Preacher: Michael Foster,
Text: Genesis 1:26-31
East River Church (Batavia, OH)
The Creation Mandate
Amen. Well, good morning. Welcome to East River Church. My name is Michael Foster. Glad to have you guys. I just got back into town last night. Kind of late. Our flight got moved so we got home like a little after midnight or something right around midnight. And so I'm running off adrenaline and coffee. I'll try not to go off my notes. I don't say anything. Too crazy because I'm sure one of you invited a friend today. I'm like, ah, what day to invite a friend? Hey, we're in Genesis chapter one. We're getting close to the end of chapter one. Today we're going to be in verses 26 through 31. I'd hoped that I could get this all in the one sermon, but I don't think I'm going to be able to. So this is probably part one. Genesis chapter one verse 26 through 31. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "Behold, I've 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 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've given every green plant for food and it was so and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good and it was evening and it was morning the sixth day. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this story, this true history of where we come from and what we're made for. Lord, help us to believe it and to live it by the power of your spirit and through the new life we have in Jesus Christ and it's in his name we pray. Amen. So the book of Genesis is a book of beginnings of origins. It's not myth or mythical, nor is it a metaphor. It's true history that records actual events as they happen. And though it's historical, it's not written like a science or even a history textbook. They'd be a wrong way to read this. Acts 7, 22 says that Moses, the author of Genesis, was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and he was mighty in his words and deeds. And all that skill shows when you study the way Moses structured Genesis. It's one of the books where understanding the original language actually does really help. All the events emphasize all the details about this person or that land, all the illusions and foreshadowing every literary device is the work of inspired craftsmen. So the Bible is literature. It's right to say that. It's got multiple genres, all sorts of word plays going and all sorts of amazing things like that. And there are very particular doctrines and themes and ideas Moses wants to get across and for good reason. While Genesis belongs to all the people of God, its first audience was the Jewish people during their exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land. So that's when Moses is hanging out with these guys and that's when he wrote this. So Moses wrote in such a way to combat and confront the false ideas of the Egyptians and the nations who inhabited and surrounded the Promised Land. So he's helping deliver them from bad thinking they've been surrounded by for hundreds of years. And we find out that they're constantly adopting the ideas of the surrounding pagan nations. So this was Moses taking a step to protect them from that. For example, the creation record we find in Genesis 1 flatly contradicts all the pagan creation myths. We went over that a little bit last week. One commentator put it well and Genesis 1, God doesn't come into existence. He simply is. Rather than matter pre-existing God, God pre-exists matter. The sun, moon, stars and sea monsters. Sometimes that's translated differently but in the Old King James, if you look in chapter 1 when it talks about all the things in the sea, it says sea monsters. So the sun, moon, stars and sea monsters all of whom were powerful deities according to the creation myths of the surrounding nations are merely creatures or entities who display God's power and skill. And human beings are not an afterthought of the gods nor are they created by the whim of the gods for their pleasure and service. Rather humans are central in God's world and the world is provided for them in their use. Very different. You hear people say, well, religious basically say the same thing. All these creation myths are so, they have so much in common. It's just not true. Those are people that don't read. That's just something they like. Maybe they googled and they read some Reddit page. That's not true at all. When you start comparing these creation myths, there are things that they have in common but they're kind of super structural. They're very big ideas and they contradict in some major ways. Moses wanted them to know that the God who redeemed them out of slavery is the only true God. He's no local deity. So you'll see that a lot that they'll have gods that are like over this mountain or this valley or that river, this nation. He is a unlimited and eternal God. He rules over everything because he made all things and all the things he made, he made with a special purpose. We talked about it as the idea of tell us last week that everything has its place and its purpose. It's this last part, the special purpose of mankind that we're starting to look at today. As I said last Sunday, Genesis 1 is in a poem but elevated prose written with poetic elements. The creation week is structured in such a way to emphasize God's order and purpose for creation. God speaks with the command, let there be, followed by a word, a fulfillment and it was so. Then there's a naming or blessing as it says, God called. Each created and named thing is followed by a divine accommodation. God saw that it was good. Each day of creation concludes with the formula and there was evening and there was morning, whichever day. So on day one through three, God forms realms or kingdoms if you prefer and on days four through six God fills those realms with things to rule over them like governors. There's a perfect order to all of creation. First, God creates the structure of the world and then he fills that structure with living beings. It's like he's building a house and then placing inhabitants inside of it. I think about this a lot of time with one of my daughters likes, well, I'm just going to tell you, I'm sorry, it's Galilee. Wherever we go, she's always catching something. So she caught like a bunch of lizards, some other stuff. She's always catching things but we went out a couple weeks ago to get all this stuff for her aquarium because that's what we do. We spend money for fish in a big glass container. But we're putting all these special plants in there so the fish could have a good time. When was the last time I got a plant? But she puts all the care so the fish can be happy. So you prepare that and then you put the fish in. So God is making our home. He's putting care into us before he puts us there. He forms and he fills. You see this in the cycles of the days. On day one, God creates day and night. Then on day four, he creates the rulers for the realms of day and night, the sun, the moon, the stars. On day two, he makes the sky and the sea and that corresponds with day five. The sky and the sea are given their governors, the fish and the birds. On day three, the land and the vegetation are created and on day six, animals and the first humans are given dominion, rule over the land, but not just the land. In verse 26 it says, "And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Mankind rules over the rulers." Interesting enough, even the sun, the moon and the stars are created to serve mankind. Back in verse 14, it reads, "And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years." So the sun, moon and stars help us distinguish night from day and they mark the passage of months and years. These heavenly lights, they undergo precise and regular changes that can be observed, counted, even predicted. So they function like a clock and calendar. God being timeless doesn't need that, but we do. These lights offer clear and reliable signs, visible to anyone anywhere in the world, indicating when the Sabbath begins and ends, when a new year or a month starts and when a holy day occurs. So all of creation was made for mankind. We rule the rulers and they help us rule. The lights in the sky aids us in our worship of God by allowing us to set aside sanctified time. It was supposed to be next week, but in two weeks, John will get to this with the Sabbath, but there's a rhythm built into all of creation. This is what I mean when I talk about creation means doxological or liturgical, meaning that everything is made and geared towards the worship of God. That's why it's so crazy that people will worship stars or the sun or the moon. They serve the opposite purpose, which is to tell us to worship God and when to worship Him. We set aside special times. People say, "Should we always be worshiping God?" That's like a husband saying, "Look, baby, I would take you on a date night. I'd take you out on a date night, but should every day just kind of be a date?" Every day is like a date night. It's just a date night at our home. Because if I put aside a special day to date you, that clearly means that I don't love you on the other days because that's how people think sometimes. But that's not what we see in Scripture. In Scripture we do see sanctified time set apart time for holy purposes. So the reason he stuck all that stuff in the sky is so we could have an ordered child life ordered around worshiping God. So it aids us. It helps us just like a clock or a wristwatch is a tool. All these things were made to facilitate and encourage mankind's worship of God. Now all the days of creation have built up to their final ultimate purpose on Day 6. That's why things slow down on Day 6 and we get more information about this day than any other day, probably about 30% more than the next closest day. So Day 6 is the height of creation and mankind is God's crowning achievement in their commentary. Jameson Faucet and Brown Wright, this last stage in the progress of creation being now reached, God said let us make man. Words would show their peculiar importance of the work to be done. The formation of a creature who was to be God's representative, closed with authority and rule as a visible head and monarch of the world. That's what this has been building towards. And we immediately see mankind's uniqueness in verse 26. The formulation of creation switches up here. It reads, then God said let us make man in our image after our likeness. Two things should stick out. First, we have God speaking to someone about creating man. He uses the plural pronoun us. Second, unlike the rest of creation, mankind is created in God's image or likeness. So first, who is God talking to? Who is the us? When he says our image, who is included in that? In many pre-Christians, understood us to refer to the angelic host in heaven, sometimes called the heavenly court. Some see an illusion to this in Job 38, where it says that the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy when God laid the foundation of the earth. So some people think this is God talking to the angels about what he's making here, and later you see them celebrating the creation of man. Well, I don't think this is baseless. I also don't think that's what's happening here, particularly because scripture emphasizes that mankind was created in God's image in a special way, not also the image of the angels. Traditionally, Christians have seen us and are to allude to the other persons of the Trinity, that this is referring to God's Trinitarian nature. So what is contained in the Old Testament, kind of in a cloud of mystery to some degree, is revealed explicitly or explained in the New Testament. And part of this thinking that our Christian forefathers had comes from John chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. They're John comets on the creation. He says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. So we already saw that the Spirit of God is hovering or brooding over the waters like a mother chick, or mother hen, hatching her chicks. And now John sees and says that Jesus, the Word, the Logos, has been actively involved in creation. So that's what I see going on here. I like how Stephen Demster, he wrote a good book called Dominion in Dynasty. That's a great book. The first three chapters just skip. It doesn't matter. But once you get to chapter 4 on it's super helpful. He says thematically, as well as verbally, humanity is crowned the royalty of creation, whereas other creations come about by the divine Word in a predictable manner, let there be, and it was so. There's a pregnant theological pause before the creation of humanity. God takes counsel with Himself before speaking. As Von Rad remarks, the origin of humanity springs from the world above an absolute immediacy from the depths of the divine heart. Human beings have a heavenly origin. So pregnant pause, I do this sometimes when I'm preaching, I'll say, "Should I go off my notes?" I'm like searching my heart, "Should I do this, or will this be problematic?" He's reflecting in Himself, or at least that's how it's being communicated to us. And that fits with the flow of this passage, which stresses man's unique connection to you and reflection of God. That's what I see going on here, which brings us to the second issue of what is meant by image or likeness. This is another heavily debated topic. When we hear the word image, we tend to think of a picture, right? Of the visible, something that can be seen with the eye. We've all heard someone say that a son is the spitting image of their father, meaning he looks like his father. However, we know that God is an invisible spirit. Therefore, this can't be saying that to be made and his image means that we physically look like God. Some heretics do say that, like the Mormons say, things like that. Back in the '80s, there was some word of faith preachers that flirted with those ideas as well. What does it mean? Well, it must mean that we bear his image or his likeness in some other way or ways. Many it reformed thinkers, including those who wrote the Westminster standards, see this as referring to some of God's spiritual attributes. So there's sort of catechism. So catechisms are a series of questions and answers. They're like the Bible's FAQs. It says, "How did God create man?" Or ask. And then answers, "God created man, male and female, after his own image in knowledge, righteousness, holiness with dominion over the creatures." So it's focusing on knowledge, righteousness, and holiness elsewhere, a reasonable soul. Alexander Wright says that his image is his soul, his mind, conscience, and heart. And some of that comes from verses like Colossians 3, 10. It says, talking about the believer and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. So you see a connection of knowledge and image there. So part of bearing God's image is to share these attributes. And so both men and women equally share these attributes because both men and women bear the image of God. And I believe this is right. But I think it would be a mistake to limit the meaning of image to this. I see another aspect of image being emphasized here. Now in the ancient world, only a king or a high ranking official could be designated as the image of God. For example, the Egyptians, they worshiped a revered pharaoh not only as a king, but also as the incarnation of God or the image of God. So this is a text from one of the pyramids. So this is actually on the wall of a pyramid. For the king is a great power who has power over the other powers. The king is a sacred image, the most sacred of sacred images of the great one. And whomsoever he finds in his way, him, he devours peace mail. Thousands serve him, hundreds make offerings for him. So you find that repeated throughout ancient history over and over again, that these kings, they were the image of God, they were God incarnate, they reflected God. And one commentator pointed out that in the ancient world, a son could be born in the image of his father. But only a God could be created in the image of God's. This is why ancient rulers would set up images of themselves in distant parts of their kingdom. They do it to represent their authority. And that also explains why Nebuchadnezzar got so angry when the three Hebrew men refused to bow and worship before the statue he erected. They were defying his image. They rejected his likeness to God and in a sense, his kingly authority, ultimate sort of authority. That plays out during their early church because we wouldn't call Caesar Lord. There is only one king of kings, only one Lord. So Genesis here again is flipping pagan thinking on its head. All of mankind, both men and women bear the image of God. Therefore, all of mankind was created to rule and extend God's image to the world or to bring God's authority or represent God's kingdom to the world. Dempster again, he says, "If the terms, image, and likeness stress the unique relationship humanity has to its creator, they also indicate the exalted regal role humanity plays in its natural environment." The male and female as king and queen of creation are to exercise rule over their dominion, the extent of which is the entire earth. Being made in the image of God signifies humans exercising dominion as God's vice regents of creation. So God made us to share in his rule to expand his rule. And this brings us to what's sometimes called the creation mandate or the cultural mandate or or dominion mandate, all of which have some negative associations. I usually use the creation mandate because it's got the least negative associations. But you'll hear people say, do you believe in dominion? That's like asking if you believe in predestination. You have to believe in predestination. But the word is in the Bible, right? You can debate what it means, but you don't get to reject what the Bible says. Well, you have to be okay with dominion, right? The idea of dominion, of subjugation, of rule, all that's in scripture. You have to be okay with that. We can debate what it means, but one reason people get so weird about the word dominion is there was what's called "dominganism" that came out of like the 80s and 90s. And again, that was like in some of these charismatic churches, and they went some really strange directions. So you just have to ask, how is the word being used? Now this creation mandate, you find in verses 27 and 28, so God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. We'll get to that more next week. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." These verses reveal the purpose for which we are created. A friend of mine, who I wrote a book with, he wrote that we're so familiar with these verses that we overlook, just how intense and emphatic they are and what they're saying. So he says one way to get the help, forceful it is, is to try to summarize it in your own words. And this is his summary. He says, "God said, let us make man as our stand-in to rule, rule, rule, rule, rule over everything." So God made man as his stand-in, male and female, and he told them flourish and rule, rule, rule over everything. Notice how rulership, fruitfulness in the image of God are thoroughly and repeatedly connected, right? They're all weaved in together. It's almost laborious in how repetitive it is, but it's not because Moses needed to fill space. You can't get away at that anymore. When I was like, you used to, you know, when you used to turn in papers and you'd like mess with the margins, and then like, I'll do 12.5, right? It's not just filling space. It's not like your typical Christian book today. Its purpose is to draw our attention to the importance of what is being said and to make us reflect on its significance, right? He's saying it over and over again, so it'll get through our fixed goals. The reason that God creates man as in mankind on the earth, according to Genesis, is for productive, representative, rulership. For productive, representative, rulership. That's what it means to exercise dominion, to fruitfully order the world in God's stead. So for those of us that live in a fallen world that can seem and sound impossible, the God made man to establish his own presence and rule in the physical realm, to bring heaven to earth through and by his image. Having gone through the process of creating and ordering just this immense universe, these huge structures of the world over the first six days, God stops and rests on the seventh. He does not order it down to the end degree. He doesn't manicure every shrub, doesn't, you know, damn many rivers. He doesn't build houses. He leaves the world untamed and unrestrained and creates just a single garden sanctuary. Then he fashions one last kind of creature, a creature suitable to continue his work, suitable the function as his vice region, suitable to expand his rule across the entire globe as God worked in the first week. So Adam, will take over from him in the second. In the Anet's Bible translator notes, it says this, God's purpose in giving humankind his image is that they might rule the created order on behalf of the heavenly king in his royal court. So the divine image, however it is defined, gives humankind the capacity and/or authority to rule over creation. Notice how the language God uses in connection with this task, fill the earth and subdue it. All these words are, we have problems with these words, don't we? Like the idea of rule, dominion, subdue, conquer, right? Take over. God doesn't. We see in Genesis in the days prior that the world has been filled already with other life, but here we are alerted that it's not only not yet subdued and that to subdue it, mankind will have to continue this process of filling that God started. They'll have to fill it with themselves so that God's ordering presence can be extended to every forest, desert, plain, every corner of the earth, everywhere. The modern cult of environmentalism is him, right? We should love what God's given to us, but it is a cult. People don't love children and they do worship creation, right? They do, in what they emphasize. But God made us to rule this planet and to fill it. We're not even close to having it for a long time, so we go through these cycles. I've already talked about this last few weeks, but these are things that I like to mock. But we go through these cycles where we were really scared about the world freezing, I think it was in the 70s, right? Like another ice age is coming. And now it was, first it was global warming, right? We're all going to burn the death, right? It's all we're going to burn and then everything's going to flood everything. And then that wasn't really happening. They have to change it every 10 years. So now it's climate change. But there's this sense that we are a burden to the earth, but no, the earth was made for us. God fashioned it for us. He put all the care into it. On the sixth day, he put us in it to rule it. It is our job to rule the earth. Evangelical Christians, they like to speak of the creation mandate in terms of stewardship. And that's true, but the term stewardship mutes the far more forceful terms that God actually uses. That's what we do a lot of times in Scripture. One thing I hate, you can tell when people use chat GBT because it's written like, I don't know, like a feminist fourth grade teacher is how it sounds to me, right? It's just very weak suggestive language, full of so many adverbs, and adverbs always weaken. Sun is your room clean. Yes, dad, it's mostly clean, right? It means it's not clean. That's what that means. And so we're always using adverbs to weaken things because forceful terms offend people, you know, like that. They want a way to wiggle out. So that's like when you hear people talk about their sin that I'm just broken, man. Yeah, you're broken. That's true. You also are a blackhearted rebel that loves your sin and won't repent and trust God. That's what the Bible says. Well, who are you to judge? I am telling you what the Bible says, what the Holy Judge says. So he's made you. He's who to judge you. I'm just saying that, you know. The word it actually uses is rule the earth, have dominion. It means to reign with Kingly power. It refers not just to authority, but authority backed up by might, but the ability to get it done. We can rule of creation. Now we shouldn't conclude from this that God created us to have a combative relationship with the world. We'll get back to that when we get into the fall. But here there is no hostility between Adam and the creation. He was not to violently oppress it. He was made to work with a creation didn't have a grain that he had to go against. We went with the grain. We were made to live on this planet. This much is obvious from the fact that all creation is declared very good at the end of this chapter in verse 31. And Adam was created to carry on God's very good work. And God's rule is always wise, loving, righteous. But Genesis clearly does imply that the world was an in needing of taming or subjugating or conquering. The general meaning of the verb appears to be to bring under one's control for one's advantage. In Genesis 1, 28, one might paraphrase it as follows, harness its potential and use its resources for your benefit. So we're supposed to harness the earth. That's kind of when we get into this next week, that's why this is eventually called the cultural mandate. We take a branch off a tree and we make it into a flute. We order plants in a way that it's not just a random field, but it's a garden. We create beautiful things, whether it's music or something that's pleasing to the eye. Again, this is the minion fruitfully ordering the world and God's stead. That's what God made you to do. While the Garden of Eden was a sanctuary that God made, Genesis does not suggest that the rest of the creation was similar. The Garden was bounded, it had a boundary, and the rest of the world was outside that boundary. And it wasn't gentle or soft, but in a sense it was made to be tame. Adam was made to bring it into submission to order and shape it. The way I see this is that God gave Adam the Garden as a model of what he's supposed to do. He's supposed in a sense to extend the boundaries of the Garden, extend the rule and worship of God to the entire planet. What does that sound like? Sound a little bit like the Great Commission? The creation mandate is the Great Commission before there was sin in the world. They're deeply connected. It's important that Adam's task here is the minion and not just stewardship because it calibrates our understanding of two critical things, Adam's nature and God's. What Adam was created to do is what we're created to do. And the God who created him is the God who calls us, calls you. If Adam was made in God's image and that image is worked out in terms of dominion, and we see the image transmitted from Adam to his son as it is unquestionably connected to dominion in Genesis 1, then how God exercises dominion should tell us a lot about how he expects us to carry forth his image. Now brothers and sisters, we were made to rule to shape things. Thinking about what is, I think, drives people away from so much of evangelical Christianity. A lot of it is we think everything happens in here somewhere, inside of us. It's like you can't touch it to the theory. It's the world of ideas, of the mind that Christianity is a spiritual endeavor, and it is. But we are a spirit body composite. We are both physical. Like creation is good. You're made to live in creation. When you see a mountain, it is normal and good to want to climb it or to knock it down to make something cooler. That's normal. There's a reason little boys dig in the dirt. We were made to shape this planet. It's ours. It belongs to us. It was given to us. Now think about what we do with that desire though. How often do we build something for our own glory and not for God's glory? And so what you'll see moving through Genesis 1 through 11 is the twisting of the creation mandate. Now it's good to build towers. You should build towers. They're glorious. You say, wow, look, look at that. That's beautiful. Praise the Lord that he has given men such ability to make these things, to give him honor. There's the sense that cities in of themselves are bad. They are when they're made to raise the name of man and to deny God his rightful place. But when you build something for the glory of God, something beautiful like the temple, the temple is celebrated. It's good, but when you build a tower to make a name great for yourself up into heaven's. That's evil. It's great to fill the world with disciples of Jesus Christ. Have lots of babies, right? Love them. Catechize them. Teach them to trust God. Let's fill the world with praise. Let's have homes in every county where people are singing of God's goodness. Let's have homes in every county where children are growing up knowing what we didn't learn to we're in our 20s or 30s, right? Let's fill the world with that. That's good. But what we see in Genesis in the coming chapters is that the world does get filled with mankind, but all their thoughts are constantly sinful, constantly violent, and God so grieved that this marred image is there that he wipes the world out except for eight living souls. Now, the beautiful thing is, is that when we are called out of darkness into light, we are a new creation. We have new hearts. And what we used to do for our own vain glory, for our own attention, now God starts changing things. And we start doing it for his glory. So, the reason I bring this up is I think it's good to be sick of a passive Christianity. It's good to be sick of Reformed churches that just talk doctrine and don't do anything. Constantly listening, reading this book, listening to these lectures of that podcast, just this info we're like obsessed with information. But God made us to do stuff, to build beautiful things. And next week, we're going to dive into some of the particulars of that call to dominion and how we can do that. But my challenge for you this Sunday is simple, is where has God gifted you to bring his glory into this world? Right? You can start kids, you start by having dominion over your own little room, right? Make your bed, clean things up, don't make mom and dad feed the chickens or the cats. I don't want to feed chickens and cats. I feed my children. They feed you, right? You feed the animals, right? Have dominion when you're at. Maybe you're just a janitor, well, you should be the best janitor to the glory of God, right? Because God, God looks at that, and He says, that's beautiful, that honors me. Worship God with your whole life, have dominion wherever He has you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, for its depth, for its meaning and word. We don't want to be people who live as if this world won't be our home when it's renewed. In this current state, it's fallen, it's messed up, Lord, but you will constimate all things at the end of the age, and we will be with you forever and ever in a perfect creation. You made this place for us, and you made it, made us so we would bring glory to you. We asked that we would do that, Father, that we'd exercise dominion. We'd see our kingdom spread in our homes, in our workplaces, wherever else you have us. We ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen. Amen.