“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1

“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31

The outworking of His nature - To be sure, perfectly good. Flowing forth from His eternal, nature all things were made perfectly good. The creation - six days of artistic brilliance. The vastness of space, the beautiful symmetry of the galaxies, the intrinsic order of the solar systems, the radiance of the sunset sky, the majesty of the mountains, need I go on? I could speak of the intricate, delicate, yet immensely complex world of the cell. Like a galaxy unto itself. All confined to a space more minuscule than the tip of the hair on the top of my finger. Words are crippled in their ability to describe what God has made. But it is without a doubt, very Good. And Elohim, one of the Hebrew names for God...in it’s plural form. We understand it now to be three, trinity. And in the Godhead, love, (“agape” as we would eventually understand it to be) eternally existed - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - One in Essence, three in person, One as GOD, but not alone. Eternally Perfect in unity, perfect in relationship, perfect in fellowship. For where one is the number of aloneness, two is relationship and intimacy, three is community and fellowship (koinonia as we would eventually understand it to be). Four adds, in essence, nothing more. My point? Perfectly Good.

This perfection...It’s not our experience though. Goodness has become obscured...eclipsed by evil. But we know why. The source of the obscurity? Well, back up... Back to His perfect nature. Not because His nature is the source of evil - certainly not. God is perfect and God is Love. Love, to be sure, does not exist where there is no object or recipient of it’s pursuit. For God so loved that he gave. To whom? To us. “Let us make man in our image...” We were created as God’s “image bearers”. The title held by no other creature. We are the object of His Love. Adam and Eve, the benefactors of His beneficence. It seems, however, that our progenitors, those two who were the prototypes of God’s crowning creation also realized, long before glamrock and the song, titled the same: “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

For love requires something more as well.

Love requires Liberty. God’s love for us - the object of His love - involves choice. Our choice? To Love God in return. There was nothing that Adam and Eve did to deserve what God freely gave them. His love was a freewill gift. A relationship, however, involves the love of two. Their part of the deal? What was and is love in return toward God? It’s a concept, captured in a word, one in a long list of GOOD ideals, distorted and twisted into something worse than evil - it has become mundane, boring, passe - in a word, their love, expressed to God would only come in the form of OBEDIENCE. You can eat the fruit of all the trees in the garden (My love for you will be to give you everything you need). But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, you shall not eat. (Your love for me will be expressed in submitting to me in humble obedience. After all I am the Creator and you are my creature.) Humanity does not love well because Adam and Eve did not love well.

It was their failure to obey, to trust, to LOVE, that resulted in the cataclysmic fracture. The Fall. The source of the Obscurity, the Corruption of His perfectly good Creation was man. The first Adam. Suddenly, in what was certainly an instant, they felt it. They recognized it. They were naked. They were exposed. For Love not only gives, it also covers. And the love that covered Adam and Eve was gone. How did you know that you were naked Adam? What did you do my child?

Love pursues, love covers, love is also just.

Enter the curse. All of creation affected. All of creation. Enter Death. Enter Pain. Enter Corruption Enter Toil Enter fractured man, fallen world, fallen creation.

Exit perfection. Exit Life. Exit Goodness. Exit wholeness.

Enter redemption “and the Lord made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” Covered once again. But not without the shedding of the blood. “For without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.”

And it is in this state of corruption that the the creation subsists to the present day.

Waiting...

“For we know,” wrote Paul, “that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” Romans 8:22 and “the heavens are not pure in His sight.” Job 15:15

Even we, our souls redeemed, new heart, new mind,

Await physical restoration...the redemption of our bodies - resurrection...

But Creation does not wait in vain. Creation does not groan in vain.

Redemption, Reconciliation, The Cross - His work is finished. But not yet fully implemented, realized. We live now in a time of expectation, experiencing a foretaste of coming attractions.

We are waiting to go back...creation is waiting to go back to the Garden, back to Eden. Creation is waiting to be restored...

OUTLINE: I. New Heavens and Earth (Revelation 21:1)

II. New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2)

A. The Holy City

B. A Prepared City

C. A Beautiful City

II. New Relationship with God (Revelation 21:3)

III. New System (Revelation 21:4-5)

A. No Death

B. No Pain

For Application: What did God speak to your heart from this study of the Restoration of all things? How does understanding the future change the way you should live in the present? What has impacted you the most during our study of HIStory - The Scarlet Thread?