Homesick For Eden
Homesick for Eden
Excerpted from “Plenteous Redemption”
Sermon #351
Delivered on Sabbath evening, December 16, 1860, at Exeter Hall, Strand
People are not the only ones who suffer under the Curse; the Earth itself experiences the devastation of the Fall in the form of thorns, blights, and disasters of every kind. But one day Christ will come to restore the Earth to its rightful state. Then it will no longer groan in the pains of childbirth but will live in joyful celebration of its new life, which will never again be taken from it.
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. Genesis 3:18-19
After the first humans sinned, God cursed the Earth.
When Christ came into the world, evil people twisted a crown made of the cursed thorn and put it on his head and made him king of the Curse, and in that day he purchased the redemption of the world from its curse. I believe, and I think it is warranted by Scripture, that when Christ shall come a second time, this world will become everywhere as fertile as the Garden of Paradise used to be.
I believe that the Sahara, the literal desert, shall one day blossom like Sharona and rejoice like the garden of the Lord. I do not conceive that this poor world is to be a forlorn planetary wanderer forever.
Once mighty creatures far different from ours stalked through the Earth, and I firmly believe that luxurious vegetation such as this world once knew shall be restored to us and that we shall see again a garden such as we have not known—one no more cursed with blight and mildew, with no more parched withering. We shall see a land like Heaven itself—
Where everlasting spring abides, And never withering flowers.b
When Christ returns he shall do this.
In the day of the Fall, too, animals for the first time received their ferocious temperament and began to fall on each other. If I read Scripture rightly, I find that the wolf shall lie down with the kid, and that the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and that the weaned child shall put his hand on the serpent’s den. I do believe that in the millennial years that are coming, and coming soon, there shall be known no more devouring lions, no bloodthirsty tigers, no creatures that shall devour their kind. God shall restore to us again, and even to the beasts of the field, the blessing which Adam lost.
And, my friends, there is a worse curse than that which has fallen on this world. It is the curse of ignorance and sin. That, too, is to be removed.
See that planet? It is whirling along through space—bright and glorious. Hear the morning stars sing together because this globe is made their new sister? That is the Earth; she is bright now.
See that shadow sweep across her? What caused it? The planet is dimmed, and on her path there lies a sorrowful shadow. I am speaking, of course, metaphorically. See there the planet; she glides along in dark night. The day has not come when that planet shall renew her glory, but it is hurrying full speed.
As the serpent escapes its swamp and leaves it behind, so that planet has slipped its clouds and shone forth bright as it was before. Do you ask who has done it? Who has cleared away the mist? Who has taken away the darkness? “I have done it,” says Christ, the Sun of righteousness. “I have scattered darkness and made that world bright again.”
Look, I see a New Heaven and a New Earth, where righteousness dwells. This world is now covered with sin, ignorance, mistakes, idolatry, and crime. The day is coming when the last drop of blood shall be drunk by the sword. God shall cause wars to cease to the ends of the Earth. The day is coming—oh, that it were now!—when the feet of Christ shall tread this Earth. Then down shall go idols from their thrones, down superstitions from their pinnacles; then slavery shall cease; then crime shall end; then peace shall spread its tranquil wings over all the world. And then shall you know that Christ has died for the world and that Christ has won it.
“The whole creation,” says Paul, “has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22). Groaning for what? Groaning and waiting for the redemption, when this world shall be washed of all her sin. Her curse shall be removed, her stains taken away, and this world shall be as fair as when God first formed her from his mind, as when, like a glowing spark, forged from the anvil by the eternal hammer she first flashed in her orbit. This Christ has redeemed; this Christ shall most assuredly redeem.
We are homesick for Eden. We’re nostalgic for what is implanted in our hearts. It’s built into us, perhaps at a genetic level. We long for what the first man and woman once enjoyed—a perfect and beautiful Earth and free and unstained relationships with God, one another, animals, and the environment. Every attempt at human progress has been an attempt to overcome what was lost in the Fall. If God’s plan were merely to take mankind to the present Heaven or to a Heaven that is the dwelling place of spirit beings, there would be no need for new heavens and a New Earth. Why refashion the stars of the heavens and the continents of the Earth? God could just destroy his original creation and put it all behind him. But that is not his plan.
Upon creating the heavens and the Earth, God called them “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Never once has he renounced his claim on what he made. He isn’t going to abandon his creation; he’s going to restore it. We won’t go to Heaven and leave Earth behind. Rather, God will bring Heaven and Earth together into the same dimension, with no wall of separation, no armed angels to guard Heaven’s perfection from sinful mankind (Genesis 3:24). God’s perfect plan is “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Ephesians 1:10, NIV).
Albert Wolters says, “Redemption is not a matter of an addition of a spiritual or supernatural dimension to creaturely life that was lacking before; rather, it is a matter of bringing new life and vitality to what was there all along. . . . The only thing redemption adds that is not included in the creation is the remedy for sin, and that remedy is brought in solely for the purpose of recovering a sinless creation. . . . Grace restores nature, making it whole once more.”c
We have never seen the Earth as God made it. Our planet as we know it is a shadowy, halftone image of the original. But it does whet our appetites for the New Earth, doesn’t it? If the present Earth, so diminished by the Curse, is at times so beautiful and wonderful and if our bodies, so diminished by the Curse, are at times overcome with a sense of the Earth’s beauty and wonder, then how magnificent will the New Earth be?
Spurgeon speaks eloquently of what awaits this Earth: “Her curse shall be removed, her stains taken away, and this world shall be as fair as when God first formed her from his mind.”
Earth cannot be delivered from the Curse by being destroyed. It can be delivered only by being resurrected. Christ’s resurrection is the forerunner of our own, and our resurrection will be the forerunner of the Earth’s.
a The Plain of Sharon is a coastal area in Israel near the Mediterranean Sea. It was known in biblical times as being particularly fertile.
b From the hymn “There Is a Land of Pure Delight,” by Isaac Watts, 1707.
c Wolters, Creation Regained, 58–59.
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