Governor.
When God made this wonderful garden out of even less than gravel and concrete, out of nothing at all for Adam and Eve to tend to, He – as the governor of all things – just asked something very simple in return. God made the world for His people and He just told them to take care of it and obey Him in two or three simple ways.
- Genesis 1:28a: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it…”
- Genesis 1:28b: “Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
- Genesis 2:16-17: “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’”
God says 1) populate the earth, 2) take care of everything in it and 3) in doing this I’ll let you eat anything you want in the garden – but just not the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it’s not safe. I’m saving that for something.
.
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This is like if you, as parents, are going out for the first time on a Saturday night leaving your older children to baby-sit their younger sibling all on their own. “Be good and take care of the house”, you say. “I want you to unload the dishwasher and you can have whatever treats you want before bed but just don’t touch the cupcakes; they’re for church on Sunday, so don’t eat the cupcakes or there will be real trouble.” Then you come home, very pleased with your children that they are now old enough to be left alone, you look in the kitchen for something to eat and you notice that where the cupcakes should be… they are gone. The disappointment, the sadness and anger must be a reflection of the disappointment God felt when He came back to the garden and saw that – even though there was only one fruit that He was saving – He came back and it was gone. As parents, of course, if our children ate the cupcakes we would realize that they are not quite ready for the responsibility of being left alone at home and so we would wait awhile before we would trust them to take care of the house again. The children would certainly have a time-out from that responsibility. It was the same with God. He wasn’t about to leave his children in the garden by themselves when they betrayed His trust, letting Him down in exactly the same way. Adam and Eve couldn’t be trusted to take care of the garden. Adam and Eve couldn’t be trusted. Humankind couldn’t be trusted. That responsibility was thus removed from us until we are more able to handle it (Genesis 3).[5]
There is more still to this story in Genesis 1-4 of God as governor. We mentioned how well humanity did in keeping God’s third command to abstain from eating the one forbidden fruit in the garden. How did we do with the first two of His commands? God told us to, Genesis 1:28 ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it…’ After we messed up by eating his fruit, how did we do with scattering and filling the whole earth?[6] Let’s take a look at Genesis 11 and the story of the tower of Babel, shall we?[7] Genesis 11:1-3:
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and NOT be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’
Here we are just a couple of chapters and a few generations later and if we haven’t messed things up enough by eating God’s fruit that He was saving; now, He has told us to go and fill the whole earth and we say, “Thanks anyway God, but I think we’ll just stay here and make a name for ourselves instead of going and filling the whole earth like You said.” How well do you think that goes over?[8]
That’s like telling your children to get their boots on because its time to go to school, then heading out to warm up and scrape off the car and upon coming back into the house, seeing them all still just sitting around in their pyjamas. And when questioned they answer you, “we decided not to go to school today.” How’s dad going to react? How’s dad going to feel? Our earthy fathers are going to - in maybe not their most gentle, inside voices – tell their children to get ready right now! Dad is not happy. The children are going to school whether they like it or not! The children are none the better off for this little stunt because a loving father is still going to send his children to school because he cares what is best for them. And a generation and a Supreme Court ruling or two ago, they might just have had a sore backside to show for their disobedience as well. The children’s stunt didn’t help their cause at all because they still have to go to school, just maybe now they are a little less happy about it then they would have been if they had done what they were asked to do in the first place.
It is the same with God, the governor of all things, and humankind’s decision to disobey His command to fill the whole earth.[9] We still had to do what we were told – scatter over the whole earth – but now we just have something extra to remind us about it. Genesis 11:8-9: “So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
The Lord is the governor of all things. You would think that humanity would have learned this by now after blatantly defying God in breaking the first and the third rule of His government but no. We still hadn’t completely learned our lesson and later in the Pentateuch is recorded the penalty His people experience for breaking the second governing rule: Genesis 1:28b: “Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Now we must note first that, as The Salvation Army Canada’s Position Statement articulates, “God’s instruction to ‘subdue’ the earth and ‘rule’ over every living thing (Genesis 1:28) cannot be interpreted to justify abuse or disregard for any life, not only human life. The privileges granted require our accountability to Him and one another.”[10]
Leviticus 25 records that we are directed that the land itself shall enjoy its Sabbath rest (Leviticus 25:2, 26:34,35) just as man was commanded to (Exodus 20: 8-11, Deuteronomy 5:15), and just as God did (Exodus 20:11, Genesis 2:3). If we, as ‘tenants’ of God’s land (Leviticus 25:23), fail in our responsibility to carry out this duty to take care of the land, then the owner of the land -who cares about His land- may remove us from it, like He did with Adam and Eve.[11]
This is exactly, according the scriptures, what happened to Israel as well. God removed Israel from the Promised Land as it neglected its responsibilities to take care of that land. 2 Chronicles 36:20-21: “He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power. The land enjoyed its Sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfilment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah.”
God, as the governor of all things, gave us just three rules of His government in Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 and before the conclusion of the books of Moses, it was apparent that we would disobey them all and presumably break God’s heart in the process (cf. Job 34:14-15; Psalm 65:9-13, 104:24-30; Isaiah 65:17-25; John 19:11; Romans 8:18-25; Colossians 1:17; Revelation 21:1-4).[12] And this brings us to the third attribute of God we are looking at in our passage today: God as preserver.
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