The LORD God of Life - Genesis 2:4–14

In the gospel of John, chapter 3, Jesus famously says, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” One Bible scholar explains the meaning of “life” in Jesus’ statement. He writes, “This life is salvation and manifests itself in fellowship with God in Christ, in partaking of the love of God, of his peace, and of his joy.” That life is the rich bond that man was created to enjoy with God and all the benefits that come with that bond. 

Genesis is clear and experience proves that when God created mankind, the life He gave to humans was different. We are unique among God’s creatures. We have breath and a heart beat like the other creatures, but we have something else. We are made in God’s image, and we need God. We need all the benefits of that special bond. Our need is a primary theme of the Scriptures. We are not whole without the life God gives. We were created to know Him and to experience His love, peace, and joy. 

But we naturally imagine that God and His benefits are not enough for us. Sin causes us to choose other things, to look elsewhere for the life that only God provides. And yet Jesus Christ came to restore this life to us. Later in John’s gospel, Jesus says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus uses the same word that He used in John 3, but He then says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus employs a different Greek word there which translates to our language as “life.” The word means something like, “the whole self” or “the whole person.” 

You see, Jesus gave Himself, body and soul, to restore the life connection, the life bond between God and mankind. And because Jesus has done this, we should look to Him for the life we need. Jesus suffered and died to bring sinners to God. He said that no one could come to God except through Him. But why is Jesus the only one who could restore this life? 

These verses in Genesis 2 help us understand. There are two reasons that we see here. You can find them listed on page 6 in the WG. The life bond with God and all its benefits could only be restored by Jesus because the LORD God is the giver of human life, and He is the upholder of human life. When one of Jesus’ disciples asked Him to show them the Father, Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” 

Jesus Christ is the LORD God. He was there in the beginning, involved in the creation of human life. Again, I say “human” life because our life is different. Today’s passage begins to tell mankind’s history with this “life” and “life” is a thread that runs all the way to the end of Scripture and to the end of history. So let’s look at these together.

Notice verse [4] “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth.” In other words, what follows is “an account of men and their descendents.” There is a shift in focus here from the creation as a whole in Genesis 1 to one specific part of creation in Genesis 2. The focus will now be on the God/mankind relationship. Another indication of the shift in focus is this group of words, “the LORD God.”  I’ve mentioned before that when you see “LORD” in all capital letters in Scripture, that lets you know that in the Hebrew manuscripts, God’s covenant name or His personal name is used there. We commonly pronounce this name as “Yahweh,” but the Jews would not say the name because of its sacred nature. Instead, they would substitute another word, such as their word which meant “lord.” 

This is the first instance of God’s covenant/personal name in the Scriptures. God later introduces Himself as Yahweh in Exodus 3 when He reveals Himself to Moses in the burning bush. “Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And [God] said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘[Yahweh], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever.” 

Many years ago I heard football coach Tommy Bowden speak at an event. He is the son of the legendary coach Bobby Bowden, who won multiple championships and just passed away this past summer. Tommy told a story of the first time he was scheduled to coach against his father, Tommy as the head coach of Clemson and his dad at Florida State.

It was common for coaches to trade film of their teams for the opposition to study. And Bobby, the dad, asked his son the address to which he should send the tape. Tommy said he told his dad, “Well daddy, I’m well known in this town. Just address it, ‘Tommy Bowden, Clemson, SC.’” He said his dad replied, “Oh, ok.” Tommy then said, “To what address should I send your tape, daddy?”And Bobby replied, “Just address it, ‘Bobby Bowden, USA.’”

A name has attached to it the stature and accomplishments and reputation of an individual. Who is God? He is “I AM.” He simply “is.” He was not created; He has no beginning or end. He is infinite. He is entirely self-existent. He was, and is, and is to come. Today, many people refer generally to “God.” It was the same during Moses’ life. In Genesis 1, Moses uses the general word for God, “Elohim”. 

But in Genesis 2, we learn that Elohim is Yahweh. It was Yahweh who delivered the Israelites from Egypt. It was Yahweh who made the heavens and the earth, who made the universe and everything in it. But notice the switch in the word order from “the heavens and the earth” to “the earth and the heavens” in verse 4. Unlike chapter 1, which describes God’s creation of the whole universe, chapter 2 explains what came forth from the earth, most importantly mankind. 

Humans have this special place in the universe, this special relationship with God. Man is the only creature made in the image of God, after the likeness of God, and made to rule over the other creatures. Mankind had a person-to-person type of relationship with God in the beginning. The use of God’s personal name lets us know that this relationship is coming into view.

Isn’t it true that names indicate the nature of a relationship? One thing I found fascinating about Tommy Bowden’s story is that he didn’t call Bobby, “coach.” He called him “daddy.” To those whom God saves by His grace, to those with whom God made his covenant, he is not just “God,” He is “Yahweh Elohim,” the LORD God, who loves us with a steadfast love. 

Now, it is also important to recognize this shift in focus at Genesis 2:4 because the next verses have been grossly mishandled, casting doubt on the Genesis creation account. The claim is often made that Genesis 1 and 2 present contradictory narratives about God’s creation of the world. Attempts have been made to reconcile the chapters, but that is unnecessary because Genesis 2 is not a second creation account. 

What we have here is similar to what we see in other places in Scripture: we have a description of an event but from a different perspective with a different focus. Beginning with verse 5, the focus is on the setting in which God first placed mankind and how it changed after sin entered the world. Moses takes us to the time after the separation of land and water, after the creation of some plant life, and before the creation of mankind. Look again at verse [5], “When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up.” 

The Hebrews words are important. This foreshadows God’s discipline of Adam after His fall into sin. In Genesis 3, God says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain 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.” Before sin entered the world, the bushes or shrubs that produced thorns and thistles either did not exist or they did not yet exist as we know them today, in our sin-plagued world.

And the small plants referred to here correspond to those which Adam would have to cultivate to make bread. Before the fall, mankind would simply walk over, pick, and eat. After the fall, toil was necessary. Weeds would have to be removed, labor was required. Wheat and barley necessary to make bread apparently did not exist until man was tasked with cultivating the ground. 

And notice the immediate reason given for why these things were not yet growing, the rest of verse 5 says, “for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground.” The vegetation that did exist was not watered by rain. 

Things were not operating according to the ordinary providence that we observe today. Another example of this extraordinary providence was how light existed before God created the sun. The light came from His holy presence. So it’s not problematic to accept that various things were different at that time. There was already plant life, as Genesis 1:11-12 tells us, but not these kinds which now grow rapidly after the rain. 

I couldn’t help but think of how the weeds grow rampantly after heavy rains! It seems like rain supercharges them. Rain is also essential for our crops. Interestingly, after the fall into sin, mankind must wait and hope for rain to grow what we need, although by God’s grace we learned how to irrigate our fields as it was in the beginning. So at that time, rain did not fall. Water sprung up from the ground. Of course, water still exists beneath the surface of the earth. 

But in that pre-rain world, look at verse [7], “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground.” The evolutionary theorists who argue that we came from the sludge, that mankind was formed over millions of years by random, coincidental processes are at least correct about this: we did come from the ground. However, we were not first a one-celled organism, then later a tadpole, then much later a monkey, and so forth to our current human state. No, the first man was fully formed from the start. 

God made Adam from the ground. In fact, the name “Adam” sounds like the Hebrew word for “ground.” God made Adam fully formed but not yet living. Notice the rest of verse 7, the LORD God, “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Yahweh breathed life into the man.

In human terms, God “formed” Adam like a potter would form pottery. Elsewhere in Scripture, God is described as a potter, mankind as clay. Isaiah 45 says, “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him...Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?” And in Romans 9, the apostle Paul writes, “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay?” 

Moses was giving to the Israelites, and to us today, an even greater sense of God’s sovereign claim over us. “Know that Yahweh, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his,” Psalm 100. God formed the man and made him alive, but also, God put within the man the ability to know God and and have this personal bond with Him. All people are made to know God in this way.

Do you have this personal bond with God? Do you have a growing sense that God knows you and He is interested in you, that He cares for you and desires to help you, that He is with you, that He is for you and not against you? Do you want to know God in that way? God put that desire within you. He made you to know Him and all His benefits. He is the giver of human life; yes, the breath in your lungs and the living body you possess, but also, your personal nature: your ability to think and hope and love and feel. He gave you that. God gives life. 

And also, He upholds life. Notice verse [8] “And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” Eden was apparently a region, and God created a special place there, a garden for mankind. A place suitable for man’s needs. And in that garden specifically God caused certain things to grow, verse [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.” 

This is not a restating of the creation of vegetation in chapter 1. This is what God planted in the garden. Among what Yahweh placed there were two special trees. Verse 9 “The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” At the center of the garden, in the heart of it, stood one of these two unique trees, and the location of the other is not given. 

Genesis 3 tells us that if the man and woman had been able to eat of the tree of life, they would have become immortal, living forever. They would have known eternal life. We will look next week at God’s instructions regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But that tree’s fruit was forbidden; to eat from it would be disobedience. The consequence of disobedience, Genesis 3 says, would be “knowing good and evil.” It would be an awareness of good things and bad things. Until the fall into sin, humans had only known what was good. They were innocent. 

But we will get to that in later sermons. For now, notice verse [10] “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.” This agrees with what we saw earlier, that water sprung from the ground and flowed out to irrigate the land. These final verses seem to address the geography during the time of Moses. 

The location of the rivers Pishon and the Gihon rivers are unknown to us today. Pishon was apparently a region that produced great wealth: gold and other precious stones. Naturally, Israelites hearing this account are similar to us today. They wanted to know where the garden used to be. 

Now the rivers mentioned in verse 14 are ones we are familiar with today: the Tigris and the Euphrates. But today, these two rivers do not share a common source as they did in the beginning, although they do flow to the same place, the Persian Gulf. The earth has no doubt undergone various turbulent changes through the ages. But notice this: these four rivers which watered and nourished that area came from a single river. The implication is that God upheld or sustained the life He created. 

With all that mankind is capable of, with all the tasks God has entrusted to us, we can easily forget how much we depend upon Him to provide what only He can. The rain, the sunlight, the air we breathe, our health, our life. In Psalm 54, King David sang, “God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.” And just as God upholds our physical life, He upholds our spiritual life. In John 7, Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” The LORD God irrigates the soul of man. Jesus said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The LORD GOD is the upholder of human life.

I said earlier that this “life” is a thread that runs all the way to the end of Scripture and to the end of history. The last chapter of the Bible is Revelation 22. Throughout the book of Revelation, the apostle John describes various visions which God gave to him. And in Revelation 22, John writes, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” 

On the last day, when Jesus returns to gather His people, to judge sin, and to make all things new, the giver and upholder of life will secure finally what only He can. We must remain faithful and hope in Him until that time. Do you know God as the giver and upholder of your life? Have you placed faith in Jesus Christ? Have you accepted and admitted that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness? Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” As we go now to His table, surrender yourself to Him.

Let’s bow in prayer.