Christian Living

Restored Fracture

by Thomas Kirkpatrick
08/05/21
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“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

Many of us, and most truthfully, have lived a portion of our lives thinking that we are on a good path and wishfully desire to make a good show of it in the end. I often am reminded of the word my elder brother said to me one day, “I had a lousy start, and now I am trying to have a good finish.” I never intended to live my life badly, yet I have. I never intended to live my life evilly, yet I have. I never intended to live a life of failure, yet with all my successes, I have filed. We desire good for ourselves, yet we never find enough good. Tomorrow I promise to do better only to rest in the evening without peace and satisfaction in our hearts. There’s always been a calling, a quest to be better than my best, and the disappointment of not achieving perfection. Looking at the text, I have found a key that opens the door to the goodness, satisfaction, peace, and perfection I desire for myself. At the beginning of everything, place God.

In the beginning, God. However, God has existed. He is eternal, and in the beginning, He was God. God created the heavens and the earth, and with each step, He declared that it was good. (Genesis Chapter 1) All God created was good, perfect, and everything he created was His best, and all was in harmony with His will. “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” (James 1:17) Form all we know God is the beginning, and form all we hope for God is that end. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8) Key; At the beginning of your day, God.

Before creating what we have known and have seen, there was a complete heavenly realm of spiritual beings that God created. This heavenly host was divided between three archangels, Lucifer, Michael, and Gabriel. They were God’s chosen leaders of the heavenly host of spiritual beings. The greatest of the archangels was Lucifer, as he was the musician and worship leader. There was no created being more talented and beautiful than Lucifer. But unrighteousness was found in him. “Thus says the Lord GOD, “You had the seal of perfection, Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were blameless in your ways From the day you were created Until unrighteousness was found in you.” (Ezekiel 28:12, 15) “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” Isaiah 14:13-14)

This self-pride and boastfulness caused his rebellion against God’s order, and Michael and the angels in his charge expelled Lucifer from the heavenly realm of Heaven. “And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” (Revelation 12:7-9)

God created a man to have dominion over the earth and give God the glory as his Creator. God’s creation was spoken into existence by the Word of God, but man was formed from the dust by the hand of God. Unlike all God created on the earth, God breathed life into the lifeless mound of dust a man. Of all that God created, only man had an eternal spirit as God his Creator. “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)

An assumption is Satan, who had been thrown down to the earth, must have thought man now upon the earth was under his domain. But the man was created to glorify God, and that infuriated Satan. The man was a living physical being that had an eternal spirit, and the only way to destroy man was to destroy his spirit, the only way to hurt God was to rob Him of the spirit of man.

God created Adam and Eve and as all God had created in this world was in harmony with the will of God. They were righteous creatures who were spiritually in line with God’s plan and purpose for their lives. They had no thoughts of evil or disobedience to God’s Word. As far as we know, they lived in the Garden with one rule: they were forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge between Good and Evil. The penalty for breaking that rule was death. Adam knew it, and he should have made Eve fully aware of God’s law.

To destroy man’s relationship with God, Satan had to cause disobedience of God’s Word to come into their lives. Satan had fallen to self-pride and wanting to be as God and tempted Eve with the same desire. “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Eve ate the fruit of the tree and did not die, or so she thought. She convinced Adam to eat, and evil thoughts flooded their hearts and filled their minds with evil desires.

God knew what they had done and came amongst them to pass judgment of their evil sin. First, God cursed Satan for destroying His creation. “The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life” (Genesis 3:14) Second God cursed humanity. “To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16) Third, God cursed the earth that would support man. “Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.” (Genesis 3:17) Then God pronounces the death sentence that humanity would return to the dust from which he came. “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

By all of these four judgments of God, creation was fractured and remains fractured because of man’s disobedience. The soul, heart, and spirit of a man are fractured and can no longer have communion with God, and as time has passed, humanity has moved further away from the truth of God’s Word. His heart is filled with evil thoughts driving the soul to act out in evil deeds without fear of the coming judgment. The spirit cannot comprehend the truth of God’s Word and has no moral foundation to stand upon. Reality has become truth based upon the desires of a wicked heart that seeks its own pleasures. Truth changes daily for a man with shifting perceptions of life and how he reacts to it. With no true north on man’s compass of life, humanity is adrift in the sea of life. In His incomprehensible love for His creation, God has a plan for humanity’s redemption and restoration.

It’s a long story for another day, but I found myself in the Army within a few months of graduating from High school. A friend of mine convinced me that the only way to straighten out was to join the Army. After a couple of months of training, I step foot into Viet Nam to liberate a communist-ravaged nation. That was an illusion, as I felt that we were the enemy and not the South Vietnamese. I was a loving child of a Presbyterian Minister and now had become a killing machine for the Army. I was proudly doing my duty and hating every minute of it. There was no satisfaction in being who I was.

All this conflict on the outside wore me down on the inside, and there was no escape from where I was or who I had become. At first, the heroine gave me a pleasant peace as I went through the day. Then a buddy of mine said take this, it will change your whole perspective. It soon became my god. It was all I could think about, all I lived for, and everything I wanted. It became more than my 136.00 a mouth could afford. So I did whatever I had to do to get my next fix.

I was at the end of my string and not even enough to hang myself with. I found myself in a completely black night in a pit that I had dug myself to protect me from the tracer rounds flying around the field. Then all become quiet, and none would make a sound, as that would draw fire. It was too dark to see who was a friend or who was a foe. I was thinking, is this how it is to end, a bullet from nowhere ripping my life from me? I had no heroin to give me a remembrance of peace. I was alone with only my rifle, pain, and blackness. Is this what my life amounts to?

I took my rifle, jammed the barrel beneath my neck, laid my finger across the trigger, and pushed up. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. It wouldn’t move, I’d been firing at things all night, and now the trigger wouldn’t release. I opened my eyes to look at the safety but saw billions of stars in the sky. They were winking at me, saying “come on, come on, come on home.” I opened my eyes and looked up into the blackness, and said I want to go home. Lord, I know you are there. I want to come home to you, Lord, will you take me?

A peace, a peace I hadn’t known since childhood came over me. I no longer had any pain from the lack of heroin, and I no longer felt that I would die here in this far country. I found what I had never had, hope. I found someone who could save me from myself. I had the presence of the Lord Jesus in the pit with me. When I put the rifle back down, I felt the safety was off and ready to fire. I was in a field of fire and free.

God is love. God can love one who is the most wretched as I, and he certainly loves the least of these. God loves me, and Jesus loves me, but more importantly, Jesus loves you. He doesn’t need you, but He wants you to help Him reach the one in the pit next to you. “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” (1 John 4:9)

Are you fractured? Are you a sinner? I cannot believe that no one here is not a fractured sinner. I know that I am, and I know that none of us meet the measure of God’s glory. I also believe that most of us here tonight are forgiven. Give the Lord a clap for the grace you have received. I would like to believe that all of us here are forgiven; all of us here are faithful followers of Jesus Christ. But I can’t gamble and leave someone behind. I want you all to take in this verse from Romans. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-24)

If that is true for you, then Praise the Lord and shout. Thank you, Lord! But if there is doubt, if you feel a tug on your soul, if a still quiet voice is speaking to you your name, and if you feel a conviction that you need to do something, then answer. I know as I for most of my life, I was complacent and didn’t answer. I pondered my way through thinking about it. What is there to think about? It is your life you are toying with? It is not hard to accept Jesus’ call, much harder to reject the call. “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10)

Do not be like me and give up the best years to come, answer Him. “At the acceptable time I listened to you, And on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is “the acceptable time,” behold, now is “the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2)

Thomas N Kirkpatrick, First Baptist Church of Durant, April 17, 2019