Genesis 2 - Purposeful Creation

Genesis 2 tells you what you are & what you're for.

Picture: Alexey Demidov via Unsplash

Genesis 2:4–25 (ESV)

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.

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— 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. ⁸ And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 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.

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.

¹⁵ The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

¹⁸ Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹ Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. ²¹ So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²² And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

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HEIDELBERG CATECHISM

Q&A 6

Q. Did God create man so wicked and perverse?

A. No. God created them good and in his own image,

that is, in true righteousness and holiness,

so that they might

truly know God their creator,

love him with all their heart,

and live with him in eternal happiness

for his praise and glory

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Summary

Today's opening verse helps explain where the book of Genesis gets its name: These are the generations of the heavens and the earth... . This phrase will be repeated eight more times before the book is over, each time introducing a new phase in the ongoing story. While the famous first chapter laid out God's sovereign creation poetically in a rhythmic fashion, chapter two slows the pace down and adds a few more details, although they're still pretty scant.

But it's this often overlooked second chapter that sets the stage for the rest of scripture as it introduces us to ourselves - man and woman, and the importance of these revelations can't be understated. It's here, right at the beginning of the Bible, that you find out both what you are and what you're for.

The first thing you find out about yourself here is that you're holy. Now this word has many senses depending on its context, the most familiar of which is being pure and faultless. Although man was this upon his creation, this isn't the aspect of holiness that this passage emphasizes. The word holy also means separate - literally: cut apart. This is the first thing you learn about yourself as you read the Bible: you're different from everything else that's been created.

Yesterday we read of God speaking everything from nothingness into being, today we read of Him forming the man of dust from the ground and then stooping down to breathe into his nostrils the breath of life. Whereas God verbally ordained the universe into existence like a mighty King, He intimately formed His prize creation into His own image like a loving Father.

  Dig Deeper  

Just as this second chapter explains what you are - a holy man, created imago Dei - it also unpacks what you're for. The first clue comes early and is easy to miss: Before Adam, there was no man to work the ground. Certainly this work includes the aspects we commonly associate with it. It's good to be reminded that although our work is miserably cursed because of sin, the concept itself came before the Fall and is one of the principle reasons you exist. So do your work well!

Because work is such a fundamental aspect of your identity, it gets repeated in one of the Bible's most important verses:

¹⁵ The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

It's that second verb - keep - that helps us understand that work involves much more than tillage. But there's a grammatical conundrum here: we're created to work it - we get that, and we're good at it! - and we must keep it, but keep it what? Clean? Well maintained? Taken care of? Yes! But that's not all.

This humble little word keep keeps showing up in critical passages of Scripture. So as the Bible unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that your primary purpose is both to work to expand God's glory and to keep both God's created world and your intimately formed life the way God made it: holy - pure and faultless.

But you already know you haven't fulfilled this purpose and you're hopeless unable to do so. So starting tomorrow, and, Lord willing, each weekday for the rest of this year, we're going to see how it is that your Savior restores your holiness and enables you to fulfill the purposes you were created for.

AAA Prayer (About)

• ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who formed us and breathed the breath of life into us;

• ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that, having been redeemed by the blood of Christ, you will fulfill the purposes for which you were created.

• ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:

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