GENESIS 2
In the opening verses of the second chapter we come to the seventh day, the day on which God rested “from all his work which he had made”. It is blessed to consider that a day is coming when God will rest in a scene which is the product of His own work — a scene brought under the influence of Christ, where everything is sustained by living food in the energy of life, and marked by fruitfulness and increase. God will then find pleasure in the result of His own work.
The Sabbath was afterwards a very important institution, a special link between God and His people. God ever kept before His people Israel the thought of His rest, and of the conditions in which alone He could rest, and His desire that men should share that rest. The Sabbath became an everlasting covenant and sign between God and His people.
God inspired Moses to write on the first page of Holy Scripture a suggestive outline of the conditions which will bring in His rest, but it takes the whole of Scripture to unfold the varied divine workings which will issue in the rest of God. It should be noted that in speaking of the rest of God we are not referring to the eternal state, but to the dispensation of the fulness of times, when everything will be headed up in Christ. All the conditions of life will be established and will be enjoyed, so that God’s thought as to man on earth will be realised. Christ and the assembly will be in supremacy; God will rest, and His saints will participate in His rest. How blessed!
The Lord when here was “Lord of the Sabbath”, and in exercising the rights involved in this title He [p. 21] would heal and deliver men. How could there be a true Sabbath even for men so long as they were oppressed by the devil, and under a thousand ills and infirmities? And how could there be a true Sabbath for God while His creature was in such a state? It is a terrible witness of the state of man that the Lord was never mentioned in connection with the Sabbath except as doing what the Jews regarded as breaking it! Man had fallen under such terrible bondage that no rest was possible for him until a divine deliverance was wrought for him, and so grace made the Lord of the Sabbath a worker on that holy day. Deuteronomy 5: 15 is of much interest as showing that the commandment to observe the Sabbath day was addressed to a people delivered from bondage by Jehovah their God. In a world of sin and bondage there could be no rest for God; hence the Lord had to say, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”.
But the seventh day is figurative of the time when everything will be put into suitability to God’s pleasure; it speaks of the millennial rest of the wide creation. We sing sometimes: —
“Joyful now the wide creation
Rests in undisturbed repose”. (14:6)
But we sing it anticipatively; it is not really so yet. The first day of the week is the characteristic day of Christianity; it is the beginning of a new period, and really stands in relation to what is eternal. But the seventh day stands in relation to the preceding six days in which God had worked in a scene where disorder and darkness had been, but which He finally brought into suitability to His pleasure. It thus has [p. 22] in view the millennial age when all will be so ordered as the result of divine working that rest will be brought into the very scene where all the disorder and darkness have been. It will be the triumph of God in relation to all the conditions which have come in here as the result of sin and Satan’s power.
From verse 4 things connected with the creation of man, and his moral relations with God, are taken up more in detail; hence the name Jehovah is brought in — the name of relationship. The creation of man is of the deepest importance. “And Jehovah Elohim formed man, dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”. It was something altogether different from the creation of the beasts. Man is not only a living soul, but he has a spirit directly inbreathed from God; he became a living soul by having a spirit. He was formed as a creature to be in direct moral relation with God. And it is important to recognise that each human being receives his spirit direct from God.
It is the most direct and intimate thing that could be thought of, for God to breathe into man’s nostrils. Man is a creature: he is not God, nor a part of God, as the folly of Pantheism would assert; but his spirit lives in virtue of the inbreathing of God. Man is the offspring of God; “in him we live and move and have our being”; this cannot be too much insisted upon. It is his relation to God that makes man responsible; and nothing will make men right or happy but having their relation with God divinely adjusted. The fall having taken place, man has gone astray from God, and nothing will put him right but being brought back to God. The coming into the world of the [p. 23] Son of God, redemption, and the giving of the Spirit are all in view of man being recovered for the pleasure of God.
When God recovers man through redemption He gives him His own Spirit; that is more than Adam innocent ever had. It is God’s way when anything fails which He has set up to bring in something better. He permits in His wisdom an order to exist in which failure can come, and when it comes He secures greater glory for Himself and greater happiness for His creatures by bringing in a better thing. To be forgiven, justified, and to have the Spirit puts one in a higher and better place — into much greater nearness to God — than Adam had as an innocent being. The Christian through redemption has the Spirit of God, and that is more than living by the inbreathing of God. The believer has his own spirit, but he has also God’s Spirit bearing witness with his spirit; Romans 8: 16.
“And Jehovah Elohim planted a garden in Eden eastward, and there put man whom he had formed”. Eden means pleasure; it suggests a scene of delight, in which everything was found that could minister to the natural happiness of an innocent man. Every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food was there. And man was placed in that garden “to till it and to guard it”. Everything was provided, but man had to till the garden. There seems to be a principle in this primary ordering of things which deserves attention. It contained features, too, in the tree of life and the river, which are distinctly typical of Christ and the Spirit. So that from the very outset God gave an intimation that He had in His mind a greater good for man than anything that could be found in the natural sphere. The tree of [p. 24] life in the midst of the garden was a suggestion and promise of something better and greater than all the good with which He had surrounded Adam. It was the promise of life before sin came in, before the ages of time had begun to run their course, and while as yet death was only known as the terrible penalty attached by Jehovah’s word to disobedience. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there also. But this was a question which God alone was equal to; man was not competent to take it up; it meant ruin for him to touch it. Hence God fenced about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with the most restraining prohibition possible, and with the most solemn penalty attached to disobedience.
The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil bring in such great and important subjects that they call for much consideration. It seems as if God here plainly declared the two great questions which He purposed to work out in connection with man. And the two trees standing together seem to suggest that the question of life for man was bound up with the solution of the question of good and evil. That question having come into the universe it had to be settled according to God’s glory, so that life according to His thought of it might become the portion of His creatures. Man became involved in that question by his disobedience and fall. God knows good and evil, and can take account of both perfectly; but man could only get that knowledge by becoming evil himself. But it was in the purpose of God that man should be as Himself in knowing good and evil in a holy nature, and this comes about through Christ and through the cross.
The question of good and evil was too great for the [p. 25] creature; God only could solve it; and man, the creature of His pleasure, having become involved in it, God has allowed the whole question to be worked out in connection with him. It was God’s intent that it should be so. Now He has made it possible for good and evil to be known in the way of pure blessing, and not simply in a guilty conscience. What a setting forth of good and evil was there at the cross! And good in God brought to light by the evil in man in a way it could never have been known in a world of innocence! We see the evil judged there too, and the death penalty attached to that tree coming upon One who bears it in love, to God’s glory. So that streams of life and blessing can flow out from that very spot. Evil has become the background to show out the lustre and glory of good in the blessed God. The revelation of God in Christ is really the tree of life, and when the creature is brought to know God, and to live by what God is as revealed, a power of life is brought in that no evil can touch.
We see in the cross the two trees brought together. Good and evil have been brought to light and disentangled there. We see the infinite goodness of God there, and we see evil both in man and Satan fully exposed, but the good in God has triumphed over the evil. The whole question is settled now, and the One who has settled it has become the Tree of life. But having been involved in that question by the fall, we have to learn its character and solution through moral exercises, in which we make discovery of what we are, and also, through grace, of what God is. And this not only in connection with the first exercises of the soul, which prepare it for the gospel, but through those experiences by which the people [p. 26] of God have their senses exercised for distinguishing both good and evil; Hebrews 5: 14.
There is nothing more wonderful than the opening chapters of Genesis. The tree and the river are here, and we get them again at the end of the Revelation; what God begins with He ends with; He began with Christ in a typical way, and He will end with Christ. He has brought all that Christ is into view, and the very fall of man has become the occasion of his appreciating in a very deep and blessed way, when born again and having the Spirit, all that God is as revealed in Christ. It is wonderful that we should have before the fall such a setting forth typically of grace, and of the outgoings of God’s heart.
God has come in and solved the question of good and evil in the cross and death of Christ; He has brought everything into clear light there, and has done it in favour of man, so that from that spot blessing flows out. The rivers suggest that, and four points to universality. No doubt they speak, too, of the outflow of blessing from the heavenly city, and from the sanctuary on earth, in a coming day. See Revelation 22: 1; Ezekiel 47. But at the present time the rivers find their answer in the gospel going out in the power of the Spirit.
The first branch of the river, Pison, means ‘Freely flowing’, and there was gold in the land where it flowed. How suggestive that is of the gospel! It speaks of grace freely flowing in divine righteousness; instead of demanding righteousness from men God is ministering His own righteousness to men. The gospel does not demand righteousness but confers it. The three things connected with Pison — gold, bdellium, and the onyx stone — seem to indicate three different [p. 27] features of divine grace. The only other place where bdellium is mentioned is in connection with the manna (Numbers 11: 7). And the onyx stone was what the priest had on his shoulders engraved with the names of the children of Israel. Grace flowing out in divine righteousness — and the gold would speak of this — confers everything on man that he needs. It ministers righteousness to him, and food to sustain him in the wilderness pathway, and secures to him the support of Christ as Priest. Indeed, God graces man with all that Christ is.
The second part of the river, Gihon, flows round the dark country. It compasses the whole land of Ethiopia or Cush, which means ‘Black’, We may see in this a suggestion of being set free from the power of darkness. There is deliverance in the knowledge of God, and in the power of His Spirit, from all the power of darkness. When the fortune-tellers at Ephesus got the knowledge of God, they brought their books and burnt them, and the Spirit of God has told us what those books were worth. Those men had been living in the ‘black’ country, but they obtained deliverance from the authority of darkness.
Hiddekel means ‘Rapid’, and it flows toward Assyria. Assyria speaks of man in violent opposition to God and to His people, but this branch of the river seems to suggest a power of divine grace which can overcome and subdue all that. Assyria as a moral symbol differs from Babylon. Babylon is the corrupting influence of the glory of man, but Assyria is man as marked by violence. One like Saul of Tarsus could be reached and subdued in a moment by the grace of God in a glorified Saviour. That grace is a river that is able to sweep away every obstacle in its course, and subdue the proudest will.
Then Euphrates is ‘Sweet water’. How sweet is the revelation of God in love, and the shedding abroad of that love in the heart by the Spirit!
The saint who is in the good of the gospel becomes a source of blessing and refreshment to all around him. Out of his belly flow rivers of living water. If there is no outflow it indicates that not much has flowed in; there has not been the coming to Christ and drinking abundantly. If I am held by some power of darkness or of man, I cannot give expression to what is of God, so that the exercise for us is to be really in the good of the deliverance and blessing which the grace of God has made available for us; then we can be exponents of it.
If we see in the river a figure of what is for man, we may see at the end of the chapter a wonderful picture of what is for Christ. The ministry of the gospel gives expression to what there is for man, but the ministry of the assembly brings out what there is for Christ. Both are suggested here in a typical way.
“It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helpmate, his like”. We get a type of the assembly here before sin came in. The thought of the assembly goes back to the eternal purpose of God, and goes on to eternity. How wonderful that Christ is to have a counterpart — a companion to answer perfectly to Him in moral state, in mind and affection and sensibilities! All the animals passed before Adam, but there was nothing that answered to him — that was ‘his like’. To secure a counterpart for him something had to be taken out of himself; Eve had to be formed out of man.
Nothing could be suitable to be united to Christ [p. 29] but what came out of Him. Think of that glorious Man in heaven! How could anything be suitable to be united to Him but what came out of Him? The assembly is a wonderful formation; she is a divinely formed counterpart to Christ, so as to be for His satisfaction; He can recognise that she is of Himself. One may ask, How much is there in me that Christ could recognise as being of Himself? That is the measure in which bridal formation has taken place in me. Of course the formation of the bride is a collective thought, but it must be wrought in each saint. The assembly viewed as the bride is a divine formation, formed out of Christ. The ‘deep sleep’ is the secret of it. There could not have been any formation if everything formative had not been brought into death. Christ went into death, and all that man is as in the flesh was exposed and judged there, but everything that is excellent and blessed was disclosed there so as to become formative. The assembly derives her spiritual being from what was disclosed in the death of Christ. In Eve as a type it is all viewed as brought about in sovereignty from the divine side.
Think of the varied elements which were disclosed in fulness and perfection in that precious death! The love of God in all its depth and full extent was made known there. Divine holiness in all its purity was there. The perfect love of righteousness was seen there in One who would die to establish it, and such a hatred of lawlessness that He would die to remove it. We behold there, too, the perfection of obedience and devotedness in a blessed Man who would go to the very lowest point to glorify God. We see there, also, the love of Christ for the assembly expressed [p. 30] in the giving of Himself for her. These are the most powerful influences in the universe, and they have been disclosed in the death of Christ so as to become formative of His bride.
As we come under the influence of Christ we are formed in appreciation of His love, who died not only to secure the good of His own but the possession of them for His own heart. We are formed, too, in the appreciation of the will of God, and of the love of God. And in this way moral accord is brought about between Christ and the assembly; she becomes His counterpart; she answers to Him in mind, in affections, in moral sensibilities. It might be good to ask ourselves sometimes, What is there in my moral being that came out of Christ, that could not have come from any other? Well, that is the measure of bridal formation so far as I am concerned.
It is a wondrous thing for Christ to be able to recognise what is of Himself in His saints — to see such features in them as dependence, meekness, lowliness, obedience, holiness. These are moral foundations. But then He sees, too, a response to His affections, and an appreciation of the love of God, and that His interests are in the heart of the bride. The building of the bride is going on; her members are being fashioned ‘during many days’; Psalm 139: 16. As we come under the love of Christ we are formed.