EDEN: ONCE UPON A PARADISE
IT’S ALL GOOD
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 1:26-31
MAY 25, 2008
Two weeks ago, U.S. News and World Report published an article called, “Reverend Wright’s Wrongs.” Of course, the reference is to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright of the city of Chicago. According to U.S. News and World Report, Reverend Wright made six tragic statements. The first was that 9/11 was simply a response to America’s terrorism. The second tragic statement was that the racist nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan is one of the great voices of the 20th and 21st centuries. The third tragic statement was that the United States Government engineered the AIDS virus for the purpose of genocide with the African-American people. The fourth tragic statement was the statement that American soldiers are no better than the Roman soldiers who killed Jesus Christ. The fifth that American soldiers are no better than Al Qaeda operatives and the sixth tragic statement was his tragic plea, “God damn America!”
Of course, the Reverend Wright is wrong and it’s very evident that Rev. Jeremiah Wright struggles with hatred. He struggles with hate and he struggles with paranoia. I think it’s hard for him to look at his race and the people and the suffering that they have had over the years. He just wants to lash out. He wants to lash out even at this nation that we are so blessed to live m.
It is of course true that America is not perfect. It is true we live in world now where nothing is perfect. It is true that we now live in a world where, in every person, there’s a little bit of right and a little bit of wrong. In every person there is right because we are created in the image of God. In every person there is wrong because we are fallen into sin. Something happened in Eden but when God first created, God said, “It is good.” So, today we’re going to look at the creation, at least for part of this time, before the fall and see its goodness.
We begin with the material physical universe and God’s crafting of the Cosmos. God created the heavens and the earth and it was good. In the world of cosmology, and of course cosmology is different than cosmetology. In the world of cosmology there are three models of the universe. The first is the Oscillating Model and the second is the Steady State Model, but most scientists, most astronomers, most cosmologists today believe in the Expanding Model of the universe. They believe that the universe began with a big bang and that the energy and the mass and the matter just exploded outward into the void, forming the galactic systems, and they believe that the universe continues to expand today and the galaxies are moving outward and that there’s not sufficient matter, even when including so-called dark matter, to cause the universe to suck back in on itself and would be in the oscillating model of the universe.
Most scientists, even though they hold to this big bang and the expanding model of the universe, never really ask themselves, “Where did the big bang come from? Where did the energy come from? Where did that original matter that formed the cosmos, where did that come from?” They don’t answer that because they really don’t have an answer for that. But the Bible simply says, “In the beginning, God…” “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and for God, it was good.” The Hebrew word is “tov.” This is the Hebrew word for good, “tov” and it means, “pleasant.” It means, “pleasing.” “And the universe pleased God.” So, God saw the galaxies and He was pleased.
We live in The Milky Way Galaxy. This galaxy has over 100 billion stars spanning, in terms of the length of the galaxy, 100,000 light years so that light, moving at 186,000 miles a second, takes 100,000 years just to go across this one galaxy called The Milky Way so there are over 100 billion suns or stars in our galaxy and yet our galaxy is only one of more than 100 billion galaxies, spanning the cosmos, spanning a distance of more than 14 billion light years and it is good. God looked at the plants on earth and the animals and God said, “It is good.”
Barb and I love the zoo and love animals. Just this last week someone asked me what, when I was a child, I wanted to be when I grew up. It wasn’t a pastor. What I wanted to be when I was a child… I thought about maybe being a zoologist because I love animals so much. Barb and I love to go to the zoo. My kids loved to go to the zoo. We had those annual zoo passes and our love the zoo. When we leave the zoo, there’s a part of us that just says, “It was good. It was very good.”
Just this last week, Barb and I went to the Denver Botanical Gardens between York and Josephine. I had never been there before. We walked around the Denver Botanical Gardens, and it was beautiful. Within the Denver Botanical Gardens there are a lot of sub-gardens. One of the gardens there is called, “The Scripture Garden” and it’s a biblical garden. It just has plants from the Bible. And so, in the Denver Botanical Gardens there is this Scripture Garden with plants from the Old and the New Testament. There are scripture verses from the Bible. It’s kind of a cool thing. As you enter that garden there is a plaque which mentions Eden and poses the question, “What was the forbidden fruit?” It suggested it probably wasn’t an apple because apple trees were not known in ancient Mesopotamia but they suggest it might have been an apricot tree. Other scientists have said, “Maybe a fig tree.” Some have said, “Maybe a pomegranate tree.” It doesn’t matter but, “In the beginning, it was good. It was very good.”
When Barb and I left the botanical gardens and we got in our car and we drove away, we kind of looked at each other and thought, “That was good. That was very good.” And God felt that way about all of His creation. It was very, very good.
I want to, at this point, make a couple of comments about the statement of God, that the material, physical universe is good. I want to make a couple of comments because you understand in the ancient world this was not a common belief. In the Eastern religious world, in the Eastern philosophies, the material, physical universe was not viewed as good. The realm of the Spirit was viewed as good. The realm of the physical was viewed as evil. Of course, those philosophies which are foundational to Buddhism and Hinduism, they teach that it is the destiny and the goal and the hope of every human being to escape the body and to escape the physical and to escape the material universe and to enter the realm of pure Spirit. Something is wrong with the physical and the material universe by its very nature.
In the Greek Hellenized world, when you go back to the time of Christ, there was this concept of a platonic dualism as taught by Plato, and this concept was that the spiritual is good and the material is evil. There was this religion that grew in the late 1st century, in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries and it was a religion philosophy called Gnosticism. Gnosticism was rooted in Greek thinking. It was also rooted in Eastern religious thinking so Gnostics combined the Greek worldview and the Eastern religious view into one system. Gnostics taught that the physical, material universe is a mistake and that it was created by an evil power called “the demiurge.”
There were some Gnostics about a hundred years after Jesus who were kind of enamored with Christ and so, some of these Gnostics tried to build Christ into their religious system a little bit and they created the Gnostic Gospels but don’t think for a second that the Gnostic Gospels are a rival for true Christianity with the biblical Gospels. The biblical Gospels are 1st century and they’re rooted in Judaism. They’re not rooted in Greek philosophy or in Eastern philosophy. The biblical Gospels are rooted in Judaism. True Christianity came out of Judaism.
I marvel how so many professors and secular scholars are really ignorant regarding religious history. Christianity grew out of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew. The disciples were Jews. And so, they had Judeo-Christian worldviews. They were not Gnostics. They were not grounded in Greek philosophy or Eastern religious philosophical thought. They believed the material-physical universe was good. It was good and that gives us a different perspective and that’s why Jesus… I mean, we’re not trying to escape the body. We’re excited because Jesus tells us He’s going to give us a new body. We’re not trying to escape the physical. Jesus is going to create a New Heavens and a New Earth. Jesus appeared resurrected and alive to His followers. He said, “Touch Me. See Me. A Spirit has not flesh and bone as you see that I have in My resurrection body.” And so, shall we be blessed. There’s nothing wrong with the physical or with the material. God created the material universe and God said, “It is good.” This is, in terms of the ancient world, a rare perspective.
So, you see today, as Christians with Judeo-Christian values, more than anyone we ought to value the planet. More than anyone, we ought to care about the air. We ought to care about the land. We ought to care about the water. We ought to care about the earth because it was good. God created it and it was good. YES, the world is fallen but we are stewards. Before Christ we are stewards.
Now, I know this is a controversial area. I read a lot of scientific publications. I know there are a lot of scientists who believe that global warming has been caused by the misconduct of man. I know there are other scientists who believe that global warming is caused solely by solar activity, and I know there are still other scientists who believe the verdict is not in yet. The jury is still out. We don’t know. We don’t have enough information. I know there’s controversy but there shouldn’t be any controversy about this. We’re stewards of this planet and in the beginning in Eden, we were given dominion. Let’s not abuse it. Let’s be good stewards of the air, the earth and the water and of the earth itself. This will please God.
Let’s take a moment and have a second area of teaching. Let’s look at man. God created man. God created man and God said it was good. God breathed on man and imparted the imago Dei, the soul, the image of God. Of course, today there are some who would debate the image of God. What does that mean? A lot of people want us to define the image of God and we can’t define it. The Bible never defines it. What is the image of God? Is the image of God the logical, rational, cognitive capacity of man? Is that the image of God? Is the mental gifting a reflection of the image of God or is the relational/social capacity of man a reflection of the image of God? Or is the moral and ethical aspect of man? Is that the image of God?
Certainly, the image of God includes all of this. Certainly, the image of God is cognitive although His mind is greater than our minds as the heavens are higher than the earth. Certainly, the image of God is social/relational as God even within Himself is filled with love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Of course, the image of God is not only cognitive and social/relational but the image of God is also moral and ethical, the fact that you have a conscience. Corrupted as my conscience might be, and yours, still there’s a reflection there of the image of God. The fact that we have souls is tied to the image of God.
So, as you sit here today, whatever your view of intelligent design, whatever your view of the creation… If you believe that God created in six 24-hour days literally or if you believe that God created in six periods of time as in the day/age theory of Hugh Ross or if you believe that God created through theistic evolution as many Catholic and Protestant theologians do, whatever. If you’re a Christian, if you believe the book, then you have to believe that at some point God breathed on our original parents. You’ve got to believe at some point the breath of God came upon Adam and Eve. God breathed on them and He imparted “nephesh ruah,” “pneuma, psyche.” Adam and Eve, the original parents were unique in all the earth. They had an ability and a capacity that this side on this side of the fall we cannot understand. They fell.
What was originally very good is not so good today but the image of God remains, does it not? At least residual in every single person. Al Capone’s mom once said, “Al is a good boy.” He ran the mob in Chicago and around the nation and was responsible for the death of thousands perhaps and it’s true that he was so sexually promiscuous as to be riddled with venereal disease and syphilis but there was some good in him. His mother saw it. Yea! The image of God is somewhere there in everybody but we’re fallen. The whole world has fallen. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” It’s not like it was.
A couple of weeks ago Barb and I went to Hawaii. I guess Bill Hybels kind of let that out of the bag when he spoke here. Barb and I were trying to hide that but Bill at least at a couple of the services told the congregation that Jim is in Hawaii. That was true. Our daughter, Heather, and her husband, Chris, were celebrating their 10th anniversary and 10 years ago when they were married, they honeymooned in Hawaii. And so, now on their 10 anniversary they wanted to go back to Hawaii. They wanted to bring their children with them but they didn’t want to take care of their children so they invited Barb and me to come for one of the two weeks to give them a break, so we did that. We played Grandma and Grandpa and enjoyed Abigail and Nina very much.
I was reading some stuff while I was there in Hawaii. I was reading about the Menehunes. Have you ever heard of the Menehunes? The Menehunes, according to Hawaiian tradition, were kind of small people, diminutive people who were just small in stature and once lived on the Island of Hawaii according to their legends. You can go and visit the Menehune Pond and you can go to the Menehune Ditch and supposedly they were crafted in the 13th century by Menehunes who had these almost supernatural giftings and skills in building and making things.
Of course, archeologists, according to articles I read, they’ve studied and wonder, “Did these Menehunes ever really exist on Hawaii? Were there midgets here? They began to do archeological work and they found no evidence on any of the Islands that there were ever short-statured people. They can’t find such skeletal remains or anything. They think it’s just myth and legend, but they have examined the etymology of the word and they feel like they know how it came into being.
They discovered that when the Tahitians first came to the Hawaiian Islands, the Tahitians looked down on the native Hawaiians. The Tahitians viewed them as inferior to them and the Tahitians referred to the Hawaiians as “Monohuene” and the word was kind of corrupted into “Menehune.” The Tahitians called them “Monohuenes” which really means “inferior, common, small in social stature, less than us.” Isn’t it a marvel? Wherever you go in the world, wherever you travel on the earth, whatever culture, whatever society, you find evidence of the fall. Isn’t it true. We just can’t get along. We view ourselves better than somebody else, racially, socio-economically, whatever and God grieves. God just grieves.
There’s this call that’s upon us and this is really the third and final part of my message this morning. There’s this call that Christ has made to His people. God created the Cosmos, plants and animals and man. God said, “It is very good” but He gifted us with freedom and we have abused it and we have fallen. We’re waiting for a return to Paradise. We’ve waiting for a return to heaven but we’re not supposed to just sit and wait. There’s a call. There’s a call on us. There’s a call to serve the cause of good. You can’t just sit there. You can just ride it out. You can’t just feed your face and treat every day the same as the next. You’ve got to do something to serve Christ. There’s a call upon us so we’re to serve the good and to bring a little bit of heaven to earth, a little bit of Eden back. We’re to bring a little bit of Paradise to Planet Earth. That’s the call of Christ upon us.
Now, I think many of you know that in the 1799 some of Napoleon’s soldiers discovered a large stone slab stuck in the mud in the Nile Delta not too far from the city of Alexandria in the region of the little town of Rosetta. Today that large stone slab is called The Rosetta Stone. It is exhibited. You can see it in the British Museum. Barb and I have been there. Many of you have. The Rosetta Stone has a three-fold inscription and each inscription etched into the stone, each inscription commemorates and celebrates the ascendancy of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. That was in the year 203 BC when Ptolemy V Epiphanes rose to the Throne of Egypt so this three-fold inscription commemorates that but the Rosetta Stone opened up a whole new world for us.
What is that world? It’s the world of Egypt, ancient Egypt. That world was closed to us. We couldn’t see that world. We couldn’t see ancient Egypt through the eyes of the Babylonians because we understood their language. We could see ancient Egypt through the eyes of the Greeks because we understood their language but we couldn’t see ancient Egypt through the eyes of the ancient Egyptians. We didn’t understand their etchings, their writings. We didn’t understand hieroglyphics. So The Rosetta Stone has this three-fold inscription, and guess what? It changed everything because the three-fold inscription was first in Greek. Then the same exact statement but in the demotic text of 3rd century BC Egypt and then the same exact statement in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. We could compare and contrast, figure out the characters in the Egyptian language and a whole new world opened up to us and we had a whole new glimpse of ancient Egypt through the indigenous languages of people.
I hold in my hand the Bible. This is a precious gift. Oh, what a precious gift. I hope you understand the Bible opens up a whole new world for us. I hope you are into this Book all of the time. I hope you’re reading the Bible every day because it gives us a whole new worldview. If you read and you believe, you won’t see the world like everyone else does. It gives you a whole new worldview and you understand that God created and He created it all good. You understand that He breathed divine breath and soul into a special pair and He gave them the special gift of freedom and they fell. You understand that sin has flooded the creation. You understand that the fall of man was not the first fall. If you read this book, you understand that the angels fell long before them and we have no way of knowing how that affected the Creation but we know that things are not as they were meant to be. We know that from the Book. Things are not as they were meant to be. We know that God sent His Son because God loves us still. He so loves the world that He sent His Son. We know that Jesus died for the sin of the world and He offers redemption, reconciliation with God and regeneration. He offers to bring us back into the family of God with the promise of Eden, the promise of Paradise, with the promise of heaven before us but upon His people is a call. It’s a call to serve the good.
Of course, we’ve seen the Hebrew word for good is “tov” and it means, “pleasing.” If we serve the good, we have to please God. Do you do that? Do you live to please God? Do I live to please God? In the New Testament there are two Greek words for “Good.” There’s the word “agathos” which means, “beneficial in effect.” So, if we must please God, we must benefit the world and benefit the people of the world, even benefit the earth if we would please God. The second word for good in the New Testament is the word “kalos,” The Greek word “kalos” means, “Intrinsically good, ethically and morally pure.” We must seek hearts like that if we’re going to please God, if we’re going to serve the good.
About two weeks ago I was reading Newsweek Magazine. In this Newsweek Magazine they had an article, as I was kind of leafing through the magazine, I saw this article called Bigchurch.com. Whenever I see the word church, particularly in a secular publication, I kind of see what they’re going to say so I see this Bigchurch.com article and according to Newsweek Magazine, Bigchurch.com is a website where Christians can meet each other. This Bigchurch.com website has this quote out of Genesis: “A man shall leave his mother and father, cleave onto his wife. The two shall become one.” It’s kind of like a Christian dating service where you can find a husband or a wife who’s a believer and you can download a bunch of scripture verses and they have, according to Newsweek Magazine people writing in saying, “Thank you, Bigchurch.com. I found my husband.”
Newsweek Magazine says there’s really only one problem, and the problem is that Bigchurch.com is owned and operating by Penthouse Magazine, the porn peddlers of Larry Flynt infamy. They are not trying to please God. This is the kind of world we live in. It’s kind of hard-to-find real goodness in this world. They’re not trying to please God. They’re trying to make a buck! If they were trying to please God, they wouldn’t peddle porn. No, they’re not trying to please God. They’re trying to make a buck! They think, “Hey! Here’s another niche that we can make some money off of.”
That’s the kind of world we live in but how’s it going with you. How’s your heart? How’s your soul? Do you long to please God. Do you long to hear Jesus say to you some day, “Well done, good and faithful.” Can you go home today and just kind of make a little list of what you’re doing that’s good. Make a little list of what you’re doing to please God. You’re a follower of Jesus. Check it out. What are you doing to please Jesus? What are you doing to benefit the earth? What are you doing to benefit mankind? What are you doing to improve your purity? What are you doing that’s good?
In this church we’ve got a million opportunities for you to do good in the sight of Jesus, a million opportunities. Just make a list and see what kind of things you might be involved in.
As we conclude, I want to tell you about something I read about recently. Many of you have been to New York and you’ve been to New York Harbor and Liberty Island. You’ve seen the Statue of Liberty that rises there. It’s so beautiful and what a great symbol of America, Lady Liberty.
It was June 17, 1885, when the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on a French Ship, the Isere. The Statue of Liberty came across the Atlantic. It had been presented to the United States July 4, 1884, but it didn’t cross the Atlantic and come into New York Harbor until June 17, 1885, and it was not erected and dedicated until October of 1886. You’ve either been there or you’ve seen pictures and you know it’s beautiful. It rises up 151 feet, the statue itself—not the podium or the platform, the Statue—151 feet, 1 inch to be exact from the feet to the tip of the flame.
It was all crafted by Frederick Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor. Of course, the inner workings of it were crafted by Gustav Eiffel, who designed the Eiffel Tower. But Bartholdi crafted the image of Lady Liberty. He used his mom. I think many of you know that. He used the face of his mom for the face of Lady Liberty so when you look at the Statue of Liberty, that face is the face of Frederick Bartholdi’s mother. But here’s what has amazed many people today, that if you fly over the Statue of Liberty in a helicopter and look down, you’ll see beautiful, intricate crafting above the crown, beautiful, intricate crafting.
Why? Bartholdi crafted this thing in 1885. He could not have foreknown, could not have prophesied 1903 and Orville and Wilbur Wright and the invention of the airplane. He couldn’t have thought anybody was going to fly over this thing. Maybe seagulls. Of course, when you stand in the observation tower, you’re not high enough. You can’t see above the crown. You can’t go up the arm to the flame so why did he do it? Historians know the answer. He did it because of his mom. He not only put the face of his mom on Lady Liberty but he believed his mother was looking down. He believed that his mother was looking down and that she would see even the top of the crown and he wanted it to be perfect for his mom.
My mom passed away not that long ago. I miss her and she’s in heaven. I don’t believe for a second that she’s looking down. My dad passed away twelve years ago. He’s in heaven with Mom and Jesus but I don’t believe for a second he’s looking down. I don’t see anything in the Book that tells me that my loved ones in heaven are looking down. I know some people quote Hebrews, chapter 12, “that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses but I think “martus,” the Greek word for “witnesses” there means, “martyr” or “example” and it refers back to Hebrews 11 and all the Heroes of the Faith who set an example for us. They’re the cloud of examples. I don’t see anything in the Bible that would tell me that my loved ones are looking down on me. I do believe that God is looking down.
I believe God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sees everything. I believe Jesus is looking down. I believe Jesus sees everything I do in His deity. What is true of me is true of you. He sees all of us. He sees everything I do. He hears everything I say. He discerns everything I think and I know—I don’t know about you—but I know for me, He’s not always pleased but I want to please him. I really want to please Him. I long to hear Him say, “Well done, Jim, well done.” I know if I want to please Him, I’ve got to serve Him and I’ve got to serve the good until we return to Eden. Until we return to Paradise, until we go to heaven, we need to serve the good. I need to seek to benefit the earth. I need to seek to benefit people. I need to seek a pure heart. All of this pleases Him. So, today, as we continue through this Eden series and we look back and we look back in the future, we need to remember that we’re living now. Let’s commit today to seek the good and serve the cause of heaven on earth. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.