Genesis: The Portrait of Man
Genesis 2:4-17 | Sunday, September 21, 2025 | Pastor Travis Connick
I wonder if you have ever experienced homesickness? Maybe when you left for college, or joined the military? Maybe you grew up in one house, and then your parents divorced, and you always wanted to go back and see the house you took your first steps in, to smell the smells you can still recall, and get a sense of who you are from your past…just a general longing to go back. I had that experience with my mom and stepdad’s house that I grew up in was on 25 acres. I have a mental snapshot of it, and it’s awesome. It was the first place I saw a herd of Elk up close and personal…I’ll never forget it. I was free to roam the land on foot or on a quad…it was an incredibly peaceful setting and my step-dad, Darrel, took immaculate care of it. When they retired they sold the home, and moved to La Grande—and the property exchanged hands several times over the years, and it came up for sale a couple of years ago. So Trea and I went to go see it. I remember walking through the house thinking I was getting glimpses of the past. The house was not in good shape, and needed to be fully restored. What was once beautiful and full of life, was at that point, run down and in need of restoration. How I knew it, was not what it currently was, but could be one day again….
That brings us to Genesis 2 where we get a snapshot of man’s first home, and it sets the stage for the rest of the Bible. It sets the stage for man’s temptation, and fall into sin, man being sent out of his home, and then God’s grand rescue plan to restore us to our true home.
Read Genesis 2:4-17
“These are the generations of…” That phrase is used 11 times in the book of Genesis to introduce a new section that has begun and we’re told in this case that these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. We’re not reading a second creation account—one way you could look at this is chapter 1 was a panoramic view of the Creation of the Heavens and Earth, and now chapter 2, the author zooms in on the creation of Adam and later Eve. The author moves from the Cosmos to a garden in Eden—everything that we’re about to read about happens in Eden so the author zooms way in on Adam and Eve in Eden….
Notice the shift in the name of God. In verse 4 we read, “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.”Up to this point, Moses has only used one designation for the name of God, Elohim. Elohim is the title used for the majestic portrayal of God as Creator of the universe, who in His wisdom and creative power, simply spoke the creation into existence. Here however, we see a shift, the name for God switches to Yahweh-Elohim, you see in verse 4, where LORD is in all caps, that signifies the covenant name of the Lord, Yahweh, and from here until the end of chapter 3, Yahweh-Elohim is the dominant name designating God.
It’s a name that’s used 19 times in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 and the reason is because Yahweh is the personal covenant name of God who relates to and redeems His people…and Moses is saying to Israel, yes, our Lord is the Creator, but He’s also our Covenant-Redeemer…He’s the God we were created by and in covenant too.
As I mentioned chapter 1 gives this panoramic view of the creation, and then in chapter 2, Moses slows down and focuses all the way in on the creation of man…and by doing so, Moses gives us first….
The Portrait of Man. What do we see about Man? Now, this section is talking about the literal man, Adam. But it also refers to humankind in general…and what we learn here is that man is created by God. We’re told in verse 7 that the Lord God “formed the man of dust from the ground.” The term “formed” conveys the idea of intentionality; formed by careful design. Man is no afterthought, but rather the product of the infinite mind that created the cosmos, as well as the atom….
By the way, note that God is not afraid to get His hands dirty so to speak, and materialness is not bad or evil, as some Greek philosophies say. God created us with material bodies and the goal isn’t to be liberated from them…because we’re going to have material bodies in the next age as well here. God forms the man and he becomes a living creature.
So we see the creaturehood of man—We are fully dependent upon God—we owe our very breath to God—In Acts 17, when Paul is speaking to the people of Athens affirms that God “gives all men life and breath and everything else,” and that “in him we live and move and have our being.” We cannot lift a finger apart from God’s will….
Man is seen as the clay and God is the potter and He intentionally forms us…does this mean we’re like Pinocchio, just puppets on a string, hoping to become real boys and girls? No….because of what we’re told next.
We’re told about the Personhood of man: That after God formed the man from the dust of the earth, He then, verse 7, “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” He breathes into him—and man has the very breath of God sustaining them…and man becomes a living being. He becomes a living creature---the same term is used to describe animal life so he’s similar in some way, draws his breath and life in the same way, but he is completely different, and elevated from animal life, because humans have been granted moral capacities. He is a real person, who makes real choices and is responsible for them. Therefore he has great potential for glory….and disaster.
Robert Brinsmead quoted in Created in God’s Image, states, “The creaturehood and the personhood of man must be held both together and in tension. When theology stresses creaturehood and subordinates personhood, a hard-faced determinism surfaces and man is dehumanized. When personhood is stressed to the exclusion of creaturehood, man is deified and God’s sovereignty is compromised. The Lord is left standing helplessly in the wings as if man had the power to veto the plans and purposes of God.”
The portrait we see here of mankind is that they are created in the image of God, which gives them immense dignity, and by being created with personhood, they have given tremendous responsibility to make real decisions that have real and lasting consequences…
The Placement of Man. Look at verse 8. The garden in Eden, which could imply that Eden was a place with a garden in it. Maybe…but then again in verse 15, it’s called the Garden of Eden..and it’s called that again in chapter 3…and elsewhere it’s called the Garden of God.
The main thing to grasp, it’s is a real place; not simply a symbol—Eden was the Paradise of the Past—we’re told of the original flood irrigation, these subterranean streams that watered the entire area---and Eden’s abundant river then watered the garden and flowed out and then separated into the headwaters of the four rivers—the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Eurphates…
Now here’s the deal because the Tigris and the Euphrates are identifiable by us, people have searched for Eden for thousands of years. When Christopher Columbus passed the mouth of the Orinoco River in South America, he believed that its waters came down from the garden of Eden of course, he thought he was on the east coast of Asia. Now because the Tigris and the Euphrates river are still identifiable, most people think that Eden, therefore must be in modern day Iraq or a part of Syria, but you have to remember, this is all pre-flood description. With the great flood, there for sure would have been topographical change, (so you don’t get on YouTube this afternoon and listen to wild conspiracies about finding the garden of Eden.) We know how catastrophic a localized flood can be. It can change the landscape within hours; it’s power can be so destructive; it can create new ravines within hours….not a global flood—we can’t even imagine really what it can do—so there’s no need to spend your precious time seeking it out—a better use of your time would be to take your wife out to lunch after church….
But to be clear, the paradise of the past, there was Adam, and later, Eve had the Unparalleled Presence of God. Man lacked nothing. He was made in the Image of God; God breathed into him. He had the unparalleled presence of God—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on this would write, Adam, “speaks and walks with God as if they belong to one-another.” Unparalleled Presence of God….but he also had The Unbelievable Provision of God: The common Hebrew meaning of Eden is “delight” and we read in verse 9 that “out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”…and later Adam is told he can eat from every tree in the Garden but one….the author is stressing that Adam was placed in the perfect environment to live in obedience to God….and he was given….unbelievable purpose…what was it? Well, look at verse 15 where we see
The Purpose of Man (v.9; 15-17)
If you’re in the ESV it says the LORD God put the man in the garden of Eden to “work it and keep it.” If you’re in the New American Standard Bible it says, “to cultivate it and keep it” and if you’re in the NIV, it says man was placed there to “work it and take care of it.” Whatever translation you use, it means he was given work to do. This shows us something of the basic dignity of work—and by the way, Genesis, especially when we get into the life of Joseph, will provide us a lot of material on how important our work is but right here we see the basic dignity of work.
Work is not a result of the Fall. Work is the result of creation and it was given to man before as a good gift. Victor Hamiliton in his commentary on this section says, “Physical labor is not a consequence of sin. Work enters the picture before sin, and if man had never sinned, he would still be working. (Now obviously, the Fall had huge consequences on our work, as our work was to be incredibly fruitful and satisfying, but because of the fall, much of our work falls far short of it’s intent).
But note, God created us with purpose; he created us with dignity and part of human dignity is to work in the field in which the Lord has placed you---we’re to be engaged in God’s Work where He’s placed us—and you’re work to cultivate may not be in a literal garden, but it is to serve the Lord where He’s placed you…
So if you’re a homemaker, in this season, your work for the Lord is to cultivate your family, to partner with the Lord in the cultivation of their lives. If you work outside of the home, whether it’s a for profit business or a non-profit, you purpose is to look around and ask, “how can I with my skills and abilities best serve the Lord, by taking care of what He’s entrusted me with, and by tending and tilling cause greater growth in the plot of ground that He’s placed me…
One of the great purposes of man is to be engaged in the work in which the Lord has called him….and it gives all forms of work, whether manual or mental, blue collar or white collar tremendous dignity….so one of the great purposes of man that we see here is to be engaged in God’s Work….we’re to….Be Obedient to God’s Word: God’s word to Adam came in two ways. God’s word to man was first permissive. Read Verse 16: This is straight permission—Adam was given permission to partake of everything in the garden to his heart’s content, which includes the tree of life. This is lavish, extravagant abundance, and Adam could take from the tree of life if he wanted it. Everything was there for him—everything his heart could possibly want.
But then God’s word was paired with just one prohibition: Read Verse 17: To disobey and eat from this one tree would bring sure death---first, alienation from God, and later physical death….So here’s Adam—a literal man, who is the first man—we’re given a portrait of him—he’s both a creature, fully dependent upon God, and yet a real person who has moral capacities, he’s placed in paradise and given tremendous purpose to be engaged in God’s work, and to be obedient to God’s word….surely, with all of the abundant provision of God, and surely with knowledge that He was created by God, Adam will be obedient to God’s Word….right? Sadly no….and thus we see…
The Problem of Man
So what exactly was the temptation for Adam in light of the “every tree” abundance of the garden and the “surely die” threat of the forbidden tree? What was the temptation? Here is what it was. The temptation to eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” was to seek wisdom without reference to the Word of God. Adam and Eve as we’ll see soon enough wanted to be autonomous beings---they wanted to decide what was right without reference to God’s revealed will---they wanted to usurp God’s role in determining right and wrong apart from God’s word—and mankind has been doing it ever since… We will decide thank you very much how to define marriage. We will decide what gender is. We will decide if killing a baby created in God’s Image is okay? We will decide euthanasia is permissible and under what circumstances?
They wanted moral autonomy…they didn’t want to live under God’s Word and God’s ways…and mankind has been doing it ever since we have our own anthem to autonomy…Frank Sinatra’s, “I did it my way….”
The temptation for Adam
was to seek wisdom apart from God—and here we get at the heart of the original
sin—to sidestep God and His word and live unto ourselves—this is the problem of
man. And here’s the reality—because it poses a huge problem for you; it poses a
huge problem for me. Because this is the portrait we have of man—who’s placed
in paradise, who has abundant provision, who’s given immense purpose and
dignity.and yet he chose to disregard God’s word and sought wisdom on his own…and he died. And that death, that separation from God is passed onto us….how will this be remedied? Can it be?
Only if One comes, who is like Adam, the representative head of the human race, but unlike Adam chooses to live in complete obedience to the Word of God…This is exactly what we have in Christ Jesus…who Paul calls the 2nd Adam, who when He was tempted, in a much tougher test said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus lived every second of his life in radical dependence on God’s Word….where Adam’s disobedience brought death, Jesus’ obedience brought life…
This is exactly what Paul says in Romans 5—Paul says, “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ…for as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
Adam’s disobedience brought death—Jesus’ obedience swallows up the death and brings life to those who trust Him…as fallen men and women, we’re then faced with a choice…. You can pass over from death in Adam to new life in Christ right now….how? By making a decision…which you can make because you’re a real person, who has real moral capacities, to make real decisions that have lasting consequences… And you can receive forgiveness of sins, and new life in Jesus name, by admitting that like Adam, you’ve disregarded God’s Word and sought to live life on your own terms, and you’re repenting of that right now, and making a decision trust Christ as your Savior and Lord and letting His Word and His ways shape your life going forward…