6-14 Evening Gathering
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Double Rainbow Guy:
Amazement—weeping—despair
What does it mean? Tell me
It’s too much, tell me what it means
This was a man after Adam--
A man stuck in the curses of the covenant of works
8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Not a command to be a master gardner
The main purpose is found in the commandment (16-17)
Adam was to keep the garden in protecting it from sin
This was his main objective
The Garden was the special presence of God on earth in which righteousness dwells
And keeping the garden meant being the proper representative of God—freed from sin
Adam was to be tested for a time to gain righteousness for him and his posterity in which they would spread this Garden, this Kingdom of God throughout the world
To ensure I am not just making things up, the fact that the garden represented the special presence of God is clear in Scripture
Scripture later reveals that the Garden was the special presence of God on the Earth
2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
And chapter 22 describes this city more in which it sounds just like the Garden of Genesis 2—it is clear that John is purposefully tying the end of the Scriptures to the beginning
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
They hid and were driven out because no one can be in the special presence of God with sin
They were driven east and that is why the entry way to get into the later Jewish temple was WEST—the Holy of Holies was a way to get back in the garden…by sacrifice
What’s the point that I am getting at?
The Double Rainbow Guy is a man after Adam
He has a certain awe and wonder of the creation on display in front of him
And instead of using it to worship God and spread his Kingdom—as was the original mandate for man
He weeps, what does this mean?!?!?
He knows that it means something more than itself—that there is something more he should be doing with creation
That’s because he has the covenant of works on his heart
And since he only experiences its curses, he is utterly confused and broken over such beauty
The covenant of works was a mandate to take such beauty and express God exlicitly
By nature he knows there must be more to such beauty
But since he is under the curses he is dead in sins, and dead in knowledge
Because of the mandate given to Adam, we are to use the creation of God and bring forth the knowledge and worship of God in it
But with Adam’s fall—such an identity is lost and we are left wondering, what does this all mean?
I think this helps explain the corruption of nature with the corruption of man
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
In a manner of speaking, even the creation is held under bondage because of man’s failure
Creation itself knows it is be a conduit of explicitly praise to Creator God
But man in his cursed state does not use it for this purpose
And so both man and creation is cursed
But notice the hope—(23)
Those who own this hope—are not in despair like DRG
From whence does such hope come from?
Well it started in the Garden—before any curse was given to man
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
We see such hope play out in the story even as man quickly comes so wicked
Noah was born only a little over a hundred years after Adam died
Noah was born just a few years after Seth died
But by then, the Sons of God intermingled with the daughters of men
The chosen race of the promise seed mixed with the seed of Satan and a flood is needed closely after
After the flood we get the story of Abraham to show God staying faithful to the promise of the seed to come
We see an entire race come from Abraham with the promised one singled down to Judah, and then even more to David
1 And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. 3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.
The child is born in Bethlehem—from where David came from
And this child became known as the Son of David
For he was the promise seed in the Garden
The promise started in the garden, continued in Seth, on to Noah, on to Abraham, on to Judah, singled down to a single family of David
The devil and his angels tried his best to devour the child—even utilizing the children of Abraham to try and destroy the promised one
The Jews cried for Jesus to be murdered—crucified
Not knowing that they were actually crying for the promised seed of Eve’s heel to be bruised
After his heel is bruised, the serpents head is crushed from the tomb
And that tomb is somewhere very interesting
41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.
Adam and Eve were kicked from the garden because of their sin
Jesus—the sacrifice for those sins was placed back in a garden
Remember Romans 8—referring to the corruption of man and nature itself…but there awaits hope---from whence doth come such hope?
23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
The body of Christ raised in that tomb, in that garden, three days later....and what came forth from that tomb was the hope of redemption
That through the forgiveness of sins, the people of Christ would pick up the mandate given to Adam and spread the Kingdom of God far and wide
18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
What’s terribly sad about double rainbow man
Is he should have seen that stunning display of God’s creation
As a reminder that God is the Creator of Heaven and earth
And he, as a son of Adam was meant to, was to take the knowledge of this God to the ends of the world
Bringing the garden, the special presence of God through out all the earth
Also in that rainbow
he should have been reminded that God is keeping his hands from destroying the earth again for the sake of the Second Adam
Who has come into the world to finish the work that the first Adam failed to do
And that he can be part of that work today by spreading the gospel, the kingdom of Christ to all the world
But instead, he stood there weeping,
“what does it mean?!?!?”
“It’s too much, tell me”
Praise be to God—we know what it means
The Creator of all things is even more beautiful than the greatest of sights in creation
And the point of this all is for us to praise this Creator in it
Because of sin—we are alienated from the purpose of God—from God himself
But through the promised seed, we can be forgiven of our sins, and we can praise God in his creation as we were always meant to do
Through Christ and his work and his bride, the garden of God, the temple of Christ, the Kingdom of Yahweh can spread once more
Until it is all completed in the new heavens and the new earth and we hear the blessed words “behold the dwelling place of God is with man”
and we enter into the final garden, the final city of God