In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:1,31 ESV
I was sad the other night in thinking about the many struggling people that I deal with as a pastor. People who struggle with addictions, broken relationships, lonliness, social disfunction, anxiety, fear, anger, bitterness, hopelessness, unforiveness, suffering from consequences of bad decisions, discontentment, disease, mental illness, habitual sins, and so many other results from the fall. I felt so much love and compassion for them all and at the same time great feelings of helplessness over all the sorrow and pain that I see in this world. In my sadness I began deeply reflecting about the way things used to be before the fall, what happened after the fall, and what God intends to do someday.
When God created the world everything that He made was exceedingly beautiful and perfect. To God Himself it was “good”.
Paul Tripp describes it this way:
God's creative artistry, shown in the world he made and everything he placed in it, was a thing of gorgeous and stunning beauty. The hills were awash in multi-hued flowers, with no weevil to consume their leaves and no mites to infect their blossoms. The soil was packed with life-giving nutrients, and there were no thorns, thistles, or weeds to be found. Trees were laden with the lushest, sweetest, most succulent fruit. There were no plagues or pollutants. Nature grew, bloomed, and produced without struggle or toil. There was untainted natural beauty as far as the eye could see. It literally covered the earth. Animals frolicked, fed, mated, and produced without fear of predators or a fight with disease. The animal kingdom was a place of an amazing variegated beauty, all existing in an atmosphere of peace.
People lived in joyful, unafraid, and unashamed community with one another. There was no stealing, lying, cheating, harsh words, abusive actions, strategies of vengeance, sexual immorality, broken families, or corrupt government. No one struggled with depression, anxiety, issues of identity, paralyzing regret, anger, envy, compulsion, addiction, fear, guilt, aloneness, hopelessness, or doubt. People didn't suffer from injury, disease, or old age. There were no hospital vigils and no viewings of the deceased. No one needed to ask for forgiveness and no one struggled to forgive. There was no marital disappointment and no employment gone bad.
People lived in heartfelt, loving, obedient worship of God. They worshipped the Creator and managed creation; they didn't give in to worshipping creation and trying to manage the Creator.
There was no doubt of his goodness, no fear of his anger. There was no overt rebellion or subtle disobedience. They obeyed his words and listened to his wisdom. There were no corrupting idols or competing systems of faith. No one was ever angry at God, and God had no cause for anger with the people he had made. People loved God's glory and in no way lived for their own.
In every way you could think or imagine, the world, as God created it, was a place of unparalleled peace and beauty. It was a sight and surround-sound glory display, reflecting the transcendent glory of the One who had made it out of nothing. His creative majesty was on untainted and uninterrupted display: the piercing red of the rose, the fluorescent scales of the fish, the sweet song of the bird, the gray grandeur of the rock, the earth-shaking roar of the lion, the endless gurgling of the stream, and the lacey delicacy of the leaf. Each part pointed to him. Each thing existed as a hymn to his glory.
But then something catastrophic happened. Man sinned, fellowship with God was ruined, and paradise was lost:
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. ..To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3:6,16-19)
How do you begin to express the result of the cataclysmic events that happened? Perhaps the apostle Paul did it best with this powerful statement in Romans 8:21:
The whole creation groans."
Do you ever wonder why things are the way that they are? Do you ever feel a sadness, a sense of loss, frustration, brokenness, mourning, grief, or despair over the way things are? Sometimes as a pastor I will look at all the suffering and pain and falleness in this world and just weep before the Lord. I feel this longing inside, a sense that this is just not the way it was supposed to be?
Look at the way this world has become since paradise was lost. This sadly, is the very world that we are so tragically accustomed to live in paradise lost!
Paul Tripp writes,
Lilies now fought with weeds that would choke out their lives. Pollutants floated as shadows in the sky and unseen toxins in the stream. Fruit and flower were blighted with disease. Pain, suffering, toil, disease, and death became the regular experience of everything in the creation. What was once very easy was easy no longer. What was simple became terribly complicated. Everything that was once free now was only obtained at great cost. What seemed once unthinkably wrong and out of character for the world that God had made now became a daily experience. Words like falsehood, enemy, danger, sin, destruction, war, murder, sickness, fear, and hatred became regular parts of the fallen-world vocabulary.
For the first time, the harmony between people was broken. Shame, fear, guilt, blame, greed, envy, conflict, and hurt made relationships a minefield they were never intended to be. People looked at other people as obstacles to getting what they wanted or as dangers to be avoided. Even families were unable to coexist in any kind of lasting and peaceful union. Violence became a common response to problems that had never before existed. Conflict existed in the human community as an experience more regular than peace. Marriage became a battle for control, and children's rebellion became a more natural response than willing submission. Things became more valuable than people, and they willingly competed with others in order to acquire more.
The human community was more divided by love for self than united by love of neighbor. The words of people, meant to express truth and love, became weapons of anger and instruments of deceit. In an instant, the sweet music of human harmony had become the mournful dirge of human war.
Yet, with all of the havoc that sin wreaked on the physical world and on the human community, there was another horrible result. It was something so unthinkable, so horrific, so hard to grasp, that it easily stands as the saddest thing that has ever happened on earth. This tragedy is portrayed in a seemingly mundane conversation captured in Genesis 3:8-10,
"Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
What a sad, sad moment! Here is a man, created to have the boundaries of his life reach to the furthest boundaries of the glory of God. Here is one who was created to get his identity, meaning, and purpose from an intimate relationship with God. Here is a person whose every word, thought, desire, and deed was meant to be shaped by a heartfelt submission to and worship of his Creator. What do we find him doing? He hides in fear when the One who is meant to be his life comes near! And so we continue hiding from God to this day.
How sad I am as I think about this loss of God and of paradise seen and lived out every day in this fallen world.
But thanks be to God who is seated on the throne and in Revelation 21:1-5, says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." And he who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new."
Do you see and feel this wonderful and hope filled truth? "I am making everything new!”
There is going to be a restoration of all of God’s beautiful creation. Something new, something better, something wonderful, something hopeful, something beyond anything we could ever ask or imagine!
It is summarized in Romans 8:17-25,
“And if children, then heirs- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
Neil Morse wrote a song that sums up our longing:
I wish there was
A way to start again
Just blink and count to ten
In the land of beginning again
Where no one knows
The bad things that you´ve done
The past is truly gone
In the land of beginning again
And I
See a child returning to the sky
We´ll all play simple games
And all the hard things there
Are soft as rain
I wish there was
A way to start again
To wake up among friends
In the land of beginning again
And I
Love my brother more than my own life
And no one feels mean
All things are new
Behold - the slate is clean....
I wish there was
A way to start again
Just blink and count to ten
In the land of beginning again
THERE IS A LAND OF BEGINNING AGAIN!
Full of longing for the restoration of paradise and the restoration of all these precious people who suffer so,
Pastor Bill
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