Present at the Birth (Part 3): Creation Reveals His Purpose

Why would a God as great as our God, who lived in eternal aloneness, go create a whole universe? So, I’d feel good. Bring me into creation and then make me feel good, then make me an old dirty sinner, and then save me so I’d appreciate Him more. Alright, maybe all of that is true, but is there not something throbbing in God that is for God? Did He not want something Himself? And I’m not saying for His satisfaction, I’m not saying for His pleasure. I am saying simply that there was something that was unto God in all of this, that there was a purpose in which the arrows pointed toward Him.

Brothers and sisters, I give you the eternal purpose of God from now, the rest of these two sessions we have tonight, and whatever we have tomorrow night. And to the brothers and sisters who have just begun meeting in this town, I give you the eternal purpose until I don’t have anything left to talk to you about. Until I’ve just said everything I know about the eternal purpose. For those of you who are leaving tomorrow, sorry. You’re not going to get it all. I don’t know when it will come about, but at some point, there will be a place where I have nothing more to say what His eternal purpose is. But I will tell you this: it has been a mystery. It has been hidden in God. It was made to be made manifest by the church. That’s according to the eternal purpose of God formed in Christ. That is, in Christ.

What the purpose is, I tell you, I’m standing here right now, I cannot fully declare to you. And if I could, there’d be something wrong with me. We’re dealing with Almighty God here. But I’ll tell you, I’m going to get as close as a human knows how to get to explain to you, to let you know, that there really is a great, magnificent, and glorious purpose in God, totally outside the need of man, having nothing to do with our salvation from sin. I will tell you this: for us here on this earth, it has a great deal to do with the Ecclesia.

So why don’t you quit that non-profit religious organization that you belong to? Why don’t you give up getting up on Sunday morning and getting dressed with your Bible and Sunday school literature and going, sitting down for an hour, and listening to somebody preach the 10,573rd sermon on what Christ did for you when He saved you? Why don’t you give it up and come up to the eyes of God and stand behind the eyes of God and dwell in the thought of God and be part of the very intent, character, nature, disposition, and passion of that eternal purpose? Therein is His satisfaction, and therein you will find your satisfaction in His satisfaction. Praise the Lord. Amen.

Brothers and sisters, we will take a break. Now we will find a place in the Scripture where we can go and stand and say, “This is not touched by sin.” Tell us, little area of space and time, tell us what you know about His eternal purpose. Come back in just a minute.

Brothers and sisters, I really would have you to raise your eyes. Look, I know someone would say, “Gene, you’re overemphasizing the God section of all this.” Okay, I’ll give you that point. So, I’m the only man in the United States of America overemphasizing the fact that arrows point toward God. There are 350,000 Protestant ministers in America; let them overemphasize the arrows pointing the other way. But for one short time, let us look at that which points toward Him.

Alright, that was not what I wanted to talk about. We stand on the shoulders of giants when we speak of the eternal purpose, for very few people have ever spoken on it. There’s almost no literature in existence on the subject. Most of what has ever been written on the subject is out of print. We owe so much to so many. Let me just say to you that there are places we can go to in Scripture to begin to learn a little bit about what the eternal purpose is, and one of the places we go is to Scripture, where there is no fall, where there is no evidence of the fall whatsoever. It has not yet existed, or it has ended. As it has been so wisely pointed out by men, there are only four such chapters in the Bible.

Let me go back to this beautiful chart I did. You remember my blackboard chart there? See my blackboard? God. The Eternals. That which is finite, that which is created. Let’s take a look at that now. Here’s the beginning of creation, the physical creation, and the end of it, but sin did not begin here, and it does not end here. Sin begins here and ends here. You got a space right here where there’s no sin and no fall. You got a space right here where there’s no sin and no fall. This is before sin and the fall. This is after sin and the fall. That is Genesis 1 and 2, and that is Revelation 21 and 22, and you got four chapters in the Bible you can go to and say, “Ain’t no sin here. There’s no fall here. What can you tell us about God’s eternal purpose?”

Now I’m going to make an announcement. That’s all I’m going to preach on for the rest of my life. I’m going to preach on these two chapters, and these two chapters, and I’m going to trace what’s there and what’s there through all this mud in here. And I can spend the rest of my life doing nothing but that. There are two chapters, all filled with glorious things. They emerge again down here, and here’s all the mess they pass through. But each one of them is there throughout the history of man’s fall. That which is here and that which is here, you can also find it here—even in our fallen state—from Genesis 3 to Revelation 21; He never gives up. His work is there, His work toward His eternal purpose. Here’s Genesis 1 and 2, and here’s Revelation 21 and 22, and everything that’s in those you can find as a scarlet line or a golden line or a silver line or a bejeweled line or a flowing river passing all the way through and emerging again in glory. And there we see so clearly His purpose, His kind intention, His intent from the beginning and in the end and throughout eternity. God had a purpose that’s got nothing to do with our fall.

And for those of you who fellowship in this town, that’s what we’re going to give our lives to. Now, next week when everybody’s gone, we’re going to go through some chapters in the New Testament, books in the New Testament, and we’re going to try to find verses that point away from us to God, point toward Him and His heart, that which is unto God. I’ve already told you that.

Brothers and sisters. I have been trying forever, since God set my soul on fire about all this—what is there in Genesis 1 and 2 that is outside the fall, but also emerges again at the end of the Scripture? Beginning with, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and going all the way down to the closing—the closing word: “For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” And look at how chapter 3 opens: “Now the serpent.” Now the serpent.

And you get over here to Revelation, written oh, 2500 years later—you get down here to the very last verses: “And the sea gave up their dead, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, everyone according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name is not found written in the book of life, he’s thrown into the lake of fire.” And then, bang! Chapter 21, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth.” At last, death, Hades, and the serpent are thrown into the lake of fire, and we break loose into beautiful heavenly sunlight in Genesis 1 and 2 and in Revelation 21 and 22. Isn’t that nice? So, let’s spend the rest of our lives just reading four chapters.