Measure Upon Measure – Sorrow – The Restoration Of God - Part 7 Series

MEASURE UPON MEASURE – SORROW – THE RESTORATION OF GOD - Part 7

CHAPTER 4 - THE FOURTH CONSEQUENCE

Are we not continually bombarded through television and magazines with a variety of advertisements showing groups of people smiling and laughing, seemingly with the world at their feet? What the advertisers are trying to convey is the desire in the viewers “to be like them.” Just too much of this is merely stage managed, for in actual fact, deep down, so many of these people are basically unhappy. In this regard the viewers are more like the actors than they realise. Movie stars, whom many fans idolise, are among the saddest of all and live a life of prescribed drugs and “recreational drugs” and alcohol just to keep going, but for their image they continue to present that effervescent face to the world. But all is a pretence.

Politicians love to be all-engaging when the cameras are on them but many of them in their private lives go home to face their own demons, to use a world expression. You have heard the expression, “Drown your sorrows in drink,” or something similar. Everyone in this world faces sadness and sorrow, but there is a vastly different understanding of that for the Christian and the non-Christian, that we shall discuss later.

Among the revealing insights from a few of the world’s great men come these: The poet Lord Byron lived a life of pleasure but afterwards admitted, “The worm, the canker, and the grief are mine alone.” Lord Beaconsfield enjoyed his share of position and fame. He wrote, “ Youth is a mistake; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.” These two men reflect something of the sadness and futility clothing the human race. Sorrow and lack of purpose are universal.

SERENITY RUINED

In the Edenic tranquility, how much sadness and regret was there; how many spilt tears; how many moods of sorrowful depression; how much pretence? Well, there was none. Husband and wife lived without any pain of suffering. There was none in their relationship, none in their bodies, for nothing hurtful was present.

How dramatically all this was reversed because of the sinful act of disobedience. We are now to look at THE FOURTH CONSEQUENCE OF MAN’S FALL, part of Serenity Ruined, and we find it in {{Genesis 3:16. To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply YOUR PAIN IN CHILDBIRTH. In pain you shall bring forth children; yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”}}

That was an interesting comment to Eve about multiplying her pain in childbirth because she had not given birth to start with and so had no idea of pain in that regard. In fact there had not been any conception otherwise her first child would have been conceived and born without sin and that was not the case. As I understand that verse, there would have been some pain in childbirth if sin had not entered, for it says, “I will greatly MULTIPLY your pain.”

This verse specifically addresses the woman, and in essence, all women. There is promised to them sorrow or pain in childbirth and to that fact all mothers can testify to a greater or lesser extent. God is tagging a reminder in all births, of the fact of sin and the consequence of it. Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28) and it would be logically supposed that childbirth would have had little pain but for the deceitful entry of sin into God’s paradise.

SIN’S RESULTS

Sorrow though has no limited confinement merely to childbirth. It rapidly spread throughout all locations of mankind and through all avenues of life. Hurt, pain, grief and sorrow are all aspects in full operation and display in every part of human endeavour and daily living. Sorrow has matured beyond the immediate introduction of the pain concept in childbirth. It is part of the curse. This world is teeming with sorrowful people but you can’t pick that by looking at them.

How sorrow has afflicted every life, and the fingers of pain and grief have touched countless numbers of human beings time and time again. So ingrained is sorrow and pain and grief that they are accepted normally as one of the various human emotions, and we have divorced sorrow in particular from any relationship to the fall, yet we must be reminded of its origin so it can be placed in its proper perspective. Understanding brings awareness and reason and then can progress to solution. Humanists have no solution at all but compound the problem.

(a). Sorrow entered the lives of mankind through Eve and Adam but the nation that bore the direct line to Jesus Christ, has tasted of frequent sorrow more than any other people through history. The developing Jewish nation suffered under an unjust Pharaoh, and amidst the infanticide, the ongoing groaning and sorrow was not unnoticed by God. They suffered at the hands of their enemies frequently, often a chastisement for their sin in departing from the good intention of Jehovah toward them. There was terrible sorrow inflicted by the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, with pillage, rape and death, at the fall of Jerusalem. Rebellion after rebellion almost drowned the sorrowful nation under the Romans until in AD 70, the estimate is that over 1 000 000 Jews were executed by the Romans (many of these being crucifixions).