GOD’S WORD FOR OCTOBER 1 ~ ~ Psalm 8:6-9 ~ ~ “You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen—
Even the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea
That pass through the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth!”
From the book, “We Shall See God”
Part 2 of “God as Master Artist”
ALCORN:
I resonate with Spurgeon’s story of the great artist whose son says he won’t look at his father’s paintings because he wants to think only of his father. There is a false spirituality among some believers who say, “We must love God, not His gifts.” and “We must worship the Creator, not His creation.” They have forgotten the very purpose of God’s gifts and what He created—to reveal His greatness to us! As Spurgeon says, we should look for God in what He has made and praise Him for it.
If we take literally the earthly depictions of life on the new earth, we can make a direct connection between our current lives and our future in heaven. When I’m eating with people here, enjoying food and friendship, it’s a bridge to when I’ll be eating there, enjoying food and friendship at the banquet table God has prepared for us (Revelation 19:9), this isn’t making a blind leap into a shadowy afterlife; it’s just taking a few natural steps in the light Scripture has given us.
Every joy on earth—including the joy of reunion—is an inkling, a whisper of greater joy. The Grand Canyon, the Alps, the Amazon rain forests, the Serengeti Plain are but rough sketches of the new earth.
All our lives we’ve been dreaming of the new earth. Whenever we see the beauty in water, wind, flower, deer, man, woman, or child, we catch a glimpse of heaven.;. Just like the Garden of Eden, the new earth will be a place of sensory delight, breathtaking beauty, satisfying relationships and personal joy.
“God Himself prepared mankind’s first home on earth. “Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there He put the man He had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food” (Genesis 2:8-9)
The phrase “planted a garden” shows God’s personal touch, His intimate interest in the creative details of our earthly home. If He prepared Eden so carefully and lavishly for the first people in the six days of creation, imagine what He has fashioned in the place He has been preparing for us in the two thousand years since Jesus ascended from this world!
Just as Eden is our backward-looking reference point, the New Earth is our forward-looking reference point. Notice the Earth’s restoration to Eden–like qualities prophesied in these passages:
“Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places and her wilderness He will make like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and sound of a melody” (Isaiah 51:3)
They will say, “This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.” (Ezekiel 36:35)
“Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree. (Isaiah 55:13)
Once we understand that all we love about the old earth will be ours on the new earth—either in the same form or another—we won’t regret leaving all the wonders of the world we’ve seen or not seen. Why? Because we will yet be able to see them!!
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John 1:3
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
John 14:3-4
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.”
Revelation 21:3
And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.
He stretches out the north over empty space;
He hangs the earth on nothing.