The Earliest Command

Welcome

Good morning my name’s Craig, I’m sure you’ve all forgotten who I am by now!

I just want to start with a thank you. Thank you for letting me rest and recuperate, for giving me space over the summer to draw near to God, to seek His plan for our church, to be reminded of God’s love for me and my family, and His love for each and every one of us who calls BFC home.

This summer has been a summer of rest and a summer of working with God and with others on where we’re headed as a church so that we can all pull in the same direction, seeking that each of us and our gifts get to play our part in seeing this body of believers grow and be effective in proclaiming the Kingdom and making disciples.

In the next couple of months we are going to be making more of this clear, but let me encourage you to put the 17th and 24th October in your diaries as key days to be around as the church gathers. On 17th we celebrate 20 years of BFC, and on 24th we look ahead at our priorities moving forward, as well as having a family and vision night that evening to look at what this will mean practically for us as a church and pray into God’s plan for the next few years at BFC.

Introduction

This summer I was blessed to spend a lot of time journeying from place to place. I walked with a great friend of mine and of BFC, Tom Stockwell. Together we rose early before the sunrise and walked down country lanes praying and worshiping God before anyone else was up, seeing the beauty of the sun cresting over hilltops, trees, pylons and fields of maize. Everyday there were wonders afresh each morning, as well as new mercies of refreshed feet and the morning dew.

As we walked and talked to each other and to God, as we wandered off our path and added three miles to our journey on one day; I was amazed by what I could see around me. This world, this creation that God has put together for us to enjoy. The ground being worked, crops being brought in, animals scurrying in the undergrowth or flying over treetops, the sun setting and the stars and planets appearing overhead, it’s marvelous isn’t it? Isn’t this world amazing!

God has blessed us abundantly, and this made me think about creation and our relationship to it.

The problems

Wildfires around the world, of note those in Italy and the US

Floods in Germany this year, a once in a century flood for sure, but flooding has got worse and more frequent in recent decades.

Excessive CO2/greenhouse gas creation by humans plays a part in this, as well as building practices making an impact. Even given a natural cycle of the world, research shows that humans have accelerated and exacerbated the issues we’re facing.

I’m not a scientist, but there are issues that humanity are laying out for the earth to deal with, and science seems to be saying that things are getting worse.

We have to think about this, as a church, what if anything is our response? Does it even matter?

What do we know about the future, that the world doesn’t?

The bible is the most amazing book ever written, it is the Word of God to us, that which shapes the life of every believer. It tells us about what God has done, about what He is doing, and about what He will do. It tells us about ourselves, about our identity, about where we stand with God whether we’re with Him or not. It tells us about how to live our lives, and what we can expect as we do.

Jesus told His disciples and it’s recorded in the bible that they would ‘hear of wars and rumours of wars.’ He told them that they should ‘See that they were not alarmed, because they must take place.’ He spoke about earthquakes coming and famine which would be signs of the beginning of the end of the age. Now, there would’ve been a near future application of this in the lives of the disciples, but I believe that there’s a future prophetic application here as well. We live in the age where there are wars and rumours of wars, we live in the age of increasing levels of natural disasters and increasing levels of lawlessness as Jesus goes on to speak about in Matthew 24. (Lawlessness being not living in line with God’s statutes).

We are in the end times and throughout these times we must remain faithful to the Word, because no one who believes that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life wants their love for Him to grow cold (which is something Jesus warns will happen to many near the end).

So in light of all these disasters and so on, what is our part to play? Does it even matter what we do?

What about in the beginning?

I think the most important thing for those who believe, is that we have to hold onto the Word. We have to look at what it says as the highest authority in our lives and act upon it.

Throughout history, Christian teachers have said different things about the timing of Jesus’ return, and even today there isn’t an agreed doctrine on when Jesus will return, we just know that He promised He would, and the Bible lays out the expectation that He will.

At one point a few years ago, I read of people being encouraged not to recycle and things like that because it might hasten the return of Jesus, using Peter’s words in 2 Peter. Well we know that no-one knows the day or the hour of the return of Jesus except for the Father so that puts that one to bed. We don’t know when Jesus will return but, in the mean-time, it is important for us to consider what the bible does say about our relationship to creation.

If we look back at one of the very first things God set for us to do, and told us to do, our purpose as humanity if you like; it was the moment God gave humanity an identity distinct from everything else; we need to go back to the very first chapter of the bible. Genesis 1:26-28 says

English Standard Version (Chapter 1)

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.”  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.”

There’s this lovely chiastic nest of scripture here that tells us God wanted to make us for a purpose, primarily to be His image bearers in creation, and secondly to rule and reign over creation, to have dominion over it, to subdue it or to bring order to it.

Let’s look at these two aspects, then. We are image bearers, and we are to rule creation.

Most important of the two is that we are image bearers of God. We are created in God’s image.

Our primary role as human beings is to reflect God to creation. To bless one another and the world around by being models of God’s glory. That makes us worshipers, those who proclaim God’s goodness, God’s mercy and God’s majesty to everything and everyone around us.

Every human bears the image of God for we are made in His likeness. The fall broke creation and separated us from God, nonetheless we still bear His image as men and women together, we complement one another and present God’s image to the rest of the world.

Better than this though, as believers we don’t only do that passively merely by existing, but we do it actively because we know the one in whose image we are created.

God sent His only son Jesus, a member of the Godhead, God Himself into the world so that we might know God and His love for us. When we know Jesus we know the Father and the filling of the Holy Spirit and we are equipped to share His love and declare His glory to everyone who might hear, and those who hear and respond will also know and experience the love of God for them.

This is the first commandment given to man, and in it we are told primarily that that we are made in the image of God, that we are different to all other aspects of creation that we unique within it. Our identity is that we are made in the image of God, our identity is therefore to be found in God.

So, primarily we’re told our identity is found in God since we bear His image, secondly in these verses we’re told that we have a purpose. Humankind has a purpose.

Perhaps today you wonder about your identity and your purpose? Do you think you have either? Perhaps the idea of finding your identity in God is foreign to you or maybe it’s not. In any case, if you are a human I can promise you that your identity is to be found in God and in no other place, and that your purpose too is found in God.

What is the purpose of humanity? To make God known, but also look after creation. We are given the opportunity by God to care for what He has created, to watch over it, to care for it, to bring it to order. The precise words in God’s word to mankind was to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, to have dominion over every living thing.

We were created to rule over His creation. Humans were created to rule, to be rulers.

In British society we often have a bad image of rulers, probably because we’ve had some pretty rubbish rulers over the years! But what about if we consider a good ruler and a bad ruler.

All rulers have the power, authority and ability to act. A good ruler, or a good king will use these things to further their kingdom, to look out for those over whom they rule because they know that by doing so, their kingdom will be blessed. A bad ruler, or a bad king is the one who exploits that which they are charged with ruling over, which eventually leads to the destruction of their kingdom.

Jesus is the example of a perfect ruler, He cared for the needy and protected the vulnerable, He stood up to those who were exploiting people and things to their own ends. He has a kingdom that will never end, a kingdom that will always be full of blessing to everyone outside of it and within it.

Now, we each rule over parts of our own lives. For believers we believe that Jesus rules within us by the Holy Spirit, but still we make decisions to follow His lead, and each of us can choose to care for the little things that we can have an affect over. So if we can care better for the world by recycling, let’s just do it. Let’s see it as part of our helping the world that God let us look after. If we can lower our carbon emissions, let’s do it. If we can let parts of our garden flourish with native wild flowers that helps the bees and increases biodiversity, let’s do it.

What else are we charged to do?

We are made in His image, we too are creators. Not in the same way as God, but we are made to create. Humans were made with the ability to procreate, the fall has had an affect on this, but biologically most of us will be able to have, currently have, or have had the ability to procreate, even if the opportunity hasn’t presented itself. We are made to create.

We are also able to create with the arts, make expressive things of beauty and wonder. We create with technology, we have created so much that blesses the world and human kind. But, just as with the good and bad ruler, we need to be careful with what we create, we need to be responsible so that things flourish rather than are exploited.

Let’s ensure that we take this original command to us as humans seriously. Don’t just cast it aside because we’ve got more important things to do, more money to make or faster toys to enjoy. I believe that there’s a blessing in following this kind of commandment, since we’re walking in that which God ordained for us to do. It’s not a salvation matter, but it does still matter.

Close

The thing is that in our day and age, if we disregard this command because we think it doesn’t matter, we can actually harm that which is our primary aim as believers which is to make disciples.

When people outside of the family of believers; the church, see that we don’t take this kind of thing seriously, it shows them that we don’t care about things that they care about. Jesus spent most of His time speaking into issues that the people of the day cared about. Often in ways that they hadn’t considered before.

There’s a book that a few of us in the church have looked at in our studies, and another based on the principles within it, and the book’s called Grasping God’s Word (Natalie led a course on the accompanying book called Journey into God’s Word). And in Grasping God’s Word there’s a part of the process of working out how a passage applies into the context of the hearer of the message in our day that is as simple as understanding the context in which we speak. We don’t always get it right but it’s important that we understand the context in which we live, so that we can be as effective as possible with the message of Jesus that we have to share.

We need to know what people around us care about, so that we can meet them where they are with a Christian perspective on what they care about. There’s little point in telling people stuff they’re not interested in.

It’s like turning up at my house to try and sell me a new roof. I don’t care. I know what I’ve got and and I’m satisfied it’s fine. No matter what you say or do, I’m not going to listen. But if you want to knock on my door and discuss how a new motorbike is going to be more efficient, faster on the track and safer on the road; then I’m going to listen because I genuinely care about those things, I’m passionate about them. If you know me and what I care about, you’ll talk to me about what I care about.

As believers in Billingshurst and around the area, how well do we know our area? I can tell you that people care about the environment and would likely love to hear a positive Christian message on how we should care for the creation we’ve been given oversight of.

We have a duty to care for the creation that God put us in place to care for. We have a primary duty to reach people with the gospel, which is the good news of God’s love for people who are His image bearers.

I think we’ll be at our most effective, when we combine our primary call to witness to who God is and what He’s like (the one who sent Jesus so that we could know God and live lives of freedom), that we’ll be most effective in the lives of others when we combine witnessing with the matters that people care about such as caring for the world around us.

Let’s Pray...