Caretakers of God's Home

Transcript

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[0:00] This is one of my favorite passages in all the Bible. And I really wanted two people to read it in the way that Steven Yuki read it, because what's fascinating about this text is that actually the form of the text, the form of the passage, the rhythms that you hear over and over are just as important in communicating to us what God is wanting to say as the words themselves. And so I hope just that responsive style of reading kind of helped bring out that, the pattern and the rhythms for you. So I will be preaching a little bit from this passage this morning. So before we kick off, let me pray for us.

[0:54] Father God, we thank you so much for your word, for communicating to us. Holy Spirit, speak to us through your word, and may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight. In Jesus' name, amen.

[1:15] So I'm very excited about today, about our pet blessing. You may not know this about me, but I am a total animal lover. So last weekend, September 24th, that was actually my birthday. But what made September 24th really exciting was it was World Gorilla Day.

[1:37] And kind of not long before that, it was World Elephant Day. And in between was World Red Panda Day. And I celebrated them all. I loved them all. And when it comes to pets, Jared and I have very openly confessed that that question of, are you a dog person or a cat? Or a cat person? That was actually a threshold question in our relationship. So we both like cats. But if either of us did not like dogs, might not have happened kind of thing, right?

[2:15] But why are we blessing our pets today? And what does that have to do with God? And what does that have to do with our Christian faith and practice? So I wanted to just kind of tease that out a little bit today.

[2:32] And fill us in on why we're doing this. So October the 4th is the day on which Roman Catholics, and actually a lot of Anglican Christians, celebrate St. Francis of Assisi. So Francis was a very godly man who lived in Italy in kind of the late 12th century, early 13th centuries. And traditionally, we celebrate him on October 4th because he died on October the 4th in 1226. So of course in the covenant denomination, we don't particularly celebrate saint days as such. Because we believe theologically in Christ, we're all saints, right? Jesus makes us holy by his blood and his saving work. So we would say all Christians are saints. Roman Catholics would say that too. But historically, in the broader Christian tradition, there are particular Christians who have gone before us, whom all Christians would agree that they've had a very significant impact on our faith and on Christianity, like what Christianity is, not only in the past, but they still have an influence on us today.

[3:52] Francis was definitely a saint. One of those figures. So how many of you have seen that statue just off the 280 of Francis? Yeah, San Francisco is named after St. Francis. And he lived, like I said, end of the 12th century till 1226. He lived in Italy. And interestingly enough, he was never ordained. He was not a priest. He was just a lay Christian believer. But he was such a radical disciple of Christ. That he actually ended up founding one of the largest Roman Catholic orders, the Franciscans.

[4:32] And I did a bit of reading about him. He was a very passionate man. And once he committed his life to Christ, he followed Christ's teachings literally. So one story goes, one of his followers, he had lots of people who were very attracted to what he was doing. One of his followers got robbed. And a man stole this guy's hood. And Francis made him go chase after the robber and give him his cloak. Because in Matthew, Jesus says, you know, offer him more.

[5:08] And he really took laying his life down like Jesus. So Victoria has been preaching over the last few weeks on Philippians, right? So Philippians 2, where Jesus says, give up all his status. Francis really took that laying down his life to heart. So he actually gave up all his wealth. He was born into a very wealthy family. And he lived in complete poverty and total service to God.

[5:40] And so what's this about pet blessings, though? Where does that come in? Francis loved animals. And he loved nature. He loved all nature and all creatures as his brothers and sisters. And so we put in your bulletin a copy of his Canticle of the Creatures, which is a song that he wrote. And you'll see he calls the sun and moon, even death and sickness. He actually suffered a lot in his health. He called all these things his brothers and sisters, all part of creation together. And he would do interesting things like he would preach to the birds. So one story goes he preached a sermon to the birds. And he told them to do things like praise God for your wonderful clothes.

[6:36] Praise God that he provides you with seeds to eat. And the legend has it all the birds stayed in the trees till he was done preaching. And they didn't fly away till he dismissed them. So he was a good preacher.

[6:54] So this morning we're not going to pray to Francis the way some of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters might do. But we're going to learn a little bit from him. And so I want to take a look at today's scripture reading and learn from the text and also see, kind of learn a little bit about how Francis saw the world. Because I think it's a very beautiful perspective that he had. And the theme I want to explore, my title for the theme is How are we to live in our Father's world? How are we to live in our Father's world?

[7:32] So before I want to go too much further, I just want to say a quick word about our actual Bible reading. Some of you might know there are many, many ways in which this text has been interpreted and used. There are lots of interesting conversations going on about it. There are lots of things that are going on about how it relates to science, for example. And I just want to say right now, I'm not going to go down that road. Because what I want to do is focus on what the passage is saying theologically. And what I mean by that is I want to look at what it says about God, about us as human beings, and about the world, about creation. And I want to look at what it says about how these three things are connected.

[8:14] And as much as possible, I want to help us to read and understand this passage in the way the original readers and hearers of the text might have understood it. Because I think then we'll get to the original intention of the passage, and we can get the most out of it. And so just a little bit of Bible history. The period of time that we're talking about is what historians call the ancient Near East. And so geographically, it's roughly the Middle East and North Africa. And time-wise, the ancient Near Eastern period goes back to around 4000 B.C. But the Old Testament scholars think that the Old Testament as we know it now, in its final form, was kind of put together during the time that Israel was in exile in Babylon. Which puts us in kind of like the 700s B.C. The accounts and the stories and the history, they were of course much, much older.

[9:20] But we actually have stories in the Old Testament itself, right, that talks about how Israel's kings forgot the Torah, and about books being lost, and how Josiah rediscovers the Torah. We actually have that in Scripture itself. And so we think the final collating of these texts happened in the 700s B.C.

[9:45] And so of course people back then, they understood the world very differently to how we think about it now, right? And so it's very helpful for us, I think, to put ourselves in their shoes as much as possible to get the full meaning of what's being said. So I'll go into this a little bit more in a minute.

[10:07] Okay, so in looking at Genesis 1 through to chapter 2 verse 3, I want to focus on this. I want to focus on three themes. The first theme will be what is God doing? The second theme is going to be let's look at God's creatures. And then the third thing is human beings, a very particular kind of creature.

[10:32] So first of all, what is God doing? When we read this passage, God is doing a lot of things, right? He's talking a lot. And his words are accomplishing a lot of things. I mean, he's making the world here.

[10:51] But I want to put on some ancient Near Eastern glasses to point out something that might not be so obvious to us right now. One of the obvious things about this text is the seven days, right? And there's lots of different opinions about the seven days, especially about what sort of length of time they're referencing. But if we put our ancient Near Eastern glasses on, what we actually see in this seven days is that God is building his home.

[11:25] God is building his home. What do I mean by that? John Walton is a New Testament professor at Wheaton College, and he spent a lot of time researching the ancient Near Eastern worldview. And he says in the ancient Near East, this pattern of building over seven days is an image of a temple, a temple being built. And so when people even outside of Israel, so like the people of Babylon, for example, would have heard this story of something being built over seven days, they would have thought, oh, this is a story of people building a temple for a god. We're building a house for our god. We're building a house for our god to live in.

[12:14] And on the seventh day, when all the building is finished, the building work is finished, the god comes in to the temple to rest. The god comes to rest in the temple. The god moves in. So in this kind of setting, Genesis is saying God himself created the world. God created the whole of creation to be his temple.

[12:43] And the building work finishes on the sixth day. And God looks back at all of creation and he says, it is very good. And the culmination is actually on the seventh day when God's presence comes to rest in his temple. The cosmos that he has created.

[13:12] So this language of God resting, people would have heard it as God's presence is coming to rest in his temple. God is moving into his house. So when we think of the Psalmist saying things like the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. And when we think of Isaiah saying, heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool. That all kind of ties in, right?

[13:45] So I think this tells us several things about God. The first thing it tells us is of course, God is the creator of all things. So I'll talk about this more in a minute. But for now I want to say in the ancient Near East, they thought of gods as local. They were attached to their locations. And the people also worshipped things like the sun and the moon as if they were gods. But Yahweh was the God whose temple was the whole of the heavens and the earth. So God is God of everything, everywhere.

[14:27] And things like the sky and the waters and the sun and the moon and the stars, things that people worshipped, this tells us, Genesis 1 tells us, to Yahweh these were all just part of the furniture. These are not things to be worshipped, they are created things.

[14:49] The second thing it tells us is that God is present with his creation. He dwells with his creation, which tells us that he loves and values his creation because it's his home. Francis understood this, I think. And I think this is why he could say, all the animals, all the creation, they're all my brothers and sisters. We're all part of God's family. I think another community that kind of sees things from this perspective is our Native American brothers and sisters, right, who see kind of all creation as sacred, something precious to be honored. I think both of them understand something of what we see in our text today, that God is the dwelling place of God.

[15:43] The third thing I think it tells us about God is, well, it kind of gives us a whole new meaning to Sabbath, right? Sabbath is the day God came to dwell with us. So on the Sabbath we stop. And we rest. And we enjoy God. We enjoy God's presence with us.

[16:10] So in our passage today, we see that God is making his home and that God is present and dwells in his creation. The second theme I want to focus on is God's creatures. Throughout Genesis, we heard this rhythm, right? Then God said, let us make, let there be. And then shortly after those words we hear, and that is what happened. So God made. So God created.

[16:47] And we hear this about everything in the cosmos. We hear it about the sun, the moon, the seas, the land, plants and animals. And in verse 26, we hear it about us, right? Then God said, let us make human beings.

[17:04] So Genesis 1 says, everything is made by God, except God himself. So everything that is created shares this thing in common. God is our creator. And we are his creatures. We are all God's creatures. I think it's really important to remember that God is not just a creature. It is a human being. And it is very important for us as human beings to grasp this truth. That I am a creature. That we are creatures. And I think it's very, very freeing because it takes the pressure off of us.

[17:43] If we kind of flip, fast forward a little bit to Genesis chapter 3, the temptation to Adam and Eve from the serpent was, if you eat this tree, of this tree, you will be like God. Our temptation as human beings is to grasp this truth. To grasp after being God.

[18:01] But I think it's helpful to us to remember, no, we're creatures. To be a creature is to be dependent upon our creator. We would not exist if it weren't for our creator. Right? And other parts of the Bible says, our creator God didn't just make us, he actually sustains us as well. And as creatures, it kind of helps us to remember this. And it helps us to remember that there's only so much we can control.

[18:38] And so, for us to flourish, we need to depend on the God who made us. And depend on the God who sustains us. I think Francis really understood this. I think it was behind his vows of poverty. And you know, like, in his life, he was giving a sermon to the birds. Thank God that he feeds you.

[19:04] And, you know, I think of this passage in Matthew 6, where Jesus says, consider the lilies of the fields, consider the sparrows. They don't worry about their clothes or their food. Your Father feeds them. So the birds and the flowers, the animals and the plants, remind us that it is God who provides for us. And it is God who sustains us.

[19:32] Some of you know that Jared and I spent some of 2020 in Ghana. And I love how my Ghanaian friends celebrate their birthdays. I don't know if they do this in Liberia too, Karen, but they make, like, posters with their photo. And, like, it's my birthday. And they send it around the WhatsApp group. And they say, on these platforms, they say, we praise God that he's given me another year of life.

[20:06] We praise God for another year of life. When life is fragile, you are thankful for each year of life. They don't take their life, their existence, for granted. And every time I see one of those birthday announcements, I tell myself, that's a better attitude than I had to my birthday, than I had to getting older, right? God is our creator. We're all God's creatures.

[20:35] And the final theme I want to explore is we are God's representatives. We're God's representatives. So in chapter 1, verse 26, it says, Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of them, he created them. Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.

[21:29] So on the one hand, with all the other animals, we are creatures, but unlike any of the other animals, we are the animal that is expressly made in the image of God. This little phrase, in the image of God, sets us apart from all the rest of creation. There are two sets of relationships it sets up. It sets up our relationship with God, and it also sets up our relationship with the rest of creation.

[22:02] There has been enormous debate over the centuries amongst theologians about what this means precisely. But the one I want to hone in on is this idea of royal representation. Royal representation. So in the ancient Near East, to be an image-bearer meant that you were a representative of the king. The king of a country could give his seal that literally had, like, a picture of the king on it to a representative. And this person who bore the king's image literally carried this image and with it, he had all the authority of the king.

[22:54] He could function in front of other people as if he was the king. So he was like, I guess, an ambassador, but maybe even more than that. It was an incredible honor and a great responsibility. I think this is one of the meanings that we have here in verse 26. And I think it's affirmed in the other verses where it says you're going to reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, et cetera, et cetera.

[23:28] Other translations that you might have heard before would talk about, like, fill the earth and subdue it, or we're given dominion over the earth. So this is other translations of this idea of reign over the sea.

[23:44] So what does this say about our relationship with God, first of all? I think the first thing it says is that we are made to have a very particular intimate relationship with God that's different to how the animals will relate to God. One of my theological crushes, Natalie knows this, is an early church father by the name of Athanasius. And he talked a lot about what it means to be a Christian. He talked a lot about what it means to be made in the image of God. He thought that to be human, to be made in the image of God, is to live in a face-to-face relationship with God. And that this relationship with God was actually, like, fundamental to our human existence, to be fundamental to our being.

[24:38] So the way I think about it is this. Think about your image in the mirror, everybody. Think about your image every morning. It can't exist without you, right? So just imagine one morning if you're brushing your teeth in the mirror, and all of a sudden your image looks at you, sticks its tongue out at you, and walks away.

[25:00] It can't happen. It doesn't happen. And if it did happen, like it kind of did in a Star Trek episode, think about how long will that image last? Apart from you. Right? Athanasius said if we, God's image, tries to live apart from God, we fall apart.

[25:29] Think about Karen Sorensen a few weeks ago came to speak to us about our mental health. And I really appreciated how she called it the human condition. Anxiety, the human condition. There's something, all of us are fallen, right? All of us have in different ways tried to run away from God. And we're suffering because of it. There's a sense in which in our very beings we're broken. And the only one who can repair us is Jesus Christ, who is God himself, right? This is the gospel. And so there's something different from the other animals in our relationship with God. We are tied to God more in the way of God. We are tied to God more intimately in our being. And we need to put our trust in Jesus to restore us to that right relationship. So I think that's the first thing about being in the image of God.

[26:27] The second thing is being in the image of God means that we are different to the other animals because God has given us a job to do. We are supposed to rule over the earth. God has given us, he has made us in his image to rule over the earth and because of this, we as human beings have great power.

[26:56] But in ruling over the earth, we as human beings are supposed to do this as representatives of the king. We are supposed to rule over the earth in the name of God and we're supposed to do it as people who are in in the name of God. So we have an intimate relationship with God taking our instructions from God.

[27:21] I don't think we've done a very good job of that. I don't think that is going to be a hot debate here. Some people groups have done better than others. And I do think of our Native American brothers and sisters. I think of Australian Aboriginal communities where they have lived in greater harmony with creation. But throughout history, Christians as well as non-Christians have often used these verses, this mandate to rule, to justify exploiting the earth, using up all the resources of the earth, killing animals to the point of extinction. And so much so that, you know, I work with college students.

[28:09] Apparently, the culture of the world, the current climate crisis is one of the major causes of anxiety amongst young people today. Right? So in our brokenness, we have ruled over the earth in a broken way. And I think we're reaping what we've sown, right? And Hurricane Ian is just the most recent example of that.

[28:33] But let's go back to God's intention for creation, right? Creation is God's home. It's the dwelling place of the Most High God. And God, in creating us in His image, has given us the honor of being the caretakers of His palace.

[28:59] Queen Elizabeth passed away just a few weeks ago. I'm an Australian citizen. She was my queen. How many of us watched The Crown? We all like The Crown. Downton Abbey, you kind of see it a little bit as well. But I remember seeing scenes, right, of the, I don't know what you call them, housekeepers, butlers, like laying the royal banquet hall for visits of dignitaries. And they're using like rulers to work out how far apart the knives and forks should be, stuff like that.

[29:34] Think about all the training that goes, into someone who just lays the royal table. And think about how diligent the queens, and now the King Charles' servants, have to be. It is an honor to lay the table for the queen and the king. And the things in Buckingham Palace, some of them have been kept in good working condition for centuries, right?

[30:01] And so in response to Genesis 1, I think we have to ask ourselves, if this is how people feel about serving a human queen, how could we live differently if we saw ourselves as the caretakers of God's home?

[30:21] How would we treat animals and their habitat differently if we saw them as fellow residents of God's house, as our brothers and sisters? What would we do to protect and preserve and keep in order God's home?

[30:45] I want to finish with Jesus. Jesus, God's son, and with the 2020 vision of hindsight, Jesus, who was not created, but who was there at creation himself. And yet Jesus, who came to live, and to live and die amongst us, and to rise from the dead so that we can rise with him, to be the perfect image-bearer of God.

[31:14] If human beings are God's representatives, appointed to rule over all creation, then the state of creation is dependent upon the job that we're doing, right? And creation's in a lot of trouble, because we messed up.

[31:31] But through Jesus, we can repent of our sins, receive his forgiveness, and as we follow Jesus in faith and obedience, he promises to make us new. He promises to restore to us the image that we're supposed to bear of God.

[31:52] And so it follows that actually the restoration of all creation begins with Jesus' work in us, right? So in Romans 8, Paul says, all creation is groaning, waiting for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed.

[32:12] The caretakers of God's house need to be made new and restored to right relationship with God. And as God makes us new, he starts to show us how all creation is our brother and sister. He can start to guide us by his spirit, to live and work in this world in ways that will restore and renew and protect his home.

[32:42] So how are we to live in our Father's world? I think it starts by us turning to Jesus and being made new, and then caring for this world as caretakers of the palace of the Most High King.