Doug McMasters: To the book of Genesis and chapter one.
Doug McMasters: So we won't be traveling too far, but we'll start at that very first chapter.
Doug McMasters: Fyodor Dostoevsky said this.
Doug McMasters: He said, Man does wrong even when he knows the right.
Doug McMasters: And when he said that, he wasn't trying to be dramatic.
Doug McMasters: He was actually describing something he saw himself and he saw in every other person that he met.
Doug McMasters: That there's a contradiction inside the human heart.
Doug McMasters: Remarkably and tragically, we are capable of astonishing beauty and agonizing cruelty.
Doug McMasters: And sometimes even in the same hour.
Doug McMasters: I think all of us recognize that there's something within us that's bent, and there's something in us that's broken.
Doug McMasters: And we all just know it.
Doug McMasters: But it's more than just a moral contradiction, it's an ache in our heart.
Doug McMasters: There's something we feel, not just something we choose to do.
Doug McMasters: And everywhere that we look, we see people who are dealing with that ache, with that restlessness, with that longing to be something different than they actually are, are never able to be it.
Doug McMasters: Sometimes you see people trying to eradicate that ache through just diving into passions and pleasures.
Doug McMasters: Other people are filled with anxieties.
Doug McMasters: Some wrestle with a screaming emptiness and silence.
Doug McMasters: We're all restless.
Doug McMasters: We're all frustrated.
Doug McMasters: We're all wondering why things are the way they are.
Doug McMasters: And every one of us can say life just isn't as it should be.
Doug McMasters: Something's off here.
Doug McMasters: Something's missing.
Doug McMasters: But here's the thing.
Doug McMasters: Though every human heart says that, it's only when we really understand what was supposed to be that we can actually understand how broken we actually are.
Doug McMasters: It's only when we recognize the beauty of the design that God had for us that we can understand just how fractured that original image is.
Doug McMasters: And so before we get into the fractured image, which is the topic of this message in the Amalgo Day series, I want us to look at the design and to remember it before we dig into the distortion of it.
Doug McMasters: And before we face the fracture, I want us to see the beauty that God originally created.
Doug McMasters: And over the last several weeks, we've been looking at that.
Doug McMasters: We've sought to capture a vision of that beauty.
Doug McMasters: We've understood humanity, male and female, designed by God, stamped with his image, created for grand and glorious purposes, to reflect his person in this universe and everything that we do.
Doug McMasters: That we're marked with the dignity of that connection, and that we have been given a glorious purpose in our reflection of him, and that he's given us an amazing task to cultivate this world under his lordship and in reflection of his sovereignty.
Doug McMasters: We've seen that the image has shaped our capacities for reason, our capacities for righteousness, our capacities for rulership, and our capacities for relationship.
Doug McMasters: We've seen what we were meant to be.
Doug McMasters: And just for a moment, let's sort of reflect back on that and just read a passage that shows that to us again.
Doug McMasters: So here in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 26, God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
Doug McMasters: And they would rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.
Doug McMasters: And so God created man in his own image.
Doug McMasters: He created him in the image of God, he created them, male and female.
Doug McMasters: And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and every creature that crawls on the earth.
Doug McMasters: God also said, Look, I've given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed.
Doug McMasters: All this will be food for you.
Doug McMasters: For all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth, everything that having breath of the life in it, I've given every green plant for food.
Doug McMasters: And it was so.
Doug McMasters: And then we give this beautiful summary of all creation.
Doug McMasters: God saw that all that he had made, and it was very good indeed.
Doug McMasters: Evening came, then morning, the sixth day.
Doug McMasters: If the eight tells us that something is broken, Genesis 1 tells us what it was meant to be.
Doug McMasters: And before the fracture, there was only this beauty where God could look back on it in sort of retrospect, seeing everything as it's laid out in its order, and says, like he hadn't said with the other days, this is very good indeed.
Doug McMasters: What a beautiful, beautiful creation.
Doug McMasters: And us at the pinnacle of it all, in this unbroken connection with God, stamped with his image, living within his created realm, and enjoying an unclouded relationship with God, our Maker, filled with purpose and living with unhindered joy and fullness.
Doug McMasters: Humanity created with a unique connection to God that gives us dignity and was meant to set for us our eternal destiny.
Doug McMasters: You see, we weren't only made by God, we were made toward God and for God.
Doug McMasters: And that image that He's put upon us bonds us together with Him.
Doug McMasters: And it was meant to be visible.
Doug McMasters: The things that we've talked about here indicate that.
Doug McMasters: We were designed to reflect God corporately, male and female together, displaying his character, displaying his ways, and carrying out his purposes that he designed for us in this world.
Doug McMasters: And because we were bearing his image, we are to reflect him in every area of responsibility that we had.
Doug McMasters: And that image carries with it several different capacities.
Doug McMasters: And you've heard these words, the four R's that we've talked about.
Doug McMasters: Reason, thinking God's thoughts after him, righteousness, living in moral alignment with God's character, rulership, exercising wise and careful stewardship as God's representatives, relationship, loving God fully, loving as he loves, and giving as he gives.
Doug McMasters: Now, all those things are not random abilities, actually, they're the outworking of our image.
Doug McMasters: In fact, some people would look at them and say, either one of those or composite of those four things, or actually what it means to be in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: I would say that's not necessarily true, but they are intimately intertwined with the image because they are the first expressions of what it means to be made in God's image.
Doug McMasters: This is who we were.
Doug McMasters: This is what we were meant for.
Doug McMasters: This is the world as God designed it.
Doug McMasters: Ordered, fruitful, harmonious, and good.
Doug McMasters: Until.
Doug McMasters: Genesis chapter 3.
Doug McMasters: So let's just go a page or two over.
Doug McMasters: And there, in verse 1, we see the moment of fracture.
Doug McMasters: Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made.
Doug McMasters: He said to the woman, Did God really say, You can't eat from any tree in the garden?
Doug McMasters: And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the tree in the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.
Doug McMasters: No, you will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman.
Doug McMasters: In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
Doug McMasters: The woman saw that the tree was good, good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom.
Doug McMasters: So she took some of its fruit and ate it.
Doug McMasters: And she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Doug McMasters: Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
Doug McMasters: So they sewed fig leaves together and made covering for themselves.
Doug McMasters: If Genesis 1 shows us what the world was meant to be, Genesis chapter 3 shows us what the world is.
Doug McMasters: And the shift between the two is not gradual, is it?
Doug McMasters: It is sudden, immediate, catastrophic, and the mirror of God's image cracks.
Doug McMasters: Let's take a look at this passage.
Doug McMasters: The serpent enters into the garden, and he enters not with blazing force, and he doesn't enter with accusations, he enters with subtlety.
Doug McMasters: He enters in with a question.
Doug McMasters: And his question is a deceitful question.
Doug McMasters: It isn't a direct denial of God at first, but it comes with a distortion.
Doug McMasters: Did God really say?
Doug McMasters: And that question was framed in order to provoke and to implant suspicion into Eve and Adam's heart.
Doug McMasters: He was trying to make them think that maybe God is just a bit too restrictive.
Doug McMasters: Maybe his generosity is really too small.
Doug McMasters: Maybe his goodness needs to be questioned.
Doug McMasters: Perhaps he is withholding the best and the good from us.
Doug McMasters: But notice what he attacks.
Doug McMasters: He attacks God's word.
Doug McMasters: Because if you can distort God's word, you're going to distort his character.
Doug McMasters: And if you can distort God's character, you're going to distort the arc of human destiny and dignity.
Doug McMasters: And so he uses a strategy he's still using today to question the goodness and to question the rightness of God.
Doug McMasters: And Eve listens.
Doug McMasters: And so does Adam, who's standing there beside her silently.
Doug McMasters: And in the middle of that silence, something grows.
Doug McMasters: The desire to be like God.
Doug McMasters: Not in the way that they were created to be, but in the way that the serpent was alluding to and suggesting.
Doug McMasters: That they could be God by being self-sufficient, that they could be like God by being independent.
Doug McMasters: That they could be like God by being self-ruling.
Doug McMasters: That they could be like God by designating for themselves what is right and what is good.
Doug McMasters: That they could be the arbitrators of those things.
Doug McMasters: And so the lure of defining what is right and what is good draws them toward disobedience.
Doug McMasters: And they eat.
Doug McMasters: And in that moment, the image is fractured, the connection breaks.
Doug McMasters: Not because God has moved, but because we have.
Doug McMasters: Sin is not simply breaking a rule, and many of us think that way.
Doug McMasters: Sin is breaking a relationship because at its heart it's rebellion.
Doug McMasters: And here's the creature indicating that it wants to be independent of the Creator.
Doug McMasters: Here is the image bearer rejecting the one whose image it bears.
Doug McMasters: And so that fruit taken, the bite made, and the world has never been the same since.
Doug McMasters: But what was fracture?
Doug McMasters: That's the question we want to ask ourselves.
Doug McMasters: We've seen the beauty, we've witnessed the fracture, but what actually broke within us?
Doug McMasters: When Adam and Eve turned from God, the image of humanity did not disappear.
Doug McMasters: There are two key verses that tell us that the image of God still carries forward with relationship to humanity.
Doug McMasters: In Genesis chapter 9, after the flood, in which God is speaking about human government and the responsibilities that we have of keeping an ordered society, talks about those who would take advantage of the weak and the vulnerable, and says that they, if they kill humanity, must themselves forfeit their life.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: For God made humans in his own image.
Doug McMasters: There is something grand and glorious and distinct even in fallen humanity after the flood.
Doug McMasters: To kill a person is to deface the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And so a person forfeits the right to live on God's earth.
Doug McMasters: James says the same thing.
Doug McMasters: He reminds us that we can use our tongue to bless God and at the same time curse people.
Doug McMasters: And the contradiction of that he intensifies by saying this we curse people who are made in God's likeness.
Doug McMasters: How can we bless God and curse his image in humanity at the same time?
Doug McMasters: How can we be so contradictory?
Doug McMasters: Again, the image remains.
Doug McMasters: But while the image remains, what have we lost?
Doug McMasters: Well, the first thing that we've lost is a connection.
Doug McMasters: That bond of humanity to God, that seal of love and trust.
Doug McMasters: It's now marked by suspicion and intentional distancing.
Doug McMasters: The relationship that once brought us joy, as we'll see in a few minutes, now brings only fear.
Doug McMasters: The God who walked in the cool of the garden or in the garden in the cool of the day is the God we now run from and hide behind trees and leaves.
Doug McMasters: And where that connection is broken, that means our reflection of him is also distorted because we are not seeing him as we used to.
Doug McMasters: We're running from him, and our understanding of him is distorted, and therefore our reflection of him is likewise distorted by the sin that we've committed.
Doug McMasters: And so those things of reason and righteousness and rulership and relationship are all aspects of what has happened in the fractured image.
Doug McMasters: Let's take them each in turn, and we'll take a short look at them.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at chapter 3 and verse 7.
Doug McMasters: And we see, first of all, distorted reason, distorted reason.
Doug McMasters: Created with the capacity to reason to think God's thoughts after him.
Doug McMasters: Now in the fall, our thinking is clouded and our understanding is darkened.
Doug McMasters: And Genesis says in chapter 3 and verse 7, the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
Doug McMasters: The first thing that Adam and Eve understand is not enlightenment after the disobedience of eating, but confusion and shame.
Doug McMasters: Their eyes are opened, yes, but not the way the serpent promised.
Doug McMasters: Their eyes are opened to shame.
Doug McMasters: Their eyes are opened to fear.
Doug McMasters: Clarity and wisdom are not what they received.
Doug McMasters: Their perception is now clouded, and their understanding is now turned inward.
Doug McMasters: And what was once innocence now feels like shameful exposure.
Doug McMasters: Ephesians 4 in verse 17 says this that our thoughts have become futile because our understanding is darkened through the hardness of our hearts.
Doug McMasters: We still are reasoning people, but our reasoning has been affected by the fall.
Doug McMasters: Paul says in Romans 1 in verse 18 that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.
Doug McMasters: Truth is there, truth wants to grow and to flourish, and what do we do?
Doug McMasters: We try to get our hands over the top of it and shove it back down because we don't want to deal with the truth.
Doug McMasters: Our reasoning is corrupted.
Doug McMasters: Think about Pharaoh as an example.
Doug McMasters: There, Moses comes to him, makes an appeal to him that should be reasonable.
Doug McMasters: He refuses in his pride, and in order to break that pride, God brings plague after plague after plague after plague.
Doug McMasters: And as he watches those plagues come and go and come and go, Moses says that instead of it opening up his heart, it just made his heart harder.
Doug McMasters: Evidence didn't melt his heart.
Doug McMasters: Evidence actually calcified and exposed his heart.
Doug McMasters: Sometimes we think that the problem of humanity is a lack of information.
Doug McMasters: That is not true.
Doug McMasters: It's not a lack of information, it's a will that refuses the illumination that's there.
Doug McMasters: The Bible tells us in Psalm 19 that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.
Doug McMasters: Day after day they spread forth their speech.
Doug McMasters: There's not a language on earth in which their voice is not heard.
Doug McMasters: We're inexcusable.
Doug McMasters: Our reasoning doesn't need information.
Doug McMasters: Our reasoning needs to be restored to the way God made it.
Doug McMasters: We see the pattern in ourselves.
Doug McMasters: We know what is right and we choose not to do it.
Doug McMasters: We hear God's word and we walk away unchanged.
Doug McMasters: This is why we misjudge ourselves.
Doug McMasters: This is why we rationalize what is sinful.
Doug McMasters: This is why we can be surrounded by truth and still blind to it.
Doug McMasters: Because our reasoning is corrupted.
Doug McMasters: And this is why salvation is more than just information for us.
Doug McMasters: It is meant to give us a transformation of our inward parts so that we might have God given clarity once again.
Doug McMasters: Now, secondly, our distorted righteousness, not just distorted reason, but distorted righteousness.
Doug McMasters: Before the fall, righteousness was natural.
Doug McMasters: We are simply living in alignment.
Doug McMasters: With God's character.
Doug McMasters: God, in all of his fullness and all of his goodness, is there in handfuls.
Doug McMasters: Everything you want to eat, you can eat.
Doug McMasters: All of it is given for you.
Doug McMasters: Barring one thing.
Doug McMasters: But now righteousness feels foreign.
Doug McMasters: And shame enters our story.
Doug McMasters: Look at verse 7 again.
Doug McMasters: They sowed fig leaves and made coverings for themselves.
Doug McMasters: They hide from one another, they hide from God, and they're hiding from each other.
Doug McMasters: And God calls to Adam, and in verse 10, he says, I was afraid because I was naked.
Doug McMasters: So I hid.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah 64 and verse 6 said, All our righteousnesses are like polluted garments.
Doug McMasters: Our best efforts are stained with self-interest and self-protection.
Doug McMasters: In 1 Samuel chapter 15, we're told the story of Saul, and he is there disobeying God's commands, and yet blatantly says these words.
Doug McMasters: While the sheep are bleeding in the background, he can't see his sin because he's so busy trying to defend himself and to self-justify his actions.
Doug McMasters: And so we find our righteousness, moving from fellowship to fear, from honesty to hiding.
Doug McMasters: And we are now filled with self-protection, our self-fulfillment and pride.
Doug McMasters: The fracture means that we don't not that we don't ever do anything good.
Doug McMasters: It's just that everything that we do that might be good or beneficial is bent the wrong way.
Doug McMasters: We do good and we want the control.
Doug McMasters: We do good and we want to call ourselves righteous on our terms.
Doug McMasters: And this is why shame clings to us, because we can never get away from it.
Doug McMasters: We realize that it's just not enough as much as we try to tell ourselves it actually is.
Doug McMasters: And so we need a righteousness, not one that we can produce, but one like we see in the book of Genesis, a covering to cover those things that we can't when we sow our own leaves together.
Doug McMasters: And that leads us to the third element of what is fractured, that is our distorted rulership, our distorted rulership.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 17 of chapter 3.
Doug McMasters: Before the fall, our dominion was wise and careful.
Doug McMasters: We were stewards of God's creation.
Doug McMasters: We were reflecting God's person through our attentiveness, our protective and fruitful goodness in relationship to the created world.
Doug McMasters: But now God says to Adam, the ground is cursed because of you.
Doug McMasters: It will produce thorns and thistles for you.
Doug McMasters: And here in Genesis chapter 3, we see the ground itself groaning under our failed stewardship.
Doug McMasters: And Romans chapter 8 tells us that the creation was subjected to futility because of our rebellion.
Doug McMasters: Now work is still a calling, but now it is marked by frustration.
Doug McMasters: Our rulership is tainted.
Doug McMasters: The world that once responded to our humanity's touch now resists anything that we do.
Doug McMasters: Our rulership now is a struggle.
Doug McMasters: Our responsibilities become toil.
Doug McMasters: Our stewardship is really trying to eke out mere survival.
Doug McMasters: And if we do enter into stewardship, we often do in one or two ways, either through exploitation or abdication.
Doug McMasters: We either overdo our rulership or refuse to exercise our stewardship.
Doug McMasters: We grasp for control or we abandon responsibility.
Doug McMasters: Solomon begins his rule with wisdom and justice.
Doug McMasters: He's ruling as a shepherd king.
Doug McMasters: But as his heart drifts, so does his rule, and his stewardship becomes self-indulgence.
Doug McMasters: And the kingdom fractures under the weight of that excess when the rulers rule for themselves and the people suffer.
Doug McMasters: And we see the pattern in our own hearts.
Doug McMasters: Work becomes for us a place to prove ourselves rather than a place to serve others.
Doug McMasters: Our leadership becomes a means of control rather than an avenue of care.
Doug McMasters: Or we might, as some do, shrink back from responsibilities because it just seems too costly to step into it.
Doug McMasters: And this is why the things that we do feel frustrating.
Doug McMasters: This is why our efforts feel fruitless.
Doug McMasters: This is why we swing between over control or disengagement, because there's something broken and fractured within us.
Doug McMasters: Not just our righteousness, but our rulership is broken.
Doug McMasters: And this is why Christ's restoration means that we're not just forgiven people, but we need to be renewed people.
Doug McMasters: And that leads us to our last one, the distortion of our relationships.
Doug McMasters: Think about how we were made.
Doug McMasters: Made by God with His image on us, responding to Him, fellowshipping with Him in the evening, with the winds beginning to pick up, there with one another, without any shame, united with one heart, harmony with God, harmony with one another, harmony with all creation.
Doug McMasters: But the unity of Genesis 1 and 2 gives way to the blame of chapter 3.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 12.
Doug McMasters: God asks Adam what happened, and Adam replies, The woman you gave to me.
Doug McMasters: Maybe I put the emphasis this way the woman you gave to me.
Doug McMasters: She gave me some fruit, and I did eat.
Doug McMasters: And God says to Eve, your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
Doug McMasters: Now there's a lot of ways to look at what that means.
Doug McMasters: But one thing we can say for certainty is that a relationship that was meant to be one of unity and harmony and compatibility has now become one of tension and conflict and power struggle.
Doug McMasters: Our love is still tangled with self-interest.
Doug McMasters: And unity is now given away to blame and conflict.
Doug McMasters: And the people that we were meant to cherish now become people that we use, or we avoid, or we accuse.
Doug McMasters: Genesis 4.8, the fracture shows up immediately, brother against brother, murder on earth.
Doug McMasters: James chapter 4 asks us this question What is the source of wars and fightings among you?
Doug McMasters: Do they not come from the passions that wage war within you?
Doug McMasters: James is telling us that the problem is not out there, the war is in here.
Doug McMasters: It's a war that's spilling from within ourselves outward.
Doug McMasters: And this is why marriage strains and friendships fracture, and churches divide, and families are left wounded.
Doug McMasters: And so the gospel not only has to reconcile us to God, it's meant to reconcile us to one another.
Doug McMasters: It heals the war within us, so God can heal the wars between us.
Doug McMasters: And so, to sum all of this up, this moment of fracture has had a reverberation that lasts until our very day in all of these places.
Doug McMasters: The image remains, but every part of it is marred.
Doug McMasters: The capacities remain, but every one of them is bent the wrong way.
Doug McMasters: Our responsibilities remain, but they're carried out in a way that distorts God's good design.
Doug McMasters: This is the tragedy of the fall.
Doug McMasters: And this is why we live in this world and none of it seems to make sense.
Doug McMasters: Why our lives never seem to be utterly fulfilled, why the ache won't go away.
Doug McMasters: Let me just mention the consequences very briefly.
Doug McMasters: Genesis chapter 3 and verses 17 and 18, God speaks about this world and he says, the ground is cursed because of you.
Doug McMasters: It produces thorns and thistles for you.
Doug McMasters: Now, why is the earth subjected to these things?
Doug McMasters: Well, it was from the ground that Adam was made.
Doug McMasters: Out of the dust of the earth he was formed and shaped, and then placed into the garden to cultivate that very ground.
Doug McMasters: And so when he turned from God, this dirt corrupted the rest of the dirt.
Doug McMasters: And the world itself fell under this futility in which it still continues.
Doug McMasters: It's affected by that breach.
Doug McMasters: The soil that responded to humanity's care now resists our touch.
Doug McMasters: Paul talks about this in Romans 8.
Doug McMasters: He says, This, the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it.
Doug McMasters: But there's something that I want to share with us.
Doug McMasters: It says, We know in Romans 8, it says, we know the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.
Doug McMasters: And there's two things to draw out of that verse.
Doug McMasters: One is creation groans.
Doug McMasters: The world groans.
Doug McMasters: We groan.
Doug McMasters: We hear it in the brokenness of our systems, in the fragility of our bodies, in the instability of our world, in the ache of our hearts.
Doug McMasters: I watched this video some weeks ago of a grandfather with his uh, I think a grandson, I think it was his grandson.
Doug McMasters: And uh his grandson was walking around the house going, oh, oof, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Doug McMasters: And the grandfather's just looking at the grandson, going, Why is he going, oh, oof, and then he caught himself getting out of the chair and then moving across the kitchen.
Doug McMasters: Oof.
Doug McMasters: And the grandson was just mocking his grandfather or mimicking his grandfather by making the noises that his grandfather was making.
Doug McMasters: He the grandfather felt the ache of the bull the bones, but the grandson simply said what his grandfather was doing.
Doug McMasters: We feel that groaning.
Doug McMasters: But I want you to catch something that Paul says here that's easily overlooked.
Doug McMasters: Listen again to this verse.
Doug McMasters: The whole creation has been growing together with labor pains until now.
Doug McMasters: Isn't that an interesting phrase?
Doug McMasters: Labor pains.
Doug McMasters: Not death throes, labor pains.
Doug McMasters: Labor pains are real, and I've been told and I've seen that they're intense.
Doug McMasters: They're also unavoidable.
Doug McMasters: But what is it about a labor pain?
Doug McMasters: It's pointing to something.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: A labor pain is anticipating something.
Doug McMasters: A labor pain is a signal that something is coming.
Doug McMasters: And Paul picks that up and says that this creation is groaning and travailing in labor pains until now.
Doug McMasters: What is it saying?
Doug McMasters: The creation is longing for the better day, that creation is waiting for the day of restoration.
Doug McMasters: The creation is aching for the moment when the sons and daughters of God are brought into full glory.
Doug McMasters: And on that day they will groan no more.
Doug McMasters: Because what is coming will have been realized.
Doug McMasters: Why does the world groan?
Doug McMasters: It groans because it remembers Eden.
Doug McMasters: Why does the world groan?
Doug McMasters: Because it's longing for Eden's return, if I can put it that way.
Doug McMasters: And this is the thread of hope that I want to leave us with.
Doug McMasters: Look at Genesis 3 again.
Doug McMasters: In verse 8.
Doug McMasters: The man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.
Doug McMasters: What an astonishing comment this is.
Doug McMasters: Here is humanity fallen, rebellious, disobedient, hiding, humanity ashamed, humanity running away.
Doug McMasters: And God comes walking toward them, just like he did the day before.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't storm into the garden, he doesn't shout from a distance, he comes walking, seeking, pursuing, initiating, asking.
Doug McMasters: Verse nine, Adam, where are you?
Doug McMasters: God's not lacking the information of where Adam is at.
Doug McMasters: He's causing Adam to reflect upon himself and where he's at.
Doug McMasters: Adam, where are you?
Doug McMasters: He's drawing Adam out of hiding with this question.
Doug McMasters: He's inviting Adam toward confession.
Doug McMasters: He is eliciting from Adam honesty about what's happened.
Doug McMasters: He is in some ways saying, I still want to relate with you.
Doug McMasters: Adam answers sadly in verse 10, I was afraid and I hid myself.
Doug McMasters: Again, fear and shame and hiding have replaced fellowship and innocence and communion.
Doug McMasters: But even here, God doesn't abandon him.
Doug McMasters: Yes, he names the consequences, and yes, he speaks of judgment, but woven into these statements is a promise.
Doug McMasters: A promise that is so profound that theologians call it the Proto-Uangelian, the first gospel message.
Doug McMasters: God says to the serpent in verse 15, I will put hostility between you and the woman, between the offspring, your offspring and her offspring.
Doug McMasters: He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.
Doug McMasters: Right there, right in the middle of our ruin, right in the middle of our shame, right in the middle of our hiding, God promises a deliverer.
Doug McMasters: He promises that someone is going to be born of a woman, that someone's going to enter the human story, that someone's going to confront our enemy, someone who is going to be wounded himself, but ultimately will crush the head of the things that brought us this shame and this destruction.
Doug McMasters: Yes, the fracture is real.
Doug McMasters: Yes, the consequences are real, but God's commitment still is real.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't walk away from his image-bearers, and he doesn't abandon the world that he made.
Doug McMasters: And he doesn't leave the story in the hands of the serpent.
Doug McMasters: For the first time, hope enters into this world at the very same moment that sin does.
Doug McMasters: And that hope is what we're going to carry into next week.
Doug McMasters: Because we're going to look at next week the echoes of Eden.
Doug McMasters: But when we step back from Genesis 3, we see this world as we know it.
Doug McMasters: That's uncomfortably familiar to us all.
Doug McMasters: We see in Genesis 3 the things that we feel within our own hearts, hiding and fear, and blame and ache and self-justification.
Doug McMasters: These things are woven into the world that we inhabit and the lives that we live.
Doug McMasters: It's a fracture that's not just a theological category for us, it's a human experience.
Doug McMasters: It's our experience.
Doug McMasters: And yet, in the middle of that brokenness, Scripture refuses to let the story end in despair.
Doug McMasters: It's brief, but it leaves the story open for something different.
Doug McMasters: It tells us that God hasn't withdrawn, that He hasn't left us, that He is planting a seed of hope that we can look forward to.
Doug McMasters: And so we end this evening, not with an understanding of that resolution, but with a sense of quiet anticipation of it.
Doug McMasters: Because we still feel the pain and the ache of the fall.
Doug McMasters: We still know it's real, but we also know that our lives are not meaningless and empty.
Doug McMasters: We know that the longings rise up within us, but they're no accident.
Doug McMasters: That the groanings that we feel and the groanings that creation sounds are not the sounds of a world that's completely unraveled, but of a world and a humanity that's waiting still for something better.
Doug McMasters: And so this evening, I'd like for us all to appreciate better that there's a reason why we sense life to be different than we think it ought to be.
Doug McMasters: There's a reason why we feel a pull toward the good and the wholesome, even if we don't do it.
Doug McMasters: That there's a reason why the fractures in our relationships and the futility of our work trouble us.
Doug McMasters: Because those are all longings, not of weakness, but of memory.
Doug McMasters: Even though we've never been to Eden, we remember it and we feel it because we want it to come back so we can actually experience it.
Doug McMasters: The reminders to us that our story began in beauty, and we have a God who speaks promise that one day it'll be beautiful again.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we thank you that we have been given the lines of this story far better than Adam and Eve received it on that day.
Doug McMasters: We know it captured their hearts.
Doug McMasters: We know that they longed for.
Doug McMasters: It to be realized in third time.
Doug McMasters: For when that first child was born, Eve cried out, I've received a child, the Lord, thinking perhaps that that first one that was born would be that very deliverer that you spoke about.
Doug McMasters: And here we are, thousands of years later, knowing that in the fullness of time, made of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those that are under the curse of the law, Jesus Christ is come.
Doug McMasters: And we know that your word tells us that this one will crush the serpent's head under our feet shortly.
Doug McMasters: And so, Father, with a better understanding of the story as it unfolds, with still the ache of fulfillment still residing within us, we cry out, even so come, Lord Jesus.
Doug McMasters: Bring these days of woe to an end.
Doug McMasters: And may those labor pains that creation groans with produce the fullness of eternal life in the manifestation of the children of God.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.