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CARING FOR CREATION
First Things, Part 3
September 23, 2007
Pastor Bob Sanders
This is the third in a series of messages on the book of Genesis, a series entitled First Things. Yes, I know we’re barely into the second chapter. Don’t worry – we’ll get on to the rest. These first two chapters are so profound with meaning and so foundational to what Genesis and all of Scripture has to say, and so we’re spending some extra time here.
Two weeks ago we said that Genesis 1 is a poem, a magnificent song of creation that addresses the important questions about who made this amazing world and why we are here.
Last week we looked at what it means to be made in the image of God and saw we’re called to be workers and thinkers, creators and lovers, care takers and respecters. This morning we look closer at being care takers of this planet, this home God has given us. What does Genesis tell us about caring for creation?
Listen now to our reading from Genesis 1 and 2 (printed on the cover of your bulletin):
Genesis 1:26-28, 31; 2:7-9, 15
26Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
31God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
7Then God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
15The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
Christians and Environmentalists
I know a number of Christians and I know a number of environmentalists. But until recently it’s been hard to find many Christian environmentalists. During the 1980s and 90s a lot of Christians decided environmentalists were pretty much New Age pantheists who worship trees and belittle people. And in those same years a number of environmentalists concluded that Christians at best had no concern whatsoever for the environment, and at worst favored exploiting the planet because God’s going to blow it up right after they’re all raptured away at the Second Coming.
There’s still a lot of mistrust out there. But the good news is that there are a number of Christians who see things differently. Take Larry Schweiger for example.
Larry is a devout Christian and a dedicated environmentalist. For years he was a senior vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, a large, five-million-member secular environmental organization. One of the things he’s discovered is this spiritual longing among many environmentalists, who sense the need for a deeper religious basis for their passionate care for the earth. Unfortunately, many of them think that Christianity is the problem instead of the answer. But many are open when Larry shares his biblical perspective with them. In fact, he’s led weekly Bible studies for about 40 staff members at the National Wildlife Federation, and has had the joy of leading several people there to personal faith in Christ.
Larry believes that biblical faith provides the best foundation for caring for the creation, and it pains him when some Christians dismiss those who work to protect it. He treasures every aspect of nature precisely because he loves and worships the One who spoke nature into being. He’s trying to show secular environmentalists how biblical faith provides the spiritual foundation they’re looking for. And he’s trying to show Christians how the Bible calls them to care for this beautiful garden God has given us.
More and more Christians are urging a new concern for the creation. A few years ago more than 500 Christian leaders signed an “Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation.” It says that as followers of Jesus Christ, committed to the full authority of Scripture, we’re called to worship and honor God the Creator, and to cherish and care for the creation. It’s a helpful statement, and if you want to read it go to our church website and click on today’s sermon for a link to link to take you there.
None other than Billy Graham has said, “I find myself becoming more and more an advocate for the true ecologists . . . . Many of these people have done us an essential service in helping us preserve and protect our green zones and our cities, our water and our air.”
He tells the story of Sugar Creek, which ran through the middle of his father’s farm just outside Charlotte, North Carolina. One morning he found a cow lying dead by the steam. A mill upstream was dumping deadly poison into the water. “We couldn’t do anything then,” Graham says. “There were no laws to which my father could appeal to have Sugar Creek cleaned and restored.” When I was a little boy, our family lived about a half mile away from that farm, and even today when I hear the words “Sugar Creek” what comes to my mind is the horrible smell that drifted over from its polluted waters.
Our Job Description
Why do Christians need to care about creation? Because God created it, every aspect of this beautiful world, and then pronounced it all good. Because God created us in God’s own image and called us to engage in the kind of work we see God doing – and that includes caretaking. We find a kind of a job description in our reading from Genesis – three key words that describe our role in caring for the creation.
The first word in the job description is dominion, and you find it in verse 26 where God says, “Let us make humankind in our own image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps over the earth.” It appears again in verse 28, where God says, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion” over all the creatures on the earth.
God created human beings to have dominion, to have responsibility on his behalf over creation. Now, some have twisted this to mean human beings have a right to exploit creation. Down through the centuries many different people – including Christians – have abused the earth for the sake of power and wealth and comfort. And it’s still happening today. But that’s not dominion. Dominion is not domination. It’s stewardship. Exercising dominion doesn’t mean we’re free to do whatever we like. It means we’re managers, caretakers, and accountable to God.
Dominion – that’s the first key word. The other two are found in chapter 2. In verse 8 we read, “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” We said last week that Genesis reveals this radical view of God – a God who works, a God with dirt under his fingernails. And we who are made in his image are called likewise to be workers. No other religion gives work – even menial work – this kind of dignity. God planted a garden. Then look at verse 15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”
God put us in the garden to till it and to keep it. Those are the other two words in what it means to care for creation. The word translated “till” is the Hebrew word abed, and it means to serve. Tilling the garden means serving it – cultivating it, developing it. In other words, God expects us to get down in the dirt and work the garden.
And the word translated “keep” is the Hebrew word shamar, which suggests watchful care and preservation. Keeping the garden means protecting it and guarding it. In other words, God expects us to work this garden, but also to watch over it. Develop it but don’t exploit it. Till it, yes, but care for it and protect it.
Perhaps you remember the old joke about the country preacher who made a call on one of his parishioners – a farmer who didn’t come to church very often. The preacher found the farmer out in a field he’d recently bought, walking the newly planted rows, checking on the wheat beginning to come up. In an attempt to get the conversation onto spiritual things the preacher said, “That’s a fine field of wheat you and the Lord are growing together.” And the farmer replied, “Well, you should have seen it last year when the Lord had it all to himself.”
The preacher has part of the Genesis truth, and that is God created the heavens and the earth. He made it – all of it. But the farmer has the other part of Genesis, and that is we’ve been given dominion to till the garden and to keep it. To develop it and to protect it. That’s our job description. That’s our privilege and our responsibility.
What Did You Do With It?
And what that means, says Calvin DeWitt (a leading Christian environmentalist), is that when we get to heaven God is not likely to ask, “So, how do you think I made Creation? How do you think I did it?” More likely God will ask, “What did you do with it? Did you take care of it?”
God’s going to ask us: What did you do with the air?
It wasn’t that long ago when you couldn’t see the blue summer skies over the Willamette Valley for the thick clouds of smoke from grass seed farmers burning off their fields. Today if you go into cities like Shanghai or Bangkok or Mexico City, it’s actually dangerous to breathe.
Global warming is on the rise. Last week U.S. government scientists announced that the Arctic ice cap is melting even more rapidly than they had feared. By 2050, 40 percent of the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean could be gone – a loss that wasn’t supposed to happen for 100 years. Our nation heads the list as the top global warming polluter in the world. Since 1990 there’s been a twenty per cent increase in carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels in this country, with another fifteen percent increase forecasted by 2020 unless we find a way to cap pollution.
God’s going to ask us: What did you do with the land?
Tropical forests provide a home to a majority of the world’s plant and animal species. They also convert vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the oxygen we must have to breathe. For years, these vast forests have been disappearing. In the Amazon, a parcel of forest the size of a football field is leveled every minute. That means a forested area nearly the size of the state of Oregon is destroyed every year.
Author Tony Campolo points out the rain that falls in the Sahel region of Africa comes from those same forests of Brazil. The moisture from the jungle forms rain that eventually falls on the parched soil of places like Mali and Senegal. We’re talking about the rain that falls (or doesn’t fall) on our friends in Lake Grove Land. That brings it closer to home for me. Devastated forests in Brazil lead to devastating famine in West Africa. I should add there’s some good news here. Just last month the president of Brazil announced that destruction of the rainforest in his country has decreased by some 25 percent. But loss of forest is still a world-wide problem.
God’s going to ask us: What did you do with the water?
Steve Duin opened his August 23 column in The Oregonian with these words: “The Willamette River, as we all know, is an open sewer.” Was he exaggerating? Ask those triathlon swimmers who nearly cancelled their swim when some 5,000 gallons of raw sewage overflowed into the river just downstream from where they were planning to dive in. And the Willamette is just one of ten rivers in this state that do not meet minimum water-quality standards.
The headline in Friday’s newspaper concerned a highly radioactive spill up at Hanford that threatens to further contaminate the Columbia River, raising once again the questions over how we care for this, the second longest river in the United States. How to balance the needs for cheap hydroelectricity, crop irrigation, and salmon habitat? Tough questions.
But also profoundly spiritual questions. I was impressed when in 2001 twelve Roman Catholic bishops from the Northwestern United States and British Columbia wrote an 18-page pastoral letter calling on us all to become better caretakers of the Columbia River watershed. Here’s part of what they said:
The Columbia River, made by God and populated with His creatures of every sort, is holy – and therefore polluting it, and treating it as a sewer, and stealing from it without regard to all the creatures, human and otherwise, who depend upon it for sustenance is a grave offense to God.
I quote that because I think Christians ought to be more involved in current debates concerning atmosphere and climate change, deforestation and species extinction, land and water degradation. And too often we’re not involved. I’ve been preaching for over 30 years, and this is the first sermon on the environment I’ve ever given (may the Lord have mercy on me). I’m not saying we have all the answers. I’m not sure we could get everyone here to ever agree on that. But if we’re not certain what all the answers are, our faith compels us to be asking the right questions.
Worship and Care
What’s clear today as we listen to Genesis 1 and 2 is that the environmental movement has been around a long time. Long before Earth Day, long before An Inconvenient Truth, long before carbon footprints, God made us in his image and put us in the garden to till it and keep it. From the very beginning, we’re called to express our love for the Creator by caring for his creation.
What does that mean for us today? Perhaps it means learning some more about ways other Christians are working together to protect the environment. Perhaps some of us will want to join in a small group to study and pray and find out how to do a better job in our part of the garden. Perhaps it means a ministry of little things: recycling more carefully, buying more fuel efficient cars, changing fertilizers, getting an energy audit on your home, using less stuff in general. Whatever we decide to do, we cannot ignore this any longer. It’s part of our calling – at least, that’s what Genesis says. We’re made in the image of God the Creator: made to care for his creation.
Faithful Christians today will tend the garden and keep it. We will revel in its splendor, but we will worship only the Creator who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We will fall at Jesus’ feet in praise and adoration, and we will join all of creation in singing,
Fairest Lord Jesus,
Ruler of all nature,
O Thou of God to earth come down,
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,
Thou my soul’s glory, joy, and crown.
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