Tuesday, September 04, 2012

The Place of Creation

Text: Genesis 9:8 - 17 and Romans 8:18 - 26

If you are a Christian who loves your animals and pets, you have faced the question about their eternal state. Do they go to heaven? Many feel instinctively that they must have a place in eternity, while others proclaim them to be soulless. Today, I want to do a survey of Scripture with that question in mind.

We begin by looking at Genesis 9, especially verses 9 and 10. In these verses the Lord is establishing a covenant with Noah and his family, AND with every living creature that just got out of the Ark. We expect covenants with people, but with creation? That seems surprising, in some ways. The rainbow is given as a sign for us and the creation. The Lord has made promises to them.

Romans 8:18 - 26 lets us see what those promises were and the hope that the creation has. We wait for Christ's return while the creation waits " for the revealing of the sons of God" (verse 19). Paul continues by telling the Romans that the Lord subjected creation to futility so that they could be delivered from "their bondage to corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We read in Jonah 4:11 that the Lord remembered his creatures.

And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?"

In Isaiah 11:6 - 9, we have a vision of eternity that includes animals, man, and God at peace with each other. This prophecy can only be fulfilled when all things are made new in the New Creation.

Lastly, we know that the Lord breathed the breath of life into man; however, Genesis 1:30 shows how free the Lord is with the breath of life. ""And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so."