CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST

October 9, 2005

KEEP THE FOLLOWING IN PRAYER:

Our congregation                                                                 Our students

Various friends, relatives and co-workers                        James and David in the military

Our nation, military and leaders                                         Pat Henderson will have knee replacement

                                                                                                surgery Thursday

Mel’s recovering from dental surgery

BACK TO EDEN

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21).

After God finished creating, He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  We can only imagine what it was like.  Free, peaceful, content, and in fellowship with God.  We are told that God walked in the Garden in the cool of the day.  This is what God intended for humankind.  Then the first couple sinned and were thrown out of the Garden.  The gate was closed and sealed and no one would be allowed back in (see Genesis 3:23-24).  Humankind became people of the earth, subject to its harshness, cast into the wilderness, and the earth became subject to bondage as well, Paul calling it decay, victim of the sin of the first couple.  Once again, we see that sin often affects others.

>From that time, humankind has been trying to find Paradise again.  History shows us that that has been a fruitless quest.  The people became so sinful that God flooded the earth to cleanse it.  Yet sin continued shortly after humans returned to the land.  The earth in chaos and humankind in the wilderness -- that has been our fate. 

God provides illustrations to show the direction He wants us to head.  The primary example is that of the rescue of the nation Israel from the slavery of Egypt.  At the end of the book of Genesis, Joseph moves his family to Egypt where they settle down.  For four hundred years they live in Egypt, though as they increased in number, the Egyptians began to enslave them until we find them slaves in the days of Moses.  Moses is called by God to bring Israel out of that bondage.  The Jews knew the promise given to Abraham, that there was a promised land that would be theirs one day.  But that was a promise from a long time ago.  They were just trying to survive the daily grind.  Then came Moses and he talked about the promise land and that God would lead them there; He had not forgotten his people.  Using creation, God delivers Israel from the Egyptian bondage.  Insects, winds, and various weather conditions attack Egypt and finally God sent an angel who kills the first born of Egypt.  Israel is free.  They travel southeast until they came to the Red Sea and God intervenes, parting the water.  Israel crosses on dry ground and the Egyptian army is destroyed when they tried to follow.  Now they are in the barren desert, the waste land, the wilderness, going to the mountain of God, where they would meet Him.  After a period of time, about two years with God mercifully providing for them, they turn north to the promise land.  Spies are sent and come back with produce but ten with a bad report.  Because of their lack of faith, God leads them deeper into the wilderness for another thirty-eight years.  Finally Israel has reached the Jordan, the promise land on the west side.  Their garden, their paradise was just across the river. 

The Bible tells us the history of Israel.  There promised land became a land of chaos and finally a deserted land, Israel having sinned and once again found carried off into another captivity called Babylon.  Some came back, attempting to rebuild paradise but being occupied by Persians, Greeks and Romans, and ruled by a usurper, Israel’s paradise was anything but a garden.

That brings us to Jesus.  He came into the world with a promise of paradise, of leading people to the promise land.  Once again we see God rescuing people from bondage, this time the bondage of sin.  Freedom by the power of God, we were lead to our Red Sea, where we were baptized into Christ (see 1 Corinthians 10:1-4).  We are now in the wilderness being lead to our promised land, or to say it another way, to Eden.  The metaphors abound.  We are citizens of heaven living on earth.  We are pilgrims journeying to our paradise.  But we are not yet there. 

When we look at the cross of Jesus, we see His hands spread out bring the past and the future together in the present.  The past is the Garden of Eden, the fellowship that God began with, and the future is a return to that Garden, what we call heaven.  It is at the cross that we see the bridge between the two.  That brings us to our  understand of eternity and heaven and earth. 

Particularly in America, a country we have seen as paradise or a promised land, we have been influenced much by views that see that the world will be destroyed by fire and that in the end we will all come into the presence of God around the throne.  Revelation in particular has drawn on this picture.  Peter uses the fire picture (2 Peter 3) and many have concluded that the earth will be burned up.  The new heavens and the new earth of Revelation is a description of heaven.  It is appealing to our materialistic views; Peter at the pearly gates, streets of gold, walls so high and wide for protection, and no tears or crying.  That for us sounds like paradise.  And yet.  Peter is a Jew familiar with apocalyptic literature which often used highly vivid language to draw a picture of judgment or paradise.

Paul views this differently in Romans eight.  There he sees the earth being restored.  Here we will return, as it were, to the Garden of Eden, the original intent of God, with the intimate relationship that He desires for us.  Even in Revelation we see the tree of life and garden scenes.  Other pictures of peace and tranquility have the lion laying next to a lamb and a child playing with an asp.  Paul brings together our final or ultimate redemption and ties it to the creation’s redemption.  Our heaven will be a return to the Garden of Eden on a restored earth.  The whole earth would be the Garden.  Of course, this requires us to look at scripture in a different way.  It appears that this a more dominate view in England (see Jim McGuiggan on Romans and N.T. Wright).

Some will argue that this is the view of some cults, especially the Jehovah Witnesses.  Keep in mind several things.  One, they do not see Jesus as Lord or Savior.  There theology has difficulty with sin.  Two, they are influenced in America with the premillennial end times ideas.  Three, they only have 144,000 literally entering heaven and the rest remaining on earth. 

Why bring this up?  We often hear much about the end times.  Whatever the case, keep in mind the following.  One, we as Christians will all be in the presence of God when the end comes, and will be around His throne.  That is the key.  Walking with Jesus leads us to paradise, just like the thief on the cross.  Two, this view is not a matter of faith.  However and whatever God wants to do with the earth at the end is His choice not mine.  To me, either view is paradise.  What is important is our relationship with God in Christ.  Once again, the cross of Jesus ties the past and the future in the present.  We walk forward looking to the eternal city set on a hill (another metaphor) where we will join the great cloud of witnesses in joyful assembly (see Hebrews 11:39-12:2).

                                                                                                                                                George B. Mearns