Welcome to the audio ministry of God-Centered Universe with Pastor Timothy Phan. The following sermon was preached at Genesis Family Church in Denver, Colorado. Please join us as we open the Bible and continue trembling joyfully at God's Word. O Holy Father in heaven. We pray this morning with your servant, David. Make haste, O God. Come quickly, make haste and come to us. Lord, we need you to draw near to us quickly. Father, there are those who seek to hurt your children. They're seeking out the evil and the hurt of your people. Lord, we pray for your justice, your righteousness, your intervention. We pray that when little tiny babies and children are taken away from their parents simply because they're Christians, we pray that you would intervene and bring your justice and restore those children to their parents. Lord, we pray for our suffering family around the world, so many paying such a dear price for the gospel, and so many orphans and so many widows. because of the persecution. And we pray that you would be the husband of the widow and the father of the fatherless. Lord, protect your people and deliver your people. And for all those who seek you, for your worshipers who really seek your name, let us rise up together, Lord, and say, let God be magnified. and all of our suffering, and our pain, and our weariness, Lord, be magnified. The weaker we get, the stronger You are in us, and we pray that You would magnify Your name in us. I thank You for these treasures, these precious people in this room. Each one is such a treasure to You, Lord, and I pray that Your Holy Spirit would embolden each one and encourage each one. Let your hope dwell in them richly. May they know your hope, oh God, by the power of your Holy Spirit. Lord, we reach again towards heaven this morning and we pray that you would write these truths on our hearts so that we can suffer well for you and glorify you in our suffering. In Jesus' name, amen. The book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 65, will begin with verses 17 through 20. It's a beautiful passage on heaven. This is the word of the Lord. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in what I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem as rejoicing and her people a joy. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in my people, the voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her, nor the voice of crying. No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days. For the child shall die 100 years old, but the sinner, being 100 years old, shall be accursed." That's Father reading of God's Holy Word. In Eden, God created a beautiful garden. He created man and woman in His image. In the image of God, He created them. Male and female, He created them. And He placed them in that beautiful garden. And in the original garden, all things were good. And all things were given to Adam and Eve to steward and to enjoy, They could partake of all things save one, just one. There was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it was the one thing. And God warned Adam and said, do not eat of this tree for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. And they ate. The serpent tempted, the snake came and tempted, and they ate, and they were expelled from the garden. And once they were outside of the garden, things that used to be beautiful immediately became quite ugly. Cain murdered Abel right outside the garden. The beautiful vision of brotherhood that was intended for the garden is now turned into this nightmare of murder right outside of the garden, just immediately. And then history unfolds and things get really ugly. Gardens turn ugly over time. King Ahab is a wicked king. And he's a coveting man. And he looks out from his palace and he sees Navot's vineyard. And he wants it because he thinks it'll be a nice garden for the king. So he orders Navot to hand over the vineyard, give him the garden. Navot's a God-fearing man. He knows the law of Moses. The law of Moses says you can't hand over your ancestral land just to anybody. You have to hold onto it. You can't move the boundary stones. And so he says no. And King Ahab, the coveting man, decides to murder him. So he murders Navot. He takes his vineyard and turns it into the king's garden. But it's not a beautiful garden. It's a blood-stained garden. It's a murderous garden. There were in Solomon's day, if you go back to Solomon's day, there were in Jerusalem some very beautiful gardens. If you read the book of Ecclesiastes or study the life of Solomon, he was an artist and a craftsman. He cultivated these beautiful gardens in Jerusalem. At one time during the reign of Solomon, Jerusalem was magnificently beautiful under Solomon with lush, amazing gardens. But Jerusalem is no longer like that. Jerusalem of today is not a garden. Jerusalem of today is a war zone. The icon of Jerusalem, when you think of Jerusalem today, the icon is not some lush spreading garden. The icon of Jerusalem as I think of it is a tear-soaked wailing wall. And the skyline of Jerusalem is no longer dominated by Solomon's temple. If you look at the imagery in the Bible of Solomon's temple and study it carefully, a lot of it is garden imagery. It's going back to the Garden of Eden. The pomegranates, the palm trees, everything that was crafted so carefully on the walls of the temple, this is all garden imagery. It's to tell us about the Garden of Eden. We're going back into the Garden of God when we go into the temple. But the skyline of Jerusalem today is no longer dominated by a guard by the temple by the temple which symbolizes the garden now today the skyline is dominated the skyline of Jerusalem is dominated by a blasphemous Muslim mosque Jerusalem is not the city of peace that God intended her to be she is now the city of blood where there's warfare and bloodshed on all sides So if you look at the scope of human society today, you don't think of it as this great, perfect, peaceful garden. If you can see the world today through the biblical lens, we see the ugly wasteland of sin that the world has become. And to be sure, there are many beautiful weddings that still take place today. People get married and they lots of times get married in outdoor botanic gardens. I've officiated at wedding ceremonies in some beautiful places with outdoor garden scenery. And the wedding photos at those weddings take place in front of the blossoming flowers. And they're lovely photos and very bright and vivid. And yet lots of those marriages these rich marriages that take place in these beautiful gardens. Lots and lots of those marriages turn very quickly into an ugly wasteland of marital strife and relational isolation. And then many of those marriages end in the ugly wilderness of divorce. The beautiful garden wedding becomes the ugly wilderness of divorce. For those who have eyes to see, we are not living in the Garden of Eden. We trick ourselves, we kid ourselves into thinking that our well-landscaped university campuses that look like gardens and our forest-decorated wine parties, you make the interior part look like a garden. We trick ourselves into thinking that we live in the Garden of God. But the truth is that we live in the wilderness. We really live in a wilderness. The world as we know it is under sin, an ugly wasteland. It is ravished by sin. At least when you compare it with what it once was. There's still grace. God's grace still shines into it. But when you compare it to the original garden, it's a wasteland. We've created a wasteland. Our sin has done it. So what would it be like then to discover a doorway back into the original garden? What if there was a portal or a doorway that would open and allow us back into the garden? We who have always, we've grown up, we were born and grown up, grew up and we have lived in this sinful wasteland for such a long time, we who have grown up in this world have a hard time imagining what the Garden of Eden actually looked like. What was it like for Adam and Eve to be in the garden? What would it be like for a door to open and be able to walk back in and see the original Garden of Eden and see Adam and Eve in the garden? Well, the biblical truth is that there is no re-entry pass into the garden. There's nothing in the Bible that gives us this re-entry pass. There's a flaming sword guarding the entry to the garden, but you can't go past the angel and the flaming sword. You would die. And in the Bible, there's no way back in. You cannot re-enter. But in Isaiah chapter 65, there's something even better than a re-entry pass back into Eden. There's something better. In Isaiah 65, there's not a portal or a door that takes us back into the original garden, but rather, there's something even better. There are, in Isaiah 65, the blueprints for a new garden. Not going back to the old garden. but the blueprints for a new one, a new garden. Isaiah 65, 17 through 18, again, listen as I read the verses for the verb to create. It's a threefold repetition of create here. For behold, Isaiah 65, 17 through 18, I create new heavens and a new earth. And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in what I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing in her people, a joy." In Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth. In the book of the prophet Isaiah, God will create, future tense, a new heavens and a new earth. So this The prophet Isaiah brings us now to this cycle, this gospel cycle of creation in the Bible, and the cycle goes like this. God creates, and then sin decreates, and then God recreates. God's good creation is given to man. Man ruins God's good creation through his sin, so sin decreates, it destroys the creation, and then God, who is a redemptive God, steps in and recreates. He creates anew or afresh. Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So there's the good creation, and God pronounced it, of course, very good on the sixth day. But then Genesis 6-7, here comes the decreation brought about by human rebellion and human sin. So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created. So sin brings the destruction of the creation from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air. So you get all the categories of creation, for I am sorry that I have made them. Sin decreates God's good creation, but God is a redemptive God, and so He brings in the Bible the promise of recreation, of creating anew or afresh. Isaiah 48, six through seven, you have heard, see all this, and will you not declare it? I have made you hear new things from this time, even hidden things, and you did not know them. They are created now. So not previously, but now they are created. and not from the beginning, and before this day you have not heard them, lest you should say, of course I knew them." So he will create new things. God is doing a new thing. Through sin, what was once a beautiful garden has now become an ugly wilderness. It's been de-created. Yes, but the prophet Isaiah says, now God will create a new garden. You're not going back to the old one, but there will be a new one. And Isaiah gives us the blueprints. Isaiah 65 is the blueprints for this new garden that God will create. And when the prophet envisions the garden for us, the way he shows us the garden so that we can see it is in the negative. So he shows us the negative terms of the garden so that we can understand what the garden will be like. We learn the delights the garden by learning what horrors of this current life the current wilderness will not be present in the garden so as it tells us what the garden will be like by telling us what it will not be like he tells us what the garden is by telling us what it is not he gives it to us in the negative and he says there are horrors in this current world that will not be present in the new heavens in the new earth and the first of those horrors is the horror of weeping there will be no more weeping in the new heavens and the new earth Isaiah 65 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in my people the voice of Weeping shall no longer be heard in her nor the voice of crying This is how you get the blueprints for the new garden. He gives it to you in the negative. There'll be no weeping there. I The first horror of the current world that will not exist in the new garden is the horror of weeping. of the action of the Bible. Of course, the Bible covers human history mostly from after the fall until the final redemption. So most of the scope of the Bible covers the time in which there's much weeping. The span and the story, the history of the Bible is the history of weeping because we live in the wilderness of human sin. And so the Bible is filled with weeping in Genesis. Weeping, the first time you find weeping in the Bible is with Abraham. Sarah, his beloved wife, has died. And so we find Abraham in Genesis weeping. In Exodus, there's a little baby boy floating in a little tiny little ark on the Nile River, and he's weeping for his mother. In the book of Ruth, Naomi tries to encourage Ruth to leave and go back so she can find a husband, and just the thought of leaving Naomi causes Ruth to weep. She's weeping. In 2 Samuel, David has been judged by God because of his adultery, and the child, the little baby boy, has been struck with sickness, and when the baby is dying, David is found fasting and weeping. In the book of Ezra, Ezra the scribe looks out upon his people and he sees the great sins of his people including the intermarriage of the godly with the ungodly and he's so distraught over it that he's found weeping over the sins of his people. In the book of Esther, Esther has to stand before the king because her people are under the threat of Haman's plot to launch this mass genocide against the Jews and so she comes before the king weeping. She weeps for the Jews when she stands before the Persian king. In this book of Psalms, in Psalm 137, the psalmist is in Babylon. He's homesick for Zion, the city of God, and he's weeping. He's weeping for Zion. And of course, Jeremiah in the prophets is known as the weeping prophet. Jeremiah weeps in the book of Jeremiah over the coming slaughter of his own people his people are about to be slaughtered because they're adulterous sins against God and so Jeremiah is the weeping prophet because his people are about to be destroyed. That's the weeping in the Bible and that's just in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus in the Gospel of John weeps and it's kind of a strong, violent weeping in the Gospel of John over death because Jesus hates death and his friend Lazarus has died. In Acts chapter 20, Paul knows that false teachers are gonna come like wolves to devour the sheep of the flock, and he foresees this, the false teaching coming into the church, and he weeps. And in 2 Timothy, young Timothy knows that his beloved spiritual father, Paul, is about to be martyred. And so in 2 Timothy 1, we hear of him weeping for Paul. The Bible is filled with weeping, and the gospel of redemption itself comes with weeping. When Jesus came, he came weeping. Hebrews 5, verse 7. speaks of Jesus who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his godly fear. But in the end, so the Bible's just filled with weeping, in the end, in the new heavens, in the new earth, in the new garden that God will create, The prophet Isaiah puts it in the negative. There will be no more weeping. And the book of Revelation follows. Revelation 21, verse four. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor weeping. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. There will be no more weeping. because there will be no more death. The wages of sin is death. If you eat from the tree, you will surely die, but there will be no more death in the garden. In the new garden, death will be entirely absent. Isaiah 65 verse 20, nor more shall an infant from there live but a few days, nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days, for the child shall die 100 years old, but the sinner being 100 years old shall be accursed. And when Isaiah says there in verse 20, The child shall die 100 years old. He's using a poetic image. This is his prophetic poetic picture of the new heavens and the new earth. He's not saying the children will die. He's saying that if a child would die, he'd have to be 100 years old and children aren't 100 years old and there will be no death. It's just no death at all. It's a poetic way of saying there will be no death. God hates death. And therefore Isaiah prophesies, the prophet Isaiah prophesies about the coming death of death itself. Death will be put to death. Isaiah 25, seven through eight. And he, God, will destroy on this mountain the surface of the covering cast over all people and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever. And the Lord God will wipe away tears. from all faces and rebuke and the rebuke of his people he will take away from all the earth for the Lord has spoken and then in the New Testament 2nd Timothy chapter 1 verse 10 speaking of God's purpose in the gospel God's purpose 2nd Timothy 1 10 has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ who has abolished death and brought life in a more immortality to light through the gospel. Amy Carmichael rescued all those little orphan girls out of Hindu temple prostitution. If she hadn't rescued those little baby girls, they would have grown up as Hindu temple prostitutes. So she saved them out of that horrible life. She brought these little tiny baby girls into her own home. She adopted them. She became their mother. They called her Ama or mother. And she raised these girls. And there were so many of them. And she loved each one of them. Everyone was precious. But there was one little girl. one precious little girl that was very special to her and she called her her lily in the garden. Amy loved gardening, she loved flowers, and so she nicknamed this little girl her lily. in the garden. Her real name was Sapphire, that's the name they gave her, but she called her Lily, like she was the best flower in the garden. She's a little tiny girl, she wasn't old enough to talk yet, and when the other little girls would come in from outside with the orphanage activities, the little girls would stream through the door, and little Sapphire would clap. She couldn't talk yet, but she would clap. She was Amy's little prize, her lily in the garden. And then one day she got sick, The little girls came in streaming through the doors from their outside activities and one day Sapphire was so sick she couldn't clap anymore. She couldn't talk, she wasn't old enough to talk, but she was very smart and apparently Sapphire knew that the time had come for her to go to heaven. So she was on her sickbed and Amy was there with her and she pointed up to the sky. as if to tell Amma, Amy, that it was time to go to Jesus. There's a little music box on the shelf above her that Sapphire loved to listen to, so Amy turned the key in the music box and the music played. Sapphire smiled when she heard the music play, and then she died. And Amy said it was the hardest thing she ever had to do, to take her lily, her little lily, and give her back to God. I think what has hurt the church so deeply in the last few decades, if not more than that, is that the churches have been filled with pulpits that preach sensational sermons. and the thrust of the sensational sermons. These are psychologically driven sermons. These are man-centered sermons. The thrust is that you can laugh now in the gospel and enjoy the good life now in the gospel. And then in heaven, you can laugh too. You can laugh then. So everything's joy now and everything's joy then. It's all joy. It's all laughter. And the gospel certainly brings laughter and it brings joy, it brings liberation. There's much joy in the gospel. But when you read through the New Testament, so much of the Christian life in the New Testament is weeping now and laughter then, later. And there's a fearful warning in the New Testament gospel and the fearful warning is that those who would stand up in front of the church and preach that everything now should be good now and laughter now that those people are bringing a false gospel in front of the church, and they will be judged, and when Jesus comes, there will be mourning for them at the judgment. They will mourn and gnash their teeth at the judgment. Why are there so many tears in the Christian life? Why is it such a constant flow of tears in the Christian life? How can God allow so much weeping? Why is it month after month and year after year? Why is it lifelong weeping? Well, the scriptures say that the tears of the righteous are like seeds. They're planted in the ground, the spiritual ground, like seeds. And the scriptures also say that heaven is like a garden. It's like a new garden. And so here's the promise of the gospel, that there are unfathomable heavenly rewards for those who sow in tears. That when we sow the seeds of our tears and weeping in the gospel, sharing in the sufferings of Christ and the persecutions of Christ, We are sowing seeds that in the new garden of heaven, in the new heavens, in the new earth, will spring up like flowers and trees and crops, and they will bear the fruit of everlasting gladness and everlasting joy in this new garden. Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. What will the new garden look like? We're so blinded in our sinful state, we don't even understand what the old garden looked like, but we want to know what the new garden will look like, and Isaiah gives it to us in the negative. Our minds are only big enough to understand it in the negative. There will be no more weeping, and the second negative image in the prophecy is that there will be no more curses. No more weeping. and no more curses. Isaiah 65, 21 through 22, no more curse. They shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit. They shall not plant and another eat. For as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of my people. And my elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. In Deuteronomy 21, there's a type of curse that we would call an individual curse, but it's a general curse. It's a very general, broad curse, but it's for the individual. And here it is, and just take it and put it in your pocket for now. We'll come back to it in just a minute. Deuteronomy 21, verses 22 through 23, this is a general curse aimed at the individual. If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, That's where the curse comes from, hanging on the tree. His body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall bury him that day so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. For he who is hanged is accursed of God. That's an individual curse for a man who's hung on a tree. But then in Deuteronomy 28, there's a national curse. not just for the individual, but for the whole nation. And it's also general, but it's general and meant corporately for the nation. And this curse involves the Israelites building houses, but not being allowed to live in them after they worked so hard to build them. And planting vineyards but not being allowed to eat the fruit after they worked so hard to plant the vineyards. Foreigners will come in and take their land and their houses, and foreign enemies will eat their produce. Deuteronomy 28, 30, you shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but shall not gather its grapes. So this is a general curse aimed at the whole nation if they disobey God, and it's very specific in these images. You'll build your houses, but you won't be allowed to live in them. You'll plant your vineyards, you won't be allowed to eat the fruit. And Isaiah says that in the new garden, this curse won't exist anymore. Isaiah 65, 21 through 22, this is the opposite of that curse. They shall build houses and inhabit them. So it's not that you'll build them and you won't be able to live in them. You'll build them and you'll live in them. They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. The blessing will come. They shall not build and another inhabit. They shall not plant and another eat. For as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of my people. And my elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. So the national curse against Israel will be reversed. the blessing of living in the, enjoying the fruit of your hands, the work of your hands, living in the things you built and eating of the fruit of the vineyards you planted, the blessing will be there. And then there is a specific curse in the Bible. There are two specific curses. There's one for Adam and one for Eve. There's the male curse and there's the female curse. When Adam sinned, there was a male curse pronounced upon Adam. And when Eve sinned, there was a female curse pronounced upon Eve. And here's Adam's curse. In Genesis 3, 17, after Adam has disobeyed God and eaten from the tree, then God said to Adam, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake in toil." So this is specific to men. "...in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life." And this is of course the curse upon a man's work. So much of a man's identity is his God-given task and dominion to work, his ministry of work, and here is the curse upon it. You will work as you were created to do, but when you do it, it will come with toil and sweat and pain. And then Isaiah says, Isaiah responds to that curse given to the man and says, in the new garden, no more curse for the man. Isaiah 65, 23, they shall not labor in vain. The curse of the man's work is taken away. The man will no longer have to pull weeds from underneath his tomato plants. He'll no longer get a splinter in his hand when he's using the shovel or the plow. And then there's the curse given to the woman. Eve's curse was that she would bear children, but with great pain. Genesis 3.16, to the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception in pain. You shall bring forth children. And Isaiah says that in the new garden, that curse will be taken away, the curse of childbearing and raising children in pain. In the new garden, there shall be no more mourning, grieving over one's own children. The woman will never give birth to a stillborn child. Nor will she watch one of her little ones die of pneumonia. No more curse against Eve and her daughters. Isaiah 65, 23. They shall not labor in vain. That was Adam's curse. Nor bring forth children for trouble. That was Eve's curse. No more. for they shall be the seed of the blessed of the Lord and their offspring with them. So God shall take all the curses of sin and abolish them and cast them out. They will not be in the new garden. Adam's curse, the curse of work and the pain with it will not be there. Eve's curse, the curse of childbearing and the pain with it will not be there. In the negative, those curses will not be there. So Isaiah paints it in the negative. And this removal of the curse will come through the seed Adam and Eve Isaiah says it comes to the seed Isaiah 65 23 they shall not labor in vain nor bring forth children for trouble for they shall be the seed literally the seed of the blessed of the Lord and their offspring with them and that's that goes all the way again back to Genesis chapter 3 Genesis 3 15 and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed and and he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Galatians 3.13 takes us back to that, remember the Deuteronomy curse I told you to put in your pocket for a second? Here it is. Galatians 3.13 says, here's the curse. Christ has redeemed us. How can it be true that there's no curse in the new garden? Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. And then here's the Deuteronomy passage, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Christ was hung on a tree. And Galatians 3.16 says, now to Abraham and his seed. So Paul's definitely reading Isaiah 65 here. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He does not say unto seeds as of many but as of one and to your seed who is Christ. Jesus Christ takes away the curse and so in the new garden there shall be no more curse. But right now there are curses. Right now we live under the weight of the curse. And so these promises about the new garden are so valuable for us. For example, today, if you are suffering, you feel the curse, you feel the weight of the curse. You feel the curse tearing away at your body or at your heart like a wild beast, just rending and tearing. And if so, if today you feel the pain of the curse, if today is your day of suffering, remember the cross of Jesus Christ. Every ounce of pain that you bear, He bore, and yet infinitely more. Remember that He suffered, but also that His suffering was temporary. If you're suffering under the curse, remember that Calvary had an end point. Calvary had an end. It did not last forever. And so remember that your suffering too is temporary. However long it may seem, however unbearable it may seem, it will end. It is temporary. And then on the other side. If you're rejoicing, if today is a day of rejoicing and not a day of suffering, if the weight of the curse is not bearing down upon your soul today, is your heart so full of joy today because of all the joyful events that God has allowed into your life, but that makes you a little bit anxious and uneasy because you know the Christian life and you know that over time, if you're joyful for a while, there's sure to be suffering on the horizon. Do you kind of lose a sense of the enjoyment of your joy because you know it's only gonna last for a short time? If so, remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not just his death, but his resurrection. Every ounce of joy that you feel in the Christian life, he felt, yet infinitely more. He rejoiced, and his rejoicing is not temporary, but eternal. The empty tomb has no end point. It will last forever. And so there will be a day when your joy will never cease, will never end. It will be eternal. It will have no end. So this is how Isaiah paints it. He paints it in the negative. Firstly, the new garden will have no more tears. And then secondly, in the new garden, there will be no more curses. The curses will be taken away. And then lastly, a third negative about the new garden. There will be no more danger. No more threats, no more persecutions, no more danger. Isaiah 65, 24. It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer. And while they are still speaking, I will hear. In the new garden, prayer will not be delayed the way it's normally delayed today. Typically when we pray today and we call out to God for deliverance and help and salvation out of our sorrows, typically today prayer is not answered so immediately the way you see it answered in places like Psalm 138. In Psalm 138.3, here's an immediate answer to prayer. And the day when I cried out, you answered me. and made me bold with strength in my soul. Typically, today in the Christian life, prayer doesn't work like that. It's not such an immediate answer when we cry out in our distresses. Our prayers, mostly today, are more like Psalm 22. Psalm 22, verse two says, oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear, and in the night season, and am not silent. But this will no longer be the case in the new garden. When we call to God in the new garden, he will answer us immediately. In fact, our communion with God will be so close in the new garden that God will answer us before we ever call to him. And so there will be no more danger in heaven. No more threat, no more danger. God already knows, he sees in advance, he answers before we call. Isaiah 65, 25, the wolf and the lamb shall feed together. The lion shall eat straw, not blood, but straw, like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain," says the Lord. I say it is absurd to think that God created animals in the original garden to eat each other. Sadly, Christian pastors who actually think that, but I think it's absurd. It's absurd to think that in the original Garden of Eden, which God pronounced very good, that there were lions already devouring lambs and wolves already feeding on rabbits. That's not a very good garden. But the primary point of the metaphor is to tell us, the prophet's trying to tell us that there'll be no more danger in the new garden. No more persecutions, no more dangers. And that's why he mentioned snakes. I'm glad he mentioned snakes. And I'm encouraged to hear that the snakes will still eat dust. I'm not a big fan of snakes. And Isaiah in 65, 25 says, the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountains, says the Lord. And I think the reason why snakes are mentioned as eating dust in the prophecy is because the original dangers in the original garden came from the snake. It was the snake who tempted Adam and Eve. Of course, it was Satan using the snake to twist God's word and tempt Adam and Eve. And in Moses' life, the snake was dangerous, and that's why Moses jumped back from the snake, and then God said, pick up the snake. I'll give you power over the snake, and it'll become a staff. And the snake in the wilderness was the one that bit the Israelites and caused the plague, and they all died until the bronze snake was lifted up. And in Jeremiah chapter 8, snakes are depicted as the very wrath of God. God's wrath comes in the form of snakes. And then the ultimate snake in the Bible is Satan himself, and that danger will be completely removed. Revelation 12 9 so the great dragon was cast out that serpent that snake of old called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world he was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him and then it finally comes to an end where the snake is fully banished forever in Revelation 20 verse 10 the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophets are and they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever. So the new garden is depicted in the negative, no more weeping, no more death, no more curses, and no more danger, no more persecution, no more attackers, no more predators. Once we get to the heaven, we shall see all the negative effects of sin completely removed. all of the things that have turned the once resplendent garden of the original Eden into an ugly, repugnant wasteland, all those things will be removed in the new garden. And there in the new garden, we'll have to ask the question, how can this be? Who took all of the bad things away? And there in the new garden, the angels in heaven shall answer us, well, Christ Jesus has removed them for you. He is the gardener of the garden. And He has done all these things for us. Weeping, dying, taking the curse, and being bit by the dangerous snake, the serpent. He did it all for us on the cross in our stead. On His mighty cross, the Lord Jesus bore our sin. In doing so, He bore our weeping, our death, our curses, and all the deadly attacks of our fierce enemies. By one sacrificial death, by the one death of the Son of God, our banishment from the garden has been revoked. And we're now invited to enter into the new garden that God will create. And so there is a small, humble door that doesn't lead back into Eden. It's not a door that takes us backwards in time, back to the original Eden. It is instead rather a door that takes us by faith into a new garden, into the new garden. And this door is Christ Jesus himself. And we say to unbelievers as we interact with them and evangelize as humbly as we can, as we talk with them with love, we tell them, There's only one door. It's a narrow door, it's a humble door. It's the only way to enter in. And dear friend, if you reject this door, this one door, which is the only door into the new garden, if you reject it, you will be shut out of the garden forever. And you will spend all of eternity in a vast wasteland where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And so we plead with them, humble yourself and enter through the one door, the narrow door, before the door shuts forever. And then the prophet Isaiah says to those who would indeed humble themselves and enter through the door into the new garden, He says that for us, we will not have to search once we get to the garden. We will not have to search in the garden to find God. Once we're in the garden, we won't have to look for God. Because His bright and radiant glory in the new garden will constantly shine upon us like sunshine on the leaves of olive trees. And the cool spray of His Holy Spirit will constantly refresh us like warm rains lightly falling on the petals of crocuses. And the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ shall be so near to us in the new garden that before we call to Him, He will answer us. And while we are still speaking, He will hear us. And He shall wipe away every tear from our eyes. This Lord's Day, as we come to the Lord's table, we look upon it as the place where the curse was removed. These are the symbols of the cross, and that is where the curse was taken away. Before we come to the table, here's the doxology. Praise be to God, our Father, who carries us through our weeping now, so that we can share in a tearless heaven then. Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ who bore for us in his body on the tree all the curses of our sin. Praise be to the Holy Spirit who shall throw down all of our dangerous enemies and who shall hear us in the new garden even before we call to him. Amen.