Stewardship: The Environment
Stewardship • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Climate Anxiety
Quoting from an article I came across on the Gospel Coalition by Andrew Spencer - “Climate Anxiety Paralyzes. Gospel Hope Propels”
“According to author Britt Wray, climate anxiety is “a condition that robs sleep from those who, when all is dark and quiet, stir in thoughts of how uninhabitable the Earth will soon become”. In a 2021 survey, nearly 60 percent of the 10,000 young people (16–25 years old) surveyed reported they were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change. More than 45 percent of those surveyed reported their anxiety “negatively affected their daily lives.”
A climate Scientist offers some perspective on this when she says:
“Climate change is alarming, but research on everything from airplane seatbelts to hand washing in hospitals shows that bad-news warnings are more likely to make people check out than change their behavior”
When the Bible is not the sources of our understanding, we will not be able to respond to issues like climate change with clarity and stability.
God’s Creation
God’s Creation
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
God’s creation is good
God’s creation is good
As you scan through Genesis 1, something that is clear is that God regarded what He created as good. (v. 4,10,12,18,21,25,31)
Gen 1:31.
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.
God regarded everything that He had made as good.
Why was it good?
Our Mandate
Our Mandate
Gen 1:26-28.
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.”
to subdue something is to make it subordinate or subservient.
to have dominion is to rule over… to exercise authority over. We are to rule over God’s good creation. But as we have noted in previous weeks, our authority is God-given.
What does the exercising of God-honoring dominion look like today?
God-Honoring Dominion
God-Honoring Dominion
Mark Chanski, who wrote Manly Dominion & Womanly Dominion says this:
“A man of dominion seeks to boldly subdue and rule over the circumstances of his life, instead of passively permitting the circumstances of his life to subdue and rule over him. He dominates his environment instead of letting his environment dominate him.”
What does God-honoring dominion look like? What are the qualities of God-honoring dominion?
A man of dominion seeks to imitate his Lord and Savior in every life assignment, whether it’s in school, at work, in marriage, in parenting, in churchmanship, or in personal godliness. So help him God, with no excuses, he seeks to subdue and rule in every sphere to the glory of his Maker and Redeemer.
So our mandate is to rule over God’s good creation. But, how has this impacted everything?
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
God’s creation and the Fall
God’s creation and the Fall
Gen 3:17-24.
The Fall messed everything up. Remember what God told Adam before the Fall
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.
God’s creation yielded what man needed to survive.
But we get to Genesis 3, and that’s no longer the case:
Genesis 3:17–18 (ESV)
… cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
And man’s desire to fulfill the mandate to exercise dominion and subdue the earth in a God-honoring way was compromised as well…
16 To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
evidence that sin had corrupted man’s sense of responsibility and duty to the rest of creation.
The questions we need to ask at this point is:
Is God’s creation still good?
Does man’s mandate to subdue and rule over creation still stand?
Gen. 9:1,7.
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
7 And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”
When in Noah’s life and in redemptive history did God say this to Noah and his family?
So this is post-fall. God’s creation, while impacted by the Fall is still good.
Rom 8:19-21.
19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
And fallen man, as we see in Gen. 9, still has the mandate to subdue and dominate the earth. But this is an mandate of stewardship. We exercise stewardship for the glory of God, so the way we interact with creation (the environment) should reflect this kind of stewardship.
We miss the point if we worship the creation. But, what does it look like to fail to rule of and subdue the creation? What does it look like to exercise poor stewardship over creation?
Being wasteful
mismanaging resources
marginalizing concerns for sustainability
But let’s consider why these things are good and God-honoring.
God’s Command
God’s Command
Matt 22:34-40.
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Loving God and loving people go together.
Where does this command intersect with our treatment (stewardship) of the environment?
Loving God and loving people expresses itself, in part, in a concern for future generations.
Love the future
Love the future
4 We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
6 that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
20 “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ 21 then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. 23 And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. 24 And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day.
4 One generation shall commend your works to another,
and shall declare your mighty acts.
We often hear this issue addressed in economic terms. The mismanagement of our money now will leave our children, grandchildren and beyond in a disadvantaged position.
If there are ways we can interact with the environment to preserve air quality, water supply and other resources that will benefit future generations, we should do that out of a love for our neighbors and for God.
The challenge with this idea however, if that some suggest we need to stop driving combustion engine vehicles to preserve air quality, but other “experts” say that’s not necessary. (for example)
It is difficult to discern what is true and what is propaganda. What’s motivated by sincere concern for the well-being of man and what’s motivated by hidden agendas.
The principles that we just briefly considered seems to me to be helpful in navigating some of these challenges. We are to love our neighbors which include future generations. Our treatment of and care for the environment reflects this aspect of loving our neighbor to some extent.
All Getting Along and Not Agreeing
All Getting Along and Not Agreeing
Unity & Freedom
Unity & Freedom
We need to be united on
Christology.
The way of salvation
The local church
The gospel
Other
But there is freedom to disagree
What is required for God-honoring stewardship of creation
Some guardrails
Some guardrails
Avoid extremes
it’s all going to burn, so who cares?
idolatry of creation
Don’t let politics get in the way of biblical thinking
Terms have been so politicized, that it’s difficult for us to even think of this (and other) issue without inhibiting or even paralyzing presuppositions. environment, climate, warm, others…
Not all Christians need to agree o every detail of what good stewardship of the creation looks like or does not look like.
Loving our neighbors, including future generations, should influence our treatment of creation.
All efforts to understand and all conclusions must be filtered through the Bible.