Eden is Not Enough

Psalms 22:1-11

Jim Davis

Our souls are longing for something that Eden couldn’t fulfill. Eve only had to be ask one question to persuade her to become dissatisfied with Eden. Satan asks, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Then she is told: “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”(Genesis 3). 

Satan robbed Adam and Eve of their true identity. He gave them one that left them hiding from God as they made garments out of fig leaves. God immediately steps in and makes them clothes from animal skins. It’s an equivalent to atoning for their sins. God wasn’t ashamed of them; they were ashamed of themselves. God didn’t make garments for them because he was ashamed of their nakedness. It because they were ashamed of themselves, of their own naked bodies. 

The Garden of Eden wasn’t created to fulfill the deepest needs of humanity. The Tree of Life was placed in Eden as a reminder there is something more than this world has to offer. Even if you live in Eden. It was planted there to point them to the very source of life. 

Most of us are concerned about identity theft. Afraid we will wake up one morning with our credit cards maxed out and our bank account emptied. What if I told you that you live in a world that seeks to steel your true identity? 

This is readily seen in our advertising persuading you to create a new you through some miracle life changing product. They are selling everything from luxury cars to viagra. They are selling everything from cosmetics to designer underwear. Most of it is sold on the premise of giving you a new image of yourself.

Advertising is designed to sell us things you never new you needed.  So often, things you really don’t need. To give you a new look, make you a master chef, etc. There was a great fad over bread machines a few years back. Everybody began thinking they needed one. I am thinking that we don’t need to eat a lot of bread. I knew I didn’t. I was given one by someone who had grown tired of it. I used it a couple of times; then I gave it away to my granddaughter. It is probably stuffed away in her closet. 

The world is a master at filling our lives with things that are unfulfilling. 

It surprises us when we see some famous person who seems to have it all die of an overdose. It is mind boggling. Yet, stories like this are almost a daily occurrence.

God made us in his image. The world blinds us to our true purpose and our true identity.

The World Challenges Christ Identity

The world tends to rob even the best of people of their God given image as it gives us a false sense of security. It is almost unbelievable when you hear our Creator hanging on a cross crying out “I am worm not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.” He was despised and rejected by a world that held him in very low esteem (Isaiah 53:3). The world questioned the Creator’s Identity to the point he began to wonder about himself. The world was seeking to rob the Creator of his identity.

The Psalmist sums up the thoughts of the Creator as he is hanging on the cross.

Psalms 22:1-19
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
    you are the one Israel praises.
In you our ancestors put their trust;
    they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
    they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
    “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
    since he delights in him.”
Yet you brought me out of the womb;
    you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast on you;
    from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Do not be far from me,
    for trouble is near
    and there is no one to help.

The Creator is left crying out “I am a worm and not a man.” The cruelty of this world has a tendency to blind us to our intrinsic value and a need for a relationship with God. We are left feeling as though we are never what we were meant to be. There on the cross the Creator feels as we often feel.

Psalm 22:1-3
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.

The Creator feels betrayed. The Creator begins reflecting on what God did for Israel. His ancestors had trusted God for deliverance and God came through. They cried out and were saved. They were not put to shame. Yet, here I am despised and rejected.

Psalms 22:3-5
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
    you are the one Israel praises.
In you our ancestors put their trust;
    they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

Feelings of worthlessness sweeps over the one who gave us life as the agony increases. He begins to have feelings, no one cares, people are mocking me and insulting me. Jesus begins thinking:

Psalms 22:6-8
But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
    they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
    “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
    since he delights in him.”

The identity of the Creator is challenged. The mob cries out, if you are, who you claim to be, come down off that cross. In times like these we question our own identity. There are times where there seems to be no help from the one you expect help. We begin asking: What have I done? Why are they treating me this way? I should have done things different? I am not who I thought I was? The very one who has led you to trust them turns their back on you. You desire help you don’t have.

Psalms 22:9-11
Yet you brought me out of the womb;
    you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast on you;
    from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Do not be far from me,
    for trouble is near
    and there is no one to help.

The Creator’s thoughts conjure up hopeless despair. 

Psalms 22:12-18
Many bulls surround me;
    strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
Roaring lions that tear their prey
    open their mouths wide against me.
I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
    it has melted within me.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
    you lay me in the dust of death.
Dogs surround me,
    a pack of villains encircles me;
    they pierce my hands and my feet.
All my bones are on display;
    people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my clothes among them
    and cast lots for my garment.

This is what makes God so appealing. God comes in human flesh willing to live with the emptiness we so often feel on the inside. He chose to walk through a lost world in human form. The common man readily heard Jesus——simply because he felt what they were feeling in their hearts.

Reclaiming Our Identity

There has never been a time when the world has worked so hard to pin a new identity on each of us. The world is seeking to define us by our sexual desires, skin color, how we are supposed to think about the world, our politics, our moral values, how we are supposed to feel about these differing identities, etc.

Our modern world is beginning to truly see what it means to be lost in a biblical sense. It is as though the world is crashing down around us. Most of it is because we have lost sight of our true identity. There is nothing worse than a lost identity. We see it in the streets with that person with a needle stuck in her arm. We see it in the person who seems to have it all who overdoses or commits suicide. 

A person, my wife and I knew committed suicide. To this day it is hard to grasp. He was comfortably retired, was doing some traveling around the world. He was articulate and intelligent. Seemed to have people around him that loved him. I would have never thought he would do this. Somehow he just lost sight of everything and took his own life. The aura he projected wasn’t one of an unhappy person.

I read something the other day Stedman Graham said concerning our identity.

“Identity is about positive traits; it also can be negative traits. It’s a combination of things that you do; it’s your talents, it’s your strengths, it’s your passions, it’s what you love, it’s what you care about. What we try to do is teach people how to develop a positive identity of themselves so they can self-actualize their potential as a human being.”

Thinking positive and self-actualization can be a good thing. However, we can easily self-actualize a great self-image as we lose sight of our true identity.

Self-actualization may lead us to create a great self-image. The image we project can have a powerful influence on others. A person dresses a certain way, drives certain cars to leave an impression. The image we project does not define individual traits or qualities. They just make up the total impression one leaves on the minds of others.

A person can start wearing glasses and radically change his impression on others. Wearing dark glasses have more of impact than regular glasses. The amazing thing is the person is the same person. It is this aura, this image he projects that people react to.

The world believes our identity is tied up in our self-image. I read this the other day. I am not sure who wrote it.

“Identity is on the inside as opposed to the outside. Most people define you by the outside based on your color, based on your religion, and based on your environment, [based on your accomplishments or lack thereof], all of the external things that make you think that's who you are.”

Often religion and the world seeks to clean us up outwardly while leaving an internal mess. We eat the right foods, develop the right habits, say the right things, think positive thoughts, wear the right clothes, believe certain things, etc.

Once the world stamps its image on you it is hard to shed. This is why child abuse is so horrible. A child’s sexual abuse, physical abuse and mental abuse stamps an image on that child’s heart. It imprints on our minds and heart. It is an image that will take a life time of management to overcome. 

I have always questioned how we treat a person who has created a criminal offense. The person is labeled as a criminal for life over one offense. A person commits a felony offense. The person is branded as a felon all his/her life. Can’t vote, own a gun and lives with the title of felony. Must tell any potential employer he/she is a felon. They have paid for their crime, but they are still felons for the rest of their lives. 

Conclusion:

God came to live in the shambles with us to help us recognize and reclaim our true identity regardless of what the world says.

Nothing in Eden was designed to bring satisfaction without God who is the source of all life. Heaven is not about living in the new Eden John pictures in Revelations. It is about the restoration of the Tree of Life found there. The ability to live with God in the Garden. We already know what happens in Eden without God. 

We are not different from those building the tower of Babel. They were building a tower to make a name for themselves. Confusion was their lot.

It was much different for Abram when God steps into his life and says follow me and I will make your name great.

Jesus told the thief on the cross, today you shall abide with me in paradise.

He told the adulterous woman to go her way and sin no more.

He offered the Samaritan woman, who was considered an outcast among the Jews, access to the River of Life.
 
Christ offers us an opportunity to become a new creation, a creation much different than the world has created for us. He does this as he reconciles us to God.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21  
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As Christ was forsaken on that Cross, he made a way for God to take my sin away without me paying the consequences myself. It gives us a chance to start life with our slates wiped clean. Gives us a chance for a new beginning and a God given identity.

Romans 6:3-4
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.