Restoration in Christ
- Tim Cain
- Mar 20, 2010
- Series: Ephesians
Kaleo El Cajon
Ephesians 1:10
Tim Cain
March 20, 2010
We live in a broken world. All of us know this. Turn on the news for ten minutes and watch as men are abducting high school girls, earthquakes are killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of children are dying each day from preventable diseases. Not only are all these massive things true but each of us is also dealing with our own personal struggles. Struggles with family, with friends, with God, or with our health. There are times when this brokenness feels more acute than at other times. Times when this brokenness threatens to absolutely overwhelm us if we think about it too much. The fact of the matter is that things are not as they should be. As hard as we try we never seem able to find the elusive lasting joy and satisfaction that our hearts long for. Even when everything seems to be going great, deep down inside we dread the fact that we know it isn’t going to last, we know it can’t last. We throw around words like forever and yet we know they are not true. The more we have and the better our life is, the more painful things are when they finally get ripped away. We live in a broken world and we are a broken people.
I want you to know that it wasn’t always this way. It wasn’t. When God created the world it was not broken. When he made it, it was good. When God made Adam and Eve, they used to go walking with him every night in an amazing garden, that he made for them to take care of all their needs. They knew God. They walked with him and spoke to him as we speak to our friends. They didn’t pray to the air and wonder if God heard them, they talked to him, they felt his presence and they loved it. He was their father. And they loved each other. They had a perfect marriage. They never fought, never argued, never hurt each other with snide remarks, and never ignored each other because they were engrossed in something they thought was more important. They never hid anything from each other, they didn’t have to, and they were naked and unashamed. They knew everything about each other and loved it because it was all good, all beautiful, and all lovely. And they had every kind of pet you could imagine. They had a perfect relationship with every kind of animal. God says every animal was brought to Adam and he named it. Imagine that. Imagine the lion coming up to him, sitting before him, Adam puts his hand through his main, he scratches under his chin and says, ‘You shall be called lion.” And Adam and Eve’s job was a joy to do. Everything they did produced. They never worked on something that backfired, never was any of their energy thwarted. They worked, they worked in the field, they worked in the garden but they didn’t need gloves, didn’t need shoes, and didn’t even need pants because everything was soft. There were no thorns, no weeds, no sticklers, nothing to scratch them, nothing to callous their hands, everything worked together in complete and perfect unity. Seriously, can you fathom such a world? It’s hard to imagine, hard to imagine because it bears almost no resemblance to the world we live in today. Our world is broken.
So what happened? The Bible tells us we were made to worship God, to love him, to obey him, to submit to his good rules, to find in him all our joy, all our satisfaction and in him to have all of our needs met. Even Adam and Eve lived dependent upon God. He was the one who gave them each breath. And yet even though we were made to live in joyful dependence upon the good God who created us, we have severed our relationship with him. We have broken it. We have chosen to live by our own rules and try and satisfy ourselves our own way. The bible speaks of how this brokenness began in the garden. Even though the world was as perfect as I just described, it was not enough for Adam and Eve. There was one problem. They loved everything about the world except for one thing. They loved their relationship with each other, they loved their relationship with the world, they loved their work, and they loved their God. And yet there was one thing they struggled with. They had everything they could possibly want but there was one thing they were not allowed to have and they began to wonder if that one thing was even better than all that they had. One day as they were wandering around by this tree that they were told not to eat of, a serpent, one of the animals they were supposed to rule over, tempted them and told them that this tree would make them like God. He made them feel like God was holding out on them, like even though God had given them so much he wasn’t giving them everything that they should have.
Now God had told them that he had given them everything good for their joy and that this one tree was the only thing they should not eat of because in the day they ate of it they would die. So, here they were faced with the dilemma. Is it possible that God has made something beautiful that would be good for us that he won’t let us have? Or, is he being truthful and is this tree poison? Is this tree evil? Is he trying to protect us by keeping us from eating of this tree or is he holding out on us? These were the questions Adam and Eve were faced with. And somehow, against all logic, against all reason, against it all, they chose to take a chance. Their desire to be like God, to know things for themselves instead of believing what they are told, drove them to eat of the tree. And so they declared their independence from the one they depended on and brokenness entered the world. Do you see why this broke everything? They declared their independence from the very one they were dependent upon. And now they found themselves in an utterly broken position. They could not live without God, because they were dependent upon him, and yet they could no longer live with God because they had chosen to rebel and to try and make it on their own. And so this alienation, this brokenness entered the world and it not only severed their relationship with God but this brokenness pervaded every aspect of their life. It has been handed down to every generation since.
The Bible speaks of how comprehensive this brokenness is. I want to talk briefly about how every single sphere of our existence is permeated with brokenness. The first and greatest brokenness deals with our relationship with God. When God came walking in the garden, Adam and Eve could no longer walk with him. They ran and hid from him. They made garments of leaves and hid in the bushes. The perfect, joyful, satisfying Fatherhood of God had been broken and now they could no longer stand his presence. Their sin had so shamed them that they could no longer have fellowship with God since he was absolutely perfect and could have no fellowship with sin. And so they were kicked out of the garden. Even today we know this brokenness don’t we? Ephesians talks about it when it speaks of people as “Having no hope and without God.” Our severed relationship with God has made joy, peace, satisfaction, love, all of these good things impossible for those who do not have a relationship with God. Augustine rightly said, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” This broken relationship with God is at the heart of all of the brokenness in this world. The massive void we have because of this broken relationship has also destroyed our ability to rightly relate to ourselves.
You see we were made to find our joy in worshipping God. And when our relationship with him was severed, the peace that Adam and Eve once knew was replaced with “shame, fear, and a tormenting self consciousness”. Adam tells God, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” We see the results of this brokenness all around us. We were made to worship our God, to find in him our source of meaning, security, and worth. But when we reject him we find that we need to look elsewhere for these things. We lose the only true source of meaning, security, joy, and worth and instead we have to try and manufacture things to fill the massive void that is left when our relationship with him is broken. Tim Keller says, “Unhappiness, guilt, fear, loss of personal identity, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicide, sexual problems—all these stem from our loss of fellowship with God.” And so our own lives are broken. We are a broken people, an empty people, a needy people, a demanding people, a people with a massive void, a desperate hunger that simply cannot be satisfied apart from God.
And because of this massive insatiable hunger that we have all our other relationships suffer. Because we now look toward each other to fill our insatiable voids we find that we are constantly demanding too much of others and being hurt and we are constantly failing to meet the impossible demands of others and feeling ashamed. There is a book called Night by Elie Wiesel, it’s about the holocaust and one of the saddest parts of the book comes when everyone is starving in the train cars. The SS officers would throw bread into the cars and would watch the people scramble to get it. They would fight, hit, kick and even kill each other to get the bread. You see they had this hunger, this hunger that was so strong it caused them to kill their own family and friends. It blinded them to reason. It is the same for us. This massive hunger in us for God has destroyed our ability to truly love or serve each other. Instead we can only use and demand and manipulate each other to try and fill the voids in our hearts. And because others fail us and can’t fill our voids we find ourselves building up walls and losing our ability to trust. And because we know that we fail others we feel ashamed and self-conscious and no longer want anyone to truly see us because if they do we are afraid they will no longer be able to love us.
Look at Adam and Eve. As soon as Adam and Eve sinned they realized they were naked and they were ashamed. They had to hide, not just from God but from each other. You see they realized something in that moment. Adam realized that if Eve could turn on God, if Eve could rebel against God who had given her everything, who had made her and given her her very breath. If she could look upon God’s brilliance and still turn on God, than she could turn on him at any moment. And so trust was broken and they no longer felt safe with one another.
And so we see the seeds of all the brokenness that permeates our world today. All the fears, all the defensiveness, all the hatred, all the anger, all the bitterness, all the frustration, all the rage, all of it begins here. And we know that this brokenness in relationships still exists today. We talked about it a few weeks ago; we talked about the orphan spirit. The fear of getting too close, the walls we put up, the fear of being crushed again, of being let down. The fear of other people actually seeing who we are deep down inside and rejecting us. These issues are so deep that they permeate everything. And we hate the fact that all of our relationships seem so hard, so much work, and that even the people that we think we should be able to trust let us down.
Lastly, our relationship to this world has been broken. When Adam sinned the ground was cursed, so that now only reluctantly does it yield up to our hands its riches. All of our lives will be a struggle against this world to make a living and eventually the world will win for we will find ourselves buried in the ground. George Whitfield a great preacher made this point by asking his audience, “Dost thou know why the wild animals fear and growl and shriek at thee? Because they know you have a quarrel with their master.” Tim Keller says, “We may use chemicals, cosmetics, and refrigeration to hide it temporarily, but nature itself is subject to disintegration and decay. Natural disasters, famine, disease, decay, mental and physical disabilities, aging and death are the results of our broken relationship with the world.” Guys we know that things are not right in this world. We know 200,000 people are not supposed to die in earthquakes, massive waves are not supposed to crush whole cities, people are not supposed to get brain tumors; this world is not as it should be. Things are not as they once were and they are not as they ought to be. We live in a broken world. And this brokenness is pervasive. It extends to every sphere of our existence.
And we hate it. We don’t like death, we don’t like pain, we don’t like hurting others or being hurt, we don’t like the massive void in our hearts that seems to control us. The world is broken and we long for it to be fixed. Don’t we want this world to be fixed? Tell me you wish it wasn’t fixed. Tell me you wished your wife didn’t leave you, you wished your kids would listen, you wished your dad hadn’t left, you wish you didn’t have to watch those you loved get sick and die, tell me you aren’t sick of the brokenness. Right. We don’t like the brokenness.
We see this brokenness every day. I look at people in wheel chairs and I wish they could walk. I see mentally challenged people and think why? Why can’t they walk, why can’t they talk normal, why can’t they think like others? I hear of people who have been sexually abused and think why? Why did that happen, why the pain, why the brokenness, why the shame, why? Everywhere we look we see the effects of sin and they are bad, we hate them, we wish things could be back to the way they used to be. Think of a world without pain, with no more goodbyes, no more shame, no more fear, no more insecurities, no more lies, no more anxiety, no more suffering, no more loneliness, we can all imagine this world and we want it so bad. Everything in us begs for this world.
Today I have good news. Today I want you to know that God has a plan. God has a plan and in Ephesians 1:9-10 he shares this plan with us. I am going to be using a translation taken from some of the commentaries I have been reading so it will sound a little different then the ESV but I think it brings out the full meaning of the text. He tells us “In all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of times, to reunite under one head all things in Christ, the things in heaven and the things on earth in him.”
God has a plan and he has let us in on what he is doing. “God is reuniting all things under one head in Christ.” The best way to understand this is that through Christ God is fixing everything that is broken. He is fixing everything that is broken by restoring it to its rightful relationship under the headship of Jesus. Your God is going to fix everything. For all those who are in Christ, everything that is broken will be fixed, and everything will be restored. Paul is telling us that this is going to happen. It is going to happen; it is part of God’s plan. He is not surprised by the brokenness, he knows that things are in disarray and disorder right now, he is aware of it, and he is working to bring everything back together and fix it under Christ.
And have no doubt, He will succeed. Revelation 21:3-5 says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Do you hear that? The former things, the broken stuff, all of it will pass away and behold he will make everything new. That is what vs. 5 says, “And he who was seated on the throne” that means the one who is in control of everything, that one says, “Behold I am making all things new.” Listen to what he goes on to say, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of water of life without payment.” Do you remember the void that all of us have that simply can’t be filled? The insatiable void that came with our broken relationship with God. The void that has lead to all of our brokenness. That void will be filled once and for all. It will be satisfied eternally. Our relationship with God will be perfectly restored, “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”
Guys, I want you to hear what amazing news this is. God is going to win. The brokenness which feels so heavy right now is not going to last. Guys, one of the worst parts of our pain is that we feel like it is never going to end. Our suffering feels so heavy, so suffocating, our needs feel so insurmountable that we don’t really believe that they will ever end. That is why we give up. We give up because we can’t see the end. We don’t really believe that God is working everything out, even these tragedies in our life out for our good and his glory.
And so we try and fix things ourselves. We try and fix the brokenness without Christ. We try and fix our severed relationship with God by making up a God we can please. The world is full of religions where God is able to be pleased through certain acts of service. And all of us make up this sort of God and still call it Christianity. We try and fix our relationship with ourselves through medication, through eating right, through exercise, through self esteem, through psychology, we try and fix our loneliness by finding our soul mate, by pouring ourselves into a relationship thinking it will ease our pain and take away our loneliness. Guys, I want to tell you what is so sad about this. It is tragic irony. You see both God and us want the same thing, we want the world fixed, we want our void filled, we want satisfaction, we want an end to suffering, we want comfort, and these are all the things that God has promised to give us.
Hear this: we want the same things. Our God hates the broken world as much as we do and he is going to fix it. Even now he is fixing it. And in his time, in his way, for his glory he will complete it. The question is will we wait for him? Will we work with him to restore the world the way he calls us to, or will we try and do it on our own? You see when we try and fix the broken world outside of Christ, when we try and fix it in our own way, in our own time, when we refuse to trust him, to wait for him, we actually find ourselves working against him. You see when we try and fix the brokenness of the world in our own way, when we are not patient, when we choose to satisfy ourselves in things other than God, we are no longer living under the headship of Christ. And God is fixing the world, but he is fixing it under the headship of Christ. He is fixing it in Christ. And everything that is not under his headship is fighting against God. God is against everything that is not submitting to the headship of Christ. And so when we try and pursue joy, peace, comfort and satisfaction outside of God, we always fail. We always fail because we are fighting against God and fighting against God is always futile. It is so tragic because God wants to give us the very things we long for. He plans on giving us all that we desire, he plans on giving us more joy then we could ever ask or imagine. He plans on filling, once and for all, the massive void in our hearts; the issue is simply will we trust him? Will we believe that he is for us, that his way is best, or will we, like Adam and Eve before us, believe that he is holding out on us and try and fix everything on our own?
The Bible has a sweet story that gives us a picture of this dilemma. You can read it yourself this week in Acts 27. Paul is a prisoner on a boat, they were getting ready to sail for Rome and Paul warns them not to set sail but to wait for the winter to pass. The people vote however and decide to leave anyway. Because they disobey him and do not heed his counsel, a huge storm comes up and it devastates the ship. They throw over almost all their cargo. Listen to verses 18-20. However, Paul tells them that God has promised that he will protect them if they will listen to him. Fourteen days go by; the people have not eaten anything. Things are getting really bad and the sailors feel like they could get to land if they take the lifeboats, so they begin to lower the lifeboats. But Paul tells the soldiers, “No, no the sailors need to stay on the ship. If the sailors do not stay on the ship we cannot be saved.”
So the soldiers are faced with a dilemma. Do they trust Paul and stay on the ship or do they join the sailors on the lifeboats and leave the prisoners on the ship? What should they do? The soldiers decide to trust God. And so they actually cut the ropes for the life boats. There was no going back now. No leaving the ship now. And then Paul does a strange thing. In the midst of the storm, this storm where everyone feels like there is no possible escape, Paul takes out the food and breaks bread and gives thanks and urges everyone to eat. He says in vs. 34, “Therefore I urge you to take some food. For it will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you.” And when he had said these things, he took bread and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat. Then they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves.” Do you see that? In the midst of a storm, after cutting the lifeboats away, they ate. They gave up trying to save themselves and simply said, “God is going to save us and we will celebrate even in the midst of the storm, for we know that God will save us.” Isn’t that amazing?
That is how our God is calling us to live. He is calling us to cut off the life boats, to give up trying to fix ourselves and instead to trust him. To trust him in the midst of the storms of life. They rejoice even in suffering because we know that God is fixing everything. To truly believe that our present suffering is “light and momentary and is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” Our God is calling us to trust him. Yes our world is broken but he is fixing it and he is fixing it by restoring it all to its rightful place under the headship of Jesus. So we need to cut our life boats, to give up trying to satisfy ourselves in our own time and in our own way and instead to give ourselves to God. To trust that he is at work, that he is going to fix everything, that there is safety and joy in trusting him. In following him. In gazing upon his beauty and trusting that he knows what he is doing.
And we can trust him. We can trust him because he has proven himself trustworthy. Since the beginning of time people have been trying to fix this world and none has ever succeeded. Lives have been spent trying to find the fountain of youth, trying to cure diseases, trying to alleviate suffering and yet the world is still broken, people still die, and no one has discovered anything to fix this brokenness. A brokenness that we have all brought on ourselves. Like the sailors brought the storm on themselves because they refused to listen to Paul, so we have refused to listen to our God and have brought the brokenness on ourselves. However, God has a plan and his plan is to restore all things under the headship of Christ. But how? How on earth is God planning on fixing this brokenness, this brokenness that we have brought upon ourselves?
The Bible tells us that in the fullness of time, the same fullness of time spoken of in Ephesians, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive the adoption as sons.” You see in the fullness of time God sent his son Jesus. And Jesus came and he took on human flesh. And he experienced all the pain, all the suffering, all the brokenness that we experience except without sinning himself. And then he went to the cursed cross. He went to the cursed cross to bear our curse. You see on the cross Jesus bore all our brokenness. He bore our broken relationship with God when the Father turned his back on him and Jesus cried, “My God my God why have you forsaken me.” He bore our broken relationship with ourselves when he felt the emptiness of God forsaking him. When he felt the shame of being naked upon the cross. And when he cried out to those around the cross saying “I Thirst.” He bore our thirst, that insatiable thirst that is left because of our broken relationship with God. He bore our broken relationship with others as he experienced the pain and loneliness of rejection when one of his disciples betrayed him; another denied him three times and the rest fled. And he bore the brokenness of our relationship with nature as the thorns that our sin created were used to pierce his head. When the nails tore through his flesh and his lungs collapsed under the weight of his body. He bore our curse as he bled and died and was buried in a tomb. You see Jesus is able to fix everything that is broken because he bore all the brokenness that we deserved in his body on the cross. He bore it all. That is why we can trust him. That is how we can know that he is going to fix everything.
He didn’t die for the fun of it. He didn’t die simply to be some example to us on how to live. He died to fix everything and through his death and resurrection he has paid the price to redeem all things and reunite them under his headship. At the cross he paid the price. And at the cross we see how God is able to use sin for his glory and our good. You see at the cross we get a glimpse of why God made the world the way he did. We will never have all the answers but we do know that there are things about God that could only be seen at the cross. You see Adam knew God loved him, he knew God loved him because he had made him out of nothing and gave him everything he needed. He knew he was loved. And yet he could not comprehend how much he was loved. What did it cost God to make Adam? It cost him six days of his time, it cost him one of his breaths, it didn’t cost much did it? What is six days to an eternal God? But it did cost him something to fix everything. It cost him the blood of his beloved son to fix everything. Guys we have the privilege of knowing and seeing the love of God in ways that can only be known because of our sin. The brokenness of our world, which we have caused, has been redeemed by God to demonstrate the depths of his love. We see the depths of the love of God at the cross. We see what a genius he is to figure out how to fix the mess we made. We see how patient he is to look over the sins of his people in the Old Testament until he would pay for them through his son. We see how rich in grace he is as we contemplate the massive distance between what we deserve and what he paid in order to redeem us. Oh the riches of his grace revealed at the cross.
My friends praise God for he is going to fix this broken world and for all eternity we will live knowing his love in ways only a God who bore our hell in his own body on the cross could show us. What a wise God. What plans he has. Oh how powerful, how wise, how amazing that he is able to work all things out, even our sin, even this broken world for his glory. And so we know that we can trust our God. We don’t have to try and fix our brokenness alone but instead we can run to the Gospel. In the Gospel our brokenness is fixed. In the Gospel it is all paid for.
And so God is calling us to be a people who run to him to fix our brokenness and fill our massive voids. We are to be a people who seek our joy, our peace, and our satisfaction in him. As the Psalmist calls to God, so we are to call out saying, “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love.” Guys, even though we live in a broken world we can rejoice. We can eat and be encouraged like those sailors, for we know that our God has bore our brokenness in his body on the cross and he is in the process of fixing everything. We can know that. And so we join him. As a people we are to be a different type of community. We are to be a restored community. The church is to be a place where God’s restoration is beginning to take place. We are to be a community that is being fixed. Oh we have not arrived and we will not completely arrive until our savior comes again and totally fixes us. But as a church we are to be a people who fight to restore broken things under the headship of Jesus.
We are to be a people who are reconciled to God through Jesus and who are ministers of this reconciliation to a lost world. We are to tell people that they can know God; they can be adopted through Christ. We are also to be a people who are restoring our broken relationships with ourselves. WE are to be a people who find their identity in being children of God. We are to find a peace amidst the storms of life as we put our trust in him. We are to find meaning and satisfaction in knowing and loving and worshiping our God. In him we are supposed to find our inner person restored to its proper place as a dependant, joyful worshiper of God.
We are to be a people who fight to restore our relationships with others. We fight to restore broken relationships through the Gospel. Because of the Gospel we don’t have to hide from each other. We can admit our sins and confess them to each other. Because Jesus has forgiven us we are able to forgive others, because he loved us while we were yet sinners we are able to love each other even when people mistreat us. We are to be a place of reconciliation. A place where diverse people come together to worship our God. A place where enemies become friends through forgiveness.
We are also to be a place where our broken relationship with the world is restored. We are to be a people who lovingly seek to provide for each other’s needs. We are to work to make sure that our people are eating, that they have what they need to survive. We are to be a people who no longer fear death but are able to sacrifice for others knowing that because our savior was raised up from the dead we too will be raised from the dead. We are to be a community that is able to rejoice and celebrate even amidst the devastating brokenness of our world. Because we know that we have been redeemed and soon we will live for all eternity in a world without brokenness with the God who gave his only son to fix it.
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