Bible Study Genesis Part 29-Four Rivers

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So we're back in the book of Genesis again tonight.

We have been working our way through it.

We're working very hard and trying to expel all the normal views of this book.

Most people think it's nothing but fairy tales.

We have been arguing against that all along, and we will continue.

For the most part, this creation thing is argued against throughout the world.

And then as we get further through the book of Genesis, there are fewer arguments because really it's more or less history, but some people don't believe the history even.

So you will always find scoffers when it comes to God's word.

As I said, we are in the book of Genesis.

We are in chapter two.

Tonight we're going to begin with verse 9.

I'll read it first.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Here we are given just a hint of the loveliness of God's creation, particularly within the garden.

Once again, we can see that God's creative narrative, the creation narrative, is focused on something specific.

He didn't give us any details about the world outside the garden.

All he's doing is getting us familiar with the environment inside Eden.

That's what he's doing here.

Now, that doesn't mean, of course, that beyond those walls nothing existed, nor can we assume that God didn't know anything about what was going on out there.

Instead, we can see that he's keying in on the details of the garden because it helps him to communicate the message he's trying to convey.

Why are you always telling us this stuff, John?

Because I want you to see that if you look at the background, if you look at the context of what God is saying throughout the Bible, if you understand or try to understand everything he's saying, the story becomes much more interesting and much more applicable and much less prone to being disregarded.

Listen to what God is saying, don't disregard it.

So what we're talking about here in Genesis 2.9 mostly is the place where God planned to put Adam.

Now let me back up one verse just to make sure you see what I mean.

Genesis 2.8, and the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

And out of the ground, what ground?

Well, the context tells me he's talking about the ground of the Garden of Eden.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed, and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

There were lots of wonderful and nourishing plants in this garden.

After all, God's entire purpose in this part of his plan is to provide a place for mankind to grow and prosper.

Now I love Jay Vernon McGee's perspective on this.

Let me read that first part of verse 9 again.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, on which Dr.

McGee comments there was the beauty of them and the practical side of them, pleasant to the sight and good for food.

Beautiful and useful.

That is how God does things.

That's how He creates things.

Everything that is of God, listen to me, is beautiful and useful.

This is an important reminder for all of us, I believe.

In this life, God has given us many things that will stimulate and please our senses.

There are beautiful mountains and the sounds of birds, the feel of a soft breeze, and one or two others, I'm sure you can think of.

Therefore, God gives us plenty.

It's a part of our nature, it's a part of our design.

We must be somehow relaxed and pleased in order to be full human beings.

We know that because that's the way God designed us.

It's important.

Therefore, God is going to give us things that please us.

But we must not ever forget that everything God has created, including those things that give us pleasure, also have a pragmatic side.

Nothing in creation is simply pleasurable for the sake of being pleasing.

There is always a practical side to that which God gives us through that that gives us enjoyment, and seeking only the enjoyment without accepting its practicality is sin.

Now, I don't think I need to say anything more than that.

No need for explanatory examples.

I'm sure most of us can think of at least one example.

Back to verse 9.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Now, while bringing up the general topic of pleasing to look at food trees, God gets specific and mentions two of history's most famous: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Almost everyone has heard of these trees.

Now, God goes into no further detail here except to mention their names.

And they will come up again in the next chapter.

These are important features of the garden, indeed, of all of creation.

However, let me warn you, though they are mentioned again and play a prominent role, we get almost no additional details as to what they actually are.

As I said, almost every Christian and Jew, and even some of those on the periphery have heard of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge and good and evil, of good and evil.

Not only do these come up regularly in religious education, but they're mentioned quite often out in the secular world as well.

Like so many things from the Bible, these two trees have made their way into our cultural consciousness.

Of course, the majority of those who have heard of these trees consider them nothing more than fable, but they still seem to fascinate all of us, believers or not.

Now, I'll not say much more about these trees at this point, except to challenge you to contemplate what they could actually be.

Yes, they're trees, but how are they connected to life?

And how are they connected to knowledge of good and evil?

We're not told why these two trees are given these names.

We don't know why they're in the garden, and we don't know why they're forbidden beyond the fact that God said they were forbidden.

So what's your point, John?

My point is it's okay to not know some things.

It's not unusual to have to speculate on some of what God tells us in only limited detail.

Of course, Christian philosophers will give you their compelling arguments as to what these are and why they're here.

I'm sure you have your own interpretation of their purpose, but the truth is all of that is conjecture because God says nothing more about them, say, after the third chapter of Genesis, with the exception of one more mention of the Tree of Life way over in Revelation, but not much to go on there either.

However, I will say there is one person who doesn't mind chiming in with his opinion of what is going on here.

Though we'll get to this in the next chapter, we haven't gotten there yet.

And I'm probably not offering up any spoiler alerts.

Most of you know this already, but the devil, or rather the serpent, if that makes you feel better.

He says that if one eats the fruit off of that tree, then that person will become aware of the difference between good and evil, as the name implies.

And in the serpent's version of the issue, once the fruit from the tree is eaten, then the one consuming the fruit becomes like God.

They will become like God, because only God has knowledge of good and evil.

That's the serpent's take on the matter.

Now, the bizarre thing, and again, we haven't gotten there yet, but I put this in my notes because it befuddles me a little bit.

The bizarre thing is that the serpent doesn't say how that's accomplished, how the person receives the knowledge of good and evil.

He doesn't say how that happens or why, or frankly, any other details, or even how he knows these things.

He comes off as an expert without producing any credentials.

And yet, despite all of that, Eve believes what he says.

And not only believes what he says, but believes what he says over and against what God says.

It's shocking, isn't it?

Tell me you haven't believed someone without having them giving you their credentials too, like on this book, on the book of Genesis, on the Bible.

The same kind of liar that the serpent was will tell you without any knowledge that the Bible is no good for you.

Anyways, back to the two trees.

They're very mysterious.

But we're all so used to hearing about them that we don't actually stop and contemplate what they are, what their purpose is, and why they're where they are.

I'll say this one last thing and then we'll move on.

Think about this.

These must be powerful trees because not only does God mention them twice, but they constitute what would have been the entirety of the law for all of mankind had Adam and Eve not sinned.

Isn't that absolutely mind-blowing?

Humans had complete freedom to do anything and everything except that one thing.

That fascinates me.

Anyhow, let's keep moving.

We'll take these next several verses together.

I'll read them first, of course.

And a river went out of Eden to the water of the garden, and from thence it was parted and became into four heads.

The first name of the name of the first is Pison.

Some people say Pishon, some say, some say Pisan.

I'm gonna say Pishon.

That's how it's pronounced in the Hebrew.

The name of the first is Pishon, that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.

Verse 12, and the gold of that land is good.

There is Delium, some people say Badelium, and the onyx stone.

Now, not much to say about this.

Some people speculate that God wanted to compare and contrast the earthly treasure of the land of Havilah with the spiritual and man-improving riches of Eden.

Gold and precious stones and materials are cold and their value is variable and often fleeting.

But what God provided in Eden was meant to advance the pleasure and usefulness of the ones he placed there, or so their theory goes.

Now, I'm not sure I agree with that assumption.

I think it just had to do with trying to further identify the location of Eden.

Using a reference point with identifiable characteristics, such as a land that's mineral rich, is helpful in discovering a location.

This section reads like God is trying to tell us where Eden is.

So he uses landmarks.

One of the landmarks happened to be the land of Havilah.

So what about these elements that are mentioned?

We, of course, know what gold is, but there isn't a whole lot of agreement about what is meant by delium or bedelium.

I've read in a few places that it's supposed to be some sort of resin or a gum that's secreted from a certain tree and that has a unique smell.

But I'm not sure why a resin would be put here in a conversation about precious stones.

Now, I'm not saying that isn't it, but it seems a little far-fetched.

Some even say what's referenced here are pearls.

Now, this would make a little bit more sense to me, given the context.

The fact that the Persian Gulf area, where many speculate, is where Eden is nearby, since pearls are today fairly abundant in the Persian Gulf area, it sort of gives this interpretation a little more weight, but no one knows for sure.

Now, as far as far as is that onyx on the in the notes, honey?

As far as onyx is concerned, we have onyx to this day.

Catherine says, yes, that's an onyx stone.

I asked her to put an onyx stone up just so you could see what it looks like.

We have onyx stone today.

It's a beautiful stone, as you can see.

And this isn't the only time onyx is mentioned in the Bible.

There was also an onyx stone in the very elaborate garment of the high priest of Israel.

There were onyx stones in the temple.

It's also going to be found in the foundation of the new city of Jerusalem following the millennium, but that's still quite a ways off in the future.

How far off?

Only the Father knows.

We'll talk more about that when we get to the book of Revelation.

So back here in Genesis, let me just state that these precious stones or whatever they may be are probably not terribly critical to this story, but important nonetheless because God put it in here, verse 13.

And the name of the second river is Gihan, the same as it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia, verse 14.

And the name of the third river is Hedekal, that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria, and the fourth river is Euphrates.

Now I'm sure you remember saying a few times in the past that everything that is written in the Bible is here for a reason.

God included the things we needed to know, and he left out the things we don't need to know.

Verses 10 through 14 are here in chapter 2 of the book of Genesis for a good reason.

Now you'll also remember that I often say that everything in the Bible is there for a reason, even though everything is there for a reason, the reason is not always clear to us.

These verses describing the location of Eden are an example of that truth, which presents me an excuse to give you an important reminder.

We must always approach the Bible on faith first and knowledge second.

And sometimes knowledge never comes.

I have no idea what to say about these four or five verses.

I don't know why they're here.

All I know is that they are important, but I don't know why they're important.

You know, I used to, you know, I must admit, I that used to bother me.

I used to worry when I couldn't figure out what God was saying.

I thought there was something wrong with me.

Or worse, I'd think there was something wrong with the Bible.

There was a time when if I came across something mysterious or confusing or in my mind contradictory, I would think the Bible was at fault.

Well, now, and this is like reason 3,455, why it's important to study the Bible, the more I study the Bible, the more I become familiar with Scripture, the less I worry when something is difficult for me to understand.

I've learned through all of this that the Bible is the most perfect piece of literature in existence.

The more I examine it, the more convinced I am that this could only come from God.

The Bible is so wonderful and perfect that there can really only be one reason it exists.

The reason it exists is because God wrote it and he gave it to us.

And that is honestly the conclusion I have come to about it.

And that has made me realize that a book written by a God is not going to be easily understood all the time by a man.

And therefore, I should expect that the limits of my intelligence will be reached on a regular basis when studying it.

And that's what's happened in these few verses.

I have no idea why God put this information here.

I know it's supposed to be a description of the location of Eden, but almost none of it makes sense to me.

And I can't tell you why.

And I can also tell you that it doesn't make sense to a lot of people.

And I can say that because I've read a lot of commentary for this section.

Now, is it a big deal that I can't figure this section out?

I don't think so.

You see.

See, what's being discussed here are geographic elements of the Garden of Eden.

Knowing or not knowing the details of these elements, though important, does not have much impact on my faith.

I'm certain it's all accurate and true, and that's good enough for me.

I have no idea what is or where is the river referred to in verse 11 as Pishon.

The scholarly literature is all over the place as to the possibilities.

Some say it's actually referring to the Persian Gulf, and some say it's related to the Indus River.

Now I know what the Euphrates River is.

That's mentioned in verse 14, as is the river Hedekel, which almost all agree is actually the Akkadian word for Tigris.

So we can be relatively certain we have the Tigris and the Euphrates, and everybody knows about these, but most of the rest of the geographic names are completely unfamiliar to me, and most others, from what I can tell.

So again, should our lack of knowledge of what God is talking about concern us?

My answer is still no.

The information that is so obscure to us simply here references places and names of places and descriptions of places.

Knowing precisely what God is talking about doesn't seem to have a great deal of gravity in the grand scheme of things.

And listen, don't let that bother you.

By now we're actually used to not having all the information, aren't we?

Paul once famously said, For now we see through a glass darkly.

Why are we going over it over and over this?

Because I want you to understand, do not be afraid of not knowing what God is talking about.

God does not expect you to always make an intellectual connection to what he's told you.

It does not impact the truth of what he's told you, whether you can figure it out or not.

Continue to go at it.

When these things meet your brain, ask God to help you.

So many people set the Bible aside because they say it's just too hard to believe.

It's too hard to understand.

Don't let that happen.

Don't worry about if one or two things don't make sense to you.

In other words, our knowledge will remain imperfect and incomplete throughout this earthly life.

And there will be things that we have to accept merely and solely on faith.

I mean, here's another example of this.

In the gospels of all places, no one really knows where Golgotha is.

Yes, we know that's the place where Jesus was crucified.

We sometimes also refer to it as Calvary, but we've yet to pinpoint its exact location.

Are we supposed to doubt the crucifixion just because we don't know where his cross stood?

Of course not.

Where he was crucified isn't important.

He was crucified, and that's enough for us to know.

Maybe someday someone might find the exact location of Calvary.

That would be wonderful if they did, but it wouldn't change my faith.

I won't believe any harder that Jesus died there for my sins.

Knowing its exact location has no bearing on that outcome.

We don't know exactly where Eden is, but we know it existed because God tells us about it here in Genesis 2.

We know it existed and that God purposely prepared it for man, and it's the place he put Adam.

That's enough.

There may come a time when we'll get more information, but anything new that comes out won't change how I feel.

Of course, by something new, you know I don't mean something new from the Bible.

The Bible is closed.

What we have there is going to remain for all eternity.

Nothing will ever be added nor subtracted from it.

What I mean is maybe in the future, we'll discover something in archaeology or geology or anthropology that will help us to connect the dots, so to speak.

I don't know.

That may or may not happen.

I already believe that God put Eden in a place that has a river running through it and that it eventually splits into four others, named Pishon and Gihon and Hidekel and Euphrates.

I believe all of that stuff that's mentioned in Genesis 2, 10 through 14.

I just don't know what most of it means.

That's okay.

Because I trust the person who shared those details with me.

If God said it, that's all I really need to know to believe in it.

All right.

Well, that's probably enough for now, but we're not quite done yet, so we'll pick it up right there next time.

We hope this study has blessed you.

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It is our prayer that this will be so for all of our listeners.

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