Micah McCormick: Turn to Genesis chapter 2.
Micah McCormick: Hopefully you have a Bible with you.
Micah McCormick: And if not, you're welcome to grab one from the pew there in front of you.
Micah McCormick: Genesis chapter 2.
Micah McCormick: We're going to read verses 8 down through verse 15.
Micah McCormick: This is God's word.
Micah McCormick: The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed.
Micah McCormick: The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge, good and evil.
Micah McCormick: A river went out from Eden to water the garden.
Micah McCormick: From there it divided and became the source of four rivers.
Micah McCormick: The name of the first is Pishon, which flows through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold.
Micah McCormick: Gold from that land is pure.
Micah McCormick: Delium and Onx are also there.
Micah McCormick: The name of the second river is Gihon, which flows to the entire land of Cush.
Micah McCormick: The name of the third river is Tigris, which runs east of the Euphrates, east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.
Micah McCormick: The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: God, we come to you again acknowledging we we need you, and we want to attend to all of your word, even parts of your word that may seem more removed to us or not on the front of our minds, yet it's given by your inspiration.
Micah McCormick: And we want to know all of our responsibilities and privileges and joys as people made in your image.
Micah McCormick: So help us to understand that even more tonight.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' name, amen.
Micah McCormick: The title for the message tonight, if you happen to look on the bulletin, is Cultivating the Garden, Stewards of Creation.
Micah McCormick: That's the title for the message tonight.
Micah McCormick: Now, some of you might come away a little disappointed tonight.
Micah McCormick: If you came thinking, this is great.
Micah McCormick: I'm going to find out once and for all whether fracking is glorifying to God or whether it is a sinful degradation of God's good earth.
Micah McCormick: You're going to be disappointed.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes people hear that phrase, creation stewardship, but all they can think about is public policy.
Micah McCormick: Well, those questions are important, but we want to first set the groundwork by looking at the bigger picture from God's Word.
Micah McCormick: And the bigger picture is God does call us to be stewards of His creation.
Micah McCormick: The verses I read explain that.
Micah McCormick: We'll see that theme in Scripture.
Micah McCormick: But God calls us to be His stewards.
Micah McCormick: We're going to look first tonight at the basis of our stewardship.
Micah McCormick: Then we'll look at the essence of our stewardship.
Micah McCormick: Third, we'll consider the priority of our stewardship.
Micah McCormick: And then fourth, we'll look at what I'm calling the place of our stewardship.
Micah McCormick: So let's let's start first.
Micah McCormick: What's the basis of our stewardship?
Micah McCormick: The basis of our stewardship is that we're made in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: Turn back to Genesis chapter 1.
Micah McCormick: I know I had you read from Genesis 2, but just turn back one chapter.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 1, verses 26 to 28.
Micah McCormick: God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
Micah McCormick: They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.
Micah McCormick: So God created man in his own image.
Micah McCormick: God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.
Micah McCormick: Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.
Micah McCormick: Basis of our stewardship is that we're made in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: And that's where we tie into this whole series, because this whole series is on the image of God.
Micah McCormick: If you can remember, this is going back a few weeks now, when Pastor Doug first introduced the series, he talked about how people have different ideas and emphases about what it means to be made in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: Some people stress human reason, that we have a capacity to reason that is godlike in a way that animals don't have.
Micah McCormick: Other people stress righteousness.
Micah McCormick: We as humans have a moral capacity to make moral and ethical choices that reflect God in a way that animals and the rest of creation doesn't.
Micah McCormick: Some people stress relationship.
Micah McCormick: We can relate to God and to others in deep and meaningful ways that move beyond the kinds of relationships that animals have.
Micah McCormick: And some people stress rule.
Micah McCormick: God rules and we rule.
Micah McCormick: Now, those those four different, if you want to think of them as the four Rs, they're not mutually exclusive.
Micah McCormick: You could combine those.
Micah McCormick: And while the image of God might not be directly identical to any one of those categories, the image of God has implications for all of those categories.
Micah McCormick: And what I want to show you in connection with our message tonight is that idea of rule and how the image of God has implications for our rule in the world.
Micah McCormick: So, verse 26, if you look in your Bible, again, Genesis 1, we have God saying, Let us make man in our image, then it immediately says, and let them have dominion.
Micah McCormick: Some suggest this should be translated so that they may have dominion.
Micah McCormick: We won't track that down tonight.
Micah McCormick: But the point is there's a very close connection.
Micah McCormick: Verse 27 repeats the idea that God created man in his image, and then verse 28 repeats the command to rule.
Micah McCormick: Do you see that there?
Micah McCormick: So we've got image of God, rule, image of God, rule.
Micah McCormick: It's not a coincidence that those ideas are so closely intertwined together.
Micah McCormick: If we think about a call to reflect God's glory, to image something of his glory as our destination, as our purpose, how can we do that?
Micah McCormick: There's a lot of ways we can do that.
Micah McCormick: One of the ways we can do that is to reflect the way that He rules in the universe by the way that we rule over planet Earth.
Micah McCormick: Have you thought about that before?
Micah McCormick: We sometimes think of reflecting God's glory as uh our characteristics.
Micah McCormick: God is gracious, so we should be gracious.
Micah McCormick: God is loving, so we should be loving.
Micah McCormick: And that's absolutely true.
Micah McCormick: But one of the ways we reflect God's glory is doing what He does.
Micah McCormick: Not in the exact same way.
Micah McCormick: God spoke and worlds came into existence.
Micah McCormick: We can't speak and just worlds come into existence.
Micah McCormick: But we get to model what our Heavenly Father does and the way that we rule in His world.
Micah McCormick: Turn over to Genesis chapter 5.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 5.
Micah McCormick: We're gonna be mostly in Genesis tonight.
Micah McCormick: This is one of the few places that the Bible explicitly mentions the image of God.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 5, verses 1 to 3.
Micah McCormick: This is the document containing the family records of Adam.
Micah McCormick: On the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
Micah McCormick: He created them male and female.
Micah McCormick: When they were created, he blessed them and called them mankind.
Micah McCormick: Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
Micah McCormick: So God created humans in his likeness.
Micah McCormick: There's our image category.
Micah McCormick: And the writer tells us Adam had a son named Seth in his image and his likeness.
Micah McCormick: So there's something about the father-son relationship of Adam and Seth that teaches us about the relationship we have as image-bearers to God who made us.
Micah McCormick: So, how does a child image their parents?
Micah McCormick: We tend to think of physical features.
Micah McCormick: He's got his daddy's nose.
Micah McCormick: She's got her mother's eyes.
Micah McCormick: Or as the child begins to grow, we sometimes think of character qualities.
Micah McCormick: She's so happy and joyful, just like her mother.
Micah McCormick: He's so ornery, just like, well, we'll leave that alone for now.
Micah McCormick: Realize that in the ancient world, and really in most cultures throughout history, one of the ways that children image their parents is by taking on their vocation.
Micah McCormick: The idea that a kid just chooses to do whatever they want to do independent of what their parents do, that's a pretty modern and Western idea.
Micah McCormick: In most of world history, if your dad's a potato farmer, guess what?
Micah McCormick: You get to be a potato farmer.
Micah McCormick: If your dad's a blacksmith, hope you enjoy being a blacksmith.
Micah McCormick: And I'm not making a comment on that morally good or bad.
Micah McCormick: I'm just pointing out that in this in this framework here of the way the Bible was first given and would have been received by the people, they would have understood that part of this Seth imaging his father is by doing the kind of things his father did.
Micah McCormick: So we image God, just as the Bible says, Daniel 4.17, the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms.
Micah McCormick: We get to be like our Father in heaven by ruling in the world he made.
Micah McCormick: That's the basis of our stewardship.
Micah McCormick: We're made in God's image.
Micah McCormick: How about the essence of our stewardship?
Micah McCormick: Um, what exactly is it?
Micah McCormick: Genesis 1 uses the word rule.
Micah McCormick: Adam and Eve were called to rule over the earth.
Micah McCormick: Take dominion, some of your translations use that term as well.
Micah McCormick: So why am I using the word stewardship?
Micah McCormick: Well, because that's the word that Doug gave me for the title of this message tonight.
Micah McCormick: And no, here's how the word stewardship helps us to understand something very important about the kind of rule that God's calling us to.
Micah McCormick: Let me give you an example.
Micah McCormick: Let's say the summertime rolls around.
Micah McCormick: And I look out at the youth group and they've all got their video games and their phones.
Micah McCormick: I'm like, what do you guys do in the summer?
Micah McCormick: Doesn't anyone have a job around here?
Micah McCormick: You guys need to get some responsibility.
Micah McCormick: Look, what someone how about how about how about how about how about how about Aaron?
Micah McCormick: Can you clean you gotta clean the organ once a month?
Micah McCormick: That's your job.
Micah McCormick: Can you do that?
Micah McCormick: I gave him responsibility, gave him a job.
Micah McCormick: Now let's say something different happens.
Micah McCormick: Let's say Ted comes to visit the youth group.
Micah McCormick: And he says, Listen, I'm going away to Kentucky for a month, and I need someone to help me take care of that organ while I'm gone.
Micah McCormick: This is something that's helped our church worship for many years.
Micah McCormick: It's something I love.
Micah McCormick: And who can I give this?
Micah McCormick: Aaron, can you help me with this?
Micah McCormick: Do you see what happened?
Micah McCormick: A job became a stewardship.
Micah McCormick: God is not just giving Adam and Eve a job so that they can learn about taking responsibility.
Micah McCormick: He's entrusting something very precious to them.
Micah McCormick: He's entrusting his own creation to them.
Micah McCormick: It's a little bit, you know, if your parents they're trying to get the house clean and they say, now you go clean your bedroom.
Micah McCormick: That's your domain.
Micah McCormick: Go be like us.
Micah McCormick: That's how we're going to do it in this household.
Micah McCormick: That's that's a kind of stewardship, it's an apprenticeship, it's a training for how we can live in life.
Micah McCormick: Turn to Genesis 2.
Micah McCormick: If you go back to Genesis 2, those are the verses we read at the beginning.
Micah McCormick: Verse number 15.
Micah McCormick: The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.
Micah McCormick: Here's how I'm going to try to summarize the essence of our stewardship with the word cultivation.
Micah McCormick: Again, when we hear the word rule, it's a very appropriate word, but we might think of that only as giving commands.
Micah McCormick: Like, what does that look like?
Micah McCormick: All right, sharks, no more taking advantage of the minnows.
Micah McCormick: You mind your own business, I'm going to be watching you.
Micah McCormick: We don't rule like that.
Micah McCormick: God has called us to cultivate the earth.
Micah McCormick: Um, look there at verse number 11 to develop his world.
Micah McCormick: Verse number 11 tells us about a place called Havilah where there is gold.
Micah McCormick: And I think it says uh pure gold in the CSB.
Micah McCormick: It's literally good gold.
Micah McCormick: There's some good gold in Havilah.
Micah McCormick: How do you get gold?
Micah McCormick: You have to mine it.
Micah McCormick: I mean, I maybe there were gold bars just lying on the ground in the Garden of Eden.
Micah McCormick: I don't know.
Micah McCormick: But probably not.
Micah McCormick: God created Adam and Eve to work.
Micah McCormick: And how can we find the beautiful and rich things in God's world and put them to beautiful and good uses?
Micah McCormick: That's a stewardship from our Father in heaven given to our original parents, Adam and Eve.
Micah McCormick: To work the garden and watch over it.
Micah McCormick: God has called us to be his royal priests.
Micah McCormick: The specific Hebrew words there for work and watch over or guard and keep, maybe different translations, those two words are only used together in the Old Testament when it's talking about the job of the priests in the tabernacle or in the temple, to work it and keep it, to guard it and watch over this holy sanctuary of the Lord.
Micah McCormick: That's a pretty amazing sacred privilege and trust that God has given to us.
Micah McCormick: And God wants Adam and Eve, and by implication, humanity, to extend that rule and reign in the world, to expand.
Micah McCormick: It's not enough simply to guard, we have to cultivate.
Micah McCormick: Remember the parable of the talents?
Micah McCormick: The man who said, Oh yeah, I kept this one talent here.
Micah McCormick: And the Lord didn't say, Great job, as long as you just kept it the way it was, that's all that I was expecting.
Micah McCormick: He wanted him to take what he had and cultivate it, to put it to use.
Micah McCormick: So that's how God wants us to rule in the world, to cultivate his world.
Micah McCormick: Third, what's the priority of our stewardship?
Micah McCormick: If the basis is that we're made in the image of God and the essence of our stewardship is cultivation of God's good world, how do we that's that sounds really big and grand and glorious?
Micah McCormick: How can we prioritize what that looks like?
Micah McCormick: I'm gonna summarize the priority of our stewardship as a priority of human beings.
Micah McCormick: And let me explain what I mean by that.
Micah McCormick: First, the work of cultivating God's created world is a big task.
Micah McCormick: It's a big task that needs a lot of people.
Micah McCormick: The Bible says that God formed man from the dust of the ground, and then he formed Eve to be Adam's helper.
Micah McCormick: Some people hear that and they think it only means, or they tend to emphasize, Eve was only a romantic companion for Adam.
Micah McCormick: Like they just sat around all day looking in each other's eyes.
Micah McCormick: That's a part, a significant part of the beauty of that relationship.
Micah McCormick: But they had a job to do.
Micah McCormick: Having and raising children is a great way to carry out God's stewardship.
Micah McCormick: God doesn't give everyone children, but for those who have children, this should be a huge priority in life.
Micah McCormick: And it's a beautiful opportunity from the Lord.
Micah McCormick: I think it's maybe more the case.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes mothers are made to feel bad that they're not doing more things, you know, like amidst all of the diaper changing, you couldn't also become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Micah McCormick: What's wrong with you?
Micah McCormick: Raising little ones, cleaning up their mess, and helping them learn how to clean up their mess so they can go out into the world and help clean up the world's mess, that's a big job.
Micah McCormick: Nourishing little ones so that they can go out and grow up and be a part of a world and bring wholeness, hopefully, and order to a world, that's a big job.
Micah McCormick: So it's it's not about, you know, um just having children merely for the sake of having children.
Micah McCormick: You know, if you're if you're bragging about your five kids or your 15 kids, you're not actually raising them and instructing them.
Micah McCormick: That's key here.
Micah McCormick: But it's a glorious calling.
Micah McCormick: So if we're going to prioritize human beings, we do have to prioritize human life.
Micah McCormick: We should want to protect human life in the womb, on the streets, in the nursing home.
Micah McCormick: And I don't want to get too far ahead of us.
Micah McCormick: There's this is a free preview.
Micah McCormick: We've got a whole nother message on defending the dignity of every human life.
Micah McCormick: So I'm just wanting to flag that now.
Micah McCormick: So many of these application points for life connect into these early pages of Genesis and the role that God's called us to as his stewards.
Micah McCormick: When I say that humans are a priority, uh, I don't just mean human life and raising children.
Micah McCormick: I also mean that God has called humans to be the capstone and pinnacle of his created order.
Micah McCormick: It's humans alone that are said to be made in the image of God, not the rest of his creation.
Micah McCormick: Look at chapter 1 of Genesis, verse 29.
Micah McCormick: God also said, Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed, this will be food for you.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 9, God tells Noah, Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you, as I've given the green plants, I've given you everything.
Micah McCormick: God it's a it's grace, we not that we deserved it.
Micah McCormick: God has designed the world for us, not designed us to have the world be elevated above humanity.
Micah McCormick: That inverts God's created order.
Micah McCormick: So what about PETA?
Micah McCormick: You have to say they they were very shrewd to get that domain name, right?
Micah McCormick: People for the ethical treatment of animals.
Micah McCormick: Who's going to stand up and say, you know, actually, I'm for the unethical treatment of animals?
Micah McCormick: The more unethical treatment of animals, the better, right?
Micah McCormick: So they they got us on the name there.
Micah McCormick: If you go on the website, right at the right at the about page, PETA opposes speciism, speciesism, a human supremacist worldview.
Micah McCormick: Now anything with supremacists on the end, very bad, obviously.
Micah McCormick: I I wasn't familiar with the term species ism, but it's good to learn some things, right?
Micah McCormick: So you keep you keep reading.
Micah McCormick: Speciesism is the misguided belief that one species is more important than another.
Micah McCormick: So maybe someone here tonight works for PETA and you're like, look, I'm just I'm trying to stop undercover dog fighting.
Micah McCormick: Can you cut me a break here?
Micah McCormick: That's a good thing to do.
Micah McCormick: So there's there's good things that PETA is.
Micah McCormick: Doing.
Micah McCormick: That's not my intent.
Micah McCormick: My point is that our way of viewing the world has consequences for our life.
Micah McCormick: And that organization has made it very clear that their worldview, their way of looking at the universe, is to say animals and humans are just two different species that are equivalent.
Micah McCormick: That runs fundamentally contrary to what Scripture itself says.
Micah McCormick: God told Adam to name the animals.
Micah McCormick: God didn't go to the hippos and say, hey, I'm making this dude with two legs.
Micah McCormick: What should I call him?
Micah McCormick: Sometimes you hear thank you for that laugh.
Micah McCormick: I appreciate that, Audrey.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes you hear people talk in glowing terms about Mother Nature.
Micah McCormick: And that's not a wrong expression.
Micah McCormick: I've used it before, but sometimes when people say that, they say it in a kind of sacred way, as if to suggest that nature is a person that must be honored as a person.
Micah McCormick: Or even that nature is God, has some divine-like quality.
Micah McCormick: No, God didn't make trees in his image.
Micah McCormick: Now, let's let's go to the other side of that of that idea.
Micah McCormick: So we have to prioritize humans because the Bible prioritizes humanity.
Micah McCormick: But that doesn't take away our responsibility and stewardship.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes, some some Christians, whenever they hear the word creation, cultivation, or stewardship, they have this allergic reaction and they they just want to rush to their favorite verse on the subject.
Micah McCormick: 2 Peter 3 10.
Micah McCormick: Anyone know what that is?
Micah McCormick: The day of the Lord will come like a thief.
Micah McCormick: On that day, the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, the elements will burn and be dissolved, and the earth and the works on it will be disclosed.
Micah McCormick: It's all gonna burn up, anyways.
Micah McCormick: You can only do so much to save the world.
Micah McCormick: It's gonna burn.
Micah McCormick: Yes, it's gonna burn, but that doesn't mean that we can help it burn, and that's what God would desire, right?
Micah McCormick: We live in a world of hot takes and extremism.
Micah McCormick: The only two options you have are not worship nature as divine or treat it like your personal trash can.
Micah McCormick: There's other options besides those two options.
Micah McCormick: Let's say that Doug gives his eight-year-old son Ben a$200 Schwin bicycle.
Micah McCormick: He says, I want you to take care of this, I want you to keep it running, I want you to work at it, and when you turn 18, I'm gonna get you a$10,000 Cannondale racing bicycle.
Micah McCormick: Doug's like, maybe for myself, not for Ben.
Micah McCormick: But think about this.
Micah McCormick: Would Father Doug want his son Ben to conclude, well, yeah, I have this bike, it's okay, but he said he's gonna get me a brand new one anyway, so I might as well ride this thing into the ground.
Micah McCormick: That's that's not the point.
Micah McCormick: He entrusted the stewardship of the small thing temporarily.
Micah McCormick: Yes, we've got a new heavens and a new earth coming.
Micah McCormick: Hallelujah.
Micah McCormick: This world's not eternal, but it's still valuable, and God calls us to care for it.
Micah McCormick: Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God.
Micah McCormick: The expanse proclaims the work of his hands.
Micah McCormick: Day after day they pour out speech.
Micah McCormick: Night after night they communicate knowledge.
Micah McCormick: Psalm 104, my soul blessed the Lord.
Micah McCormick: Lord, you are very great.
Micah McCormick: You're clothed with majesty and splendor.
Micah McCormick: He wraps himself in light as if it were a robe, spreading out the sky like a canopy, laying the beams of his palace on the waters above, making the clouds his chariots, walking on the wings of the wind and making the winds his messengers.
Micah McCormick: He established the earth on its foundations, it will never be shaken.
Micah McCormick: That's how much God cares for the world, and he's told humans, you're my royal priest to guard this good possession.
Micah McCormick: Lastly, the place of our stewardship.
Micah McCormick: What does this look like in our lives?
Micah McCormick: Again, I know it's a little abstract.
Micah McCormick: Think, well, I'm not a marine biologist in the Amazon.
Micah McCormick: Like, okay, what does this look like in our lives?
Micah McCormick: Here's some suggestions.
Micah McCormick: First, we need to enjoy God's creation.
Micah McCormick: Yes, God's given us a job.
Micah McCormick: He wants us to enjoy that job.
Micah McCormick: God made the world, and he took time to rest on the seventh day and contemplate his good works.
Micah McCormick: Yes, he's embarking on keeping the world moving on its foundations, ruling among the galaxies.
Micah McCormick: Creation gives him delight, and it should give us delight that will help us do our job better.
Micah McCormick: Listen to the birds, marvel at sunsets, take a walk in the woods.
Micah McCormick: This is an amazing world that God has given us.
Micah McCormick: Second idea about the place of our stewardship, we need to show charity to Christians who may not always agree on every single application of policy questions.
Micah McCormick: And this ties into a few things I've been saying.
Micah McCormick: If humans are alone made in God's image, if they have a priority, then think about to go back to the earlier comment, is our opinion on fracking?
Micah McCormick: Is that so clear and urgent that we need to treat people who disagree with us like they're complete idiots rather than people that are made in the image of God?
Micah McCormick: And especially if there are brothers and sisters in Christ, we'll be spending eternity with them.
Micah McCormick: So we can show, we can show charity in some of those areas.
Micah McCormick: Yes, God gives us principles that speak into every single domain of life, but we don't have every detail in God's word spelled out with perfect clarity.
Micah McCormick: So we want to be thoughtful and loving in how we engage others.
Micah McCormick: What's the place of our stewardship?
Micah McCormick: Start by cultivating the place God has you in right now.
Micah McCormick: 1 Corinthians 7 17.
Micah McCormick: Let each one live his life in the situation the Lord assigned when God called him.
Micah McCormick: This is what I command in all the churches.
Micah McCormick: The internet world makes us think if you're not involved in so many different things, then you're failing.
Micah McCormick: If you're not giving to world hunger organizations, you don't care about world hunger.
Micah McCormick: If you don't sign this petition to help protect wallabies in New Zealand, you don't care about God's world.
Micah McCormick: Start wherever God has you.
Micah McCormick: Start in your own home, your own church, your own place of work, your own neighborhood.
Micah McCormick: How can you bring some order out of chaos the way God brought order to the world?
Micah McCormick: How can you nourish and cultivate your home, people in your church, your neighborhood?
Micah McCormick: Some of you have a garden in your backyard.
Micah McCormick: Great.
Micah McCormick: You're not obligated to have a garden in your backyard, but that's a place that you can start and say, I love God and I want to do this for his glory.
Micah McCormick: We encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more, to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you.
Micah McCormick: There's a pastor who tells the story about church, a lot of young people and some young guys in his church were you know on him that God tells us to take dominion in all the world.
Micah McCormick: We've got to do a better job taking dominion in the government and places like that.
Micah McCormick: And he said, you know, some of these guys, a lot of them, they're living with their parents.
Micah McCormick: Some of them don't even have jobs, and you know, they want to argue the fine points of theonomy with me.
Micah McCormick: And I told him, look, why don't you start by taking dominion of your own bedroom?
Micah McCormick: Get a job, get some responsibility, and then you can come back and talk about how Christians can go out in the government and you know change the world and all that kind of thing.
Micah McCormick: There's something biblical about that, right?
Micah McCormick: Lead a quiet life, work with your hands in the place where God has you.
Micah McCormick: Start right then and there.
Micah McCormick: Last suggestion.
Micah McCormick: And think with me, and I'm just gonna sound a little bit uh out of the box here, but participate in disciple making near and far.
Micah McCormick: How do we get from you know naming the animals to evangelizing for Jesus?
Micah McCormick: Well, there's some key parallels between what Christ tells his disciples when he leaves and what's called sometimes the Great Commission, go into all the world.
Micah McCormick: There's some interesting parallels between that instruction of Jesus and the original command here in the garden.
Micah McCormick: Both of those instructions have the idea of multiplication.
Micah McCormick: Go into all the world and make disciples.
Micah McCormick: Be fruitful and multiply.
Micah McCormick: So in the original command, there's an emphasis on biological multiplication, having children, bear the image of God.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' words, there's an emphasis on spiritual multiplication, giving people the gospel, helping build others up in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: But there's multiplication, there's a geographical expansion impulse in both cases, fill the earth and subdue it, go into all the world and make disciples.
Micah McCormick: Now, I'm not saying that that great commission replaces entirely those instructions in the garden.
Micah McCormick: Those instructions in the garden about being fruitful and multiplying and cultivating God's world in a lot of ways, those are still valuable and good for us.
Micah McCormick: But Jesus gives us that target as the people of God that we must include in our lives.
Micah McCormick: So you can reflect God's image by planting a tomato plant in your backyard.
Micah McCormick: You can.
Micah McCormick: You can, and people do, helpfully reflect God's image by going into a company that is in total disarray and helping get the books in order.
Micah McCormick: Those are good ways to reflect God's image.
Micah McCormick: That's that's a good thing.
Micah McCormick: If we're the people of God, we can do those things, and some will be more called to certain realms and walks of life than others.
Micah McCormick: Again, this is a free preview because we've got a whole nother message on the dignity and calling of every line of work.
Micah McCormick: So if you're a dishwasher, don't think I'm just washing dishes.
Micah McCormick: No, you're helping clean up a mess under God's kind providence in his world to make his world a cleaner place.
Micah McCormick: So we got a whole message on that.
Micah McCormick: But if we're children of God, we can do any number of those things.
Micah McCormick: We must, on some level, be engaged in cultivating people for Christ.
Micah McCormick: So I'm not saying the only way to glorify God is passing out a track or going through a Bible study with someone, but that should be a significant part of what we want to do to make eternal disciples.
Micah McCormick: Because yes, this world is good, it is temporary.
Micah McCormick: Human souls will last forever.
Micah McCormick: So participate in disciple making near and far.
Micah McCormick: Part of our heart should be that we want to see multiplication and expansion and cultivation, just like we prayed earlier for Sasha, right?
Micah McCormick: For more elders to help lead the church that it can grow and multiply.
Micah McCormick: That's a good desire.
Micah McCormick: Seth, Adam and Eve's son, he wasn't obligated to immediately move to Alaska and start a botanical garden.
Micah McCormick: But he was part of a call on humanity to extend into the world and do that.
Micah McCormick: We are not all obligated to pick up and move to Azerbaijan.
Micah McCormick: Well, maybe some of you want to do that.
Micah McCormick: But we are called to be about the process of making disciples.
Micah McCormick: Now, this is preview night.
Micah McCormick: I've got to stop because once again, we've got a whole message on to every tribe and tongue.
Micah McCormick: But I hope you see that as royal priests called to work and watch over the garden, there's a whole lot in scripture and a whole lot in our lives, and a whole lot more in this series.
Micah McCormick: That's all we have for tonight.
Micah McCormick: Want to encourage you as we pray and as we sing this week, how can you cultivate God's world for good and for his glory?
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: Lord, there's there's just so much here, and it is easy for us to feel overwhelmed, but help us to start where we are, to look for that next way that we can see the good and beautiful things in your world and put them to use.
Micah McCormick: Lord, help us to do that with a special eye for humans, for those that are made in your image.
Micah McCormick: And what a wide variety of talents and gifts and places of work and opportunities you put, even within this one small room.
Micah McCormick: And this one small room is only one small part of your created world.
Micah McCormick: This is our Father's world.
Micah McCormick: We rest our hearts in that thought.
Micah McCormick: And we want to be motivated earnestly to be your faithful stewards, that you might say to us, Well done, good and faithful servant.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' name, amen.