first thing first

But if God is God, as we understand the word, then He is eternal and needs nothing; and He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere present. In order to have a “limited god,” you must first redefine the very word “God,” because by definition God cannot be limited.

Furthermore, if God is limited and “getting greater,” then what power is making Him greater? That power would be greater than “God” and therefore be God! And wouldn’t that give us two gods instead of one? But the God of the Bible is eternal and had no beginning. He is infinite and knows no limitations in either time or space. He is perfect and cannot “improve,” and is immutable and cannot change.¹

God is Eternal God has been is and will always be. Trillions of years ago GOD and trillions of years after tonight GOD. Before anything God was. I wonder what God did. God made us in hos image so then we began and will always be either in the realm of heaven (if we trust in Jesus) or the realm on hell (if we die and did not trust in Jesus)

God is All knowing, God knows all that is and all that could be. Gods knowlage is perfect. If you played trvia with Jesus Jesus could never lose. Jesus knows everything about you including every thing you ever thought. It ought to scare you if you sin because God knows it and keeps a record.

First Things First

If you could have been present to witness any event in Bible history, which event would you choose? I once asked that question of several well-known Christian leaders, and the answers were varied: the crucifixion of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the Flood, Israel crossing the Red Sea, and even David slaying Goliath. But one of them said, “I would like to have been present when God finished His creation. It must have been an awesome sight!”

Some scientists claim that if we could travel out into space fast enough and far enough, we could “catch up” with the light beams from the past and watch history unfold before our eyes. Perhaps the Lord will let us do that when we get to heaven. I hope so, because I would like to see the extraordinary events Moses described in Genesis 1 and 2.

Genesis 2 introduces us to a series of “firsts” that are important to us if we want to build our lives according to the basics God has put into His universe.

1. The first Sabbath (Gen. 2:1–3)

The word “Sabbath” isn’t found in this paragraph, but Moses is writing about the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week. The phrase “seventh day” is mentioned three times in verses 2–3. “Sabbath” comes from a Hebrew word shabbat that means “to cease working, to rest” and is related to the Hebrew word for “seven.” We need to consider three different Sabbaths found in the Bible.

The personal Sabbath of the Lord God (vv. 1–4). This first Sabbath didn’t take place because God was tired from all His creative work, because God doesn’t get weary (Isa. 40:28). God set apart the seventh day because His work of creation was finished and He was pleased and satisfied with what He had created. “And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).

Three things are distinctive about this seventh day of the creation week. First, there’s no mention of “evening and morning,” suggesting that God’s Sabbath rest would have no end. Unfortunately, man’s sin interrupted God’s rest; and God had to search for Adam and Eve and deal with them (3:8–9, and see John 5:9, 17). Second, there’s no record that He blessed any of the other six days, but God did bless the seventh day (Gen. 2:3). In blessing it, He made it a blessing. Third, after blessing the seventh day, God sanctified it (v. 3), which means He set it apart for His own special purposes.

Jehovah is the God of time as well as the Lord of eternity. It was He who created time and established the rotation of the planets and their orbits around the sun. It was He who marked out the seven-day week and set

aside one day for Himself. Every living thing that God has created lives a day at a time except humans made in God’s image! People rush around in the frantic “rat race” of life, always planning to rest but never seeming to fulfill their plan.

It has been said that most people in our world are being “crucified between two thieves”: the regrets of yesterday and the worries about tomorrow. That’s why they can’t enjoy today. Relying on modern means of transportation and communication, we try to live two or three days at a time, only to run headlong against the creation cycle of the universe; and the results are painful and often disastrous.

A famous Chinese scholar came to America to lecture and during the course of his tour was met at a busy metropolitan railway station by his university host. “If we run quickly, we can catch the next train and save ourselves three minutes,” said the host. The scholar quietly asked, “And what significant thing shall we do with the three minutes that we save by running?” A good question that could not be answered. Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden over a century ago, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I wonder what he’d say if he saw the frantic people running up and down escalators in our airline terminals!

God had done many wonderful things during the six days of Creation, but the climax of the creation week was God’s “rest” after His work. As we shall see, God has sanctified work as well as rest, but it’s rest that seems to be the greatest need in people’s hearts today. Augustine was correct when he wrote, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

The national Sabbath of Israel. There’s no mention of the Sabbath in Scripture until Exodus 16:23 when God gave the regulations to Israel about gathering the daily manna. From the way this commandment is worded, it suggests that the Jews already knew the importance of the Sabbath and were observing it as a day of rest. In giving the Sabbath to Israel, the Lord related this special day to other events in sacred history.

To begin with, when God gave Israel the Law at Mount Sinai, the Sabbath was connected with Creation (20:8–11). God was the generous Giver of all that they needed, and they must acknowledge Him by worshiping the Creator and not the creation. They were not to imitate the pagan nations around them (Rom. 1:18ff). Moses even mentioned the weekly rest needed by servants and farm animals (Ex. 23:12), so keeping the Sabbath was a humanitarian act as well as a religious duty. The Lord commanded His people to observe every seventh year as a Sabbatical Year and every fiftieth year as a Year of Jubilee. This would permit the land to enjoy its Sabbaths and be renewed (Lev. 25).

The Sabbath was not only connected with Creation, but at the close of the giving of the Law, it was vested with special significance as a sign between Israel and Jehovah (Ex. 31:12–17; Neh. 9:13–15). “Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you” (Ex. 31:13, nkjv). There’s no evidence that God ever required any other nation to observe the Sabbath, because the Jews alone were the chosen people of God.

There’s a third connection between the Sabbath and the Jews. When Moses rehearsed the Law for the new generation about to enter Canaan, he connected the Sabbath Day with their deliverance from Egypt (Deut. 5:12–15). The weekly Sabbath and the annual Passover feast would both remind Israel of God’s mercy and power in freeing the nation from bondage. Furthermore, this weekly day of rest would also be a foretaste of the rest they would enjoy in the Promised Land (Deut. 3:20; 12:10; 25:19; Josh. 22:4). God had brought them out of Egypt that He might bring them into the Promised Land to claim their inheritance (Deut. 4:37–38). In the Book of Hebrews, this concept of a “promised rest” is applied to believers today.

The nation of Israel eventually declined spiritually and didn’t observe God’s laws, including the Sabbath law; and they were ultimately punished for their disobedience (2 Chron. 36:14–21; Ezek. 20:1ff; Isa. 58:13–14; Jer. 17:19–27). The Northern Kingdom of Israel was swallowed up by Assyria, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah was taken into captivity by Babylon.

By the time of the ministry of Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees had added their traditions to God’s Word and turned the Law in general and the Sabbath in particular into religious bondage. The few prohibitions found in Moses (Ex. 16:29; 35:2–3; Num. 15:32–36) were expanded into numerous regulations. Jesus, however, rejected their traditions and even performed miracles on the Sabbath! He said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

The spiritual Sabbath of the Christian believer (Heb. 4:1–11). Hebrews 4 brings together God’s creation rest (v. 4) and Israel’s Canaan rest (v. 8) to teach us about the spiritual rest that believers have in Christ (vv. 9–11). When you trust Jesus Christ, you enter the “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17) and into His spiritual rest (Matt. 11:28–30). You also enter into the spiritual inheritance He gives all who trust Him (Acts 20:32; Eph. 1:18; Col. 1:12). Believers are not under bondage to keep the Law (Gal. 5:1) because the Holy Spirit fulfills the righteousness of the Law in us as we yield to Him (Rom. 8:1–3).

The first Christian believers met daily for worship and fellowship (Acts 2:46), but they also gathered together on the first day of the week, the day of Christ’s resurrection from the dead (John 20:19, 26; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2). The first day was known as “the Lord’s day” (Rev. 1:10); and to make the Lord’s Day into a “Christian Sabbath” is to confuse what these two days stand for in God’s plan of salvation.

The seventh day of the week, the Jewish Sabbath, symbolizes the old creation and the covenant of law: first you work, then you rest. The first day of the week, the Lord’s day, symbolizes the New Creation and the Covenant of Grace: first you believe in Christ and find rest, and then you work (Eph. 2:8–10). In the New Creation, God’s Spirit enables us to make the entire week an experience of worship, praise, and service to the glory of God.

The Jewish Sabbath law was fulfilled by Christ on the cross and is no longer binding on God’s people (Gal. 4:1–11; Col. 2:16–17). However, some believers may choose to honor the Sabbath Day “as unto the Lord,” and Christians are not to judge or condemn one another in this matter. When good and godly people disagree on matters of conscience, they must practice love and mutual acceptance and grant one another liberty (Rom. 14:1–15:7). “Therefore let no one judge you in food or in drink [the dietary laws], or regarding a festival or a new moon [the Jewish feasts] or Sabbaths” (Col. 2:16, nkjv).

2. The first home (Gen. 2:4–14)

Some Old Testament scholars have claimed that this section of Genesis 2 is a second account of Creation written by a different author whose message conflicts with what’s found in chapter 1. That theory isn’t widely promoted today; for in these verses, Moses tells the same Creation story but adds details that we need to know in order to understand events that happen later. Genesis 2:4 is the first of eleven “generation” statements that mark the progress of the story Moses wrote in the Book of Genesis. (See chapter 1, section 1, page 13.)

Adam the worker. Looking back to the third day (1:9–13), Moses told how God had brought forth vegetation and provided a “mist” to water the plants. You won’t encounter rain in Genesis until the time of the Flood. It’s interesting that God needed someone to till the earth and help produce the food needed. Humans are stewards of God’s creation blessings and should use His gifts as He commands. God and man work together, for God put Adam into the garden to do His work in tilling the soil and caring for it (v. 15).

A retired man living in a city got tired of seeing an ugly vacant lot as he took his daily walk, so he asked the owner for permission to plant a garden there. It took days to haul away the accumulated rubbish and even more time to prepare the soil, but the man worked hard. The next year, the lot was aglow with life and beauty, and everyone took notice.

“God has certainly given you a beautiful piece of property,” said a visitor as he admired the flowers and the landscaping.

“Yes, He has,” the busy gardener replied, “but you should have seen this property when God had it all by Himself!”

The reply was a wise one and not at all irreverent. The same God who ordains the end—a beautiful garden—also ordains the means to the end—someone to do the work. After all, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26); and no amount of prayer or Bible study can take the place of a gardener plowing the soil, sowing the seed, watering plants, and pulling weeds. “For we are laborers together with God” (1 Cor. 3:9).

Work isn’t a curse; it’s an opportunity to use our abilities and opportunities in cooperating with God and being faithful stewards of His creation. After man sinned, work became toil (Gen. 3:17–19); but that wasn’t God’s original intention. We all have different abilities and opportunities, and we must discover what God wants us to do with our lives in this world, for the good of others and the glory of God. Someday, we want to be able to stand before God and say with Jesus, “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17:4, nkjv).

Adam the tenant. God planted His garden “eastward in Eden” (Gen. 2:8). “Eden” means either “delight” or “place of much water” and suggests that this garden was a paradise from the hand of God. Bible history begins with a beautiful garden in which man sinned, but the story ends with a glorious “garden city” (Rev. 21–22) in which there will be no sin. What brought about the change? A third garden, Gethsemane, where Jesus surrendered to the Father’s will and then went forth to die on a cross for the sins of the world.

We have no information about the Pishon River or the Gihon River; and though the Tigris (Hiddekel) and Euphrates are familiar to us, we still don’t have enough data to determine the exact location of the Garden of Eden. The location of the land of Havilah is also uncertain; some place it in Armenia, others in Mesopotamia. The King James Version has identified the land of Cush as Ethiopia, but this interpretation isn’t generally accepted today. Fortunately, it isn’t necessary to master ancient geography in order to understand the spiritual lessons of these early chapters in Genesis.

In this beautiful Garden, God provided both bounty and beauty; Adam and Eve had food to eat and God’s lovely handiwork to enjoy. As yet, sin hadn’t entered the Garden; so their happiness wasn’t marred.

3. The first covenant (Gen. 2:16–17)

A covenant is a binding arrangement between two or more parties that governs their relationship. The word command is introduced at this point because it’s God who makes the terms of the agreement. God is the Creator and man is the creature, a “royal tenant” in God’s wonderful world, so God has the right to tell the man what he can and cannot do. God didn’t ask for Adam’s advice; He simply gave him His commandment.

God had given great honor and privilege to Adam in making him His vice-regent on the earth (1:28), but with privilege always comes responsibility. The same divine Word that brought the universe into being also expresses God’s love and will to Adam and Eve and their descendants (Ps. 33:11). Obedience to this Word would keep them in the sphere of God’s fellowship and approval. All God’s commands are good commands and bring good things to those who obey them (Ps. 119:39; Prov. 6:20–23). “And His commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).

God placed two special trees in the middle of the Garden: the Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:9, 17; 3:3, 22, 24). Eating from the tree of life would confer immortality (v. 22). Eating from the second tree would confer an experiential knowledge of good and evil, but it would also bring death (2:17). Since they had never experienced evil, Adam and Eve were like innocent children (Deut. 1:39; Isa. 7:15–16). When they disobeyed God, they became like Him in being able to discriminate between good and evil; but they became unlike Him in that they lost their sinlessness and eventually died.

But why did God have to test Adam and Eve? There may be many answers to that question, but one thing is sure: God wanted humans to love and obey Him freely and willingly and not because they were programmed like robots who had to obey. In one sense, God “took a risk” when He made Adam and Eve in His own image and gave them the privilege of choice; but this is the way He ordained for them to learn about freedom and obedience. It’s one of the basic truths of life that obedience brings blessing and disobedience brings judgment.

4. The first marriage (Gen. 2:19–25)

At the close of the sixth day of Creation, God had surveyed everything He had made and pronounced it “very good” (1:31). But now God says that there’s something in His wonderful world that is not good: the man is alone. In fact, in the Hebrew text, the phrase “not good” is at the beginning of the Lord’s statement in 2:18.

What was “not good” about man’s solitude? After all, Adam could fellowship with God, enjoy the beauty of the Garden and eat of its fruits, accomplish his daily work, and even play with the animals. What more could he want? God knew what Adam needed: “a helper suitable for him” (v. 18, niv). There was no such helper among the animals, so God made the first woman and presented her to the man as his wife, companion, and helper. She was God’s special love gift to Adam (3:12).

The dignity of woman (vv. 18–22). The woman was by no means a “lesser creature.” The same God who made Adam also made Eve and created her in His own image (1:27). Both Adam and Eve exercised dominion over Creation (v. 29). Adam was made from the dust, but Eve was made from Adam’s side, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh (2:23).

The plain fact is that Adam needed Eve. Not a single animal God had created could do for Adam what Eve could do. She was a helper “meet [suitable] for him.” When God paraded the animals before Adam for him to name them, they doubtless came before him in pairs, each with its mate; and perhaps Adam wondered, “Why don’t I have a mate?”

Though Eve was made to be a “suitable [face-to-face] helper” for Adam, she wasn’t made to be a slave. The noted Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote: “She was not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” Paul wrote that “the woman is the glory of man” (1 Cor. 11:7, niv); for if man is the head (1 Cor. 11:1–16; Eph. 5:22–33), then woman is the crown that honors the head.

The sanctity of marriage (vv. 23–24). God’s pattern for marriage wasn’t devised by Adam; as the traditional marriage ceremony states it, “Marriage was born in the loving heart of God for the blessing and benefit of mankind.” No matter what the courts may decree, or society may permit, when it comes to marriage, God had the first word and He will have the last word (Heb. 13:4; Rev. 22:15). Perhaps the Lord looks down on many unbiblical marriages today and says, “From the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). His original plan was that one man and one woman be one flesh for one lifetime.

God had at least four purposes in mind when He performed the first marriage in the Garden of Eden. First, He wanted suitable companionship for Adam, so He gave him a wife. He gave Adam a person and not an animal, someone who was his equal and therefore could understand him and help him. Martin Luther called marriage “a school for character,” and it is. As two people live together in holy matrimony, the experience either brings out the best in them or the worst in them. It’s an opportunity to exercise faith, hope, and love and to mature in sacrifice and service to one another for God’s glory.

Second, marriage provides the God-given right to enjoy sex and have children. The Lord commanded them to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28). This doesn’t imply that sexual love is only for procreation, because many people marry who are beyond the time of bearing children; but the bearing of children is an important part of the marriage union (1 Tim. 5:14).

A third purpose for marriage is to encourage self-control (1 Cor. 7:1–7). “It is better to marry than to burn with passion” (v. 9, nkjv). A marriage that’s built only on sexual passion isn’t likely to be strong or mature. Sexual love ought to be enriching and not just exciting, and marriage partners need to respect one another and not just use one another. Throughout Scripture, sexual union outside of marriage is condemned and shown to be destructive, and so are the perversions of the sexual union (Rom. 1:24–27). No matter what the judges or the marriage counselors say, “God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (Heb. 13:4, niv).

Finally, marriage is an illustration of the loving and intimate relationship between Christ and His church (Eph. 5:22–33). Paul called this “a great mystery,” that is, a profound spiritual truth that was once hidden but is now revealed by the Spirit. Jesus Christ is the Last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45) and therefore a type of the first Adam.

Adam was put to sleep and his side opened that he might have a wife, but Jesus died on a cross and His blood shed that He might have a bride, the church (John 19:33–37). Christ loves the church, cares for it, and seeks to cleanse it and make it more beautiful for His glory. One day Christ will claim His bride and present her in purity and glory in heaven (Jude 24; Rev. 19:1–9).

When Adam saw his bride, he burst into joyful praise (Gen. 2:23), as though he were saying, “At last I have a suitable companion!” (The niv sets this apart as a poem.) Her identity as “woman” would remind everybody that she was taken out of “man,” and the term “man” would always be a part of “woman.” She was made from him and for him, and he needed her; therefore, they will always belong to each other and lovingly serve each other.

Adam didn’t speak the words recorded in verses 24–25. They are God’s reflection on the event and His enunciation of the principle of marital unity declared by Adam. Woman is one with man both in origin (she came from man) and in marriage. In the sexual union and in their children, the man and woman are “one flesh.” Marriage is a civil relationship, regulated by law, and should be a spiritual relationship and a heart relationship, governed by the Word of God and motivated by love. But marriage is basically a physical relationship. The man and the woman are not primarily “one spirit” or “one heart,” as essential as those things are, but “one flesh.” Hence, the importance of “leaving” the former family and “cleaving” to one’s mate (Eph. 5:30–31), the forming of a new relationship that must be nurtured and protected.

The phrase “one flesh” implies that anything that breaks the physical bond in marriage can also break the marriage itself. One such thing is death; for when one mate dies, the other mate is free to remarry because the marriage bond has been broken (Rom. 7:1–3; 1 Cor. 7:8–9; 1 Tim. 5:14). In Matthew 19:1–9, Jesus teaches that adultery can also break the marriage bond. Under the Old Testament Law, anybody who committed adultery was stoned to death (Deut. 22:22–24; John 8:3–7), thus leaving the innocent mate free to remarry; but this law wasn’t given to the New Testament church. It appears that divorce in the New Testament is the equivalent of death in the Old Testament and that the innocent party is free to remarry. However, sins against the marriage bond can be forgiven and couples can exercise forgiveness and make a new beginning in the Lord.

We live in a world created by God, we are creatures made in the image of God, and we enjoy multiplied blessings from the hand of God. How tragic that so many people leave God out of their lives and become confused wanderers in a unfriendly world, when they could be children of God in their Father’s world.

1 Wiersbe, W. W. (1998). Be basic (pp. 12–13). Colorado Springs, CO: Chariot Victor Pub.