Genesis 1:28-31

Alright,
well, welcome back to the study.
Today we kick off, again,
our last section here in chapter one.
Yeah, yeah.
We’re not quite done with this story yet.
We’re very near the culmination
and then there’s a little bit more.
This story actually goes into chapter two,
which is interesting and we can talk about why that is.
But today we kind of finish the narrative.
Just to bring you up to speed, we’re chapter one.
We’re verse 28 and so man and woman have just been
created and remember in this story that happened simultaneously.
The next story gives a more
detailed account but this is
a story in which God speaks men and women into existence,
male and female, He created them.
And now there is the follow-up where God blessed them and this is
language we’ve seen before,
a good bit of it.
And it is interesting that man
and woman, man and woman share in the calling that has been placed on the animals, birds earlier.
So verse 28 here, God blessed them
and said to them,
be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it,
have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and
every living thing that moves upon the earth.
Now this we’ve seen before and we had some
conversation about this language of dominion and subdue in its context.
This is a recognition that
in our ancient
ancestors lives existence was difficult and it was a struggle and they
had to strive to do those things.
So much of what we take for granted has not existed
for most of human history and there is this inherent assumption in this creation narrative
that existence, even existence in the garden has some uphill struggle to it and we don’t
need to rehash that ground,
but the word subdue and the word dominion have been fertile ground
for conversation in Christian and Jewish faith conversations ever since.
Yeah, so we actually began our youth group series last night and we’re going through some of the heroes of the
faith, some of the men and women,
both the old and new testament who are sort of those critical
people of the faith.
We started with Adam and Eve and the reason I point this out
is just to say
that we talked a little bit about chapter two and we’re going to get to chapter two,
but one of the
things that is highlighted there is Adam’s role in the garden of naming animals.
I think that context of what will come,
that story helps gives us some context for this story in the sense that
as we come to this idea of having dominion over the animals, subduing the earth,
there’s this sense of ordering the world.
God creates everything by the word,
but Adam is doing this subsequent
kind of creating in the second chapter where he’s giving animals names,
he’s putting them in
categories, he’s helping God that’s sort of an under shepherd,
an under caretaker in the earth,
and I think that’s a better image for this idea of dominion than beating up on the earth and like
you said Clint, we’ve already sort of walked this ground so I won’t rehash it other than to say
that as we come to understand what we as humans do on the earth,
we need to understand that we
do so as those who stand under the creator.
So whatever dominion we have
is completely
subject to the ordering of the one who made all things.
He has ultimate dominion,
he’s ultimately
the one by his own providence who is carrying us forward.
So to whatever extent we act it’s conditional,
it’s contextual,
and sometimes we’ve over vested power in this idea of subduing the
earth and we’ve missed the one who gave us that authority.
Yeah, very interesting.
The word dominion probably in this context has more to do with
caretaking or administration rather than
possession, rather than control.
This is the idea that the man and woman in their fruitfulness
have
a responsibility to the world in which they live,
and I think that we’ll get there.
It’s very interesting as we finish this story,
keep that word dominion in mind as we go through this
next couple of verses because it puts a very interesting spin on it.
Verse 29,
God said,
“See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all 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 air,
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.” So why don’t
we stop there, Michael?
Very interesting.
We mentioned,
we don’t want to hash this again,
but we mentioned early on in this study that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 clearly come
from two different sources.
They use different language,
they have a different style.
There are two versions of a kind of faith family story.
This first chapter gets labeled the
priestly source because of the word for God that is used here.
It’s the Hebrew word Elohim,
and it comes, we believe, from the priestly tradition.
Now, what’s very interesting about
that is the priests who oversaw things like animal sacrifice very much were devoted to the
idea of the sacredness of life,
the sacredness of blood.
We’ll see that later down the road in
Genesis a while, this idea of life blood and things like that.
And you will notice,
if you read these verses carefully,
that the clear implication is that in the Garden of Eden,
not only the man and
woman, but all of the animals were vegetarian.
And that is understood to be the priestly sources way
of saying that in the goodness of God’s creation,
there was no death,
there was no killing,
there was no sacrifice of blood,
there was no violence,
that these things were not a part of this initial order.
Now,
not everyone is going to interpret that way,
but if you read these words,
there’s no mention here of eating meat.
This is a very peaceful kind of portrayal of what’s happening
in the early experience of the man and woman.
And I do think it colors and gives nuance to that word dominion,
because it’s very hard to read dominion as control and do what I want with
in the context of this other picture.
So we talked about on Thursday of last week,
we talked a little
bit about how the pacing of this has been interrupted.
And here we see this really bore out.
And we have had this pattern,
right, where God speaks and then that day a thing happens,
God looks at that thing and says that it’s good.
And that’s happened day one,
day two, day three.
Now we get here and we’re coming down on the end of day six.
And here things have slowed down.
So not only does God have this deliberation that we already talked about where God says,
“Let us make
humankind,” this is, I’m looking at verse 26 here,
“Let’s make humankind in our own image,
according to our own likeness.” Then we had this talk about being the image bearers, the imago day.
Now we come here to really this kind of summary.
This is a really interesting change of the pace
that we’ve had thus far,
where it’s summarized.
The idea that God now says all of this ordering
and creating I’ve done thus far has been for the purpose of me allowing you to live in it,
to have a leadership kind of role within this ordering.
It is clear that God’s laying out
expectations at this place.
And if you take that nuance that you’re speaking about here,
Clem, I think that it takes us even a step further to say that one of our jobs is those seeking to live
into this new creation that God makes was from the beginning to live in the same spirit that God
intended it, to exist with the same kind of peace,
to try to seek the same kind of tranquility
and the same kind of life,
begetting life that has existed from all time.
And we have that built
into our own understanding of what a good society is.
We build into what we incorporate in our
governance and in our lives together,
people whose job is the actual stewardship of creation
and the protecting of species and all these kinds of things.
This is ultimately a very
concrete expression of this reality that as Christians,
we seek to try to continue the
creation along the same path that God made it from the very beginning.
Right. And it’s easy to read
this and think, you know, well, that’s very utopian.
The idea that
lions and tigers lived
alongside gazelles and deer and everyone ate green grass.
But again,
I think it bears repeating,
we’ll say this at numerous points in the Genesis narrative.
Don’t think of this as scientific history.
Think of this as sermon.
Think of this as theology.
Think of the lesson implicit
in a God who has created the heavens and earth
and given it over to the creatures.
And it is a system that is not built on death.
It is a system that is not built
on stalking and hunting and eradicating.
No one is dependent upon the life of another.
There is a harmony in it.
Now, whether we could talk about that zoologically or biologically,
that’s not the point.
We could push back against this and say,
well, it couldn’t have been.
Right.
We could.
But we would be missing the point of the story if we did that.
The point of the story is that
in God’s original intention,
there is this balance.
There is enough for everyone.
There is life sustaining for all the creatures and man and woman are over it as those who are charged with
managing and overseeing this world that they have been given.
And it ends with,
you’ve seen this phrase before,
verse 31 here, God saw everything that he made and indeed
it was very good.
And there was evening and morning,
the sixth day.
Now,
if you paid close attention,
you know that in the other times this phrase was used,
it said God saw that it was good.
And here it intensifies that it was double good.
It was very good.
In English, we translate, very good.
And this has to do with that sense that it’s completed.
God’s work is done.
And the priests, being the priests, they’re going to tell us tomorrow,
we’ll look at this.
They’re going to tell us the next part of the story,
which was clearly important to the priests about what happens
after the work is done.
But this verse with its addition of very tells us that God is finished
and that that finishing is complete.
It is just as it is supposed to be.
Yeah. And consider that this happens with six days of the week.
We might miss because
this is a story that’s in every children’s Bible that’s ever been made,
the supreme power of God
demonstrated here.
God takes nothing before day one.
And by the end of day six,
God has not only
created all of the order and structure of the world,
but he’s now also created the being that
he intends to hand it off to.
And this is a God who has no equal.
This is a God who has no competition.
There’s no fight for God’s supremacy.
And the reason I’m emphasizing this is if you’ve
ever read any sort of ancient Genesis stories,
non-Christian stories, there’s often a lot of
violence.
There’s often a lot of competition where gods are warring against other gods.
What is striking about this story is that there is no discernible conflict.
There’s no need for God to take up arms or for God to trick another being God with,
but simply a word makes
and every day sees that the work of that day was good.
And then now we get to the end of day six
of what we’re going to know is a seven day week when we finish tomorrow.
And we’re going to see
that the end of day six,
God doesn’t need seven days.
At the end of day six,
God can step back.
He can look at this thing that he’s made and he can say,
it is not just good.
It is exceedingly good.
It is very good.
The God that’s being proclaimed here is a God that is jealous of his
position.
There’s a God who has no one who can compare.
And I mean, that’s intended.
It’s clear that the God that we’re looking at here is not a God who has any sort of fight with other smaller gods.
This God is the creator, redeemer,
and sustainer.
And that’s an intended sort of focus
that we get in this story.
Right.
And so as we move on tomorrow,
we will finish this first story.
It doesn’t end with the end of the first chapter and we can talk about why that may be,
but we will continue tomorrow as we look at this last bit of the story,
which is a very interesting
part of the story because we would naturally assume that when the work is done,
the story is done.
And yet that’s not the case,
partly because the people who are telling it find it important for
us to know that.
And we will see what that says about the one who has created it.
We’ll talk about that tomorrow.
Thanks for being with us, friends.
We will see you tomorrow.