Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: So much pain in the world. Why did God make a world when He knew it was going to go wrong and women would end up selling their bodies and disease would take mothers the hard way to heaven? Knowing what was going to happen, why did He make a world like this in the first place and people that He knew would have children who would do the same things to each other, bite and claw and tear each other to pieces? Why would a good God do such things? Well, that's the question that the whole of the world's been asking for a long, long time and is still asking today.

The Bible, of course, has answers to this. We're going to look right at the beginning of time in the moments that we have together just now, and we're going to try and think of the answers to some of those questions. We're going to think of four gardens in the Scriptures. We're going to think of the Garden of Gardens that we read about in Genesis chapter one, and then we're going to think of the Garden of Sin outside the front door of paradise. Then we're going to think of the Garden of Grace, and then we're going to think of the Garden of God.

Now, we start with the Garden of Gardens. The earth was formless and empty, chaos. Darkness was on the face of the deep, and God breathed. God hovered. God overshadowed the chaos and brought order out of it. God saw that everything He'd made was very good. There wasn't anything He made that was bad. There was no pain. There was no problem. It was all very, very, very good.

The Bible says that God was a gardener, and He planted a garden east in Eden, a garden of trees. He brought forth water from the ground and it watered that beautiful garden full of trees and fruit. He irrigated it. I wonder what it was like for Adam and Eve to live in that garden that God had planted. My mom had a poem hung on her kitchen wall, one that you're probably familiar with. The kiss of the sun for pardon, the songs of the birds for mirth, one is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.

I don't know if you ever feel like that. I am a gardener and sometimes I feel like that. I run to my garden for therapy. I love to pull out the weeds, and when I do, I think about the mess that was made of God's garden. But I imagine Adam and Eve with a hoe in their hand and working and keeping the garden God had given them to keep, and coming around the corner of the garden in the cool of the day and there's Jesus sitting in the shade. He walks with them and He talks with them. What a wonderful thing it must be, paradise indeed. No pain, no sorrow, no tears. Paradise.

Life inside the garden was wonderful, all very, very, very good. God had made the man, Adam. The word means humanity, man, male and female man. He put him in the very beginning in the garden without anyone to help him. There were animals there and he named the animals and they were his companions, but for Adam, no one was found. But in the beginning of times, he had the hoe in his hand and God said, "I've got a job for you to do. Do it."

I heard a man tell a story the other day of how when he was a little boy of four, his daddy asked him to clean out the garage and he put a broom in his hand. He said, "This is a job I want you to do, son." The little boy of four began to sweep it out and he wasn't doing a very good job. His bossy little sister, age six, came out and watched this and tried to take the broom out of the little boy's hand and said, "I'll do that. I'll do that for daddy." And the little boy fought with the broom and he said, "My daddy gave me this job. My daddy gave me this job."

There was a huge sense of purpose and pride in the little boy because his daddy gave him a job. God the Father gave Adam a job and He put a hoe in his hand and He said, "You can do this. I've got a job for you to do." Work happened in Eden in paradise. He never said, "Thank God it's Friday." He always said, "Thank God it's Monday." That was before the fall. Thank God it's Monday.

I expect when God put the hoe in his hand and said, "Your daddy has a job for you to do, Adam," I expect he might have thought work and paradise was an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp, two words in the same sentence that don't go together. But not before the fall. And so there was meaning and purpose and paradise and God walking and talking with the man that He had made. This was supposed to be a garden for all time. This was the Garden of Gardens for all people.

It occurred to me as I was thinking about this that if there hadn't been a snake in the garden and if Adam and Eve had not listened to him and taken the forbidden fruit, we might have finished the job by now and this world would be called the paradise instead of the world. We might have been sharing our lunch with a friendly elephant or panther later on and even a couple of skunks. I bet they didn't smell like that before the fall. This world was meant to be paradise, but paradise was lost.

That's pretty evident every time you pick up a paper and read it. So the snake deceived the man and the woman and they fell. Now where did this woman come from? Adam went to sleep one day and woke up and there she was. I bet it made him scared of closing his eyes at night in case God made another one and another one. But God only made one. That was His plan: one man, one woman, marriage, family. And so He made Eve and she came from a rib. She was his prime rib.

I wrote a book once called "Prime Rib and Apple" and it was about all the prime ribs of the Bible, starting with Eve. So Eve was his prime rib and she had a hoe in her hand and they were meant to rule, not over each other, not the man over the woman or the woman over the man, but over creation and over the animals, equal partners in this event. Everything in the garden was lovely until the snake came on the scene.

The snake was more crafty than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He didn't walk like a snake, he didn't look like a snake, and he wasn't a snake. The crafty creature was Satan himself, the angel of darkness who had previously been the angel of light. Lucifer, son of the morning, in drag. The king of muck looking like the queen of the roses. How long they lived in innocence, we don't know.

But the forbidden fruit hung invitingly there and there came a moment in the history of this world when Eve looked at it, desired it. To see it was to want it, to want it was to have to have it. The greed need took over and she wanted to be like God. She didn't want to be like a woman. She took it and gave it to the man. The Bible said, "who was with her." He wasn't around the corner hoeing. He was there and he watched her and he didn't stop her.

After she'd taken a bite, he took a bite. "Bite the bullet," the snake advised, or rather the apple. What Adam felt we know, and what Eve did we do. We eat forbidden fruit readily and eagerly, and we know how to get our menfolk to do the same. Oh, the power of a rib. Think about it. Say off-limits to me and that's the temptation we all fall to.

The problem is, from Adam and Eve and from the fall, we are all born with this propensity to sin. Prime rib took the hand that omnipotence had fashioned from her little piece of bone and she plucked the piece of forbidden fruit. She placed it between the lips omnipotence had framed to praise Him and she absorbed into her system the poisons of independence, selfishness, and death.

Jesus prepared to leave from Bethlehem. Grace prepared to be carried down the stairway of heaven in His Father's arms, put in a bale of hay and set the world on fire. So as soon as all hell was set loose, all heaven prepared to come in the shape of a baby born in Bethlehem. And so everything in the garden was lovely and then everything in the garden was terrible. The Garden of Sin takes the place of the picture of the Garden of Gardens.

"What is this you've done?" says God. And He came looking. Why did He come looking? Grace. Grace. If I'd been God, if you'd been God, I would have sent an avenging angel. I would not have come myself to look. "Where are you, Adam?" Can you hear the pain? Have you ever lost somebody you love? "Where are you?" Have you ever had a spouse walk out on you? "Where is he?" Have you ever lost somebody? He lost everybody all at once, all you and me and the potential human race.

The pain in His heart is obvious. "Where are you? What have you done?" And from then till now, that's what we've been asking. What did we do? And some of you say, if you're thinking, "Hey, I wasn't in the garden. That's not fair. They did it, I wouldn't have done it." You would have done it. I would have done it. We are sinners by nature and we are sinners by choice. If you'd been Adam or Eve, you would have done it.

You would have done it. God comes looking. You know the difference between Christianity and every other religion? In Christianity, God comes looking for man. In every other religion, man goes looking for God. That's the difference. It's true, it's right, it's the only way. Because God came seeking, God came reconciling, God came looking, saying, "Where are you?" at great cost to Himself. Whereas everybody else is saying, "Where is God? I can't find Him, I'm looking for Him."

We begin with man speculating on where God is and who God is. But for the Christian, we know God came looking. He started in Eden and He's been looking ever since. He's been looking in Africa and India and Europe and America and He's been saying, "Where are you?" The Father, loving us enough to let us go, but loving us enough to come looking and offer us a second chance.

Life outside the garden in the Garden of Sin is not easy. There's a cursed ground. Work has become the sweat of the brow. For most people in the world, not in America and not in the West, but for the majority of people in the world who will never ever have three meals a day, who will live in one eternal fast until they die, they understand Genesis one. Thorns and thistles and the sweat of the brow, never enough, never clean enough, and never nutritious enough. They understand.

God's pain is palpable. We know about God's pain because in Genesis six, when life outside the garden has got impossible and there are hundreds of people on the earth in the pre-diluvian age before the flood came, God is still walking around saying, "Where are you? Where are you?" And the entire human race, apart from one man and his family, have only evil in their thoughts all the time. Every inclination of their heart is only evil all the time.

The Bible says God looks at this mess and He is sorry that He made us. Have you ever read that verse? He's sorry that He made us and His heart is full of pain. His heart is full of pain and He's saying, "I'm sorry I made them. I'm going to wipe them out of the world. I'm going to start again. Why did I even give them a second chance? Why did I promise them a way back to me? Look at it."

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Do you know how much you have to offer and to say thank you to Noah when you get to heaven? He's the reason we're here, folks. His name means comfort. He brought comfort to the human race because one man decided to be forgiven, one man decided to be reconciled. He found grace in the eyes of the Lord and God built him an ark. God built him an ark.

When I think about the pain of God, I cannot conceive what that must have been like. As I was looking at this message to prepare it, I came to that verse, "I am sorry that I made them," and I wept. I said to God, "I am so sorry that You are so sorry and I'm sorry I'm part of that, that You look at my life and You say I'm sorry that I made her." Apart from grace, that's what He feels.

What grace is, even though He's sorry that He made us at this point in history and I'm sure many times as He looks in this terrible, horrible things that are happening in the world today, as He looks into every little grubby room in India and Los Angeles and wherever He is and He sees what men are doing to women and women are doing to men and parents are doing to children and children are doing to their parents, I think He's sorry that He made us all over again.

But there's grace that comes even though He's sorry that He made us. Even though He's asking for a whole lot more pain if He comes and tries to put it right, God was in Christ. He came in Christ to make a third chance and a fourth chance and a million chances still to be reconciled with God. I've often thought about it. He knew what was going to happen ahead of time. He knew that Cain would use his hands to kill Abel, but He still allowed Cain to be born a perfect child with two hands to do it.

He knew that Herod would give orders to kill a whole village of children, but He still gave him a tongue in his head to issue the order and allowed him to be king. He knew David would commit adultery, but He still gave him sexual function. He knew millions would say thanks but no thanks, I'm having too good a time and I refuse to be redeemed, and He still sent Jesus. That's grace. God's Riches At Christ's Expense. G.R.A.C.E.

God's riches, spiritual riches, forgiveness, a place to belong, a heaven to go to, and a God to live with, a good God. That's spiritual riches. He sent Christ to make that possible. Right back in the garden, He gave them a promise. He gave a promise to the snake. "Your descendants will have enmity between you and the woman's descendants. There will be war, spiritual war from this point on, until the seed of the woman, Christ, my man, comes and crushes the serpent's head."

How do you kill a serpent? You crush its head. That was the promise to the snake. The promise to Adam and Eve was, "I will cover you. I will make you garments to cover you. I will kill an animal. A life will be lost, blood will be shed in order for you to have skins of animals to cover you." And that was a picture, a picture of what was to come. God would make a way. He would cover the sin and one day He'd do away with it altogether at the cost to Himself.

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and God said to him, "Build an ark." It took him 120 years. Grace builds an ark, a place that we can get into out of the judgment of God because God has to judge sin. And so He said, "Build a big boat. It'll take you a long, long time, and while you're building it, preach." He built us an ark and He sent us a preacher.

For 120 years, Noah faithfully told them why he was building the ark, that God was going to judge the world, a flood was going to come. And this was a safe place to be, and the only place out of the judgment of God that was coming was in the ark. The door was open for 120 years. At the end of 120 years, God said, "Come on, Noah, bring your family into the ark." And God shut the door. God shut the door.

The rain started and the rain came. Those people suddenly realized he'd been right. They came up to the ark and they scrabbled on the door and they knocked on the door and they screamed and they yelled. I believe Noah was the other side saying, "Please let me open the door, please let me open the door." And God said, "No, I've shut the door. 120 years My long suffering has waited in the days of Noah." It tells us that in the New Testament.

There will come a day when God shuts the door. There will come a day when God shuts the door forever on the chance to go into the ark. Noah and his family went into the ark and the judgment of God fell. The judgment of God fell on the ark, but they were in the ark and they were safe. That's a picture of God's plan. The judgment of God fell on Christ. He's the ark and we can come into Christ. We can come into Christ. We can go through the door.

Jesus said, "I'm the door. I'm the door. I'm open. Come, come into the ark. I bore the judgment of God on the cross for you. I didn't allow it to fall on your head." After a while, that ark arrived at Ararat, 40 days and 40 nights. There wasn't a tree high enough and there wasn't a mountain high enough for the people. Everybody was drowned, everything died, and God's heart was filled with pain.

But it had to be done. For those people, it was too late. But the ark, holding the people that were saved, the forgiven sinners, the ones who had been reconciled with God, bumped up against a mountain called Ararat. The word means heavenly places, heavenly realms. They came out. God opened the door and they came out. Noah built an altar. First thing he did, he built an altar.

He sacrificed some of the clean animals he'd taken into the ark and the sweet smell came up to God. What Noah was saying is, "I understand. A life has to be given. A life has to be given for us to be saved. A life was given or will be given for us." He looked forward to the cross. We look back to the cross. He thanked God for his salvation, for grace that had made a way.

We're a long way from Genesis, but we're not a long way from God. We can come out of the ark out of our initial experience of being saved, of salvation, of coming to Christ. We can come out into a spiritual realm, heavenly dimensions in a human life that we can experience. Ephesians talks about it. In Christ, we live in a heavenly dimension.

There is a spiritual dimension added to your life where before there'd only been a religious dimension. Some of you have got a religious dimension to your life. That's not what I'm talking about. Religion or ritual is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a heavenly experience of a living Christ. I'm talking about forgiveness that you can know. You can know yourself forgiven. You can know that God has forgiven you. He can deal with the guilt.

These are heavenly things, these are spiritual realities that we can experience. We can know that we belong, that we're adopted. In Ephesians one, it says when you live in this heavenly dimension, God adopts you into His family. He takes you for His own. Everything He has is yours. God, Christ is your inheritance, and you are His inheritance.

All of this religious stuff you'll hear about is a reality. It works. It works in our families, it works in our marriage, it works in our personal life. Ararat, the mountain of God, life on the highest plane, if you wish. Life on the highest plane. What's so incredible when you read Genesis is that after this possibility, this wonderful chance, it was one short year, one short year before Noah made a vineyard, drank the wine, and got drunk.

He lies in his tent and his three sons are there. One of them, Ham, comes in and we are not quite sure what happens, but something happens that should not happen as his father lies there out like a light and naked. He comes out and he boasts about it to his brothers, and his brothers are horrified. Shem and Japheth put a coat on their back and they walk backwards so that they would not see their father's nakedness and they cover him up.

The whole thing begins again. The whole thing begins again. A man begins to hate man, a man begins to kill man, and God's heart is still filled with pain. Business as usual, if you wish. Yet God provides a means of grace and a reminder and He's put a rainbow in the sky with colors in it. Colors like green for the world and red for redemption and blue for heaven and yellow for glory.

He says, "That's My reminder. I promise you, I'm going to make a promise, a covenant with you. I'm going to make a promise. I'm going to see this thing through." Not until you get into the Garden of God, not until you get into heaven, will it be any really different. You can know a little bit of heaven down here because heaven can come into your heart in the shape of Christ and grace can cover your sin, but we are still left in the Garden of Sin for the whole of our lives.

But one day, one day we will and can live in the Garden of God. The Garden of God where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. One day we'll go through the front door. Yes, we will, if we know Christ. And you know the first thing you'll see? You can read about it in three places in Scripture. You'll see someone that looks like a man, a sort of familiar man sitting on a sort of throne on a sort of platform that's like chrysolite, and underneath there's transparent gold.

Round the man is something like, says John, a rainbow. A rainbow. God paints His promises in such pretty colors. He does on earth. He says, "I promise you I'm going to see it through, that even though you'll never know what it is to be free from sin until you walk through the front door, one day it'll happen and I'll take you home to Me."

I'll pick you up and I'll shout to the angels, "Bring the shoes and bring the robe and let's have a feast for this my daughter was dead and is alive again. She was lost and is found." You will live forever in the Garden of God. I'm thinking about this Everland. I was talking to Jesus about it the other day and I write, "In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you."

I was very tired and I talked with God about it and we were talking about houses and I was thanking Him for my lovely house. "I have a lovely home too," He said. I knew He would have. How could it be different? "Lord of Glory," I heard myself saying, "What is your house like? Does it stand in a garden?" "Watch carefully," He said to me, "and I'll open the door, I'll open the front door just a little minute so you can look through. See what you see, Jill."

Oh great, Lord of Everland, it's so beautiful. I see flowers that never fade, trees that are laden with fruit, and light that never dims. "What do you hear?" Well, I hear birds that never stop singing and laughter that sounds like a thousand rivers. I notice then the laughter came from people that never die. "Can you see the angels?" I don't know, Lord, yet I think I feel the brush of their wings.

Oh Lord of Everland, how long will it be till we move house? "Soon, very soon, you'll all be there, and you'll be there as long as I am." Then I was satisfied and He closed the front door and kissed me to sleep. Do you know you're going to Everland? Do you understand what happened in the Garden of Gardens? Do you understand about the snake and the Garden of Sin? Do you know about the Garden of God, the Garden of Glory?

Well, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and individually and personally, each of us need to find that personal grace to say, "Forgive me, God. Forgive me, God. I want to come into the ark. Thank You for sending the judgment I deserved on Jesus' head on the cross. Thank You for offering me salvation in Christ. Show me how to walk into the ark and show me to live on Ararat is what this is all about. Help me understand the spiritual dimension of life in the Garden of Sin with the Christ of God living within me to make the difference. And oh Lord of Everland, I want to come home. One day, I want to come home."

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, thank You there is a God to believe in and a heaven to go to. Thank You there was a Christ who came seeking and looking behind every tree and rock to find us. And God, thank You for the Gospel, the Good News. There is forgiveness. There is the possibility of a spiritual dimension in our life, a heavenly realm. At the moment, the door is open. God, may we not abuse the day of grace, and may the God of grace through Christ make all this make sense. Thank You, Lord. Amen.