Prayer
Heavenly Father, I praise you. You are the Supreme Potentate who rules over all things. I praise you for the sovereign ordering of my life, that you have perfectly directed all of my providences in perfect wisdom. I praise you for my joys. I praise you for my provisions. I praise you for my trials. I praise you for my pains. You have done all things well, and I praise you that eternity will reveal the infinite wisdom with which you have accomplished the display of your glory in my life. O Lord, my Sovereign King, be pleased now to speak to me through the reading of your word, and make the meditation of my heart to be acceptable in your sight. Please cleanse and renew my heart, unite my heart to fear your name. This I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Reading
Gen 1:24-31.
“And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and 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.” 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28. 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 and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29. And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30. 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. 31. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
Meditation
A more focused aspect of the dominion mandate is that we are called to work, to care for the garden and to till the ground. In Gen 1:28 we thus read: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” So too in Genesis 2:15 God puts man into the garden for the purpose of working and keeping it. This dominion comes as a call to work, to develop and cultivate all the gifts and potential that God has given us in the creation.
Pay particular attention in verse twenty eight to the word “subdue”. Contrary to the agenda of the modern Green movement, our natural environment is not designed to be left to itself. It’s actually designed to be cultivated. Now on one hand, the Green movement recognises the way that we as a culture have in many ways abused our environment. This is a sad reality. The problem is that environmentalism then responds to this abuse by making an idol of the natural world and seeking to hamper our God-given call to keep and cultivate the natural world. We need to see the environment through the lense of the gospel. As Christ restores God’s rule in our hearts, we start to see that the environment is not to be abused or neglected, but cultivated – to the glory of God. The gospel is what’s missing in Green ideology, and because of that they go too far in the other direction, and increasingly we even see a new kind of spiritualistic paganism emerging in some sectors of the green movement.
But let’s put this positively – what is it that God calls us to do in this work? I think that we can summarise in two words: care and cultivation. Firstly, that God calls us to care for his creation. Caring for creation is a key aspect of dominion. Taking dominion doesn’t mean ruling like a tyrant, it means lovingly caring for the creation. In Gen 1:26 we see that God gave mankind dominion over the creatures. One of the reasons God made the animals was to teach us to be responsible and caring of them. Thus in Proverbs 10:12 we read: “Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.” We see this model of caring oversight in God himself, who gives food to all creatures (Gen 1:28-29).
In his kindness God provides for all living creatures, and as we are created in his image he wants us to do the same sort of thing as we exercise dominion. He wants us to be kind, to be caring of the earth, the creatures, and of each other. Dominion is not about selfish domination, it’s about selfless service. By way of application we might pause and ask ourselves: Am I a caring person? Do I take care of the things that God has entrusted to me? Of my possessions? Even of the creatures around me? Do I take care of the people God has placed in my life?
The second aspect of this call to work is about cultivation – God calls us to cultivate the creation. On day four we saw that part of God’s plans for creation was that his glory would unfold in the course of time. There would be progress and development of his plan. God didn’t create man and build a city for him, instead he filled the earth with stone, and metals, and precious jewels. He made trees not houses. There was the potential to build planes and cars, but there wasn’t a ready made Boeing 747 on the tarmac waiting for him. Man was thus called to cultivate and develop this potential.
Be ye doers of the word…
Now as we’ve noted previously, because of sin this potential has been much abused and misused. Nevertheless, the calling is still there. God calls us to cultivate the creation to his glory. To care for it and to develop it, to see to it that we make progress with what we’ve been given. So then, cultivate what God has given you. For each one of us, God gives talents and gifts, opportunities and relationships. The calling to cultivate is the calling to develop those gifts and opportunities. In a sense, that’s really what a vocation is all about. It’s about pushing the boundaries of music, engineering, mathematics, agriculture, architecture, technology, theology, linguistics, science, art, literature, creativity – all the potential God has laid out in creation. To develop and discover his glory as it’s revealed in all these things, in the context of the relationships of love that we have with one another. Vocation is about service rather than selfishness.
This calling goes right down even to the simple things as well. Keeping a tidy garden, an ordered pantry. Everything we have presents an opportunity to glorify God. So, what are you doing with what you’ve been given? How are you cultivating and developing the trust that God has placed in your hands? What talents, abilities, desires and opportunities has he given you? And what are you doing with them? God doesn’t want us to waste these things, he wants us to use them, to develop them, and to serve others with them. That’s real capitalism by the way. Capitalism done right is others-centred (Christian capitalism). Capitalism done wrong is self-centred (carnal capitalism). As we care for and cultivate creation, this dominion mandate will unfold in history… and God’s glory will be realised in the creation.
The gospel is not some pious religious, spiritual thing. It is profoundly spiritual, as we’ve noted in an earlier study, but spiritual reality ought to flow out and bear fruit on the earth in every area of life. That’s what dominion is really all about, it’s about seeing the life of Christ in his people bear fruit in every area of life to the glory of God. SDG.
Prayer of Confession & Consecration
Almighty God, please forgive me for my idleness and laziness. Please forgive me for the vast disorder I have allowed to be fostered in my life. I want to be a diligent worker with all the things that you have given to me. Help me, Lord, to work hard with all the opportunities that you have provided for me. Please help me to be mindful at all times that every moment presents an opportunity to be busy accomplishing some deed for the glory of your name. Please help me to use my time, my gifts, my abilities, my relationships, my opportunities, my possessions, and all that I have with diligent purpose to serve others and glorify you. Please help me in this, I look to you, who moves in the hearts of your people to will and to work. Glory be to you, Lord God Almighty! In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Day 35: God calls us to image his work (Gen 1:24-31).