GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 24~ ~ Genesis 3:18-19 ~ ~ “Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,  and you shall eat the herb of the field.  In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread

Till you return to the ground,  for out of it you were taken;  for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

From the book, We Shall See God, with teachings from Charles Spurgeon and Randy Alcorn.

Homesick For Eden, part 1

SPURGEON:

People are not the only ones who suffer under the Curse; the Earth itself experiences the devastation of the fall in the form of thorns, blights, and disasters of every kind.  But one day Christ will come to restore the earth to its rightful state.  Then it will no longer groan in the pains of childbirth, but will live in joyful celebration of its new life, which will never again be taken from it.

After the first humans sinned, God cursed the earth.

When Christ came into the world, evil people twisted a crown made of the cursed thorn and put it on His head and made Him king of the curse!!  In that day He purchased the redemption of the world from its curse.  I believe, and I think it is warranted by Scripture, that when Christ shall come a second time, this world will become everywhere as fertile as the Garden of Paradise used to be.

I believe that the Sahara, the literal desert, shall one day blossom like Sharon and rejoice like the garden of the Lord.   (footnote: “The Plain of Sharon is a coastal area near the Mediterranean Sea.  It was known in Biblical times as being particularly fertile.”)  I do not conceive that this poor world is to be a forlorn planetary wanderer forever.

Once mighty creatures far different from ours stalked through the earth, and I firmly believe that luxurious vegetation such as the world once knew shall be restored to us and that we will see again a garden such as we have not known – one no more cursed with blight, and mildew, with no more parched withering.  We shall see a land like heaven itself.

“Where everlasting spring abides, and never withering flowers.”  (from the hymn “There is a Land of Pure Delight” by Isaac Watts, 1707)

When Christ returns He shall do this.

In the day of the fall, too, animals for the first time received their ferocious temperament and began to fall on each other.  If I read Scripture rightly, I find that the wolf shall lie down with the kid, and that the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and that the weaned child shall put his hand on the serpent’s den.  I do believe that in the millennial years that are coming, and coming soon, they shall be known no more devouring lions, no bloodthirsty tigers, no creatures that shall devour their kind.  God shall restore to us again, and even to the beasts of the field, the blessing which Adam lost.

And, my friends, there is a worse curse than that which has fallen on this world.  It is the curse of ignorance and sin.  This, too, is to be removed.

See that planet?  It is whirling along through space – bright and glorious.  Hear the morning stars sing together because this globe is made their new sister?  That is the earth; she is bright now.

See that shadow sweep across her?  What caused it?  The planet is dimmed, and on her path there lies a sorrowful shadow.  I am speaking, of course, metaphorically.  See there the planet; she glides along in dark night.  The day has not come when that planet shall renew her glory, but it is hurrying full speed.

As the serpent escapes its swamp and leaves it behind, so that planet has slipped its clouds and shone forth bright as it was before.  Do you ask who has done it?  Who has cleared away the mist?  Who has taken away the darkness? 

“I have done it,” says Christ,  the Sun of Righteousness.   “I have scattered darkness and made that world bright again.”

Look, I see a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells!  This world is now covered with sin, ignorance, mistakes, idolatry and crime.  The day is coming when the last drop of blood shall be drunk by the sword.  God shall cause wars to cease to the ends of the earth.  The day is coming – oh, that it were now!!! –  when the feet of Christ shall tread this earth!  Then down shall go idols from their thrones, down superstitions from their pinnacles; then slavery shall cease; then crime shall end; then shall you know that Christ has died for the world and that Christ has won it.

“The whole creation,” says Paul, “has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth.”  (Romans 8:22)  Groaning for what?  Groaning and waiting for the redemption, when the world shall be washed of all her sin.  Her curse shall be removed, her stains taken away, and this world shall be as fair as when God first formed her from His mind, as when, like a glowing spark, forged from the anvil by the eternal hammer she first flashed in her orbit.  This Christ HAS redeemed;  this Christ SHALL most assuredly redeem!

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Romans 5:12:

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

Romans 5:15-16 

But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification.

Genesis 3:6: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”

(Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life—the same three temptations the devil used on Jesus, and the same he uses on everyone)

Luke 1:32-33

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.

Psalm 2:6

Yet I have set My King

On My holy hill of Zion.

Isaiah 11:9

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,

For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD

As the waters cover the sea.

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