The New Creation Promised, Prophecied and Pictured
— The New Creation
- Andrew Fountain — Aug 9th, 2011
Earth
- 1. The Big Picture: Two Creations
- God Created the world
- Sin entered and the perfect creation was corrupted
- God promised Eve that one day he would destroy Satan permanently
- The Earth became increasingly rebellious against God
- He destroyed it with the flood
Floodwater
- God made a new start with Noah
- After a few generations it was as bad as ever
Abraham
- So God made a new start with Abraham and his descendents
- The descendents grew into the nation of Israel
Tabernacle
- God brought them out of Egypt and made a new start with the whole nation
- by giving them the law and making the covenant at Mt. Sinai
- Within days they had broken his covenant and refused to trust him
Jericho
- So God made a new start with the next generation of Israel
- That conquerored the promised land under Joshua
- He gave Israel the promised land, but they became increasingly like the corrupt nations around
King David
- So he chose a man, David, to lead them back to him
- he promised David that one day a totally new start would be made with one from his line
- David made a new start in the worship of God, and established the “tabernacle of David”
- God’s presence in their midst had purifying power
- But they did not value his presence
- But throughout this time the prophets start to whisper about a totally new creation
Babylonian Siege of Jerusalem
- Even David’s own desendents fell into extreme sin and God allowed the entire nation to be taken away into captivity
- God made a new start with those who returned from captivity
- Eventually groups like the Pharisees and Saducees replaced true worshipers
- But things were now ready for an entirely new creation in Jesus Christ
Sunrise
- But what Jesus did was totally unexpected
- He began the new creation before the old one was ended
- One of the words he used for it was the “Kingdom”
- This Kingdom is invisible to the old creation, but they can see its effects
- love, truth, justice, faithfuless
- but also healing, restoration, victory over darkness
- It would invisibly grow like yeast in bread
- and seemingly small and weak like a tiny seed would grow into a great tree
- Jesus, with his resurrected body, became the first full new-creation being
- But all people had to do was to believe him and they would receive the seed of this new life
- Soon it was rapidly spreading over the whole world
- Nothing can stop it eventually reaching every nation
Butterfly
- Then the old creation will finally be destroyed
- and we will receive new creation bodies, like caterpillars turning into butterflies