Where is God?

Welcome to apocalypse. Not The-pocalypse, just A-pocalypse. Some people get all excited and start comparing the book of Revelation with newspaper headlines. Except they usually call it Revelations, with an “s.” It’s Revelation. As in The one and only Revelation of Jesus Christ. We’re not supposed to play end times bingo with the news, trying to figure out when Jesus is coming back. No one knows the hour except for the Father in heaven and He ain’t talking. Our job is to be ready and to wait patiently. Faithfully. With hope.

So, as I’m standing here all alone in my office talking to a camera, because the whole world is in some version of quarantine—welcome to A-pocalypse. It’s so weird.

I was thinking the other day that this whole thing is like the worst zombie movie ever. It’s like, there are all these rumors of people getting infected and turning into Chinese zombies and Italian zombies—so the scientists at the CDC and the president issue warnings and shut everything down, make people stay home—tell us to wash our hands with soap. But we look out the window and we don’t see any zombies. And for some reason everyone gets really worried about how they’re gonna wipe their butt. Some redneck in a Dodge Charger starts getting crazy saying, “If this is a zombie apocalypse, I better start seeing some zombies!”

I don’t want anyone to get sick, and I certainly don’t want anyone to die—but that’s what this C19 thing seems like so far. I hope it stays that way.

This invisible threat is a pretty good picture of sin, though. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. We’re all infected. We’re all born sinners and unless we’re saved by grace through faith in Jesus, we’re gonna die in our sin. But people are like, “Nah, I don’t think sin is a real problem. The Church has exaggerated the issue. I don’t see any wages of sin, I don’t see any dead people.” So people ignore the warnings, and live their life as if it doesn't matter and God doesn’t exist. 

Another way that this COVID-19 crisis is like a zombie apocalypse, is how the real danger is the way people react to it. In The Walking Dead TV show, we learn pretty quick that the living are far more dangerous than the dead. Willing to murder for a 9 pack of Charmin, forcing people to make their own soap like a hippy. As deadly as the virus is, our overreaction, our panic and anger—our stupidity is just as deadly and destructive. Stop buying all the frozen vegetables, people! Since when do people eat so many green beans?

Whether we want to believe it or not, the real threat to human life is sin. The sin we were all born infected with, and the sinful ways that we continue to harm each other and deny the God who made us. We ignore God at great risk to ourselves and everyone we love. I think it’s very much like the situation we’re all facing with this Coronavirus pandemic. We need to pay attention to God’s warning and turn back to Him.

Let’s turn to Him now as we get started with this today: Father in heaven, have mercy on us. Hear our cries and answer our prayers. Please don’t hide from us. Lead us away from sin, and help us turn back to You. Restore to us the joy of our salvation, give us hope and peace, heal us and give us new life. In Christ’s name. AMEN

We’ve been in a series called IN THE BEGINNING, where we’re looking at the first few chapters of the Bible through the lens of Jesus. A bunch of us are reading the Bible from cover to cover this year and it’s important to understand that it all points to Jesus, it’s all about Him. 

So, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, He created everything, then in chapter two we zoom in on a particular aspect of that creation. The place where He’s going to locate His gifts for mankind—the place where He’s going to be present.

I called this sermon “Where is God?” The Sunday school answer to that question is, “He’s everywhere.” And that’s true, God is omnipresent, He’s everywhere. But that’s not very helpful when we’re looking for Him. That’d be like a fish looking for water while swimming around in the ocean. God makes it easy for us, though, He tells us where we can find Him.

Genesis 2:8-17 “Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground—trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. …

(Then it talks about a massive river that flows from Eden to provide water for the garden.)

Verse 15: The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” 

So He created the expanse of the heavens and the whole earth, then He made this smaller area called Eden where, in the eastern part of it, He planted a garden to be the place where Adam would live. It says the Garden was in Eden, a smaller place within the larger Eden. This was going to be the location of God’s gifts. It’s where God would meet Adam and walk with Him. It’s where He would provide food and drink for him.

God’s gifts and the promise of His presence are always located in specific places. Throughout the Bible we see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others building altars in specific places to worship God. Then God has Moses build the Tabernacle and that was the place where they would come to pray and worship. Later, Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem—which became the place where God promised to hear their prayers and accept their worship. 

God doesn’t want His people just walking around looking for Him everywhere, even though He is everywhere. He wants us to know where to find Him.

So where has God promised to be for us? Where is God?

There’s only one place. You won’t find Him anywhere else you look. The only place God is available to mankind is in Christ. There is no God for man outside of Christ. Jesus became flesh and Tabernacled among us. He is the true and living Temple. The image of the invisible God. 

People talk about how they can worship God anywhere. They say they feel closer to God in nature than they do in church. God is everywhere, so why do they need to show up somewhere on Sunday morning?

Because even though God is everywhere, He has promised to be located in a specific place. He instructed us to worship Him in a specific location. It’s not a mountain or a physical Temple—because of Christ, He promises to be where His people gather in His name. Also, when it says in the New Testament that

“you are the Temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

it’s a plural “you.” All you people together are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. It’s a communal thing.

“Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.” (Matthew 18:20)

When we gather around His Word and His promises, the place where we find His gifts, that’s where God promises to be. So where do you think that is? The place where we find baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the preaching of His Word, where we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with other Christians… Where is it that people gather in Jesus’ name?

Remember all this the next time you’re tempted to forsake the gathering of the saints.

The church gathers in Christ, preferably in person with other Christians. But this morning we are gathered in Christ online, in our various homes. We are the people of God in Christ. This isn’t an obstacle for Him. When we’re gathered in His name, it transcends time and space—there’s a sense that every time we worship, we are worshiping with all the saints who have ever lived, and all the saints who WILL ever live, in the presence of God. In a mysterious way, this morning we are not only assembled in a very real way as the people of NewChurch, but we’re also located in Christ before the throne of heaven with believers from every denomination and church and tribe and tongue and nation and generation—from Adam to our grandchildren to their descendants until the end of time. We worship in Christ. That’s the location.

Throughout the Old Testament, the location of worship was the city of God, Jerusalem, also called Zion and the mountain of the Lord—it’s where the Temple was, the place where God’s presence was to be found on the earth. It’s interesting to me that throughout the Bible Jerusalem is referred to in Eden-like terms. Like Isaiah 51:3 for example, where it says,

“The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.”

Eden continues to be a reference to the place where God promises to dwell with man on the earth. 

In the beginning there was a perfect garden in Eden, and in Revelation we have a beautiful garden city described as the place where God will live with His people forever. 

In 1 Corinthians 15 St Paul calls Jesus the second Adam. In Romans 5 he says that by one man sin came into the world and by one man, namely Jesus, righteousness and grace and life came to everyone who believes in Him. 

Sometimes people say they don’t believe in original sin. They don’t think Adam’s sin has anything to do with them. But if you don’t get that original sin came from the first Adam, you’re not gonna get that righteousness comes from the second Adam. It’s the same idea. By one man death came into the world and by one man’s dying and rising came life.

Here’s something kinda mind-blowing. I said that Jerusalem was described in Eden-like terms throughout the Bible. Then Jesus kept saying He had to be crucified in Jerusalem—couldn’t be anywhere else. The place He was crucified was just outside the city on a hill called Golgotha, right? Which means “the place of the skull.” Do you know why it was called “the place of the skull?” This is so cool.

Jerusalem was always connected to Eden. And Eden was the place where death came into the world through Adam. The skull that Golgotha refers to is Adam’s skull—as if he was buried there in Eden—just outside the garden. Christ died on the hill named after the skull of the man who brought death into the world, so that He could rise from death and bring the promise of everlasting life.

I got that from a guy named Chad Bird when he was talking about early church fathers. Those guys noticed some heavy stuff. 

He also said, “We gain more in Christ than we ever lost in Adam.” That’s something to consider. “We gain more in Christ than we ever lost in Adam.” 

Let’s talk about those trees in Eden. The mysterious Tree of Life and the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

God put Adam in a garden and the first thing He was concerned about was what Adam was going to eat. Hunger and thirst are at the very core of what it means to be human. Apparently, Adam would have been hungry and thirsty before the fall. So He put him in a garden with a bunch of trees that produced food and a mighty river. This is a picture of the Gospel.

It’s a picture of how the Gospel works every time we get hungry or thirsty. 

We don’t generate our own food. We are not self-sufficient. Our life is sustained by food and drink, and those things have to come from outside us. Every time your stomach growls, let that be a sermon about how the Gospel works. You can’t make your own righteousness, you can’t save yourself. It has to come from outside you, it has to come from Jesus. Is it any wonder that Jesus made bread and wine the means of His grace and forgiveness for the strengthening of our life and faith?

So, there was this whole “garden of yes” and one tree of “no.” The fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden. It was right there in the middle of the garden as a reminder that God was God, and man was not. This was actually a gift to them. This was the place where they could go to remember God’s Word and worship Him—simply by not eating the fruit. It was called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because once they ate its fruit, they were going to learn the good they had lost and the evil they had gained. Evil only happens one way, it’s what happens when we disobey God.

God gives us commands as a blessing for us. His law is good, we aren’t, but His commands are. Thank God for the Gospel and forgiveness.

The other tree that was in the middle of the Garden was The Tree of Life. Tree of life, tree of death. After Adam and Eve sinned God had a little inner Trinitarian conversation:

“Then the Lord God said, “Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!” So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis 2:22-23 

That’s quite an image. Terrifying. But there is kindness and mercy at the heart of it.

In The Walking Dead TV show, the whole world had been infected with some kind of virus that when you die, you come back to life as a zombie. They seem like pretty miserable creatures. Walking around moaning and hungering and thirsting for flesh. They don’t die, they just live on and on in misery. One of my favorite characters was a guy named Hershel, he was a Christian and one time he was talking about all the miserable zombies when he said, “I can't profess to understand God's plan, but Christ promised a resurrection of the dead. I just thought he had something a little different in mind.”

I think this is kind of like what God was talking about when He said, “What if they eat the fruit from the Tree of Life? Then they’ll live forever.” Like this. Dying. Growing old. Aches and pains and hunger and thirst that they’ll never be able to satisfy. I think God was protecting them from that. 

Someday, you and me and everyone we know will die. That’s okay. Jesus died and then He rose from the dead. There couldn’t be a resurrection without a death. It’s the same for us. There can’t be a new life until the old life passes away. Jesus said in John 12:24 that

“unless a seed is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.”

He was talking about His own death and resurrection. St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22

“So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.”

And in verse 42 he says,

“Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength.”

We gain more in Christ than we ever lost in Adam. Every Christian cemetery is a garden. Every Christian is planted in weakness but will be raised in glory.

And that Tree of Life isn’t lost. We see it again in Ezekiel 47 when he paints a picture of the salvation that comes through the Messiah. And we see it again in the final chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, this is truly amazing:

“Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations.

No longer will there be a curse upon anything. For the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there, and his servants will worship him. And they will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads. And there will be no night there—no need for lamps or sun—for the Lord God will shine on them. And they will reign forever and ever.”

That, my friends, is The-pocalypse. That’s how this whole thing ends. Not only this C19 outbreak, and the economic fallout. This is how it all ends. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Gospel. This is our hope. This is where God is, and it’s where all who are in Christ will be, you and me, now and forever. AMEN