Once God had created humankind, He blessed them. This devotional reading looks at that blessing and how God ended His plan for creation.
Nuggets
- God wanted humankind to grow to more than just Adam and Eve and to be more than they were upon creation.
- Just as God has authority, He has given humankind limited authority.
- God gave us dominion over fish, birds, and animals that scurry on the ground.
- God approved that we were to eat plants and fruits.
- God was very pleased with His creation.
- God rested from creation because He had completed His plan.
Let’s start out wit a little reminder because timing may confuse some of us. “Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.’ So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1: 26-27 NLT).
It sounds like man and woman were made together and blessed immediately afterwards because it said God blessed them. When we get to the next chapter, we’ll find out there was some time between. We don’t know exactly how much, but we do know that Eve, too, was created on Day 6.
However long it took, God blessed both Adam and Eve.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Celebrating Creation’s Story series
Blessing of Man
“Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.’ Then God said, ‘Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground — everything that has life.’ And that is what happened” (Gen. 1: 28-30 NLT)
Be Fruitful and Multiply
God wanted humankind to grow to more than just Adam and Eve and to be more than they were upon creation.
In His blessing, God empowered humankind to grow and thrive in everything. He didn’t necessarily bless them to be successful in everything they do – as the world would define success.
Yes, God wanted humankind to multiply to fill the earth. He always wanted them their spiritual conditions to grow. Yes, they were perfect because they had no sin in them; but being human, they could grow.
Govern It
Just as God has authority, He has given humankind limited authority.
We have to watch how we interpret dominion (as the King James Version translates it). Some think that means that we have rule over all the earth.
I don’t think dominion here means domination. Rather, I think it means we protect it because the earth and all in it has a dependency on us. We are stewards of it.
God did not give humankind authority over earth. He gave it to Jesus.
We know the Great Commission in Matthew 28: 19-20, but we sometimes forget what He said right before that. “Jesus came and told his disciples, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth’” (Mt. 28: 18 NLT).
Well, we know Jesus had an integral part in creating the universe. “God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him” (Jn. 1: 3 NLT).
God handed over control to Jesus. “The Father loves his Son and has put everything into his hands” (Jn. 3: 35 NIV).
So, it is Jesus who is keeping all the plates spinning. “He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together” (Col. 1: 17 NLT).
Clarkson agreed. He said that we share in authority, not take over from God.
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Instead, we need to understand God more. We know what His laws and commandments say and how we are to live to obey them.
Our job is to be a steward of the world. We know that our work is much needed to be custodians of what God has created.
Reign over the Animals
God gave us dominion over fish, birds, and animals that scurry on the ground.
Dominion doesn’t mean we have sovereignty. I do think it means we have superiority over animals. While God does love His creatures, humankind has given us reign over animals because of our dual nature.
What is interesting is that God gave mankind the dominion over all that He created on Day 5 and one thing He created on Day 6. “… Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground’” (Gen. 1: 28 NLT).
The livestock and the wild animals are left out in the list over which humankind will reign. He gave us dominion over some of the animals, but we still have to exercise that rule according to His plan.
McGill cautioned that we don’t want to take this dominion too far. “A right to rule is not a right to tyrannize; and a right to service extends only to such duties as are consistent with the powers of the servants, and with the place which is assigned to them.”
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The blessing God gave humankind and what was said in the Trinity’s meeting are similar but slightly different.
· “… ‘They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground’” (Gen. 1: 26 NLT emphasis added).
· “… ‘Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground’” (Gen. 1: 28 NLT).
One of the orders we received was to subdue the earth. That goes along with the curse put on the earth as consequences for the original sin. “… the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains” (Gen. 3: 17-18 NLT).
If we don’t work the land, it becomes overgrown and reverts to its natural state. Think about what the pioneers found as they moved out west in the 1800s. Here they would have found tall prairie grass and trees.
Think about when the Wilderness Wanderers entering the Promised Land.” But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply and threaten you” (Ex. 23: 29 NLT).
Food
God approved that we were to eat plants and fruits.
Yeah, we were to be vegetarians at first. It wasn’t until the original sin occurred that we were allowed to eat meat.
Look what Evans said. He wrote,
“We are, as to the outward man, mere dust of the ground. Is not this plain enough from experience? Does not the food that maintains our bodies come directly from plants, or indirectly from them, through the beasts that feed upon them? And do not those plants draw all their support from the ground?”
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Either way, we get plants into us. But God expected us to directly eat plants, not get them second handed.
It Was Very Good
“Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day” (Gen. 1: 31 NLT)
God was very pleased with His creation.
It is easy to think that God was saying that creation was physically good. That limits the complexity of creation and God’s purposes for creating the universe.
What God was saying is that creation would fulfill the purpose for which it was made.
But we sure have messed this up. Yes, God did see His creation as good as He was making it.
I grew up hearing that God said it was very good when He created man, and He saved the very good designation to humankind.
Wrong.
Day 1 – “And God saw that the light was good …” (Gen. 1: 4 NLT).
Day 2 – Nothing
Day 3 – “… And God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1: 12 NLT).
Day 4 – “… And God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1: 18 NLT).
Day 5 – “… And God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1: 21 NLT).
Day 6 – “… And God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1: 25 NLT) – but this is just talking about the cattle. Nothing was said about humankind.
Read the verses again. “Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.’ So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1: 26-27 NLT).
It goes straight from there into the blessing after that.
Where does it say very good? Verse 31. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day” (Gen. 1: 31 ESV emphasis added).
Everything God had made was very good, not just humankind.
How arrogant we are! We think we were the only thing God considered very good.
God considered everything very good.
We have to remember what good means. It doesn’t mean decent, suitable, or well-behaved.
It means that it is pure like God is. It means we are suiting the purpose for which He intended.
Padget argued that the very good was largely based on the outward appearance. He wrote,
“He approved it not only as fit for the material development which He had designed for it, fit for the ages of change, the course of history which should be enacted on it: but also as outwardly delightful. He saw His work, and, behold, to sight it was very good.”
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Hmmm. It fulfilled its purpose. It could last. It was pleasing to look at.
Kingsley made a good point that backs me up here. If God didn’t think humankind would be good upon creation, He would not have created us.
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Sometimes, I think I am so stuck on the point that God made us anyway knowing we would be disobedient that I don’t think about the time in the Garden of Eden. He made us exactly how we were supposed to be.
We had the free will to muck that up.
And again, we don’t need to know what God’s purpose was for us messing it up almost from the get-go. The only reason I can explain that is God wanted to showcase Jesus’ love for us.
God doesn’t see His children as sinful – even though we still are. He sees us a redeemed by His Son’s blood.
God’s Work Completed
“So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed” (Gen. 2: 1 NLT)
God rested from creation because He had completed His plan.
Many say that He had no more to create. Well, nothing more was created, but not everything was there.
“… When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the LORD God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil” (Gen. 2: 4-5 NLT).
Gilfillan identified creation as a gradual process. I agree. God didn’t come in and do everything in five minutes. He spread it over six segments, which have been called days.
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God did have a plan. He created things in a logical order. The work got progressively, systematically more involved as He created the higher life forms.
I love how Parker described God’s plan as an expression of His mind. He had to think it up before He could do it.
But it took more than God’s mind to take the plan from thought to action. As Parker said, it took His sovereignty, compassion, and generosity. We can take Him at His Word.
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We have to acknowledge that God — and only Sovereign God — took what was (darkness and void) and turned it into what is.
Only a Person such as He could do it. Creation didn’t happen on its own or by accident.
God could have created everything in five seconds. He didn’t.
That makes us wonder if creation really appeared all out together when God said, “Let there be.” Why did He take six days instead of five seconds?
Again, we have to focus Who, not the how.
We have to remember that the condition of creation looks nothing like it did when God created it. Sin has greatly damaged it.
But what is is spectacular. Ferguson reminded us that He made everything seen and unseen. He wrote, “How ‘things which are seen were not made of things which do appear’ — in other words, how something was produced out of nothing, we can never hope to comprehend. But matter once brought into existence, almost equally [marvelous] is its organization into distinct living forms.
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Only God could do what He did.
Making the Connections #1
We cannot separate body, spirit, and soul. Alford said that it is the spirit which houses our personalities.
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It is the spirit, this divine part, which separates us from animals.
Alford argued that we are made in the image of God because we have the capacity to love. “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (I Jn. 4: 8 NLT).
We reach God by exercising faith in Him.
Making the Connections #2
I like the reminder that Kingsley gave us. He wrote,
“That which is good in us God has made; He will take care of what He [has] made, for He loves it. All which is bad in us God has not made, and therefore He will destroy it; for He hates all that He has not made, and will not suffer it in His world.”
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No, it isn’t that God is going to go into a hissy fit and destroy everything He didn’t make because He didn’t make it. He is going to destroy it because it is impure.
The corrupted and impure cannot approach God. And let me tell you, Satan corrupts us.
And yes, we will be destroyed if we love our corrupt nature more than we love God. But that is our choice, not God’s.
Making the Connections #3
Think about the things that this shows us.
How powerful our God is! We see His intelligence and wisdom. Most of all we see His love and goodness.
How Do We Apply This?
- Be fruitful and learn more of God.
- Multiply to fill the earth.
- Understand our role on earth, which is to be a steward.
Father God. You creation is very good – all of it. Forgive us when our pride makes us believe we alone are very good. Forgive us – especially – when we try to put ourselves as Your equal. Amen.
What do you think?
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