The Glory of Growth

What Am I To Hope For?

Trees in a Garden

Wisdom. By eating of it, we grasp at independence from God.

Life. Denial to this tree results in the loss of immortality.

Excluded. Man has lost perfect communion with God.

Tree of Life

Sin does not prevent us from having immortality. Gen 3:22

Rather, the tree of life speaks of our destiny: we are not meant to die, but the wages of sin is death, so we are removed from the source of life.

Hope Begins

We were created as mortal beings, but the Tree of Life was the promise of living forever with God.

The potential for immortality has been denied and we must return to the dust from which we were made.

Despite this, Genesis 3 imprints hope on humanity. There is still a future with God even though sin has entered.

Hope = Change

Hope was not a thing in the garden because hope implies change, and the Creation began in its optimal state.

That which is perfect needs no change.

Sin ended the optimal state. The perfection was lost. Thus, that which is less than perfect needs to be changed.

Creation was good, but it could be better

Hope is not just for us but for all of Creation.

New realities for us are built into the hope that comes out of the Genesis narrative.

That hope was there even before sin entered into the Creation.

“Where are you?” Gen 3:9

God knows what man has done, yet He still walks in the garden and talks to His special creation. We must remember that God is holy, but He is also gracious.

God provides for Adam and Eve by providing them adequate clothing: He has not given up on humanity and He is actively seeking the best way forward for us.

God still wants to bless His Creation.

Covenants of Hope

Gen 9:16 = a covenant with all living creatures

Gen 12:1–3 = a covenant with obscure man with implications for all of humanity.

This incredible journey now focuses on one nation that does not exist in anything other than a promise. It survives childlessness, famine, danger, and poor moral characters.

But it survives because God made the promise.

If the Noahic covenant was about all living creatures, the Abrahamic covenant is about all peoples.

Exod 19:5–6 = One nation is the blessing to all nations.

Exodus 19:5–6 NKJV

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”

1 Sam 8:11–17 = Kingship becomes central to God’s plan as the journey of hope continues.

1 Samuel 8:11–17 NKJV

And he said, “This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants.

Two Kings

Saul = The king who stood against God.

David = The king who stood at God’s side. Remember that while David fought alongside God, all went well. When he didn’t, things went sour very quickly.

David was a worshipper of God before he was ever a king. God would provide the eternal king from David’s line.

All of creation, to all of humans, to Israel, and now to one Israelite through whom God would provide the blessing on the whole of Creation.

Hope Lost?

The kings of Judah fail. Like the first humans, they too go into exile.

Hope remains. It remains because God made a promise and His promises do not fail.

The prophets speak, and when they do, it is the promise of hope is what they shout the loudest.

Jerusalem: not just a city

Psa 132:13–18. Jerusalem, like Eden, is God’s dwelling place. But, it is more than a city in the middle east. The hyperbole about Jerusalem found in the Psalms speaks of more than that literal city.

Psalm 132:13–18 NKJV

For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His dwelling place: “This is My resting place forever; Here I will dwell, for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her poor with bread. I will also clothe her priests with salvation, And her saints shall shout aloud for joy. There I will make the horn of David grow; I will prepare a lamp for My Anointed. His enemies I will clothe with shame, But upon Himself His crown shall flourish.”

To the Psalmists and the Prophets, Jerusalem was much more than a city in Israel.

Ezek 36:24–27 = This is forgiveness, but it is much more: it is transformation.

Ezekiel 36:24–27 NKJV

For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.

Ezek 36:28–30; Jer 31:31–34 = Universal reconciliation.

Ezekiel 36:28–30 NKJV

Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God. I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. I will call for the grain and multiply it, and bring no famine upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of your trees and the increase of your fields, so that you need never again bear the reproach of famine among the nations.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 NKJV

“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Intimate knowledge of God.

A new day dawning.

Aliens are real

We are the aliens. First, we were alienated from God, then, we were alienated from each other.

Hope is in the redemption and reconciliation in the nations.

Resurrection

Dan 12:2 = immortality is still attainable.

Daniel 12:2 NKJV

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Job 19:26–27 = Cain’s family east of Eden could hope only for death, yet they could hope for resurrection.

Job 19:26–27 NKJV

And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, And my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

God will bring justice. His people will live before Him for all eternity.

The ending was never in doubt.

God with us

Matt 1:23 = God lives here with us, and blesses us.

Matthew 1:23 NKJV

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”

God is not somewhere else: He is right here.

We are not called to live somewhere else other than right here.

This is practicing resurrection.

Hope

It is not passive.

It keeps us going forward, living the righteous life.

It is faith’s best friend.

Hope tells us that success is possible in this life because what it promises is inevitable.

It helps us go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, resist evil, and finish the course.

Hope is love’s servant.

Philippians 3:20–21

Philippians 3:20–21 NKJV

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.

Lesson inspired by Iain W. Provan’s Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014.