Creation Fall Redemption
Many people today think a Christian is someone who tries to live a good life, who accepts there is a God, or goes to church. In reality, none of these by themselves makes a person a Christian.
Rather than rely on guesswork, we need to listen to God himself, who has spoken on the subject in the bible. As the one true source of knowledge about God, the bible stands alone. It is the very word of God himself and states its purpose like this: these things are written that you may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:31).
A Christian is one who has realized his sinfulness before a holy and righteous God and trusted in the Divine savior Jesus Christ alone to redeem him from his sinfulness. But I do not want to start there this morning. When you read a book, you do not open it up in the middle and then start reading. If you do that you miss the whole plot and characters. No, you start from the beginning and that is where I want to start this morning.
The Christian message does not begin with “accept Christ as your Savior”; it begins with “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The bible teaches that God is the sole source of the entire created order. No other gods compete with him; no natural forces exist on their own; nothing receives its nature or existence from another source. Thus his word, or creation ordinances give the world its order and structure. God’s creative word is the source of the laws of physical nature and it is also the source of the laws of human nature. This is why Psalm 119:91 says, “All things are your servants.”
Creation
In the early chapters of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, we read that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, in six 24-hour days, simply by speaking. God spoke and commanded the heavens and the earth to come into existence (PS. 33:9). Before this act of creation by God, nothing existed, not even time, save God himself. Now that is a deep thought! Imagine, if you can, absolute nothingness. Imagine, if you can, the concept of no time. You can’t do it can you. Our entire lives we have been surrounded my matter. Our entire lives consist of time. But, before there was time, God was, because he is God, and he chose to create the heavens and the earth. Now try this, command something to come into existence. You can’t do that either can you! So immediately in the bible we are confronted with this almighty, gigantically, enormously, colossally, powerful God who by the power of his voice, commands things that don’t exist, to exist. This act alone should result in our endless praise of God as it seems to for the Psalmist David, who in dwelling upon this thought exclaims, “Psalm 104:1 - Praise the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. Psalm 104:24 - How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Truly the heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands. One thing I enjoy doing at night time is to sit outside and just look up and try to count the stars. It doesn’t take long though before I lose count though and I start to get tired because of how seemingly endless it all is. God created all of those stars also, and you know what, it didn’t make him tired at all. What a display of power! Isaiah 40:26, 28 – “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great strength and mighty power, not one of them is missing. Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.”
Not only did God create everything; All that God created was perfect. We read in Genesis 1:31, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. This means that in the beginning, when God first created all of the heavens and the earth, there was no crime, no hate, no immorality, no sickness, disease, or famine, no sin, and no imperfection whatsoever. Everything was perfect. Everything was just as it was supposed to be. What a glorious thought! Why has he done all of this? He certainly did not have to did he. He was not obligated in any manner to do so. Why has God done such a gloriously wonderful thing? Scripture tells us the reason for that also, for his good pleasure. Revelation 4:11 – “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory, honor, and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”
It was on the last day, day six that God created man in his image. I want you to catch that phrase, “in his image.” Without getting into all the details, you need to know that is a beautiful, wondrous thought. It implies creativity and worth. With that one phrase, “in his image” we know that humanity is important in the mind of God. It means God did not just create all of us helter-skelter or randomly but that he gave significant thought and care to us so our lives have great significance. It means God did not just create us to do whatever, but to reflect him, to image him in all we do so that means our actions have significance. In short, because we are made in his image our lives and our actions matter! Never can we say, my life and what I do don’t matter. Never can we say my life and what I do is trivial! No, your life and what you do enormously significant because a great and powerful and awesome and loving God has created you in his image! You are not some insignificant trinket to be thrown away. No, you are made in God’s image!
Now, God did not just create man and forget about him, leaving him to grope and wander, but God gave man instructions. He blessed them, 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God also gave very clear instructions to our first parents, Adam and Eve, not to do one particular thing. We read, starting in Genesis 2:15 that, 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” We see from this that not only was all that God created good and perfect, there was a perfect relationship between God and man and God had specific instructions and guidelines for man to follow.
The big point to gather from this is God is the creator and we are the creatures. We are responsible to God. He made us, he has a plan for our lives, and we must obey him. We, as the creatures, are dependent upon him, the creator. Everything and everyone belong to him and must obey him. As the Apostle Paul said so brilliantly, Acts 17:24-28 - “24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Now perhaps you are saying to yourself, this all sounds great, so what happened that the world has become so dark and bad? Why is there so much imperfection in the world? What went wrong? What caused all of this?
Fall
To put it simply, we revolted against God’s dominion as Creator. Remember, earlier I read God’s instructions for Adam and Eve in the garden. He told them to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, and to have dominion. He also told them they were free to eat from any tree in the garden except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That one you cannot eat from God said, and if you do, you will surely die. How simple! How easy! What a life, living in a perfect land, with a perfect relationship with God, free to fill the earth and subdue it, to eat from any tree save one! Surely, the odds are with them! Surely, they will never want to eat from that tree! Why would they! What need have they too? Yet, Adam and Eve do eat from that tree. The tempter, Satan, in the form of a serpent, casts doubt into their minds, and Adam and Eve disbelieved God’s word that they would surely die, and disobeyed it by eating from the forbidden tree and thus sin entered the world.
Read Genesis 3:1-13
Wayne Grudem has wisely pointed out their eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is in many ways typical of sin generally. First, their sin struck at the basis for knowledge, for it gave a different answer to the question, “What is true?” Whereas God had said that Adam and Eve would die if they ate from the tree, the serpent said, you will not die. Eve decided to doubt the veracity of God’s word and conduct an experiment to see whether God spoke truthfully. Second, their sin struck at the basis for moral standards, for it gave a different answer to the question, “What is right?” God had said that it was morally right for Adam and Eve not to eat from the fruit of that one tree. But the serpent suggested that it would be right to eat of the fruit, and that in eating it Adam and Eve would become like God. Eve trusted her own evaluation of what was right and what would be good for her, rather than allowing God’s words to define right and wrong. Third, their sin gave a different answer to the question, “Who am I?” The correct answer was that Adam and Eve were creatures of God, dependent on him and always to be subordinate to him as their Creator and Lord. But Eve, and then Adam, succumbed to the temptation to be like God, thus attempting to put themselves in the place of God.
Finally, we should note that all sin is irrational. It did not make sense for Adam and Eve to think that there could be any gain in disobeying the words of their Creator. These were foolish choices. Though people sometimes persuade themselves that they have good reasons for sinning, when examined in the cold light of truth on the last day, it will be seen in every case that sin ultimately just does not make sense.
Adam and Eve foolishly chose to disobey God by trying to live life their way instead of God’s way, and now they and we must reap the consequences of such a revolt. Don’t be deceived; God is not mocked. You reap what you sow. Adam and Eve have sinned against a perfect and holy God and they must face the consequences of such actions...judgment. Because of their sin, pain, suffering, and death entered the world and we are today reaping the consequences of this terrible sin. Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”
Sin is not trivial. Sin is not something to laugh about and joke around about. Because sin entered the world through disobedience there is death, increase of pain and sorrow, and great loss! Sin has devastating consequences, the worst of which is spiritual death. God is holy and hates sin. God is a perfect judge and must perfectly and rightly punish sin. The punishment or wage of sin is spiritual death. Romans 6:23 says, “the wages of sin is death.” Ephesians 2:1 says you are dead in trespasses and sin without Christ. Perhaps you say I have never sinned so I am OK. You say, “I am a good person. I am OK with God.” You deceive yourself. 1 John 1:8 says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” And as we just read “all have sinned and death has come to us all!”
Do you see the tragedy! Do you feel the heartbreak? What a calamity! What a disaster! God created the heavens and the earth in perfection. God and humanity lived in perfect fellowship. We were created in his image to reflect his glory in the world. There was no suffering death or loss. Everything was perfect. But we chose to throw it all away! We ruined it by disobeying God’s clear directive! What great shame and now we are reaping the results of this foolish sin and each day its consequences are waxing worse and worse. Do you see the tragedy! It is not supposed to be this way. The heavens and the earth have been broken by sin and need to be fixed. We need to be saved from this sin!
As a result of this sin, we no longer enjoy a perfect relationship with God. We have been separated from him, indeed Scripture says we are at enmity with him and there is nothing we can do in our own strength wisdom and power to cross this great divide between us and God save this, repent of our sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our one and only savior! God is a holy God and he is offended at our sin and separated from us because of our sin.
It is not supposed to be this way. The disease of Sin has infected everything and we need to be cured. We cannot cure ourselves. We cannot help ourselves. There is nothing we can do in our own strength and wisdom and power to cross this great divide between us and God. We are in desperate need of a powerful Savior, and that Savior is Jesus Christ.
Redemption
So we have seen that the world was created in perfection and that we were created to be reflectors of God’s glory, but due to our revolt against God, sin has entered the world, corrupting all of humanity and the universe, separating us from fellowship with God. God, however, has not left us hopeless. God has not abandoned us in our sin. Rather, because God so loved the world, despite all of its badness, he sent his son to save us, to redeem us from slavery to sin, to cure us from the disease of sin.
Because of our sinfulness, we are cursed under God’s judgment and rightfully so. Sin has devastating consequences. But Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, lived a perfect life. He knew no sin. He was perfect. He lived a perfect life of obedience to God and thus did what we cannot do and became our perfect and final sacrifice for sins.
Read Romans 5:12-19
Jesus Christ bore the curse of our sin. He took the punishment we deserve for sin. He was our substitute and all those who put their faith in Christ, who confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved from your death in sin. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, “anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” Put your trust in the Lord and God will breathe new life in Christ in you. You will be redeemed from the pit of death. You will be transferred from the kingdom of darkness and put in the kingdom of God’s glorious son, King Jesus Christ. You will once again have full fellowship with God.
This is the crux of the Christian message. This is why faith alone in Christ alone is our cry! He bore our penalty, he bore our sin so that we might be free from slavery to sin! That we might be restored to fellowship with God! What a mighty, mighty savior we serve! You bore the wrath of God, you saved us! You bore our curse! How undeserving we are of such compassionate love, grace, and mercy! Death has been swallowed up in victory. Praise be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Put your faith in Christ alone. He is the only way, truth, and life. There is salvation in no other name. Confess your sins and trust in him and be reunited in full fellowship with God Almighty. You are made for this! Your life is too valuable to waste and throw away in the muck and mire and death of sin. Give your life to Jesus. Commit your life to Jesus. He will wash away your sins. He will cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
Jesus Christ did that for us which we could never do on our own. He lived a perfect life of obedience to God and thus was the perfect and final sacrifice for sins. God placed on him all the sins of those who will believe that we might be freed from bondage to sin.
When a cheap trinket is broken, we toss it aside with a shrug. But when a priceless masterpiece is defaced, we are horrified. It is because humans are the masterpiece of God’s creation that the destructiveness of sin produces such horror and sorrow. Far from expressing a low view of human nature, the Bible actually gives a far higher view than the dominant secular view today, which regards humans as simply complex computers made of meat – products of blind, naturalistic forces, without transcendent purpose or meaning.