Gen 9:1–7 — The Cultural Mandate Renewed

Last week we looked at this same section, although we looked at the broader context around it, dealing with the covenant that God is making here with Noah and his sons and with all creation.

It is the covenant of common grace. I stopped at verse seven, but if you keep reading in the text there in verses eight and nine and following, God says, behold, I am establishing my covenant with you. This is not a covenant of special grace. This is not a covenant to save. This is a covenant of common. For both believers and unbelievers alike. It is a universal, non-redemptive, unconditional covenant, securing the backdrop for God’s purpose to accomplish the work of salvation.

The Cultural Mandate in Common Grace

But I want to zero in today on this particular part of this covenant of common grace, and that is the paragraph here in verses one through seven. Where God gives the renewal of the cultural mandate. Although this covenant of common grace is unconditional, because God is promising to restrain judgment until the end of history, he is promising to give his reign and sunshine upon the wicked and the righteous alike. Although it is unconditional, and God is showing his favor even to unbelievers, yet it does involve commands.

There are some commands here in our text. In the passage that we read, just this one section here, in verses one through seven, there are commands to be fruitful and multiply, to engage in dominion over creation, to have some kind of process for judicial reckoning when murder and violence take place. This covenant of common grace may be unconditional in the sense that God is not threatening to take away his common grace from unbelievers, at least not until the end of history. It may be unconditional in that sense, but at the same time, it does involve the things that mankind is to be fruitful and multiply. Mankind is to exercise dominion over creation.

Mankind is to continue the cultural mandate that was given originally to Adam before. In Genesis chapter one. Let us go ahead and turn in our Bibles to Genesis chapter one and just remind ourselves of these commands that God gave to Adam before the fall.

And notice how similar they are to the ones in our text. So in Genesis chapter one, verse 26, then God said, let us make man in our image. That language there is repeated in our text, is it not? Remember in chapter nine, verse six, God made man in his own image as the argument for why murderers should be put to death.

So then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion. That is the same language in our text, right, in Genesis nine. They are to have dominion over the beasts of the earth and every bird of the heavens and so on. So back to 126, let them have dominion over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over everything that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. There is the image of God language again. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them.

Now, in our text, in Genesis 9, it does not specifically mention male and female, but it is implied, is it not? It is implied by the fact that God said to be fruitful and multiply. How is that going to happen apart from the male-female distinction and through marriage?

Continuing in Genesis 1, verse 28, and God blessed them. That is the same as our text, Genesis 9 verse 1. God blessed Noah and his sons. And God blessed them and 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.

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 in its fruit. You shall have them for food. That part there about the food provision for man is also mentioned in our text in Genesis 9 and verse 3. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.

So there are clearly very strong echoes in Genesis 9 of the original cultural mandate in Genesis chapter one before the fall. Even the same words are being used, be fruitful, multiply, have dominion, the image of God, all of this language is clearly echoing that. On the other hand, at the same time, there are also some important differences, are there not, between these two passages, between Genesis one, verses 26 to 29, and Genesis nine, one through seven. One of the main differences that stands out is the fact that the original cultural mandate was given to mankind in his state of innocence before the fall. Whereas this repeated form of the cultural mandate is given to mankind who is in a state of sinfulness.

That is mentioned actually just before the passage we read at the end of chapter eight. At the end of chapter eight, after Noah and his family and all the animals exit the ark, Noah builds an altar to the Lord, offers some of the clean animals as a burnt offering, and when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, what did God say? Genesis eight, verse 21, God said, I will never again curse the ground. Because of man.

Four, the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. And that, of course, is picking up on the language just before the flood. Remember back in Genesis 6, when God said the reason why he is sending the flood to destroy all mankind is because the thoughts of man’s heart is only continually evil from his youth. The flood did not change that. Yes, God destroyed mankind, and he did save his people, he saved Noah and his family, but there is still something wrong with mankind.

Mankind is still in a state of sin. So when this renewed cultural mandate is given in the very next paragraph in Genesis 9, one through seven, we see that it is being given not to man in a state of innocence before the fall, but to man in a state of continued sinfulness.

Another difference is the fact that there is one key verb that is not repeated. So be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth is almost a direct quotation from chapter one, but there is one verb that has left out, and that is the verb to subdue. In Genesis 1 verse 28, God blessed Adam and Eve, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, That is the same as Genesis 9 verse 1, but it adds, and subdue it, in Genesis 1 verse 28, and subdue it. That verb, to subdue, is not repeated in Genesis 9.

That is because there is no promise attached to this form of the cultural mandate that the cultural mandate will be successful. That it will lead to an eschatological goal. Remember the original cultural mandate is given to Adam in the garden before the fall had a prospect.

If Adam had passed the test then he would have been fruitful, multiplied, filled the earth, and eventually the world would have become a glorious temple for God to dwell with His people. In fact, we know that because It says in Genesis chapter two, right after the finishing of the six days of creation, that God rested on the seventh day. And he set apart the seventh day as a Sabbath capstone upon his work. And since man is made in the image of God, man is called to work just like God, and eventually to enter into God’s eternal Sabbath rest.

The cultural work that Adam was commissioned to do had a goal. It had a prospect. It had a wonderful eschatological hope associated with it. That it would lead to the bringing in of the kingdom of God in its fullness and glory. With the glory of God filling the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Not so with this form of the cultural mandate. There is no Sabbath sign attached to it. God is not promising that the descendants of Noah will be able to bring in the cosmic eschatological kingdom of God, that glorious temple. God simply says, this is what you are supposed to do. You are supposed to do this work, be fruitful, multiply, have dominion over creation. Have some form of civil authority to provide a restraint upon the violent tendencies of mankind. But there is no promise that if man does this, if the human race does these things, that they will enter into God’s eternal Sabbath rest.

The post-fall curse, referring back to Genesis 3 and verses 16 through 19, remember right after the promise of the offspring to come, God issues this curse upon both the man and the woman. The post-fall curse of Genesis 3 is still in effect. Remember with that curse involved with the woman, he says, I will multiply your pain in childbearing. With the man, he says, cursed is the ground because of you, and it is going to bring forth thorns and thistles.

It is not going to bring forth eschatological fulfillment, it is just going to be a frustrating labor. That is not going to lead to anything eschatological. Well, in a sense it will through Christ, but in terms of what God is talking about right now, after the Fall, and repeating here in Genesis 9, for mankind post-Fall, it will not.

So in this passage then, in Genesis chapter nine, we must understand that God is renewing the cultural mandate of Genesis one, but he is reshaping it for life in a fallen world upheld by his common grace. That is the main point of the sermon. God is renewing the cultural mandate, but he is reshaping it and adapting it and revising it for a form that is adapted to fallen humanity that is being upheld by God’s common grace with the goal, ultimately, of providing a stable context for God to do his work of redemption. God is not simply repeating the cultural mandate, but he is reshaping it in the common grace mode. The main cultural tasks and functions that God established at creation remain.

Family, marriage, procreation, dominion over the non-human creation, and even judicial authority for the purpose of rule. Judicial authority for the purpose of rule is clearly repeated here in our text. In Genesis 9 verse 6, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. So notice that text there is speaking about some kind of civil authority, some kind of governmental authority that has judicial authority to restrain crime and restrain murder. And the ground for it is that man is made in his own image, so it goes back to creation.

But all of this, all of this cultural work that man is to do post-fall and post-flood is without any promise of eschatological consummation. In fact, the Bible teaches that this whole cultural work and activity of man in building civilizations and producing a human race that is full of All of these activities of exercising dominion over creation and judicial authority, all of this whole program will one day end in the purifying fires of judgment at the end of history. Let us look at the three main things that are found here in our text. There are three main aspects of the cultural mandate in its renewed post-fall common grace form.

The Cultural Mandate Renewed

First of all, the family. Secondly, the reaffirmation of man’s dominion over creation. And then thirdly, civil government and the sanctity of life. So first of all, the family. The family is the foundational institution of not only at creation, but in its renewed form here in common grace.

The Family

The section that we just read both opens and closes with the command to be fruitful and multiply. Remember verse one, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And then verse seven, and you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. And that can only happen The being fruitful and multiplying can only happen in light of that marriage bond between a man and a woman.

Remember back in Genesis 1, the be fruitful and multiply command is given in verse 28, right after verse 27. Verse 27 says, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Then the very next verse says, So be fruitful and multiply.

So the point is that marriage and the male-female relationship in marriage is established as the primary institution of the post-flood common grace order. God is not simply destroying all humanity and destroying any possibility of creating a cultural history. He is sustaining in his common grace the institution of the family as a key component. In fact, it is the foundational component of the common grace order.

And marriage is for believers and unbelievers alike. Marriage is not a special holy institution only for Christians. Now it is true that Christian marriage is distinct from non-Christian marriage, but it is distinct only in the sense that we are engaging in that bond of marriage in light of Christ and in light of our common commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is still marriage.

It is an institution. It is a common grace institution that is something that both believers and unbelievers partake of. Hopefully the Christian form of marriage has the greater support and strength of the church and the gospel to make that institution even stronger. That is the goal.

But fundamentally marriage is something that is common and it has been reestablished. It was established originally at creation and it has been reissued here in common grace form in Genesis chapter nine after the flood. All cultural development All civilization proceeds from and flows from this foundational basic social unit that God has established. That is marriage. The family is the foundational institution of this whole reality that is going to develop post-flood throughout the history of the world. That is the first thing. So the second element of the cultural mandate renewed is the reaffirmation of man’s dominion over creation. So verses two through four.

The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens and upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

Dominion over Creation

Here God reaffirms that dominion that God gave to Adam before the fall. Before the fall, God gave Adam dominion over all of creation. Genesis 128. 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. God’s reaffirming that dominion that man has, even though he is a sinner now, even though he has fallen into a state of sin, even though he does not deserve to have this dominion, yet God reaffirms that. Interestingly, the language of dominion is slightly altered in Genesis 9 to the fear of you.

It says, the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the field. Of the earth and every bird of the heavens. Man’s dominion over the animal world is universal and also it is characterized by this dread and fear that the subhuman creation has of man.

The fear of man is analogous to the fear of God. Remember throughout the Bible, it says that we ought to have the fear of the Lord. We ought to view God with a sense of acknowledging his authority over us, that he made us and that he is going to judge us. Well, that same fear now is being projected into man because man has this godlike authority. Man is created in the image of God. And so for the creation to fear man is analogous to us fearing God. This shows that man’s dominion over the subhuman creation is ordained by God. Man is not at that lower, he is not on the same plane with the animals and with the other subhuman creation.

Man has dominion over the animal world. This means that all animals may be eaten. Verse three, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. There are no limits upon man’s diet. However, there is a restraint in man’s exercise of his dominion over the animal realm. And that is, it says there in verse four, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood.

Blood is symbolic of life. When the blood is poured out, when blood is shed, then whether it is an animal or a human, that person dies because the life force is drained out. And so blood is sacred. It is symbolic of life. When a man, when a human being harvests an animal for human benefit, which is clearly permitted here in the text, it must be done in a respectful and restrained manner. Respectful of life, respectful of blood, which is symbolic of life. This implies, does it not, that there is a difference between taking the life of an animal and taking the life of a human being. Because animals are not made in the image of God.

But at the same time, there must still be this sense of restraint and recognition of the symbolic significance of blood. Interestingly, It seems to be a general fact of anthropology that practically every human society has treated blood with reverence and sanctity. Yes, there are some societies that do have various forms of eating blood, but even then they do so in a way that is ritual and respectful of the power of blood and the symbolic significance of it. I personally think that is part of God’s common grace restraint upon mankind that even societies that do not know about the word of God, do not know about the Bible, they still retain this sense of the sanctity of blood and the symbolic significance of it.

Now you might be wondering, does this passage imply that until this point, mankind was restricted to a vegetarian diet? You might be wondering that because of the fact that it says, as I gave you the green plants, Before, implied before, now I am giving you everything. So now it is okay to have meat. Does this imply that prior to this point, mankind was supposed to be vegetarian? And I am not going to answer that question right now in the sermon, but come to the adult discussion time afterwards, and we will talk about that in more detail. The simple answer is that the answer is no. Mankind was not restricted to a vegetarian diet before.

But to explain why that is the case takes a little bit more work. So we will talk about that in the adult discussion time. So we are going through these main elements of the cultural mandate in its renewed common grace form. The first one is the key foundational institution of the family. The second element of it is this dominion over the non-human creation, which includes the eating of animal flesh. But then thirdly, there is a third element here, and that is that a key part of this renewed cultural mandate in its common grace post-fall form is that God has established civil authority and civil government in order to uphold the sanctity of human life.

Civil Government and the Sanctity of Life

And that is found in verses five and six. And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast, I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

For God made man in his own image.” Here, clearly, capital punishment is authorized as God’s means of upholding justice. The Apostle Paul in Romans 13 is probably appealing to this passage when he says that the civil magistrate, the civil authority, bears the sword as God’s servant. He has the authority to take life, that is to execute criminals and those who are violent murderers. Notice how this text here says that whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. It is very interesting.

You can even see it in English, but in Hebrew it is even stronger. There is this staircase where you go down and then back up. So, if you want to take a pen, you could highlight. There are three key words that are used here, and they are used in reverse order. Whoever sheds, that is the first key word, the blood, second key word, of man, third key word, and then the next part of the sentence goes in the same backwards order, by man, shall his blood be shed. Did you see that staircase going down and then going back up? Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

And it is a very compact statement. It is clear in English, but in Hebrew it is even stronger. And it is making this point that there is clearly an authority being given to man, man who is made in the image of God to execute murderers. There is authority, royal, granted to man in order to uphold the sanctity of life. There are two ways of interpreting this.

The last part of verse six gives the ground. It says, for God made man in his own image. Whenever you see that word for, it is always important. Here is the theological ground for the statement before, that staircase. The statement before that whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. What is the ground for that? What is the theological basis for that? It is that God made man in his own image. And there are two ways of taking that for statement, that ground, the part at the end of verse six. One way to take it is that murderers must be executed in order to uphold the sanctity of the image of God. When murder takes place, someone is attacking the image of God by killing that person. Unlawful. And so the image of God has to be upheld.

So whoever sheds the blood of man, the emphasis in this view would be, by man shall his blood be shed. Why is it important to shed their blood? Because it upholds the sanctity of the image of God. That is one interpretation. The other interpretation is that This gives the ground for why man should do this. So in this interpretation, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. Why?

Why is man given the authority to execute capital punishment? It is because God made man in his own image. In this view, man’s royal authority to execute murderers is an expression of his being made in the image of God. So the first interpretation is that murderers must be executed to uphold the sanctity of the image of God.

The second view is man has the authority to do it as an expression of the fact that he has made in the image of God. Well, why cannot it be both? Maybe it is both. The authority of civil government both expresses and upholds the sanctity of the image of God in man. I think that both interpretations make sense.

Now notice this is the clearest one of all in terms of showing that we are talking about the cultural mandate in a post-fall form. Because clearly, murder is a post-fall reality. There would have been no murder taking place in the garden before the fall.

So here, in this third element of the cultural mandate, we clearly have this idea that God is trying to provide a check upon the violence of man. Remember, that was what caused the flood. That was what provoked the flood, is that man was so violent that the earth was filled with violence. Genesis 6 verse 11. So God here, post-blood, is ordaining the power of the sword in the hand of civil government to place a check on human violence. And so clearly this is a post-fall, common grace form of the cultural mandate.

Now there might have been some kind of rulership authority for mankind before the fall if Adam had not sinned. I suppose that Adam would have had sort of a kingly role in the world. And maybe even as his descendants multiplied, there could have been some kind of rulership. But it would not have been adapted to the post-fall setting the way this one is.

What that suggests then is that civil government is not given with the purpose of trying to save humanity because we are talking about the covenant of common grace here. We are not talking about God’s special plan of salvation that is going to be revealed through Abraham to come in the next few chapters.

This suggests then that God’s purpose in giving civil government is to place a check, a restraint upon man’s violent and sinful tendencies. The point is that God preserves and sustains human society, even in its fallen and sinful state. And he does so through these three means, through the institution of the family, through this dominion over the non-human creation realm, and through civil government.

Christian Political Engagement

This passage, in my view, is foundational for a Christian political philosophy. It gives us tremendous guidelines here for how we as Christians should be engaged politically, how we should think about politics, how we should think about engagement in the civil arena. First of all, this passage gives us a point of contact with unbelievers.

We need a point of contact. We need to have something in common. Otherwise, we are just perceived as Bible-thumping religious right people who are trying to impose our religion on other people. And that is not the point. When we engage in the political arena with people that have different religious beliefs or none at all, we need to have a point of contact. And that point of contact is the common grace mode of the cultural mandate.

In other words, Genesis 9, one through seven, is our primary passage that we ought to use to guide our thinking and how we can have conversations with the world around us. God has promised to preserve within mankind through conscience, to preserve this sense of the Noahic commandments here, of these basic fundamental ideas that there is this institution of the family, that the purpose of the family is procreation, that man has authority over creation. And that we should responsibly use creation and not simply wantonly engage in violence toward it, that we are made in the image of God, that murder is wrong because of that, and that there is a structure for dealing with that to provide restraint upon man’s violent tendencies. This is our point of contact with the world around us, because God has promised to sustain the conscience and the image of God, even that sense of being made in the image of God, Even a secular person who claims not to believe in God, who claims that there is no God, even a secular person still has that inner sense of a creator that God has implanted within them and that God is promising to preserve within them.

And you can appeal to that. You can appeal to that sense that they have, that sense of deity within them. Not the sense of their deity, but their sense of the fact that there is a deity, that there is a creator God, and that they are accountable to him. Calvin talks about this in his Institutes, the sensus divinitatis. That is the Latin phrase for the sense of deity, the sense of that there is a creator.

And everyone has that. Even though they claim to deny it, right, yet they have that sense within them, and God is promising to preserve it. And so when you talk to an unbeliever about these issues, you can appeal to that conscience that they have that reminds them of, yeah, everyone kind of knows, right, that murder is wrong. Everyone kind of knows that we need to have a system to restrain that, which we call civil government.

So that is our point of contact. That is the first point that this passage provides for us. It provides us a point of contact with unbelievers and people of other faiths and beliefs so that we can have something in common that is rooted in our common humanity, rooted in our common experience as being the descendants of Noah and living in this post-flood, post-fall common grace world that God is sustaining. Secondly, the second point that I think is very helpful for us is that we should not be surprised that both the institution of the family and the sanctity of life are under attack. They are under attack not only in our day, but even throughout history.

Think about the ancient Roman culture that the early Christians lived in. In the ancient Greco-Roman culture that the early Christians lived in, there was rampant sexual immorality. There was rampant infanticide and abortion. Infanticide meaning, what they would do is, they would do infant exposure. So if there was a child that they did not like, they did not want to have, they would just leave it out on the side of the road. And it would usually die unless somebody came and saved it and raised it for themselves. Infant exposure was a common, common thing in the ancient world. There was also fundamental disrespect for the sanctity of life.

You can see this with Roman emphasis on extreme violence, even like in the Colosseum playing up as a spectacle. These are things that are throughout history, that there is this constant rebellion of mankind against these creation ordinances as given in the common grace mode. So we should not be surprised that we see those same attacks even today.

Abortion, for example. Abortion, one of the things that we can easily fall into as Christians when we condemn the practice of abortion and the permissiveness of it and the fact that it is so widely encouraged. We can fall into the kind of a moralizing framework of saying, how can we permit such an evil, such a moral evil?

And that is definitely the case. We have to be careful. We have to warn people of that, and especially we warn the covenant community of the tremendous evil of abortion. But we could also put it in a different frame. We could put it in a Noahic frame and say abortion goes directly against this mandate to be fruitful and multiply. If you are killing your offspring, you are not doing what God wants us to do as the human race. He wants us to be fruitful and multiply. That is just one example. Another example would be on the debate with same-sex marriage and the LGBT agenda.

Yes, we could, as Christians, be very condemning towards those things because it is clearly contrary to the word of God, but we could also frame it in Noahic terms as being these types of relationships are not procreative unions. Same-sex marriage is not a procreative union. In fact, it is not really even marriage according to the definition of the cultural mandate. Marriage in the cultural mandate is for the purpose of having children. It is based upon the male-female binary and the two coming together to have children. So the idea of a same-sex marriage is contrary to the very concept of the cultural mandate.

These are different forms, whether we are talking about abortion or same-sex marriage, all of these things are rebellions against not only the moral law of God, they are not only immoral things, they are rebellions against the common grace order rooted in creation and renewed here post-flood. And so we have a point of contact when we are talking to unbelievers.

A society that does not punish violent criminals. A society that discourages getting married and forming families and having children. A society that encourages abortion on a mass scale. A society that rejects the male-female sex binary. It is a society that is going against the grain. It is a society that is going against the grain of the common grace order that God has established here. And it will inevitably lead to societal decay.

And so we could make that as an argument, even for the unbeliever. Even unbelievers should be able to see that, whether or not they believe in Jesus Christ, whether or not they believe in the Bible being the word of God. They should be able to see that.

And then thirdly, the third value of this text is that it gives us a biblical alternative to Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is something that we can sympathize with because they are resisting the godlessness of secularism. But Christian nationalism is not the answer. Christian nationalism errs by looking to the wrong biblical foundational texts governing nations.

And to put it very simply, I would say, not Moses, but Noah. That is the simplest way I can explain how we should look at the Bible as providing us with the foundational text governing how nations should operate. Not Moses, that is not looking to Israel as a special theocracy with its holy laws, not looking to that as the model for nations, but rather looking to Noah, that is looking to our text here in Genesis 9. Notice that when it talks about civil authority and civil rule, the emphasis simply is on restraining violence, not upon promoting the kingdom of God.

The state cannot establish the kingdom of God because the state is not redemptive. It is part of this common grace order that is for believers and unbelievers alike. And so that is why we do not appeal to the Israelite theocracy as a model, rather we appeal to Genesis 9 and God’s charter for humanity after the flood, which is for all image bearers, regardless of whether they are part of the covenant people of God or not. Any attempt to make holy and redemptive and special that which God has ordained to be common for all mankind is a transgression of God’s own ordinance here in Genesis chapter nine.

And also, one last point too, which is that I think that this passage then helps us to have our priorities right, does it not? Because it helps us to see that the real thing that God is doing, and as you keep reading Genesis, it is leading up to Abraham. The real thing that God is doing in establishing this common grace order is not to redeem the world, and to create Christian nations, what God is doing is he is setting the context, a stable order of society, a context so that he can do his special, saving, redemptive work, which we will see begins with the call to Abraham. Well, it does not begin there, because it begins with the first promise of the gospel after the after the fall in Genesis 3, but in the text as Genesis is unfolding, that is where things are really going to start happening. Is when God calls Abraham and sets up his special covenant of grace with his elect people. That is God’s purpose.

This covenant, the covenant of common grace, is setting the context. It is setting the stage. It is providing for a history to unfold and for cultural activity and procreation and civil government to provide the context for God’s special work. That is where things are really at.

That is where God’s purpose is really happening, is through his covenant purposes with his redeemed people. So it gives us the right perspective. But it helps us also to see that even that common grace realm is important. Because it does contribute to God’s eternal purpose. God is going to use all of those things.

Like a wonderful illustration of that is in a moment we are going to come to the Lord’s table and just look at this table sitting in front of you here. This is all common ordinary creation stuff. There is a table made of wood and there is a tablecloth made of ordinary cloth that was probably manufactured by some unbelieving factory somewhere. There is metal objects here. We have literal bread, which is ordinary bread from the supermarket. We have wine and grape juice here, which is ordinary, common grace material.

But God has taken those special things and made them into a special means of grace, consecrated by prayer, which we will do in a moment, to pray and set these ordinary elements aside for their special use, for God’s redemptive purpose. This is just one little illustration of how we see the importance of the cultural mandate, the importance of all of these things that God is asking humanity to do in order to provide the context for His special redemptive work.