If we may get started, gentlemen, and ladies, all right, so we pray together as we start. O Lord, we call upon thy name. We give thee thanks, Lord, that thou hast redeemed our life from the pit, and thou hast crowned us with love and compassion. We thank thee that thou hast by thy spirit united us unto Christ Jesus, that we are united unto him, who has been raised from the dead and exalted on high. Therefore, we pray of thee that, being in this state that we might set our affections on those things which are in the heavens with Christ Jesus, where our life is hit away with him. And we thank thee that we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, and that we shall share in the reward which he has earned for us of a fellowship with thee and eternal life in the thy presence. And we pray that in this world, as we are called of thee, to serve thee as witnesses of the Lord Jesus, that we may do so in such a way that thy church might witness in such a way that from the nations there shall be brought forth that great company of those who shall sing the new song of the praises of the redeemer. Wonders to be involved in this great enterprise of grace, in the name of the one who was King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the one to whom all authority in heaven and earth has been given, so that he commissions us to go forth with the assurance that he is with us to the end of the days and the end of the age, may it be so, and may thy church triumph in thy name, gathering the elect from every people so that there shall be joy in heaven both now and forever. And may we find our part in this blessed ministry, we pray through Christ our Lord. Amen. Great folks, we are analyzing now the covenant of creation, you may recall. And maybe I should mention at the outset that I am not wearing a Halloween Frankenstein mask up here tonight, this has a little surgery under the eye a couple of days ago to remove something that apparently was benign, thankfully, but in any case, that accounts for the problem that we go on from there. And so we are analyzing the covenant of creation, let's see, we had dealt with the Lord's claims in the first two chapters as the one who was the creator of all and the claim of his all and so on. And we had dealt in the second chapter with the claim of his goodness and the way he created and managed this image and he stood upon him, this wonderful garden of God, this sanctuary paradise. And we had moved on to chapter 3, which corresponds then to the stipulation section in the pattern of the treaties, remember. And we had dealt with the general principles that involved there of the imitation of God, the service of God. Then we were dividing the covenant of creation, commandments for the rest into the areas of culture and cult, the kingly functions and the priestly function. And we had dealt with the first of those with the cultural, with the royal task and saw that it can be summed up in the thought that man's cultural assignment, his historical mission, which by the way, the primarily fulfilled once he had passed his probation. And that historical mission could be summed up we said in terms of the idea of the city, the city of God. This was the thing that was to be developed in terms of the dual functions of pro-creation and labor, the citizens of the country of the city would be produced, the architectural statement of the city would be produced, the family itself would constitute the authority structure of the city. And so the cultural assignment, which would have taken in any case when he generations to fulfill, was one then of moving on from his initial role as the royal gardener of the paradise of God to the point where there was a global mastery manifestant man's proprietorship and dominion over the world would have then advanced to the point where they would come to expression in a worldwide, holy city of God, holy city of God, it would be the temple of God at the same time. So this was the royal priestly function in view from the beginning in need and to be said we know that the first Adam failed in this, but nevertheless it's worthwhile noting that this eschatological goal of the city of God that was placed before the first Adam is still the objective and in God's purpose, it's still the goal of redemptive history and it is now of course accomplished for us by Christ as the second Adam, but in our thinking about the Lord Jesus and His mission, well here is one component is that he is the one who is building the great city of God doing it through redemptive means now to be sure, but nevertheless that is the ultimate goal where his people will be, the holy people, the New Jerusalem, you see there's an identification of the people themselves with the city of God, with the New Jerusalem, the bride and the revelation is the city. And so this is the ultimate achievement of Christ redemptively by his spirit, getting back now to the first Adam and the assignment that was his from the beginning there is then the priestly aspect and indeed a lot of treating of it in second and order here, we are nevertheless wanting to make the point along the way that the priestly is the prior function, the priestly function has a priority over the royal function, the royal task is an ancillary, it's a board and it contributes to the achievement of the goals of the priestly functioning which are what then, while we turn in our kingdom prologues then to page 52 under the heading of cultic ministry and well I'll just sort of highlight it, maybe the heading is under that section and the first point I'm making is what did it take for man, for Adam there at the beginning to be made aware of his priestly obligations, duties, privileges and it was something I would say that it didn't require or say that some special revelation, he man is made with a sense of deity, he knows not only the thatness but the whatness of God, he knows that God is the one who is a great and holy and the one who is to be adored and worshiped with our whole souls, that sense of deity within man already tells him that this is his calling to be involved in and priestly adoration of the one who is his God and maker, so that is there that this is priestly assignment from the beginning to be involved in the confrontation with this God of glory who has made him in his own image that God of glory who as we analyze the concept of paradise we suggested that God of glory was manifested on the top of the mountain of God on the top of harm again in the mount of assembly the earth the projection of the heavenly reality there was the glory of God and man stands from the beginning in the presence of that glory and that he should evoke he knows from him adoration right from the outset and consecration is the other point I combined there on page 52 adoration and consecration because he stands under this great God of glory the one who was the great king and he adam the servant the one who was his father and heaven Adam the son he knows then that his life is a stewardship right from the beginning and he knows that although he has this proprietorship over the earth that is not an ultimate proprietorship but it is one that he has under in stewardship to the Lord and therefore it is his function to be handing over to be consecrating to the Lord the fruits of his royal victories in the world and so there is consecration of that sort a positive kind of consecration now in a moment we're going to be speaking of the second kind of of a consecration the negative thing the the guarding and ship of the sanctity of the the garden type of thing but the the first previously function we noticed is one of positive consecration that we should be in worship with the the doxological expressions and phrases of our lips committing ourselves in in praise and thanksgiving to God but also then taking of the fruits of our labor under God's blessing and giving those back to him in on page 53 I guess it is then I get into some discussion of yeah of how that might have come to expression from the beginning and in the exercise of sinless worship before the fall as man worship God would there be any place for symbolism with this this function of consecration come to expression in symbolic token visible offerings or is this kind of visible symbolism something that enters into the religious relationship only after the fall well I think the answer is is clear enough that there is a place for visible outward symbolism even quite apart from the presence of sin because the Lord himself made use of symbolism right from the beginning you think of the Sabbath and and the Sabbath of the observance is a token expression that all of our time is to be consecrated to God and so there is a the one day in seven and this weekly cycle that we talked about the last time with the ordinance of the Sabbath that is a God ordained token symbol symbol of the greater us heavenly eschatological realities and within the garden along with the ordinance of the Sabbath the the Lord sets up these trees are their real trees but the Lord invest them with symbolic meaning so there's a tree of life and there's a tree of the discerning the knowing of good and evil so the Lord himself has instituted the visible symbolism as part of a pure and sinless worship right from the beginning and you might even ask whether it would have been in place for man right there in the garden of being a part of sin to take animals as you know later on we know after the fall there is the whole burnt offering which especially is symbolic of the idea of consecration where animal life is taken and it is placed on the altar and consecrated to God in token expression that all that is under man's dominion is to be consecrated to him and in principle I would have no problem with conceiving of that from the beginning hello there there was a place it would have been appropriate to there at the mountain of God conceivably to set up the altar and and to have a token sacrifice of that kind now mind you if if there were such sacrifice that was appropriate from the beginning it of course would not be expiatory there was no need for expiation it would have given it would simply have given expression to the thought of consecration but that at least as far as I can see would not have been inconsistent with the situation there given the view that at least I adopted the other way that it would have been appropriate as part of man's dominion over animals to use them for whatever purposes for food for this data the other but also for religious symbolism but in any case that question apart certainly from the beginning it was man's duty as a priest to consecrate himself and at least in verbal expression from his heart through his lips to give verbal expression to the Lord that all that we have is yours Lord that that would have been the duty from the beginning that would have been positive consecration then the other kind which is dealt with on page 54 it might say a negative type of consecration it has to do with the fact that Adam is placed there at the eve of course in a holy place we analyze the Eden as being a sanctuary as a holy place the mountain of God is there God is there and his presence sanctifies the place it is a holy place and it is a priest's function to be a guardian of the sanctuary that certainly later on in when redemptively the sanctuary reality is reproduced in Israel that certainly is a function then of the Levitical priest to be on guard there it's sort of like a military outpost type of function that belongs to the priest the the the stranger the defiled one the one who doesn't should not enter into the the holy precincts to keep them out that that is a priestly guardianship function later on and then that's a surely blonde there from the beginning and in fact we we have a text that indicates as much there in Genesis 215 now when we were talking about the the cultural commission we could feel for a proof text if we wanted to Genesis 128 where God blessed them and told them to multiply and have dominion now if you're looking for a sort of a little proof text for the the priestly function of guardianship I suggest you find it over in chapter two verse 15 where it says the Lord God took the man put him in the garden of Eden to work it now there's the I guess we talked about that when we were asking what was the nature of paradise and we said well and the mass labor function there and we said that along with the strong language of subduing it there was also the language of serving the garden verb avad and so that verb appears here in 215 that he was placed there to to work it to serve it avad but now the the second verb there is the Hebrew verb shamir and which means to keep or to guard to keep or or to guard and sometime you the translations give you the the flavor well that all that's being described is this gardening function at the atom is placed in the garden of God the sort of to dig up cultivate the ground and to sort of keep it in the sense of keeping the thorns and the pistols and whatnot out and so this is all just an an agricultural function but I think the context points in quite a different direction and that this is the verb shamir then that is a you is regularly for the function of the the medical priests that we were just talking about they are to guard the sanctuary and the best proof that that's the intention here I think is to flip over to the next chapter Genesis 3 because there we find that once Adam and Eve have have orphaned it they're right to do this or even to be in the garden of Eden and they are being expelled from the the garden that the Lord places now the cherry abum there and now to do what and now you repeat that verb and we know that the function of the cherry abum was not to be farmers there and to cultivate the tomato plants but the Lord put the cherry abum there with the flaming sword shamir to guard the sanctity of the garden and that is the replacement for with 2 15 had assigned to Adam so I think the way to read 2 15 is that here we have a neat summary of everything we're trying to say we're trying to say that man had a cultural task and he also had a cultic task a king and a priest and so as the king he is of doing the other garden and developing it and as a priest because it is a holy garden he is guarding the sanctity of the place so there there is a primary function and it is a key function in terms of the whole probationary testing that's about to develop so here is Adam said on guard against the strangers what strangers he and either the only one ones are around aha no Satan is going to be brought into the picture Satan is going to be that alien that defiled one who has no right to be thrusting himself into the presence of God there at the mount of glory in the holy place and so Adam take your stand there as a priest of God as a military outpost and it's going to happen be alert because God in his wisdom according to his purposes is going to bring you into this critical testing this this probation where the probationary task is going to be precisely that you should stand there as the priest of God and the name of the holy God and keep the sanctity of God's holy garden intact by resisting the intrusion of this alien evil presence and so this is sort of a general statement in 215 that points to what is actually the right at the core and the heart of all of Adam's testing and man's priestly functions were to go on throughout history but right here at the very beginning there was to be a critical application of this function of guarding the garden and this was going to be the probationary task this is the act of obedience that Adam was to have performed he failed this is the act of obedience that one act of righteousness that our Lord Jesus performed whereby he earned the eschatological heaven for himself and for us in his case too the act of righteousness what was this one to guard God's holy sanctuary to resist the intrusion of Satan into it and those temptations of Jesus which of course are so interestingly echo the phenomenon of the the first Adam's temptation so here then is the man's negative consecratory function as a priest and as I say it's a very fundamental thing throughout all of the history the whole history of Israel in a way can be subsumed under under this theme Israel is called out to be a theocratic nation to be a kingdom of priests a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and and so they are invested once again with the the functions that that pertain to the original community of God's people and and as such well they must maintain the sanctity of God's garden now in their case the task is somewhat complicated because by the time they come on the scene God's garden is holy places overrun with the enemy Baal is there and all of the worshipers are of Baal are in that particular new Eden that Canaan land that God has sustained out for himself and so Israel's involvement with this negative guardianship concentration takes the form first of all of holy war and so Israel's great covenant commandment is to go in and cleanse the house of God just as Jesus later on part part of his ministry when when he comes on the scene the house of God has been made into a den of these it should have been a house of prayer but now it's become an abomination of desolation it's become a den of these and so part of Jesus ministry is this very thing he has to cleanse the temple she does well that's what Israel had to do it had to cleanse the the Canaan temple that God had claimed for itself and and that involved then this task of of inflicting virtual final judgment upon the land of Canaan upon the Canaanites who are the devotees of Baal and of obliterating all of the the installations of the Baal cult and so on so that their first task then was to cleanse God's temple and then from that point on to maintain its sanctity you know by keeping Baal worship out of it and and wherever Baal worship raised its ugly within the land to squelch it doesn't do it around me 13 prescribes for them so this is a central crucial task for God's people in in this raging war that marks the whole course of human history so that that was going on in Israel and as we've intimated then in the case of our Lord Jesus he comes on the scene he cleanses the temple in terms of its Old Testament manifestations are there and then of course on the larger scene the final judgment when Christ comes at the power of see at the final judgment of the world that's what he is doing is he is he is functioning as God's a great priest and now not just the land of Canaan but the the whole world is to be taken over as God's a holy temple once a once again and task number one is get the the the Baal worshipers out of it all of the unbelievers out so he comes in flaming fire taking vengeance against all of those who know not God and obey not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ at that point Jesus is performing precisely this function he is throwing Satan and all of Satan's hordes out of God's world so that is sanctified forever as that's the Holy New Jerusalem so this is a very fundamental theme then that we're talking about in the in the life of the first Adam and but then of course all the more so in in the ministry of the second of the second Adam some of the guardianship of the sanctuary with Genesis 2 15 as a text in that direction then as I said the the primacy of priesthood over against the the royal task priesthood as man's primary office man's experience began with this priestly function of beholding and adoring God and its primacy is not just a matter of historical priorities but of the teleological subordination of the kingly occupation to the priestly cultic objectives what was the purpose of the cultural task the the cultural task was to produce humanity and what is humanity humanity is the living temple of God so the goal of the royal priestly task was to build yes the city of God but the city of God is the temple of God especially when you think you have in terms of the human beings who are God's temple in the spirit and so the the whole function of culture and of priesthood is to provide the holy temple for the priestly worship and adoration of the Lord so there is this subordination of culture to cult in biblical religion the subordination of culture to cult and and it receives beautiful expression there in the first Corinthians 15 again looking at our Lord Jesus where he subordinates culture to cult because when he has subdued the whole world it's been subdued to him and the kingdom is his then he delivers over the kingdom to the Father that God may be all and all and so Jesus subordinates his kingly triumphs to the service of the glory of the Lord well I tried to develop that thought and some of its negative opposites both in ancient ritual the whole Canaanite religion was the opposite of this biblical religion is subordinate culture to the higher interests of cult in Canaanite religion cult is subordinate to culture they engage in the fertility cult which is what their cult was in order to promote prosperity in the area of culture they engaged in the religious rights of the fertility so that they would be fertile and abundant in in in field and in flock and in family so which is the whole area of culture now that's a prostitution of of cult to culture and of course in on happily in the the warp message that we hear around today in the health and wealth type gospel thing that there's the tendency in that direction to make the worship of the Lord serve the ends of of of our being wealthy happy and in the in the cultural realm the biblical order is a culture consecrated in cult in worship through the glory of the Lord okay that's I think sufficient to analyze the the the general stipulations of the covenant of creation and along the way at least we have hinted rather strongly at the very specific stipulation of the covenant which actually comes through more in the form of a prohibition you know the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is related then to what we were just saying this the standing on guard against Satan is something to which man is is alerted in that negative form as I shall be saying the negative form of the prohibition not to either the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will be coming to that presently now then in chapter four we we deal with material that would correspond in the ancient treaties to the curses and the blessings so that was sometimes the last the sixth of the six divisions in the treaty we also noted that as in you know as an Exodus 20 sometimes the the sanctions the curses and the blessings were interspersed among the commandments but in any case there that's one of the standard sections the curses and the blessings and now we ask ourselves what was there in God's administration of his covenant relationship to Adam at the beginning that cars wanted to that what were the promised blessings and what were the threatened curses but there were both
the curses reverberalized will come to them in a minute in the day you eat the rubby will die that came through verbal expression I think primarily the the the blessings were symbolized and well we were talking about symbolism from the beginning a moment ago and among the symbols we said there was the symbolism of the Sabbath was also the symbolism of the tree of light and right there in those two symbols God gave expression to the promise of blessing what would be the reward of obedience of performing particularly the key probationary test task of guarding the sanctuary it would have been the attainment of heaven heaven God's Sabbath sharing with him in that so on page 57 I have a little section where I try to develop the presence of of that prospect of of ultimate glorification and so on in the very way in which man had been made in the image of God so that he from the beginning had two aspects of that glory we said in the dominion the moral excellence they didn't have the third one so right in the way he was made in the likeness of this glory spirit there's a virtual promise that your future in the way of obedience is to be like this glory spirit in terms of physical glorification as well so that was one way in which this promise might have been conveyed but then secondly and perhaps more obviously there is the tree of life and you can read if you would the discussion of that on the next two or three pages but the main point here is that here was the tree of life and it was not the tree of forbidden fruit the other tree was that but it is the tree at least of you might say the reserved fruit access to this tree was reserved it wasn't that it was forbidden completely but it was reserved and until they could eat of it in a worthy manner and not eat the damnation to themselves they're here at the Lord sacramental tree the tree of life would have served as sort of a sacramental symbol of the confirmation of the covenant relationship if there had been a successful improvisation and but meanwhile it was reserved for that time now the fact that the tree of life has to do not just with life as man enjoyed it from the beginning but life as it would have been his in that higher level had he passed his probation involving confirmation in righteousness confirmation in eternal life with destination of glorification in view that that is what the tree of life had in view that that beyond the probation type of experience is indicated by the way in which the tree of life is associated with the probation tree in well in the text and in your biblical account of it but also just physically the two of them are together in the midst of the garden that they belong together and so the association of the tree of life with the probation tree is one signal that the tree of life has to do with the outcome of this probationary test and one other indication along that line of course is that elsewhere in the Bible and the course of redemptive history as heaven is achieved by the Lord Jesus for his people and prioritizes restored and consummated that here again is where the tree of life re-emerges is not so that the tree of life has its place in the in the consummation state of heaven so the tree of life then along with the Sabbath was pointing to this ultimate goal of heaven including glorification so forth and well let me just mention the threatened curse and then I'll come back maybe and just throw a little chart on the book we're trying to sum up this whole covenant of creation for us on page 63 the other sanction then along with the promise of everlasting life a heavenly life glorified life is the curse and the day you eat there of you will die and the language of in the day of you're doing such and such I take just to be in and not so much a temporal chronological idea as the idea of certainty as shortly as you sin so surely shall the death overtake you the wages of sin is certainly going to be dead in the day you sin if you sin certainly you will die is the thought death now what do you think what kind of death was that physical death was that I'm threatened with with physical death at that point what function with physical death of a performed hell is what God has prepared for the devil and his angel and for reprobate men and hell is not a place of physical death in fact in order to go to hell the reprobate have to experience physical resurrection and that's an amazing thing isn't it that there's a final resurrection both of the wicked and the righteous is amazing huh but nevertheless in order to pass from the intermediate state whatever it is for the reprobate they have to experience the physical resurrection and it is as though it was in the body in not experiencing physical death but in the body that they experience a hell and that is of what was threatened with that I'm from the beginning apart you see apart from now we know it worked out otherwise Adam fell and God institutes a whole program of redemption at the end of which of course there will be hell for the un on believers but meanwhile there is now a place or physical death so that the kind of death that Adam was threatened with at the beginning now becomes the second death in the description of things say for example in the book of Revelation the second death is hell and it's the second one because now after the fall and as I say in terms of the redemptive program there is physical death which is the the first death and now within this new context physical death does have some point and that's oh you know I guess we're worth our our thinking through it's a certainly in a pastoral sense just thinking of our own death as well as trying to comfort and consoling the meaning to God's people facing a death what are purposes of physical death now within this range of human experience well for one thing without the shedding of blood there's no remission of sins so in order for redemption to be achieved now there was going to have to be physical death and in the shedding of blood so now there is a need for physical death at that very basic level that that was the way in which there could be hope after the fall about the hope of a everlasting life through through death that through the the atoning death of the Savior but then of course death serves and then the U.S. pastors and teachers probably thought there's this thing through and and made at these points and many others but you know for for one thing that the eminence of death gives urgency to the preaching of the gospel doesn't that that the people have to realize that they don't have forever to bottle here and to and to reflect on whether we will or we will will not accept a this gospel there's a sense of urgency because of the of of the reality of of death in the experience of of the saints we grow old and and with age then there there are the afflictions and and the old saints suffering for years hopelessly with with cancer are so on it's a deliverance to them they long to be delivered and to be with the Lord which is very far better physical death makes this possible it becomes a blessing in the life of of God's people we would rather be with the Lord so there are all kinds of of rationales and reasons for the presence of physical death in this history after the fall and in terms of God's redemptive purposes but now apart from all of that death physical death we just observed the purpose whatsoever if all God hadn't in the U.S. it was the case in the simple terms of the covenant of creation fail and then that will be the end you see it and you will so that I submit is what the options were so summing up the sanctions of the covenant the blessing and the curse there were nothing less than heaven and hell that that is what Adam was confronted with from the beginning heaven the blessing if he passed his probation hell if he should fail in terms of the covenant of creation and of course God has this other thing in view from the beginning but that's not involved in the terms of the covenant of creation with Adam at the appropriate point now God enters in and he reveals that this redemptive program and he proceeds to administer and so forth well just trying to set out now quickly that's a little summarizing overview what we've just been trying to say
here then is God's covenant of creation with Adam and it has two phases the first phases the probation phase the probation phase and the next phase we can call the conferral phase in kingdom prologue I actually make two separate covenants out of that doesn't matter as the matter of a formal difference the ideas are the same here I'm just speaking in terms of one covenant with two stages and there's a conferral phase the conferral phase will be subdivided into two stages all right we'll call it two stages there's a confirmation and then there's the consummation stage now under the first phase the probation phase we've seen that there things had a cultic focus especially the the probationary test itself there was that sanctification that guardianship of the garden function the idea there that they are an armageddon it's the it's the holy garden of God and they must guard its sanctity as we were saying that cultic task that priestly task is there's and although we haven't quite come to it yet then there's the tree of knowledge comes in in that connection might as well say something about right away then since I'm there now what was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil well here was the tree then that told man that he was going to have to do with a knowing of good and evil a discerning between good and evil and this was not some new knowledge that he was going to acquire that he didn't have before he already knew the difference between good and evil and so on what this tree was telling him was that as the guardian of God's garden he was going to be confronted with the necessity of knowing good and evil the kind of function that this tree by its name could call his attention to it's the language and then the particular verses you'll find there in the kingdom prologue it's the language which elsewhere describes kings and judges when they are confronted with having to give a verdict to make a decision between good and evil so the tree of the knowing of good and evil was telling Adam that you are going to be confronted by Satan and it will be your task to discern evil and him and to pronounce him evil and to throw him out of the good garden of God of course Adam does the opposite but nevertheless that's what this tree of knowledge was calling him to do it was this very high and solemn function and obligation where this human creature is going to find himself involved with the realities of a warfare that already has broken out in heaven and where he must play his part in the behalf of God over against the the adversary in that above the human level region and Adam was going to get caught up and it's passed as a judge even of superhuman beings of angel