Blessings and Boundaries, Part Two
Genesis 2:8-17
The Good Life
In the second chapter of Genesis, we see a portrait of Paradise, a picture of the good life. The good life of Genesis 2 is God blessing his people with spiritual and material abundance. But he also gives them something else, something we don’t usually consider part of the “good life.” 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 abundance was honoring his rule over their lives.
Our text last week and today is Genesis 2:8-17. The main theme of this text is God’s extravagant blessing toward man and his sovereign rule over him. There are blessings and boundaries.
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. Our main take away from this text is that God created us to bless us with life and joy, but this life will only be found in obedience to him.
In this text, we see one garden (v. 8), two trees (v. 9), four rivers (vv. 10-14), and two rules (vv. 15-17).
Four Rivers
In verses 10-14, we see four rivers. There’s a lot of debate about why these verses about the four rivers are here. Scholars have tried to figure out exactly where this region is or was. The search for the Garden of Eden has come up empty, and no one really knows for sure where to locate these rivers and regions, especially the Pishon (v. 11) and the Gihon (v. 13).
What is clear is that Moses wants to place the Garden of Eden within the geography of the Ancient Near East in order to show that this narrative is historical, not mythical.
Old Testament scholar Gordon Wenham says that there’s a reason why we can’t locate where Eden was. He says that the names of these rivers “affirm that there was a garden there, but maybe the insoluble geography is a way of saying that it is now inaccessible to, even unlocatable by, later man.”[1] In other words, Moses is saying that there was a real garden in Eden, but because of what happened there we aren’t meant to know where it is or be able to enter it (cf. 3:24).
We may not know where these rivers were or are, but we can see that these rivers that bless the world originate from the blessing of the garden. The garden is portrayed as a center of blessing for the whole world. God’s beauty and blessing overflowed out of the garden and into the world.
“Everything Will Live Where the River Goes”
Another life-giving river will one day flow from God’s presence. God gave the prophet Ezekiel (47:1-12) and the apostle John (Rev. 22:1-2) a vision of this. This “river of the water of life” (Rev. 22:1) will create luscious trees that’ll provide food and nourishment and healing, and “everything will live where the river goes” (Ezek. 47:9).
The psalmist tells us that this river has streams that “make glad the city of God” (46:5). The water that flows from God’s presence creates life and joy wherever it goes. It nourishes, sustains, grows, and brings life to all the arid places.
The rivers flowing out of the garden of Eden are meant to point our attention to this more important river. They symbolize the river of the New Eden that will give abundant life and everlasting joy to the people of God.
A River of “Living Waters”
The promise of the gospel is that these “living waters” are even available now. Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive” (Jn. 7:38-39). Those who put their trust in Christ are given the Spirit of God, meaning that the very presence of God comes to live in them. Not with them, but in them.
Christian, the water of God, so to speak, is already in your mouth and in your belly. The life of heaven has come to live in you. The well-spring of Eden flows through your heart.
Friend, if you’re not yet a Christian, we love you and are so glad you’re here. But we want you to know that you can’t do anything to earn this water. The only thing you have to have to get this water is thirst. Jesus cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (Jn. 7:37). Only those who understand their need for God get the nourishment of God.
Jesus came to quench your deepest thirst, that thirst you have for love and mercy and welcome and friendship and forgiveness and freedom and righteousness and healing. Jesus’s water is better than any Berkey or Brita filtered water, better than every other thing you’re drinking. “Everything will live where his river goes.” Jesus is a water that brings life to all the dead places, all the forgotten and forgettable places, all the dry and dark places.
The Bible says that apart from Christ we’re dead, not just sick. Jesus came to make us alive not just make us better. His “living water” creates life and then whatever he touches starts coming to life as well. This is why true Christians and true churches start looking more and more like Jesus.
Two Rules
The four rivers of verses 10-14 point us to the River of Life that flows out of God’s presence creating bounty and blessing everywhere it goes. Then, in verses 15-17, we come to God’s two rules for man in the garden.
Each of these verses could be summarized by one word. Verse 15: vocation. Verse 16: permission. Verse 17: prohibition. Unfortunately, as one commentator points out, “In the popular understanding of this story, little attention is given the mandate of vocation or the gift of permission. The divine will for vocation and freedom has been lost. The God of the garden is chiefly remembered as the one who prohibits.”[2]
These verses show us that God isn’t just a God of “No!” God is a God of “Yes!” and “No!” He’s a God who created us to enjoy his creation and to cultivate his creation. Yes, the prohibition of verse 17 is given too. But the prohibition must be read in light of man’s vocation and freedom.
Vocation
Let’s go through these verses one at a time. Verse 15 is one of the most important verses for your life because it helps you understand the sacredness of the thing you’ll do with most of your time on planet earth.
God put man in the garden to “work it and keep it.” This word for “work” is often used for tilling the ground, but also simply means “to serve.” God put man in the garden to serve. He’s there not to be served but to serve.
The word for “keep” means “to guard” or “to exercise great care over” and even “to protect.” The same root word is used in chapter three to describe the angels who’ll guard the entrance of the garden (v. 24).
These words tell us what God’s intentions for man in the garden were. The garden was to be “worked” and “protected.” As one Old Testament scholar says, “Eden is certainly not a paradise in which man passes his time in idyllic and uninterrupted bliss with absolutely no demands on his daily schedule.”[3] Adam and Eve weren’t given a lounge chair and a margarita. They were given a rake and a chain saw, a wheelbarrow and work gloves, or a laptop and some spreadsheets.
Work Is a Blessing, Not a Curse
And none of this was toil or painful or frustrating! Physical labor was a gift and command of God, not a result of sin. Work was a God-given blessing, not a curse. God himself was working at the beginning (2:2) and so those created in his image would work. Before sin entered the world, man’s work would be all joy and no pain, all fun and no frustration.
Man didn’t have to work so his material needs would be met. God met them all abundantly. The essence of work wasn’t survival but enjoying God’s world, like a son working with his father to make something wonderful. Man was free to be creative without worrying about how the bills would be paid.
When sin came into the world, what changed wasn’t that man had to work, but that his work would now be marked with pain and frustration (3:17-19). When man rebelled against God, God gave them what they wanted: self-reliance. From then on, God says that they’ll only eat through toil and sweat. The curse isn’t that we have to work, but that work comes with weariness and anxiety and unmet expectations and a sense of futility.
In this fallen age, in our work we must work against the obstacles that make work hard. We can’t pick fruit from someone else’s garden anymore. Some Christians in the early church were making this mistake. They believed that Jesus would come back any moment, so they thought they didn’t need to work (2 Thess. 3:10-12). Some people who were able to work were choosing not to, living off the work of others, eating the fruit produced by someone else’s sweat.[4]
God’s design is that those who’re able are to “earn their own living” and not live off the work of someone else. Work is inherently good, but under a curse, so now we must work to eat, not just for fun. One implication of this is that, when we’re considering a job opportunity, it’s perfectly appropriate to talk about the financial side of things. If a job can’t pay you what you need to support yourself or your family, then you need to look for another job. This means that you may have to do something that you don’t enjoy as much.
The objective responsibility that we have to support ourselves and our families is more important than the subjective desire to do things that we enjoy. Of course, doing what we enjoy while getting paid enough to support ourselves and our families is wonderful, but it’s not always possible. Men especially need to think through this, as God has created us to be the providers for our families. Providing food for our family is more important than enjoying our job.
Permission
Verse 16 is God’s permission. Notice that it says “the Lord God commanded…” God not only permits but even commands man to enjoy “every tree of the garden.” God’s will is that we enjoy his world!
His provision in the garden was plentiful. There’s no lack at all. Nothing ran out or spoiled or was lost. God wants to bless his creatures. He wants his world to be enjoyed liberally. Those who reject God because he’s too strict haven’t understood him properly. In the garden, there was only one “no.” Everything else was a “yes.”
What Does this Command Have to do with Parenting?
I’ve thought about this a lot as a parent. We should have clear boundaries for our children, but if our house is full of “nos” and only very few “yeses” then we may be more concerned about our kid’s behavior than their hearts. Yes, obviously behavior is important. But what I’ve noticed in me is that I’m usually concerned about my kid’s behavior because of how it’ll make me look. I want them to behave well so that I look like a dad who’s got everything under control. But the reality is that most of the time I feel like the inmates are running the asylum!
We must discipline our children, but discipline is no substitute for regeneration. As parent’s we’re called to teach and model the gospel for our children. We pray for faith, remembering that faith is a gift from God. And we look for fruit. But one way to undermine the whole process is to have a home marked by demands rather than delight.
In her novel Gilead, Marilynne Robinson says, “Prohibition loses its force if it is invoked too generally.”[5] Later in the book, Robinson makes an observation that still makes me think. The main character, minister John Ames, says, “It is the consistent example of parents in the Bible that they honor their children. I think it is notable in this connection that it is not Adam but the Lord who rebukes Cain. Eli never rebukes his sons, or Samuel his. David never rebukes Absalom. At the very end, poor old Jacob rebukes his sons as he blesses them. A remarkable thing to consider.”[6]
The point is not that parents shouldn’t discipline their children. Paul makes it clear that they should in Ephesians 6. The point is that “the consistent example of parents in the Bible (is) that they honor their children.” If it’s true that children ordinarily honor parents they respect, or that they won’t respect parents who don’t honor them, then parents who’re overly critical, excessively negative, always competitive, easily annoyed, and anxious to exert their rule over their children shouldn’t be surprised if their children fail to honor them. These kinds of parents cast a dark shadow over their homes, a shadow that lingers throughout their children’s lives.
Instead, a godly parent aims at the discipline and delight of their children. They want them to fear and enjoy the Lord. They remember that the garden was a place of innumerable blessings and only one boundary. They remember that everything except one thing was lawful in the garden, that the garden was characterized by permission, not prohibition, by delight, not demands.
As we establish our family rules and set appropriate boundaries for our children, we must remember that grace, not law, is what changes hearts, that God’s kindness, not his severity, is what leads to repentance, that what we’re after in our kids’ lives is the blessing of faith, not socially acceptable behaviors that make us look like successful and spiritual parents.
Sabbath is for Enjoying God’s World
God commands man to enjoy “every tree of the garden.” God wants to bless his creatures through his creation. He wants his world to be enjoyed liberally. One way we can do this today is by practicing a regular sabbath. Since I preached on this about a month ago, I wonder how you’re doing with sabbath? Have you established a routine of regular rest? Do you take a 24-hour break from work, paid and unpaid, in your weekly schedule? If not, why not?
A regular sabbath gives us a window of time to enjoy the miracle of this world with our senses. Peter Scazzero says, “As part of observing Sabbath, God invites us…to enjoy and delight in his creation and all the gifts he offers us in it. These innumerable gifts come to us in many forms, including people, places, and things.”[7] What gives you joy and delight? What refreshes you? For me, it’s parks and trees and running and books. For Suzy, its good food and tennis and good conversation.
Sabbathing isn’t a self-help technique. It’s a God-given gift to his image-bearers for their refreshment. If you neglect it, you’re refusing one of God’s gifts and you’ll reap what you sow.
Prohibition
This brings us to verse 17, the one prohibition that God gave to Adam. Even this prohibition can be seen as evidence of God’s goodness. Out of mercy, God tells Adam that there’ll be severe consequences if he eats of this tree. God’s warnings are evidence of grace because they’re meant to keep us from the brink of destruction. If God didn’t love us, he’d never warn us. He’d just let us stumble over the cliff of destruction without ever telling us that there was a cliff there.
The reason he must not eat from this tree is because if he does, he will “surely die.” This is a super serious command. But it must be seen in light of the preceding two verses. God has put man in a garden of beauty and bounty and given him satisfying work and said he could have anything he wants, except the fruit from one tree. The prohibition is meant to protect and preserve the blessing of God in man’s life. God’s rules are meant for our joy, not our misery.
Interestingly, the serpent totally ignores verse 16 and makes no reference to God’s abundant provision and permission. He only magnifies God’s prohibition. He wants Adam and Eve to see God as harsh and as holding out on them, when in reality the exact opposite is true.
There’s no reason stated for the prohibition. We don’t know why God put this tree there and told them not to eat from it. What’s at stake here is whether or not man will choose to trust God’s words. Old Testament scholar John Sailhamer summarizes this beautifully:
“The inference of God’s commands in vv. 16-17 is that God alone knows what is good for man and that God alone knows what is not good for him. To enjoy the ‘good’ man must trust God and obey him. If man disobeys, he will have to decide for himself what is good and what is not good. While to modern man such a prospect may seem desirable, to the author of Genesis it is the worst fate that could have befallen him. Only God knows what is good for man. Only God can know what is good.”[8]
The “good life” that we were made for only comes by trusting in the word of God. God created us and God is good, so only he knows what is truly good for us. If what were good for us was left up to us, who’s definition of “good” would we use? The terrorists? The rich and famous? The politicians? Who gets to decide what’s good? God does because he’s God, and because he’s good.
True Life for Those Who Obey the Gospel
In 2:8-17, we’ve seen one garden (v. 8), two trees (v. 9), four rivers (vv. 10-14), and two rules (vv. 15-17). God put Adam in a well-watered Garden that had two special trees. He said he could eat from any tree except one and if he disobeys, death will be the consequence. In the garden there were blessings and boundaries. For us, this means that God created us to bless us with life and joy, but this life will only be found in obedience to him.
Hard work, humble parenting, and a regular sabbath can greatly bless our lives. But the truly blessed life begins when we obey Jesus’ word in the gospel. Jesus says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God remains on him” (Jn. 3:36).
From the beginning, breaking God’s rules meant death. We’ve all broken God’s rules, so we all deserve death. But Jesus came and offered his life as a substitute for ours, so that everyone who trusts him and obeys his word will be saved from eternal death and given eternal life.
The principle of the garden hasn’t changed: those who obey God get to live, those who disobey him die. Those who obey the gospel are saved from death and brought back into the paradise of God where they’ll enjoy the river and tree of life forever. Jesus came into the world to bring sinners back into the Garden.
[1]Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1987), 66-7.
[2]Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 46.
[3]Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 171.
[4]Much of this section is from John Piper, Don’t Waste your Life, in The Collected Works of John Piper, vol. 5, eds. David Mathis and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 497-9.
[5]Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Picador, 2004), 68.
[6]Ibid., 136.
[7]Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 147-8
[8]John H. Sailhamer, “Genesis,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 45.