Genesis 3:14-19 • Why Grass Grows in My Driveway - and Not on My Lawn!
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
So, what's the shirt about? This is not a statement of cool, that's beyond my capacity. I was in Singapore this last week, and those of you who have some Asian or Singaporean background know that this is what the tourists buy. It's not what real people wear. But nonetheless, it is some reminder of what you have given me and allowed me to do. Some of you were able to be with us. 250 leaders of Grace Church gathered this last Wednesday night to talk about our Conference of Calling, what we believe the Lord is calling us to do as we move into the future. And one of the things that we counted as one of the great resources of this wonderful church is its historic commitment to world mission. And part of that commitment is very personal to me. A year or so ago when I was thinking about whether or not I could come to this church, I actually believed I could not. And one of the reasons were I have so many obligations that are international as well as national in terms of mission efforts and some of my responsibilities of teaching to pastors in various places around the world. And this church with great generosity and I think vision said, "We want you to be part of our mission to the world. If you will come, we will continue to say that what you have been doing to train pastors around the world is now our mission too."
And that came to fruition in real terms this past week as kind of in my being part of your body went to represent you in Singapore. We're going to pray before the sermon. If you would like to kneel with me, you are welcome to do so now. Let's pray for these believers serving the Lord in difficult places.
Heavenly Father, your being a father to us means that you have sent the Lord Jesus and he humbled himself and he came as a servant to die on the cross for our sins.
And now as we recognize the magnificence and the eternity of that divine act on our behalf, I praise you for these people at Grace Church who do what they can that the world may know. But our circumstances are so different from courageous Christians in other parts of the world, whether it be those serving against the affluence and the traditional religion of Singapore or those in Egypt who serve now in the face of death threats and persecution and destruction or a young man in total isolation in a prison cell in North Korea who asked Jesus to help him this day. For all of them we ask your help. Would you by our prayers, by our commitment to the gospel, be strong for the sake of Jesus in their behalf, use us, these prayers, our resources, our commitment afresh in this nation to the things of the gospel, that we being faithful to you might be helpful to them in Jesus' name. God, be their helper this day we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
As you're standing, why don't you just continue to stand and we will read God's word together.
Genesis chapter 3, Genesis chapter 3 verses 14 through 19, you will recognize the account. The Bible is dealing with humanity at its very origins and just logically addresses something that we know must be true. If there are humans now, there had to be some original humans. And because babies don't give birth, somehow God had to create the first humans.
You and I know that there are all sorts of naturalistic explanations for human origins,
but those naturalistic explanations require such improbable processes of chemistry or biology that it is virtually another tenant of faith to believe in such things apart from the intervention of God.
That God explains how the first humanity not only came into being, but how being tempted by personal interest and selfishness introduced into creation the software of our world, the virus of sin would have affected everything in such a way that the world itself as we know it has been changed. That account is explained in Genesis 3 verses 14 through 19, as the Lord speaking to the tempter explains now the consequences.
"The Lord said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity," that is antagonism, even warfare, "between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.
To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children and your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.
And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.
Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.
For out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return." Would you please be seated?
Harvard anthropologists tell us of a tribe that is in our cultural heritage that worshiped the moon, what they called Wokna'una.
And when the new moon would rise, showing itself in fullest form and power, that tribe,
realizing the world in which they lived was so painful and troubled and full of suffering, would say, "If that moon is responsible for it, though we would worship it, we must obscure it from ourselves and us from it." And so what the tribe would do in every new moon was we would throw ashes into the sky at the moon so that it could not see them and then they would put ashes on themselves so they would be obscured from the moon as well. Following this prayer, "Oh moon, may all people praise you, for you are powerful, but moon,
please leave us alone."
It sounds like a very primitive prayer, but it is not far from any person who exists in a world of trouble where there is not an explanation for that trouble other than a Wokna'una, a cruel God who doesn't keep trouble away from us. You know that. I know that.
Early in my pastoral ministry, there was a father of four, age 42, and one of those children was newborn when that 42-year-old father had a heart attack and died.
And as I was called to the home of the family, there was a well-meaning grandmother who gathered the children into the room to talk to me and said to them, "God meant it for good, children. God meant it for good." And a 13-year-old teen who could not make much sense of that said, "I wish God would do His good somewhere else."
Nineteen-year-old young man is taken to college.
He's a scholar athlete.
He has bright hope and future ahead of him, but only weeks after being at school, he contracts viral meningitis.
He dies.
At his funeral, the pastor quotes Job, "The Lord gives and the Lord gives away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
And the father simply said, "I will not bless such a God."
And to Kathy and me, a young couple very close, who just barely out of their teens have a newborn diagnosed almost immediately with a trisomy syndrome, missing vital organs, and the child dies in five days.
They are told the chance of it recurring are only one in a hundred thousand if they have another child. And so a year later, another child is on the way, but with complications that set all the fears and the worries and the doubts in motion again. The child is born and is healthy.
And as a pastor in the room, I'm not supposed to hear it, but what the father says is, "Thank goodness God left us alone this time."
God just let us be.
If you're the creator of all things, you're great, but this is what happens.
Please just stay away.
I want you to recognize that what the Bible does is addresses these hardest of issues. Why is there suffering and difficulty in the world? The title of this sermon, "Why Does Grass Grow in My Driveway and Not in My Lawn?" is just a light way of getting into the hardest of subjects. Why is the world not the way it's supposed to be? I mean, if you and I made it, wouldn't we make it different? Wouldn't we want it different? Is this really what a good and great God would do? And the Bible simply answers the question, "No."
This is not the way it's supposed to be.
When the Bible begins to introduce what the world is like, what we are facing, it says just clearly as it can, what is the cause of evil as the Bible is explaining it. The cause is clearly said in this passage of Scripture. The causal statement begins in verse 14, "The Lord said to the serpent," that representation of the evil that is tempting Adam and Eve, "because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, above all beasts of the fields." That spiritual entity representing the evil in the spiritual world is the cause first of evil in the spiritual world, but that is not the only place where pain occurs in the physical world as well. And the explanation for why there is the suffering there is verse 17, "To Adam," God says, "because you have listened to the voice of your wife and had eaten of the tree of which I commanded you shall not eat it, cursed is the ground because of you."
I recognize that there are other naturalistic explanations for how we exist and why we exist, but if you just start to say, "Does the Bible have any explanation?" The Bible is not saying God meant it this way.
As water runs in a furrow, so God is seeking for our hearts to run according to Scripture and understand His explanation of why is there difficulty in the world, and He says, "Because the virus of sin entered the software of creation and began to touch everything."
Now maybe that sounds silly to you, but at least you should see what the Bible is saying are the effects. Not only is sin the cause of the pain and the suffering of the evil, but the effects are wide and vast. The first effect is that a battle begins.
That's actually verse 15, and it's the reminder that there are three parties to the battle.
The first, God says to Satan, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise His heel."
In the great battle, there is somebody who will be crushed.
After all, the wounding, the bruising of the head is indicated to be a death blow. And the one who will receive that death blow is the one who brought the evil temptation into the world. He receives his own curse, as it were. That is verse 14, "Because you have done this, cursed to you above all livestock, above all the beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go.
Dust you shall eat all the days of your life."
This satanic one, this spirit of evil, is identified now as having the domain and the diet of dust.
He is going to be part of the world.
It's going to be what he ingests as well as what he influences.
And the reason that is so important is because of who is also in the world. I don't know if you always put these verses together, but look at verse 19, because while Satan is described now as being affected by the world and influencing in himself, you read this about Adam, mankind, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.
For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
What did God say Satan would devour?
Dust.
And what did he say Adam was?
Dust you are and to dust you shall return.
It's the reminder that a battle is now on. There is one who seeks our harm. The New Testament picks up the language in another way, correct? That Satan is about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
This is the idea that God did not mean it this way, but there is evil in the world. It touches us in ways that we cannot even fathom spiritually, as well as physically, our families, as well as our personalities, everything being touched and affected. And the great battle is not just between Satan and humanity. There is another party to the battle who is introduced in verse 15.
Between your offspring and her offspring shall this great battle happen. He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel. Now whether you recognize it or not, what we just had is the theme verse of the whole Bible.
We often think of John 3.16 as being the theme verse of the whole Bible.
"For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son." All true. But you must recognize the promise of that salvation is here in Genesis 3.15, sometimes called the first gospel, the first announcement of the coming of Christ, that as evil enters the world, God, recognizing now things are not as they were meant to be, is going to plan to correct them. And therefore everything that follows, kings and kingdoms, armies and plagues, tribes born,
men scattered, exiles, slavery, mangers, crosses, and ultimate salvation are all part of one vast plan that was laid out from the very beginning. As God said, "I will send one from this woman who is going to save and rescue." There is a great battle, but I will send a rescuer.
Genesis 3.15 serves in the Bible something like a hill, an observation deck over which we can observe the great spiritual battle that is going to unfold through all of human history. I don't know if any of you have ever been to Waterloo in Belgium. Remember where Napoleon met his Waterloo and was defeated?
I have a brother who was for a time stationed at NATO headquarters in Belgium, and as I visited him, he took me to Waterloo. As a military expert, he took me up this hill to this observation deck and began to explain what I was looking at. He said, "In this part of the field is where the infantry lines gathered. Behind the hills the cavalry waited until the right moment. Up on the hills the artillery, back behind the lines there were the supply trains, spies going back and forth, and you understand each particular of what is going on by the vast battle which is being played out on the field in front of you."
Genesis 3.15 is that observation deck. As what we are to understand is God has said from the beginning, "I made a good world. It has been corrupted by the selfishness and the sin of humanity, but I am not going to leave it that way. There is now a plan of God that is unfolding by which ultimately there would be a victory through His Son."
Now until that time, there is not only a great battle being indicated, but great brokenness in our world.
Notice we don't even like talking about, but the Bible, because it is being honest, is telling us about the consequences of this corruption that has now entered creation. Verse 16, "To the woman He said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain you will bring forth children."
Now I know that we look at this traditionally, we think this is just talking about the pain of childbirth itself, but you must recognize that what God also says to Adam, just in a verse later, do you remember, is that there will be pain in the world now because of what you have done. As the virus begins to move through the software of creation, everything being corrupted and changed and harmed, so that what we understand that God is actually saying to the woman is the pain is not just going to be the pain of childbirth, but remember the language is, "I will multiply your pain." Multiply. It's not the original pain. It's the sense that now as your children are here and they will grow, you will hurt.
"For the world that you have made now is one in which they will suffer pain and it will hurt you even more."
Here is the pain of a mother's heart as well as the pain of a mother's birthing.
And that is not all that happens. It's not just the pain of infancy. There's the pain as all of our loves are affected. The end of verse 16, excuse me, "Your desire will be for your husband and he shall rule over you." This is not saying the desire between a man and a woman is now somehow wrong. You have to understand what these verses mean in their original context. I'm going to ask that you look just in the next chapter and see these same words reappearing to understand what God has said to the woman.
In chapter 4 of Genesis, the Lord is now addressing Cain. Remember? He is so upset that his offering has not been accepted because he is not offered according to the way that God has required. And as Cain gets upset in verse 6, "The Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen?" Verse 7, "If you do well, will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.
Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it." In this context, the desire is talking about somebody trying to overwhelm another, trying to have domination over another. Its desire, this sin will be for you, but you must fight back against it. And now somehow we are being told in the wonderful intimacy of marriage that God designed.
Now there would be the desire of a woman to overwhelm, to dominate, to take control. And the reaction is no better as the husband would now rule as domination and somehow a warfare the same as what would be sin seeking humanity is going on in a marriage itself. The good that God intended not following through.
But it's not even just our loves that are affected in infancy or intimacy.
But our labors, everything about our life now being affected. God says to Adam, "Because you listened," verse 17, "because you listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I command you, you shall not eat it."
Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. It used to be fruit bearing, now it is weed growing.
And this ground that was given to you in the garden to tend as it brought wonderful fruit now not prosperingly but resisting you.
So it used to be the pleasure and the reward of work is now bred, earned only by the sweat of your brow.
Birthed in tears and continuing to be only in sweat. It's the compression of God saying to us, "This is the world that we know. Where all is a battle now and it's broken and it's not meant as I intended it. It's not as I meant it," says God. Now you and I know that there are other explanations, purely material, purely secular.
For a moment I want to talk just as Christians, just as believers and recognize that as much as we have heard this account before of why there is suffering in the world, we still struggle.
We're modern people. We're in a university town. We kind of say, "Isn't there a better explanation than this? Is this some fundamentalist dogma? Don't we have anything better to offer the world as explanation than an ancient garden tale?"
For the moment I'm going to ask you if you're a believer just to wrestle with that question with me because we might say, "You know, I do believe in God.
I even believe in a Creator, but do I have to believe this?"
I felt the weight of that some years ago when I was a new pastor in a new town and was taken to a hospital and kind of shown around as new pastors are, you know, here's where the desk is and the nurse's station and here's how you visit people. As I was being introduced in that hospital setting by a chaplain, he asked my background and I said, "Well, I'm a Presbyterian minister." And he said, "Oh, thank goodness. I thought you were one of those Baptists."
Now, I did not say that. He said it, okay? And I'm not even sure what it means, you know. And I think, "Is it the way I dress? I mean, what?" You know.
And then he said, "Can you believe it? Some of those clowns still believe in the historical Adam."
And I had to say to him, "Well, I am not Baptist, but I am one of those clowns."
Why?
Because if you do not accept the account of how corruption entered into the world, you end up with only a savage God.
If this is not true, whatever other God you pick will be a savage God. Now, when we use the word savage, we either mean very cruel or primitive in such a way as to be incapable of controlling creation. And if this is not true, that is all you end up with. I mean, just think with me about the hard things. If Adam did not fall, if the fall of creation through the sin of humanity is not the reason that there is sin and suffering and difficulty in our world, what are we left with?
Well, if you believe there's some sort of God, one alternative is that He's just a tyrant God.
That He somehow enjoys cruelty, that if you don't do enough right stuff, if the world doesn't do enough right stuff, that He just delights in His pound of flesh and He's just going to hurt people. I mean, that's one alternative, that we have this walk-na-na who still walks among us because He is just cruel and cannot be satisfied. And that's why there is the suffering in the world.
I mean, my worst experience of having to kind of wrestle through with a family where that reasoning led you was a family.
Dear wonderful people who had a child late in life who only a few days from the womb had a stroke that robbed that child for the rest of her life of mobility and speech.
So that as the family got older, and particularly as that couple got so old they could no longer care for their child, they had to put her into a nursing home.
We're not being mobile and not being able to speak.
She could not ask for the eye drops that she needed almost hourly.
And so this young woman who was already immobilized and without speech now went blind as well.
And I remember the family speaking to me, seeking some sort of comfort, and the dad just saying straight out, "I don't know what we ever did that was so wrong that God had to do this to us and to our child."
The Bible says it is a fallen world.
And in this fallen world there are horrible things that happen that it is not the way God meant it to be. And as we are made to think, as the Bible wants us to think, we are not saying, "God just did it." Our picture is not as believers that God is somewhere in heaven throwing cancer switches for joy or having some chessboard in which He's arranging accidents for His entertainment.
He is not a savage God. He is a God who made a world good and was corrupted by humanity, and He is bringing rescue to it. That's the image of the Scriptures.
But if you don't have the God of savagery as cruel to the other savage God you might have is simply the God of incapacity.
Yeah, He means well, but you know, He just can't control the creation that He made. He's just limited in some way.
It's actually the God that Edgar Brightman, the intellectual of two generations ago, explained to us when he said it this way, "Don't get angry at God.
He's only finite."
Or for this generation, the book that you will know much better, Harold Kushner, why do bad things happen to good people?
And the ultimate explanation?
Well, God's doing the best He can.
The Bible that I read is not presenting God as kind of an aging grandmother in a rocking chair at the window who sees the squirrels getting feed in the bird feeder and can't do anything but begins to knock her cane against the window saying, "Stop that! Stop that!"
And sometimes the squirrels go away, and sometimes they don't because she can't control them.
That's the other God you get.
If the account of Scripture is not accurate, you get either a tyrannical God or you get an incapable God, and our best minds always know that.
While there may be Christians who would say, "Listen, if I can't really accept Adam and Eve, I'll just kind of accept a benevolent God and make sense of this somewhere down the road." Listen, it just doesn't work, not if you're willing really to think of the way our best minds do. When I was struggling with these issues in college, I must tell you, how can there be suffering in the world if God is who God says He is? One of the books that was so influential, not helping me initially, was the one by A. Alvarez, simply entitled "The Savage God," in which he details the long day's journey into night of Sylvia Plath, the poet who ended up taking her own life. And what Alvarez did is he went into her life, knew her very well and intimately and began to discuss what went through her mind. He said she simply saw reality for what it really was.
Not willing to be distracted by entertainments, but willing to see truly and deeply the darkness and the void that was in the world, she simply said, "It is not worth it." And then what Alvarez does is he begins to track the history of suicide in artists in the Western culture tradition, one after another after another. You know some of them. Vincent van Gogh, whose vivid perceptions of the world were so much that ultimately his own mind could not take it. Percy Shelley, who could write so beautifully of skylarks on the Western wind, but then would write, "But I have learned to call death sweet names. I cannot take this world anymore."
Or perhaps the one who said it best, the essayist Henry James, summing up the secular mindset, Shelley wrote this, "Life is a battle.
Evil is insolent and strong, beauty and chanting, but rare.
Goodness is very apt to be weak, wickedness to carry the day. But this world, as we truly know it, is not an illusion. It is not a phantasm. It is no evil dream of night.
We wake up to it again and again forever and ever. We cannot forget it or deny it or dispense with it. It is only darkness.
And if I have no explanation for this world, then my God is either a tyrant or a grandmother.
Then why bother? It is a void. It is a darkness of which there is no escape.
But that is not the biblical picture.
What the Bible is saying is that there is true darkness, but the darkness is a cause by a sin from which we can be rescued.
And that rescue is spiritually now, but it is actually physically, eternally, when our Savior comes for His ultimate rescue. After all, what God is saying here, though it can even be difficult for Christians to receive, is what hope we must take. I mean, I with intention asked our song team earlier to sing, have us sing, "William Cooper's There is a Fountain Filled with Blood."
The notion that the dying thief rejoiced to see the Savior in His day, that there was hope out of His darkness, even in the pain and the misery of His crucifixion. He said, "There is hope. There is something better ahead." The dying thief rejoiced to see it, and William Cooper could write so brilliantly of it, but at the same time he was plagued by depression.
So that late in his life, sometimes you know, some of you will know, he struggled himself to see the reality. He wrote an account of a man who had fallen off a ship.
And because the sea is at storm, he sees the ship moving away from him. And the ship is the church where there are people there in bright lights and happiness, but he is drowning in the sea, and he writes, "No voice divine the storm allayed.
No light propitious shown.
When snatched from all effectual aid, we perish each alone.
But I beneath a rougher sea am overwhelmed in greater gulfs than he." Did you ever think about that? The one who could write so brilliantly about the wonderful effects of the blood of Jesus could himself be overwhelmed by darkness, and what God is calling through a man, some of you know the trouble in his heart and mind, but he still was able to see the grace of God, God is helping us to see by a man who's so treasured and needed the grace of God to say the darkness is real.
Do not deny it. You can't escape it. There has to be some explanation in your mind for it. But as you face the darkness, recognize grace is greater. The salvation that God promises through his son will release us from this, from the spiritual darkness now, and from the physical darkness eternally through the coming of his son. That there will be sight again for the blind. That weak minds will be made strong. That special needs will not be special needs. That bodies will be made whole. That God is promising by the work of his son relief and rescue and redemption, and that is our hope. And we do not claim it if we do not face the reality of the hardness of the world that we're in by the sin that corrupts it all.
Now I know, I know it can be hard to take it all in, but what the Bible is saying is that not only is our God not savage, he is not still. He is not unmoving. His hands are moving. This God of all creation is doing something truly amazing. So that as you look at verse 15, I'm going to put enmity between Satan and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He shall bruise your head.
What is going to happen? A bruised head, some of your Bibles, why actually say crush your head, is a death blow. And what God is saying is, "I am moving through history, and I will do what it takes to ultimately bring an end to this curse, this destruction, this evil, this suffering. I am moving forward." And all of us question, "Why doesn't God do it right now?" Right? I mean, if he could stop it, why doesn't he do it right? If God were going to remove all evil from the world, why doesn't he do it right now?
Well, because then you and I wouldn't be here.
If he were going to wipe out all evil, we'd be gone.
But there is another reason, and by the way, isn't that the parable of the wheat and the tares, right? That's the very thing Jesus addresses. Why doesn't God just pull up all the weeds now? Because he'd pull up the good plant too then, and the good plant has a purpose.
Good plant has a purpose of seeding the earth with the grain that God intends, and for us, that is the gospel.
There are various reasons that the theologians will give as to why God doesn't just stop all evil now. Let me tell you a couple.
To wean us from the world so that we will not say, "If I can just have enough fame or fortune or the right person or the right pleasure or whatever, you know, everything will be all right." No, no, you don't understand. This is a corrupted world, and you must understand your hope is not here.
There is another reason not just to wean Christians from the world, but to turn the world from the world, that people would truly perceive the hopelessness of what's here, the darkness that is here, so that they would then look for another hope.
And the reason that you and I are here sometimes experiencing great suffering ourselves is so that we will be able to turn people toward another hope.
Don't you recognize? I do. It's often the people who have suffered the most in this life who are most zealous for heaven.
I have suffered. I know the darkness. I know the pain, and that is why I'm so zealous that you not go through it, that they become zealous for the faith. So intent on the gospel, they have felt the pain for what it really is, and they know their calling is to keep people from going through the same.
As awkward as it may seem to say, the reason that evil exists for a time is so that the gospel will triumph forever, that people will truly turn to a hope that is real and lasting. And so God, working with a severe mercy, is working four hearts in a fallen world to help us understand what our true hope must be.
And He's not just having hands that are still. I mean, His hands are working to bring this about through the course of history, but the other thing we see is not just the hands of God moving, but the heart of God moving. The end of verse 15 simply says, as God speaks to Satan, "You shall bruise His heel." Here is this first gospel, this explanation of what will happen. And God says to the serpent, "Listen, you are going to receive a death blow from the offspring of this woman, but you will wound Him.
You will strike His heel.
You will not be a death blow, but you will wound Him. And you and I know exactly what that is about, that Jesus would come and live a sinless life,
and without any cause for penalty being put against Him, He would take the penalty for sin that you and I and the world deserved.
And God, knowing it would happen, would send Him anyway.
That God's heart was so moved for you and for me and a broken world that He would send His own Son to die and shed His blood for us.
And the reality of that is giving us hope. I can't make sense of my circumstances sometimes. I hope you hear me say it many times over the course of time of ministry among you, that there will be times we cannot make sense of our world. And our great temptation is to try to explain God by our circumstances. And we say, "How can God be good if those are my circumstances?" And the answer that I must come to over and over again and say, "It is a fallen world."
But right at the same moment, I will say to you, "But it is still my Father's world.
And as I recognize my Father's world, He is the God who sent His Son. I do not gauge Him by my circumstances. I gauge Him by His character."
And what He showed me in His character on the cross is that He loves sinners eternally and urges them to trust in Him.
It is a fallen world.
But we have a Father who would send His Son to rescue us. And for that reason, we trust Him even when many things do not make sense.
I felt it the most keenly having to say it, to put the pieces together that are so hard to put together.
And some years ago, a family in our church, wonderful family, had a son who was injured in gym class in just a freakish of accidents and was in intensive care in the hospital.
And in visiting the family, the Father came out of the room at one point and said to me with His head down, "God is taking the life of my Son because of my sin."
I don't know how you all respond in circumstances. I just panic. I'm like, "What do I say?"
But somehow the Holy Spirit gave me the words that I would now say to you, "No.
God is not taking the life of your Son for your sin because God gave the life of His Son for your sin."
And it is that reality, that heart that I trust. I cannot explain all the circumstances. It is a fallen world. And God is yet working altogether for good. I cannot tell you how that is. But as my mind is constrained by the truth of Scripture, I will not settle for a savage God.
I will settle for the God of Jesus, who tells me my world is corrupted by sin, but He has sent a Savior to rescue me. And that God I will trust. Even in the fallen moments, in the dark times, I will trust Him. This is a fallen world, but it is still my Father's world.
And because He sent Jesus, I will trust Him.
You too.
You too. Trust Him.
He sent Jesus for you.
Father, work in our hearts, we pray, the truths of the gospel. Oh, there's hard struggles at times when we look at a world so troubled and we wonder why you don't act sooner, why it even happened.
Where we want to be smarter or more intellectual, would you humble us before Your Word and teach us not by our circumstances, but by Your character of the one we can still trust, the one who sent Jesus. We can trust Him.
And we turn to You now and ask You to give us new hope and relief and rescue, even from our pain.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.