Creation

We have two passages of scripture, one from the Old Testament and one from the New, both of them focusing upon God and creation. Reading from Genesis chapter 3, beginning at verse 8, and then Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 18.

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field.

Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shalt thou bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken.

For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Now the New Testament commentary on this is Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 18. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of our body. And for the believer, the best is yet to come.

The fact of human suffering is one that no honest person can avoid, whether he be a believer or an unbeliever. We talk about natural disasters, the things that the insurance companies call acts of God. Mount Vesuvius erupts and 30,000 people are buried alive.

Back in 1918, around this world, some 21 million people died of influenza. A cyclone hits Pakistan back in 1970, and a million people are dead. And then we talk about the man-made disasters.

The Titanic goes down and 1,493 people drown. Here in the city of Chicago, we have some 700 murders every year. And we talk about the mysteries of suffering.

Babies, innocent babies, who have done neither good nor evil, born deformed or demented, children attacked brutally, criminals apparently going free while innocent people pay the bill. I say it again, whether you're saved or unsaved, you can look around this world and realize that there's a great deal of suffering, and much of it cannot be explained. How many times parents have said to me, Pastor, why? And I say, I don't know.

Now, there are some people who do have an explanation for this. They blame God. The philosophers, the agnostics, the atheists who don't believe the way we do argue something like this.

Either there is a God or there isn't a God. If there isn't a God, then what's happening is just natural and accidental and will not say anything. But if there is a God, either he knows about these things or he doesn't know.

And if he doesn't know, he can't be God. So he must know. Now, if he knows about these things and does nothing about them, he must not care.

But if he's God, he has to care. Therefore, if he knows and he cares and does nothing about it, he must not have the power to do anything about it. But if he's God, certainly he has power.

And so the end of their reasoning is there must not be any God. I was participating in a street meeting at the corner of Madison and Kedzie one evening and passing out tracts entitled, Four Things God Wants You to Know. And a man grabbed the tract and looked at it, Four Things God Wants You to Know.

And he looked at me and said, Young man, there are a few things I would like God to know. And he began a tirade on that street corner, blaspheming God for all of the suffering and trial that's in this world today. Now, is there an answer to all of this? Well, the fact of the matter is there are seven answers to this.

God has not left us with question marks. God has given us some exclamation points. And beginning today and continuing for the next six weeks, I want to share with you the answers that God gives to man's suffering.

What the Bible has to say about this. Because we as Christians do not look on this situation with our eyes closed. In fact, because we do believe in a God of power and wisdom and love, we face more problems than the unsaved people do.

When I read my Bible, I find Job and Jeremiah and the psalmist, people who are believers, people who have walked with God, crying out to God and saying, I don't understand. The prophet Habakkuk gets into his watchtower and he looks across the scene and he says, oh, God, I don't understand what you're doing. Now, the first answer that God gives to this problem of suffering in the world is the answer of creation.

We begin with creation. That's where God begins. And there are three basic facts about creation that you and I must get a hold of.

If we're going to get victory in this matter of human suffering. I believe that as I preach to this congregation here at Moody Church and then by the delayed broadcast to our radio congregation, I am speaking to many, many people who are suffering. I don't just mean physical suffering.

I mean broken hearts. I mean shattered dreams. I mean, parents who pray at night and weep over children and say, oh, God, why? And I mean, children who pray and say about their parents, oh, God, why? Why the accident? Why the injury? Why the death? Well, there are three facts about creation that if you lay hold of them will encourage you to understand what's going on in this world.

Now, the facts are simply these. Fact number one, it was made a good creation. Fact number two, it became a groaning creation.

Fact number three, one day it shall be a glorious creation. Fact number one, it was made a good creation. In Genesis chapter one, verse 31, we read, and the Lord God looked upon everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.

That's back at the beginning. Have you ever asked yourself the question, what made creation good when it came from the hand of God? Philosophers are forever arguing, is there a better kind of a world? I cannot conceive that Almighty God in his wisdom and power would have made less than the best. What is there about the creation, the world that God made, that makes it good? Well, I think there are three characteristics of this creation that make it good.

Number one, it is a personal creation. It was made by a person for persons. God did not make creation just to display his power.

God made creation to display his person. We know that there is a being there who not only has power, but a being who has wisdom. Now in spite of the fact that scientists tell us that creation is a vast jungle of bloody tooth and claw, there's a great deal of the grace of God and the love of God in creation.

We visited in British Columbia this past summer while I was preaching up there, the most beautiful garden. Some of you have been there to the Butchart Gardens. And that used to be nothing.

It was ugly. Someone came along and said, we can make this vast scar on the face of the earth, this pit, into something gorgeous. And they did.

We visited a volcano in Hawaii. The closer you got to the mouth of that volcano, the more you smelled the brimstone. It's the closest experience I've had to what hell must be like with the odor and the seepage and the death.

But every once in a while, you would see a flower growing, you'd see some grass coming through. Nature was trying to heal. This is a personal creation.

We are not aliens in a strange land. We are not strangers groping around in a world that doesn't belong to us. This world was made for persons.

God made everything and then he put Adam and Eve into it. He said, this is your world. I'm giving it to you.

It's a personal creation. Behind nature is God. Behind the heart of nature is the heart of God.

It's not a machine that just grinds away until one day it runs out. This creation is the outflow of the love and the wisdom and the power of God. It's a personal creation.

Secondly, it's a creation that's based on principle, upon law. We could not have sent men to the moon and back had God not built into this universe certain laws. You would not be able to boil an egg.

You would not be able to bake a cake. Had God not built into this universe certain basic laws. And you must remember that if we cooperate with these laws, there's power.

If we fight against these laws, there's tragedy. It's a creation based on principle. Take one law.

There's one law in this universe that says you reap what you sow. A farmer says, I want to plant wheat. Would it not be a great tragedy and problem if he planted wheat and lo and behold comes the harvest and it's barley? He'd say, what's going on here? I didn't want barley.

I wanted wheat. There is a law in the universe that we reproduce after our kind. We reap what we sow.

Now, that law can work against you. You go out and sow sin, you'll reap. You'll reap judgment.

You sow to the wind, you'll reap to the whirlwind. You sow to the flesh, you reap corruption. The same law that gives you food, the same law that gives us power, can also break us.

But it's not the law's fault, it's our fault. It's a universe of law and principle. Otherwise, we couldn't function.

Thirdly, this universe, this creation, is a good creation because it has a purpose behind it. Now, if you're wondering what that purpose is behind creation, I'll read to you from Revelation chapter 4. When the 4 and 20 elders fall down to worship God and they say this, thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created. God made this world that he might enjoy the praise of men to the glory of God.

You say God is rather selfish. I don't think so. The greatest thing you and I can ever do is glorify God.

And so, it's a creation with a purpose behind it. God's purpose is to reveal himself in creation. God's purpose is to help us find ourselves in creation.

And you put all of this together, we bring glory to God. It was made a good creation. So, says somebody, how do we get into this mess? No matter where you go in this world, you find disease and death.

I grew up in East Chicago, Indiana. I don't know if it's still true down there or not. When I was living in East Chicago, Indiana, we had about 65 or 70,000 citizens in that city and not one cemetery.

I pastored in East Chicago for some seven years and whenever we had someone to bury, we always had to go to Hammond or Gary or Highland or come to Chicago. There was no cemetery in East Chicago. I said this to someone one day.

He said there's a reason for this. The whole city is a cemetery. But wherever you go, you'll find cemeteries, hospitals.

I was out in the cemetery just this last week and as I was walking around, there are little graves and you know that down in that ground is a little baby's body. What's happened? It was made a good creation. Fact number two, it became a groaning creation.

God didn't make it this way. In Romans chapter 8, Paul uses five words to describe our creation today. Verse 18, sufferings.

Verse 20, vanity. Verse 21, bondage. Verse 21, corruption.

Verse 22, pain and travail. The Apostle Paul is saying in Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 18, that the creation we're living in today is no longer the good creation that God made. It's a groaning creation.

Verse 18, I reckon that the sufferings, plural, sufferings. There's a lot of suffering going on, physical suffering, emotional suffering, which is far worse. There are people who have mental suffering.

Suffering. Verse 20, vanity. That's the word futility.

You know what vanity means? Vanity means striving to achieve and you can't do it. Going forward two steps and back three steps. Vanity in creation means that creation is constantly trying to reach and can't reach.

It's as though every season it tries all over again. The autumn is soon upon us and we see things begin to die and the winter comes and then the spring comes and some of the things that died won't be there again. Some of them will, but not quite as strong as they were before.

Vanity. As you look at the round, the endless round of nature, you're tempted to say with Solomon when he wrote Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanity is all is vanity. Whatever was is what's going to be.

There's nothing new under the sun. Here is this endless round of existence. Vanity.

Bondage, verse 21. Creation itself also shall be delivered from bondage. Creation is not free.

Creation is bound. There is the bondage of sin, the bondage of corruption. The word corruption in verse 21 means decay.

The hymn writer wrote change and decay all around. I see. Oh, thou that changes not abide with me.

Now, not all change is decay, but all decay is change. And we see decay. A baby comes into the world weak, ignorant.

It's guided through the early stages of infancy into childhood and then into adolescence and then into adulthood. It comes in weak and gets stronger and stronger and more and more capable and smarter and smarter, hits a peak, begins to level off and begins to go down. And we go out of this world as weak as we came into the world.

Decay. We're thankful for the advances of medical science that we can have artificial parts to our body. I'm wearing glasses or I would not be able to see the page of my Bible.

Some of you have dentures, partial or complete. Some of you have hearing aids. Some of you have pacemakers.

And we thank God for every bit of help we have. But each of these items indicates decay. Travail.

Verse 22. We know that the whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain together. It looks as though creation is not is not working together.

There's an earthquake over here and a volcanic eruption there. There's a drought here. There's a flood here.

You say, why don't they all get together? They are getting together. They're groaning together. They're travailing together.

Now, the reason for all of this, as you know, is man's sin. God is not responsible for the mess that creation is in today. You say, well, why didn't God prevent it? We'll talk about that in a future message, the Lord willing.

But suffice it to say that God has purposes that he is fulfilling. And if he constantly interfered with your life, the way a mother does with a little toddler, you'd never grow up. This world is not a playpen.

It's a battlefield. And all of this is a result of man's sin. Verse 20.

For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly. God didn't take a vote and say, all you trees, how do you feel it should be? You rivers, we sang today in our opening hymn about all of creation singing praise to God. I love to read those psalms where it talks about the hills skipping in the presence of the Lord.

I've never seen a hill skip. But the psalmist saw it. The God of glory thundereth.

The Lord sits as king above the flood. David got stuck in a cave during a rainstorm, and he watched the rain and heard the thunder and saw the lightning and he saw all of nature praising God. But all of nature was made subject to vanity, not willingly.

But by reason of him who subjected the same in hope. That word him means God. God had to put nature under bondage and vanity.

Why? Because man had sinned. What would happen if you had a sinful man living in a perfect world? Man came from the dust and whatever man does affects creation. And when man sinned, creation suffered.

And that's why back in Genesis chapter 3, you have words like these. Thorns, thistles, sweat, dust, death. Those words weren't in the vocabulary.

They were not in the dictionary prior to Genesis 3. When Adam went down to the library and looked through the dictionary, he did not find thorns and sweat and death. He added those words. And the person who blames God for earthquakes and floods and famines and droughts doesn't understand his Bible.

We're living in a creation that is a groaning creation, and we are groaning along with it. He says that in verse 23 of Romans 8. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, not because of our arthritis. That hurts.

Not because of our afflictions. They hurt. We're groaning, waiting for the redemption.

We're groaning for glory. We're not groaning because of our weakness. We're groaning for glory.

We know we're a part of travail. Now I'm going to ask you a very simple question. Are you glad you are a part of God's creation? You see, there is a way to escape suffering and difficulty and perplexity and trial.

Become a tadpole. Become a dandelion. An amoeba.

That's right. The higher you go in the scale of creation, the more knowledge there is and the more privilege there is. And you and I were made in the image of God.

Now follow me. God made us in His image that we might enjoy Him and what He's made for us. Even though this world we are living in is not perfect, God is perfect.

And I would much rather go through the perplexities and the pains and the difficulties of this groaning world and be human and be made in the image of God and be able to think and write and speak and pray and worship and serve than to be in some lower level of creation and not have those privileges. God gave you a power of choice. God has limited Himself when He made man and gave man the power of choice.

There are some things that God will not do. He says, I'm giving you some decisions to make. Now make them and make the right ones.

And dear friends, much of the sorrow and agony in this world is made because people make wrong decisions, not because God's up in heaven throwing lightning bolts down like the Greek gods used to do. Much of the tragedy and heartache and sorrow in this world comes from selfish, sinful people who make wrong decisions and fight against the very laws of God. This is a groaning creation.

Now our third fact, Paul does not deny the groans, but Paul affirms the glory. Fact number three, it shall be a glorious creation. All of creation is groaning and travailing, waiting for what? Waiting for Jesus to come.

The psalmist says He's coming and the trees of the forest are going to clap their hands. You can't clap your hands among the saints, but the trees will do it. All of creation, Isaiah writes so beautifully, he says that the desert is going to blossom like the rose and all of the flowers and the trees are going to praise Him.

All of nature is waiting for Jesus to come back, waiting for the redemption of our body. Now, my spirit has been redeemed. When I trusted Christ, He put life into my spirit and my spirit has been redeemed.

My soul is being redeemed, my mind, my heart, and my will. Every day God is redeeming my mind and my heart and my will more and more. The Bible calls that sanctification.

My body has not been redeemed. I had to go to the eye doctor a week or so ago and he said, uh-huh, a little stronger next time. My body has not been redeemed, but one day it will be.

And the whole argument of Romans 8 is not, let's sit and complain against God. Oh God, why are there droughts? Why was our baby born dead? Why is there so much trouble? That's not the argument of Romans 8. Romans 8 says, wait a minute, you're groaning right along with creation, but creation is travailing and where there is travail, there's going to be birth. And one day, creation is going to see Jesus come.

Jesus calls this the regeneration. Now, regeneration means born again. If you've been saved, you are regenerated, born again.

But Jesus applies this to creation. He says in the regeneration, when the world is born again, when nature is born again, not every human being, but where all of nature becomes born again and God brings in his kingdom, it's going to be a glorious creation. Verse 19, creation is waiting for the manifestation, the unveiling of the sons of God.

Verse 23, we're waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body. What's going to happen? Verse 29, to be conformed to the image of his son. You see, we have only a short life in which to groan, 70 years, 75, 80.

We have all of eternity for glory. That doesn't seem to be too hard of a bargain. Was it not said, he is no fool to give what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose? Jim Elliott said that.

He is no fool to give what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose. So we lose our health. We lose our wealth.

Job lost both. In the circumstances of life, we have trials, we have tribulations. But Paul says to us, you're a part of a new creation.

Creation was made good. It was a good creation. Sin came in.

Now it's a groaning creation. One day Jesus shall return. It shall be a glorious creation.

But meanwhile, we Christians belong to a new creation. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, there's a new creation. We have the firstfruits of heaven down inside.

We're enjoying a foretaste of glory right now. And we're saying with Paul, the suffering of this present time is not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. This creation is marked by thorns.

One day my Lord received a crown of thorns. This creation is marked by sweat. One night my Lord sweat.

He went into the garden as the last Adam facing Calvary. And he sweat great drops of blood. Creation is marked by dust and death.

And one day my Savior went out and died. Don't you come and tell me that God doesn't know what he's doing. If God made this right now into a perfect world of balance without a bit of difficulty, people would still hate God and curse God and reject him.

And you'd have wicked people in the midst of a perfect world. God said, I'm not going to do it that way. I'm going to make a new creation right in this old creation.

I'm going to make a spiritual creation. I'm going to send my son, the last Adam, and he's going to die. The first Adam disobeyed with a tree in the garden and brought sin and death and judgment.

The last Adam obeyed on a tree and brought salvation and glory. The important thing, my friend, is not what is the condition of creation. The important thing is what's the condition of your heart.

We Christians shed just as many tears, but we have someone who dries the tears. We have funerals. But we have someone who says, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil.

Thou art with me. We have just as many heartaches, but we have someone who said to us, I've come to heal the brokenhearted. Jesus didn't come to take us out of the difficulties of life.

He came to save us and put us through the difficulties of life to build character to the glory of God. And we're looking forward to that glorious creation when there'll be no more heartache, no more tears or sorrow or death. The person who blasphemes God because he says, I see in creation, I see in this universe so much that's wrong, doesn't understand either God or the universe or himself.

You and I as Christians understand. We understand that through much tribulation, we enter into the kingdom of God. We understand it's not going to get easier and easier.

It's going to get harder and harder. But we also understand that one is walking with us who's going to take us all the way. For this God is our God forever and ever, and he will be our guide even under death.

And so, dear friend, lift up your heart. The Lord is coming. Your eyes are filled with tears.

Lift up your eyes. The Lord is coming. It's not pie in the sky by and by.

It's a vital, growing, dynamic hope down in our hearts. Jesus is coming. And if I know that Jesus is coming and what I'm going through is temporary, I can take it.

You can take it. Because one day he's going to take us. And from then on, glory.

Gracious Father, we're thankful that one day creation shall be delivered from this bondage of decay and death, that one day we shall enter into an environment that will be so pure and holy and glorious that you'll have to give us a brand new body to be a part of it. And Father, we can't even begin to conceive of all that we're going to share in when Jesus comes again. Now, help us to be faithful.

Deliver us, Lord, from being sanctified sissies who weep at every little thing. Put some iron in our souls, O God. Grant to us that we shall stand tall.

Grant to us that we shall look with the eyes of faith and that we'll not quit in the problems and the burdens of life. Gracious Father, we will not judge your work until it's finished. And you aren't finished yet.

One day when you are finished, everything in heaven and on earth, everything under the earth will join in praise to Jesus Christ. Give us, O Lord, that faith and hope until Jesus comes. I pray for those without the Savior who are so hopeless, caught in a creation that is destined for judgment.

Oh, I pray in Jesus' name, help these to turn to Christ and believe and be saved. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for wearing the crown of thorns. Thank you for bearing on your body all of our sins. May there be many who will trust, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.