Transcript
This is now the final sermon in a series of messages we've been preaching on our dominion in the earth, our stewardship of the earth, our stewardship of ourselves, our time, all the various themes we've looked at, all rooted first in the Genesis accounts, the account of the law, and then in the New Testament sounding to try to understand what it means that we've been given dominion. Next week we begin a brand new series on the book
of the Galatians, the great freedom letter of the New Testament. David Rohrer has produced a wonderful study guide that's available for you in the kiosk that would take you through the whole book of Galatians to help you in your own personal and private studies as you're getting ready for this series that begins next week. I want you to notice three things that are said about us in the opening of the book of Genesis, the first book
of the Bible. You heard that text, and God said, let us make humankind, actually the word in Hebrew is Adam, let us make Adam, which is the generic Hebrew word for man, shows that the word man in the Bible is not gender specific really, sometimes it is, but it's referring to man and woman, as this passage makes clear. So let us make man, humankind, in our image according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. And so God created Adam, humankind, in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. There are three things we notice about us in this opening account. First, that we are made in God's image, in his imprint. We are different than anything else in creation. We have his imprint. We are the creature that is fundamentally made for God, for
fellowship with God, for relationship with him. Pascal puts it this way, we have the God-sized abyss in us that only God can fill, and this is our most fundamental identity. Our most fundamental identity is not our gender, and a lot of us are confused on that now, a lot of people think, oh my main identity question has to do with my sexuality, oh no, the main identity you have biblically is that you have this reality
of being made in the image of God, male-female both. Now secondly, we've been given a real dominion, and I've already done lots of studies with you on that word. The Hebrew word dominion is literally the word tread, to tread grapes, and we said it put it this way, God makes the grape, we get to make the wine. And that dominion is given to us, and this whole series, we have looked at the extent of that
dominion. Dominion over time, dominion over our labor, six days thou shalt shall labor, one day thou shalt rest, the dominion over our memories, we are the rememberers, we get to decide, we have the freedom, notice it's the beginning of the freedom vocabulary of the Bible, we get to decide what we are going to remember, our dominion over our money, our dominion over the earth itself, we've been looking at our relationships, we've been looking at some of these
dominions. We have the dominion, the rest of the created order doesn't. A tree for instance doesn't sin, a tree can't make a bad choice, a tree always goes toward the light, that's the tree's job, and that's what it does. And on the other hand, we sometimes can choose to go toward the darkness. We don't always go toward the light, we sometimes make bad choices with our freedom. I love a line from Calvin, man with bad choices
loses both himself and his freedom, but we do have the choice, and we can go toward darkness. Ah, but we can also do something the tree can't do. The tree is totally reactive, and when its root system starts to get eroded and the soil starts to go away from the roots, and the tree does its very best to still get the roots down as far as it can and to go toward the sun, but it can't
heal itself, it can't get the soil back to those roots, but a man can do it, a woman can do it, we can go up to that tree, we can see its roots are in danger, and we can pack dirt around it, and we can trim that tree, and we can prune that tree, and we can help it to grow. We can do something the tree can't do. So we can turn toward darkness, but we can
also turn toward light. And we can do things as we shepherd the earth that are good for the earth. And that's this amazing dominion, and we have spent all these weeks looking at it. And now finally, the third way we're described. Male, female, God created us. We are made for God, for relationship with God, and also we are made for relationship with each other, and in a special way, as male, female. That's the Genesis account. Now
it's interesting, in this account, notice something at the very beginning when we're described, and in the second chapter we're described again as male-female, and it becomes very clear in the second chapter of Genesis. We are more alike each other than we're different. Now that may be a surprise to some of you who, you know, we're very focused on our differences, but the fundamental thing is we're more alike. First we're both in the image of
God that we share alike. And when Adam first saw Eve, it's interesting the first sentence he said is not, Oh, here's a person totally different than I am. His first sentence was, Ah, here is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one is like me, just like me, and yet different. And so we have this marvelous mixture that bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, this we're more alike than we are different,
and yet we're wonderfully different too. And the difference, male- female, has three results. The difference has three amazing results. First, the power to enable new life to come into the world. Imagine male, female, because of that reality, we get to usher in, in a sense, co-create. We're not the original creators, but we get to co-create with God and bring a new life into this planet, into this planet. And that is an amazing power. And
you heard that in a text too, where God left male-female and said, now multiply. We're given that amazing power to bring in new life, but there's something else too. With this difference, male-female, we're given also strong desire, strong desire. So much so that it causes a man and a woman to forsake their parents. Listen to the same text. I'm now in Genesis 2, where man and woman are introduced the second time. You know, there
are two parallel accounts of creation. Genesis 1, we've been reading, and now Genesis 2. Here's the second account, verse 24 of chapter two of Genesis. Therefore, where he says, ah, when Adam sees Eve, he says, ah, bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. But notice the next sentence. Therefore, and by the way, our Lord himself quotes this sentence in the Sermon on the Mount, therefore a man. And now we know that Adam is generic for both man
and woman. So a man, a woman shall leave his father and his mother, her father and her mother. And by the way, you know, the, the New RSV softens it and says, leave, did you know that he, the actual word is forsake. The word that we think of in a harsh way, but that's the word used. A man shall forsake his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. And they both became one flesh. And the
man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed. You know, I do a lot of weddings and a lot of them right in this church. And let me tell you a little bit about the drama that's acted out on the wedding. And I'll tell you the point where parents usually cry. I know I've married three of my kids, so I know what it's like. I didn't marry them. I was the father in three
of my kids wedding. I don't believe in pastors marrying their children, ah, because I cry so much. But the opening of the wedding is on the main floor where the bride and groom come down. The father of the bride, usually sometimes both of the couple get to stand behind the couple. And the couple are asked questions of their intentions. Will you, will you, is this what you want? The pastor says, why have you come in effect? And
the young people say, yes, we come get married. Okay. Then the father, having heard them, it's satisfied. He gets one last word and the pastor then says, who gives this woman to marry this man? And the father says, for mother and I do. And now this is where parents usually cry because something dawns on them at this moment. Uh, the girl usually turns and kisses her dad. That's really tender. And then the father sits down and then
the pastor says to that young couple, would you come with me? And they come up into the chancel and the great cathedral, this is really dramatic as they go way into the nave and you can't even hear what's said to them from this point on. So they bring two witnesses with them. Usually they're contemporaries, a best man, a maid of honor, accompany them. And they go way into the chancel separated from their family, walking away from
their family. And the very health of their marriage depends on that. You've got to leave your mother and father because a brand new kingdom is going to be established. And if you try to drag your mother and father along with you, believe you believe you got trouble. And so the parents, it dawns on the parents that my daughter is leaving. My son is leaving and nothing will ever be the same again. And that's a joyous moment. And
it's also a moment in which people cry. And that's it happens right there dramatically. Uh, why? Because the verse in the Bible is Adam and Eve, uh, when he saw, he says, bone in my bones and flesh in my flesh. Therefore a man shall forsake his father and mother. There has to be some very strong desire. There has to be some very strong motivation that will enable a man or woman to forsake the safety and the
comfort of their family, to leave their home and go and risk establishing a new home. And yet that's what happens. Uh, by the way, in little later in Genesis is a totally romantic portrayal of this. And that's the moment when Isaac meets Rebecca and he meets her in the desert. And when Rebecca sees him, she's on her camel and she says, who is that man? And she had literally alights off the camel, comes off the
camel, covers her face when she discovers that it's Isaac. And then Isaac comes up to her and then this beautiful line is in Isaac's encounter with Rebecca in Genesis 24. Then Isaac brought her into his mother's Sarah's tent and he took Rebecca, his mother Sarah is already dead by the way, but he takes her into the tent and he took Rebecca and she became his wife and he loved her. And so Isaac was comforted after the
death of his mother. He now can forget his mother. He now has been, he's comforted with something wonderful and notice what's happening here is strong desire and a mystery. And the mystery is this relationship between Rebecca and Isaac is going to be more than just sexual procreation of the species. It's going to be more than sexual desire. It's also going to be relationship in which he loves her. And so you get this marvelous three ways, these
three insights that are, that come out of the Genesis account and our Lord picks them up in the Sermon on the Mount, they're picked up in the New Testament. First, the amazing power to create life and the strong desire that goes with it, that goes right through your life. And then the mystery that this relationship is more than biological, it's more than Darwinian survival of the species. It's more than sexual desire, it's relationship. And notice
the language for sexual union in the Bible. It's not procedural. It's not technical like intercourse. It's this word, Adam knew Eve. They become one flesh. He knows her. Notice this is knowing language. This is mystery language. And you see it in the Bible. Now, the same principle that we've observed throughout this series on dominion is going to hold for this dominion too. This is part of our dominion, part of our freedom, is this right to forsake
our father and mother and leave them behind. By the way, with their love, oh, parents love this. They love to watch their daughter and son fall in love with someone that's good for them and to see them establish this new kingdom. I put on the cover of our bulletin, Bonhoeffer's wonderful quotation, as he writes to his friend, Eberhard Bethge and his cousin Renati on the occasion of their wedding, where he talks about most people forgot
nowadays what a home can mean. They're establishing a home, though some of us have come to realize he writes this in prison as never before. It is a kingdom of its own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life's storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary. It's not founded on shifting sands of outward and public life. It has its peace in God. See, God decided. And for in it, God gives special meaning and
value, its own nature and privilege, its own destiny and dignity. And in accordance with God in the world, this is the place in which whatever else may happen around it. I love this closing. It's where peace, quietness, joy, love, purity, discipline, respect, obedience, tradition, and above it all, happiness. And that's a mystery that's beyond just desire, beyond just the ability to procreate and create new species, the continuation of our species. It's something totally mysterious. Now that
freedom that allows that to happen has the same principles attached to it that the other dominions we've looked at do. And that's this principle. For every dominion you have, there is attached to it an equal amount of responsibility. For every freedom you take, you need an equal amount of responsibility added to it or it becomes destructive. And we looked at that with regard to money, with regard to time, with regard to work. When I did that sermon on work, I said some of you may be workaholics, some of you may be
restaholics. But the point is, your work needs to have a restraint upon it, needs to have a discipline, a responsibility attached to it so that you aren't a workaholic or a restaholic. The same thing with memory. After my sermon on memory, I received several emails and letters from people that told me that the sermon helped them because they had nursing, bitter feelings toward people and grudges and resentment that they had held for years and years and
years. And they realized in that sermon, because of the text, that they could give that up. They could decide what to remember. That's a freedom dominion is given to you. Don't tell me you have a nagging memory you can't get rid of. You have a freedom to bring it to Christ and ask him to heal it. And that was amazing. So with every freedom you have, to what you're going to remember, what you're going to do
with the earth, what you're going to do with your time, what you're going to do with your work, there's an equal amount of responsibility. This is the principle of life. I remember I taught you from this very pulpit three years ago how to ski, to downhill skiing. And I just said downhill skiing just has three simple rules. Notice, they're rules. You have to face down the mountain. You have to go fast. You cannot execute a turn
without speed. And you have to, above all, keep your weight on the downhill ski. And I made a promise that if you obey those three rules, you will not break your leg unless somebody runs into you or something like that. But you won't break your, you break a leg when you have your weight on the uphill ski. But if you have your weight in the downhill ski, you'll be able to ski and you'll be able to
go fast and you'll be able to have freedom. Now notice the freedom is attached to the rules. The restraints upon skiing those three inflexible rules have to be followed. And then you get the freedom to ski. It's true with driving a car. A car has so much power and yet it must be road safe. You have to be the condition of the road, the condition of the driver, the condition of the car at speed has to
be appropriate to other cars in the highway. And all those restraints, when added together, the car will perform and you can have a tremendous experience in a car. Mountaineering, if you read Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air, about the tragedy of the Everest climb when Rob Hill died on Mount Everest, his body is still up there. There's a window in which you can reach the summit of Everest. It's true of Rainier too. It's true of any great
mountain. There's a window of time when you can get to the summit and you have to be off the summit. And Rob, because people had paid him $50,000 to get to the summit of Rainier, the summit of Mount Everest, exceeded that window of time, went beyond it. And he was, since he was the guide, he was the last person up there and he was there too late, he'd used up all his energy and he physically
could not move. And so he died on the top of Mount Everest because they broke a rule about Everest. There are rules that have to be followed. And then the freedom comes in climbing. And every one of us, ironically, we resent rules. We resent the restraint which comes upon our dominion. And yet ironically, we also like the rules. We have a love hate relationship with restraint. You know, you may have a boy or a teenager or
a teenage girl who's totally chaotic in their life, totally wild and say, that's a wild kid, yeah. And all the rest. And yet when that very wild boy or girl who says, I don't want to obey any laws. I want to do what I want to do. When they're setting up a sandlot football game or a sandlot volleyball game down at a beach. The first thing they do is establish strict rules. Because there is no game
without boundaries. There is no game without some rules as to what you can do with the basketball, whether you can dribble, double dribble, what you can do. And those rules have to be followed or you can't have a game. So we love the game because we love the restraint, that make a game possible. Now, the same thing is true with regard to our, the way God has made us male and female. And that's the way the
apostle Paul decides to put it. And if you want to look at a New Testament text, it's 1st Corinthians chapter 6. In 1st Corinthians 6, Paul describes our sexuality. He's had questions asked him by the Corinthians. And one of the questions has to do with marriage. It has to do with our sexual nature. And the apostle Paul, I think, does a very wise thing. He decides to take the approach toward our sexuality, through the dominion route.
He takes it through our dominion. It's a dominion we have. It's a power we have. It's a freedom we have. And then he takes the freedom and shows how the freedom can reach its greatest stride. And here's how he does it in 1st Corinthians 6. Listen, he says, start with verse 12 of 1st Corinthians, 6th chapter. All things are lawful for me. He's actually quoting something that either someone else said or maybe he said in another
place. But anyway, the RSV puts it in quotation marks. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are edifying, beneficial. Not all things build up. So notice what he's doing. You have freedom in your dominion. Nobody's policing you. Nobody's following you around with regard to your body, with regard to your time, with regard to the power that you've been given. When you're sitting in front of a computer and you're on the internet, nobody's sitting
right there over looking over your shoulder. Man, the power you have. So all things are lawful. So you can do anything, but not all things build up. So look what Paul's doing. He's saying for that freedom, there has to be an equal amount of obligation to build up the body, to build up your body, to build up other people's bodies. You see a tree where the root system has got the dirt washed away. You don't have
to do anything to that tree. Just let it die. Or you can build up that tree and use your freedom in that direction. So notice all things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial, are edifying. All things are lawful. He repeats it a second time. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anyone. And that again is a subtle point Paul makes, especially with regard to sexuality. Sexuality is one of
the most powerful desires you have in your life. And it can dominate your life. And it can, in a sense, have a destructive force. If it isn't boundaried within this healthy restraint that gives it its freedom. And that's what Paul is saying. So he says all things are lawful. Yeah, you can do anything you want, but not everything builds up. All things are lawful. You can do anything you want, but not everything. But I don't want
to be dominated by anything. I just, I don't want that freedom by bad choices with the freedom, to dominate me. And then he goes on and says he uses food as an example. For example, the food, you can eat whatever you want. And then he talks about the body sexually. The body is meant not for fornication, that's immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. So what he does now is take your body
and put it into a larger framework. Notice your first identity is not your desires. Some people say my identity has to do with my desires. I have a strong desire in this direction. Therefore I must be this sexually. No, my first identity is that I belong to the Lord. See, you saw that in Genesis one, he made it from his image. That's the first identity. That's your fundamental identity. Your desire identity is secondary. So he says
the body was not made for fornication, immorality. The body was made for the Lord. And then he goes on to say, therefore should I take my body and join it to a prostitute, to where sex is for sale, where now sex has become just a commodity in the marketplace. And he says, no, I should not do that. Why? Because when I do that, I've taken my body and made myself one flesh. Notice how important our sexuality
is. I've made myself one flesh with something that is commercial and degraded and meaningless. And so he says, I should not want to do that because the two shall be one flesh. And I don't want that, but everyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. And therefore he comes to his conclusion, shun fornication, shun immoral acts where sex is now run rampant. It's dominating me. It's not in restraint. Every sin that a person commits
is outside the body, but fornication is a sin against my body itself. And then he, then he goes to one last point. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which again is Paul's commentary now on the first statement in Genesis. You were made in the imprint of God. You were made for fellowship with God. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have
from God. And that is not, and you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. And now he brings up redemption. Christ died for you. He redeemed you and you were therefore glorify God in your body. Now that's Paul's argument and notice what he's doing. He's saying restraint, the restraint of sexual activity until the sexual expression of our life, until it's within the larger context of our commitment in the faithfulness commitment and
love commitment of marriage. It's interesting about an interesting irony here. I said that we do kind of have a love relationship, a love hate relationship with restraint, but it's interesting here that ironically this restraint, the restraint that is now the sexual restraint in my life actually adds to the romance of the relationship. It does not subtract from romance. And that's really an interesting irony. Let me give you an unromantic statement. Here's two young people going out
together. Maybe they're just discovering each other and beginning to be interested in each other. And now the young man or maybe the young woman says, Hey, by the way, I want to tell you something. If we now start our relationship, I want you to know that I am had tremendous sexual experiences. I have had, I can teach you a lot about sex. I know everything about sex. I had lots of sexual partners. And is that supposed
to be romantic? Uh, that is not romantic. Uh, that girl is the guy that says that the girl wants him to go and have to be tested. That's, that's the effect of that statement. Well, I think we better have a test before we go any further because I don't want to get herpes or something like that. It's not romantic. What's romantic is two amateurs discovering the joy of sexual union together. And that comes with commitment.
And with that commitment comes this marvelous joy that Bonhoeffer's describing when he talks about the creation of a family. So the irony of restraint upon our dominions, these various dominions of our work, our use of the earth, our time, and our male-female differences, the way God has made us actually result in greater joy. Now I have one last question to raise, and that is what if we've made mistakes or bad choices along the way
with our dominion, made bad choices with regard to the earth, bad choices with regard to time, bad choices with regard to memory. Maybe some of you are still harboring grudges, uh, bad choices interpersonally in terms of just honesty and integrity in relationships or sexually. What about these bad choices? Are they the end of the world? No. What do you do now? Well, you claim the ransom of Jesus Christ, the very way Paul wonderfully ended this
paragraph. You claim his ransom. You claim his love for you. You claim his forgiveness. In fact, a little later, Paul wrote a second letter to the Corinthians and he put it this way in 2nd Corinthians 5, to these same people. He says this, he says the love of Christ constraineth me. There's the restraint word, but now that word restrained, sunecho, means holds me together. So like the river bank, hold a river together and makes
a river out of water. Uh, you don't have a river bank and water is flowing. You have a swamp and a swamp is not your destiny. A river is your destiny. But what makes a river? Banks that hold it, that restrain it, that holds it together and give it direction and give it a goal. Otherwise you're this, you know, Louisiana swamp down by New Orleans. It's not as nice as the Mississippi river. Believe me. And
so Paul says the love of Christ constraineth me, creates river banks, holds me together. That's literally the Greek, sunecho, holds me together. The love of Christ integrates me, holds me together because I'm convinced that one has died in behalf of all. See, we have made so many mistakes. Thank God that Jesus Christ has died for those mistakes. He can make you whole. He died for all, therefore we all die. I mean, we've all made so
many mistakes. And he died for all that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. And that's not all that Paul has to say. He goes on to make one more point, and he says, therefore we regard no one from the human point of view. If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold the new has come. And
this is the reconciliation we have from Christ. So if you failed at some point in your own dominion journey, and this series of sermons may have alerted you to areas where you failed, areas where areas where maybe you've blown it, where you've made poor choices, and now you regret them. Hey, I have good news for you. You have a right to claim the one who is who's ransomware. You have a right. That's the way Paul ends
his passage. You have a right to claim his love for and I invite you to do it. And then after you've fallen, you can get up and go right on skiing, or keep your weight on the downhill ski. Heavenly Father, thank you for your love for us that surrounds us and makes us whole. And now Lord, may we experience that joy and that fulfillment, that restraint that makes life so meaningful and rich. May we experience it
in terms of our male-female knowledge too. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.