When John Knox, the reformer from Scotland, happened to visit Geneva, where John Calvin was passed in and actually installed there by the city council as a chancellor. When he visited that city of Geneva, he said that it was as if he was visiting heaven on Earth. The city was so transformed and so much in his mind, like the Kingdom of Heaven, that he thought it was literally heaven on Earth. Well, a lot of people are aware of that experience of John Knox, especially if you've been traveling in our circles, Presbyterian reform circles. But what a lot of people don't know is what Geneva looked like before John Knox got there, before John Calvin got there. In fact, the city of Geneva was really a center of immorality, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, gambling, prostitution. In fact, there are some accounts where in late at night, people would take their clothes off and run naked through the streets. And there's all kinds of immorality there, but when John Calvin came, everything changed. It's interesting that the city council did what no city council today would ever do. And that's when they saw these problems of immorality, they hired a theologian, and then the rest is, as they say, history. And the city of Geneva became really the epicenter of the reformation, the Protestant reformation, and it was spread all throughout Europe, and then even to here in the United States. And I think what we can learn from that is, is that the gospel changes more than just hearts. The gospel changes the whole earth. The gospel is more than just conversion. The gospel is not just about our redemption, it's about the redemption of the entire earth. And the last time we were together, we spoke about the Great Commission. And then during the, and then some of the Great Commission, we talked about going out in the nation. This morning, what I want to talk about is something called the cultural mandate. And you find that in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 28. And what I want us to see here is how the Great Commission and the cultural mandate go hand in hand. And so let's look at Genesis chapter 1 and verse 28. And the first thing that I want you to see here in the cultural mandate is that it says, God blessed them and said to them. And so the first thing I want you to see is that this is the very first time in the scriptures where God speaks from his mouth to man. And this is the first time that man with his ear hears the voice of God. God has spoken to nature in all the creation. We know that, you know, all of chapter 1 is about the whole creation story. God speaks to nature and the phrase, and God said, is repeated over and over again throughout chapter 1. God speaks to nature, creates the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, the fish and the sea, heaven and earth and everything that is in it. And God speaks to himself when he says, let us make man in our own image. But here is the first occurrence of God from his own mouth speaking to man and of man with his own ears listening to God and notice what it says. The very first words from the mouth of God to the ear of man are words of blessing. It begins by saying God blessed them. The first words out of the mouth of God to the ear of man. That is to say, man's very first experience with God is hearing God bless him. God blessed them instead to them. You know, I've told you before, whenever I travel with Kenya, one of the things that they do over there, and I've noticed this other places that I've traveled in other parts of the world is that at some point in their worship service, the worship leader or the pastor will say God is good. And then the people will respond by saying all the time. And then the pastor or the leader will say all the time and the people will respond by saying God is good. And I visited one of the little churches that we support over there. It's a brand new church plant. The pastor there has been a friend of mine for over seven years now. I met him the very first time that I went to Kenya. His name is Joseph Mute. He's one of the missionaries. We support one of the indigenous church planners there. And I went to their little church. It's in a little tiny school room. They're using an rented facility. And one of my goals, by the way, is to help them buy a piece of property and build the church on that site. But they're in a little tiny school and we went there and I preached there one morning and during the worship service, the same thing happened, right? The pastor stands up and says God is good. The people said all the time and the pastor says all the time and the people said God is good. And then without any provocation at all, completely spontaneous. All the children in the church said they added a phrase to that little saying they have. And the little children in unison said because it is his nature to be so. I looked at the pastor and the pastor looked at me. It wasn't rehearsed. Maybe they learned it in Sunday school, I don't know. But in unison, after they said God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. They said because it is his nature to be so. It's true. God is good. And it's his nature to be so. And so it's no wonder that the very first words out of the mouth of God to humanity and the very first words in the ear of man from God, our words of blessing, the words of benediction, the words that God has spoken out of the goodness of his nature to humanity. God is good. Now that tells us something about God that's very important for us to know, namely that it is his nature to be good. It also tells us about how God views humanity, doesn't it? It tells us the very first words out of the mouth of God to the ear of man were words of blessing. That tells us what God thinks about human beings. The human beings that are created in his image and his likeness. You know, part of our reformed theology, part of our Protestant theology really is understanding the depravity of man, understanding the sinfulness of human nature that we inherited from Adam, from the fall. And we do a great job, don't we? Of articulating the sinfulness of our human nature. And, you know, Ed was absolutely right in terms of, you know, evangelism, and especially here in the West, you know, it's very important that we help people see their own sinfulness and the laws, a great tool of helping people see their own sinfulness. It's a great tool of helping people realize their own inability and their own depravity. We do a great job of that pretty much in reformed theology. And in the West, sometimes that's what people need to hear. In fact, one of my colleagues over that was traveling with me in Kenya, we were actually teaching this method of evangelism over there. And one of the things he said is that, you know, sometimes you gotta get people lost before you can get them saved. You know, people don't aren't aware of their need for the gospel because they don't know their lost. They think they're okay. And so sometimes, you know, in our methods of evangelism, we want to get people lost first so then we can get them saved. I think it was G.K. Chesterton and one of his novels and Father Brown, mystery murder series that, you know, he was saying nobody, nobody's really any good until they realized just how bad they are. And that's true. Now, look, there are a lot of places that don't emphasize that. And it's something that does need to be emphasized. But we also need to emphasize something else. And that is that we're created in the image in likeness of God.
Yes, that's been tainted by the fall. Yes, we've been corrupted by the fall. Yes, we are in a state of depravity and inability because of the fall, but yet we are still the image in likeness of God. And this was so important for us to understand because look at what God's view is of humanity. It is such that he blessed them. The first words out of his mouth, what words of blessing, words that flowed from the deepness of the goodness of his nature. God who is spirit and infinite eternal and unchangeable and is being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness. And truth spoke words of blessing to man. The very first human experience was an experience of blessing. Now that, to me, is something worth stopping and noticing. That to me is something to pause at and to ponder and to meditate on. That the God of the universe, I believe, we confess in the apostles' creed and God, the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, the God of the cosmos, the God of the universe and the very first words out of his mouth. They're not words of malediction. That words of curse, words God bless them. You know, we preached on the Great Commission in Matthew, chapter 28, a few weeks ago. And there's a corresponding passage at the end of Luke's Gospel. How many chapters of Luke's Gospel? Does anybody know as a 24? Where are all the seminary students? How many chapters in Luke's Gospel is a 24? How many? Oh, thank you. That's not a seminary student. By the way, that's an evangelist that just answered that question. Well, there you go. Oh, he's got it in his palm pilot. Nice. 24, but it's interesting when Luke is doing the equivalent to Matthew's Great Commission and chapter 24 of his Gospel. The last thing Jesus does after he tells the people that there'll be witnesses for him. As he's ascending, it says he blessed them. He pronounced a good word. He pronounced a benediction on his disciples on the people of God before he ascended into heaven. What that means, Gloved, is that blessing is not only the first word, man's first experience with God, it's also the last word. It's the first and the last word. God blessed them. And if you are the people of God this morning, then you are a blessed people. God has pronounced his benediction on you. He has blessed you. You are the new people of God. You are the new creation of God. You are new creatures created in Christ Jesus. And so God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth. So the first thing is blessing. The second thing is filling. We're to fill the earth. And this is this coincides with the great commission, right? Jesus had gone to all the nations. See, both have a worldwide vision. Both have the whole earth as its goal. This is a worldwide goal. It's a worldwide vision. Fill the earth. In fact, this is what Christ's ministry was too. Wasn't it Christ who was the image of God? Like no other image of God? Christ who is the image of God, the exact representation of his being. All right. What does it say in Colossians and Ephesians? He fills all. See, in that way, Christ fulfilled the cultural mandate. In essence, he fills all. We as a church are to fulfill the cultural mandate. We are to fill the earth. Now, when we were talking about evangelism, when I was in Kenya, and the first week that was there, we talked about, I had the opportunity to train just the leaders. There was a whole new leadership over there when we got on the ground. And in places like Kenya and other African nations, this can be problematic because things are still pretty tribal there. So whenever a new leadership comes up, it can create a lot of rifts and so forth, and even some division in the church. So I wanted to just meet with the leaders of the African Evangelical Presbyterian Church to just kind of address that new leadership. And I had a great opportunity to do that. It was just a wonderful opportunity. But why were we there when we were talking about evangelism? I said, now, tell me guys, these are the leaders. I said, tell me, what is the most effective form of evangelism? And they gave me answer after answer after answer. Of course, they've been trained by whole bunches of different ministries over the years and so forth, missionaries and different mission agencies and so on and so forth. And so they were giving me all these answers about what they thought was the most effective form of evangelism and so forth. And then after I sort of exhausted all of their answers and all the possibilities, they were just kind of staring at me with blank faces. In fact, they looked a lot like your faces are looking at me right now. In fact, you know, but so then I said, guys, I said, you know, what is the most effective form of evangelism? Now, how be it when I gave them the answer, then they were really looking at me with stairs, blank faces and their chins down to their chest because when I told them that the most effective form of evangelism is really sex, procreational sex
and the context of marriage and the family, right? Isn't that what it says? Fill the earth. How are you gonna do that in the context of creation here and the context of the cultural mandate? Well, you guys are all embarrassed, aren't you? Burst, see? When it says to fill the earth, be fruitful, multiply. What do you think it's talking about? It's talking about sex. It's talking about procreation. Isn't it interesting? God is the God of all creation and the people that are created in his image and likeness are to procreate, do the word there. Study the word, procreate, procreation. Without sex, there is no procreation. You understand? Are you with me? Am I going too fast? Procreate. Now, isn't it interesting though that in our culture, we've bought the myths, haven't we? We've bought the Freudian myth that Christians are all just a bunch of uptight, you know, Victorian kinds of people, haven't we? We've bought into the myth. We've also bought into the family planning myth, you know, that you really being irresponsible if you have more than just, you know, what is it? 1.5 or two kids now? You being irresponsible. We've bought into myth. Now I'm not negating responsibility. I'm not negating stewardship. But isn't it interesting that in buying the myth, not only have we forgotten that to fill the earth is about procreation isn't interesting that we have made sex entirely about recreation, that now all of our talk about sex is recreational sex in exclusion to and for getting about procreational sex. We are inundated with emails we don't want in our junk email box. We are inundated with television commercials and magazine articles. You can't even ride down to the street listening to your radio with your children in the car because what it's gonna be promoting is recreational sex rather than procreational sex. Now look, sex is recreational. Nothing wrong with that in the proper context. Husband and wife and marriage, sex is fun. And it's okay for Christians to admit that. But that's not all it is. We are to fill the earth and by the way, that brings me. So what's the most, what's the most effective means of evangelism is covenant succession is procreation, raising children in the context of Christian marriage and family teaching them everything that God has commanded.
And all the records show, all the data shows, all the surveys show that the most effective way to evangelize is to teach your children about God, your own children. Now that doesn't negate the other forms of evangelism. We are to be out there evangelizing the lost, evangelizing those who have never heard the name of Christ or those who have heard it and didn't understand it. We're to evangelize those who are lost, those who are blind, those who are spiritually dead, those who were not born in a Christian family. We are to fill the earth. It's a worldwide scope. And so the first thing is filling. The second thing is we're not only to fill the earth, he said to them be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth, but we are to subdue it, subdue the earth. And if I might borrow from John frame here, what that means is that we are to bring culture out of creation. We're to bring culture out of creation. You see in chapters one and two of Genesis, what you have there is creation. You have the work of God. So as John said before in an essay that I read on Christian and culture, what he said there was is that creation is what God does. Culture is what man does. And so what God is charging man to do is to bring culture out of creation. That's what it means to subdue the earth, to harness the earth, we're to bring culture out of creation, we're to subdue the earth. That is to say folks, that our God is a much bigger God than we think. And our gospel is a much bigger gospel than we think. I believe that the problem with most Christians, whether in the West or anywhere else, the problem with most Christians is that our God, as Philips once said, is too small. But not only is our God too small, our gospel is too small. It was J. I. Packer that said a lot of times Christians look at God through the wrong end of the telescope. And what happens when you look at God through the wrong end of the telescope, you end up with a little tiny God, what he called a pygmy God. And the problem J. I. Packer said is that a pygmy God, a pygmy God produces pygmy Christians. We serve a big God. What did Paul say all the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how insurchable are his ways? How far past finding out who has been his counselor? We have a big God. And one of the things that we do, it seems as if it's in our human nature to do it is that we shrink God down to what we think our manageable terms
or a manageable size. Listen folks, there's no way that you can think about filling the earth and some doing the earth, about preaching the gospel to every creature and every nation, every tribe, nation and tongue, unless you understand that you worship a big God. And not only you worship a big God, but you have a big gospel. And one of the mistakes we make is shrinking the gospel. The gospel that Paul says is the power of God onto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The gospel is the power of God. And when we make the gospel exclusively about conversion or salvation, then we shrink the gospel. The gospel isn't just about so you can make a profession of faith so you can get saved so you can go to heaven. If you think that all we're trying to do here is figure out if the gospel is about populating heaven, then you've really missed the whole story. The gospel isn't just about populating heaven. I'm sure heaven's a nice place. The Bible talks a great deal about heaven. It ensures us that heaven's a nice place. But the gospel isn't just about populating heaven. It's about bringing heaven to the earth, our father who art in heaven. How will be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, where on earth, as it is in heaven, subdued the earth. This is where you're gonna spend most of your time. Both now and after the resurrection, you're gonna spend most of your time on earth not floating around in the cloud up there, singing in the heavenly choir, playing your peaceful little harps. That's not the gospel. We are to bring culture out of creation. We are to subdue the earth for the glory of God and the good of all of his people. So we need to understand that requires a big view of God and requires a big view of the gospel. Subdued the earth, fill it. Subdued, you know, when you go in the mission field, there's a lot of weighting around. And that drives me crazy because I'm made in America. I mean, that's just who I am. I am no apologies. Whenever I go, I don't try to hide it. I don't try to become something I'm not. I know a lot of missionaries, you know, they do all the cultural studies and everything. And then they try to go to the culture and they try to blend in. They try to adapt to the culture. And I don't even try. I'm made in America. That's just who I am. I'm sorry, no apologies. Take me or leave me. That's just the way it is. And one of the things that really drives me crazy is how much you have to just wait when you're in other countries. You wait for transportation. You wait for somebody to come and pick you up. You wait for them to prepare a meal that was supposed to be ready an hour ago. And so it's just you have to wait. And so you have to learn how to wait. And one of the things that we were doing, you know, we wait and so we were talking, especially after dinner. I mean, after dinner, after the conference is over, after you've already taught all day, you go back and, you know, I mean, you're sitting around just kind of hanging out and I had two great colleagues that hang out with Bill and Carol. Some of you know them. You could not be with two better people. But you're sitting there, what time is it, you know? You just finished eating dinner, all it's about 8.30. And then about two minutes later, what time is it, you know? It's 8.30, dude. It is going to like, well, is this clock move here? Does anything happen, you know? And so consequently, we would hang out and we would talk and talk and talk and talk. And eventually it all comes back down around to Western civilization, you know. We start talking about the West and then. And then we find ourselves, you find yourself talking about the West, you know, and sort of a pejorative way. And two, my two colleagues were talking about, you know, the downward spiral of Western civilization, you know. Evil is waxing worse and worse. It's getting worse and worse, you know. And, you know, look, I get tons of email from people. I read books on culture and Christianity. And, you know, there are sort of just kind of two different versions. You know, the one is the sky is falling, okay? You know, and what are we going to do? The sky is falling, things are as bad as they could be, you know. And one of my colleagues was saying, you know, that the West is getting worse than it ever was. And I said, no, wait a minute, hold up for a minute. What do you mean by that? You mean worse than some golden age that you imagine used to exist in the West? Did you believe there was a, you believe like there was this golden age sometime in America, you know, where, you know, things were the way they were supposed to be. Is that what you believe in compared to that? You see, things are really, really bad now. We're really on the downward spiral. Listen, I was born in the 50s. I know I don't look at it, but I was born in the 50s. I grew up in the 60s and 70s during what was called the cultural revolution in America. Saw it with my own eyes. And I have to tell you folks, when I look at America today, I don't bemoan how far we have descended into the botry. Now, there's true enough, there's enough sin to go around in America. And America has a very city and wicked side. There's true, it's true of every nation, there's true of every people. Yes, there's sin, yes, there's evil. I'm a realist. But that doesn't amaze me. What amazes me is this, that when I look at the trajectory we were on in the 60s, what I'm amazed about is not how far down we have fallen or how quickly. What I'm amazed at is that the speed and the depth at which we are falling has been greatly restrained. And when I looked at our culture in the 60s, I would have thought we were in a way, way, way, way past where we are now in terms of evil and sinfulness and wickedness and immorality. That doesn't amaze what amazes me is how restrained our culture has been here in America. And I think it's because the gospel does matter. Christians do matter. The church does matter. The presence of the people of God matters. And it matters greatly. And it has retarded and restrained the pace at which we are spiraling down. I would have thought by now that our culture would have much more resembled the Netherlands than where we presently are. And quite frankly, why we're on our way, we're still the good ways away from the Netherlands. And so we are to fill the earth, we're to subdue it and we're to rule over it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Ruling the earth implies that we are the kings and queens of the earth. One of the church planners we support over in Kenya has named this in Bumi Mokuku. Here's a member of this church when you went to seminary here. He and his wife Martha are dear, dear people. And I got to spend some time with them. And one of the things that I always forget when I wouldn't, because I know there are mixed marriage that is that they come from two different tribes. But I always forget what tribes they come from. So whenever I'm with them, I always ask them, now what tribes are you guys with again? And in Bumi said, well, I'm a luah. And that's the second largest tribe I believe in Kenya. And he said it very humbly, kind of shrinking down in this sea. And then I said, well, Martha, what tribe are you from? She says, I am a Kaku, Kakuya. And we are the royal tribe. We are the ruling tribe. And everybody knows it, including your husband,
with a filthy earth, which does do the earth, to bring a culture out of creation. And we're to rule it. Beloved, you are God's ruling tribe. You are his royal priests, a special people, called by God. We are a nation of kings and priests. And what that tells us is, beloved, that you don't have to be afraid. You don't have to be scared. That means that as our great king has sent us as his vice regents, as ambassadors, into this world to preach the gospel, to everyone, to minister at the abortion clinic, to go on to the college campuses with ed and evangelize to pick up those kids over pioneer clubs to do the ministry with the youth that we're doing here. You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to be discouraged, but rather you can be encouraged to know that the first thing that God has done is bless you, which means he has enabled you and empowered you to fill the earth, to subdue it, and to rule it. You believe that?
That's our mission, folks. And what the great commission does is it prepares a context for the gospel to go forth and be received. And what the gospel does is it recruits the army of God to fulfill the great, the cultural mandate. That's how those two things work together. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you and praise you and worship you and give you glory and honor. You are the Lord most high. You are God, almighty. You are the omnipotent one. You are the exalted one. And we worship you and we praise you. Lord, open up our eyes and let us see the vastness of our God, the immensity of our God. Let us see a big God with a big gospel and let us not be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation. But let us speak boldly, courageously without shame, without apology, the good news of Jesus Christ. We give you the praise and Jesus' name.