8-24-08 The Place You Live

Do you ever think about the place where you live – the place we call Mother Earth? I live on the earth, but I don’t tend to think much about it because it’s so BIG! And because the earth is so big, and because I’m so small I don’t think much about the consequences of my actions that concern the earth.

 

But as I’ve studied and deeply pondered the earth and our stewardship of it, I have been completely stunned to find that, until now, I have never really read my Bible in such a way that I’ve noticed what it says about creation, about our stewardship of the earth and it’s resources, and about the curse that has been placed on the earth, not by God . . . but by us, and our actions.

 

So this morning and over the next couple of weeks I’d love it if you’d join me in looking at how God sees the earth and how he calls us to see the earth, and I’d like to look at how this whole process deepens our relationship with God, each other, and with the earth itself.

 

Now, before we get going, you have to know that I am not traditionally known as a Tree Hugger or an environmentalist per say – I’ve done a bit of recycling and I’ve tried to conserve some, but most of what I do environmentally, up until now, has been because it benefits . . . me. I turn off lights because it costs me less. I recycle because I don’t have so much trash to take to the dump, and so that costs me less. The reasons why I conserve and recycle are primarily because it’s good for me.

 

What I’ve learned in the last few weeks, as I’ve really gotten into God’s perspective on caring for the earth is that it’s really changed me. It’s moved me. I’m different. I look at the world differently, in a good way. It has blessed my life.

 

Environmental issues have traditionally been seen as a political agenda or maybe a social action, “Green” group, but I want you to know up front that this is not my platform or my agenda. I come to you, trying to listen to God and because I have been trying to see the earth, and what we do with it, from God’s perspective.

 

I believe that if you keep an open mind about these issues that God will move you to a new way of looking at the world in these next couple of weeks, and it will transform you in a good way. It will strike you in such a way that it will bless you; it will bless God; it will bless others, and it will bless the planet in which we live.

 

Ok . . . then let’s dive in. We’re going to start in Genesis as we often do, because Genesis is the basis for how the world was meant to be. It is how the world was created.

 

We’ve talked about his before, but in Genesis, time after time, we see God as he creates something – as he creates birds and animals, and trees and flowers – after he creates each one, he take a moment and he steps back and looks at what he’s created and he says, “That’s good.” And he does this over and over again – looking at what he’s created and saying, “It’s good”.

And then when God’s finished creating he stepped back and looked at everything that he had created, and he shook his head in pure delight and he said; “Now that’s really good.” God was proud of what he created and delighted in it because it was really good. Here’s the part of the creation story that relates directly to us.

 

God spoke, and he said: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them so they reflect our nature So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, And, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.” God created human beings; he created them godlike, Reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female.  God blessed them saying “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill the Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.” Genesis 1:26-28 (MSG)

God created us in his image, as a reflection of who he is. Not that we would be God, but that we would be a people who would reflect God’s desire and God’s will and God’s goodness, so that our very lives would be good.

God created the earth. God cared for the earth. God managed the earth, and God was given delight by what he had created, and he wanted us to join him in all these things. God loved his creation and he delighted in it and he wanted us to love what he loved and delight in what he delighted in, because it was good.

If we are to do as the greatest command calls us to do then we are to love God and one of the ways that we do this is to love what he loves. When you love someone, you honor their treasures. That’s part of the gift of love. When you love somebody, you begin to treasure what they treasure. When you really love someone you delight in what they delight in.

Some of you may remember this powerful story that I told earlier this year, but I think it bears repeating here to make a very important point.

Robert Fulgham writes about a time when his daughter was a tiny, little girl and he was going to work. She gave him two paper bags to take to work with him. One was his lunch. When he asked her what was in other bag, she answered: Just some stuff. Take it with you. At lunchtime, he looked in the bag-kind of a ratty little bag-and there were two ribbons, three stones, a plastic dinosaur, a pencil stub, a tiny seashell, used lipstick, two chocolate Kisses, and thirteen pennies.

 

He kind of chuckled, finished his lunch and swept everything off into the wastebasket. Later when he got home, his daughter said: Daddy, where’s my bag? He asked: What bag? The one I gave you this morning. Oh I left it at the office. Why? Well, those are my things in the sack, Daddy. The things I really like. I thought you might like to play with them, but now I want them back. You didn’t lose the bag, did you Daddy? Big tears. No, He writes. I just forgot to bring it home. I lied. Bring it tomorrow. OK? Sure. Don’t worry. Then she hugged his neck. He writes:

 

Molly had given me her treasures … all that a seven-year-old held dear. Love in a paper sack. And I missed it. Not just missed it. I had thrown it away. Nothing in there I needed. It wasn’t the first or last time I felt like my “Daddy Permit” was about to run out. I went back to my office, dumped all the wastebaskets out onto my desk. The janitor came by. He asked: Did you lose something? Yeah. My mind. It’s probably in there. What’s it look like, he said? I’ll help you find it.

 

They search through all the trash and find the bag. He takes it home, sits down with Molly, and she tells him the story of every treasure that’s in the bag. Then he writes:

 

What Molly was saying was, “This is the best I’ve got. Take it. It’s yours. Such as I have I give to thee. I missed it the first time, but it’s my bag now. I’ll never miss it again. That’s the story.

 

God was and is absolutely delighted in what he has created. God gets done creating the earth; God gets done creating the flowers – orchids, roses, carnations, tulips, lilies, all the flowers of the field; God gets done creating the fish – clown fish, Sunfish, pike, sturgeon, sharks, whales; God gets done creating all the birds – cardinals, bluebirds, finches, hawks, Bald Eagles, Ostriches, storks; God gets done creating platypuses, Rhinos, Elephants, Zebras, Dolphins; God gets done creating all the unique and diverse and wonderfully created beings, and he steps back like a great artist and he says: It’s good; it’s good! No, No, No, It’s Better than Good, It’s VERY GOOD!. God is delighted with his creation.

If we are to love God, then part of what it means to love someone is that we love what they love and delight in what they delight in.

How are we caring for the earth that God so deeply delights in? Are we caring for it in a way that would delight God?

Turn with me, if you have your Bibles, to Genesis 3. Adam and Eve have been living in the Garden of Paradise and everything has been going very well. God gave them the ability to choose either good or evil – to choose his will or theirs, and in the scene with the apple, Adam and Eve choose to believe that they know more than God. They choose to go against God’s will. We’d never do that would we? Adam and Eve choose to take their destiny in their own hands and some how believe that God must be holding out on them and they choose against God’s Good and Delightful will. They choose to eat from the tree of Good and Evil. The one tree that God forbid them to eat from.

 

Immediately after eating the apple things start to happen. Adam and Eve are overcome with fear and shame and they cover themselves. When God calls their name, they become fearful and hid from him. In their actions, the perfect balance in God’s creation is thrown off. They now fear the each other and the God who loves them.

 

Then God begins to ask questions and make proclamations. He doles out punishment to the serpent, and to the woman he disciplines her with pain during childbirth, but then look at what he says to the man – the one whom he told not to eat of the fruit from that tree.

God told the Man: “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from, saying ‘Don’t eat from this tree,’ the very ground is cursed because of (who?) you; Who cursed it? Getting food from the ground will be as painful as having babies is for your wife and you’ll be working in pain all your life long. The ground will sprout thorns and weeds, and you’ll get your food the hard way, Planting and tilling and harvesting, sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk, Until you return to that ground yourself, dead and buried; you started out as dirt, you’ll end up as dirt.” Genesis 3:9-19 (MSG)

God does not curse the man. He curses himself, and not only himself, but the earth. The curse of the earth results from sin. The curse of the earth results from us seeking to do our own will and not God’s. When we don’t do God’s will, we upset the balance of creation.

 

There is an incredible balance in God’s good creation, so much so, that when we break the balance, our relationships with one another are broken and we become war-like to one another; our relationship with God is broken and we become war-like toward him; and our relationship with the earth becomes broken and we become war-like toward it.

 

All of creation is incredibly and miraculously balanced

 

The story of the Old Testament is a living out of the curse that humanity has given itself, but then God came down in the person of Jesus to set us free from the curse. To teach us and empower us to live in a way that brings blessing to God, to us and to the earth.

 

God came down in the person of Jesus to redeem us, to transform us, to restore us to the people that he had created us to be. He came to redeem and with us the earth.

 

the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8:21-23 (NRSV)

Jesus primary teaching is pointed at removing the curse from our lives. In Jesus, by his life, his teachings, his death, his resurrection, by his forgiveness of sins that cleansed the inside of us, and by his Holy Spirit that comes inside of us and begins to clean out the evil, the bad, the stuff that we weren’t created for, and he begins to give us new ways to live – ways that give life – ways that are good.

 

Jesus’ greatest command was to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and when we begin to love someone with all that we are, we begin to treasure that which they treasure. We begin to delight in what they delight in. How are we doing in this area? How are we doing at being good stewards of what God has given us in love?

Before I share these facts with you, I want you to know that my intentions are not to make you feel guilty. My intentions are not to judge you. My intentions are to make you aware of the facts, and if you feel convicted by them and by God, then listen to that still small voice and make changes in your life. If you are not convicted by these teachings now, then that’s ok, because that’s where you are in your journey – Your time may not be now, it may be later.

 

Here are some trash facts. According to the New York Times and Penn State University research

 

• Americans throw away 35,000,000,000 aluminum cans every year. An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 100 years from now!

 

Now, when I say a billion, you know that’s a big number, but how big is it? I don’t think we can even fathom how big that number is. Let’s see if this helps. If you were to count the minutes from the time that Jesus was born until now, that would be about a billion minutes. In the same line of thinking, it would take more than 220 years to count all 35 billion cans.

 

Let’s try again,

• Americans throw away 2,500,000 plastic beverage containers every hour! That’s 60 billion every day. Fast food restaurants and gas stations are known for providing these kinds of containers. They take 50-100 years to decompose.
• Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups and 2,500,000 Styrofoam beverage cups every year – Styrofoam never breaks down.
• 60% of our waste, which ends up in landfills, is packaging material. 

 

I didn’t understand this fact at, but then I realized that every soft drink that we buy has a cup that is considered packaging material.  Every time we visit a fast food restaurant, everything that our food comes, in is considered packaging material. All of our Speedway “Big gulp” cups are packaging material. They all get thrown away.

• Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable and will take at least 4000 years to decompose in a landfill.
• Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours.
• More than 3,000,000,000 household batteries are thrown away each year. That’s enough to fill 600 large school buses. Many of these batteries could and should be recycled.
• The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds/person/year. This means that 5% of the world’s people generate 40% of the world’s waste.
• You can walk 1 mile along an average highway in the United States and see about 1,457 pieces of litter.
• The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.
• If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
• In a lifetime the average American will throw away 600 times the amount of his or her adult weight in garbage. For example, a 150-pound adult will leave a trash legacy of about 90,000 pounds when he or she dies.

 

God delights in the earth and he has called us to delight in it with him. We are free to do with the earth what we will, but here is the question: Is everything that I do good for the earth – God’s delightful creation – or is it just good for me? I find that I don’t think about what’s good for the earth. I just think about what’s easy or convenient for me.

 

If we are to love God, then we are to join him in caring for and ruling the earth in a way that represents his Goodness. Can you sign God’s name at the end of the day and say the way that I used the resources of the earth and the way that I disposed of used resources is Good in the creator’s eyes? Can you say that?

 

Mother Earth – She is our mother because we are dependant upon her for all our provision. Our relationship with the earth is like the relationship that a child has to it’s mother. What are we doing to our mother; Mother Earth is second only to our Father and our God.

 

As God’s children, when we hurt Mother earth, what does that do to our Father . . . the earth’s Creator? Does it hurt him?

 

One of the things that I forget about is the idea that I don’t own the land that I have purchased. Another thing that I forget is that even though I call the U.S, “My Country,” it’s not mine, but God’s. One of the things that I forget is that I don’t own all the things that I buy. I don’t own anything that I “own”. God owns it all. I’m just called to be a good steward of that which he has given me.

 

I come into this world with nothing and I leave this world with nothing. One of the things that is our curse as God laid it out in Genesis 3 is that we were created from dust and we will return to the dust – that’s our curse. The land that is God’s will claim us and in some sense testify for us or against us according to how we have cared for her.

 

Everything that I have is God’s and everything that I do while I am here, I do unto God and what is his. God calls us to be good stewards with what he has given us. How are you doing at that? How are we doing at treasuring that which God treasures? If you are a Christian – a follower of Jesus, join me in asking God to grant us wisdom in how to care for his creation better. 

 

We’ll take a look at several ways to become better stewards of the earth next week.