The Restoration of Creation
NKJ Romans 1:2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
Attention: You are looking in the newspaper for an apartment to rent. In one of the ads it says, “Beautiful Apartment for rent 2 BR, 1 Bath w/ Jacuzzi, Large LR and Kitchen Area $200 per month/ great condition.” You think hhm... this is strange so you call the number. A man answers and you set a time to see the apartment. You go to the address he gave you and stop at this run down old building painted bright pink. There is trash all over the ground out in front of the building.
The man comes and takes you inside. You walk up 4 flights of stairs. You can’t tell what it looks like because none of the lights work and the windows are boarded up, but it doesn’t smell good. The man opens the door to the apartment and the smell gets worse. You step into the livingroom and rats scurry under the sofa.
The man says, You will really like the Jacuzzi. But it will be a few weeks before we get the water running so you can use it. You say, I am not going to rent this. This place needs fixed up majorly.
The man says, I doesn’t need fixed up it is fine just the way it is.
Need: That would be a weird situation wouldn’t it? But did you know that it happens everyday? We live in a really messed up world, where everything is going wrong and people say it is okay and it is normal.
Bridging Sentence: But God doesn’t see it that way and Christians shouldn’t see it that way. In Romans 1 Paul doesn’t see it that way.
Turn to Romans 1
Paul in Romans 1:1 explains to the Romans who he is as a Christian and as he is explaining who he is he tells us what it means to be a real Christian. Remember two weeks ago I talked about this and said that it isn’t enough to just say that you are a Christian. A real Christian is a submissive slave called to special service.
Verse 2 builds on that. Verse 2 tells us about the special service that God is calling people to.
Romans 1:1-2 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
Textual Idea: Paul and the prophets were part of God’s plan of restoration for his creation.
Sermon Idea: God uses people to restore his creation.
Interrogative: How does God use people to restore His Creation?
Sermon Division 1: The Restoration Of Creation
Explanation: The word ‘gospel’ mean ‘good news’. Paul says that all down through history God has been giving us this ‘good news’. This ‘good news’ is about God’s restoration of creation.
Illustration: This news is not new. It goes all the way back to creation and actually before creation. Revelation 13:8 says that before creation God knew that man would mess everything up, so He had a plan of how to restore it. God knew that the Garden of Eden would not last when He created it. But God created it anyways knowing that everything would go wrong.
The Garden of Eden gives us a picture of what should be. God created the Garden of Eden and said, “It is good.” But sin in man caused everything to go bad. It didn’t cause just man to go bad. It caused all of creation to go bad. Things were no longer the way God had made them to be. Romans 8:22 says that all creation is suffering because of man’s sin.
God didn’t plan for this world to have all the pollution that it does. God didn’t plan for our streets to be full of trash. God didn’t plan for buildings to be rundown and filthy. God didn’t plan for animals to kill each other. Nothing in creation is the way that it is supposed to be. Do you ever look around you and realize that things aren’t the way that they should be? We have trashed our world. God made it good but because of sin it is getting worse and worse, uglier and uglier.
I am going to explain to you the good news, but you must also know the bad news. Walk the streets. Look at the trash. Look at the rundown buildings that is the bad news. Creation is ruined because of man.
But there is worse news that you will see when you walk the streets. You will see it in the people. Hundreds and thousands of people you could meet and all of them with problems and sin. Lots of crime, lots of hate, and lots of sin. You can see the bad news in yourself too. Day after day you live with your problems and your sin. Is how God created us? Is this how we are supposed to be? No. God created man and said, “They are very good.” We sinned and we have trashed our world and ourselves. That is bad news.
Argumentation: All through history God has been saying, “I am going to restore my Creation.” He used prophets to tell this ‘ good news’ to His people. That is the ‘good news’. God is going to restore His Creation. He is working at it right now. He has been working at it ever since the fall. God’s going to fix everything. God doesn’t want to only restore man and leave him in a messed up world. He is going to change everything in time.
Application: However, now the most important part of the restoration of creation is you. People messed up the creation in the beginning and people will mess it up again if they aren’t restored. Just as trashed as the streets are, we are. People are not the ‘very good’ people that God created. We have gotten ‘very bad’. There is a lot that needs to change in our lives.
The ‘good news’ of God in Romans says, “You can be forgiven and you can be changed.” It say, “You can be free from sin, be restored in this world, and made ready for the world to come. God wants to restore our lives, but we are not forced to let it happen.
Next Sundays Sermon Division 2: People’s Part in the Plan
