jesus Christ, was exalted by God because of his humility and obedience. “Though he was in the form of God, (he) did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:6-11).

Adam seized what wasn’t rightly his, Jesus surrendered what was rightly his. Adam promoted himself, Jesus humbled himself. Adam pursued independence; Jesus pursued obedience. Adam wanted recognition; Jesus suffered humiliation. The first Adam was overcome by the allure of wisdom apart from God and was humbled. The Last Adam submitted himself to the wisdom of God and was exalted.

Does your understanding of the “good life” look more like the First Adam or the Last Adam?

Jesus succeeded everywhere Adam failed. Jesus is the perfect Prophet, Priest, and King who’s come to open back up the way to the Garden. Everyone who follows him will be led by his hand to the tree of life. Jesus is both the Lion and the Lamb, both omnipotent and gracious, so he can rescue you and he wants to.

[1]Kevin DeYoung, Men and Women in the Church: A Short, Biblical, Practical Introduction (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 23.

[2]Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 247-9; James M. Hamilton Jr., God’s Glory in Salvation Through Judgment: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 74; T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Main Themes of the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 21.

[3]Quoted in Gentry and Wellum, 246.

[4]Cassuto, Genesis, 113, quoted in Kenneth A. Matthews, Genesis 1-11:26, The New American Commentary, vol. 1a (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 1996), 205, n. 75.

[5]Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1-3, 49, 51, 60, quoted in Matthews, 202, n. 61.