"The Earth is the Lord's"
Rev. Thomas Lineweaver
April 27, 2008

Genesis one, verse one, first verse of the Bible, can you hear it in your minds?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering [full of thought and purpose] over the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)

Of course, this belief is the center of much debate. I don't suppose there's any end to it. And I don't want to be against science. This study is honorable and of great service to the rest of us: whether they discover new medicines, new ways to create energy or endless other possibilities.

Faith and science don't need to be enemies; in fact we are all better off if they are not. Whatever process God used; whatever self-sustaining life He put in the universe I believe He stands behind it all. We can still say: "I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of heaven and Earth." And it is a wondrous thing. It is no surprise men and women devote their lives to studying some part of it. It is endlessly fascinating.

The Scriptures declare and we need not doubt:

The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein. (Psalms 24:1 KJV)
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
The whole earth is full of his glory." (Is. 6:3)
^{Ps 19:1} The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
²⁰ For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-
his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made...(Rom. 1:20)

The conviction that steals over us in time is that God made and loves this creation. It reveals his heart and mind at every turn. If we look we can learn about him from it. It deserves our respect and love. On the sixth day:

^{Ge 1:26} God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
^{Ge 1:27} So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
^{Ge 1:28} 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."
^{Ge 1:31>}God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day.

"And it was very good." We were made to fill the earth, rule over it and subdue it. Some have taken exception to this and complained it has been exploited by the so called "Christian" West in ruthless ways. And they are partly right. This commission can be misused in ugly ways. I love the Scriptures but they have to be handled with care and heart. And they can be wrenched in the wrong direction.

I also believe this is prophetic and inescapable. We have a unique place in the creation. We are destined to fill and rule over it for good or ill. We can't help ourselves. We can't escape the responsibility assigned to us by our Creator.

And there's the catch. We can only do this well under God. We are not the creator. Whatever power over creation we have and we seem to have quite a bit, we can still misunderstand and misuse things. We bear the image and likeness and cannot renounce it. We have both the freedom and responsibility.

We cannot escape having power over the creation. It is a curious thing to be able to pollute the very rivers and lakes that we must drink from. We were given power and dominion but only within limits. Cut off from the love and wisdom of the Father this can go tragically wrong. As in all things: He is the "Vine and we are the branch," separated from him no good can come.

And we know more of the Genesis story , how:

^{Ge 2:15}The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Not in any kind of forced or hard labor. This was pure joy to explore and build and rejoice. Only after the rebellion and fall do we read:

"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

But that is yet to come. Before that:

¹⁶ the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

There is this strange warning. When you take it upon yourselves to decide right and wrong without me it will be your undoing. There have been and always will be boundaries, the possibility of harming what God has made, including ourselves. Whatever our abilities there are also limits that reside in the creation and they are not of our making. If we fail to see and observe these limits they will destroy us. This also is from the Creator.

There is a place for respect and obedience to these laws the Creator has woven into His creation. Love, respect and gratitude are appropriate and necessary.

The funny thipg is that we do love the creation, we can't help ourselves. For almost all of us there is some part of it we love. It could be our pets, gardening, architecture, science, physics, music, the mountains, ocean, rivers or lake. It is wired into us; the blue planet, our home. And everything else out there, so far, would kill us in minutes if we did not bring a piece of earth with us.

It was made for us by the One who loves us most and taught us that the one who rules must be the servant of all. (Matthew 20:25-28)

Page last updated May 15, 2008.