It All Started In A Garden

I hope that you're enjoying this series, and that it's making you think about heaven in a new way. More specifically, I hope it's helping you to explore what the Bible actually says about heaven and not just the images that our culture offers. 

Yesterday, we explored more of what it means that heaven will actually be the new earth in the future, and I hope that makes you begin to long for it and imagine what it will be like, but to fully understand the wonderful and amazing hope of the earth being made new, we have to first understand where it all began. 

In the beginning... I'm sure you know where I'm going... God made everything and he spoke it into being. When he made the earth, it was perfect, and he proclaimed that it was good (read Genesis 1 and 2). God made mankind in his image, and he made the first woman from the first man only after giving the man a responsibility over God's creation. The first woman and the first man walked in the garden with God. It was perfect. Perfect relationships. Perfect community and communion with God. They saw God face-to-face. 

But then the serpent tempted Eve and she ate the fruit of the one tree that she was told not to eat in the garden. She offered the fruit to Adam, who ate it as well. Their minds were opened to the knowledge of good and evil, but they were now separated from God and from each other. They were filled with shame. With one choice, the first sin, their perfect relationship with God, and their perfect garden-home was lost. 

I think we're so familiar with this story that it's gravity is often lost on us. Imagine paradise, living and dwelling with the Maker of the Universe, being perfectly loved and cared for by God, enjoying daily fellowship with Him, a perfect relationship with your spouse, fruitful and rewarding toil with your work, and in one moment it is all taken away because of eating a piece of fruit that you were told not to eat. 

Paradise is lost, and it seems like there is no hope to recover it. But God has a plan, and it began in the garden and led to a cross. 

​Paradise was lost, but it will be remade.