Pondering on Adam working in the garden while doing tractor work

Our Lord has given us four days of clear skies, long enough for the ground to dry and harden. Hey, that’s newsworthy here in wet Tennessee😆. I don’t mind getting wet, but the tractor tires sink in the soft clay soil, ruining any previous progress. So, with that dry ground, I enjoyed doing some more grading, culvert maintenance, and bush-hogging before the rain came tonight.

But while doing so, I kept pondering about God putting Adam in the garden to work in the garden. Who thinks about these things while working? A Christian does. As it says in Psalm 1:1-2,

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”

Years ago, when I was a policeman, my wife told me, “Bill, if you cut yourself, you’d bleed blue!” I replied I hope I would bleed out Theology.

Alright back to my tractor work and meditating on Adam’s work in the garden. When God put Adam to work in the garden, that was before sin, when Adam and the garden were perfect. And so here we go on this devotional journey through Genesis 2:15.

In Genesis 2:15 God recorded,

“And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”  

Could you imagine working your land before the fall of chapter 3, and how pleasant that would have been? No sin, no struggles, no weeds, just pure pleasure.

As Augustine said,

“Without good reason certain writers are deeply puzzled when they seek to discover how the tree of the knowledge of good and evil could have been so called before man broke God’s commandment by touching it and from experience discerning the difference between the good that he lost and the evil that he committed. Now, this tree was given this name so that our first parents might observe the prohibition and not touch it, taking care to avoid suffering the consequences of touching it against the prohibition. It was not because they subsequently went against the commandment and ate the fruit that the tree became the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even if they had remained obedient and had taken nothing against that commandment, it would be correctly called by what would happen to them there if they had taken the fruit.”  

Andrew Louth and Marco Conti, eds., Genesis 1–11, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 61.

Admittedly using a tractor with the implements to do your work is like cheating, and it makes hard work fun. Respectfully, our nearby Amish community still uses only hand tools and horse-drawn plows🫡.

This is probably not heard in many churches today, especially with all the positive-thinking pulpits. But God’s command to Adam to “keep it” [the garden] is the Hebrew word shâmar, which is used ‘before the fall’ here and then over four hundred times after the fall.

This Hebrew verb shâmar (“to keep it”) means to be a watchman and to build a hedge for protection. To guard, to ward off, to protect, to save life, and to wait for.

I’m not adding to the Text here, but perhaps we can imagine this as the first Department of Homeland Security. God commanded Adam to build a hedge of protection. This shâmar is also consistent with a husband’s role as the Three P’s, the Pastor, Provider, and Protector of the homestead. This is also a reminder of the importance of tactical components i.e. tactical readiness and situational awareness, in both the spiritual and physical realms. This is why I am considering building a watchtower for our homestead.  

I love Matthew Henry’s commentary on verse 15.

“After God had formed Adam, he put him in the garden. All boasting was thereby shut out. Only he that made us can make us happy; he that is the Former of our bodies, and the Father of our spirits, and none but he, can fully provide for the happiness of both. Even in paradise itself man had to work. None of us were sent into the world to be idle. He that made our souls and bodies, has given us something to work with; and he that gave us this earth for our habitation, has made us something to work upon. The sons and heirs of heaven, while in this world, have something to do about this earth, which must have its share of their time and thoughts; and if they do it with an eye to God, they as truly serve him in it, as when they are upon their knees. Observe that the husbandman’s calling is an ancient and honourable calling; it was needful even in paradise. Also, there is true pleasure in the business God calls us to, and employs us in. Adam could not have been happy if he had been idle: it is still God’s law, He that will not work has no right to eat, 2Th 3:10.”

Matthew Henry and Thomas Scott, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1997), Ge 2:15.

So, if there was no sin in the garden, then why would God tell Adam to “protect” it?

This shâmar also reminds us that our LORD is not only omniscient (all-knowing), but He and His Son Jesus have foreknowledge. This foreknowledge in the N.T. is the Greek word proginōskō, which means God ‘foreknows everything even beforehand.’ God not only foreknew everything in the beginning “was good,” that the first Adam would sin (Rom. 5:12-19, 1 Cor. 15:45-49). He foreknew Adam & Eves’ sin would cause “the fall” in the garden. He foreknew that every man since the fall would be a byproduct of the fallen nature of man.

He knows our sins, past, present, and future (ouch). But the Good News is, for His elect (His chosen), He sent a remedy for their sin problem, that would be His Son, aka the Last (or Final) Adam. To know more about the first Adam, the fall in the garden, and our need to be saved by the Final Adam, click here or read below. 

For Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary definition of shâmar, please see the comment section below.

THE GOOD NEWS!