Sharper Iron & Truth in Genesis: Before the Flood Before the Fall

Rev. Andrew Preus, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Guttenberg & St. Paul Lutheran Church in McGregor, Iowa, studies Genesis 2:5-17 on today’s episode. Rev. Preus talks about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Spirit hovering over the waters, making man out of the dust, the pre-flood landscape, and what’s going on with the lack of rain.

“In the Beginning was the Truth” is a mini-series on Sharper Iron featuring a step-by-step walk through the book of Genesis, focusing on the truth of Jesus, the story of salvation found throughout the book, and how we view our lives through the lens of God’s promises.

Genesis 2:5-17

⁵When no bush of the field^[a] was yet in the land^[b] and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶and a mist^[c]was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— ⁷then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. ⁸And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. ¹¹The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.¹²And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.¹³The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat^[d] of it you shall surely die.”