The document discusses how creation groans due to human rebellion against God. It says that when Adam and Eve sinned, it turned everything upside down and cursed the ground. As a result, creation does not experience the shalom or flourishing that God intended. Both creation and humanity recognize things are not as they should be and long for full restoration through the redemption brought by Christ.

2. The Pains of Childbirth
For the creation waits with eager longing for the
revealing of the sons of God. For the creation
was subjected to futility, not willingly, but
because of him who subjected it, in hope that
the creation itself will be set free from its
bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom
of the glory of the children of God.

3. The Pains of Childbirth
For we know that the whole creation has been
groaning together in the pains of childbirth until
now. And not only the creation, but we
ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit,
groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption
as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
Romans 8:19-23 (ESV)

4. The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the
Main Thing
• Christ Has Died
• Christ Has Risen
• Christ Will Come Again

5. Eternal vs Temporal
• Abraham
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Jonathan Edwards
“I must live with eternity stamped on my eyeballs.”

6. It’s HIS Story
Question: What is the chief end of man?
Answer: Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to
enjoy him forever.
The Bible is FOR us, but it’s not ABOUT us!

7. Creation’s Voice (LAST WEEK)
1. Creation declares the beauty, the power, the
goodness of God
2. As Creation cries out about God, we should be
driven to worship Him!

8. “The whole creation has
been groaning.”

9. Creation is GROANING
1. Human rebellion against God turns
EVERYTHING upside down!

10. And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your
wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.

11. By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
Genesis 3:17-19 (ESV)

12. Shalom:
“The webbing together of God, humans, and all
creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight.
Universal flourishing, wholeness – a rich state of
affairs in which natural seeds are satisfied and
natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of
affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator
and Savior opens doors and welcomes the
creatures in whom He delights. Shalom, in other
words, is the way things ought to be.”

13. …therefore the Lord God sent him out from the
garden of Eden to work the ground from which
he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the
east of the garden of Eden he placed the
cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every
way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:23-24 (ESV)

14. “We’ve lost God’s shalom – everything
(physically, spiritually, socially, psychologically,
culturally) falls apart.”
- Tim Keller

15. Creation is GROANING
1. Human rebellion against God turns
EVERYTHING upside down!
2. Our wiring KNOWS things are a mess.

16. The words of the Preacher, the son of David,
king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 (ESV)

17. Creation is GROANING
1. Human rebellion against God turns
EVERYTHING upside down!
2. Our wiring KNOWS things are a mess.
3. Nothing will replace the loss of SHALOM but
SHALOM itself!