So, I want to share with you, just asking the question, and this probably came to your mind this week. Here’s what I want to share about briefly, making sense of the world in which we live. What kind of world are we living in? The murder of a young Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, a school shooting in Colorado this week.
We become numb to those because it happens so often. I looked up this morning how many mass shootings in the United States in 2025 so far, mass shootings when two or three rather than just one individual is killed, and they said 309 so far, mass shootings in our country. And then on Wednesday, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and as someone shared with me yesterday, maybe use the word martyr, that somehow has obviously gripped our country.
And so how do you make sense of what’s going on in our world? And I just want to share a few thoughts here that might help us make a little bit of sense. And so let me share four truths quickly. First one is this.
1. Genesis 3 changed everything…
Genesis 3 changed everything. Genesis 3 changed everything. By Genesis 3, I mean here’s creation, Genesis 1 and 2, Adam and Eve are living in a perfect environment in a perfect world.
They have perfect fellowship with one another. They have perfect fellowship with God. They’re in a beautiful place.
They’re enjoying life. And then a talking snake comes along, Satan himself, and begins to tempt Eve and test Eve and Adam and Eve partake of the fruit. And all of a sudden, everything changed.
The perfect world that God had intended and had created no longer existed. And now all of a sudden, sin came into the world. And as Romans 5:12 says, because sin came into the world, so did death.
Here’s Romans 5:12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and death through sin, in this way, death came to all people because all have sinned. And that death that happened when Adam and Eve sinned wasn’t just physical death. Creation started to die.
Mankind started to die, but it was also what? Spiritual death, separation from a holy God. And so, the world in which we live is not the world in which God originally created. Now, thank God that at some point in time, if you read the Bible, when you go to Revelation 21 and 22, guess what happens? God makes all things new again.
2. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked…”
And we do end up with a perfect world and a perfect creation and perfect fellowship with God for those that know Him as their Lord and Savior. So, Genesis 3 changed everything. Secondly, this is Jeremiah 17:9. The heart is destroyed, deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
So now mankind is sinful. Mankind is depraved. If you follow it in Romans 1, it says when mankind exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and then there is a downward spiral of immorality and perverseness and wickedness that comes into our world when man rejects God.
So, the heart is wicked and deceitful. Paul writes in the Apostle Paul in Romans 3:10. Let me just read this passage. It’s eight verses long.
As it is written, there’s none righteous, no, not one. The Apostle Paul is quoting the Old Testament a lot in this passage. There is no one who understands.
There was no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They have together become worthless.
There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are in open graves. Their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Well, that describes our world today, and we live in a world where pure evil exists.
3. our world is broken
Thirdly, and this just kind of goes along with the theme, thirdly, we’re just driving home the point that our world is broken. We live in a broken world, broken lives, broken homes, broken marriages, broken relationships, that we live in this broken world, and we all experience the effects of that. But here’s the good news, and we saved the good news for last, number four.
4. Jesus is the answer
Here it is. Jesus is the answer. John chapter 10, verses 9 and 10, here’s what Jesus says, I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved. They will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.
That’s the enemy. But Jesus says, I am come that you might have life, and you might have it more abundantly. And so, what’s the answer to the fallen world in which we live? What’s the answer to the broken world in which we live? The answer is Jesus, who came to pay the price for our salvation.
That’s what we’re going to remember this morning, but also redeem all of creation. So, Romans 8, verse 22 through 25, 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 who have the first fruits of the spirit groan inwardly, probably did some groaning inwardly this last week, as we await eagerly for our adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies, that’s our hope, the resurrection, a glorification.
For in this hope, we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who has hopes for what they already have? But if we have hope for what we do not have, we wait patiently for it. So, what are we waiting for? And this is what we’ve been studying in First Thessalonians.
The whole theme is that Jesus is coming again, and he’s going to make this world new, and he’s going to judge sin. Jesus is the answer for our world today, and when we put Jesus in His place, then our lives come together.