________________________________________________________________________

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were offered a free cruise to Nassau, Bahamas with her family. We thought about it for approximately one and a half seconds and then accepted. It was the first time that I had actually been to what is known as a "paradise." I was surprised to find that it was actually more beautiful than the postcards that you see. The water was perfectly blue, the sand was white and the islands were breathtaking. We spent an entire afternoon wandering around the famous Atlantis Hotel and it's wonderful gardens and admiring the aquariums and fountains and gardens and pools and rooms and sculptures all built on what has got to be one of the most fantastic scenic places of the world. On a little island, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, man has truly built what could be called a "place of rest, relaxation, wonder, and comfort." It truly is a paradise setting.

I bring up my trip to the Bahamas not to rub in your face that I got a free vacation, but to point out to you that anything man can do at his best, God can do better. It was God who had the first idea to create a garden of paradise. We read in our text, a passage of scripture from the first chapters of the Bible that detail God's creation of this world. God spoke light and substance into nothing. He set the stars and the moons and the sun in their places by His mere command. He formed the earth by speaking what was to happen next and this wonderful universe and beautiful and complex planet was born into existence. God could have created the world anyway that He wanted to -- after all He is God. God could have chosen to use a big bang. God could have chosen to use an evolutionary process to create everything that you see. He could have done so. But He didn't! Instead He chose to speak this world into existence by verbal command because He wanted from the very beginning of His Word and man's history to impart to us the power, importance, and magnitude of His Word! There simply is nothing in the universe as powerful as the Word of God. The Psalmist wrote:

We talk a lot in this church about the power of the name of God. When we pray for the sick we always use that precious, holy, all-encompassing name of Jesus Christ! It truly is a name above every name! Jesus said that "whatsoever you ask in my name, I will do it." He said that He was "as close as the mention of His name!" We still believe in not taking that precious name in vain. We don't use it as a cuss word. We don't use it as a slang explicative. Because many of us have learned the power of the name of Jesus. We have been healed by calling on that name. We have been comforted by calling on that name. We have been saved by calling on the name of the Lord: at Repentance asking Him to forgive us and to help us walk a different direction from our sinful past, at Water Baptism we went down in the lovely name of Jesus Christ and thus were buried with Him and had our past sins washed away, and we received the Holy Ghost by praising and calling on the precious name of Jesus Christ! Devils tremble and are subject to the power of the name of Jesus Christ. That name is a strong tower in which we can run to! We exalt and praise and magnify the name of Jesus Christ because our lives have been changed by the power and the magnificence of that name!

With all of that in mind, I want you to realize that the psalmist said that God has "magnified" or "made bigger and better" His Word above His name! The name of Jesus is very powerful, but the Word of God is even more so! There is not anything that you have done this week that is more important than what you are doing right now, because if you receive the Word of the Lord this morning, you are receiving something that is powerful even more powerful than the name of Jesus! He has magnified His Word above His name! The Word of God has creative force! If you will allow it to move you, if you will step out in faith and obey it's commands and promises and conditions, then it will create something even out of nothing! It will take void and blackness and chaos and turn your life into a living paradise! God created the world by speaking it into existence because He wanted you and I to know that His Word has the answer and the solution and the power to change you and your situation! His Word is magnified, even above His name!

________________________________________________________________________

And so God spoke this world into existence. He created this planet a place of beauty and then He rested and saw that it "was good." But then after all the part of creation is over. After God is through producing something out of nothing, then we find Him turning gardener on us. No wonder Mary mistook Jesus as the gardener outside of His tomb, because the Creator of all is apparently very comfortable in a garden!

The Bible says that God "planted" a "garden eastward in Eden." Most people don't realize the difference between the land of Eden and the garden of Eden. The word "Eden" means "place of delight, tenderness, and loveliness." The word for "garden" literally means "an enclosed place" or "a fenced in place of rest." When God created the earth, it was all "good," but the region that was called "Eden" must have been especially beautiful. God took the prettiest part of the entire earth and there decided to do a little landscaping. He went to the east side of the land of Eden where there was a great river flowing and right at the spot where the river split into four separate streams, God decided to plant a garden or an enclosed, cultivated area. The four streams were named "Pison" or "freely flowing," "Gihon" or "a gushing fountain," "Hiddekel" or "rapidly moving," and the "Euphrates" which literally means "good and abundant." In addition to this mental image we are told that the land around the Pison, known as the "land of Havilah," was full of gold and precious stones mixed in with it's sandy shores. To this fantastic setting, we find that God added two important trees: the tree of life which by eating the fruit man could live forever, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil which was placed there so that man would not be a robot and could have a choice as to serve God or not. It represented carnal knowledge, or "loss of innocence" and, as you may already know, was the one tree which was forbidden by God. In fact, God said "in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die!"

To these two important trees, the scriptures say that God arranged, planted, and cultivated every other good fruit tree, vine, and plant. And it was here that God placed your "great grand-daddy" Adam to live and exist. The earth was beautiful all by itself, but the earth was not good enough for God's prize creation. The land of Eden was the prettiest spot on the earth by itself, but that wasn't good enough either, God wanted so to bless and impress and generously give to man, that He planted this beautiful garden, this paradise and let man live within it and dress it and keep it! If I have been awed by what man can do with a little money, effort, and time, then I can only imagine how great God's -- whose resources are limitless -- paradise looked. Beautiful running and rushing waters and falls, gold and precious jewels scattered throughout the sands, every plush plant and vegetation and every animal of beauty placed, arranged, and "hand picked" by God Himself -- it must have been something to see! God loved man so much that He created the ultimate paradise for him!

________________________________________________________________________

I believe that God intended for man to reproduce and multiply within the garden and for the precious garden of Eden to expand until it's magnificence took over the entire earth. I believe this because God told Adam to "tend" the garden. It was the will of God to eventually fill the earth with a veritable paradise that was cultivated by the ones whom He had created in His image. Adam, then, had two possible decisions and dilemmas in the garden: not only must he choose to not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but he also had to choose to obey God and cultivate and tend and expand the garden. Adam had two possibilities to sin not one. He had the possibility to sin by "commission" by eating the forbidden fruit, and also to sin by "omission" by not tending or obeying the commandment of God to take care of the garden. It, of course, was the sin of "commission" of eating the fruit that got Adam and us into this mess called sin, so we tend to not focus on the other choice, but the devil gets many Christians who carefully guard against doing anything spoken about in the Word of God with sins of "omission." The scripture says:

If the devil can't get you by sins of commission (lying, cheating, adultery, murder, gossip, drunkenness and any of the other lists of sins), then he'll try to get you through the sins of omission. How about "lack of prayer?" How about "lack of church attendance?" How about "lack of praise?" Or maybe "lack of soul winning!?" Maybe it's something simple in the Word of God that you would rather ignore. But I'm preaching to you from the Word of God: sins of omission are just as deadly as sins of commission. If Adam had stayed away from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and yet failed to obey God's commandment in tending to the garden, then he would have lost out with God all the same and Eve would have a whole lot less people "on her case!"

Never forget that the devil doesn't want God blessing you and therefore will do whatever he can do to get you to live in sin and thus remove yourself from the blessings and promises of God! And he's sneaky, because if he can't get you with the fruit of sin, then he slips in with a "spiritually lazy" attitude, and tries to get you with the sins of omission by keeping you from doing things that are good and that you know you should do. I sincerely believe that there will be just as many people lost through sins of omission as there will be sins of commission. And I think that sins of omission are harder to deal with because they are not as obvious in our lives. To let them slip in, we only have to do NOTHING! And so, every once in a while, it's good to take stock and ask yourself "am I doing everything that I know to do according to God's Word?"

________________________________________________________________________

Let me get back to my topic on the paradise of God. If you have been around the Bible, Sunday School, or church any amount of time, you probably know what happened. Despite being in the most beautiful paradise ever created, Adam and Eve failed miserably and got you and I into a mess so big that Jesus Christ had to come and die to provide a way out!

It started with Eve hanging around the forbidden. When Satan entered into the paradise, he went right for the forbidden tree. Eve only heard the voice of Satan when she chose to hang around the tree! The devil's voice caused her to wonder about things that she had never thought about before. He aroused a curiousness within her. He began to twist God's word and when he realized that Eve wasn't quite sure of what God had said exactly, he began to turn and twist and reason the Word of God away. Understand that the devil, as a fallen angel, knows full well the power of the Word of God because even he, himself, was created by it! That's why the devil would like nothing more to get you to believe that the Bible contradicts itself, is inaccurate, or is dependent upon your private interpretation. That's a lie from the pits of hell. I don't have time to get off into that subject this morning, but I challenge anyone here that believes that lie to see me after church and prove it. The Bible never contradicts itself one time. It may contradict your opinion, but not itself, and when you let scripture interpret scripture then you have God's view on a subject and that is the only correct interpretation. God's Word is all powerful, and don't fall for the trap that Satan wants you to believe that it's not reliable. Satan is a liar and the father of them, you can take the opposite of what he says and take it to the bank! God's Word is the surest thing in existence today!

Because she allowed herself to hang around the forbidden, Eve opened herself up to temptation. Then she looked upon the forbidden, and then she desired the forbidden, and then she reached out and took just a little "touch" of the forbidden, and then finally she partook of it, and then handed it someone else, her husband who had been with her and should have stopped the situation a long time ago, and then caused him to willfully sin against God and because of one child of God's hanging around the forbidden and another's refusal to stand up for what is right, mankind sinned against God.

We understand a lot of things happened here. Of course, their spiritual man died and the close relationship that they had had with God was lost. Their physical man began a dying process and that coupled with not being able to eat of the tree of life anymore would eventually lead to a physical grave. But there was also a mental death. The scriptures say that "their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked." Sin brought a loss of innocence and with it a loss of happiness. Now they would worry about things that they had never given a second thought to. They had never felt the slimy hand of condemnation in their life, and now it would be their constant companion. They had never felt the worry and the stress and the despair and depression of living knowing that they were separated from a holy God by their sins and now they would not live a day without it. They had never heard the voice of judgment from God, but they now heard it that day as the voice that all of their life had pronounced only goodness and blessings, issued personal curses as retribution for their sin. And then they watched with horror as God took one of the animals that had been their companions and brutally slaughtered it and then fashioned clothing from the bloody skins to cover their nakedness. What a horrible day it must have been for Adam and Eve!

And we tend to focus on all of those things and rightfully so, but I think that at the time, the worse curse of all was that because of their sin, Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden of Eden that God had specially created and prepared for them, never to return, and instead would have to live in the rest of the earth. But it wasn't the earth as they had known it before, because God put a special curse upon the ground and now the earth that was once so fruitful and, while not being as magnificent as the garden, yet was beautiful in it's own right, would now bring forth thorns and thickets and poison ivy and would only with much hard work and labor give enough crop for them to have enough to eat. And what made it worse was that God allowed the Garden of Eden to remain as a testimony of what they had left behind. The scriptures say:

Later on, we find that Adam's son, Cain went to live in the land east of Eden, so we know that Adam and Eve did not travel far once they left the garden. I can imagine Adam, sweat dripping off his brow, trying to till up and break up enough of the hard ground to get some crops to grow so his family won't starve looking over across the hedge, across the fence, looking into the still fertile and still perfect paradise that should have been his abode. Looking at the scrumptious fruit and vegetables only a few feet away, and then looking back at the angel and the sword of fire and realizing that they had forever barred his entrance back into the paradise of God.

I can't think of a worse punishment than being without, knowing you should and could have been in there if you'd only made a wise decision, and yet knowing that you will never be able to partake of it. I think that hell will be horrible because it is hot and because you will burn forever without the pain ever subsiding. That in itself is horrible enough to want to live for God today! And it will be even worse when your perfect memory kicks in and plays for forever every chance you had to miss hell. But I think the worst horror is found in the teachings of Jesus in the story of the rich man who dies and goes to hell and while in hell can see the righteous Lazarus in his reward. Lazarus couldn't see into hell, but the rich man could see out. I think the worst part of hell will being able to for forever witness the blessings of God being enjoyed by the righteous throughout eternity and knowing that you could have been, should have been there, but couldn't do without the pleasure of sin for a season. Of knowing that you chose to miss out of the paradise of God because you weren't willing to swallow your pride, or sacrifice for a short time in this life and then for eternity are like Adam looking into the garden of Eden!

What a horrible, horrible fate to be able to see the paradise of God, even see others in the paradise of God, but never be able to partake of it because you listened to the wrong voices and refused to give up a few small things in order to be obedient to the Word of God which was there to protect you anyway! Perhaps, you are a bit uncomfortable with my preaching this way. I'm bringing you this close to hell's flames within my sermon today only to point out that this is as close as anybody in their right mind should want to get. It's not a party. It's not a club. Even the devil doesn't want to go there. Hell will be the wrath of God without His mercy. It will be His judgment without His love!

There are voices in this world that are the voices of Satan trying to tell you that "hell is not real." But understand something: if you believe in Jesus, you must believe in a literal hell because we get the most information about hell from His teachings. In fact, even though preachers don't preach it today, Jesus preached about hell more than any other subject. He died a horrible death on a cross to save you. To save you from what? To save you from hell. To provide a way out from an awful fate. Understand that Jesus Christ was the only human being that ever walked on this earth having seen hell. As God in flesh, He knew what hell was like before He was born as a baby, and so was the only human being then and since that walked upon this earth with full knowledge of the horrors of hell. And that is why He spoke of it so often. Because He knows how horrible a place it is. That's why He endured such agony and hardships on the cross. That's why He willingly subjected Himself to such persecution and pain, because even in the extreme suffering of Calvary, Jesus knew that the physical pain produced by men, could not compare with the horrors of a place called hell, therefore He willingly suffered and died so that you and I could miss such a horrible place. If you do not believe in hell, then you do not believe in Jesus Christ and the work of Calvary, because it was because of hell that He came and died! The pain of Calvary is nothing when compared to the horrors of hell!

________________________________________________________________________

If that's all there was to the story, then I would have done you an injustice. I am not preaching about hell to condemn you, or scare you. I'm preaching about hell to point out that it is the final resting place of mankind as long as they remain outside of the paradise of God. There is no one here that is doomed to hell just yet as your absolute final resting place. If you are breathing, then you have the ability to choose life today! You have the opportunity to choose paradise for forever! Let me finish this sermon by preaching hope to you from the powerful Word of God!

The literal Garden of Eden remained, untouched by sinful man until the Flood of Noah's time. At that time, it was annihilated with the rest of the world's features by the water that covered the earth. Today, all we have left are the two rivers now known as the Euphrates and the Tigris and the region that was once a paradise which comprises modern day Iraq, Jordan, and Saudia Arabia can hardly be called a "garden of Eden." The sand is still there but after the flood such places have for the most part become a barren desert. That forbidding desert is a fitting analogy for the spiritual condition of man without God and I would like to end this sermon by taking you to an obscure prophecy in Isaiah that was told years after the flood!

God says "listen to me those that are seeking God: look at where you have come from. Look at Abraham and his wife who were the 'fathers of faith.' Look at how I took them and blessed them when they stepped out on my promises and took me at my word." God then says in verse 3: "those who seek me and follow in the footsteps of faith, will I comfort, and will 'make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord!' And then joy and gladness will be found again in their lives and thanksgiving and singing because of what I have done!" Do you realize what God is saying? He is saying that He can and wants to create a spiritual Garden of Eden! He wants to create a paradise within the lives of those who are "seeking and looking" toward the Lord.

File that away for a moment and let me remind you of our other text.

It's almost 100 A.D. when John is writing this book and God speaks to him and says "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." Notice what it says: "which is in the midst of the paradise." Present tense. In other words, God is saying "tell the church that there is a paradise that I have created for them!" And it still holds the tree of life and the ability to live forever and forever experience the wonderful blessings of my paradise garden! And it will be those who "overcometh" or "win this battle" or "are conquerors in this spiritual life" that will walk in God's paradise and partake of that fruit!

I don't have time to tell you all about the New Jerusalem and the New Heaven and New Earth that awaits God's people, but I can tell you that there is nothing to really even compare it to on earth today! It will be another Garden of Eden, and it will swell and fill the New Earth! It will be magnificent and it definitely beat hell!

So the question is how do I get back into God's paradise!? How do I get back to eating of the tree of life!? The answer is easy: simply do in reverse what it took for Adam and Eve to get out! Remember the scripture in Isaiah that said God would give the garden of Eden within the lives of those who are "searching and looking?" To get there, you've got to travel the same steps of Adam and Eve but going back the other way. Stay with me:

You've got to go back and face the fiery sword of the Word of God. You have had that opportunity today. The scriptures say:

I've preached the sword of the spirit, the Word of God as fiery and as straight and as sharp as you can preach it. I haven't held anything back. I've presented it to you. That means that all of you are now standing at the entrance to paradise because that is where the fiery sword is located! And now you can run from it and distance yourself from it, or allow it to pierce your heart and bring you to a place of repentance!

Before they passed through that entrance going out, Adam and Eve watched God kill an animal and placed it's bloody skin upon their shamefulness and loss of innocence. Going backwards, it's not the blood of a literal animal or lamb that you need applied physically, but the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, applied to your spiritual man to remove the shame! When we are baptized in the name of Jesus, our sins are forgiven and washed away from us through the power of His blood! We are properly applying His blood as a covering for our shame and sin! The blood sacrifice represented the passing of the point of no return for Adam and Eve because after that, they would never go back into the Garden! But we are going the other way! Therefore Water Baptism in the Name of Jesus represents a spiritual place of no return, because God forgives your sins never to bring them back to your account again! You can be free from condemnation knowing that if you will continue in a forgiving spirit, your past sins will never be mentioned by God!

And then of course, we must partake of a tree, but not the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because that was what started this whole mess. Instead we must again partake of the tree of life! The tree of life represents the Holy Ghost! Because it is the Holy Ghost that works in our lives to heal. It is the Holy Ghost that is the "living waters" that bring spiritual healing! It is the Holy Ghost that changes our lives so that we can do things God's way and live life more abundantly! It will be the Holy Ghost what will be the quickening agent that brings you back to life when Jesus Christ returns and gives you your glorified body that will live forever! The Holy Ghost is the "tree of life" both earthly and eternal!

To get the Holy Ghost, you must first get to it by repenting of your sins and being baptized in the name of Jesus! And you've got to start listening to the voices of those who will NOT twist the Word of God. You've got to start hanging around the tree of life and listening to the voices of those who will tell you EXACTLY what God's Word said. It is for you. It is something beautiful. It is something to be desired. God still fills people today! It is your answer! You can be different! It CAN keep you and protect you and guide you and lead you!

And after you have began to think of it as something good and perhaps even felt it a little bit, all that's left is to partake of it and receive it inside of you! Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Receive ye the Holy Ghost and you will not be disappointed, because when you partake of it, it is the tree of life! And it provides you the ability to live within the paradise of God's promises in this life! And it provides you the power to be an "overcomer" and thus one day partake of the tree of life in eternity!

And the best part of it is, after you partake of the Holy Ghost, it will affect those hanging out with you! Your hunger will ignite a fire for your loved ones and friends to partake of the tree of life also! And there is no limit to how much you can have or how often that you partake! If you feel like your spiritual life is running low, grab another bite! This tree of life will never run out of fruit or blessings!

The paradise of God is waiting! Adam and Even showed us the way out, and unknowingly showed us the way back in! The price has been paid and the path is clear! Choose to enter into the God's paradise today!