WEBVTT 00:00:29.839 --> 00:00:31.280 I just took Micah's. 00:00:31.519 --> 00:00:32.399 Yeah, there we go. 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:33.840 Excellent. 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:38.960 Well, welcome back to our Amago Day series. 00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:46.159 Last week we looked at the fall and the fracturing of our mirror, of our ability to reflect God. 00:00:46.560 --> 00:00:49.200 Tonight is going to be similar to that. 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:52.960 We're going to look at the echoes of Eden. 00:00:53.359 --> 00:00:54.960 And let's let's pray together. 00:00:56.799 --> 00:01:06.480 Father, we do pray that you'd give our attention to your word that we might receive it well, understand more about ourselves, this world, and you. 00:01:07.280 --> 00:01:14.319 And Father, to be able to find our hope and our fulfillment in you, our living God. 00:01:14.879 --> 00:01:16.560 And we pray this in Christ's name. 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:17.760 Amen. 00:01:18.959 --> 00:01:23.760 You ever have a moment in your life where you've been pulled outside of yourself? 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:33.359 Uh, when you've been so filled with a sense of wonder and awe that you wish you could just live in that moment and never lose it again. 00:01:35.359 --> 00:01:43.599 I've experienced that several times, and one of them uh was a beautiful time driving with Royal uh through Vermont. 00:01:44.000 --> 00:02:15.759 We lived in Boston, and uh the church I was converted at was in Plattsburgh, and so we'd make our way up through the Green Mountains and driving through the Green Mountains of Vermont and into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and just seeing a guy who sort of landed in Illinois where uh an anthill is about the biggest thing that we had in southern Illinois, and to see the mountains and uh the the just the movement of all the various shades of of the different ranges as they layered upon each other as the sun was setting. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:20.080 He used to bring my heart to places of delight and song. 00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:27.120 Oh Lord my God, when I an awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made. 00:02:27.439 --> 00:02:31.280 And I would I wish I could have just captured that moment. 00:02:32.719 --> 00:02:37.680 Or maybe a piece of music that you've listened to and it's just lifted you out of yourself. 00:02:38.080 --> 00:02:46.800 Or perhaps a time at the end of a day in the quiet stillness of the evening where it just seems so calm and serene and peaceful. 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:51.120 You think I don't I don't want to I don't want to move from my chair here. 00:02:51.439 --> 00:02:55.199 I just want this to stay just like this. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:03.520 Well, whatever form that might take in your experiences, all of them point to something. 00:03:03.759 --> 00:03:14.080 They make us lean in, that there is something that draws us to beauty, that draws us to transcendence, that draws us to tranquility. 00:03:17.120 --> 00:03:17.280 C. 00:03:17.439 --> 00:03:17.599 S. 00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:20.719 Lewis talked about this in his book, The Weight of Glory. 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:24.479 He talks about the beauty, and he says something this. 00:03:24.560 --> 00:03:36.319 He said, the books that we read or the music in which we thought the beauty was located, they'll betray us if we turn to trust in them. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:46.879 It was not in the book or in the music itself, it came through the book and through the music. 00:03:47.759 --> 00:03:56.560 These things, the beauty of the memory of our past, are the good images of what we really desire. 00:03:56.719 --> 00:03:57.919 Did you hear what he just said? 00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:08.719 The memory, the beauty, the memory of our own past are the good images of what we really desire. 00:04:10.960 --> 00:04:26.399 But if they are mistaken for the thing itself, the book or the music or the mountains, in my case, we'll turn them into idols, breaking the hearts of us, the worshipper. 00:04:27.920 --> 00:04:29.759 For they're not the thing itself. 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:42.720 They're only the scent of a flower that we have not found, the echo of a tune we've not heard, news from a country we've never yet visited. 00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:50.800 Lewis wasn't trying to be poetic simply for poetry's sake. 00:04:51.120 --> 00:05:01.600 He was trying to explain something about the ache within us that is at the same time and in the same place familiar and foreign. 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:09.680 In those moments, we're longing for a world we've never yet lived in. 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:16.720 And it's not just simply desire, and I would say it's also memory. 00:05:17.439 --> 00:05:19.920 And that's what Lewis was saying. 00:05:20.639 --> 00:05:39.040 It's an echo, if you will, of Eden as it was, etched into the human heart, where all of us carry that visceral memory of what we were created for and what we actually lived in at one time. 00:05:40.399 --> 00:05:45.680 We were made for fellowship, for worship, for glory, for communion. 00:05:47.439 --> 00:05:51.199 And even if we can't name it, we feel it. 00:05:52.399 --> 00:06:13.360 Every ache in our culture, every fracture and longing for more in our relationships, every fullness we experience in the moments of music and beauty, every ache of futility in the work that we do, all of them express an echo of Eden. 00:06:14.959 --> 00:06:31.120 We sense in ourselves that life is just meant to be fuller, that our relationships are meant to be richer, that our work is meant to be more satisfying, and that our worship is meant to be more natural than it is. 00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:45.439 But instead of harmony, we find conflict, and instead of joy, we find ourselves in futility and frustration, and instead of clarity, we end up often confused. 00:06:46.879 --> 00:06:53.920 Even our greatest advancements, our cities, our technologies, our art, our progress, they all speak a promise. 00:06:55.600 --> 00:06:58.800 And then we need technology 2.0. 00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:06.160 They hint at what we were made for, and yet they fall short of what we long for. 00:07:07.040 --> 00:07:12.160 We find that somewhere we have cracked the mirror. 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:15.040 We have bent the violin. 00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:19.040 We have left the masterpiece unfinished. 00:07:20.079 --> 00:07:29.279 We think, we create, we build, but our reason is misdirected, our creativity is twisted, our communities are fractured. 00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:33.439 What remains are echoes of Eden. 00:07:34.079 --> 00:07:39.279 Longings for what was lost, groanings for what we hope may come. 00:07:42.639 --> 00:07:45.120 And so this is the remarkable thing. 00:07:45.519 --> 00:07:53.120 These echoes are not meaningless, and they're not simply groanings, they're not random. 00:07:54.079 --> 00:08:17.759 They're God's designation within us to put us into the place of having a driving force of yearning that will lead us not to be satisfied with the things as they are, but to reach for and to hope for and to long for something different and something better. 00:08:19.199 --> 00:08:25.600 The ache is meant to be a witness and it's meant to be an invitation to us. 00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:29.199 Don't be satisfied with life as it is. 00:08:30.079 --> 00:08:32.639 So tonight we're gonna listen for those echoes. 00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:45.679 We're gonna listen for the ways that creation and conscience and beauty and even our own longings point back to that world that God made and what we lived in and forward to the world that God is restoring. 00:08:46.799 --> 00:09:04.080 We're gonna listen for the ways that the ache itself becomes a signpost, sometimes quiet, but always persistent and very honest, telling us that our story actually did begin in beauty and that God who made us has not walked away. 00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:08.240 So let's listen to the story clearly. 00:09:08.480 --> 00:09:14.159 And in order to hear the echoes, we first of all have to land in the place where those echoes come from. 00:09:14.320 --> 00:09:16.639 We have to go back to Eden itself. 00:09:16.879 --> 00:09:21.039 And we've done this several times in our series and the Imago Day series. 00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:27.039 We've gone to these first couple chapters of the book of Genesis and we've traced those steps. 00:09:27.200 --> 00:09:30.000 But let's revisit it again just briefly. 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:35.279 And I I want, for time's sake, simply to highlight two of the many different things that we could bring out of this. 00:09:35.519 --> 00:09:38.960 Let's go back to Eden, chapter two of Genesis. 00:09:41.679 --> 00:09:49.440 Here in Genesis chapter two, we see that the pace of creation slows. 00:09:49.919 --> 00:09:53.919 Chapter one, God said and it was. 00:09:54.159 --> 00:09:55.679 God said and it was. 00:09:55.840 --> 00:09:57.200 God said and it was. 00:09:57.360 --> 00:10:06.639 Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six, Genesis two slows the pace down. 00:10:08.559 --> 00:10:10.320 And we're invited to linger. 00:10:11.919 --> 00:10:20.399 We're invited not only to just reflect on the fact of human creation, humanity's creation before God, but also to feel it. 00:10:21.600 --> 00:10:28.080 The Lord forms a man from the dust of the ground and breathes the very breath of life into him. 00:10:28.639 --> 00:10:30.159 And what does he do with him? 00:10:30.879 --> 00:10:33.360 He puts him in a garden. 00:10:34.960 --> 00:10:42.000 Not a wasteland, not a wilderness, but a place of order and beauty and abundance. 00:10:42.720 --> 00:10:52.159 And God says to him that he has caused every tree to grow that was pleasing in appearance and good for food. 00:10:52.399 --> 00:10:59.279 And there in the garden, beauty and utility were matched together in perfect harmony. 00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:05.039 It was a place where nothing was in competition. 00:11:06.639 --> 00:11:14.159 And God places the man in that garden, as it tells us in this chapter, to work it and to watch over it. 00:11:14.399 --> 00:11:18.399 And there, in those moments, work was not a burden but a joy. 00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:26.080 It was an expression of rulership rightly expressed, wise, attentive, and fruitful stewardship. 00:11:27.360 --> 00:11:34.399 The world responded to humanity's touch because humanity's touch reflected the Father's care. 00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:41.519 Within this garden, however, we're told that there's something missing. 00:11:42.159 --> 00:11:49.440 Even at these days of goodness, God declares that it's not good for man to be alone. 00:11:50.879 --> 00:11:53.600 Now that sentence ought to stop us cold. 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:55.600 How not good? 00:11:55.840 --> 00:11:56.559 Wait a second. 00:11:57.279 --> 00:12:02.240 There's no sin, there's no fall, there's no degradation, there's no death. 00:12:03.519 --> 00:12:04.320 Not good? 00:12:05.039 --> 00:12:06.320 What's not good? 00:12:06.960 --> 00:12:14.480 Well, in chapter one, God says, it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good. 00:12:15.679 --> 00:12:17.279 Man being by himself? 00:12:19.440 --> 00:12:20.159 Not good. 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:34.159 Not because the man was deficient in anything, but that the image of God was designed to be reflected in community of male and female. 00:12:34.879 --> 00:12:44.399 Together displaying God's character, together displaying his ways, together reflecting and fulfilling his purposes. 00:12:46.399 --> 00:12:54.559 You see, before the fall, companionship wasn't a remedy for loneliness as it is often yearned for in our day. 00:12:55.279 --> 00:12:57.200 It was the completion of design. 00:12:59.679 --> 00:13:06.399 Adam wasn't pining here, he wasn't wandering the garden feeling incomplete. 00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:12.799 If I could only find a spouse, he was fulfilling his calling. 00:13:13.440 --> 00:13:18.000 He was naming the animals, he was working the soil, he was walking with God. 00:13:19.279 --> 00:13:25.600 But in all of that goodness, something was unfinished. 00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:37.279 And so the man alone could not reflect the relational nature of the God who made him. 00:13:38.559 --> 00:13:45.679 And so man could not image God as a solo portrait in the garden. 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:48.960 It needed to be a shared likeness. 00:13:49.919 --> 00:13:56.879 And so God forms the woman, not from the dust, but from Adam's own side. 00:13:57.679 --> 00:14:05.039 And doesn't just gather her from the dirt or simply put her together in the same way that he put Adam together. 00:14:05.120 --> 00:14:12.399 It says that he shaped her with the word that in the Hebrew would speak of artistry and artisanship. 00:14:13.200 --> 00:14:16.240 The language is intimate and intentional. 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:33.600 Eve is not taken from Adam's head to rule over him, nor taken from his feet to be trampled on by him, but taken from his side, close to his heart, equal in dignity, and sharing the same breath of life. 00:14:34.960 --> 00:14:41.039 And when Adam sees her, he speaks poetry into the world for the very first time. 00:14:42.559 --> 00:14:51.279 He looks at her and says, Wow, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. 00:14:51.679 --> 00:14:55.200 She shall be called woman because she was taken from man. 00:14:57.679 --> 00:15:05.039 The world that was already beautiful had in Adam's eyes just become even more beautiful. 00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:17.759 The harmony of creation is now richer, fuller, and complete now that there's male and female in the image of God. 00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:26.799 This is the first human community, the first covenant bond, the first picture of unity and diversity. 00:15:28.399 --> 00:15:34.879 It's the image of God refracted through two lives intertwined together in perfect communion. 00:15:36.320 --> 00:15:44.879 Together, they would think and discern and cultivate and protect and expand and multiply and worship. 00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:57.600 Together, they would embody the relational fullness of the God who existed eternity, Father, Son, and Spirit, in eternal love and harmony. 00:16:01.360 --> 00:16:03.759 Now notice what Genesis says about that. 00:16:04.480 --> 00:16:08.879 The man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed. 00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:16.320 This is not a statement about clothing or the lack of clothing necessarily. 00:16:17.120 --> 00:16:24.000 It's a statement about the absence of fear, about the absence of hiding, of the absence of self-protection. 00:16:24.639 --> 00:16:36.320 It is the world as it was meant to be, where you could be fully known and fully safe, where you could be fully seen and still fully loved. 00:16:37.840 --> 00:16:40.240 This was companionship before the fall. 00:16:41.679 --> 00:17:02.960 Mutual delight without any distortion, shared purpose without any competition, vulnerability without fear or shame, unity without any eraser of the person's identity, a difference without division. 00:17:05.440 --> 00:17:07.599 This is the world we remember. 00:17:08.799 --> 00:17:13.920 This is the relationship our souls ache to have. 00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:28.000 This is the echo that reverberates through all of our longings for intimacy and every desire for friendship and every grief over a fractured relationship. 00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:32.480 We're not imagining something that's never existed. 00:17:33.039 --> 00:17:36.000 We're remembering something we were made for. 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:41.599 And that's why the echoes in the world today strike us so deeply. 00:17:43.039 --> 00:17:52.079 We know, and we know instinctively, we know intuitively, we know deeply that this life is not how it was meant to be. 00:17:53.119 --> 00:17:54.240 We understand it. 00:17:55.200 --> 00:18:06.000 And our souls are reaching back to that world that God made, and we're longing forward for it one day to come back. 00:18:07.920 --> 00:18:10.079 The world as it was. 00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:16.160 But let's talk about these echoes because we need to speak about the world as it is. 00:18:17.039 --> 00:18:21.359 And now we go from Genesis chapter 2 to Genesis chapter 4. 00:18:23.200 --> 00:18:30.240 We turn just a just a page or two in our Bible, and the contrast is jarring. 00:18:31.519 --> 00:18:35.200 The harmony of Eden still ringing in our ears. 00:18:35.759 --> 00:18:41.279 And the first sound we hear outside the garden is dissonance. 00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:49.519 The first family after Eden becomes the first reminder that the world has changed, and boy has it. 00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:52.960 But Genesis 4 opens up with hope, doesn't it? 00:18:53.680 --> 00:18:55.599 Eve gives birth to a son. 00:18:55.920 --> 00:18:58.720 I've had a male child with the Lord's help. 00:19:00.559 --> 00:19:01.440 What is that? 00:19:02.240 --> 00:19:03.039 Gratitude? 00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:04.400 Yes? 00:19:05.519 --> 00:19:06.799 Even more, I think. 00:19:07.119 --> 00:19:08.000 Expectation. 00:19:09.039 --> 00:19:17.119 There's this faint hope that perhaps the promise of Genesis 3.15 is going to unfold quickly. 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:22.559 But the story doesn't move to restoration. 00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:25.200 It moves to rivalry. 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:32.960 Cain and Abel, children of Adam and Eve, grow and bring their offerings to the Lord. 00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:36.000 Abel's is accepted, and Cain's is not. 00:19:36.799 --> 00:19:44.079 Scripture doesn't tell us everything we'd like to know about that situation, but it tells us everything we need to know about it. 00:19:45.279 --> 00:19:50.079 Abel's offering reflects a heart aligned with God. 00:19:50.319 --> 00:19:51.759 Cain's doesn't. 00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:54.480 His heart is not aligned with God. 00:19:55.279 --> 00:20:00.480 And instead of repentance, Cain turns inward. 00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:06.880 Instead of humility, he turns toward envy, and instead of worship, he becomes violent. 00:20:07.279 --> 00:20:16.960 And the Lord warns him sin is crouching at your door, and you must rule over it. 00:20:17.359 --> 00:20:25.920 And there is a moment of mercy, a moment to invite him away from himself, a moment to remember Eden. 00:20:27.759 --> 00:20:28.720 But he doesn't. 00:20:30.319 --> 00:20:32.720 He rises up and kills his brother. 00:20:35.119 --> 00:20:38.240 And here we see the first echo of Eden. 00:20:39.839 --> 00:20:41.359 The relational breakdown. 00:20:43.920 --> 00:20:52.079 In Eden, relationships marked by unity and joy and mutual delight, and outside of it, suspicion, rivalry, and competition, and bloodshed. 00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:55.839 Brotherhood giving away to violence. 00:20:56.960 --> 00:21:02.720 Worship becoming the very spot in which alienation grows. 00:21:05.759 --> 00:21:10.400 Cain's envy isn't just a personal failure, and it's not just a family problem either. 00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:14.960 It's symptomatic of a deeper fracture within all of us. 00:21:15.839 --> 00:21:18.880 Because there's still that longing for fellowship there. 00:21:19.920 --> 00:21:25.519 But the capacity to be able to live in that fellowship is broken. 00:21:28.079 --> 00:21:33.920 We long for a connection, but we only find ourselves constantly going back to conflict. 00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:40.079 We reach for harmony, find ourselves face to face with hostility. 00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:43.839 We desire unity, but we end up creating division. 00:21:46.079 --> 00:21:55.440 We feel it in our relationships strained marriages, fractured families, broken friendships, communities marked by mistrust, nation against nation. 00:21:58.000 --> 00:21:59.759 Our souls remember a world. 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:01.839 When it wasn't like that. 00:22:02.319 --> 00:22:04.559 When it was actually joyful to be together. 00:22:06.160 --> 00:22:07.279 This is our story. 00:22:10.079 --> 00:22:12.720 There's another echo of Eden. 00:22:13.440 --> 00:22:17.599 In Genesis 4 to 11, and I just want to give you the span of those things. 00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:20.160 You can look a little more deeply into chapter 4. 00:22:21.359 --> 00:22:25.039 But humanity multiplies, the ache multiplies with it. 00:22:25.680 --> 00:22:29.599 The fracture that begins with one family doesn't remain a private sorrow. 00:22:30.799 --> 00:22:32.160 It becomes a public reality. 00:22:33.759 --> 00:22:39.119 And what we see next in Scripture is very surprising, but also deeply revealing here. 00:22:39.359 --> 00:22:42.240 The world outside of Eden is not fallen. 00:22:42.480 --> 00:22:44.640 It doesn't stall there, though. 00:22:44.799 --> 00:22:48.480 It grows, it organizes, it creates. 00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:57.359 And as we go through Genesis 4 to 11, we see a world in motion, a world developing in culture and capability. 00:22:57.759 --> 00:23:05.279 In chapter 4 in verse 20, we have Jebel becoming the father of those who dwell in tents and rave livestock. 00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:10.480 In verse 21, Jubal becomes the father of all those who play the lyre and the pipe. 00:23:11.440 --> 00:23:15.519 In verse 22, Tubalcane forges tools. 00:23:16.480 --> 00:23:22.000 Cities are founded, and music is composed and technology is developing. 00:23:22.319 --> 00:23:25.119 Human culture is taking shape. 00:23:26.319 --> 00:23:30.720 And all of it reflecting in some way what God put into us. 00:23:31.359 --> 00:23:39.839 This ability to tend this garden, to steward it, to develop it, to expand it. 00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:42.640 But we're not expanding Eden. 00:23:43.359 --> 00:23:46.160 We're expanding a self-centered culture. 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:50.880 We continue to think and design and to build. 00:23:51.119 --> 00:23:59.039 We continue to form communities and to develop systems, but our capacity to reflect God in all of those things is gone. 00:24:01.599 --> 00:24:05.680 Our cities are built, they become places of pride. 00:24:06.319 --> 00:24:09.920 Music is composed, but we elevate ourselves in it. 00:24:10.480 --> 00:24:16.079 Tools are forged, but they become instruments of harm instead of harvest. 00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:20.960 Human progress continues, but it doesn't bring us renewal. 00:24:22.160 --> 00:24:27.599 Our world continues to grow more and more sophisticated, but no more righteous. 00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:42.559 Every achievement hints at our ingenuity and the capacities that God created us for. 00:24:43.039 --> 00:24:45.039 And yet we misuse them. 00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:47.279 And we end up lost in them. 00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:51.920 And in this, we recognize the tension in our world. 00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:56.240 We live in an age of extraordinary progress. 00:24:56.799 --> 00:25:01.279 Scientific, technological, medical, artistic advance. 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:06.319 We can accomplish more, it seems, than any generation before us. 00:25:06.720 --> 00:25:09.359 Yet none of us can make anything good. 00:25:10.799 --> 00:25:13.599 None of us can heal the human heart. 00:25:14.559 --> 00:25:17.519 None of it can restore what sin is fractured. 00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:21.519 And Genesis 11 brings us to the arc of this. 00:25:21.920 --> 00:25:29.119 Humanity gathered on the plain of Shinar, resolving to establish a name for themselves. 00:25:30.079 --> 00:25:34.880 A deliberate attempt to reclaim the glory of humanity without God. 00:25:37.200 --> 00:25:41.680 And the result is not unity or greatness, it's confusion and dispersion. 00:25:43.279 --> 00:25:53.839 Babel then becomes the anti-Eden, in which we are left fractured and left separated instead of whole and together. 00:25:55.759 --> 00:26:12.400 And yet Pastor John, could you switch to the pulpit if possible? 00:26:12.880 --> 00:26:13.200 Thanks. 00:26:13.759 --> 00:26:14.480 The pulpit? 00:26:15.279 --> 00:26:16.559 Yes, please, thanks. 00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:23.039 How's that? 00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:23.839 Can you hear me? 00:26:24.960 --> 00:26:25.279 Okay. 00:26:29.839 --> 00:26:32.319 What did I say about technological advance? 00:26:36.160 --> 00:26:39.680 All these things are reminders of what we were meant to be. 00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:48.720 They're echoes of a world in which we flourished and we could fill it with things that would bring honor and glory to God. 00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:54.640 In it, it shows an echo of Eden. 00:26:55.279 --> 00:26:59.119 Because we really do want our creativity to be pure. 00:26:59.839 --> 00:27:02.400 We want our communities to be whole. 00:27:02.720 --> 00:27:06.319 We want our progress to reflect righteousness and not rebellion. 00:27:07.039 --> 00:27:16.079 These are the words of every politician who stands up with a fresh face and says these things and will make it better until he has to be elected the next time. 00:27:16.240 --> 00:27:18.480 It becomes the same old story. 00:27:18.799 --> 00:27:24.000 Just like the Who song here comes the new boss, same as the old boss. 00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:26.240 Won't get fooled again. 00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:27.519 But we do. 00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:29.279 We get fooled again. 00:27:31.759 --> 00:27:37.119 History is filled with all of these attempts to try to find paradise without God. 00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:41.039 And that brings us to our third echo. 00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:49.359 And I know this is a difficult message for us to hear, but it's it's very real and visceral for us because it is our human experience. 00:27:50.799 --> 00:27:56.880 We go to the book of Ecclesiastes in chapter 1, in verses 2 to 11. 00:27:57.680 --> 00:28:09.920 As scriptures moved us through the early chapters of Genesis into the wisdom literature, the scope of our ache widens, and there we see life's futility and our longing for meaning. 00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:35.839 The book of Ecclesiastes opens with the preacher speaking, who speaks from a vantage point of someone who is wealthy enough to do everything that he desired, who's lived long enough to see everything, and who has been able in his position to accomplish everything that he's desired. 00:28:36.559 --> 00:28:50.000 And then, through all of that effort and through all of that exploration, to recognize that a world outside Eden carries a deep weariness about it. 00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:56.960 But it's not a weariness of physical exhaustion, it is a tiredness of the soul. 00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:05.359 The preacher in Ecclesiastes knows that life was meant to be more coherent, more satisfying, and more whole. 00:29:06.480 --> 00:29:11.119 He looks in chapter one at the cycles of life. 00:29:11.839 --> 00:29:15.200 He says, generations come, generations go. 00:29:15.440 --> 00:29:25.200 The sun rises, the sun sets, the wind circles back on itself, the streams run to the sea, only to return again. 00:29:26.960 --> 00:29:35.839 Human effort, it fills the day, but the sense of lasting gain is outside the reach of the finger. 00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:41.200 The work is done, but we're not complete. 00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:46.240 Pleasure is pursued, but we're not satisfied. 00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:52.400 Wisdom is sought, but our questions still ache in our mind. 00:29:54.000 --> 00:30:00.160 The world keeps moving and it doesn't stop at fulfillment. 00:30:03.279 --> 00:30:04.480 What is he doing? 00:30:04.720 --> 00:30:06.640 Is he just simply being cynical? 00:30:07.039 --> 00:30:08.960 No, he's being honest. 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.720 He's being honest because this world is not what it was meant to be. 00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:24.480 Ecclesiastes gives voice to the ache that rises when we sense the gap between our experience and our design. 00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:37.920 Made for meaningful work, made for purposeful days, made for joy that endures, made for a world where time was a gift and not a burden. 00:30:41.920 --> 00:30:47.839 But Ecclesiastes has within it a comment we'll look at in just a moment, in chapter 3 and verse 11. 00:30:48.240 --> 00:30:52.720 That God has set eternity in a human heart. 00:30:53.599 --> 00:31:01.519 And that single statement explains so much of what the preacher felt as he looked at and experienced the world around him. 00:31:03.039 --> 00:31:10.559 This eternity set in his heart was a feature because it's an imprint of Eden on his heart. 00:31:12.799 --> 00:31:19.680 A longing for permanence, a longing for purpose, a longing for joy. 00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:34.079 And Ecclesiastes is wrestling with this tension between the longing for what is good and lasting and the frustration of not being able to find it and to secure it. 00:31:35.839 --> 00:31:37.359 Don't you feel that? 00:31:37.759 --> 00:31:39.039 I know I do. 00:31:40.720 --> 00:31:54.640 To pursue things that matter and to find your accomplishments fade or don't fulfill, to seek experiences and pleasure or enjoyment to thrill you, but it doesn't last. 00:31:55.680 --> 00:32:01.680 To invest in relationships and find they're still fragile and easily broken? 00:32:03.359 --> 00:32:10.240 To make a sense of your days and find that time moves you past those moments too quickly. 00:32:12.400 --> 00:32:14.960 These aren't just disappointments. 00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:16.799 They're longings. 00:32:17.359 --> 00:32:18.640 They're longings. 00:32:19.440 --> 00:32:22.240 Because we were made for something better. 00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:25.200 Eternity was set into our hearts. 00:32:27.039 --> 00:32:33.279 This leads us to another echo of Eden back in Genesis in chapter six. 00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:37.599 Because the world is not only confusing, it's also corrupt. 00:32:38.640 --> 00:32:44.319 And in chapter six, we're given a sober picture of what the human heart is like outside of Eden. 00:32:45.039 --> 00:32:58.000 The text tells us here that the Lord saw the wickedness of humanity and that every inclination of the thoughts of the hearts were only evil continually. 00:32:59.440 --> 00:33:01.920 Wow, is that a comprehensive statement? 00:33:02.799 --> 00:33:05.839 Listen to how piercing it is. 00:33:07.920 --> 00:33:16.720 The wickedness of humanity, every inclination of the thoughts of the heart were only evil continually. 00:33:17.599 --> 00:33:33.039 Down to the very, very deepest mark of who we are is this comprehensive description that all of our capacities that were once reflecting God's goodness are still present, but the direction has changed. 00:33:33.599 --> 00:33:38.160 Our hearts that were made to love God are now turned to love of self. 00:33:38.480 --> 00:33:45.200 The mind that was meant to make a discernment of truth and to welcome it now drifts to deception. 00:33:45.440 --> 00:33:51.119 The will that was there to choose the good now gravitates to the wrong. 00:33:53.039 --> 00:33:58.079 And the passage goes on to say that this grieved the Lord deeply. 00:33:59.839 --> 00:34:12.480 The weight of grief of a creator who knows what we were meant to be, of a father who sees children harming himself, themselves, and one another. 00:34:13.679 --> 00:34:17.840 Genesis 6 is not just meant to show us the fracture, though. 00:34:19.920 --> 00:34:25.760 It's meant to mark for us why we don't feel right. 00:34:28.559 --> 00:34:41.679 Because here we're told that we can desire and not produce, we can hunger and not be satisfied, we can long and not find fulfillment. 00:34:43.599 --> 00:34:52.559 And this is not only in expressions of work and relationship and meaning, it's also in righteousness. 00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:58.800 And so we can admire integrity and yet not practice it. 00:34:59.760 --> 00:35:09.360 We can celebrate acts of courage or compassion because they resonate deep within us, but then we end up hurting our loved ones. 00:35:10.320 --> 00:35:16.159 We grieve injustices because we know they violate the way things were meant to be. 00:35:16.719 --> 00:35:19.840 We want to be patient, but we become impatient. 00:35:20.079 --> 00:35:23.920 We want to be generous, but self-interest pulls us inward. 00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:31.440 We want to be truthful, but fear complicates our words, and we shadow our lie, our deceive. 00:35:31.920 --> 00:35:36.239 We want to be faithful, but distractions crowd out our fidelity. 00:35:37.679 --> 00:35:42.639 We feel the moral tension between what we were made for and what we are. 00:35:43.599 --> 00:35:50.320 We long for a world in which righteousness is natural and where goodness is home. 00:35:51.679 --> 00:35:54.639 It's the imprint of Eden on our soul. 00:35:57.440 --> 00:36:00.480 And that leads us to the fifth echo. 00:36:01.119 --> 00:36:13.440 Not just an echo of relationships that are broken, and all the other ones that I've mentioned, but this one, the cosmic groaning and the hope of renewal that Romans chapter 8 talks about. 00:36:13.599 --> 00:36:15.760 We mentioned this a little bit last week. 00:36:16.239 --> 00:36:22.400 This this yearning reaches beyond the human heart, into the whole creation itself. 00:36:22.719 --> 00:36:35.280 And when we reach Romans chapter 8, the ache is expanded into not only culture beyond the individuals, but it has become existential in the very creation itself. 00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:41.840 The fracture that began in Eden extends to the world. 00:36:42.079 --> 00:36:49.119 The ground that once yielded fruit is now resisting, creating thorns and briars. 00:36:49.360 --> 00:36:55.920 The harmony that once marked our relationship to creation is now straining under disorder. 00:36:56.639 --> 00:37:03.360 The beauty that remains is real, but nature is still red in tooth and claw. 00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:07.119 And Paul describes creation there as groaning. 00:37:08.960 --> 00:37:10.960 It's a striking image, isn't it? 00:37:11.920 --> 00:37:15.920 It's a way of saying that the world knows that this isn't what it should be. 00:37:17.360 --> 00:37:22.400 The very earth is saying, we want to be back to what we were supposed to be. 00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:30.480 Longs for a day when the children of God will be revealed, when our renewal and its renewal will come. 00:37:31.519 --> 00:37:42.000 When the frustration that the natural world has been subjected to, decay and instability and fragility will not be the final word, but wholeness and restoration will be. 00:37:44.320 --> 00:37:51.920 And that yearning of creation is meant to resonate in our hearts so that we stay looking forward. 00:37:54.239 --> 00:38:03.519 This language of groaning is not meant to discourage us, but to clarify for us that we need to be looking further yet. 00:38:05.119 --> 00:38:16.159 And so Paul speaks about hope and anticipation of the creation, longing for a day of liberation, the renewal of God's promises, becoming the realities of eternity. 00:38:16.639 --> 00:38:34.239 This hope that's not vague or sentimental, but rooted in the very resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the beginning of the new creation, imprinting within us a longing for that day to come, and in Christ, and I'm getting ahead of myself, a security that it will happen. 00:38:36.159 --> 00:38:40.719 And this leads us to our final echo, the most significant one, actually. 00:38:42.880 --> 00:38:45.840 Humanity's reaching for God. 00:38:46.880 --> 00:38:52.320 And we see this very clearly when Paul stands in Athens in the book of Acts in chapter 17. 00:38:52.559 --> 00:39:02.400 And he's speaking to all the philosophers on the Areopagus, and he's describing something to them that's been true of every generation since we left Edom. 00:39:03.039 --> 00:39:05.119 That humanity's been reaching. 00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:13.599 We've been reaching for meaning, for goodness, for beauty, for justice, for permanence, no, for God Himself. 00:39:16.960 --> 00:39:26.480 In Acts chapter 17, verse 26 and 27, he said that God has made every nation and determined their times and boundaries. 00:39:26.719 --> 00:39:34.079 Listen, so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him. 00:39:37.039 --> 00:39:43.119 This is not a statement about a few spiritually minded people, it's a statement about the human condition. 00:39:44.400 --> 00:39:50.639 This reaching is not merely intellectual curiosity or religious instinct. 00:39:50.880 --> 00:39:57.119 It's the expression of a longing that's been woven into the human heart. 00:39:59.519 --> 00:40:03.840 When we don't understand his ways, we still feel his pull. 00:40:06.159 --> 00:40:10.880 When we don't know God's name, we still feel his absence. 00:40:12.400 --> 00:40:19.199 And when our worship is misdirected, the impulse of worship is still intact. 00:40:21.199 --> 00:40:27.280 As Augustine said, My heart was made for you. 00:40:27.599 --> 00:40:32.079 My heart is restless until it finds its rest in you. 00:40:33.679 --> 00:40:39.440 And Paul here is acknowledging to the Athenians that they were religious in every way. 00:40:39.679 --> 00:40:45.519 And he wasn't commending their idolatry, but recognizing the longing that was beneath it. 00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:58.239 Their altars and their philosophies were attempts to make sense of this world that feels at the same time beautiful and broken, familiar and foreign. 00:41:00.239 --> 00:41:06.960 And this longing for God is not something we acquire, it's something we have. 00:41:09.039 --> 00:41:16.400 We know that we were made for fellowship with God, that we feel his absence. 00:41:17.360 --> 00:41:29.039 And we try to paper it over with achievements or relationships or pleasure or pursuits of various kinds, but they don't satisfy that deeper desire. 00:41:30.239 --> 00:41:36.079 They quiet us for a moment, perhaps, but they don't resolve the problem. 00:41:37.440 --> 00:41:46.639 The longing is there because it's not a longing for something, it's a longing for someone, for God. 00:41:47.519 --> 00:41:51.039 And all the echoes gather here. 00:41:52.400 --> 00:42:07.039 The ache in our relationships, the frustration in our culture, the weariness of our work, the tension of our moral lives, the groaning of creation itself, they all point in this one direction that we were made for God. 00:42:07.519 --> 00:42:15.599 And we're only going to find our fulfillment when we are back into the relationship that God designed for us to have with Him. 00:42:17.519 --> 00:42:21.440 Nothing else can satisfy the longing heart. 00:42:22.480 --> 00:42:31.360 Paul says here, in him we live and move and have our very being. 00:42:39.920 --> 00:42:47.519 That our existence is tied to him, our purpose is tied to him, and our hope is tied to God. 00:42:49.360 --> 00:42:54.880 And so he shows us in Acts 17 that this longing is universal. 00:42:55.519 --> 00:43:08.159 It cuts across cultures and languages and generations, it's present in all the questions that people ask, and all the fears people carry, and all the hopes people nurture, and all the disappointments people endure. 00:43:09.119 --> 00:43:12.000 It's present in those moments of quiet reflection. 00:43:12.639 --> 00:43:16.880 It's present in the restless searching that marks our life. 00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:25.039 And I want to finish with this because in the weeks to come, we're going to answer this one and last week's. 00:43:26.079 --> 00:43:28.400 Is that these echoes matter? 00:43:29.119 --> 00:43:40.960 Yes, they're uncomfortable, and yes, they're difficult, and yes, they color every one of our days, but they're purposeful. 00:43:42.480 --> 00:43:48.639 Because we were not meant to be satisfied here as it is. 00:43:50.239 --> 00:43:56.800 We're not meant to be just left in what is just happening in the moment. 00:43:58.639 --> 00:43:59.440 They're meant to. 00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:04.400 Lead us to long for the one that we should be satisfied in. 00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:15.840 Because the ache for fellowship finds its answer in the one who is willing to call sinners his children and friends. 00:44:16.880 --> 00:44:22.880 The ache for a better world finds its answer in the kingdom that Christ brings. 00:44:24.079 --> 00:44:29.840 The ache for meaning finds its answer in the purpose that God gives us. 00:44:30.559 --> 00:44:36.800 The ache for righteousness finds its answer in God's grace and in his transforming power. 00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:43.599 And the ache for renewal finds its answer in the hope of the resurrection. 00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:59.199 The ache is meaningful, the echo is purposeful, so that we might find our answer in the only place it can be found, and that is in God through our Savior, Jesus Christ. 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:06.159 Because Jesus doesn't silence the echoes, he fulfills them. 00:45:06.719 --> 00:45:11.119 He doesn't erase the longings, he completes them. 00:45:11.679 --> 00:45:16.079 And he doesn't dismiss the aches, he heals them. 00:45:16.960 --> 00:45:21.360 Because the story that began in Eden doesn't end in exile. 00:45:21.840 --> 00:45:31.840 It moves through the aches, it moves through the longings, it moves through the groanings, and it arrives for those in Christ where He will make all things new. 00:45:33.199 --> 00:45:40.320 Because the God we reach for is a God who in mercy and love and grace reaches to us. 00:45:41.360 --> 00:45:47.599 The one whose image we bear is the one who's come to restore the image in us. 00:45:49.119 --> 00:45:52.159 This ache is not the end of our story. 00:45:52.559 --> 00:46:01.039 It's simply an invitation to find the real story in his story. 00:46:01.280 --> 00:46:03.119 Let's pray together. 00:46:09.280 --> 00:46:17.599 Move our hearts, we pray, to find all that we ache for in you. 00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:31.039 We pray, Father, that these truths will cause us to loosen our grip on the things that we cling to to find meaning in that reside outside of your person. 00:46:32.719 --> 00:46:54.719 To hold on to relationships and work and culture and meaning, and even the earth itself with a looser grip, and to cling to you with a tighter one, and to look to you with an eye of hope and a sense of anticipation, just as the world itself has. 00:46:55.119 --> 00:47:00.320 This creation that has birth pains, longing for the coming day. 00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:13.840 Father, we pray that we would find our satisfaction in that place, that only satisfaction can be found in you through Jesus Christ our Lord. 00:47:14.079 --> 00:47:16.000 And we pray this in his name. 00:47:16.320 --> 00:47:16.960 Amen. 00:47:17.199 --> 00:47:17.679 Amen.