The Creation Made Subject

I'd like to ask for a volunteer that could read Romans. I'd like to read this passage and actually the passage following. I'd like to read Romans 19 through 25 in Chapter 8. Can I ask for a volunteer or maybe two volunteers if you want to split it up?

Sure. Thank you. For the anxious longing of the creation, wait patiently for the revealing of the Son of God. For the creation was subjected to futility not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from slavery to corruption and to the freedom and the glory of the children of God. I'm sorry, to 25. Yeah, thank you.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves have had the first preach of the Spirit groaning inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. We're in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Great. Thank you. So actually, we're going to be studying those set of verses this week and next week. So basically, and I went back one verse. You know, Bob covered verse 19. But if you started looking at the context, it seemed appropriate to include 19 in this section, as we're talking about the creation.

That's going to be kind of the, the focal point of what we talk about today. So this section is going to be about the creation, and then the next section is going to talk about how the believer interfaces with the hope that's going to be mentioned here, the hope of the glory of the children of God.

So one of the questions I wanted to ask at the beginning here, just from reading the passages here, what do you think And some translations have creature for creation. And hopefully, I'll try to explain a little bit about that. But what do you think the creation is referring to in this passage? And this is just sort of, you know, just to kind of get your mind going, if it's not going. And just, you know, what do you think, the different articles there in the Greek. So it's the creation talking about the creation. So without telling you what it is, what do you think it's referring to? And what do you think it includes, maybe, and doesn't include? Or does it include? Or is there any exclusion?

Could it be the earth rather than the heavens, or where man dwells? OK. That's certainly a possibility. That's certainly a possibility. Other thoughts? It seems to be too, too different to talk about the wait eagerly for the beginning of the sons of God. So to me, it's some being someone outside that looking upon the church. OK, walk.

Okay, well that's good, because actually that's what I kind of, that's part of, the next section we're going to read talks about similar things about how we, we, Paul's talking about we believers, also grown, we also have some of the same issues as the creation has. So it seems like he's addressing the creation first, then he addresses believers second, and there's some similarities there. So let's just go on here, and I'll try to give you some ideas about the creation here. I keep forgetting which one it is, but... Hello. Okay. Okay. There we go. There's the on button. Yeah, turn the on to on. Okay.

So if you notice in that passage, the creation was talked about as having anxious longings, waiting eagerly. The gentleman back here kind of mentioned that, waiting eagerly, groans and sufferings. It's given human qualities, the creation. And then also it says it's subject to God's will. It's subject to futility or vanity. And it said it will be set free. And the word creation. denotes primarily the act of creation. But also what's really key here, and actually what I do with my little pointer here, here we go. I think this line here, this is from Vines. It says, like the English word creation, it also signifies a product. So it seems like that the creation is signifying inanimate objects. And we're going to see some things about that, like the rocks, and the trees, and the hills, and the valleys, as well as animals.

But probably not in that first context, probably not the believer, because the believer is going to be addressed separately. And I'm not sure. There's some possibly different interpretation there. But it looks like it's referring to the creation, because the creation is groaning because it's waiting for the revelation of believers, the Son of Man.

So that was part of my thoughts here. And then I wanted to kind of show you here, and this is kind of neat, I wanted to get some more volunteers here. Hopefully we'll, let's go the other way. Could someone read Habakkuk, can you read off the overhead here, Habakkuk 2.11? And just maybe, Avani, maybe you can read it first and then we'll kind of. Oh, Mindy wants to read all of them? Well, no, I want you to just, I'm sorry, I didn't make it clear. If you could read one and make it Lindy to read one. And actually what I'm trying to show here, let me, I'll kind of jump right into this. This is other places in scripture where sometimes inanimate objects are given, that they're talked about as having, they're speaking or expressing something.

So if you could read Habakkuk 2.11. Surely the stone will cry out from the wall, and the rafter will answer it from the framework. And, Lindy, can I get you to read Joshua 24, 27? Joshua said to all the people, Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord which he spoke to us.

Yeah, I thought... I'm sorry. Sorry, keep going. I got all excited. This stone shall be for a witness against you, so that you do not deny your God. I was getting all excited about what I saw here, so I jumped in there. It's interesting, like around here, the walls, they're hearing what God has said, and they're going to testify against you. Interesting things.

Wayne, could you read Luke 19.40? But Jesus answered, I tell you, these become silent, the stones will cry out. Right. And that's testifying about him in the context that they're testifying about the Lord. And then, let's see, who else?

Someone for Psalm 98.8? Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy.

Actually, I have a story about this one. It's in California on the coastline. And there's a surfing beach. And when the waves come in, the rocks kind of quake. And it kind of reminded us of the rivers clapping. I mean, they made a sound. We kind of, wow. The waves roll in. And when it comes back out, the rocks kind of make a sound. And we think, wow.

How about Psalm 65, 12 through 13? The gentleman in the back, if you wouldn't mind. Thank you. I mean, I'd like to read the last one, Joel 120. Ruth, I'm sorry. Even the beasts of the field can't long for you, for the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness. Great, thank you.

So I actually spent a little time kind of thinking about that, you know, there's some terms in English like personification, you know, that's where something that's inanimate takes on a personhood or takes on qualities of that. Also another big word is anthropomorphism. It's a very similar idea where it says ascribes human motivations and characteristics to inanimate objects. So it's just not unique to what Paul's doing.

Other places in scripture use this allusion to that inanimate objects are speaking what God is all about, what he's done, praising him, basically. And then there's tons of psalms that just say, the heavens declare the glory of God, and so on, so many verses like that. So we're going to see that as the creation groans, it has childbirth pains, all these interesting things it's going to say as we go through here. So let's go on.

OK, so this is a verse that we've seen before from last week. For the anxious lungs of the creation wait eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. So I just kind of divided it into the top yellow boxes. In fact, my font got kind of interesting there. Anyway, that's a nit there. That's actually the subject of this verse.

The anxious lungs of creation wait eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. And anxious longing here is a word that talks about... It's interesting. Have you ever been like in a parade and there's something coming down you want to see and you stretch your neck out like this to look for it down there? Well, that's basically what this seems to be. If you look carefully, it says here, the straining expectancy, eager longing. So creation is anxiously waiting for God to complete His salvation. And we're going to see that. God, His salvation has not been complete. We who are saved, that process is not complete yet. We aren't glorified. We're not with Him yet. So that process has not been complete.

So it says, the creation is anxiously longing for that to occur without stretched heads. That's a really neat picture. All right, so let's go on here. And waiting eagerly, that's the verb of the sentence. And actually, it's in the present tense. So presently the creation is waiting eagerly to wait expectantly. It's running to wait for.

And I had some other verses here that I just found basically in 1 Corinthians 1.7. so that you are not lacking in any gift awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And in Galatians 5.5, for we through the Spirit by faith are waiting for the hope of righteousness.

And then Philippians 3.20, for our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then Hebrews 9.28, So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation, without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await him."

And what's interesting here, I think, is that you look at the focus. The creation is waiting for the revelation of the sons of God. And these other usages of the same word, waiting eagerly, are looking for a very similar thing. They're looking for the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ's work is salvation. So we're kind of all waiting for the same thing to happen, God's plan to be completed. And this is the last part of that verse, the revealing of the sons of God. And revealing here is this word to uncover, to unveil. The root word is to unveil.

And I had some verses here that Other places and the word is either revealing sometimes or revelation and you're going to see here that it's going to be The revelation of our Savior in first Corinthians 1 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift awaiting eagerly and I've actually looked at that way.

I wasn't sure that my actually might be a you know Fall back to the waiting eagerly of creation the revelation or Lord Jesus Christ And then Ephesians 1 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. And then first Peter, therefore prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And then lastly, but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exaltation." So once again, the creation is anticipating this revelation, and many other passages support that, saying, we're looking forward to this wonderful revelation of our Savior.

So that's kind of, you know, that kind of takes us to, you know, Bob went through this first from last week, but it just really fit. You had to kind of include in this because it's going to set the stage for the for the rest of what's happening here. OK. And then I used to have a another. So. This is just sort of a timeline.

I call it the aspects of salvation. And we're justified, sanctified, and we're to be glorified. And then our salvation in terms of... Can someone tell me what the past tense of salvation is all about? Just maybe briefly. We're saved from the... And that kind of phraseology. Maybe I'm just... Thank you. And then how about the present tense? Thank you, Bonnie. You get extra points for this. And future tense. Okay, good. Very good. Alright.

So this is really focusing upon the glorification of the believer. The finish of God's salvation will be completed when the believers are with Him in glory. That will be the completion. So creation, that's what this, Paul's creations, it's incredible. Creation is waiting. His creation is waiting for this to occur. and agonizing, and travailing, and so on. We're going to see all these different adjectives that describe that, verbs and nouns. Essentially, the nouns describe it, the verbs describe it. It's just a real combination of different things.

So now we're going to go to verse 20. And verse 20 says, so here's something that God has done for the creation, was subject to futility. Actually, 20 and 21, if you look at 20 and 21, you'll see that it's actually one sentence. for creation was subject to futility, and it ends right here. And the main thrust of this is the first clause here, for the creation was subjected to futility. I'm having a hard time with that today. And then the other parts are going to modify that one clause, the not willing part, and that the creation itself will be set free. That main clause there is going to be the focal point of these two verses.

For the creation was subject to futility, I don't know. Subjected is a word that, it's like a military term, like there's a rank, there's a general, a lieutenant, a private to rank under, to range under. So creation was, was put in a position that God had not originally intended. That was not his plan, but he has done this based upon, and we're going to see shortly, what Adam did.

So creation was subjected to futility. Here's some places where this word occurs. I won't read all of them. And many times it's talking about other aspects. There wasn't a verse that directly had another thought in terms of creation, in terms of subjected to futility.

Most I'm talking about, like the Romans 13.1, every person is in subjection to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those who exist are established by God. So this is talking about that there is a structure and we're to be under, we're to subject ourselves, we're to be under the authority which God has given. So there isn't really an exact parallel verse that kind of showed up.

And this futility is sometimes translated vanity. or actually emptiness, emptiness as to result. So creation was this wonderful thing that God has done, and we're going to look at that very shortly here, this wonderful thing that creation was perfect, but God made it into emptiness. It's interesting, you look out and you say, wow, look at what we see, and this is emptiness? I mean, you look at the mountains and the snow and the stars and you think, wow, What must it be like if it hadn't been subjected to futility or to emptiness? I mean, it's just incredible. I mean, it's an incredible statement. So most of these are, once again, they're not exactly supporting verses. They're just other verses where that word is used. So let's just go on here. I want to kind of spend a little time on this here. And just some questions that come.

As I went through here, I kind of thought about, well, we kind of got to go back to Genesis here and take a look at at how creation started out. So I want to spend a little time looking at that. So let's look at Genesis chapter 1. Because if we're going to look at that creation has been subjected to emptiness, we want to see, well, how did that happen? And how did it start out? So, I listed a bunch of verses here in chapter 1, and God makes a very similar statement in all these verses. I'll just read a few of these.

In verse 4, it says, And God saw that the light was good, and separated the light from the darkness. So, it's not as obvious here. He just says, basically, He saw the light was good. Then in verse 12, And the earth brought forth vegetation, plant-yielding seeds, after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with seeds in them, after their kind. And God saw that it was good. And so he says he saw it was good every time. Interesting, the word good, sometimes someone asked, I think someone asked the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is good?

And he says there's only one that's good. It's God. So being good is probably in our English saying probably a little bit understatement. You think, well, good doesn't sound very, superlative doesn't sound very impressive. But good, God's creation was perfect. So he said everything was good.

And then we go to verse 18. He says that This is talking about the 17. And God placed him in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

So everything that he created was good, was perfect. And then finally, in verse 31 it says, And God saw that all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. So at the end he says, it's very good. So creation was very good, was perfect. And then we're going to see what happens. So the first question, what does God say about creation? He says, it's good, it's very good, it's perfect. And then the futility part comes in after the fall and the judgment. So any thoughts or questions about so far? Unless I've been just babbling on. And you ask ones I can't answer, too. That's OK. I usually can't answer most questions, but that's OK.

Let's look at the futility part. In chapter 3, and let's see here, where do I want to go here? Let's look around verse 17. And maybe I can get someone to read here. I'm kind of babbling on, but Ronnie, can I talk you into maybe reading just a little bit here? Could you read 17 through? 17 through 19.

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 shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles that shall grow for you. And you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Now the man called his wife named Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Okay, that's fine. Thank you. So, you know, there's several things in here that he, back in about the middle of 17, it says, cursed is the ground because of you. So the ground, the earth, was cursed because of Adam, right?

In toil, you shall eat of it. So the earth is not going to be as fruitful as it could be. You're going to have to toil. You're going to have to work hard at it to produce things, it seems like. And that will be in all the days of your life. That's going to continue on. That's not going to be a temporary thing. That's going to be the way the earth is. And he says, both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you.

So all this corruption, all this futility, all this vanity, is because of the fall. So this is God's judgment that resulted upon the creation. It says, by the sweat of your face you shall eat the bread till you return to the ground, and so on. So this futility is a result of Adam's fall and God's judgment.

And what we see is in Romans, he kind of goes into detail, he kind of expands that a little bit more. and gives out some more detail. So he says, and what's interesting is, and once again, this is human character, not willingly. It's like creation said, hey, no, don't do it. God said, no, that's a result. Not willingly. And willingly is either a free will. Not willingly. And all this thing seems to focus back to the main clause here. Creation was subject to futility or emptiness.

So not willingly, but because of the One, Him, subjecting it in hope. So God did this, but He didn't, as with Adam, He provided a way of restoration. He provided a way of restoration for Adam, the salvation. He's basically saying he's subjecting it in hope.

Hope is going to be defined in verse 21. I may have got carried away. I went through and gave you hope. Actually, next week we're going to look a lot more at hope. The interesting passages are defining what hope is. Hope is not hope if you know where it is. If you already know the outcome, know the outcome. If it already happened, then... So we're going to find more about hope. But hope is... Let me just go back here for a second.

Hope is this word, elpis. I think that's how it's pronounced. Favorable and confident expectation. And I like how Malloy's... definition, it's absolute certainty. And the reason you can say that is because it's based upon God's character, who God is. God is the one that makes that hope an absolute certainty.

And you can kind of see that from these verses here. It talks about in Colossians 127, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of the mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, if Christ is in you, is there any uncertainty about glory? No, there's not. It's an absolute certainty.

In 1 Thessalonians 1.3, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ and the presence of God and the Father.

And then down in 1 Timothy 1.1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, according to the commandment of God, our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope. We notice the hope is always focusing back on God, on Jesus Christ. And then in Titus 1-2, in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ago. So here's another one that just kind of really nails it down. The absolute certainty, because of God's character, God cannot lie.

And then 1 Peter 1.21, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

So we're going to see a lot more of that to come. This may be a little bit of a messy picture, but I don't know. I was trying to divide up into little pieces, and then I got carried away here. 21 really focuses back that the creation was subjected to futility. And here's the reason, that the creation itself also will be set free.

This is the hope that was referred to in the previous verse. It's from something to something. From its slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So the glorious event when we're all together with Christ in glory. The glory of the children of God, creation is looking forward to that. So it's from the slavery of corruption, and that word corruption is the idea of inferior or worse condition. And you're going, OK, also. Oh, up here. OK. The crate also will be set free from this.

Well, the new heaven, the new earth seems to be the solution. I don't know. I look at that more as a solution, right? I mean, what we call the old creation, it's not what we call the old creation, the creation that's presently right now, groaning. The new creation is really, seems to be, that's the solution. So I look at that as the future thing, the new creation, is our abode, you know, for eternity. I don't know, that's my thought. Is that what you were thinking about? Okay, you're just asking, what about that? Okay, thank you. I need to keep awake up here, so that's good.

I would think that the new creation is part of the solution, part of the wonderful solution, the wonderful glory. a new heavens and a new earth. Because this old earth is, we have all this vanity and corruption, emptiness. Okay. And set free is, you know, many verses that talk about being free, most of them are terms of freed from sin, the slave, you know, being freed from this to that. We're just going to move on here. So the creation is a slave. And here's some verses that kind of talk about slavery in the New Testament.

Galatians 5.1, it was for freedom that Christ set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm. Do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery. So it's from this slavery into this freedom. And what's interesting is, in the passage here, 20 and 21 kind of have this construction. Actually it's 20. That the creation also itself will be set free. It will be set free from slavery to freedom.

So you have this construction as in Galatians 5.1. With freedom, did Christ set us free?

We have like a noun and a verb and they both express the same idea. And that kind of, in the Greek, idea of completeness. And so we have the same construction here. We have in verse 21, The creation itself will also be set free from slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So the action we've been set free to a place of freedom. And then Wiest here, I thought had a good rendering.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not voluntarily, but on account of the one who put it under subjection upon the basis of hope, And actually, that's interesting. It kind of helps tie in those two verses. On the basis of hope, that creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty, and that's another word for freedom, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.

And then 22. So this starts off, in 22 it starts off with, we know, speaking I believe of believers, we know, and once again it's to make a statement that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And actually, the construction is actually There's a togetherness, but with both those words, with the groans and the suffering, there are groans together and travails together.

So the whole creation groans together and travails together. And the groaning is this idea with an inward, unexpressed feeling of sorrow as we groan over something. That's probably a pretty natural thing. Something happens and you kind of go, oh, it's kind of not that again. Once again, this interesting structure where you have the creation groaning right now, together until now. And then the other part is this travail in pain, and this is the word for childbirth pains, travailing together.

And I wondered about, and this is, I'm going to ask this in a question form, What do you think the creation is travailing in birth pangs about? What do you think, any ideas about why it's travailing? I don't have, and this is something that occurred to me as I was looking through this. Why do you think it's, you can see why it's groaning, right? It's been subjected to this, to sin basically, to all this corruption, but why is it, This sort of says it's, why do you think it's travailing as in, birth pangs are the precursor to the birth, so why do you think it's doing that?

Why do you think it's travailing together? It says it travails and pain together. Because of man's sin. Okay, absolutely, that's good. So what do you think is the birth that's looking forward to, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I kind of wonder now, I kind of give away the answer here.

I kind of wondered if part of this might be, it's growing together and the travailing and pains might be referring to the tribulation period, possibly. Because that's going to be a very difficult time, right? And the end of the tribulation period is when Christ returns and we're glorified with him. So I kind of thought, I wondered about the travailing and pain together might be thinking about the painfulness of the tribulation period.

That's just a thought. But I think it could be from the time of Adam's fault, Leon's fault, to the time that we are glorified and free from all pain and suffering. I was trying to find a short version, thinking about my wife. Shorten those up would be kind of a nice thing.

She said, with the birth of our first son, she says, Roger, I'm not going to tell you how bad this is. She didn't have any medication at all. I was her coach. I'm not sure how great a coach I was, but I tried to be a coach. There's no reason why it can't be the entire time period, but I thought, Maybe the tribulation time is a very intense time. I was thinking about the intensity of birth pangs, of the birth process.

I would agree with you. I know, I know. And then the wonderful thing when you think of being with the Lord is that there's no pain and no suffering. I know, isn't that, oh, just the opposite of all this. This is groans together and travails in pain together. I mean, it's just, okay, yes, go ahead, I'm sorry.

I haven't thought about this tonight. Okay, sure. I have had thoughts that, you know, man falls. He's going to fall on his face. Imagine living in a world that was still perfect. I'm not sure how that... I mean, that almost seems like God's grace, subjecting the earth because of man's sin, so that we could live...

I hear what you're saying. That's a good point. That's an excellent point. It fits with the condition of man, because man has fallen. If he had a perfect world, I mean, it wouldn't... That's actually his grace or his mercy. That's a good point. The other thing is the effect of Adam's sin. It affected God's entire creation and God has a plan. to restore his entire creation in addition to restoring man. So God had a plan and that's the idea of hope, right? That's good.

I can't help but think of the elephants when one of their herd dies. They say that an elephant cries and mourns the loss. of that member of the herd. Other animals grieve. If you take a foal away from a horse too early from the mother, the mother grieves as well as the baby.

That's interesting. That's all the results are. That's good, that's good. We're kind of insulated from animals, unless you live in a farm someplace, like Vern had all these farm stories with goats and sheep. For us city folks, a farm is someplace out there. That's good, that's good. Actually, we're having our own experience. has a cat, and she's living with us for a while, so we're experiencing getting to know a cat. We have cat troubles, right? And cats have personalities, and they, you know, it's the same. Anyway, okay. Yeah, and this is this word, travail and pain together, and many times it's translated birth pangs, in many, many situations.

So hopefully I gave you a lot of stuff here. I was thinking, I said, I look at this one. I said, well, I gave him a lot of stuff, but I don't know. Hopefully it'll be helpful maybe for reference. I don't know. Okay. And so let's look down here. So actually I really like we use it. I use it a lot. And what's wonderful is now it's in electronic format. So I can cut and paste it. I love it. I love it.

So I, so this is just, so, May I get someone else to read this? I've been reading a lot. Ruth, can you read it from there or you read it in your paper? Sorry to catch you by surprise. I'm sorry, some of these words here, I apologize. I can't let somebody else read it. You'd like to read it, Bonnie?

It was a concentrated and undivided expectation of the creation to decidiously and patiently await the revelation of his son the God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not voluntarily, but on account of the one who put it under subjection upon the basis of a hope that the creation itself also would be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty and glory of the children of God. For we know the whole creation groans and prevails together up to this moment.

So this is the latest news, right? This is, you know, if you're on the Harry Reid or whoever the news, I don't even watch them anymore. But anyway, this is the latest news. This is it. The whole creation, up to this moment, is waiting for God's salvation to be complete. For Him to complete His salvation.

And we're to walk in light of that. Next we're going to look at the fact that we groan, not only is creation groaning, but believers groan, and the hope that we have, the wonderful hope that we have. This, I believe, speaks about God's creation. This is not God's original intent, but he subjected to his creation because Adam fell. Any last thoughts or questions? Well, let's close in prayer.

Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your word, Father. We thank you that we can study it, Father. We thank you that, Lord, that your ways are paths finding out, you say in scripture, Lord. They're inscrutable. And Lord, we thank you that you've provided salvation for everyone. It's available to everyone, Lord.

And we thank you that we have trusted you by faith in that, Lord. And we look forward to that day, and we'll be with you. And also, Lord, we're thankful that your creation will be restored to the wonderful and it was very good state that was in the beginning. We thank you for that. In Christ's name, Amen.