What Is Dominion Over the Earth?

Well, good afternoon brethren. Welcome to Sabbath services. Wonderful to see you all on such a beautiful spring day we’re having here at headquarters in springtime. Well, it’s the time of year that you’re probably all going to assume what I’m going to say next. Yes, that’s true. I just love springtime, watching the trees shoot forth, the flowers come out, nature come back alive after being, especially here in this part of Ohio, in this part of the world where everything goes dormant for months and goes gray and brown and covered in snow. To see life come back to the campus, in particular, but just to God’s creation around us.

It’s such a wonderful time of year, such an enjoyable time of year. And the time of year that can take a moment and just pause, fills you with awe looking at God’s creation, looking at all the energy that just bursts forth from all the trees, from all plant life, even animal life and all of God’s creation. It’s just wonderful to see, amazing to see truly the power of God. A miracle that God performs each spring, you could say. And it just puts you in awe of our Creator. And it is truly a wonderful time. Well, my topic today will cover, in a sense, creation nature in a certain aspect. I want to talk about what might be seemingly a contradiction in the Bible. Seemingly something, a set of verses that might oppose each other.

And to start, let’s turn to Genesis one and verse twenty-six. Genesis one and verse twenty-six. We’re just at the end of the creation week. God is recreating the Earth, renewing the Earth. And we’ll read a couple of verses. Verse twenty-six. “And 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 fowl of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” God says, “Let them have dominion.” Go down to verse twenty-eight. Read a little further. “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 fowl of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

So, again, God repeats Himself for emphasis, says we are to have dominion over the earth. We are to subdue it. Well, in those two words, in both verses, dominion is the same. What dominion means, tread down, subjugate, prevail against, reign, rule over, and subdue means tread down, disregard. So disregard all that He lists in both verses. All of His creation, conquer it, subjugate it, bring it into bondage. God’s instruction to all of mankind here to the original couple, the Adam and Eve, but to all of us that are reading it and all that have read it since, instruction. To bring into bondage all of creation, to force, to keep it under, to bring into subjugation.

Those are powerful words. That’s a strong picture, a strong instruction that God gives us, what we must do to His creation. It looks like it gives us also a broad ability to do what He instructs. Seems simple. But let’s go all the way to the other end of the Bible. It’s interesting how, in this particular case, these two verses almost book and God’s instruction book to us. Let’s go to Revelation eleven and verse eighteen. All the way near the end. I believe this chapter in particular, this is the end of the chapters talking about the beginning of the kingdom, the end of the great tribulation, the day of the Lord.

So big things are going on, big changes. And God makes a statement at the end of verse eighteen. And let’s read it, and we’ll read the whole verse. “And the nations were angry and Your wrath,” God’s wrath has come, “...and the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that You should give reward unto Your servants, the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear Your name, small and great.” So this is a positive time, too, of course, when God at the end here.

But here is what I want to focus on, “And should destroy them which destroy the earth.” So we have two scriptures. One at the beginning of the Bible that tells all of mankind to have dominion over creation. To bring creation into bondage. To subjugate it. To tread it down. And at the very end, you could say, at a particular point in the day of the Lord, so we understand that before the Millennium begins, God will destroy those that have destroyed the earth. Well, how can you have dominion? How can you bring into bondage, and then, in a sense, be destroyed for destroying the earth? What was God’s true intent?

Before we go further, let’s just look at the word, destroy. Just, rot thoroughly, to ruin, to corrupt, to perish, to remove, to make as naught. So those are kind of opposing. So God’s going to punish those that destroyed the earth. And sometimes, you can look at dominion and subdue and go, it says, “Bring into bondage. It’s forced, to keep under.” How does this all work together? So this afternoon, we’re going to look at what did God mean when he gave man dominion over the earth. What was God’s intent? What was God’s mind in the matter? And we’ll see how, actually, these two verses work together.

Bring us insight into how God thinks, how God ultimately wants us to think. Now, this is one example, I would say, the two verses in Genesis where God tells man to have dominion over the earth. The mankind and human nature has the tendency, and this is an example of it, of taking a scripture and using it for license to do what man wants to do, not what God wants to do. There are other examples in the scripture. In the scripture, the man has used, society has used for license, for good, but mostly for bad, for its own purpose. Distorts God’s scriptures, so they can nearly take free rein to whatever that scripture is. It’s an element of human nature.

“Oh, look, this one scripture all by itself gives me authority to put the earth into bondage, to put creation into the way, I, mankind, wants it to look like.” What are some of the examples that, over the last six-thousand years, man has given us to look at when it does, when it thinks it is right, when it thinks that having dominion over the earth, doing things its own way? I’m sure we’ve all heard of Easter Island in the South Pacific. Yes, a nation of people cut off from God and not knowing God, not knowing God’s laws, God’s purpose. What did they do? They overreached. They deforested the entire island for wrong purpose.

And what happened to the society? The society collapsed. They had massive famine. Population decreased tremendously. Here’s man’s example of, you could say, they had dominion over that island. They subjugated the island. They removed every tree from that island. The rain stopped. The food stopped. Without the trees, they couldn’t build canoes to go fishing in the water to feed themselves. But this is mankind having dominion, free rein. Think of the Dust Bowl in the nineteen-thirties. We’ve all heard about it in school, in history class, or other classes. Mankind focused on a particular endeavor, focused on a particular form of greed, you could say. And the ultimate outcome, not caring for that part of the world as necessary.

And you had massive dust storms. You had farms go to waste, and over four-hundred-thousand people were displaced, had to immigrate to other parts of the United States just because man had dominion. Turned an area of the prairies, an area of the center of North America into a farm with bad consequences, with not applying God’s laws. But they had a certain form of dominion. Man did their own thing. You would think somebody here close to home in Northeast Ohio where, unfortunately, the nearby city of Cleveland is not always known for good things. And the river that’s there, the Cuyahoga River, unfortunately, is known for catching fire. In the sixties, it caught fire over eight times.

You could say, “Well, man was having dominion.” They had their factories, they were controlling nature, they were controlling God’s creation. They were busy making money or doing whatever they were doing and pouring toxins and chemicals into a river that God made, ultimately, a river that God made to have life. And life and fire usually don’t match, usually don’t go together. but it was an example, free rein of man’s way of doing things and the effect of it, of having a dominion in the wrong way. What about the chemicals we’ve used? It’s got man having free rein over creation. Think of DDT, a great chemical. I don’t say that in a truthful sense, a great chemical at killing things, of removing insects. Great.

So good. Let’s apply it. It’s only harmful to the insects. Well, it’s also harmful to birds, ultimately, making the shells of eggs brittle and birds not being able to reproduce. But man was having dominion control, subjugating grueling over the insects and its crops. We’ve all heard about glyphosate or more commonly known as Roundup, having dominion over the weeds, having dominion over our crops. This is man’s way of doing things for more efficiency, for better control. And what it is amazing is where glyphosate originates as a sewer cleaner, as a pipe cleaner. They noticed when they had first made the chemical in the thirties and forties to clean pipes that it also killed vegetation on the outflow of these pipes.

So, if they formulated it right, they could maybe use it on farms, around our homes, on our driveways, etcetera, etcetera. But here’s man’s greed or man’s dominion of God’s creation just because spraying once a year wasn’t enough in sales in a sense. This is one of the most horrible things, in some ways, ever read about the use of a chemical on our food system. Goes back... I’m giving examples now of man’s dominion over the earth. Man’s dominion over God’s creation, and this is in the prairies or the Midwest of Canada, the center of Canada where a lot of wheat is growing. The weather can be unpredictable. It can snow just before the wheat is ready to harvest.

So, the smart men and the smart bean counters at the chemical companies could figure out if we sprayed a second time with glyphosate, this time the wheat crop. So the wheat crop uniformly goes dormant or uniformly dies before harvest. Then we can program that and do that before the weather changes, or the weather is unpredictable. And don’t worry, this is man figuring all they can out about God’s creation. We’ll do it at the right time. The plant won’t take up the chemical into the wheat. It won’t be in the wheat when it’s produced into bread, or cereals, or other uses. Don’t worry, it will do it at the right time, that it won’t be absorbed. We know that it does.

But just for the sake of making things more efficient, for the sake of selling another round of spray to all the farmers, for the sake of profit, for the sake of control and dominion in a sense, man is spraying a chemical that takes life on our wheat crops. Man’s examples, there are many, many more. You’ve all heard of the Garbage Patch in the Northern Pacific and how large it is. It’s man not caring, man not thinking. It may get to a point about that, a scripture about that. In the end, it’s just the last example, I heard it recently, and it strikes me as we talk about what is God’s mind on dominion over the earth? What did He intend for us? What is His real instruction?

Not the examples that we’ve just heard about, but this one example is just kind of, to me, the biggest one or the one that’s most easy to be reminded of how mankind has things backwards sometimes. We all know about Amazon. We all use Amazon regularly. It’s a great... It’s an interesting company. It’s a profitable company. It makes many parts of our lives easier. Now, this company is worth more money than the entirety of the Amazon Rainforest. Now, that should all strike us, “Well, of course, it’s a business. It makes money. It has value. It should make sense,” but how does that possibly make sense? That’s where mankind’s system is broken.

Mankind’s government and way of valuing things is off. The entirety of the Amazon Rainforest that is full of life, full of God’s creation. Maybe not used exactly the way God had intended. Maybe not having the proper dominion over it, but it’s the lungs of the earth. Without it, there isn’t rain in many areas of the world. Without it, there isn’t food in many areas of the world. People would die. Starvation would ensue, but the way man values things, a company that delivers packages for us to make our lives a little more convenient, is valued more than something a whole area gives us life. God’s creation, ultimately.

Man’s way of having dominion is broken. Let’s learn about what did God truly intend when he told us to have dominion. We’ll learn that dominion is not ownership. Let’s go to Leviticus twenty-five, twenty-three. Dominion is not complete control without parameters and instruction. And let’s start in Leviticus twenty-five, twenty-three. And here, I’m at the... It’s a long chapter, Leviticus twenty-five. We’re in the middle of it here in verse twenty-three. We’re talking about the year of Jubilee. But you want to focus on this one verse, “The land shall not be sold forever for the land is mine.” This is God talking to Israel. God talking to us. His word as we read it.

“For the land is mine.” The earth is mine. The land that you stand on is mine. “For you are strangers and sojourners with me.” We’re strangers in this land. We’re sojourners in this land, travelers in this land with God. It’s interesting that He says with Me, so that’s with Him walking with Him, doing things the way He wants to do them. The way He instructs us, but just simply, the land is God’s. It’s not ours. Let’s go to Psalm twenty-four. God makes that statement. “The land is mine.” In the United States, we have property rights. We are a freedom-loving people, and it’s ingrained in our society that you own land.

That land is yours, and you can do almost whatever you want to do to it. It is yours. That’s not how God looks at it. God says, “The land is mine.” And if the land is God’s, it comes with a set of instructions, a set of ways on how to look after it. It truly isn’t the land is our own if we own it in man’s world. Psalm twenty-four, and we’ll read a few verses, starting in verse one. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein, for He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.” Just read the first two verses. For God has founded it upon the seas. He made it. He made it all. And He says in verse one, the earth is the Lord’s, the entirety of it, the fullness, everything that is in the earth is God’s.

And He built it, He made it. And they that dwell therein, of course, we think about us, we dwell in the earth, but all of God’s creation, creatures that dwell in the earth, are His. Now, if He’s the owner, immediately in my mind is, you got to be careful when you’re not the owner and God is the owner. Maybe we’ve borrowed a thing or two or rented a home or two. When you don’t own it, when you don’t own the item that you borrowed, you naturally should, and we do, take better care of things in a way. We have a different level of responsibility. Let’s go to Psalm eight and verse six to eight.

A few more scriptures on how God looks at the earth. Describe what dominion is, who’s the earth is. Verse six we’ll read. “You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands.” So again, God’s instruction. We have dominion over His works. We’re going to learn about what that is. “You have put all things under His feet.” So, He’s delegated responsibility, He’s delegated authority to us. “All sheep and oxen, ye, the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passes through the paths of the sea.” Interesting, the paths of the sea, the currents of the sea. You look at a map and how vast those are.

Here God would be teaching David about them, inspiring the scripture, teaching how what God knew before man knew it. Just the currents that go through all the oceans. But here, God gives us dominion over everything, and all of it is ultimately His. Let’s go to First Corinthians four and verse two. We’ve seen what we have dominion over. We see who ultimately the owner is, God is. And there will be a few scriptures like this one in particular, First Corinthians four and verse two, that in this message we’re looking at these scriptures through a particular lens, a lens to see what God thinks, what God minds is about caring for His creation.

Some of the scriptures we’ll look at apply in many, many different ways and may be more common in other uses. But here, let’s look at it and think about we’ve been given dominion over the earth, and ultimately, God is the owner of it. But what is an instruction to God? Let’s read First Corinthians four, an instruction from God. Let’s read First Corinthians four and verse two. “Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful.” If we are stewards, and stewards can be... you know, the Greek there is a manager, it’s about economics. But if we are stewards of the earth, we’re given dominion over the earth, God has delegated us authority over it, we are to be found faithful.

We are to be found faithful in all our responsibilities. I have a note in my margin that I made from one of the classes, Ambassador Center classes, I made all of our responsibilities. One responsibility, why we look at the scripture today, our responsibility over God’s earth, over God’s creation. We are to be good stewards. We are to be found faithful with what God gives us. It’s a lens we may use for different scriptures. So we know the earth is God, He owns it, He’s given us dominion to look after it, but we are to be wise stewards. Let’s go to Genesis two and verse fifteen. Here, it’s shortly after the earlier verses we read, God gives what could be His first instructions, first commandments, to Adam and Eve. Adam, in particular, I believe, at this point.

Now, let’s read it. What is God’s instruction to us, ultimately to all of mankind? Genesis two and verse fifteen. “And the Lord took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress and to keep it.” Just reading verse fifteen. At the end of it, so He put the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress and to keep it. So it’s an instruction. God put man there to do those two things. Well, what are those two things? And it expounds further on what dominion means. To dress means to work, serve, keep in bondage, keep in control, compel, compel to do, dress, execute, husbandman-ship, taking care of, keep, bring to pass. To dress is working and keep. Keep is an interesting word here.

Read it recently in other instances, but it’s to hedge about, to guard, to protect, to attend to, to be circumspect, to take heed, to preserve, to save. It’s a little different. It expands the definitions that we read about having dominion and subdue. But here to keep, to preserve, to save, to be circumspect, to be aware, to think things through when it comes to looking after the Garden of Eden, to looking after God’s creation, to guard it. If you’re guarding something, it’s usually if you’re guarding something from damage or hurt, to protect it. God’s instruction to us, to all of mankind, is to protect it.

Now, how is spraying an insecticide, DDT, on a crop protecting God’s creation? You’re killing parts of God’s creation while you’re doing that. How is that protect, amongst other things? That is a clear instruction to keep the garden, to guard it, to protect it. It expands what dominion is. It’s not just for their own false or misguided use, as the Polynesians on the Easter Island did, to an extreme that brought ultimately end to their society. What is God’s instructions for care? Rest for creation. Let’s go to Leviticus. And we’re in Genesis. We’re in the front of the Bible. Let’s go to Leviticus twenty-five. Here’s maybe some of those verses that I referenced that we’d read in other contexts for other instruction.

Let’s read it in the light of how does God want us to care for the earth, care for His creation. Leviticus twenty-five, verse three. Leviticus twenty-five and verse three, it’s talking about the Sabbath rest on the earth, the seven-year cycle here. So, verse three, we break into the context. “Six years thou shall sow your field. Six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather the fruit thereof. But on the seventh year, shall be a Sabbath rest unto the land, a Sabbath for the Lord, that you shall neither sow the field nor prune your vineyard.” It’s both sowing and pruning, so everything can essentially grow the way it’s intended, grow without control, grow without being hemmed in.

Verse five, “That which grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap, neither shall you gather the grapes of the vine undressed, for it is a year of rest unto the land.” So all of creation gets to rest for an entire year. In a sense, everything that God has made gets to rest. “And the Sabbath of the land shall be meat for you, for they, and for your servant, and for your maid, and for your hired servant, and for your stranger, the sojourns with you.” So to rest for everyone, it’s all in your land. And verse seven, this is the part I want to focus on in this particular case, “For your cattle and for your beasts that are in your land shall all the increase thereof be meat.” So the cattle and the beasts are also to rest.

And in that particular time, the cattle with the beast would be used to turn over the soil to plow the ground, to grind the grain. They’re all to rest. Every part of God’s creation is to rest. It’s different than how man will and does at twenty-four/seven harvest and subjugation and exploitation of God’s creation. God wants the entirety to rest, from us to the beasts, for an entire year. Let’s go to Exodus twenty-three and verse ten, read some more about the verses on resting. Exodus twenty-three and verse ten. Again, we’re talking about the seven years.

“And six years, you shall sow your land and shall gather the fruit throughout, but the seventh year, you shall let it rest and lie still, and the poor of your people may eat and what they leave, the beast of the field shall eat. And in a like manner, they shall deal with thy vineyard and with your olive yard.” So, likewise, the rest of your farm or rest of your husbandry. But what’s interesting here that the poor of the people may eat, so the poor of the land can eat, can harvest freely, whatever grows, and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. So all of God’s creation can benefit from the Sabbath rest, not just us. God’s mind is to care for His earth, care for His creation as well.

And in verse twelve, we read about the Sabbath day. “Six days you shall work. And on the seventh day, you shall rest your ox, and your ass may rest, your beasts, and the son of your handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.” Your animals rest, too, on the Sabbath, your beasts of burden would rest. Now, imagine in our day and age, we don’t necessarily have beasts of burden. It’s usually an automobile is parked in our garage, not an ox or a horse to move our wagon or our chariot. We have an engine, and we have other, you could say, beasts of burdens throughout our society throughout that gives us the modern conveniences that we have.

Take a moment to imagine what would it be like if everything rested from sunset to sunset on the Sabbath? What quiet we would enjoy that Sabbath morning, what still we would hear that Sabbath morning, and what actually music would we hear when we hear God’s creation around us, especially this time of year, the birds, the songbirds have flown back from the tropics, and they’re back around us as they travel north. And we hear them in the morning again. But imagine a Sabbath day that all is at still and all is at rests that all our modern beasts of burden are resting, too. What would that be like? What will that be like?

And what does that show of the mind of God and what He wants His creation to do every seven days as well? The care that He wants all of his creation to be at rest in peace on the Sabbath day. A little different than the dominion that man puts on earth today, where we work, we labor around the clock. We have engines and machines and society that never stops, factories that never turn off their fires, things that never stop and continue going. What will it be like? That’s God’s instruction to us, ultimately. And, no, we can’t implement that in this age. We know we’re all going to be a part of implementing it in an age to come when the kingdom is here.

Let’s learn about some of God’s care instructions for creation. Let’s go to Exodus twenty-three. We’re actually there. Earlier on in the chapter. Just twenty-three and verse four and five. We’ll read both scriptures. “If you meet your enemy’s ox or enemy’s donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again. If you see the ass of him that hates you lying under the burden,” so an overburden, “and would forbear to help him, you shall surely help him.” It’s God’s instruction. So it’s just interesting. If your neighbor’s beast goes astray, you’re supposed to help them, bring it back. You’re supposed to care for them even though it’s not yours in a sense.

Even what’s further, just the mind of God, even if you’re not getting along with your neighbor. Things just aren’t going well, and you don’t really like helping him out that much and his beast goes astray. God’s care for His creation is that you unburden that neighbor you’re not getting along with too well, that enemy of yours in your own mind, more than likely in our own way that somehow we don’t get along with each other. What does God say? “No, you help that animal out.” You care for God’s creation. You unburden them. You help them back. Just the mind of God. Your care, our care for His creation doesn’t stop because, “Oh, that’s someone else’s animal.”

Or, “That person I don’t really care for, that person I don’t really like, so I won’t help that out.” How can we apply that in our lives, and how does it show us where God’s mind really is when it comes to caring for creation? Let’s go to Deuteronomy twenty-five. And here this is a scripture I’m sure we’ve all heard from one time to another, but it’s where God is behind it and why God states it. Deuteronomy twenty-five and verse four, a quick verse, “You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn.” So as the ox works, he can eat some of your profit. He can eat some of that corn. He’s working hard. He’s laboring.

The principle that can apply to caring for God’s creation, the principle that can apply when working with others. Principle that applies for an employer-employee relationship. There’s many instruction in those few words. Here, we’re looking at it when it comes to caring for God’s creation. It’s doing work for you, and God says it can eat a little bit of your profit. It’ll work harder. You’ll get more done out of it. Just amazing, God’s mind on it. It’s not dominion in a sense where a dominion, outright punishment. A dominion where that ox better not take anything extra and just work hard. God reminds us. The interesting thing is you wonder, “Well, why would God even put that in the Bible?”

Let’s go to Proverbs twelve and verse ten, another scripture. It helps us see God’s care instructions for His creation. You would think sometimes you’d go, “You know, maybe mankind would figure that out on their own not to muzzle the ox.” God knew better. God knew that us and our human nature, we wouldn’t think of that ourselves. We would muzzle the ox. We wouldn’t let the ox eat the corn as it’s grinding it out. God had to remind us of that. You think, “Wow, that’s easy. We could have thought of that on our own.” Apparently not. Apparently, our human nature would not allow us to see something that would be in a sense common sense.

But here we are in Proverbs twelve and verse ten. Another scripture about God’s mind when it comes to his creation. “And a righteous man regards the life of his beast. But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Just look at the first half. “A righteous man regards the life of his beast.” So caring for what is given to you, in this sense, a beast, an animal, God’s creation. You can expand it to all of God’s creation. It’s part of being righteous. Regarding and caring for an animal is part of being righteous. If you don’t care for God’s creation, it’s not part of being righteous. It brings it to a different level. It expands the seriousness and the responsibility that God gave us when He gave us dominion over the earth.

Let’s go back to Deuteronomy twenty and verse nineteen. Deuteronomy twenty and verse nineteen. Just God’s instructions again, what He cares and thinks about. Deuteronomy twenty. I’m getting there. From verse nineteen. Here, again, you would think no man is greedy. When man goes to war, a man goes to war and annihilates everything. We can often see that in the news today in certain areas of the world that are under a war or under attack. Verse nineteen, “When you shall siege to a city a long time and making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an ax against them for you may eat of them. You shall not cut them down for the tree of the field is a man’s life to employ them in the siege.”

But ultimately, God’s instruction here, the fruit trees, the food-bearing trees, you can’t cut down when you go to war because you’ll need them then, and you’ll need them later. You can’t completely annihilate that area of the earth, that spot of the earth. God’s reminder to us. And how often can we read throughout history? One thing that comes to mind is one of the battles in Carthage, Rome against Carthage, rivaling empires, rivaling cities. And what did the attackers do? They salted the farm fields, so they couldn’t grow crops anymore. That’s not what this scripture says directly, but that would be in direct violation of this command. They made it desolate, so crops couldn’t be grown anymore.

God’s instruction here is a little different than man’s way of having dominion over the earth. Let’s go over a few chapters to Deuteronomy twenty-two, verse six and seven. These verses have been used in a sermonette, and they’re a good set of verses to use in a sermonette, won’t necessarily go that direction with it. But let’s read it, “And if a bird’s nest chance to be there before thee in the way of any tree or on the ground, and there’ll be young ones or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young or upon the eggs, you should not take the dam with the young.” So you got to leave the mother. You can’t take the young.

“But thou shall be wise and let the dam go,” let the mother go, “...and take the young with thee that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days.” So lengthen the days and may be well with you. God instructs men to leave the mother. To leave the mother so there could be future generations. To leave the mother so there could be regeneration. Future options for food. It’s more than just talking about a bird. This is where I talked earlier how man will take.... mankind, we will, human nature, take a scripture and give ourselves license. We sometimes we’ll take a scripture and we’ll apply it, and this is man in society, to a very specific point and miss the bigger picture.

God isn’t only talking about birds in these two scriptures. God isn’t only talking about one particular instance, but having balance in how we use our resources so God’s creation will regenerate and provide us. Provide us what? Long days. Prolong your days. If you apply it broadly, if you apply it beyond just the specific example, God says that it may be well with you, and your days may be prolonged. What a bigger instruction. Then there’s one particular case about birds that can be implied in so many ways and how that expounds the instruction that God gave us in the first chapter of Genesis. Let’s go to Matthew ten and verse twenty-nine.

Just amazing here, Matthew ten and verse twenty-nine. More of an example of how God thinks, and this is, again, the lens we’re looking at this. There’s more going on in this chapter and the verses around it. What God thinks about His creation and how He wants us to think. Let’s just read it. Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine, “And are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father,” without your father knowing.

So two sparrows can be sold for pennies, and one falls on the ground. And the Father, our Father, the Father, our God, our Lord, the ruler of all the universe, He knows that that sparrow fell. He knows it. Think about that. For all the things that a God being, that the Father has to deal with, work with, care about, He knows when a little bird, a tiny bird, in a sense, falls to the ground. The care that He has for His creation should be ultimately the care that we have as well. And we’ve seen caring care instructions. We see that God wants all of creation to rest as man rests. But what happens when you abuse God’s creation, when we take dominion, and we take it to the extent where we start breaking God’s commands?

It brings judgment. Let’s go to Jeremiah two and verse seven, and again, it remind us... we’re looking at this through a certain lens. Yes, a few of these scriptures will go through are prophetic in nature, are future, and forward-looking in nature. But the words that are there can be easily applied to us today, to the society around us we see today. And what I want to say as well, remind us, the laws of nature. Not all of God’s laws of nature are written in the Bible. An easy one would be the law of gravity. We know it exists. We know when we break it, it hurts.

There are many, many other laws of God in nature, in creation, that when broken, bring judgment, bring hurt to mankind, to ourselves, and to the societies around us. Let’s just read Jeremiah two and verse seven. And here is God speaking. “And I brought you into a plentiful country to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof.” So, “I brought you into the promised land.” Maybe in the future, “I brought you into Paradise. I gave you everything. But when you entered, you defiled My land and made My heritage an abomination.” So, when you went into the land, when you went into all that was there, you started breaking laws.

You took dominion to a different level, a level that God did not intend, a level that God did not want. And God says, “You defiled My land.” We know what we’ve seen through history. We can even see it today, and it’s interesting. This is an example. Rain will come from the coast. But how does rain get to the middle of a continent? Rain gets to the middle of the continent because of the trees and the forests. Bring rain thousands of miles from the coast. There’s many examples of this throughout the continents on the Earth. If man removes too many of the forests, man breaks the law and the rain stop, and drought comes.

In this verse we just read, if you break God’s laws for caring for creation, ultimately, you defile His land. Let’s go to Jeremiah twelve and verse ten. Jeremiah twelve and verse ten. And here, we will read these scriptures. We’ll read two scriptures here, ten, eleven. We’ll read these and we’ll talk about the pastors that run the churches in this world. Let’s read it as the pastors, as leaders of this world, what they have done. We used Easter Island as an example. We used the Dust Bowl as an example. The leaders of the Cleveland area as an example. What did they do?

“My pastors have destroyed My vineyard. They have trodden down My portion under thy foot. They have made My pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.” Pouring chemicals into a river so that it catches fire multiple times. The pastors, the leaders of man, they’ve done that. “They have made it a desolate, they have being desolate it mourned unto me. The whole land is made desolate because no man lays it to heart.” No man thinks through their actions fully. The greed, amongst many other things, nature of man, spirit of man, fruits of the flesh that drive us to do things that cause horrible consequences.

But ultimately, the pastors, the shepherds, reminds us of looking after flocks, farmers, the leaders of the countries, the leaders of our nations have ruined God’s creation. Let’s go to Hosea four and verse three. Hosea four and verse three. And just what happens when mankind does what it does to God’s creation. “Therefore shall land mourn and everyone that dwells therein shall languish, and the beast of the field and the fowls of the heaven, ye, the fishes of the sea shall also be taken away.” We break God’s laws as it comes to caring for His creation. That is what happens to the earth.

So, in Revelation eleven, verse eighteen. The day of the Lord, before the beginning of the Millennium. God says He will destroy those who destroy the earth. We have seen that the dominion is not licensed to exploit and abuse God’s creation. We have seen the God’s true instructions throughout His Bible are not that, but give more detail that it’s responsibility. Responsibility that we must be good stewards, that we must be faithful in what God gave us. Yes, we know that we cannot do this fully in this age, in this life. We can do it as we may strive to.

But we know that as we live our life, stay true to our calling, we can be at a time when God will bring true dominion to all of the earth. God originally intended that Eden was to cover the earth. We’ve seen that man has failed at this. Brethren, you and I, and the calling that we have, in the near future, we’ll be a part of those that truly fulfill that and bring Eden to the entire earth.