The Consequence of Faith
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
Christians believe all mankind is created by the hand of the Living God. Created by the hand of the Living God they are convinced that man is thus responsible to rule over His creation. Consequently, Christians are not intimidated by environmental and ecological problems but rather they view all such problems as part of the challenge of divinely mandated rule.
Evolutionists believe man is a product of time and chance blindly operating over countless aeons. Consequently, evolutionists believe man is an intruder who ought not to tamper with nature. The source of contemporary eco-terrorists and supposed harbingers of eco-disaster is the faith of evolutionists that man is an intruder with no legitimate right to a presence within nature. The faith of the individual determines the response seen when confronted by a changing environment.
The Christian Faith predisposes mankind to seek solutions to problems which may occur, though they prefer to avoid problems in the first place since their mandate is to rule over creation as caretakers. The evolutionary faith predisposes mankind to despair, crying out that eco-disaster and devastation are coming, even while denying that man has any right to even be present.
God’s Blessing demands that we obey the Creator. Be fruitful and increase in number… I question whether we Christians believe this imperative to be in force in this day. I suspect that we are uncomfortable whenever we read these words much less defending them before a world prone to ridicule us are hopelessly naïve if we think they actually constitute a blessing. Regardless of any statements we may advance concerning the blessing of God, we are unconvinced that children are a blessing.
Throughout the account of the growth of the patriarch Jacob’s family, Leah is presented as dependent upon God as one who thought children were a gift from God. Her first child is named Reuben because, she said, the Lord has seen my misery [Genesis 29:32]. She attributed the birth of her second child, Simeon, to the hand of the Lord, saying his birth was because the Lord heard that I am not loved [Genesis 29:33]. Consider the situation when her fifth and sixth sons were born. When Issachar was born, her response was to say, God has rewarded me [Genesis 30:18]. When Zebulun was born she rejoiced, saying God has presented me with a precious gift [Genesis 30:20].
Rachel, her sister, is presented as so desperate to have children that she considers her life to be utterly unfulfilled and no longer worth living if she cannot have children [Genesis 30:1]. When at last a son is born to her she acknowledges that God has blessed her. The Word says, Then God remembered Rachel; He listened to her and opened her womb. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.” She named him Joseph [which means May He add], and said, “May the Lord add to me another son” [Genesis 30:22-24].
I don’t want to read too much into the belief of these mothers in Israel lest someone think me presumptuous. Nevertheless, we cannot question that the Bible presents Leah and Rachel as women convinced that it is God who gives children. Furthermore, it is obvious by even a casual reading of the account of Jacob’s family that these wives considered the absence of children to be a divine curse. They were not alone in this view. Hannah, mother of Samuel, was likewise disconsolate at the thought that she had no children. She thought herself cursed until God at last intervened and gave her a child [cf. 1 Samuel 1:1-20].
We begin to occupy more solid ground when we read of Shiphrah and Puah, Hebrew midwives who honoured God by refusing to kill the new-born sons of the people of Israel. Because they disobeyed the Pharaoh and spared the children born to the Hebrew women, we read that God was kind to the midwives … because the midwives feared God, He gave them families of their own [Exodus 1:20a, 21]. I cannot help but wonder if we would consider children a reward from God. Of course, the clear statement of the 127th Psalm is that God does bless those in whom He delights by giving them children.
Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
[Psalm 127:3-6]
Similar blessings for obedience are pronounced in Deuteronomy 7:12-14 and 28:11 where we read that children are the blessing of God.
The obverse of this position is that the absence of children is a curse. When the curses are being presented for dishonouring the command of the Lord, childlessness is frequently the curse pronounced [cf. Leviticus 20:20, 21]. When Moses warns the people against disobedience, one of the serious consequences of disobedience is childlessness [Deuteronomy 32:25]. When God curses Jehoiachin through Jeremiah, it is with a pronouncement that he will be considered as if childless [Jeremiah 22:30]. Similar warnings against disobedience carrying the sentence of childlessness occur in Ezekiel’s writings [Ezekiel 5:17; 14:15]. Those who sacrificed their children were said to despise God’s gift and were thus under most serious censure from the Living God [e.g. Isaiah 57:3-5]. I suggest to you that a nation which slaughters its unborn and rejects its infants is a nation guilty of grossest idolatry and under the condemnation of Holy God.
Clearly the whole of the Word of God considers children to be the richest of God’s blessings upon a nation as well as to an individual. We are compelled to agree with the assessment of Moses the man of God who wrote the words of our text in presenting the blessing of God as encompassing a fruitful womb and an increase in number to fill the earth and to subdue it. Though our minds accept this as a blessing we are too often driven to a state of confusion because we live within this present culture which resists this biblical view. Consequently, we are torn between Christ and culture, and we live as though we were unaware of the conflict.
David Suzuki is a popular commentator on the Canadian scene. He questions whether man actually has a place in the universe, espousing that man must yield to the environment. Paul Watson, erstwhile Greenpeace activist and now head of the radical environmental group known as the Sea Shepherd Society, is on record as saying that man is a cancer infecting the environment. Pete Singer considers that a human has no more right to life than does a mouse or an elephant. In fact, he proposes that children not be consider alive until twenty-eight days have passed to give parents the opportunity to decide if they want the child or not. Each has indicated either in clear language or through implication that man must reduce the population or face environmental disaster.
Each of these eco-philosophers espouse a worldview based on the concept that increased pleasure and happiness are motivating forces for our choices. Each unwittingly demonstrate the veracity of the Word of God which warns that in the last days people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power. Let there be no mistake that the people of God are to have nothing to do with them [2 Timothy 3:1-5].
For at least thirty years I have heard the message of massive famine and ecological disaster preached by fear mongers who demand that we respect their opinions as accomplished fact. The predictions were advanced over thirty years ago, without any opposition, that Asia would experience famine as the populace outgrew the capacity to provide food for the people. Where are the harbingers of fear today? Asia exports food. The nations of Asia are giant economic engines driving world economy and the people are better fed than ever we could have imagined. Miracle crops ensure that small plots and small fields produce ever-greater amounts of food.
Europe was the object of dark predictions as we were assured the populace would outgrow the capacity to provide. Again, the story of rich provision belies the tales of woe which were preached. I am not exalting man, but I am stating the obvious that the ability to provide more from less advances at an exponential rate. Fewer Canadians farm the land today than ever before and there is an ever-decreasing land base for agriculture, and yet we produce more food today than ever before. There is sufficient to feed our people and to export enough for the nations of the world.
God would not command man to do what God was unable to ensure would occur. Man is responsible to fill the earth and to subdue it. I can only take from this that God is well able to supply knowledge of the means by which we are to employ the earth to His glory and to our benefit. I do acknowledge that this does not give us a right to abuse the environment nor does it give us license to waste and destroy what God placed under our rule. It does impose on us responsibility to wisely reign over the earth.
I am astonished as I read of the conflicts resulting from an ageing population in Canada. Ours is a greying nation. The baby boomers are entering the years when they are considered to be seniors. Already politicians and economists are struggling with the fact that our governmental pension plan is overdrawn and nearing collapse. Already politicians and economists are voicing deep concerns over continued funding of the social programs we have assumed as our heritage. There are insufficient children being born to sustain these programs and the birth rate is too low to permit continued economic growth.
Canada, as is true of all western nations, is compelled to open its doors to ever more immigrants from foreign cultures in the hope of continuing funding of the programs we cherish. The consequence of these actions is that Canada is changing perceptibly as the foundations we have taken for granted are eroded. Though Canada was never a “Christian” nation, our laws and our national consciousness was founded upon Christian precepts. Our moral structure reflected Christian underpinnings which we inherited from our European parents. As the complexion of the nation changes it reflects an even more disastrous change of cultural worldview and the Christian heritage is jettisoned in favour of what is considered to be more neutral and thus more egalitarian. Unfortunately, we are in the process of moving ever further from obedience to God and the consequences will of necessity prove disastrous.
God’s Appointment demands that we rule. Rule over… The Creator blessed the man and woman He had made by charging them to be fruitful, to increase in number and to fill the earth which He had made, and to subdue that new world. What God charges He enables. The blessing of God would enable man to do all that God commanded. Man was given the capacity both to fill the earth and to subdue it – and this work was a blessing pronounced by the Creator. That divine blessing yet applies whether man accepts it or not. Likewise, He appointed man with a responsibility for the world in which he was placed. Rule! The concept of rule is to exercise dominion. That appointment may either be exercised for the benefit of the ruled or to the detriment of the ruled. Man was to function as God’s regent on earth, and thus man would look to the Creator for the manner in which he was to exercise his dominion.
As we consider the creation account we discover that God demonstrates consideration and care. At each step He is careful to survey His handiwork and to pronounce it as good. As He began His work, God saw that the light He created was good [Genesis 1:4]. When He had made light and darkness, formed the atmosphere, and separated the waters from the dry land, He assessed His work and pronounced it good [Genesis 1:10]. He created trees and plants and said of the greenery that it was good [Genesis 1:12]. After vegetation had been provided and the heavenly bodies placed in their respective orbits, God again survey all that He had done and pronounced it good [Genesis 1:18]. When fish and sea mammals had been produced together with the birds of the air, the Lord God stated of His work that it was good [Genesis 1:21]. After all the animals and insects were produced, that work was pronounced good [Genesis 1:25]. At last, surveying the whole of His creative work, God pronounced it very good [Genesis 1:31].
When God states that each of these acts is good, He makes more than a mere statement characterising His work. God, by stating that each act is good, makes a moral pronouncement. When, upon surveying the whole of His labour, the Creator pronounces the work very good, He is again making a moral pronouncement concerning His work.
I am not saying that we are to become pantheists nor should we worship nature; I am saying that the world which God created reflected His moral judgement and especially did it reflect His goodness. That which we speak of as disasters in this world, acts of God in the parlance of the insurance industry, reflects not the creation which God presented to man, but it rather reflects the consequence of our first parents’ rebellion. Thus when God appointed the man to rule over the creation, He in effect entrusted to man His good creation in the expectation that man would honour the Creator through wisely administering this glorious work. Man is responsible to rule over the world as a caretaker in the place of God. Man is responsible to exercise dominion over the earth as though he were acting under the appointment of God and as though he would at any moment return the earth to the One who made it.
Of course, man has not performed this appointed task well. In fact it would not be in error to question whether man has ever understood his responsibility from the manner in which he has endeavoured to exercise dominion. Mankind seems to have been more fascinated with the prospect of exploiting the environment than he has in administering the environment.
That God is concerned for His environment is made clear throughout the Word. David, in the 145th Psalm, speaks of God’s concern for His world.
The LORD is good to all;
he has compassion on all he has made.
All you have made will praise you, O LORD;
your saints will extol you.
They will tell of the glory of your kingdom
and speak of your might,
so that all men may know of your mighty acts
and the glorious splendour of your kingdom.
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
The LORD is faithful to all his promises
and loving toward all he has made.
The LORD upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food at the proper time.
You open your hand
and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
The LORD is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.
[Psalm 145:9-17]
When our children were young we gathered as a family each evening and memorised Scripture. I regret to say that my wife and I fail to do that on our own, though we should. Among the verses we learned were those of the 8th Psalm. Listen to it now.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honour.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
[Psalm 8:1-9]
David could contemplate the ethers above his head and declare that
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
[Psalm 19:1-3]
Every one of these prophetic psalms speaks of God’s concern and of man’s appointment to rule. Only one who is willingly blind would deny that the appointment which man received continues to this day and that God expects His appointment to be exercised with the same loving concern that He Himself would exercise over His creation.
A final passage may serve to emphasise the truth presented here. The 104th Psalm speaks of this same loving concern and exhibits the continued love which God has toward His world. He is focused on the great sea creatures which inhabit the oceans of the world. We could assume that he speaks of fish and mammals, sharks and whales, octopus and squid, and all the other creatures of the sea.
These all look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
may the LORD rejoice in his works—
he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
who touches the mountains, and they smoke.
I will sing to the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
May my meditation be pleasing to him,
as I rejoice in the LORD.
But may sinners vanish from the earth
and the wicked be no more.
Praise the LORD, O my soul.
Praise the LORD.
[Psalm 104:27-35]
Here the Psalmist notes God’s provision for the creatures of the sea and with that notation quickly moves to the fact that this knowledge should cause rejoicing. Focused on this joy which should flow from God’s dominion he praises God and prays that sinners vanish from the earth. God’s appointment of man as regent over creation should elicit praise and joy instead of becoming the opportunity to ravage God’s good creation, exploiting it for our own selfish desires. God’s appointment has never been rescinded, and that appointment expects that we will rule over His creation. Furthermore, the dominion we exercise should honour God through caring for His work and presenting it before Him in a manner consistent with His character which was revealed in all that He has done.
God’s Gift demands that we receive. I give you… Years ago, in the early seventies to be precise, Readers Digest published an article by the eminent historian Will Durant. The article contended that the world was entering an era which would witness unprecedented ecological disaster. He used several examples surrounding the advance of the Sahel region in Sub-Sahara Africa. Then he pronounced the judgement that these ecological disasters which were surely coming were the result of the Christian Faith, and in particular he cited the passage we have before us tonight. Professor Durant was certain that God’s blessing was a curse and that God’s appointment was opportunity for man’s folly, and he openly stated his position.
I wrote a letter to the eminent magazine questioning why they would publish such an inflammatory article without checking the facts. I pointed out that Professor Durant had appealed to the disaster of the advancing desert in Africa, but that famine had always been the lot of that region of the world. Furthermore, history was quite precise in presenting the fact that the desert had indeed advanced in recent times, but that it had receded in prior days.
Furthermore, I reminded the editors that satellite imagery demonstrated that in the midst of this advancing desert were numerous oases. In virtually every instance of an oasis in the midst of the Sahel was a farm, generally owned and operated by Christian missions, which were practising sound farming techniques. Instead of Christians being the cause of the pending disaster, it was the few Christians in the region who were halting the disaster from progressing faster than it did. Outside his obvious anti-Christian bias, Professor Durant had not one reason for publishing his diatribe.
The editors did write me back, which was rather a surprise. The thrust of their letter was to question who I was to presume to challenge a noted historian like Professor Durant. Dear people, I am a simple man of God. I am a Christian. I am one who believes in what God has delivered. I am a recipient of His goodness. Thus I am eminently qualified to answer the wicked, regardless of how eminent they may appear. Just so, you, if you are a child of the Living God and one who believes in His Word, are both qualified and responsible to answer the wicked when they inveigh against Him.
To man, God said, I give… The earth and the fullness thereof is God’s and He has given this to man. Just so, God has given again and again. He gave us all that fills the earth and we are responsible to administer this great creation. However, since that giving we have experienced the disastrous Fall into sin. Man cannot act as God’s regent on his own. Every inclination of the thought of man’s heart is only evil all the time and fallen man is under condemnation of Holy God. Therefore, for man to fulfil the appointment of God and to recognise the blessing which God has given, man must be restored to his position which he occupied prior to the entrance of sin.
God once more gave and the gift He gave was the most precious gift imaginable. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life [John 3:16]. God gave His own Son, presenting Him as a sacrifice for sin that man might be forgiven of sin and reconciled to God. I speak of the Son of God who love me and gave Himself for me [cf. Galatians 2:20]. Now, we who are children of the Living God wait for the blessed hope — the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good [Titus 2:13,14]. That which is good, tending His creation, can only be accomplished by those who are redeemed.
If we believe God, we receive what He has promised. Our faith will either bless us or curse us. This holds true for us as a nation, as a congregation, and as individuals. I am not advocating faith per se, but cautioning that the object of our faith is vital. If we believe in human goodness, we will discover the depth of human depravity. If we believe in human ingenuity, we will witness massive devastation on an unprecedented scale. If we believe in the Lord God, Creator of Heaven and earth, we will receive all that He has promised. God longs to bless us and our responsibility is to believe His rich promises.
This final thought concludes my comments this evening. What we believe is seen through the lives we live. We who are the people of God must reject the thinking of this world. We can neither condone the destruction of our environment, but neither can we approve of that attitude which exalts the creation. Both those who exploit the earth and those who worship the earth are in grave error and they demonstrate that they do not know God. We who know God lend balance to the maddened world and we yet believe that His blessing is ours to receive. Amen.