Let Them Have Dominion

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles now and turn with me to the book of Genesis chapter 1 and hold your place at verse 24.
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As you all know, we've been studying through the book of Genesis now for several months.
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I'm not even really in my mind able to remember when we began.
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I think it was September or October last year sometime.
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And we began looking verse by verse through the book of Genesis and that's what we're doing.
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And we'll be in here for probably the next several years on Sunday morning.
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It's just our way of studying the word.
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And we try to dig into the word and learn what it says.
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And what we have been looking at for these past several months is just the amazing majesty of God and His creation and all that He has done.
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As I was reading a commentary this week on Genesis 1, I came across a great quote by John Calvin.
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He said this, or he asked this question, he says, From where does a dead element gain life? From where does a dead element gain life? And I thought about this, as much as we've talked about the theory of evolution and how many people believe that we started out as single cells that grew and multiplied and they became life and then that life variated into different types of life and it became this life and that life and we all basically owe our existence to that one single cell that sort of came out of the ether and was erupted into life.
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But he asked the question.
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Even in the 1600s the question was being asked.
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How does something that is dead give life? It can't.
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Life comes from life.
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Our very lives, our very existence is predicated on the fact that God Himself lives.
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Life gives birth to life.
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From where does a dead element gain life, Calvin asks? From nowhere.
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The dead elements receive their life from Him who is life.
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Not from death, but from life.
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Over the past several weeks we have seen that the Darwinian worldview does not fit with the biblical explanation of the origin of the earth.
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The Darwinian worldview causes people to see mankind essentially as a cosmic accident and thereby no more inherently valuable than anything else and this is why we have seen this great push within our day of people who have tried to bring equality between human beings and other parts of creation to the point where we see even people who have started to bow down and ask the trees for forgiveness because of our manipulation of the environment.
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And there are videos online of people who are sitting down outside of a forest and just crying out to the trees, Please forgive us! Two weeks ago there was an award ceremony many of you are familiar with, the Oscars.
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And the Oscar awards are the most coveted of all movie awards as many of you are familiar with.
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To be an Oscar nominated actor is a big deal and certainly to be an Oscar winner is a huge accomplishment.
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And the one who won for best actor was Joaquin Phoenix.
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Joaquin Phoenix during his presentation of the award, during his acceptance speech said that his desire most in his life is that he would fight against injustice.
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And this is what he said, he said that we should fight against the belief that one species has the right to dominate other species.
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We should fight against the idea that one species has the right to have dominion over the rest of the world.
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PETA of course immediately thought that was great.
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If you are unfamiliar with PETA, it's the people for the ethical treatment of animals and they responded lauding his words and they began the hashtag end speciesism.
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You know what speciesism is? It's the idea that you as a human think you're better than the dog or the cat or the tree or the bird or the leaf or the amoeba.
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That you as a human think that you are somehow more valuable or let me say it a different way, that you are supposed to be the dominant creature on this planet.
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That's speciesism.
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And PETA says we need to end speciesism and we need to see that really Goldilocks is no more valuable than the goldfish.
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What's interesting is John MacArthur says this about that, he says the same people who want to save the goldfish are usually the people leading the parade to kill babies in the womb.
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So it's an amazing bit of irony.
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But again what happens when you increase the value of nature to the point that they are the same value as humans is you don't bring nature up, you bring humanity down.
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It's not as if we're escalating the value of the trees and the goldfishes and the birds, but what we're doing is we're bringing humanity to the point where we really do believe we're no more than just the stardust.
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Now I want to say this because in case somebody wants to challenge me later on what Joaquin Phoenix says, I do agree at least in one sense that we ought not to mistreat nature and we ought not mistreat animals.
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However, the Bible clearly says we are to take dominion over them and we are to use them for our good.
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We are not to misuse creation but we are to be the stewards of God's creation.
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And that's what we're going to look at today and probably moving into next week because today I'm going to look at chapter 1 verses 24 to 31 and we're going to look at the verses and I want to give you an exegesis of what it means to take dominion and what it means to have dominion and then hopefully if we don't get to it this week, next week we're going to look at how does that apply to today.
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How do we today take dominion and how should we? Because here's the point, there has been two wildly extreme points on this.
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There are some people who make a wildly extreme dominion theology to the point that it becomes sort of a hyper charismatic dangerous view and then there's another view that says no the dominion was lost in the fall and completely eradicated and we are not to take dominion at all.
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And so whether or not we get to that today I don't know because of time and because I sort of have this internal clock and when I get to where I'm done I just sort of ramp down and I've got a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it.
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So we're going to begin though by reading the text.
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So if you have your Bibles open we're going to read verses 24 down to 31.
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We've raised the lights so everyone can see their Bibles and I want to invite you to stand because we give honor and reverence to the Word of God by standing as it is read.
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And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.
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And it was so.
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And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind.
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And God saw that it was good.
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Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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So God created man in His own image.
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In the image of God He created him male and female.
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He created them.
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And God blessed them.
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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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
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And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth and every tree with seed and its fruit.
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You shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life.
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I have given every green plant for food.
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And it was so.
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And God saw everything that He had made.
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And behold, it was very good.
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And there was evening.
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And there was morning.
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The sixth day.
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Father God, thank You for Your Word.
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May You keep me from error as I preach.
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May You glorify Yourself and save souls as You will.
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Glorify Yourself by drawing people to Yourself.
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Glorify Yourself in the proclamation of Your Word.
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May Your Holy Spirit be the teacher.
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May I increase.
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May He.
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May Christ increase.
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May I decrease, Lord, in this place.
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In Christ's name, Amen.
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As the ones who are made in the image of God, mankind does have a unique place of dominance and priority in the created order.
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Only until very, very recently was this a debate.
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It's long been understood that mankind is the dominant species in the world.
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And it's not because we're the strongest.
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There are many animals that are capable in their strength to overbear us and overcome us simply by the sheer force of the strength of their muscles.
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Apes and orangutans have so much more muscle ability and capability compared to us that it's not even really to be compared.
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And there are a lot of animals that do pose a great threat to us when they are around us.
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The animal that kills more people every year, people often get afraid of things like sharks or snakes.
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The animal that kills more people every year is the hippopotamus of all things.
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You often think of a hippo as this nice, beautiful sort of regal animal that we see at the zoo.
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They're some dangerous things.
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And so, even though these animals are much stronger than we, even though these animals are much more powerful than we are, these animals are not able to think the way that we are able to think.
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They're not able to reason in the way that men are able to reason.
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And what did we say when we studied the image of God? We said that the image of God is shown forth in several different ways.
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It's shown forth in our morality.
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It's shown forth in our spirituality.
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But it's also shown forth in our intellect.
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I've said this several times, but just as a reminder, there are people who will say, well, there's only about a 1% difference in the DNA between man and ape.
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And I say, yeah, but that 1% is what took us to the moon.
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It's what creates something like a symphony or a skyscraper.
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These are not things that we see in the animal kingdom.
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And you say, well, but, Pastor, there are animals that do amazing things.
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You know, beavers make dams.
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Yes, but it's nothing in consideration to what man has been able to do.
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Not even really to be compared with what man has done.
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We have the dominant and prioritized place in the created order because it is the way that God designed it.
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And we see this on day 6 announced by God.
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We've studied the creation days at length.
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We've seen what happened on each successive creation day.
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We have shown that there's a pattern between days 1, 2, and 3, and days 4, 5, and 6.
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On day 1, God creates day and night, light and darkness.
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And then on day 4, he creates the sun, moon, and the stars, that which would govern light and day and night and darkness.
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On day 2, God separated the sky from the sea below.
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And on day 5, he put the birds in the sky, and he put the fish in the sea below.
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So there's a parallel between days 1 and days 4, and there's a parallel between days 2 and day 5 because God is establishing an arena, and then he's filling that arena.
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First, it was the arena of the sky, and the moon and the stars fill the sky.
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Then it was the arena of the atmosphere and the water, and he fills those with birds, and he fills the water with fish.
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But then on the third day, he created land, and he separated the waters, and he created this living space that was going to produce all kinds of trees and flowers and fruit-yielding plants and vegetable-yielding plants were going to begin to give birth out of the ground.
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And he did that on day 3 because he was making preparation for day 6.
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It was on day 6 that he creates the creatures that would inhabit the dry land.
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And we read through day 6 just a minute ago.
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We saw that he created 3 types of land animals.
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He created what were referred to as, in the ESV, the cattle, the beasts, and the creeping things.
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Now, that is not a normal way that we would separate animals.
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Normally, how we separate animals, is we say there are animals that are domesticated, and there are animals that are wild, right? Like, if you have a dog, or if you have a cat, or if you have a hamster, or if, heaven forbid, you have a snake in your home.
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I want to pray for you.
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No.
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But those are domesticated animals.
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And then you have the wild animals.
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And that's normally how we define the 2 different types of animals in our world.
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But the Bible, in this sense, gives us a 3rd type.
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It says there are the cattle, which I believe is Moses' way of describing domesticated animals.
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The animals that men had used and had taken in.
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These were what God had created, those animals that were going to be useful.
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And they were going to be kept by the men for their use.
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Those are the domesticated cattle.
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That's that section.
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But then I think he separates wild animals between the animals that are the beasts, the big ones, and the ones that are the creepy crawlies, the small ones.
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Why would he separate that? I don't have an answer that's better than simply because he wanted to.
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Because that's the way God wanted to describe them to us.
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But I do think there still we see a difference between the domestic and the wild.
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The domestic would be the cattle.
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The wild would be the great beasts and the creeping things that creep upon the ground.
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But notice this.
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Not one of those things, whether it's cattle or the great beasts or the creepy crawlies, not one of them is made in the image of God.
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None of them are.
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None of those animals, whether they're going to be used for filling the stalls of the barns or whether they're going to be used for filling the forest, none of them bears the image of Almighty God.
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Beginning at verse 26, we see God describing the creation of man and we see Him determining His will for man.
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I want you to look again.
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I know we've looked at verse 26 a few times, but I want to show you something that I don't think we've looked at yet.
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There's so much in the Word of God.
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We can mine it forever, never reach the bottom.
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So just consider this.
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It says this, Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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Now we've already discussed what it means to be made in the image of God, but notice here that He says, Let us make man in our image and we've already talked about the fact that I do believe this is a veiled reference to what we would later learn about God and that God is a triune God, that God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, three in one.
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He is one being who exists in three persons and there's an inter-Trinitarian relationship that has been in all eternity.
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God has always been in relationship with Himself.
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You say, well why does that matter, Pastor? Because this is the first time in our study of Genesis that we see God in a consultation.
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It's as if He's been going along, Let there be, let there be, let there be, and now He says, but wait, we're going to do this thing and it's a different thing.
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We've spoken all the rest of these things into existence, but now we're going to stop and we're going to say this, Let us do this.
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Calvin, again, I quote him in his commentary here, he says, Up until this point God has been introducing a command, but now He approaches in a consultation.
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God might have commanded by His bare word and His wish be done, but He chose to give this tribute to the excellency of man that He would in a manner enter into a consultation concerning His creation.
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But here's the big question, Calvin, who is He consulting? Who does God consult with? Some people believe when God says, Let us make man in our image, that He's consulting with the angels.
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There's nothing in the Bible that would indicate that God is consulting and asking the opinion of other created beings.
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Some people think that He's consulting with the earth, as if the earth itself was personal, but that's not what it's saying either.
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Listen again to Calvin as he says this, Since the Lord needs no counselor, there can be no doubt that He consulted with Himself.
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God has no one over Him from which He has to get permission.
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He has no one beside Him for which He has to come and draw together a coalition.
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But God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit together are able to say, Let us do this.
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And what are we going to do? We are going to create man in our image.
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Man will be created special and unique and with a purpose that is different from all of the other animals.
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He gave commands to the other animals.
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He gave a direction to the other animals.
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If you go back up, He blessed the birds, Be fruitful and multiply.
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It's very similar to what He says to man.
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But He does not give to any other animal this specific thing.
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And that is the specific dominion over all the earth.
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Greg Gilbert says this in an article in Ligonier Ministries.
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He says this, he says, Besides living in fellowship with God, Adam and Eve were given the job of ruling over and caring for His creation as, and this is a strange word, but hang with me, as vice regents.
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Thus God told them that they were to subdue the earth and have dominion over it, not by abusing it, not by terrorizing it, but by working it and keeping it.
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And in doing so, they would communicate to all creation the love and power and goodness of the Creator.
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Adam and Eve had the job of bearing the image of God to the rest of creation.
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They had the job of standing in the place of Yahweh for the rest of creation and giving it order and giving it dominion and subduing it and taking over and being the image bearers of God in the world.
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Now we're not saying they were little gods.
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You know, some theologies teach that man is a little god.
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No, because the separation between man and God is so far, you can't make any type of connection to say that man is godlike or man is deified or anything like that.
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So don't think that that's what I'm saying.
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That's not what I'm saying.
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What I am saying is this.
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God gave man a role in the world.
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God gave man this role.
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He said, I'm going to create man to have rule over the world.
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I'm going to create man so that in ruling as my image, he will demonstrate me to the world in his goodness because I am good.
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And so man will reflect.
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What is an image? It's a reflection.
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Again, I'm in no way creating any type of comparison between God and man, but I'm saying this is why God created man.
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He created man to have this rule and have this authority, have this dominion for the purpose of demonstrating God's image to the rest of the creation.
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He is not a little deity, but he is endowed with authority from God.
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So God determines this.
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This is verse 26.
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I am going to do this.
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This is what we are going to do in speaking within the inner Trinitarian language.
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It will be a man made in our image.
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Now, verse 27 and 28, God does it.
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Verse 26, he's having that consultation.
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Verse 27, it's happening.
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So God created.
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That's the verb.
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God did this.
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So God created man in his own image.
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Now stop right there.
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When we get to chapter 2, we're going to see that that little phrase, God created man in his image, there's actually a lot more to it because he actually created man.
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He put man in a garden and then he let man realize that he was alone and he saw that he was alone and even none of the other animals were fit to be a mate for him and so God put him to sleep and God created from his rib a woman and out of that woman there came the first married couple, the first family.
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We see that.
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Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, the two shall become one flesh.
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We see that in Genesis 2.
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What's funny is all that in Genesis 1 is capsulated in the phrase God created man in his own image.
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So we're going to see later how it happened but this is more the issue of why.
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So God created man in his own image in the image he created him.
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Male and female he created them and God 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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
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This is the second time in the Bible, in the book of Genesis that we see the word blessing.
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The first time was in verse 22.
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If you look back at verse 22 it says God blessed the birds and he said be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the seas and the fish.
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It was the birds and the fish and he multiplied them and the blessing was, get this and this is interesting, the blessing is, and again this is how I understand it, the awesome privilege of procreation.
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It's the awesome privilege of multiplication through procreation.
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God blessed them with the ability to multiply.
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God blessed them with the ability to fill the earth.
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Birds can fill the earth with other birds.
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Fish can fill the seas with other fish and that's why we continue to have a constant ability to eat fish because the fish continue to multiply.
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Now we weren't eating fish at this point, we'll get back to that in a minute, but the point is this multiplication is continuing to happen and man is called to multiply.
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He's given the privilege, the blessing of procreation.
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Children are a blessing from the Lord.
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Did you know that? And I don't want to take too much of a side note on this, but it seems like more and more and more and more our culture has tried to make children a curse.
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You know what the Bible actually says? It says debt is a curse and children are a blessing.
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We apply for the curse, but we don't want the blessing.
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Fill the earth.
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That's the blessing.
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And notice it's only given to Adam and Eve.
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This blessing is given to Adam and Eve because there ain't no other people.
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It's not like God made Adam and Eve and Steve and Deborah and John and Janie.
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God made one man and he made one woman and there were no spares.
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It's interesting because later when we see Adam's sin, Adam looks to God and he says, the woman whom thou hast given me, where he blames Eve and he blames God because you gave me her and she caused this whole sin problem to come upon me.
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God didn't allow for that because Adam was responsible for himself and he was responsible for his wife.
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But notice there's no one else for Adam to point to.
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It's Adam, it's Eve and that's it.
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Every one of us are a descendant of that first two pair.
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Not two pair.
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That first pair.
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Two pair is a redundancy.
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That first two people.
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We are their children.
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When God gave them the ability to procreate, even after the fall, that did not go away.
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And by the way, that's going to go into when I talk about next week when we go into how the dominion mandates.
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Some people believe it's completely destroyed.
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I don't believe it's completely destroyed because the command to fill and multiply has not been destroyed either.
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And they fit together.
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If you believe one's destroyed, why wasn't the other one destroyed? Why didn't God just cut Adam and Eve off and start a new mankind? Because that command that he gave to them perpetuates to their children and to their children's children and down to us.
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We have the command to be fruitful and multiply.
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And without the blessing of multiplication, you and I wouldn't be here.
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But in this blessing, God adds a statement.
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He says, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.
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That's the word that's new because he said in verse 26 he's going to make man and man's going to have dominion over the fish and over the birds and over the creeping things.
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But now he's actually giving the active verb subdue it.
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Having dominion, that's what they have, but subduing is what they do.
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Take over is what the word subdue means.
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It means bring it into subjection.
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If you wanted to use another biblical example, when Joshua went in and he took over the promised land, the same word is used.
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He went and subdued the promised land.
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Now what's the difference between the situation with Joshua and the situation with Adam and Eve is the world at the time of Adam and Eve is not actively opposing them.
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The time for Joshua is a war.
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He's at war with people who are opposing him, with a world that's opposing him.
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He's in a situation that's different.
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But the word is the same because the word simply means to take ownership, to take rulership, to subdue it.
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That was the right and responsibility of Adam and Eve.
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Take control, be in charge, have direction over.
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You are God's image bearer, therefore act like it.
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And then in verse 29, it seems like it comes out of nowhere, but we have this statement about the plants providing food.
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And some people might say, well, pastor, why don't you stop the sermon here and then we'll go talk about the food.
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Here's what you need to understand.
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This is all tied up in this dominion command.
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It's all tied up in this command to subdue the earth because notice what verse 29 says.
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It says, and God said, behold, I have given you, who is he speaking to? He's still speaking to man.
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He said, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit.
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You shall have them for food.
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Then he goes on to say and to every beast of the earth and every bird of the heaven and to everything that creeps in the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.
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And you say, well, how does that fit into what he just said? This, I believe, this is the moment where God is showing Adam and Eve that while you will have dominion, while you will subdue this earth, I am still the one who's ultimately in control because I'm the one that's going to provide for you the food from the earth.
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I will cause the food to grow for you.
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I will be the one.
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You realize this, there's not a farmer in the world who can cause food to grow.
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He can plant and he can hope, but only God can cause a seed to grow.
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There's not a doctor in the world that can heal anything, in a sense.
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He puts the medicine in, he does the surgeries, but ultimately it's God who will bring the healing because there have been two people with the same sickness, both got the same medicine, one died, one didn't.
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Who's in control? Who has ultimate dominion? God.
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And so by saying you're going to take dominion and you're going to subdue the earth, understand this though, the earth's going to feed you and it's going to feed you because I'm the one who's commanding it to feed you.
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I'm the one who you ultimately have to rely upon because even though you're given a sort of pseudo-authority here, not pseudo because that means false, sub-authority, that's the word I was trying to get around to.
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You're getting a sub-authority, you're getting a vice-regency, you're getting a position of power.
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Do not allow this position of power to help you in some way think about abandoning me.
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Why did Adam and Eve abandon God? Because they wanted to be their own God.
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What does it say? What did the devil say to Eve? God knows in the day that you eat of it you will be like him.
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Not in the way you're supposed to be like him and that's the thing that kills me is we're supposed to be like God, we're supposed to take dominion, we're supposed to subdue and we're supposed to be his image bearers.
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We're supposed to be like God in all the good ways but Adam and Eve didn't want to be like God in the good ways.
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They wanted to be like God in the fact that they wanted to have ultimate autonomy and authority over themselves.
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They did not want to bow the knee to their creator.
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They did not want to bow the knee to the one who truly has dominion.
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They were not going to be subdued by Him who subdues all things.
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That's the problem with this whole conversation of dominion.
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If you don't understand that any dominion that we have is only because God has given it to us and He is the ultimate one who has dominion over all things.
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If you don't understand that then you will run headlong into pride and arrogancy and haughtiness and what does the Bible say? The Bible says there are six things that God hates, seven are an abomination to Him and the first one is a prideful look.
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The pride of man causes Him to eat of the tree.
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The pride of man causes Him to refuse to bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The pride of man causes Him to see this passage about dominion and see that it's all about lifting Him up rather than Him looking up and seeing Him who is ultimately the dominion keeper and saying I have been put here to image you.
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I'm not here to do my will but I'm here to do your will.
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I'm not here to see myself satisfied.
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I'm here to see you glorified.
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I'm not here to have my dominion expressed in my little kingdom but I am here to see the kingdom of God go to all the world.
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That's the reason why we were made to demonstrate the kingdom of God in imaging God to the world.
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And so God gives them the authority to do that.
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Have dominion.
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Subdue the earth and in doing so you will show me to the world.
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Adam had dominion but it was not an unlimited dominion.
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He was not independent of God.
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He couldn't even eat except that God provided him the food.
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Here's the thing and I don't want to go because I've got to start drawing to a close but remember a few weeks ago I was talking about how man was different prior to the fall and I think that even physiologically there have been some differences because the Bible says after the fall a lot of things changed.
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The world changed.
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Now there was going to be a battle with the environment and we're going to fight this battle with the environment and thorns and things like that.
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One of the things that I believe and I think this text bears it out is that man was vegetarian prior to the fall.
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If you look at verses 29 and 30 it says that God tells him I've given them every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth and I've given them the seed and its fruit and I've given it to them for food and then he says I've given the same for the animals.
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The animals would have eaten.