It is said, Did not God make these things? Of course He did, who else could? God made the trees in the garden, but Adam used them to hide himself from Him. Man takes these things and uses them to separate himself from God if he can, and the question is, not whether God made them, but the use man puts them to. Cain went out from the presence of God and built a city, and then used the things God had made in order to make himself happy without God. It is a great delusion to speak of God making the 'world as it is. He put man in Paradise, not in the world. The world is the fruit of sin and Satan. The point is this: we have a world which has rejected the Son; what has it to do with the Father? All we can do with the world is to go through it as Christ did a testimony for God in it.
(J. N. D.)