Let Nature Sing! (part 1 of 2)

Let the sky rejoice, and the earth be happy!  Let the sea and everything in it shout! – Psalm 96:11  (NET)

Let the sky rejoice?  Let the earth be happy?  Let the sea and everything in it shout?  We could probably agree that this is rather odd language.  Can the sky rejoice?  Can the earth be happy?  Can the sea and everything in it actually shout?  In the way we would think of such things, of course not.  So is this hyperbole?  Of course it is.  However, this use of hyperbole, and its use here in the Scriptures, also points to the eternal plan of the Creator God, and is an interesting contrast to what can be read in the eighth chapter of Romans.  There, the reader is given a glimpse into a situation in which the sky is not rejoicing, the earth is not happy, and the sea is not shouting.  We read “For we know that whole creation groans and suffers together until now” (8:22). 

This is more hyperbole, as it is understood that the creation does not literally groan (though natural disasters and plagues could certainly be looked upon in such a way).  Why does the creation groan?  It groans because “it was subjected to futility---not willingly but because of God who subjected it” (8:20).  As this is heard, one should not forget the exodus connotation to the text, with Paul alluding to the groaning of the Israelites under Egyptian bondage. 

Why was the creation subjected?  The Creator God subjected it because He gave dominion over creation to the being that He had created in His image, to tend the creation, to reflect His glory into the creation, to remind the creation of its Lord, and to gather up the praises of the creation (rejoicing, happiness, shouting) and return them to that Creator.  Man, however, by not trusting God and living up to his calling (covenant), brought the curse of death and decay upon his race, while also foisting that curse upon the creation.  So yes, the creation was subjected to futility.  It was cursed with thorns and thistles.  So it groans, as the Apostle says, “in hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children” (8:20b-21). 

What is the glorious freedom of the children of the Creator God?  The glorious freedom is the eternal life (the life of the age to come) in which believers participate upon their confession of Jesus as King (the Gospel), and which his fully and finally consummated in their being resurrected from the dead in the same way that Christ was resurrected from the dead, as was understood by the earliest of Jesus believers. 

The glorious freedom, among other things, is a glorified body (animated by the life of the age to come) that experiences the Resurrection power of God, just as was experienced by Jesus the Christ, here in the midst of God’s creation (again, just like Jesus the Christ).  This is a state in which the believer is free from death and decay---free from sorrows, pain, and suffering (just like Jesus the Christ)  Paul insists, reflecting widespread and fairly standard Jewish hope concerning the eschaton, that the creation itself hopes for that freedom, in the same way that those “who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (8:23).