Episode Details

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 pag