The following message was given at Trinity Bible Church in Powell, Wyoming. It has been over the last couple of years that I have begun to understand a concept that we really are all very familiar with, yet we struggle to really identify and to be able to articulate well, and that's the concept of shame. And in the labors that I go through week after week working with people, I've realized that shame is a much larger, much more integral part of our human experience than I originally understood. And so I have begun to study through that, read through that, and trying to profit my own understanding for my soul and in those labors. And so this afternoon, I really want to begin what may be a several part series on shame. So let's open up our Bibles, if you would, to Genesis 2. We're going to begin in Genesis 2. With one of the most baffling verses to me in the whole Bible, and that's Genesis 2 25. This is the word of the Lord. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. It's interesting to me that this is how humanness in creation is finally described. We see all kinds of things in creation that were provided. We see all kinds of ways that God provided for their physical needs, for companionship or relationship with him. And then to sum up the entire experience of humanness at this time, it is that they were naked and were not ashamed. And I would take from that that we are to know a great deal about what this means, to not be ashamed. But I struggle to see that. And my next message, we will talk more about what it means particularly, because in order for us to know what it means to not be ashamed, we have to understand with great clarity what shame actually is. But as I was working through this, trying to understand this, I realized, first of all, we have to have a better understanding of what it means to be naked. And the context of this nakedness, and what is actually being described to us in this nakedness. And so as I begin to work through this understanding of shame, this first message really is going to lay out for us a better context of the garden. So when we see what is broken, we have a much clearer, much crisper understanding of the how profound the brokenness was that produced this human condition of shame this afternoon. We'll see three aspects of the pre-fall condition that help us to better understand what was broken by Adam and Eve when they sinned and why they felt so much shame and how Jesus has encountered his creation again to bring restoration to these things. And these three aspects of the pre-fall condition are going to be summarized in perfection, peace and purity. Perfection, peace and purity. The first aspect we see in this pre-fall condition is that of perfection. I'm going to read through several verses, just kind of skipping through the end of chapter one into into chapter two, just to catch glimpses of this. We see at the end of Genesis 125 that God says that as he's working through and arriving at finishing his at these different aspects of creation, God saw and it was good. And this is actually the fifth time that God has looked at His creation and made this proclamation that it was good. God, in His fullness of knowledge and exacting judgment and understanding of exact detail, proclaims that it's good. And we often determine something to be good in our own life, in our own experience that proves not to be good. Something about it. There's an aspect of it that eventually we find out it shows itself to not be good. But this is not the case. God knows perfectly well. He knows completely and fully to the furthest expanse. And he declares it to be good. And when God declares something to be good, it is good in every aspect and every dimension. And without any sense of corruption or corrosion, what was good would be continually good. It was perfectly good. It would be perfectly good in every way, every system, every process, every structure, everything that was dependent on another entity was perfectly ordered and perfectly good. without any flaw, without any possibility of there being anything but goodness in it. And so we begin to understand good. It's hard for us because everything that we experience is has a component of corruption to it and decay and disorder. But so we have to think, what would it be like if every system structure, every dependent entity was good, and was functioning in its most excellent manner. Added to this creation, really as the pinnacle, we see God making man. And entering man into this creation, Genesis 1, beginning of 26 and 27, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. So God created man in his image. In the image of God, he created him male and female, he created them. And then also in Genesis 2.7, Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And here we have a special dimension of creation. While God had created everything, this is the first thing that is created in relationship to God, in his image. And we see this that had been created in his image was put into this creation. And we find out after that that God says it is finished in Genesis 2.1. The creation is now finished. Here we see that creation had a purpose, and that was really to contain the pinnacle of creation, mankind. We find in Genesis 1.29 that that there was purpose specified for this creation, in that it was to provide for the mankind that was created. Genesis 129, and God said, behold, I have given you the humans that he created, the man that he had created, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food. And so we not only see that this creation has a has a intended use to provide for and care for man, but we we see this intimate purpose I have given to you, not just generally. They didn't just show up and it was available. This is no. This is for you. Every plant and every fruit for for them and the whole earth is bountiful and abundant. Pastor Brian reminds us that God in creation is a bountiful, lavishing his provision on mankind, and he's for them. We also see in creation a special relationship with mankind. Throughout this narrative, God has spoken several times, but man is the only one who has created with the ability to understand and to respond. to man and man alone, God gave language and the ability to reason. And so when now when God speaks, he has a creation that can that can hear those that that hear that speech and can reason through and understand. And so we see even in this creation, God has his desiring this relationship. He didn't just create him for him and turn him loose. He says, no, I want to be in a relationship. And in order to do that, I'm going to give you language. Because it's language that allows relationship. It's language that allows God to be known and to interact with that that he has created. And of all God's creation, it's mankind that has the ability to actually reason and communicate in a way that God can communicate to them. We also find a particular care on display. God made things pleasing to man. It wasn't just a general creation. where things were bland and nutritious, but without a pleasant sense. And here it's where we see it in Genesis 29, where it says, out of the ground the Lord made to spring up every tree that is pleasant in the sight and good for food. And all of a sudden we see, oh my God, not only created man with language, but he gave them senses. to experience this creation, but not just in a general sense of understanding the creation, but to say, oh, this God that has created this creation knows me and he has made this creation to please me. God shows his care and his love for us by saying, listen, this is gonna taste so good. I've created you with the ability to interact with this and I have made it in such a way that you are gonna delight in it. and the things we see, and the colors, and all the creativity, and we think through all of our senses, really, everything that we see, and taste, and smell, and everything we hear and touch, God says, listen, I've given you these senses so that you can interact with this creation, and every time you're delighted, know it's from me. Know I had you particularly in mind when I created this so that you would enjoy it, you would delight in it, you would be pleased by it, Really, we see God's heart on display in this, don't we? But it was not just a general detached creation. God is saying, oh, I love you and I want you to experience the fullness of creation in every possible way, to the depth of it. It's all for you. And then within that, God creates a special relationship between mankind. In Genesis 2.19, then the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. And God provided more than just a mate. We'd seen the animals come through, right? And Adam had named them. And then God provided for him. But it wasn't just to be fruitful and multiply. He said, it's not good for you to be alone. I understand this relational aspect. As a triune God who has this perfect relationship, I want you to experience that impartially. and I am going to create an entity where you can have this intimate companionship. And then we see it actually described as this one flesh relationship, as close as two human creatures can actually become a close, intimate, one flesh relationship, but primarily in companionship, one with another, so that you're not alone. And so God has provided his creation, he's present, And then he says, all of this is for you. Delight in it. Rejoice in it. And I'm even going to give you a companion to live in this with. And God puts on display his invisible attributes, his eternal power, his divine nature perfectly on display without any corruption, curse or calamity. We see Jesus talking about The simplicity of this creation and how profoundly we understand the nature of God as he describes the birds of the air are perfectly fed without sowing and reaping. The lilies of the field grow without toil or spin and display pure glory. Everything is perfectly ordered, functioning as designed, no warranty necessary. Perfect communion exists between God and man. The beginning of a perfect community within the mankind is established. It's perpetual motion. It just exists, and it's perfectly, every cog perfectly fits within the other one. There's no resistance. There's nothing to slow down the motion. It is perfectly ordered, perfectly structured, and God has set man in the middle of it and said, oh, I want you to know how pleased I am that you can enjoy this creation I have given you. And as the final stamp on this creation, God says, it's really a mic drop. He says, I'm gonna rest. Look at that. My word, all that I've created for you. It's wonderful, isn't it? It's delightful, it's pleasing in every possible way. His perfect creation was perfect in every way. It was perfect in content, in quality, in quantity, in order, It was magnificent. It was a perfect creation. But sin and the consequences of sin, distorted, corrupted, disordered creation causing hardship and suffering unimaginable to the original design. It is broken. And Adam did it. The second aspect that we find in this pre-fall condition is that of peace. That of peace. While we don't see this specifically identified in this passage, it is reasonably inferred. If we have perfect order and perfect structure and everything is designed to perfectly fit together, and everything is operating in perfection as it was designed, it creates a perfect peace. Shalom. is the Hebrew word that we translate into our English as peace. Shalom. And what I found, it's like I I was digging through this and I hit this this bright, shiny thing way down deep in the soil. And I started uncovering it. I was like, oh, my word. This concept of peace is like one of the most beautiful, robust concepts in all of the Bible. When we start looking at when Jesus says, peace be with you. And we see in the blessings, every blessing has peace in it. And there's this proclamation that you're going to have peace that surpasses all understanding. And we realize, oh, my word, this is what's missing, right? This is what haunts us. This is what keeps us in turmoil. It's this peace. But in the garden, this peace is perfect. Shalom has as its essence of welfare, stability, order, prosperity. Everything coexists perfectly without effort. There's no, nothing needs to be really super intended over. It's just working according to plan because God and his creation provided the perfect context for life, provided richly and abundantly and established the perfect community with him. And man, there was perfect peace established. Everything was in perfect balance and proportion. Nothing existed to the detriment of something else. Just hard for us to comprehend. Everything flourished. Everything thrived. Resources were never scarce or poorly distributed. There was never an experience of want or need. Everything was completely at peace. There was no falsehood or deception. Everything that you saw was actually what it was. There was no hidden. There was no facade. There was no sense of suspicion. Everything was exactly the way it was presented. Trust is not even a consideration because there's never been an inkling of violation of trust. Everything in your creation and community is for your good. It's all for my good. And I've never experienced anything that has opposed me or hindered me. It's all good. And I see it all as for my good. In every way, emotionally, spiritually, physically, you only know blessing. Everything is labeled fresh, new, organic. Ideas of joy, satisfaction, contentment are irrelevant because they imply an absence of something or a condition where they don't exist. Like we don't even reason through what is contentment because I have never experienced anything but full blessing, full satisfaction. Full joy is the norm. Contentment is not even considered. I have never been dissatisfied. My satisfaction rating is always 100. No one has ever failed me or let me down. Your mind is at peace, your body's at peace, your heart is at peace. Everything is restful. You have no more inhibition to sleep at night than in the day. There's no need for even a thought of protection. Like, I don't have to do anything. There's no consideration that I need to be protected. I've never known you to have a poor thought about me. I know you're for me in every way, and I can just rest in your presence. No action has ever motivated by a need to be protected. There's never been a need to establish peace. There's no war, conflict, hostility, harm, or even a fragment of a thought against one another. Power has never been used to harm or oppress. It's always been used to uplift and for the good of those around us. Shalom. It's this full concept of peace. And so when we hear naked, we should understand this peace. Of course I'm naked. I've never even had a consideration of myself. I've never had to cover in any way because I've never had to wonder or fear. about anything. Naked is a beautiful term, a robust term that talks about this existence of shalom. But sin and the consequences of sin distorted, corrupted, and disordered shalom, creating hardship and suffering unimaginable to the original design. The third aspect of this pre-fall condition is that of purity. Purity. We've seen perfection, we've seen peace and now purity. We see this in the concept of not ashamed and also with the concept of naked. In creation there was perfect moral purity. God created everything to be perfectly moral. His presence mandated this moral perfection. The fact that he could coexist in it demonstrated that there was this moral perfection in every way. There's no hint of moral impurity. And for us to understand this concept, it's helpful to think about what Jesus said when he was approached by the teacher in Matthew 22. And the teacher said, which of the great commandments, which is the great commandment of the law? And Jesus really summarizing all of the moral law said, you shall love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. and a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself." And here what we have is this condition of moral purity. If we could go back and live in the context of moral purity, it would be displayed as pure, perfect love. A love for God and a pure, perfect love for others. Completely and in every way honorable. It's hard for us in our culture to think about shame, and we'll work through that next time, but if we lived in a shame culture, we would know instinctively that the opposite of shame is honor. We refer to those cultures that are primarily structured based on shame and honor as a shame-honor culture. At this time period, there was only honor. Everything that was done was honorable. Everything was done right. for a right purpose with every fiber of our being. And our only motive and instinct is love. We don't even have a remote instinct to do anything other than love, love for God and love for others. The moral purity of God was the nature of everything. There was no distinction or consideration of what was right, right or wrong. Every instinct was always the best thing for us to do. We had no other instinct. We didn't even actually know there was another possibility. Moral living was instinctual and it was part of nature. It just flowed out of us. Nothing had ever transgressed God's perfect morality or fallen short of his perfect obedience. Every intent in the depth of our heart was a pure intent for love. This moral purity is so contrary to our condition, it's hard to even comprehend. Every motive was others focused and done for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor. Every action was a morally pure action. Every priority was a morally pure priority. Every consideration of another was driven by pure love. Therefore, relations were morally pure and free, fully known and fully loved. Every thought action was morally innocent. We loved God purely, wholly. We delighted in our ability to be in his presence and we loved our neighbor perfectly. We had no thought of ourselves. If we could imagine the context where I love my neighbor as myself, I was and then we read verses like do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider others more significant than yourself. And we say that's the context in your presence. My entire being was for your good. My entire faculties and all of my energy was for you. I was watching, I was waiting, I was eager to please, I was eager to serve. I was 100% given over to you. I had actually never considered myself. I didn't even know I was naked. I didn't even realize, I didn't even have any comprehension of really my needs because you were 100% for me. I knew that you were for me in every way. You'd never had a bad thought about me. You'd never judged me. You'd never seen a weakness. You'd never criticized, pointed out a fault or a failure. In every way, I knew that when I looked at you and you looked at me, you were pleased. And you loved me. Purely. And I could rest in that. In all that I was as a created being. And I could be naked. without any shame because of this relationship that had been established between us. We could look into the face of God and one another and never feel the need to divert our gaze. There's never a sense that I have to look away, just gaze. Every consideration has been love, contentment, joy in your presence. God's creation was perfect. God's creation was peaceful and God's creation was pure. Man indeed could be naked, requiring no covering for protection of anything in any way. Man was honorable in every way because nothing had ever been done to warrant a covering or a shrinking back or a drawing away from one another. But sin broke everything. Every aspect of creation became corrupt. Perfection was now broken and God separated from his creation. Peace was now hardship, disorder and harm. Purity was now contaminated and unclean. And for the first time we see shame. And what shame Adam should have felt. He broke all of it. He is responsible for all of the brokenness the world has ever known. He is responsible for every feeling of fear, every anxiety, every doubt, every harm that's ever come to anybody Adam produced. Every death, every bit of corruption and contamination and corrosion and decay, Adam did it. He is responsible for every selfish thought, every selfish action flowed out of that one sin. Everything's broken. And oh, the shame he should have felt. And indeed. The shame he did feel, we see him covering himself, trying to hide from God, trying to undo that just had collapsed around him. And it is our condition as well. We know shame very well. We might not be able to identify it readily, hopefully, as we spend time together thinking through it. we will have a better understanding of it. Knowing this backdrop makes the gospel even more amazing. It is into this situation. Not in infancy, as it was when Adam began to break, but in maturity, when things are even more corrupt and more devastation, wickedness has been played out for centuries that Jesus entered into. The first Adam failed. and corrupted and broke everything. But the last Adam, Jesus, entered into that willingly, into the brokenness, into the contamination, into the decay, into the vileness that was this uncleanness, entered into it, took on our flesh so that he could rescue all of creation and his people. Jesus set free all of creation, which was in bondage to corruption. We see in Romans and he freed these children. Creation had been groaning together in the pain of childbirth until Christ came to set it free. And mankind had been groaning inwardly, waiting desperately to be adopted as sons, to be brought out of this, this contaminated situation in this lineage of Adam. and to be redeemed and purchased out of that and brought into this new relationship with the father. Jesus bore upon himself the effects and consequences of every broken creation, shattered peace and contaminated purity. Jesus has come to purchase. A people out of that. And while the transaction is complete and price payment is finished, The funds have been wired and the goods are still being delivered. The Holy Spirit. Puts his stamp on says this has been complete and we are being transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into this kingdom of light and finally delivered back into a new heavens and a new earth with a new body, with a redeemed mind. Where we will worship and enjoy all that was broken and we will have a great appreciation Because we've experienced the depths of the brokenness and the corruption and we will live in profound gratitude with full worship Because we will know where we came from and we will be overwhelmed With the work of Christ and what that work secured for us Jesus the last Adam purchases a new creation He is our peace that surpasses all understanding. And we are cleansed by his blood so that we can be brought into this new relationship with the Father. It is important to understand where we came from so that we have appreciation and gratitude for all that Christ has done in our lives and where he is taking us. Oh, Father, help us to not hear these things in a superficial sense and just discard them. Oh, Lord, show us. Show us how broken. Show us how far we've come. Show us. Show us what corruption exists. Help us to understand where we fell from so that when we realize the work of Christ in our life and he has rescued us from all these things, we can be overwhelmed. We can be humbled and we can love you. Lord, work these things out of us. We're still impacted by this cursed condition we live in, and the brokenness of this creation, and the fracturing of this peace, and the corruption within. Oh Lord, we cannot wait for the final culmination of your work, where we will brought it into your presence, where creation will be restored, where peace will be established, and where we will live out this cleansing that Christ has provided for us. Oh Lord, be praised. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.