I pray that you have been blessed not just so far this morning but also this past week.
As you think back on the previous handful of days, you were able to see how God has
revealed Himself even a little bit to you.
That you've been able to recognize how good God is and how He blesses us.
How He sustains us and then even in those moments where maybe we were stressed or bothered
or concerned, God is still there.
I would say He's even there a little bit more closely in those times.
We're going to get into our sermon today.
This does continue in our series that we have been looking at from the beginning to the
end, as we've considered in Genesis and the lessons that we can learn in the Bible's
first book.
And not just that but how it applies to us today and how it carries us forward until
the end when Christ comes to take us home.
There's a connection between the then, the now, and the will be.
It's not only relegated to the past or to humanity in bygone eras.
It's very relevant today even from the first verses, the first chapter in God's book.
We're going a little bit out of order just because today is communion.
So next Sabbath we will pick up right from where we left off which is the second part
of day six in creation, the creation of mankind.
And today though we're going to look at a world without sin.
A world without sin.
When I was trying to think of a good way of introducing this I really have two and I couldn't
decide which one so you get both.
When I was a child I often rode with my dad who was a therapist and had several contracts
all over the eastern, northeastern portion of Arkansas and I would ride with him as we
would go to the development centers or to the schools or sometimes on his home health
visits and some of those drives were a little bit closer maybe 20 or 30 minutes away.
Some of them were a little bit longer, an hour or so.
Well there were several of these trips when we would listen to music.
We eventually ended up in audiobooks and that's how I kind of learned to like audiobooks.
But we had a lot of music early on.
Just various artists and various songs.
Well then there was this one that he would play somewhat frequently and it was mostly
instrumental.
Had a little bit of a western theme to it, a little bit of a Mexican theme to it.
I'm like oh well that's kind of neat, I don't mind that.
What is this dad?
Oh this is songs from a movie that I watched many years ago, a little bit before your time.
And oh okay well what is it?
That's kind of catchy and it seems like there's this one particular chord that plays every
so often.
And he goes well this is from, this is the soundtrack from a movie called The Good, The
Bad and The Ugly.
Have any of us heard of that movie?
It's fairly famous, it's fairly well known.
Clint Eastwood was one of the stars and I've only seen it once so if my memory is
foggy we can correct me afterwards.
But from what I remember is that it essentially follows three men.
The story revolves around three men.
The end of the movie you end up with that Mexican standoff as they say where each of
the three men are aiming their guns at each other and who's going to pull first, how is
it going to end?
It was very tense, it was very exciting I guess.
But the good, the bad and the ugly and as best as I can recall that's kind of the description
of these men as you go through.
You had one that was the good guy, the upholder of justice, the one who was more morally and
ethically pointing north.
You had the evil, the bad guy and then you had one, I don't understand why the ugly,
maybe unattractive, maybe his character was a little less pretty than the other two.
And so you had the good, the bad and the ugly, one of the greatest westerns ever done.
So I'm like okay well we can consider the good, the bad and the ugly as we think about
how God's creation ends from our scripture reading today.
When God looked at all that He had made and it was very good.
Now that's just an emphasis, a highlight, the exclamation point on something that God
had said all along the way.
God made light and He separated the light from the darkness and He looked at the light
and He said it is good.
Then the firmament and the water separated and the end of the day too and God says it
is good.
And then that repeats five times until we get to the end of day six and then God says
it is very good.
So in other words we could say something like when God creates it is only good there is
no bad or ugly.
And what does it mean for God to declare everything as good?
What is the good that the Bible is talking about?
Why would God say that and what can we learn from that word, from that declaration over
creation?
When God surveys something and He calls it good what does that encapsulate?
Well one because of the structure of the Hebrew and the repeating of God saw and it was good
because that's repeated.
He looks and it's good.
We know that goodness includes aesthetic beauty.
When you have the connection of viewing something and calling it good there is a beauty to it.
Well I believe God is a God of beauty.
I believe that what God makes doesn't have bad and ugly in it.
When God first formed the trees and the flowers we didn't have to worry about frost killing
something and limbs breaking off or flowers wilting.
When God made the hills and the fields there weren't sink holes that destroyed it and there
weren't the jagged rocky sharp pointed kinds of mountains that we have today.
We believe that was a result of the flood.
When God makes something there's not a deformity to it.
It's arranged and it blooms and there's life and the colors were vibrant and appealing
to the eyes.
It was beautiful.
We know that God is a God of beauty because also in the instruction of first of the tabernacle
and then the temples God blessed particular craftsmen for their craft so they could not
only make what it was to be functional but also for beauty that's the goal that's the
ornate kind of decorations.
God intends the beautiful things around us to cause our thoughts to go heavenward.
Beauty we think of high and lofty things.
That's why I like the flowers that's why I like spring.
Spring to me is very beautiful and I think of God a little bit more.
What else does the good mean when God declares it all good?
Well we talked about in one of our earlier sermons our parts of the series that when
God created he doesn't just arbitrarily make something he has a purpose for it.
Light and dark separates day and night it lets us know what how to see and where to
go and that then he populated the light and the dark with our heavenly bodies for direction
and constellations and the sun and the moon.
There's a purpose to it.
There's a purpose to filling the voids of the air and the water with the birds and the
fish and so that they can live.
God wants life in the emptiness not just to be empty and he doesn't just create the animals
to just be there he gave them a purpose for procreation and keeping to their kind.
They had a purpose.
I believe it was also to add more beauty and and and artistic value if you will to nature.
Some of the animals are rather awesome.
Some of them make us ponder and some of us just make us wonder.
In fact I saw it recently and I have to agree with this you know I I think I've already
shared I Bigfoot is the one thing I wonder if maybe it's true.
But also someone proposed this that so many people you know downplay the idea of a unicorn
ever existing but we don't have any problems with a giraffe which is kind of this camel
leopard hybrid thing with a seven foot neck.
Little weird but we can't imagine a horse with a horn and that's it.
That's the horse with a horn.
If God can make this why why would we limit him on that.
We know of some of our other extinct animals that are rather fascinating and sometimes
a little odd.
In other words God is unlimited in his creative imagination.
That's the point that's all good.
Speaking of nature when we think of when God says it's good that means that nature is in
harmony with itself.
We don't have mosquitoes biting to suck blood and to give disease.
We don't have a rabbit afraid of hawks.
We don't have the antelope afraid of crocodiles or dogs afraid of humans or squirrels afraid
of dogs.
The fear the tension the care for survival that we see in nature today just didn't exist.
When Isaiah talks about how the lion will lay with the lamb and the child will play
by the by the adders the snakes nest that tells us of a future harmony again inside of nature.
The beginning there was this harmony.
I mean can you just in your imagination picture all the birds and the beasts and the bugs
and the fish all getting along.
That's goodness as God declares.
What else is it when things are good and very good.
Well we are going to get to next Sabbath the creation of mankind and I would like to propose
that when God made man in his image that was one significant element of going from good
to very good.
The rest of creation was not made in the image of God.
The rest of creation was there but ultimately God had a plan for a being created after his
own image to then be his steward over the rest of creation.
And because that is an amazing and awesome thing to make that that's the crowning act
of creation.
So you go from good to very good with the introduction of humanity.
Well good and very good with humanity.
What does that come.
What does that bring to mind.
What do we think of with human relationships that are good or very good.
How many of us have ever had a person to person relationship that was perfect.
Without a lie without a deceit without a backstabbing without a manipulation without emotional molding
without physical harm without.
Fill in the blank.
I am so jaded by the negative relationships I've had over my brief years on this earth.
I start out skeptical.
I don't like that about me.
I don't like that about our society but when I'm meeting someone new and when they're meeting
me for the first time I actually think that it's commonplace for all humans to start skeptical.
Are you going to hurt me or are we going to have a good relationship.
That wasn't the case with our earliest parents.
When Adam and Eve were created they were in harmony with each other.
They didn't argue over toilet seats or towels being folded correctly.
They didn't wonder how the resources were going to be spent and was someone a spender
and someone a saver.
They didn't they weren't concerned with well today is chore day or you're sleeping in too
much or you're not giving me enough attention or or loving me.
There wasn't any of that.
There was no fear that that some human was going to harm the other.
There wasn't.
It wasn't a bad relationship with Adam and Eve.
It was perfect.
It was good.
It was ethical.
It was loving and it was in harmony with each other.
They didn't desire to be alone from one another.
That's good.
God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good.
Finally what what does it mean to be good.
And God declares it good while nature was in harmony purpose was was presented and filled.
Humans were in a good relationship with each other and with nature.
Men weren't afraid of the tigers or the crocodiles and they weren't afraid of man.
I would say at the top of all of that was good.
Everything was in harmony with its creator.
All the things were good with God if you will.
Nature responded to its creator.
He only had to speak and it was.
I can almost I can almost see God helping or being there with Adam in maybe forming
some vines or shaping something for his first home.
We know that that the animals were brought to Adam so that he could name them.
There was this this good relationship.
We know that they walked together in the cool of the evening getting jumping forward a little
because when God comes to find them after the fall it's almost as if he was expecting
them to greet him and he has to call out where are you.
But it wasn't that way in the beginning.
Man and woman could be in the presence of their perfect holy creator and they didn't
die and they weren't in fear and they didn't tremble and they didn't fall to the ground.
They didn't run and hide.
They didn't close themselves.
They didn't make excuses for their actions and their words.
All was good between them and God.
All was good.
But what happened?
What happened?
My next my other introduction makes me think of I think of art and architecture.
Our buildings and our paintings and our sculptures throughout history.
I'm a fan.
I'm not artistic.
God did not bless me with that ability but I appreciate others who have it.
The music and other creative aspects to him.
Love it.
I especially like art and architecture from like the Gothic era, the Reformation era,
some of the Greek and Roman kind of buildings and so on.
But I'm really a fan of you know the 13 to 16 or 1700s somewhere in there.
I really like it.
I like the big Victorian homes.
I like the tall spires.
Some of my favorite old churches are the more Gothic style where they've got the spires
that just go way past the roof of the building.
And it wasn't until recent years I learned that that was necessary because of the physics
of how up they built them, how vertical the buildings were.
The physics necessitated the spires to go even higher to maintain the outward pressure
from these tall buildings.
Again, I don't know exactly how it works but I like it.
And then you go on the inside of the buildings and ceilings were painted and it took years
to complete the craft.
And you had statues that showed men and women just in a good healthy form.
And you can go through the Reformation era and you can see paintings and if you know
what you're looking for, you can determine if the artist of the paintings was either
Catholic or Protestant because the paintings had theology on them.
Some of them were just of Balaam and his talking donkey or the lady at the well or Jonah or
others.
But what they would do is on the borders around the side of it, they would depict Protestant
or Catholic doctrines in smaller images.
Some of them are rather specific.
Some Catholic paintings had well known depictions of a Protestant reformer with a dunce cap
and devils tormenting him because that's what they viewed of them.
On some of the Protestant pictures, they did the opposite but with popes or cardinals.
Or they would have a little picture about Sola Scriptura or Sola Fide, something like
that.
It's very beautiful.
I look at the Monets and the Van Goghs and I just I am in awe of what it is to take all
those shades of paint or acrylic or pencil or something and just wow, the depth and the
emotion comes through.
But then we get to contemporary art and my opinion changes rather drastically.
I find most modern art extremely ugly and unattractive.
I find that a lot of the creative abilities seem to have fallen away in favor of trying
to make a statement with something ugly.
So you have things like a banana and duct tape and it's just stuck to a wall with a
little nameplate under it and they call it art.
I call it the beginning of a compost pile.
And then what's even more amazing to me is after some days had gone by and the banana
had gotten more spottled and mushy, someone paid money to buy it and then eat it as an
act of living art.
I find that rather unbeautiful if you will.
Other things is contemporary art that come to my mind.
We have the famous blank canvas.
It's just white.
They just hang it.
Well, what is that?
Whatever you want to have it be, just tell me what you see.
I think it's lazy.
I think art should show something and it should be what the artist wants to show.
I actually don't think that the onlooker gets to decide what art is.
Should be from the other way around.
Some of it gets into the rather grotesque.
For example, in I believe it was a studio in New York.
Someone had a commode that they had painted on the inside of the American flag and it
was closed off but people could get to it.
The reason it was closed off was because it was intended to again be a living piece of
art.
People were asked and encouraged to use the commode, like people do, as a way of showing
their distaste for the United States of America.
I find that grotesque.
I don't find that beautiful.
What I find is that as society, and we can talk specifically about our culture, as our
culture more and more and more gets away from God, then what happens is a deterioration
in beauty, a deconstruction of the good down to either nothing or the perverse.
You get away from purpose and order and beauty and grandeur and uplifting thoughts and you
get more into the dirt and the muck and the mire.
Well, we know that though God made everything good and beautiful and moral and in its proper
place it didn't stay that way for long.
We don't know how long but time passed and at some point first the woman then the man
ate something they shouldn't have and sin came into this world.
From that point forward all the things changed.
One of the first things that changed was the relationship between man and God.
Then we hid, then we covered, then we lied, then we blamed, then we all of that.
Then we know that the ground and the plants, all of a sudden we've got thorns and thistles,
less beautiful, they're acting outside of their order.
You can just look around and see how animals are no longer in harmony.
We can think of what sin has done in our world.
In the beginning there was no sin.
It was good and very good and it was a world without sin.
And then in between a hot mess, a dumpster fire, death and deception and crime and pain
and tears and loss.
And it's been awful.
I don't like it.
I don't like how many news stories we hear of people losing their lives or helicopters
crashing and having people we know personally.
I don't like hearing the stories of trains being derailed and a whole city plus some
being affected.
I don't like hearing about slave trade still going on and human trafficking and drug trafficking
to the abuse and death of hundreds of thousands in our own country.
Breaks my heart.
It's difficult to not become desensitized but as I have studied the beauty and the wonder
and the grandeur of the world that was before sin, I become more sad about the world we
live in today.
Because if only it had stayed the way God made it.
If only.
Like any good book though, you have a good strong beginning and a good strong end.
God's book has a good strong beginning and a good strong end.
The book ends of the Bible from Genesis 1 and 2 to Revelation 21 and 22.
Give us the good beginnings and the good end.
I'd invite you to turn with me to Revelation 21.
Since this is the end of the book of Revelation, we know that the lamb that was slain has been
revealed.
We know that the 144,000 have been counted.
We know that seals have been broken and read.
We know trumpets have been blown.
We know beasts 1 and 2 have been revealed and have done their mighty and awful works.
We know that the woman and the dragon have been united.
We know that God's wrath has been poured out.
We also know that Babylon falls and all the institutions that have aligned themselves
with her.
We know that by the time we get to Revelation 21, if you have read any of these chapters,
and if you haven't, I encourage you to.
Revelation is a good book.
Difficult at times, but read it.
Revelation 18 and 19, they tell us of the fall of all that is bad.
Everything that we have lived through from Genesis 3 through our time today and going
on into the future.
We've read about the defeat of Satan and the saints of God in heaven for millennia.
We've read about the final judgment as the wicked have surrounded the holy city.
We have read about all the bad and the ugly coming to an end.
And then what do we read in Revelation 21?
Then I saw verse 1, a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth
had passed away and the sea was no more.
That first heaven and earth, that's what we know today.
There are theories out there that propose we're currently on a second.
That doesn't bear out when you read this verse.
Our second is yet to come.
I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband.
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place or the tabernacle
of God is with man.
He will dwell with them.
They will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.
We go back to a human-God harmony once again.
And then we read, God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for
the former things have passed away.
And he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.
In the beginning when God created it was good and very good.
In the end when God recreates, I believe that God will again declare over it that it is
good and very good.
I'm ready for it, my friends.
I am.
But we don't get there without one more good in between.
Today we are celebrating, we are participating in the communion service.
We do this because it brings to mind that good in between the beginning and the end.
When Jesus Christ condescended to this earth in human form and became a servant for us,
as a babe born in a manger, lowly and without any real claim to the status of the human
social ladder, He lived the life Adam should have and He died the death that we all deserve.
Every one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We are all in our own way the bad and the ugly.
All of us.
And we've experienced it from others.
It is only because of the broken body and the spilled blood of the perfect Lamb of God
that you and I have hope in the end that is good and very good.
It is because Christ as He ministered showed the Father to humanity and spoke of the love
of God and demonstrated it without regard to peoples or languages or how others viewed
your social status.
God is no respecter of people and when Christ took on the sins, He didn't only take on
the sins of the elect or those that God arbitrarily favored or the ones that God kind of liked
a little more than someone else.
When Christ took on the sins before His sacrifice, it was for everyone.
Fully, holy and complete.
That sacrifice was so sufficient that any person that has ever lived can claim it as
theirs.
It is because of His sacrifice that we can claim today the assurance, the hope, the promise
of the end that is good and very good.
We need this to bridge the gap between the bookends.
Because without our Messiah, we don't have a hope beyond this bad and ugly world.
I praise God for this.
I claim this.
Each morning, and you have to do this for yourself, people can't do it for you and being
a part of this church doesn't make it automatic in your lives.
You have to accept Christ's sacrifice on your behalf singularly.
And it's not because you feel good about it or it brings, and it should bring a smile
to your face and you should feel good about it.
But even when you don't, you claim it by faith.
I don't feel it, but it's mine.
God has said so, and so it is.
You hang on to it, and every morning you claim it again and again and again.
So that way when you come before God, when you enter into His presence, when you lift
up your voice in praise, thanksgiving, and petition, again you can know that you are
in a right harmony with your Creator and your Redeemer.
We celebrate, we participate, we do this in remembrance of Him who gave all for you, as
if you were the only one that ever lived.
Our communion service and our foot washing beforehand, all of it brings to mind the sacrifice
of heaven.
The foot washing tells us of a baptism, the death and the resurrection, one of Christ
and two of you and I as the old dying away and the new being recreated in Him.
The foot washing is a miniature baptism.
We don't have to get fully immersed every single time.
We wouldn't do that.
But the foot washing is that.
It is also an act of humble service.
If Christ our Lord can take off His nicer clothing and gird Himself in a servant's wrap
and kneel down on the floor and wash dirty, dusty, worn and calloused feet of His apostles,
that sets an example for us today.
We don't have a hierarchy in this church when it comes to service and love.
And the foot washing service reminds us of that.
If Christ can do it, we certainly can too.
And then as we partake of the bread and the juice, we remember Christ's broken body and
His spilled blood for us.
And we declare that sacrifice until He comes again, every time we do it.
This is not a sad moment, my friends.
We rejoice in knowing that Christ gave all for us and we have the hope and the assurance
of salvation in Him.
If you need to search your heart before you take of the bread, say your prayer between
now and then.
Search your heart a little bit in the next handful of moments before we come back in.
So when we do participate in this, we can cry out, praise God for the lamb that was
slain.
And we can smile and we can hold our heads up knowing that God will declare us good and
very good in Jesus' name.