Lessons from Eden

The Blessing of the Lord Part 2

The Bible depicts a God who wants to bless us

Last time we considered the idea that God’s default position is to bless us. We reflected on God as Father, a perfect Father, who would only want to bless you.

At the end of that talk I challenged you to spend some time

1. thanking God for being a good Father,
2. to bring your problems to him and
3. to begin to expect good things from a good Father who wants to bless. I believe expectancy is key.

To help us understand this more, and to increase our expectancy, let’s spend some time in his word, and let’s pray that his living and active word would speak deeply into our hearts and bring about any changes that God would desire to see in us.

Lord, as we study scriptures together, please speak. I allow myself to be educated by the divine teacher, your Holy Spirit and am willing to be challenged and changed by your word. Amen.

So let’s start at the beginning!

Eden

If you’ve had any church experience at all, you probably know the way the bible opens. It’s a creation story in 6 days with multiple hidden messages about God, the world, and us. In Genesis chapter 1 God takes 6 days to create the world and put people in it, and then he rests on the seventh day. In this concise account of creation, the word ‘good’ appears seven times. The same repeated formula comes over and again,

And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:4,9,12,18,21,25

And the seventh ‘good’ adds extra emphasis:

And God saw that it was very good.

Genesis 1:31

Seven ‘good’s is interesting when you think that in Hebrew culture seven is a number of completion and wholeness. God made a completely good world.

As each day unfolds in this story, God is adding to the compilation of creation: birds and fish one day, sun, moon and stars on another. But the crescendo of creation, the last created thing on day six, the one thing it seems everything else was building up to, was the man and the woman. All of this perfect world was made for mankind to enjoy.

As I have been saying, God’s default position is to bless, and that is seen through what we have just seen: God wanted the people he was about to make to live in a beautiful blessed world. He wanted people to living in his blessing, walk in his presence and know daily the blessing of the Lord.

The first verse I started with last time was a snapshot of life at its best when it is lived close to the Lord:

The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.

Proverbs 10:22

In the Garden of Eden where God placed the man and the woman, all they knew was a world that was ‘very good.’ They walked in his presence and knew his beauty. They had a wealth of resources and no painful toil for it. Yes, they had to work, but the yoke was easy and the burden light. This was life as God intended it, the blessed life. God’s default position is to bless!

If you think I’m reading too much into this ancient story, have a look at what the first thing is that God does once the man and woman are created:

²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’

Genesis 1:27-28

He makes people, and instantly blesses them! They are blessed with a beautiful world and an incredible responsibility to rule, govern and steward it. Yes, there is responsibility:

The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.

Proverbs 10:22

This does not say there is no toil; it says there is no painful toil. The blessed life for us today would be to reflect what God initially intended for Adam and Eve: To live and work and steward the world in such a way that is so close to him that it feels easy.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Genesis 2:15

Jesus said,

²⁸ ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’

Matthew 11:28-30

There is work to do in the blessed life, but not painful toil.

What else can we learn about God’s initial intentions for people from this story, God’s original blueprint for mankind?

So far, we’ve seen that it was a beautiful world. In our life today we could be living in an area of outstanding natural beauty or find ourselves living and working in the dirty backstreets of a deprived neighbourhood. Wherever we are, God would love to surround you with beauty in some way or other. I remember Eric Delve speaking of seeing God in the glint of the sun reflected in a piece of broken glass in the streets of Liverpool where he was a vicar at the time. Perhaps in your home there are ways in which you can surround yourself with things that remind you of the beauty that God intended for all of us. We can start by ‘tending our garden’ like Adam, keeping our room tidy, clean and decorated in a way that reflects life and light. We do not live in the world as God made it, but we can work to redeem our patch.

Another blessing of God found in Eden was painlessness. Wow, wouldn’t that be nice. Whatever pain we might be feeling today, let’s remember that it was never God’s intention for us to suffer like this. And as a good Father, he hurts with us when he sees the consequences of a fallen world bear down on us with pain and sorrow. Remember that he is the God who ultimately heals all our diseases as well as forgives all our sins. Keep looking to him for your healing and thank him for the health that you have. One of the signs of the Kingdom of God in the New Testament was that the lame walked, the deaf heard and the dumb spoke. This carried on in the life of the first apostles and God is still at work in and through his people today. As people of the presence, let’s believe and anticipate God’s healing power to accompany the message that we have to bring redemption to a lost and fallen world.

The final blessing of Eden that I wanted to highlight was the fellowship that Adam and Eve had with God. Imagine being so close to Father God that you can walk in conversation with him with ease and freedom.

This is the blessed life that Jesus came to restore. Adam and Eve walked with God, were naked and unashamed. This is more than just physical nakedness. They were perfectly innocent and had not sinned, so they could walk closely to holy and perfect God without guilt, shame or embarrassment. They didn’t even know what guilt or death was. Life was perfect. We can’t fully appreciate that in our current world age, but we can learn that the closer we get to God the better. He can deal with our sin, take away our guilt, and we can be one with God in a spiritual sense again. This is the heart of the blessed life. We must be born again.

If you haven’t made the decision to follow Jesus and ask him to restore your relationship with God, this is the first step in living under the blessing of the Lord. We will pray at the end of this talk to put that right.

If you are born again then our responsibility now is to maintain that closeness to the Father despite the multiplicity of distractions that come our way. The closer we are to a fire, the warmer we will get. And the closer our fellowship with the Father, the more we feel the warmth of his embrace, the more we become soft-hearted towards him and open to receiving blessings we don’t even deserve, financial blessings included.

The danger is that we just want to go our own way. Maybe we feel we have to prove something and enjoy looking at our achievements: look what I have earned, bought, managed to lay hold of. Or perhaps we just don’t feel that we qualify to receive a blessing from God. But let me ask you this: what did Adam do to qualify for a life of perfection? Nothing? God did all the hard work – he made the world and everything in it and then put the man in the garden. Why? Because it’s God’s default position to bless people!

We need to believe and accept this because there is an enemy of our souls who was a liar from the start, the father of lies, who would trick you into believing that you are not worthy of a blessing (which is true but God gives it anyway because he is love) or to trick you into believing that there is greater enjoyment in the pride of knowing you earned it all yourself. Well that’s partly true. It’s good to take pride in your work and to look back, satisfied, at a good result. But as we will see in future talks, it is God who gives us the ability to create wealth, and so to God be the glory!

So this enemy, what’s he up to? Let’s finish this talk with the way the perfect world took a nose-dive to imperfection.

Now the snake was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’

² The woman said to the snake, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”’

⁴ ‘You will not certainly die,’ the snake said to the woman. ⁵ ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’

¹⁰ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’

Genesis 3:1-10

Notice the main temptation there back in verse 5 was to ‘be like God,’ and that is what we’ve been tempted to be ever since. We cannot receive blessing from God if we are trying to earn it on our own, thinking that we are good enough, strong enough, capable enough to make things happen. Anything close to that which we can do is only because we are made in God’s image – yes – the irony of Satan’s temptation is that he was offering something we already had – we are made in God’s image! But Satan takes this truth and pushes it beyond its station in life. Adam and Eve were tempted by the prospect of having their eyes opened and to be like God.

Let us not fall into the same temptation. Let us keep God in his rightful place, humble ourselves before him and allow him to lift us up. Let us allow him to bless us with beauty, healing and first and foremost a deep abiding relationship with him. Let us not go our own way in attempting to find financial freedom. Let’s pray now and surrender everything to our creator who knows best and does all things well.

If you haven’t given your life over to Jesus, let’s do that now. Pray with me,

Father God, I recognise that you are my creator and that you want to bless me. Thank you for Jesus who came to restore my relationship with you. In Jesus name I ask for forgiveness of all I have done that separates me from you. Fill me with your Holy Spirit and make me new. In Jesus name, amen.

Now, let’s consider a few more action points before the next time:

Action Points

• Beauty. Think about the beauty that you have around you. It might not be the Garden of Eden, but there are still things to thank God for. Ask God what else you can do to bring beauty to your surroundings, whether at home or somewhere else you may be able to influence.
• Finance. Adam and Eve did not want for anything. If we truly believe that God is a good Father whose default position is to bless us, why not bring our needs and desires to him. Ask him to refine any desires that are not of him, but don’t be afraid to bring them all to him in complete honesty and vulnerability. Listen and let hm talk to you.
• Relationship. The greatest blessing of the Lord is to be in good relationship with him. Thank him for the true riches you have through Jesus and ask him what you can do to draw nearer to him.

Next Time

We will move further into the Genesis story and look at how God blessed Abraham, Isaac and others, and find out what we can learn for ourselves about the blessing of the Lord.