Work in Eden and Work in Exile (Gen 2:1–15)
Good morning, church. So glad we get to open God’s word together and keep walking through the book of Genesis. Last week, Pastor Sam helped us paused and meditate on the phrase, “male and female he created them.” Now we move on to the next part of the story:
Sometimes, our jobs can feel pointless or toilsome. I used to manage group homes. On occasion my overnight staff would call in sick. If I couldn’t find someone to replace them, I would have to be awake all night suddenly without planning on it. By the morning, I would feel more like a zombie than a human.
The toil of our work we all experience prompts us to consider: Why do we work? Are our jobs a good gift God gave us or a result of the fall? We want to answer this question because we spend so much of our waking hours at work. Day after day, year after year, work takes up so much of our adult lives.
The story we area walking through will help us to answer these questions. Where we left off God had just finished making humans, the crown jewel of his creation. Creating humans brought his creation to completion. Now, we get to see the first thing God does after finishing his world:
Revelation:
2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
Heavens and earth = the spaces God made for his creatures to inhabit. Hosts = inhabitants.
Verse 2 is going to show us what finishing all these things leads God to do:
2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
After God creates; he rests. Rest = “cease/stop.” God stops working.
Why is God resting? Is he tired? He didn’t get tired! Rest is not a nap. Rather, space for intimacy w/creation and enjoying what he has accomplished.
Rest can look like sleep or laying on the couch, or it can look like a holiday w/ family. This is a time to enjoy
V.3 shows us more,
3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
God does two things because he rests on this day: he “blessed” it and “makes it holy.”
God has blessed creatures, now he blesses a day. Blessed = to fill with life. This day especially filled with the enjoyment of God’s good creation. God set aside a day to enjoy what he made.
“made it holy:” first time in the Bible God makes something holy. When God makes something holy, he sets a boundary around it to fill it with himself (holy ground). What’s that saying about this day?
On seventh day, God is sharing himself with his world, he’s taking time to be fully present.
What he did in creation was astounding (making everything); what he does in rest more astounding. When dad works, he does amazing things, but not as amazing as coming home and kids jumping in arms.
Something missing? “and there was evening and there was morning…” Why? God designed to be an endless day. Story begins with eternal life.[1] How amazing?
So much to learn here! Pastor Scott preached a sermon titled, “Sabbath.” One application:
God draws clear boundaries between work and rest. One things we should learn: so should we.
In our culture (partially enabled by technology), we rest when we should be working and work when we should be resting.
We often escape from our work through the internet and our devices. Then, through those same devices, take work home with us in the form of email and texting.
We end up not truly working and not truly resting. We neither produce great things nor feel rested. Makes life feel bluh.
God sets an example by dividing work from rest as the final boundary he draws. When we let work be work and rest be rest, both our work and our rest can flourish.
We can use our gifts at our jobs to accomplish much, and we can feel deeply recharged emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
With that in mind, let’s see how the story keeps developing from here in V. 4,
4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
How many of you agree this is a strange way to continue the story?
That’s because it is, for us. Normal for Genesis.
Phrase: “these are the generations of…” repeats 11x in Genesis. Introduces new part of the story. Usually parents à children (successive generations frames the story).[2]
This one is not about parents/children, rather about what God brough through the earth.
In what follows, you might think: “this is a lot of Genesis 1 but from a different perspective.” Bingo. Zooms in and tells the story of the creation of humans in greater detail. It’s that important.
Gen 1:1–2:3 is like a global view of what God did (into). Gen 2:4 zooms in on the characters locally on the characters we will follow (chapter 1). So let’s follow that story,
5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—
New information we have not learned yet: there are parts of the earth that are uncultivated. “field” = wilderness.
Part of God’s purpose is for man to cultivate it. God describes “the field” in terms similar to the earth in 1:2, “without form and void.”[3]
Just as God’s work consisted of forming an inhabitable place into a good home, so will man’s. One clue in the story that work is a high and holy calling.
First time “Lord God” in text: introduction to God’s personal name as this story and what follows more personally introduces him.[4]
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
“Formed” = potter.[5] God forms man from the “dust of the ground.”
Hebrew for “Adam” = “Adam.” Hebrew for “ground” = “Adamah.” Deep connection.
“breath of life,” like putting his mouth up to mans and breathing how own life. Deep connection.[6]
Could not have humbler or higher beginnings. One hand: dirt creatures,[7] utter dependence. On other: God who spoke universe into existence personally breathed life into us.
Something of both earth and heaven in humans. Bridges. We will see more of this as we go…
8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
Forming his most special creature prompts God to make a special home. What a home:
“Garden” = orchard.[8] “In Eden” = “the happy land.”[9] God places man there to flourish (like a plant).
9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Tree “in midst” = “tree of life.” Who gives life? God. Tree represents God’s life-giving presence.
Garden is also “holy” (God is sharing himself there). Garden meets human need for food and greater need for God’s presence.
Whether 7th day, or tree of life, story is full if pictures of God moving close to people. Dwelling not distant.
Daniel will address tree of knowledge of Good and Evil in future sermon.
Further pictures of a place overflowing with life:
10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
God makes a river flow through Eden and his garden to water it. God’s sustaining his garden.
Then he creates four rivers to branch off and water the land around. God makes the life-giving power of water flow out from the garden to the lands around it.[10]
The idea of life flowing out from the garden continues in verse 15:
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
God has a purpose: to work and keep it. God is a worker who gives his highest creature a job like him. When God works in Gen 1, it’s ordinary word for work.[11]
God is the first worker who gives humans the gift of work; so, all work has dignity. Both humans and our work have value because God created both.
Whether you have the most menial job, we tend to think of flipping burgers, or the most prestigious job, we tend to think of the CEO of fortune 500, all work has dignity.
As long as it’s a job that actually helps humans thrive and find life (some industries are destructive).
All work has dignity, because all work is accomplishing the same thing God did at the beginning: making this planet an increasingly hospitable and good home for humanity. And that’s a good thing. If you help stock shelves are target or provide research for your company, you’re helping this world be a better home for people and that’s a good thing.
Tim Keller: “Work did not come in after a golden age of leisure. It was part of God’s perfect design for human life.”[12]
All those hours you spend at work are not unimportant. God has great purpose for them.
Closer look at Adam’s job to work and keep it: Means something along the lines of “cultivate the orchard and protect it from threats.”
To what end? Seems like as Adam works and keeps garden, it will expand outward, possibly until it covers the whole world. Mandate God gives humans in 1:28 is to “fill the earth and subdue it.”[13] This seems to be a picture of how that happens:
By cultivating a life-giving garden until it spreads it’s life all over the world. The garden is the place where God dwells, so covering the world with the garden will cover it with the glory and presence of God. Could God have given Adam a more remarkable job?
Adam is a bridge between heaven and earth and he is supposed to bring heaven to earth by spreading this garden where God is everywhere.
This was God’s heart and vision for work originally.
Not how things remained: Adam failed to protect the garden God entrusted him from a lying serpent. It deceives him and his wife and they sin and God removes Adam and Eve from his garden and curses the ground. Garden/ground; Eden/exile. Blessing mixed with curse.
Ever since Adam, toil has filled our work. Instead of just sustaining life, work saps and drains life from us. Under the curse, we not longer live in order to work, we have to work in order to live.[14]
Do you ever feel beat after a day of work? And moms, just so you know, raising kids full time is included as “work.”
Worst of all: sin separates worship and work from one another. In the garden, Adam’s job and Adams worship are joined together. He’s worshipping as he grows God’s garden.
In our world, many people who work do not worship the God who invented work. Also, we who follow Jesus often feel like worshipping Jesus is one thing we do over here and working is another thing. Is that the case for you? Do you wear separate work hats and worshipping Jesus hats?
Who would want your job to look more like Adam’s in Eden? Where worshipping God and work go hand in hand?
The good news of Jesus is that he puts back together what sin breaks apart. One thing he puts together for his people are work and worship.
When Jesus came, he perfect worker who worshipped God in all his work. John 4:34:
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
When he died on the cross, his words were “it is finished!” (John 19:30). He did the perfect work of rescuing rebels and remaking them into worshippers. Do you want this? The toil you feel in your life is the toil in your soul.
Once Jesus rescues you, he wants to transform you from just a worker into a worshipper who works.
Apostle Paul: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as if for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.”
When you follow Jesus, you are no longer working ultimately for your boss or your company, you are ultimately working for him, joining him in continuing to transform this world into a good place for humanity to live. Being godward in your thoughts and intentions is how you worship while you work.
Worshipping while you work includes working hard and doing a good job at your job. Work that’s below your ability level does not honor God.
When you work with all your heart and become a blessing to your coworkers and your community (doing well includes being a friendly, courteous worker), I believe through God will open up new doors of conversation with coworkers and clients to talk about spiritual things:
When our work transitions to worship, we should pray that God also turns our work into witness.
You will really make a earth a better place for humans to live not only when you produce a good product, but turn other people from their sin to worshipping and following Jesus with you.
To summarize: God invented work, and made us workers like himself, so that we could worship him through our work and become witnesses to others. When we work as worshippers and witnesses, we start to do the same work God gave Adam in the garden: bringing heaven to earth as we lead others to worship God with us.
[1] Tim Mackey, Bible Project Podcast.
[2] Stephen G. Dempster and D. A. Carson, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible (Leicester, England : Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2003), 55.
[3] John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary, ed. Gary Lee (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 85.
[4] Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Biblical Studies Press, 2005)
[5] Paul Ferguson, “Adam,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed., Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 10.
[6] Stephen G. Dempster and D. A. Carson, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible (Leicester, England : Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2003), 64.
[7] Tim Mackey, Bible Project Podcast.
[8] Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Biblical Studies Press, 2005)
[9] Ludwig Koehler et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000), 792.
[10] Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, Second Edition. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 245.
[11] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, vol. 1, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1987), 35.
[12] Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, Reprint edition (Penguin Books, 2014), 36.
[13] G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, ed. D. A. Carson, vol. 17, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL; England: InterVarsity Press; Apollos, 2004), 83
[14] “Amazon.Com: Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human. (Audible Audio Edition): John Mark Comer, John Mark Comer, Zondervan: Audible Books & Originals,” accessed September 23, 2022, https://www.amazon.com/Garden-City-Work-Being-Human/dp/B096WBTBMP/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5624AC9VCTO2&keywords=garden+city&qid=1663950213&sprefix=garden+city%2Caps%2C88&sr=8-1, 27.
