As we look at Genesis 2:16-17, we will be talking about Jesus Christ and Him crucified and how His death on the cross reveals something about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil reveals something critically important about human nature. This episode of the One Verse Podcast shows how all of us eat from this tree every single day, and how through His crucifixion, Jesus invites us to stop eating the fruit of this forbidden tree.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

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Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a mysterious and troubling element in the Genesis account. Why would God put this tree there in the first place if He didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat from it? We are going to spend two weeks looking at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good Evil.

Today, we will see why the death that will come from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not a punishment from God, but is actually a blessing … and we will also see how the command to not eat from the tree is the final touch on the temple that God has built.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:

Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

Do you ever think you’ll be bored in heaven, just sitting around on clouds playing harps? Well, Genesis 2 indicates that this will not happen. Work existed before the fall of humanity into sin, and it will also exist in the future state. But don’t worry. It will be work you enjoy and love.

In Genesis 2:8-15, we see why Adam was given work to do in the Garden of Eden, and why you and I still carry on this work today. We will also look at this strange description of all the rivers that surrounded Eden, and why these rivers are listed. It’s not so that we can figure out where Eden used to be located.

We will see these things, and much more, as we look at Genesis 2:8-15.

The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.  And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:

Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

Last week I promised you that Genesis 2–4 contained some revolutionary ideas about everything related to life, humanity, society, religion, war, politics, violence, and pretty much everything else in life. But other than the fact that God is relational, we didn’t really see anything too revolutionary in Genesis 2:4-6.

But that is about to change. Today, as we look at Genesis 2:7, we will learn something rather shocking about the creation of man. You don’t want to miss this!

Genesis 2:7. And 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 being.

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:

Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

Why is there a second creation account in Genesis 2? And have you ever noticed that when you compare the creation account in Genesis 2 with the creation account in Genesis 1, there are several key differences? What is going on? Do these differences prove that there are errors and contradictions in the Bible?

It is these sorts of questions we will be looking at today as we look at Genesis 2:4-6 in today’s episode of the One Verse Podcast.

This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the ground, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.

The picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware by Emmanuel Leutze:

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:

Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

This is a summary episode for everything we have looked at in Genesis 1–2 so far.

The reasons for this summary are numerous:

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:

Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

As we worked our way through Genesis 1 and the first creation account in Genesis, numerous people sent in questions about what they were learning.

Before we move on in our study of Scripture, I wanted to take an episode to answer some of these questions. I have already personally answered most of the questions sent in to the people who sent them, but I figured I would ask and answer these questions in a podcast episode as well since you might have similar questions.

To ask your own questions on future episodes, feel free to comment on the blog post of any episode, contact me through the contact form, message me on Facebook, or send me an email.

Here are some links I referenced in this episode:

This is Part 2 of our study of Genesis 2:1-3, which is the seventh day of the creation week and the day on which God rested from His work.

In Part 1, we looked at the text itself and considered various key terms and issues in this text, and also began to show how this text serves as a theological polemic against some of the religions in the days of Moses.

I left you with a cliffhanger at the end of the show, and that is where we pick up in this episode.

This study of Genesis 2:1-3 reveals something regarding the Sabbath which you have likely never heard before. If you listen, you will hear something regarding the Sabbath that will likely liberate you from all the religious rules and regulations you worry about regarding the Sabbath.

This study of Genesis 2:1-3 will liberate you from Sabbath bondage. Your Sabbath observance will be liberated from the shackles of religion, and will be brought back into the way God intended it to be. By the end of today’s show, you will be excited to observe the Sabbath, because you will be invited to observe it as God Himself does.

Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.

And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:

Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

Do you observe the Sabbath? Why or why not?

Lots of people struggle with whether or not we should observe the Sabbath. On the one hand, Sabbath observance seems like a very religious and legalistic thing to do, but on the other hand, God set up the Sabbath as an everlasting covenant (Exod 31:16).

This episode begins to look at Genesis 2:1-3 and Day 7 of the creation week as we begin to answer these important questions.

Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.

And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:

Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.

What is the purpose of life? What is the chief end of mankind?

Is the chief end and purpose of man, as many dry and dusty old theologians like to say, “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”? If that’s the case, it’s no wonder that many people want nothing to do with God, with theology, or with Christianity.

But what if I told you that according to God, our three primary tasks in life were to have sex, eat good food, and take care of your pets?

Now that is a little more appealing, isn’t it?

This is what we see from Genesis 1:28-31. Listen to the podcast to learn more!

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.

Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Those who are part of my online discipleship group may download the MP3 audio file for this podcast and view the podcast transcript below.

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:

Do you like learning about Scripture and theology through my podcast? If so, then you will also love my online courses. They all have MP3 audio downloads, PDF transcripts, quizzes, and a comment section for questions and interaction with other students.

If you want to deepen your relationship with God and better understand Scripture, take one (or all) of these courses. They are great for personal study or for a small group Bible study.

You can see the list of available courses here, and if you join the Discipleship group, you can take all the courses at no additional cost. Go here to learn more and join now.