Today we heard from Pastor Oscar Muriu from Nairobi Chapel in Nairobi, Kenya, as he kicked off this year's Celebration of Hope. After leading us in Communion, Pastor Oscar, shared with us how our church partnered with his church to establish a school that now serves 300 children. It was a beautiful story showcasing God's impact through our partnership and generosity. The school—a result of a war that had uprooted lives, killed thousands and displaced hundreds upon thousands of Kenyans—has been a beacon of hope.
Pastor Oscar continued, that the truth is the world is broken. But it wasn't always this way.
In Genesis 3, we see that God says the world is good. Everything worked in harmony together, and it was good. After God created Adam, God essentially gave this world and everything in it to Adam to steward and care for. And then, God warned him not to eat from one tree, for surely he would die if he did.
After this warning, God created Eve, and together they were to steward the earth in communion with God. But we all know the story, they ate from the tree and everything changed. However, the fall wasn’t just about physical death. There were five things that died in Eden because of man’s disobedience.
- Death #1: the relationship between man and God. Now there was a chasm between man and God. And this would be transferred from generation to generation. Man then kept trying to get back to God and kept falling short. Filling that void with everything but God. Until Jesus came, and He reversed the first death and restored the relationship between God and man.
- Death #2: the relationship between man and man. People are quick to blame Eve for the fall. But Gen. 3:6 shows us that Adam was right there when Eve took the fruit. He didn’t own up to his lack of actions but instead tried to pass the buck on Eve. We see the rift that was created here in the very next generation, and it continued generation after generation. The consequence is that every human relationship has been touched by death. But the hope of the cross of Christ is that Christ has brought healing to this second brokenness, restoring all that has broken between us.
- Death #3: the relationship between man and the environment. Because of Adam’s sin, farming and caring for the land would now be difficult. And now we see man punishing the earth. The earth seems so broken. Romans talks about all creation waiting on the redemption of man when all things, including earth, will be restored and one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth. The cross of Christ has reversed this brokenness because now there is a way, through Christ, to restore the earth.
- Death #4: The death of man’s inner soul. When Man was created he was made in God’s image. When Adam de-linked his identity from God by taking the fruit and declaring he would be like God, he could no longer know what he was really. Without the knowledge of God, we can’t know who we really are. “Apart from Christ, man’s adrift on the high seas.” But in Christ, we have a new identity. We are rooted in the God who created us.
- Death #5: the physical death of man. In Gen. 5 you read about eight deaths. This is the Bible’s way of emphasizing a point. Physical death has now entered the scene. Eternity had been lost. But the cross of Christ has brought healing. Death was defeated, and Christ won back eternity for us should we choose to follow him.
We celebrate hope because of the cross of Christ. The cross has taken the broken, the deaths, and reversed them and turned them over. This is why we can celebrate!
