As recorded in Genesis 1-2, God created everything that exists from nothing. From His own resources and in ways perfectly consistent with His nature, God created, and everything that has been made reflects aspects of His eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20). For six days, God created light, dark, time, seasons, land, water, sky, and “the fullness thereof,” and pronounced it all good.
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Then, as God completed His creative work on the sixth day, the Scriptures tell us that God “created man in His own image, in the image of God He created Him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27, ESV) Following this, He proclaimed that everything was “very good” (1:31). In this, all that God intended to create on the earth was complete (2:1), and having completed it all, He rested and sanctified the seventh day, the Sabbath.
In Genesis 1:28-30, God speaks to the people He made, giving them responsibilities to steward the creation and to achieve a variety of tasks in His name. These tasks facilitate fullness, fruitfulness and multiplication, but the text of Genesis does not elaborate on every way in which this work of stewardship for the increase of fullness and fruitfulness on the earth should be accomplished. Instead, the hint about how humanity was to accomplish this formidable task is found in whose image we bear.
As image bearers, we are called by God for purposes of stewardship, fruitfulness, and multiplication to learn from God’s work of creation as we act in creative ways with what God has provided to fulfill God’s mission for us. We were created to create!
In Jesus Christ, we have a powerful example of what is possible when humanity is fully empowered and awakened by the indwelling Spirit of God. We also have the necessary cleansing from sin and shame so we can properly steward the resources with which we have been entrusted. By Christ’s perfect life, atoning death, and glorious resurrection, we now have the power to overcome the sin which corrupts our creative acts for God’s mission.
In the coming week, we will journey together as we pray and consider how God is calling us to use the creativity and resources He has given us to take the riches of the Gospel in Jesus Christ and utilize them for our sanctification and the saving of the world through Him. The world needs us because it needs Him. Our calling is to courageously embody His Kingdom and preach His unchanging and eternal Word through all the creative means at our disposal which do not promote falsehood or excuse sin. I pray you will be blessed, confronted, corrected, encouraged, and equipped in our shared work of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ until He returns through our journey together this week.
For His glory and Kingdom, and for our good,
Nick
Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Romans 1:20
20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, `even' his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse:
Genesis 1:27
27 And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Genesis 1:28-30
28 And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 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 moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food:
30 and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, `I have given' every green herb for food: and it was so.