Survey of the Old Testament - Lesson 10

Dr. Miles Van Pelt 
Survey of the Old Testament 
ot501-10 
Creation Day 6 and the Fall 
Lesson Transcript

I. Genesis Chaptern2 (00:13):

We're now going to take a look at Genesis 2, which is a step backwards, and a look at day six more closely that we first encountered on Genesis Chapter 1. It's the very good day, the climactic day, of the six days of creation.

Hebrew loves to do this, to make a statement, back up, and focus on something. So, you have these layers of interpretation. In fact, by the time we get to Genesis Chapter 2, and we look at day six, it'll be the third time, day six has happened. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. How did that happen on the earth? Well, we have these six days. Let's look at that one more closely, we back up again.

A. Verse 4 (00:51)

Genesis 1 and 2 is not three steps forward, but three steps back. Does that make sense? We're going to attack it from this perspective. There's the heading, which says here, here's Genesis Chapter 2 Verse 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." Now, a couple of interesting things here. You can say, "in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens." That's the first time the divine name, Yahweh, is used in the Bible. So, in Genesis Chapter 1, it's Elohim, God, the title. In Genesis Chapter 2, it's Yahweh Elohim, the God, Yahweh. Yahweh, God, the title.

B. Crisis of Shubbery (01:41):

Also, notice how it says here in my translation, “in the day”, singular, that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth. It sounds like from this text that He made it in a day. Now the author is not unknowing about Chapter 1 in my view. He's saying that this was the rubric, God used to create that account. So, he's just making reference to that. These are the generations. There's 12 of these generational things. We're looking at the first one now. It's going to account for the creation of the man and the woman, the garden, and the marriage covenant. It works off of the crisis of shrubbery. Genesis Chapter 2 - how do we get vegetation? We get it in two ways.

You have got to have irrigation and you’ve got to have cultivation. I get this from a colleague of mine, Mark Futado in an article he wrote. So, we have our heading in 2:4, then the twofold problem. There's nothing to eat because there's no rain and no man. Then, in 2:6, He's going to send some moisture and in 2:7, He's going to send some man. So let's read those two things.

2:6, and a mist or a rain or a vapor was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life and the man became a living being. Then, we're going to get back into more vegetation. He's going to create a garden, which is like super vegetation, cultivated vegetation. He is going to create irrigation and rivers. So, we've got no rain, no man. We've got a mist. We've got a man. Now we need more vegetation and irrigation, because we can't live without it. Then we're going to get now, more vegetation and more cultivation. That's the structure of it. I can move then. You can see how it works. Again, a more detailed account, since we don't have time to go all through it. No wild vegetation, no cultivated vegetation. The reasons are no rain and no man. The solution is bring a man, then you've got the creation of the man, creation of a garden.

You've got the river of Eden in four divisions. Then you've got the problem stated here about you've got man's royal garden rest. He's the Covenantal Vice Regent. When God puts Adam into the garden, it says in English, he put him there, but the word is from Noah or Noach, you know that word, Noah, what does Noah mean? Rest. He gave him rest in the garden. So he established him there as a king. The problem is that it's not good that he should be alone. That's the halting statement there in Chapter 2 because everything is sevenfold good in Chapter 1. He's going to give him a helper, an Ezer Kenegdo, a helper according to his opposite, or a compliment. Whatever the man lacks, the woman's going to make up for. You've got the solution, plan A, animals and birds. Animals and birds created, animals and birds named.

C. Creation of Woman  (04:39):

In Chapter 1, God names everything. In Chapter 2, now Adam as Vice Regent is naming things, like his God. Adam is naming things like his King. Then there's another assessment. There was not a helper, an Ezer Kenegdo found for him. So Solution 2, the woman was created. It's one of my favorite passages in all scripture. It says in Verse 20 of Chapter 2, "The man gave names to all the livestock, to all the birds of the heavens, to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him”. Literally according to his opposite. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. While he slept, He took out one of his ribs and closed up his flesh." That place was flesh. The word there for deep sleep is a very special word. It's the same deep sleep that Abraham is put into in Genesis 15, and the same kind of sleep that Jonah falls into when he is on the boat. It's like an unconscious state. God knocked him out so he wouldn't feel the surgery.

The rib that the Lord had taken from the man, he made into a woman. The verb there's not “to make”, but instead,  “he built”. So the Lord had taken from the man, he built the rib into a woman and brought her to the man. You can think of the wedding ceremony here, who gives this woman to be married to this man. Then the man said, poetic intrusion, climax, this now "is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man." Now that's a play on words. The word for man in Hebrew is ish. The word for woman is ishah. So do you hear that ah the end? It's just like man and WOman. Once he saw man, he said, WO, man.

In Hebrew you can put an H on the end of things and it's directional, or so usually away from her, too. She was out of man, that's kind of directional thing. It's really just ish is masculine, ishah. Like sous is a man horse or a male horse, and Susa is a female horse, but it's a play on words like that. It's very poetic and wonderful.

What's the result of the fact that she was taken out of his bone of bone and flesh of flesh? Therefore, “a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife” where there's cling and they shall become one flesh. The word, the designation there, “one flesh” is the definition of marriage. Marriage is a one flesh covenant where two things that were formally separate, become one thing, one flesh.

This one flesh relationship is very important in the Bible. Malachi talks about it, Jesus talks about it, Paul talks about it. It's very important. The reason for that is up to now, all of creation has been achieved by division. You're separating light from darkness, waters above, waters below, sea from dry ground. You've even got separation here, sun, moon, and stars are separating this stuff. The animals are separating and ruling over that stuff. Humanity's going to divide and conquer. Even the woman is created by separation. The garden is, the word “garden” is really a walled enclosure. So it's being separated out. Everything's being created by separation, which is what bara means. The remarkable thing then, is that the one flesh marriage covenant is the first thing that comes back together.

Now, you'll remember in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He separated two kingdoms. What happens in the end, in Genesis, in Revelation 21 and 22? The two realms that were separated, come back together. The visible and the invisible. So the covenant of marriage is a picture of the eternal state. The two things that were separated into a new state of consummation, where that which was separated becomes together. So it's not accidental that we talk about consummating a marriage and the consummation of the ages. It's the same thing, but we rarely put them together in our mind. So a marriage covenant, is a walking illustration of the hope for our eternal blessed state. That's why it's so important for us to have good marriages in this context of this world because good marriages can be an evangelistic tool to a world where that's falling apart.

We learn that from here in Genesis, the one flesh marriage covenant. We'll talk about that a little bit more when we get to the Song of Songs. The result of this is the man and the woman were naked and were not ashamed because there was no sin yet in the world. So in Genesis Chapter 2, we have no vegetation and we're going to solve it by having rain and rivers and mist. We're going to solve the no cultivator by having male and female creating the image of God, ruling over that, but also typifying the marriage covenant, the Eschaton.

So remember back too, in the creation of the man of the woman, Chapter 1, then you had the cultural mandate rules to do and fill. This marriage covenant is the means by which God intended us to fulfill that mandate. You can't fill the world with more images of God without the marriage covenant. So when you corrupt the marriage covenant, you corrupt the very creational mandate humanity was created to engage in. It's also important to notice that the marriage covenant comes in Genesis Chapter 2 as well as  in Genesis Chapter 3. Marriage is a pre-fall institution. It was the means by which God intended the world to be ruled - by the family. But now stage two, we've got to do something else after the fall. So marriage is not the way in which we fix a broken culture. Marriage was the original state of a pre-broken culture. Now because of sin, of course, it's going to be corrupted. We can even see that in the redemption, the redemptive blessings that come here, redemptive curses that come later.

II. Genesis Chapter 3 (10:26):

Then this gets us into Genesis Chapter 3 and Genesis Chapter 2, Genesis Chapter 3 are linked this way in Hebrew. The man and the woman were arum, naked and not ashamed.

A. The Fall (10:37):

Then Genesis Chapter 3 says, "now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field". The Word for crafty is our arum. They're homonyms and so they link that way. The naked state of innocence and happiness is going to be corrupted by the other arum that comes into corrupted. So the arum is on attack and we get this serpent here, or the snake, it says, “now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say you shall eat of the tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you must not eat of the fruit of the trees in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die”. So here, she's referencing to the fact that they've been on the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. So she knows about this.

She saw that it was good to eat. She saw it was good to look at. So she took it, she ate it and said, “she gave it to her husband, or she gave it to her husband who was there”. So Adam was there the whole time. He ate and it all hit the fan. We see here, the eyes of both of them were open in Verse 7. They knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together. They knew they were naked before, but they realized what their nakedness meant now after sin. They sewed fig leaves together, tried to patch it up, and they made themselves loin cloths.

B. God comes in judgment (11:55)

Then it says, and “they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the cool of the day. And then the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord behind the tree, behind the tree they'd just eaten from”. Now, couple of things here. God is coming in judgment to address the issue of Satan's corruption of the marriage covenant, humanity falling into the sin. I just want to point out to you that the reference there to, “in the cool of the day”, is better translated in “the wind of the storm”. You can get that from Johan Lust or Jeff Niehaus, who's written about this in various things. Jeffrey Niehaus wrote God at Sinai, it's about Theophany. You can get that book and read about this in there.

It's a play on words. There's Yom, remember the homonym we talked about? So there's a noun that means Yom Day, like Yom Kippur. You know that's the day of atonement, Yom Kippur. But there's also a noun that means Yom Storm. This is one of those poetic plays. The Lord is coming now in the wind of the day or in the wind of the storm. When in the Bible, do you ever hear God coming? Everyone's like, hurray, he's coming. It's peaceful and beautiful. No. He always comes and everyone's knees are shaking. The mountains split, the trees cleave, the rivers tremble, that kind of thing. So this is a storm theophany and that's why they're hiding themselves behind it.

C. Consequences of sin(13:32):

Then we get to the very important text in Verses 14 to 19 where God addresses the issue of sin, falling humanity, and the tempter. The Lord begins with the serpent. In the created order of things, God intended that man and woman should rule over creation together. Man is the head. Woman is the helper over creation, and the serpent will constitute part of that. The creation, “userp”, the woman who “usurped” the man. It reversed everything. He's going to begin with the userper, move to the woman, get to the man and put everything back in His intended order. He begins with the userper. He says, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and of all beasts in the field". Notice how he curses the serpent.

1. Common Grace Covenant (14:30):

Then the serpent will be, "on your belly you shall go, dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, in between your offspring and her offspring”. What will those do? “He shall bruise your head, but you shall bruise his heel”. Now a couple of things to note here. One, the very mention that the woman is going to have seed or offspring means there's a delay in judgment. Originally it said “on the day that you eat of it, you'll surely die”. So God is instituting right here, that common grace covenant, where the wicked and the righteous, the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the chaff will maintain long enough until the seed can come.

2. Intrusion Ethics(15:16):

So He is going to delay, this is called intrusion ethics. He's going to delay eschatological judgment until the seed comes. So we've got this common grace institute right here. To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbirth and bearing in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you”. Now God is discussing the means of the production of the seed. Childbirth is going to be a painful experience. Whether it was or not before we don't know, no one's been born yet. But now we know it's going to be a painful experience. But it's going to be the means by which the seed comes to conquer the serpent. To the man he said, “because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it”. And it says, this is the second curse elicited in this section. “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain, so he's going to pain too, you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it, you are taken for your dust and to dust you shall return”.

3. The Ground is Cursed(16:28):

It's very important to note here the two references to the curse. In the first curse, the serpent himself is cursed. In the second curse, not the man or the woman is cursed, but it's cursed is the ground. If the Lord would've cursed the man, then there'd have been no redemption for him. So this is the way now creation is groaning under its curse until it's released from that, because man is cursed and it's going to be worked out in his occupation. So the woman's role in filling the world is going to be cursed and the man's role in subduing the world, like providing and doing all, is going to be cursed. They're going to be engaged in the cultural mandate work still, but it's going to be one of frustration, affliction, sorrow, and loss. That's why we have famine. That's why we have flooding. That's why we have pestilence. Those are the results of having that ground cursed. It's part of how we endure this fallen world. Then it says “and the man called his wife's name Eve”. He hadn't named her yet. She was just called woman.

4. Hope in the Promises of God (17:31):

Eve means life. By that, then, Adam is professing his faith that the Lord's promise to send a seed to crush the serpent is true. This is called the first response of faith so we know that Adam is not in Adam anymore. He's taken hope in the promises of God, that he will send a seed to crush that guy's head, who just ruined his life in all of ours. And the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. Remember that. Eve means life, but not just life, the mother of all living. Then it says, “and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them”. That's very important. So they made garments for themselves,  which were inadequate. The Lord made garments for them and reconstituted them as His children and image bearers there.

This is something I learned from a guy named Gordon Hugenberger a long time ago, a Pastor in Boston area, and a Professor at Gordon-Conwell. He wrote this paper on the significance of garments in the Old Testament and that they symbolize inheritance. So that's why the priests wear all these garments because they symbolize the inheritance that's coming to them. What's interesting too, another way of looking at that, the Levites don't have any inheritance in the land because the Lord is their inheritance. They're the only ones who get special clothes. So that clothing represents inheritance. When God gives them garments like that, it represents their inheritance has been restored in a different way, but it's still been restored. Then importantly, God kicks them out of the garden. They don't have access to the tree of life because then if they never died, they would never be able to experience the resurrection. They would always be corrupt, fall in sinful people. That's how it ends.

III. Marriage Covenant (19:14):

In these first two chapters, we've gone from a perfect world, a perfect marriage, a perfect garden, to everything corrupted. The plan of redemption begins - creation, fall, redemption. That's the pattern we're going to see - creation, fall, redemption over and over again. Since the fall, the world has been spiraling out of control. It only took a few years, well, more than a few years, until it was almost completely wicked and immoral in the days of Noah, and God had to reboot. I have found that there's a pattern in scripture that whenever you corrupt the marriage covenant, culture falls apart and judgment's coming.

A. Corruption of the Marriage Covenant(19:57):

So, for example, in Genesis Chapter 6, the sons of God are engaging in some illicit activity with the daughters of man producing these nephilim and everything's becoming super wicked and violent. That narrative is there. It's precipitating the flood judgment ordeal. That's the means by which that was happening right there. The seed of the woman is being stamped out somehow. Right at the end of that flood judgment ordeal, Ham sees nakedness of his father. We're about to talk about that. That's also a corruption to the marriage covenant because to see the nakedness of your father, according to Leviticus 18, is a euphemism from eternal incest. So that's what happened there. Therefore Cain is the offspring of that union and that's why he's cursed. So the whole eschatological flood judgment ordeal is bracketed by the corruption of the marriage covenant. Go just a few chapters later to Genesis Chapter 19, where you have the Sodom and Gomorrah event, where you have the corruption of the marriage covenant kind of thing going on there, and that precipitates our is evidence for their complete corruption whereby judgment comes.

B. Preserve the remnant and Destroy the Wicked(21:05):

Then Peter and Jude make reference to these two events that God could preserve the remnant and also destroy the wicked. The reason for that is, the marriage covenant is a very important symbol for the Lord because it's the covenant and the relationship He wants to have with His people. That's why we are the bride, and He is the groom. You see that in Revelation 19 and 21 at the marriage supper of the lamb and Jesus as a bride prepared for the groom. You can see that's the image He wants. That's why, for example, in the prophets, they use the marriage covenant as a similar picture of the covenant that the Lord has with Israel. Or how God finds this abandoned girl in Ezekiel 16 and raises her up and spreads the corner of His garment over her, entering into a marriage covenant.

C. The Ultimate Marriage (22:01):

The marriage covenant is very important. In Malachi 2, is where God hates divorce. And because you've forsaken your marriage covenant. And so it's a very important thing. Here's why some of that happens. One, because we're sinners, sin gets into our marriages, and bad things happen. Bad things happen to good people, as well. There's sin. But here's the thing, too. I think, as good as marriage is, our human marriages are not the ultimate marriage. We often put the weight of the ultimate marriage on our human marriages, which will crush them. You have to realize you married a sinner, a sinner married you. You're going to hurt each other more than anyone else could hurt you.

V. Conclusion (22:57):

You're going to feel like it should be more satisfying, but it's not. It should be more fulfilling, but it's not. That's good and bad. It's bad because it's a result of sin. It's good though, because it points us to that eschatological one. I always tell people, the single people, your desire to get married won't ever fulfill you like you imagine, but the fulfillment's coming. I tell married people, your desire is to have a better marriage or a good marriage? It's not going to come, like you want, it's not going to be fully satisfying and always belonging. If you put the weight of that on it, it's going to crush it. I think as evangelicals, we have such a high standard for marriage, and then it doesn't seem like it's as good as it should be. It seems like it's so dang hard and so then it crushes us.