Transcript & Slides: The Cultural Mandate

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The Cultural Mandate
By David Feddes

The first words of the Bible are also the foundation for everything else: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And then, after making that great blanket statement saying that it all comes from God, it begins to give a description of God's creation. It tells us that on the first day, God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. All the days of creation go like that: God speaks, and it is. It all comes from the word. We know from the New Testament, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." God the Father created all things through Jesus Christ, the living word.

So he made light on the first day. The second day, he separated the waters above from the waters below and made an expanse, calling it the sky. On the third day, he separated the water from the land and created dry land. Then, also on that day, he populated the land with plants. On the fourth day, having created light, he created light-bearing bodies: the sun to govern the day, the moon to govern the night, and the vast expanse of stars—maybe just because he could—to show his glory. Only now, with our telescopes, are we beginning to discover just how vast that creation of the stars really is.

On the fifth day, God made the fish and birds to populate the air and the waters. Then, on the sixth day, he made land animals to populate the land, and he made human beings to live on the land. On the sixth day, we read that God did something special. After creating the animals, he created humanity in his own image. On the seventh day, of course, God rested—not because he was tired and needed a nap, but because he had prepared this great universe. On the seventh day, he came and rested in it himself. A lot of the language is actually about the building of a temple. When God rests, he has finished the setting-up part and now settles in to govern and enjoy the creation that he has made.

But we'll backtrack to the sixth day and see what it says about the creation of humanity: "Then 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.' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, 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.'"

The Creation Story

Now, having heard the creation story, I just want to highlight some things about it and then zero in on verse 28, which is sometimes called the cultural mandate. In thinking about Genesis 1 and 2 and the Bible's story of creation, it's worth asking: what kind of story is it? It is not a story that says, "Where do babies come from? The stork brings them." You know, that's just a tall tale you tell little kids—"Oh, babies come from the stork." It's not to say, "And the world comes from God," in a simplistic way. On the other hand, it's not a scientific blow-by-blow description of all the processes that God actually used. It's a true story, not a myth, but it's not a science textbook either.

A second thing to observe is that God's word created everything. Every day of creation, God spoke, and it was so. That word that made the world continues to govern the world.

The third thing is that this world has purpose. It's not random. It's not chaos. It's not just a lot of stuff happening with no meaning, no point, and no goal. God made it and designed it, and that's why it looks like it's designed. Even the atheists who claim it all just happened will say, "It sure looks like it's designed." Then they try very hard to explain away that appearance of design. All of them write that way. They all say, "To any kind of ordinary, dumb person, it looks like things were made and designed, but now we smart people are going to tell you why it really isn't." Sometimes you should believe your own eyes instead of the expert who tells you your eyes are lying to you. The world is purposefully designed.

A fourth important thing to realize in the creation story is that the heavens and the earth are God's temple. God made them to dwell with people who would bear his image. The language of the Bible, especially in Genesis 2, speaks of it as a garden. In the ancient world of that time, gardens were always understood to be places where the gods dwelt. So when it speaks of the garden that God made for humans to be in, and for him to walk with them in the cool of the day, that was a dwelling of God—a temple. The whole heaven and earth were meant to become God's dwelling.

A final point, which is very obvious in what we've just read, is that human beings are to image and represent God. How do we image God? Partly, we image him by having capacities or abilities that are like his. We can think. Your brain is not a randomly evolved blob of meat. You have a mind because a great Mind gave it to you. You have the ability to love because the God who is love gave you that ability. Many of our abilities are meant, in some way or another, to be like God.

We're also meant to image God, to be like God, in true righteousness and holiness. We're meant to have a character like God's—not just the ability to think and other God-like abilities, but to have an actual character that resembles God's character.

Even more than capacities or character, the image of God means that we are supposed to represent God. In the ancient world, if you stuck an image of a god in a certain location, that image was meant to rule that location. God did not allow humanity to make graven images of him because he'd already made images of himself. You and I were meant to be the images of God. You and I were meant to rule creation on God's behalf.

When you hear the phrase "image of God" in the Bible, that's what it means. It means we're like him in some of our abilities, we're meant to be like him in his righteousness and holiness and goodness and love, and we're meant to represent him in governing his creation.

The Cultural Mandate

We find this especially in the cultural mandate, which is also sometimes called the creation mandate. The cultural mandate is these words: "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, 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.'" That is a great word of God and a great blessing from God on humanity. I think it's especially important—there may be nothing more important at the particular time we're living in—than to recover belief in the Creator and the reality that his creation is under his care and that we are meant to take care of that creation.

It's very sad to say that in a variety of ways, people have gone against the Creator. Partly by just proclaiming there isn't one—that's pretty obvious. But now we see the consequences of denying the Creator and of denying that humanity is meant to be his image and to multiply. I'll give you an example of some stuff I read this past week of people who have given up on humanity. They've given up on humanity, they've given up on the world and the creation, and of course, they've given up on the Creator. Anna Lee, 21 years old, works as an intern at CNN. She wrote an article titled "Why I'm Not Going to Have Children." She said that she thinks having children can be wonderful and a great responsibility, but she's not going to do it. Why not? She says, "If I could see hope for a sustainable future on this planet, I wouldn't be spending time mourning the children I'll probably never have. My main concern is climate change." 

Jessica Colmes, a 39-year-old teacher, says, "I refuse to bring children into the burning hellscape that we call a planet. Now, as I look at the state of the economy, shoddy global health care, and climate change, I just feel like all my trepidation was well justified." So, living in the richest economy in the history of the world, with the best health care in the history of the world, and the largest drop in climate-related deaths—there are 5% of the climate-related deaths today as there were in 1900—people are panicked and don't want to bring children into the world. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, "Basically, there is a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: is it okay to still have children?"

Even the big banks get into the act. Morgan Stanley wrote a note to investors: "The movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline." Now, I don't know if that's true or not; that's what the bankers think. What's going on? That certainly doesn't sound like what we just read about being fruitful and multiplying, does it? It sounds like people who are panicked. Part of it is because they have been propagandized. They have been propagandized and told there is no Creator looking over his creation. They have been propagandized into thinking that the creation is left simply at the mercy of the worst of human tendencies, at the same time with the grandiose idea that humans will somehow manage to destroy the earth by simple, ordinary human behavior. They're not worried about the nuclear weapons; they're worried about the internal combustion engine.

Now, you know, it's a sad thing when people have given up on humanity—when you don't even want to have children because the future for children will be so grim. Life expectancy today is twice what it was a century ago, and we're worried about the future of our children being grim? The world hasn't changed for the worse; the thinking has changed for the worse. We need to understand that we have a great Creator, and he created us with purposes to be great. He gave us a mandate—a mandate that has been affected by sin but not reversed, not canceled. So let's listen to what the Lord says in a little more detail in that cultural mandate.

Blessing: The Cultural Mandate

First of all, I just want to note that it's a blessing. God blessed them and said—that's how the cultural mandate begins. God blessed them, and God said. How did God bless? Well, he blessed with the power and ability and command to populate, to fill the creation with those who image him. He blessed with the capacity and the command to dominate, to subdue, and to rule over and govern his creation. He gave us the great blessing and command to cultivate, to develop various potentials of creation, because God, for his own reasons, decided, "I'm not going to make creation the way I want it to end up. I'm going to make it in a way that it needs to be developed, in a way that it's going to be better in the future than the way it started." Something even better than the world God made in six days is eventually going to be the reality.

So God gives humanity a role in cultivating and developing the world into what he wants it eventually to become. Then he also gives the blessing and the command to consecrate, to spread the Creator's glory, to take the original dwelling of the Garden of Eden and expand it until the whole earth is full of the glory of the Lord, until the whole earth is heaven come down to earth and is filled with God's presence and his glory and his majesty. You and I can have a part in that.

Now, this was the original command and blessing of God in the cultural mandate. It's been affected by sin and has been renewed in Jesus Christ, but it is very important to understand the origin because Jesus is both the Alpha and the Omega. You're not going to understand much about the Omega point if you haven't first taken account of the Alpha point—of how it all started and why it all started. 

Populate

So let's think about, first of all, that blessing and calling to populate. God said, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." And that's not the last time he said it. This is one of the most quoted or referred to sentences in the Bible. If you think it's just kind of one of those throwaway lines in the creation account, you're dead wrong.

I'll give you just a few examples. After God's great judgment on the world, he said to Noah just about the same thing that he had said to Adam and Eve. To Noah and his sons and their families, God said, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1). Then, after the Tower of Babel, after God judged the nations and things were again in disarray and God's purposes were not being pursued, God scattered them. But even in his scattering, he sent humanity into other parts of the earth. Then God decided, "Now I'm going to choose one particular man and through him bring about my original purposes for humanity." So to Abraham, he said, "I will make you very fruitful. I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." So there again, you have the original promise to Adam and Eve echoed to Noah, then to Abraham, who's going to be the father of believers and the source of God spreading his purposes throughout the world.

Then you remember Abraham. God made similar promises to Abraham's son Isaac, and then to Jacob, the son of promise that Isaac had. He called his name Israel, says the scripture, and God said to him, "I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you." Then Jacob's descendants, Israel, when they had become a great nation, God said to them again, "I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you." There are dozens more verses that are similar to that. I'm just giving you some of the high points of some of the main figures in the history of the Bible. God's covenant was to work out these purposes and, through these covenant people, to spread his creational purposes throughout the world.

So we can understand from the cultural mandate that God wants those who are his—human beings in general, and especially the human beings who are called to be children of Abraham through faith in Jesus Christ—to have children, to have babies, and not only have them but to raise them to image God. Simply biological production of babies is not the same as being fruitful and multiplying and developing children as imagers of God who love and trust and serve the Lord. When our Lord Jesus Christ came, he even echoed that calling to people in a different way. He said, "Now all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me." That sounds like somebody who's claiming the mantle and crown that God gave humanity, this position of rule. He says, "It's been given to me. All authority has been given to me. Now you go, and you make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to obey everything I've commanded you. Surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age." He wants this propagation, this population of his people, to keep on spreading.

So you spread by having babies if God so blesses you. You spread by teaching those babies to walk in God's ways. You spread and populate even if you're single or if you're a couple who's not been blessed with the ability to have children. You might be able to foster children, to adopt children. You might be able, as a part of a community, to bless the children of that community even if you're not one of those who gave biological birth to the children. There are single people and others who bring tremendous blessing to children growing up in a community of God's people. But when children are prized, when children are a priority, then we're getting at least some flavor of God's cultural mandate and his call and his blessing to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

That's why we ought to have that attitude that Psalm 127 expresses: "Children are a heritage from the Lord. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them." Children are a tremendous blessing. If you live in the light of the cultural mandate, you will count it a blessing. You'll know that in a sin-affected world, kids are going to have challenges. Life could be very hard for them. So what? You have confidence in the Creator. You have confidence that as long as springtime and harvest, fall and spring, summer and winter abide, so will God's care over his planet. So you can bring children into the world without going into a panic that all is going to fall apart. It will not as long as there is a great Creator, and he is caring for his creation. When we hear that call to populate, we should thank God that he has indeed multiplied the human race and has indeed multiplied the followers of Jesus Christ.

Dominate

A second element of that is to subjugate or dominate, whatever word you'd like to choose for that. It sounds like kind of a harsh word, but there are a couple of elements to it. It means, first of all, that you've got to subdue, and then you've got to reign. Now, to subdue, you'd say, "Well, what in the world would you have to subdue if the creation was already perfect?" But let me just remind you that God planted the Garden of Eden, and he put Adam and Eve in charge of it. His purpose was that even though he made the rest of creation good, he wanted something like the Garden of Eden to keep on spreading and humanity to keep on spreading, to eventually have a perfect world governed by a perfect humanity. That was God's original purpose, and that is how it's going to turn out as well—a perfect world governed by humanity made perfect.

So God says, "Subdue it and rule." Rule over the various types of animals and the various kinds of creatures that God has made. In fact, the flourishing of creation depends on human dominion. The flip side of that is that those who are kind of panicky or scared are not entirely without reason. They do understand at least this much: humans have a profound impact on the world we live in. If humans make a big mess of it, then a mess we shall have, and even animal life is affected by it. The Bible says that creation was "subjected to frustration, not by its own will but by the will of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." That is simply to say that the well-being of creation depends on the wisdom of humanity, and when we're dunces, creation suffers for it.

When we fell into sin, it did a lot of damage to the creation itself as well. So it is in redeeming humanity that God also restores his creation. Creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay. In the meantime, even in a fallen world, we're meant to be the rulers of creation. Again, certain movements in our time have completely lost track of that fact. There are those who would treat animals as though they are indistinguishable from humans. Humans become animals, and then animals take on human-like traits where animals have all the rights that humans do. You can kill babies, but you can't eat meat—that's the kind of thinking that sometimes dominates.

The Bible says, "A righteous man cares for the life of his beast." You don't abuse animals or mistreat animals just for the sake of doing it, but you do have a different identity than animals. You do have a position higher than the animals, where you rule, subdue, and rule over the other creatures that God has made. Psalm 8, in that great psalm of creation, reflects that: "You crowned humanity with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands. You put all things under his feet—all flocks and herds, beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the sea." God put animal life under the rule of humanity.

The Bible then explains that now we don't see everything under him. Hebrews 2 says, "We don't see everything under his feet, but we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor," so that those words of Psalm 8 come true in Jesus and then in those who follow Jesus. More and more, God wants those who belong to Jesus to be ruling creation well and taking care of their domain of creation well on God's behalf. It was, in fact, a failure to understand our position as rulers that got Eve and Adam into that pickle in the first place. When a snake comes up to you and contradicts God, what are you going to do? Who are you going to listen to? You say, "Well, God rules me, and I rule snakes. Adios!" That's how you handle it if you are actually the God-appointed ruler of all God's creatures. But instead, they listened to the voice of the snake, which was actually the voice of Satan, and they failed to subdue, subjugate, and guard creation.

In Genesis 2, God gives them the position of tending the garden and keeping it, which can also refer to guarding it—guarding it against intruders. Eve and Adam failed to guard against the intruder, and so they themselves were thrown out of that garden. It was a failure to dominate, subjugate, and have their rightful reign over animal life—and their rightful reign, of course, under the reign of God—that got them into that kind of trouble. 

Now, sometimes the words "subjugate," "dominate," or "subdue" have been misused. People get the notion, even people who claim to believe in God, that "Well, God put us in charge, so we can do whatever we want with those animals, rivers, air, and so on." Well, no. Along with that call to subjugate or dominate comes the call to cultivate what God has made. 

Cultivate

God's call to cultivate is implicit in the creation and cultural mandate itself, but also in what is said about the Garden of Eden in the next chapter.

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden… [So first of all, it is God's garden. Whoever else takes care of it, it is God's for starters.] The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it [or watch over it] … The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2)

Then God took a rib from Adam and made Eve to be alongside him, for the two of them to be working together and for their offspring to work together in cultivating and caring for God's world. That is a tremendous blessing.

Cultivate bounty and beauty

In that Garden of Eden, think of a garden in two different senses. Sometimes a garden is a place where you get food—you raise vegetables or develop a plot of ground so that you'll have something to eat. Sometimes a garden is a different kind of garden, like a flower garden or a botanical garden, where you're doing it just because you enjoy the beauty of what God has made. When we think of the Garden of Eden, we should think of both of those: the bounty and the beauty. Then if our calling is to cultivate, it is to care for God's world both to keep on developing it in a way that increases and brings out the bounty, but also as much as possible preserves and develops its beauty. We want to do both: develop bounty and beauty, as we take good care of God's garden and make the world more like a well-tended garden rather than an ill-kept mess.

I sometimes saw examples of that in the life of my own parents. My mom would go for walks for a mile or two up and down the road in a couple of different directions, and that would give her some exercise. But on her walks, she also carried a bag. Now, I know you think, "Yeah, you take a little bag along if you're in a populated neighborhood so that if your dog does anything, then the bag takes care of that." No, she didn't take a dog. She walked alone with a big garbage bag, and then she would pick up beer bottles and other trash that people had thrown out while they were driving down the road because she wanted her area of Montana to be garbage-free. So every time she went for a walk, she just took the bag along and got rid of any trash that people threw along the road.

My dad was a rancher and farmer, and part of his way of thinking about being a farmer and rancher was, "When I'm gone and I'm no longer farming this land, I want it to be better than when I got it. I want the cattle to be better than they were when we started raising them, and I want the land to be richer, more fertile, and better than when we started on it." And so it was. 

Really, may dad was just being a good Calvinist. John Calvin wrote, "Now let him who possesses a field so partake of its yearly fruits that he may not allow the ground to be injured by his negligence." Calvin was saying, "Be careful how you handle the land. You want to take stuff out of the land, of course, as you're raising crops or cattle or doing stuff with that land, but don't deplete the land. Don't wreck it for the sake of grabbing as much as you can from it in just a year or two." You've got to learn how farming works, how the land works, how to replenish the land.

So Calvin said, "Don't take the fruit from the land in such a way that you deplete it, but let him endeavor to hand that land down to posterity as he received or even better cultivated." That was the motto for Christian farmers: pass it on as you received it or even better. That's our calling in this garden, in this creation that God has given us: to take care of it. For sure, don't make it worse than you got it, and if possible, make it better.

Now, a lot of us aren't ranchers or farmers, but we still have this or that piece of property. Make it as beautiful and as good as you can. If you've got a garden, tend it well. These are all part of cultivating the creation, but it goes beyond that. When we think of cultivating, there's this entire calling to develop the creation, to bring out its potential, and that happens in a variety of ways. I mentioned the Garden of Eden was a place of bounty and beauty, and as humans cultivate and develop things, you want to bring out and make the world even more prosperous and even more lovely—do what's in your power.

Cultivate: some examples

Part of cultivating is planting and farming and doing all of that—orchards, gardens, whatever—and tending those. Cultivating also means developing culture in various ways.

Part of that is building. You might be in construction, and part of developing the creation is taking some of the wood of God's creation and making good structures out of it for people to live in, sometimes even grand structures, places of beauty with splendid architecture.

Sometimes there's also the calling to conserve—conserve what's there. Sometimes that means we set aside places that are going to be permanent parks and places that can continue as they are, places for animals and plant life to flourish. But to conserve—that's not just a random nice idea that people get; that's part of God's calling in tending his world.

Part of bringing out or cultivating or developing the potential of things is cooking. You know, we could just live, take a vegetable and chomp on it, or fruit and chomp on it, and those are good. But, you know, there's no law against a fruit salad that you mix and match and deal with things differently. Of course, after the fall, God also allowed meat to be added to the menu for a time. But what people do with cooking is to develop something into what's better than the raw ingredients. Most of you would not want the raw ingredients that go into brownies, but I like the finished product.

In the realm of beauty—of music, of singing, of art, whether painting or film or sculpture or other kinds of art—the telling of stories, whether you're a writer, a filmmaker, or a dramatist—these are all part of God's gift to humanity. 

The ability to use tools to make new tools, whether that's the creation of the wheel or the screwdriver or the cell phone or the car or whatever—the tools, machines, and technology that God gave humanity the ability to develop—it's an amazing thing. I mean, what is petroleum when you start out with it? It's just sticky black gunk in the ground that's a pain to have around. However, it's a very valued commodity when humans figure out something that can be done with it—actually, a lot of things can be done with it, whether fuel for vehicles, or fertilizers, or other kinds of materials, plastics, and so on. 

Again, we've got to be careful not to misuse it, but it's not wrong to have technology. It's a blessing that we can develop those things. Silicon—what is that? Basically, it's main component is sand. But most of the most valuable corporations these days deal with silicon. There's even a place called Silicon Valley because they use computer chips and all that stuff made out of silicon to do things. The silicon itself has amazing capacities  if there's enough human intelligence brought to bear on it. Humanity has poured a lot of intelligence into that stuff.

So we have to beware of technology because sometimes the technology is so splendid and such an amazing achievement that we think, "Wow, aren't we wonderful, and we humans are going to do whatever we can with technology, and there's no limits and no bounds." Then we get nice things like mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons and other kinds of terrible things that technology can do. Sometimes, when you get into something like artificial intelligence, it might be wise to decide when technology is going too far. When you have people experimenting with growing human ears out of a pig's back, you say, "What? Just because you can figure out how to do some sort of weird thing, should you?" There can be technolatry--worship of technology--where you see technology as the highest and most powerful reality, and you're just going to take technology as far as it can go, with no limit of wisdom or morality.

The opposite is technophobia, where any kind of new technology, you're suspicious of it. I remember when I went to preach somewhere in Canada, and I was driving to the church where I was supposed to be preaching. The person riding with me was pointing out a few things along the way. We drove past a church that had all black horses and black buggies in the parking lot. He said, "That's the old order group there." We got a little further down the road, and there was another church. It had divided from the first church, and its parking lot was full of black cars. They figured you could have modern technology, but you could not be showy about it or have any color in it. There should not be any beauty in it; you'd better be mighty serious and solemn about your technology. Then there was a third church which had left the second church, and its parking lot was filled with cars that were colorful and looked like just kind of an average variety of cars. These three churches that divided over how much they would incorporate modern technology.

So you can have technolatry, the worship of technology. You can also have technophobia, where you're always fearful of this or that technology and always trying to steer clear of it. A better way is to live under the Creator and ask, "Is this a God-given use of human know-how and technology, or is it doing more harm than good to humanity and degrading what God means it to be?" 

Another way to cultivate creation is to cultivate the way that humans are organized. Part of ruling is governance. That may be the governance structures and the way we get along in family. It may be in business and the way we relate in various forms of business endeavors. It may be community, in the form of church, in the form of nations and government. But these, too, are ways of developing and cultivating, and they're not necessarily bad. Some people are totally against government; others think big government is going to save them. No, the truth is that we're meant to organize our lives and develop them, and it's all part of that call to cultivate but within the bounds set by God.

So for many of us, our lifelong task is: whatever we do, do it to the glory of God, to develop God's creation, to take good care of it, to bring out its full potential, to conserve it and not destroy it or pollute it. You don't have to be a tree hugger to know that trees are a good gift of God. You don't have to be an animal rights person to care for the life of an animal because the Bible says the righteous man cares for the life of his beast. Adam and Eve were meant to take care of that garden with its animal life. You and I are meant to take good care of the plants and the animal life and then to bring out the full potential. You could preach a hundred sermons on this and not exhaust it because each of you has to think about your own area of life and say, "What area has God given to me, and how am I able to pursue God's calling in that particular dimension of my life?"

Consecrate

That leads us right into the fact that we need to consecrate everything to God. Psalm 8, that great creation psalm, says that God made man ruler over the works of his hands—how does it start? "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the Earth." How does it end? "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the Earth." God wants his glory and his name to be majestic in all the Earth, and he wants that to happen through the people that he made rulers over the creation.

God himself says in Isaiah, "Heaven is my throne, and the Earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me?" I think God always had a sense of humor about the tabernacle and the temple. It had its purpose, and it could be very dangerous to misuse, but God was never under the illusion, "Wow, that's a nice place that they built for me." He says, "I made the heavens. I made the Earth. That's my temple. A nice little tent you got there." They made the tabernacle and temple according to God's specifics—you know, I shouldn't even joke about it because it was very sacred space—but God means the whole world to be that kind of sacred space. In the new creation, it pictures this vast city that's as high and wide as it is long. Why is that city that comes down from Heaven and inhabits the Earth so huge in all directions? Why is it a cube? And why is it paved with gold?

There's another cube that is gold-covered, and that is the holy of holies. After sin, only one person could go into that little cube in the tabernacle or temple. But when God undoes sin completely, the whole world is going to be a great and vast holy of holies. I don't think that necessarily means that if you look at it when you get there, it's all going to be just a cube. Maybe it will be, but I think what God's telling us is it's meant to be entirely his dwelling, his holy place. God, in Ezekiel 28, says, "You were in Eden, the Garden of God. You were on the holy mountain of God." There again, God is speaking of the Garden of Eden as a temple, and that garden was humanity's home and God's temple.

Think of Earth in both of those ways. This world we live in is God's temple. Worship God wherever you go. At the same time, it's humanity's home. Isn't it wonderful that God decided, when he made the Garden of Eden, to make it so wonderful for humans and a temple for him to walk with them and for them to enjoy his company and he theirs? That's what the garden is meant to be. That's what creation is meant to be—a place where we enjoy and glorify God and extend his glory throughout the world, and at the same time, a place where God meets humanity's needs.

In most of the ancient world and their stories about where humans came from, the gods made them because the gods got kind of hungry, or the gods had stuff they wanted done and didn't feel like doing, so they got humans to offer them food and humans to work as their slaves. God's approach is, "If I needed something, I wouldn't tell you. The cattle on a thousand hills are mine." There's literally a psalm that goes that way. "I've made it all for you, to bless you. I didn't create this relationship just because I needed you so badly, but because I enjoy you, and I enjoy blessing you." So God wants us to consecrate it to his glory, but he does it all so that we can flourish in the setting of his glory.

That's why even the angels of Heaven say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole Earth is full of his glory." We sometimes take those as just kind of fancy throwaway sentences in a song—"The whole Earth is full of his glory"—but that is God's design, that his glory shine in everything that he's made. So those are some of the things that are involved in the cultural mandate, the creation mandate. As we think about those, just consider your own life and apply them to yourself.

Apply the cultural mandate

First of all, get your worldview straight. Don't get sucked into the doom and gloom of those who have given up on humanity, given up on the creation, and given up on the Creator who cares for it all. Just don't fall into that trap. There's a good God running the show. "This Is My Father's World, oh let me never forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet." My mom liked to say that every so often. I've been reading through her diaries. Every once in a while she'd comment on something going wrong in the world, and then she'd write, "But though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet." You know, it's good to learn a song like that when you're little. Then when all that propaganda is flying at you from the schools and the politicians and the businesses—who are all going to make a lot of money off of it, by the way—when all that flies at you, claiming that the world is lost unless you do what they want, you are not so easily fooled or manipulated.

When you think of the calling then to populate the world, you say children are a blessing. If I haven't been blessed with them, I'm going to bless somebody else's children, and I'm going to do all I can to help them to become children of God. I'm going to also use the other means God has given, and that is evangelizing. I'm going to give my own children the gospel, and I'm going to seek to spread the gospel to all nations. That's all part of that Great Commission, and the Great Commission is an outflowing of the original cultural mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth with images of God.

Then, to dominate, to subdue and rule creation, I'll just ask you a simple question: if you're meant to dominate or to have dominion, then think about your own life right now. What is my domain? What realm is under my influence or control? If you've never thought about that, it's high time you did. That may be your job. Part of what you do in your job is to develop things in creation and help it reach its potential. Whatever it may be, in family, the children that God gives you, the spouse God gives you, it may be friends that you have in your life. What is your sphere where you can bring God's influence?

It's not always a dominating, tyrannical power. The apostle Paul says, "We take all things captive to make them obedient to Christ, but we don't do it using the world's weapons. We use the weapons of righteousness and of love." So, what's your domain? Take charge of that domain. Rule it as a steward. A steward is somebody who rules but always rules on somebody else's behalf. A steward is always under a king. A steward is over lots of stuff sometimes but always under a king.

Cultivate. Increase the bounty. Enhance the beauty. Some of us have a calling that tends more toward one than another. Some of those who are gifted in the arts are told, "Oh, you can't make money at that." Well, maybe not. Does that mean it's not part of your calling? Cultivate beauty as part of the world that God has handed over to you, and develop creation's potential for bounty and for beauty because it's good for others. It's a blessing to them when you make the world better, and it's a blessing for yourself.

Keep in mind too this idea of cultivating or caring for what you're entrusted. Now, what is your little domain? How are you handling it? Jesus says those who are faithful with little will be entrusted with much. "If you have not been trustworthy in handling this world's goods, who will entrust you with eternal goods?" There is a big, big world coming with some fabulous and fantastic domains to be ruled by somebody. Do you want a position of rule in that domain? Well then, just start small. Start with that little business that you're involved in, that little job you do. If you're pouring coffee, pour good coffee. Take good care of it. If you're flipping burgers, make them good and do it well. Relate to people well. If you're running a business, treat people like they're imagers of God and act like one yourself. We have many, many opportunities to cultivate and develop.

In all of that, consecrate. Remember what the New Testament says: "You are God's temple." You are a mobile, walking temple. Jesus' body was the temple of God, and then he said that we are his temple. We're temples of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Wherever we go, if we're followers of Jesus, that becomes sacred space. There's a book titled Practicing the Presence of God. That's the idea—wherever you go, you are bringing God's presence. God's presence is there because he's omnipresent, but when you're there as his imager, then the glory can shine from you in that place and make it a temple. So wherever you go, make it sacred. Let God's glory shine. "Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the Earth."

Prayer

Dear Father, we thank you for being a great Creator, and we thank you for creating us for greatness. We pray, Lord, that your blessing will be renewed and rest upon us—that great blessing you gave to Adam and Eve. We know, Lord, that childbearing has become harder and more painful, and bringing up children because of the sins we've fallen into, but Lord, may we do so anyway with a sense of privilege and of blessing and of your calling. We know too, Lord, that the calling to dominate and to cultivate your creation has been made harder because of our sin, and the ground was affected by the curse. Yet you call us to keep on doing our work, so may we do it for your glory. Lord, we pray that we may never take the value of your creation lightly. Help us to make the little patch of ground we have, the little area that we live in, a better place, knowing that it brings honor to you, blessing to others, and well-being to us. Help us, Lord, to be protected from lies and the folly that that contradict your cultural mandate. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Cultural Mandate
Slide Contents
By David Feddes

²⁶ Then 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. ²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; 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.”

Cultural mandate

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; 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.” (Genesis 1:28)

Blessing
The cultural mandate

• Populate: fill creation with imagers
• Dominate: subdue and rule creation
• Cultivate: develop creation’s potential
• Consecrate: spread Creator’s glory

Populate

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. (Genesis 1:28)

Children are a heritage from the Lord… Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! (Psalm127:3)

Dominate

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. (Genesis 1:28)

You crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands. (Psalm 8:5-6)

Cultivate

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden… The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it … The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2)

Bounty and beauty

• Plant, tend, build, conserve
• Cooking, music, art, stories
• Tools, machines, technology
• (No technolatry or technophobia)
• Family, business, community

Consecrate

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. (Psalm 8:1, 9)

Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things? (Isaiah 66:1-2)

Blessing
The cultural mandate

• Populate: fill creation with imagers
• Dominate: subdue and rule creation
• Cultivate: develop creation’s potential
• Consecrate: spread Creator’s glory