June 15 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Genesis 2:1-17

¹Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
²And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
³And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
⁴These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
⁵And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
⁶But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
⁷And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
⁸And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
⁹And 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.
¹⁰And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
¹¹The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
¹²And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
¹³And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
¹⁴And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
¹⁵And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
¹⁶And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
¹⁷But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Devotional

Following a custom in Hebrew writing, Moses in chapter 2 beginning at verse 4 goes into more detail concerning the matter he had covered previously in broader terms. In the first chapter he had written about the creation of all things, including the man and the woman. Now he focuses our attention specifically on the making of the man and then the woman individually.

Man belongs to the earth, being made from it He is at home there, equipped physically to inhabit it. But God honored man by stooping to breathe life into him and man became a living soul. By the divine inbreathing God made him animate creation and specifically man at the same time. This was not a crude being somehow elevated to manhood. At his creation man was made at once what God wanted him to be.

In today's reading it is man's closeness to the earth that is pictured in a significant way. God, the first gardener, made Eden, the first garden, as a home for man. He placed man in it and bade him tend and keep it. What a pleasant and rewarding task Adam was given! He did not have to fight either drought or flood: a rising mist watered the ground. Nor did he have to combat plant or animal pests. The garden yielded luscious fruit. God was good to the man He had made.

At this point in history we as God's children should never lose sight of this picture of the wonderful world that God made and of the way in which He made us to have our home in it, supplied with all we need to sustain us and to satisfy us as persons made in His image. He was pleased to make us beings who needed to have our roots down. He provided us with pleasures derived from having a place that is especially ours on the face of the earth. He made a place for man that was a counterpart to heaven.

Man is not purely spirit, as God is. He is also body. He is bound to the earth until God releases him. So God made him able to enjoy and appreciate the earth and to have a real function in its care, finding fulfilment in his task. We are only sojourners here, but while we are here God wants us to enjoy to the full the home He made for us.