Thank you. It's a great pleasure for me to be here with you this morning and I will tell you in advance. I'm not a preacher. I'm a teacher and so this might be a slightly different sort of Presentation from what you're accustomed to at this conference, but we'll see how it goes. Let me get my computer up here and we will be ready to go.

I do want to mention, if I may please, that there is some literature out there telling you a bit about the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation you might wonder why there would be an article about Climate change and energy policy all that sort of thing at a conference like this Right. I'll tell you why it's because the Bible tells us very clearly that we should be concerned about the poor and the vulnerable around us in the world and There is a great deal about climate policy that I believe is very very harmful to the world's poor Not about climate, but about climate policy and as a Christian theologian and economist I cannot ignore those things and so That's a lecture that I delivered at Pennsylvania State University a couple of years ago And then we turned it into this article that I hope is informal is informing We have a free email newsletter from the Cornwall Alliance and so I'm going to if I may pass around the sheet and ask you if you'd like to Sign up for that. It's always educational. We don't done you for gifts all the time, although there is always a way to give from it.

We are a nonprofit organization. We survive on people's generosity. And then I'll just also tell you that the talk that I'm giving today on the cosmic consequences of Christ's crosswork is just the barest beginning of a taste of these things. And I've developed the ideas more in my book Where Garden Meets Wilderness, Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate, and my book on the Psalms, Psalms of Promise, Celebrating the Majesty and Faithfulness of God. This book is, it's a set of devotional essays on 19 different Psalms.

I chose those Psalms to be representative of the various different literary types of Psalms, and because they all focus on the idea of covenant and God as covenant keeper, and I arranged them to go from creation to consummation through all of salvation history so that you get a picture of the cosmic consequences of Christ's crosswork. So this develops the ideas today in much greater depth. And then I'll also just once more remind you of a couple of other resources that I mentioned yesterday this set of 23 lectures on the Ten Commandments if you watch the lectures and complete the cell of the Study guide that's online and free You have essentially a seminary level course in biblical ethics. And then this small book, Social Justice Versus Biblical Justice, How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel, addresses the very prevalent progressive effort in the church today to change the thinking of much of the Christian church from a truly biblical understanding of justice to what is really a Marxist understanding and unfortunately it's gaining a lot of traction among a lot of millennials. So some of you will have heard about the statement on social justice in the gospel that's been issued recently signed by quite a lot of reformed and other evangelical scholars.

I was one of the signers of that and they gave me permission to bind that in along with my own booklet here my own writing that Defends a biblical definition of justice and shows how it differs from the social justice idea Well those things said let's stop to pray for a moment and then I will move along with my message for you. Heavenly Father, I thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ, the firstborn of all creation, who rules over all things and who has been, because he is the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, he has been working to reverse the effects of your just and righteous curse on the earth because of man's sins right from the very start. And we thank you, Father, that he accomplished his work fully on the cross, that you set your seal of approval on it in his resurrection and his triumphant ascension into heaven. We ask you to give us eyes to see and hearts to embrace the wonders of our Lord's work on our behalf In his name we pray Asking you to give us the Holy Spirit that we might understand Amen In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth So begins the Bible and it ends in a new heavens and new earth The two terms heaven and earth are the picture frame So to speak of the great canvas of creation time and place Before the creation of the first heavens and earth there was no time for time began with creation and with the establishment Of the new heavens and new earth time will yield to eternity Between the eternity before time and the eternity after time come in succession all the events of time from creation to Consummation and outside of heaven And earth the current ones now the new ones to come there is no place no thing literally nothing Time and place then are the arena of God's art history and we and all other things in it persons and things living and non-living are his brushstrokes the New Testament uses two words to denote what I've just spoken of as God's canvas the ktesis or creation and the cosmos or world The former word expresses its origin in God's creative act the latter expresses its form Order not chaos and what is probably the most familiar widely known verse In the entire Bible tells us that God so loved the cosmos That he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life Now we American evangelicals including the Reformed tend to focus immediately on people and on people as individuals when we read John 3 16.

And we are not entirely mistaken to do so. The fact that it goes from God so loved the world to that whoever believes a singular pronoun and a singular verb Tells us clearly that the primary emphasis is on God's purpose for individual people We are right Then to cite this verse in preaching the gospel and calling lost sinners to believe and so to have eternal life nonetheless That emphasis on individual people occurs within the broader frame the the picture frame so to speak of that prior word cosmos The verse doesn't tell us that God loves individual people, though he does. It tells us that he loves the cosmos. Now, it is true that if you examine how that word is used throughout the Johannine corpus you find that the majority of the time and in the Gospel of John increasingly as the conflict between Christ and his enemies sharpens, cosmos designates not simply the ordered creation but specifically the mass of humanity that stands in opposition to him that's what is so amazing about God's loving the world not that the world is so big for the heavens and even The highest heavens cannot contain God and the earth is but his footstool But that it is so evil That God should love so evil a world is indeed amazing Yet still we must not allow the more basic Sense of cosmos to fade from view as we contemplate John 3 16 Yes, God loves evil people.

Yes. He elects to give some of them the gift of faith that they might have eternal life But He loves them within the context of the cosmos that he also loves The whole ordered universe and he sends his son to save not only the individuals who will believe in him but also creation itself Now Western Christianity has appreciated this far less than Eastern Christianity and that is partly because Western Christianity heavily influenced by the Latin Roman emphasis on law and ethics has focused in its soteriology its theology of God's saving work primarily on forensic justification that is on God's judicially acquitting of sin and declaring righteous in his sight all who trust in Christ and here too we are not entirely mistaken certainly the biblical use of justify and justification is overwhelmingly forensic and the great reformers like Luther Calvin Zwingli Knox and in the next generation especially Martin chemnitz and Francis Turretin were absolutely right to correct the Roman Catholic teaching that conflated justification with sanctification yet this correct understanding of justification must not be allowed to exclude from our appreciation another aspect of God's saving work and that is his renewing through regeneration and sanctification of the whole man according to his image and this saving work of his is not only forensic not only legal but also both metaphysical and ethical and Eastern Christianity generally has emphasized this more than Western much of the time sad to say so much that Eastern Christianity Has ignored the forensic aspect and the propensity to part Which is our justification the failure to embrace both ideas and the propensity to restrict our attention to only one is the fault of both communions In my short talk today on the cosmic consequences of Christ's crosswork, I'm going to ask you to add to your entirely correct and very Western embrace of forensic justification.

Another entirely correct and very eastern embrace of metaphysical renewal and to recognize that the renewal God achieves through Christ's crosswork is not only a renewal of individuals but also a renewal of the entire cosmos the whole ktesis the whole of creation if we were to pay closer attention to the Apostle Paul the fountain of our grand doctrine of forensic justification I think we Western Christians would see this repeatedly Paul moves seamlessly from writing about human justification and liberation from sin to Writing about the liberation of the creation from its bondage to corruption And then moves seamlessly back again Consider first Colossians 1 3 through 23 in which Paul begins by reporting what he prays on the Colossians Behalf and then transitions without a break into teaching some Glorious doctrine about the creation itself We always thank God Paul says we always thank God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you since we heard Of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the Saints Because of the Hope laid up for you in heaven of this you have heard before in the word of the truth the gospel Which has come to you as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing as It also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth Just as you learned it from apaphras our beloved fellow servant He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit and so from the Day, we heard we have not ceased to pray for you asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so as to walk in a manner worthy, excuse me, my computer set a message up in front of me, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God May you be strengthened Paul says with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and Patience with joy giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the Saints in light he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and Transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins Thus far In verses 3 through 14 Paul has prayed for and written about the Colossian believers and himself People every one of them he has focused on their faith their love their knowledge and wisdom and understanding in their manner of life Culminating in his Reminding them that in Christ they have redemption the forgiveness of sins in other words in terms of this talk He he focuses on people and on forensic ethical aspects of Christ's crosswork But notice the shift in thought as he continues in verses 15 through 20 He is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth visible and invisible Whether Thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things were created through him and for him And he is before all things and in him all things hold together, and he is the head of the body the church He is the beginning the firstborn from the dead that in everything he might be preeminent For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Here Paul's focus is on creation, the ktesis, and clearly it is not only created humans But the whole of the ktesis all things in heaven and on earth visible and invisible Christ is the image of God as the image of the invisible God is the firstborn of all creation not that is a part of creation the first thing created but the prototochost the preeminent one over all creation as Such he is the head of the body the church. Yes, but he is also the firstborn from the dead Which might make us think immediately of believers regenerated from spiritual death to spiritual life and promised resurrection Except the Paul goes on to write not that in the church. He might be preeminent but rather that in Everything he might be preeminent Paul shifts effortlessly and seamlessly from focus on the human objects of Christ's saving work to the cosmic objects everything he has come to reconcile to God not only sinful men women and children but also as verse 20 tells us all things whether on earth or in heaven and we We understand this phrase rightly only if we supply the words that he used following it back in verse 16 visible and invisible whether Thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities and then Paul glides effortlessly and seamlessly right back to writing of his saving work for people in verses 21 through 23 and You who once were alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds He is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him if indeed you continue in the faith stable and Steadfast not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard which has been proclaimed in all Creation under heaven and of which I Paul became a minister so much for Colossians 1 now consider Paul's magnum opus the epistle to the Romans the great gold mine from which the reformers dug up the gems of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone following his introduction in chapter 1 verses 1 through 15 Paul gets directly to his thesis the point he's going to prove in the main body of his argument for I am NOT ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek for In it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written the righteous shall live by faith Or as I prefer to translate to the last clause Those who are righteous by faith shall live The first step in Paul's argument for this thesis is to prove that it is impossible for anyone to be righteous and so to live By anything other than faith in his argument he sets up faith and works as the only two options men will be righteous That is declared righteous in God's sight because of their works or because of their faith There is no other option This point will occupy Paul from here through the end of chapter 3 and well into chapter 4.

But notice how he begins. Pick it up in verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteous ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppressed the truth For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes Namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the cosmos in the things that have been made so they are without excuse for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened claiming to be wise they became fools and Exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and Worshipped and served the creature the ktesis rather than the creator who is blessed forever Amen Paul brings the creation of the world, the ktesis of the cosmos into the picture right at the start of his argument for the impossibility of man's being justified by works Then through the rest of chapter 1 and all of chapters 2 and 3 he makes the case that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God Which is why by the works of the law?

No flesh will be justified but rather men will be justified by faith apart from the works of the law He then illustrates this in Abraham the father of the faithful who believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness Chapter 5 then celebrates this grand truth beginning therefore having been justified by faith We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ in chapter 6 and 7 he writes of the Christians calling to holy obedience and his struggle to achieve it Culminating in his cry Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death and the answer I thank my God through our Lord Jesus Christ and that gives way to the grand declaration that opens chapter 8 There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus no condemnation Because there is its opposite justification and then he calls Christians to live consistently with this declaration that they are righteous in God's sight something they can do only as they walk in the spirit and not in the flesh for the flesh cannot please God And so we come to verse 10 of chapter 8 and now look what happens Paul mixes individual human salvation justification sanctification with deliverance of the katesis the creation in Romans 8 10 through 17 we have this But if Christ is in you Although the body is dead because of sin the spirit is life because of righteousness If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you So then brothers we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh For if you live according to the flesh you will die But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall Back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba father the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children than heirs heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him and now I Almost wrote but now but to do so would be to betray the ease and fluidity And fluidity of how Paul thinks and writes For him there is no opposition between what he's just said about people individual people and what he now says so I must not say but now rather I must say and now and now listen to verses 18 through 25 for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us for the creation the ktesis waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God For the creation was subjected to fuel that in futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and Obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in pains in the pains of childbirth Until now and not only the creation But we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons the redemption of our bodies for in this hope we were saved now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees but if we hope for what we do not see we wait for it with patience Do you see how for Paul the destiny of redeemed mankind and the destiny of the whole creation are inextricably intertwined.

Christ came not only to bear the sins of the elect but also to set the whole Creation free from the bondage of decay to liberate it so that it enjoys the glorious freedom that the children of God enjoy Now I am convinced that Paul and with him the whole Bible Ties together the deliverance of humanity with the deliverance of the creation or the cosmos precisely because humanity God's image bearer was meant to rule creation as God's representative and Christ as the last Adam came to undo all that the first Adam did through his sin all the corruption of each of his descendants and The curse of God's judgment on the earth and everything in it Christ came to reverse Adams fall into sin corrupted not only the image of God and man but also man's dominion over the creation and In Christ we see perfectly revealed what we are destined to become through regeneration sanctification and glorification as John Calvin put it By the fall of Adam all mankind fell from their primeval state of integrity For by this image the image of God was almost entirely effaced from us and we were also divested of those distinguishing gifts by which we would have been as it were elevated to the condition of Demigods in short from a state of the highest excellence.

We were reduced to a condition of wretched and shameful destitution but as the Heavenly Father hath bestowed upon his son an immeasurable fullness of all blessings that all of us may draw from this fountain it follows that whatever God bestows upon us by him belongs of right to him in the highest degree Yea, he himself is the living image of God according to which we must be renewed upon which depends our participation in the invaluable blessings which are here spoken of thus in Calvin's words Christ is the restorer of mankind Now look back over a millennium earlier than Calvin to Saint Athanasius of Alexandria This great champion of Orthodoxy wrote in his treatise on the incarnation of the word that Christ quote was made man that we might be made God now Athanasius did not mean that man would become infinite eternal or immutable capable of creation ex nihilo or self-existent explained what he meant in part by his next words for he Christ was made man that we might be made God and he manifested himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen father and he endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality But he thought not only of immortality But also of man's participation in the moral nature of God and in his glorious dominion over creation Athanasius went on to say Christ is the Deliverer of all flesh and of all creation for he has become man that he might deify us in Himself and he has been born of a woman in order to transfer to himself our erring generation That We may become henceforth a holy race and partakers of the divine nature as blessed Peter wrote Now what did Athanasius mean by saying that Christ became the deliverer of all flesh and of all creation?

Surely he had in mind the fall God's judgment on the serpent Eve and Adam and God's curse on the earth Surely he had in mind Paul's great affirmation that God had subjected the creation to corruption in Hope because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God Athanasius like Paul saw that the redeeming and delivering work of Christ was not restricted to the salvation of the souls of the elect but included the restoration of mankind to his original glory and of the physical universe as well and when Athanasius said that Christ has become man that he might deify us in himself he meant not that each of us becomes God but that he the God-man takes humanity up into deity in himself so that the image of God can be restored in every human being who becomes united with Christ. Now what is it that is being restored in mankind through Christ's redeeming work? It is the image of God, and what is that? Consider the immediate context of Genesis 1 26 where we are first told that God created man in his image What would the novice reader of Scripture think of as the image of God in?

Man if he attended carefully to the immediate context imagine yourself in his place you've just read this startling statement God said let us make man in our image according to our likeness what would you already know about God that would help you to understand the meaning of the phrase in our image well you would know what you had read in Genesis 1 1 through 25 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth so the image of God includes creativity then God said let there be and behold look at the list light a firmament and oceans and dry land and grass and herbs and trees and stars and Sun and moon and birds and sea creatures and land creatures an Astonishing variety of things living and non-creating and he instructed all the living things to multiply and fill their various niches In the world what we see in Genesis 1 1 through 25 is that God makes everything out of nothing that he brings light out of darkness order out of chaos greater order out of lesser order life out of non life and tremendous variety and fecundity of life so the image of God includes a wonderful love of order and variety and life and fruitfulness So if you were just starting out reading the Bible, what would you think God's image is?

Principally creativity No wonder Dorothy Sayers considered man's capacity to make things a crucial part of the image of God in man But I risk running ahead of myself. Let's let's back up a little and consider more carefully what we have in mind by the imago Dei and Related to that God's design for mankind in the earth Scripture indicates three principal elements in the image of God in man in Ephesians 4 24 Paul tells believers to put on the new self Created to be like God Excuse me in true righteousness and holiness there is then a moral element to the image of God in Colossians 3 10 Paul writes of this new self as being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator so rationality is another element of the image of God in man and the context of Genesis 1 26 has already told us that creativity is a third element of the imago Dei perhaps the capstone really served by rationality and morality these three characteristics holiness knowledge and creativity ought all to be employed by man in fulfilling the vocation God gave us to rule over the earth what has often been called the cultural mandate may also be called The stewardship vocation man is to steward the earth as God's image representative the first two chapters of Genesis indicate that this vocation consists of four elements First as there is eternal fellowship among Father Son and Holy Spirit in the triune God So that God says let us make man in our image So there is to be fellowship among mankind beginning with the fellowship of male and female in Genesis 127 between the man and his wife Second as God created life so mankind is to generate life God blessed them and said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth Genesis 128 Third as God ruled over all creation so man as God's image is to subdue and rule the earth and all living things in it 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 the birds of the air and everything that moves on the face of the earth Fourth as God initially planted a garden and commanded all the birds fish animals and plants of the earth to be fruitful and multiply So man is to cultivate and guard the garden says Genesis 2 15 enhancing and maximizing its fruitfulness its safety and its beauty for God's glory and man's benefit and protecting it from the wilderness to the east of the garden Genesis 3 23 and 24 that Otherwise would encroach upon it Man and woman therefore God's image bearers were initially called to labor wisely Righteously and creatively in loving fellowship with God and each other to subdue and rule the earth and every living creature in it whether in the sky in the waters or on the land to cultivate and guard the place of the Garden God initially planted and to spread the garden over all the globe But scripture tells us that rather than acting as a responsible accountable steward mankind rebelled against God's rule hoping thereby to become supreme himself like God knowing that is defining good and evil every aspect of the image of God and man is corrupted by the fall What had been a sound mind full of the light of truth full of God who is the truth became unsound and darkened?

Full of falsehood futile dark and ignorant according to Romans 1 21 in Ephesians 4 17 and 18 What had been a clear conscience reflecting holy thought and conduct untainted by sin became fouled with the stench of sin and guilt And fear Titus 1 15 the once living soul Genesis 2 7 died Genesis 2 17 Becoming mere dust again 3 19 he who had been alive and righteousness and holiness became dead in trespasses and sins Ephesians 2 1 the companion of God followed the ways of the ruler of the kingdom of the air the spirit who is now at Work and those who are disobedient Ephesians 2 2 the child of God became a child of wrath verse 3 his once fertile and creative brilliance For the fruit of light consists in all goodness righteousness and truth Ephesians 5 9 collapsed into fruitless deeds of darkness Ephesians 5 11 the consequences were disastrous for man other living creatures and the earth itself the corruption of man's knowledge holiness and creativity affected not only his own inward nature, but also his dominion, cultivation, and guarding of the garden, and ultimately, the whole earth. He was cast out of the garden and barred from returning to it in his fallen condition lest he eat of the tree of life And live forever in his rebellious state Since he refused to submit to God he Was no longer worthy of the earth of the earth's unreserved submission to him Hence God said because you have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you saying you shall not eat from it Cursed is the ground because of you in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life Both thorns and thistles that shall grow for you and you shall eat the plants of the field By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to ground because from it you were taken for your dust and To dust you shall return Because of the fall the breaking of fellowship with God human fellowship was broken with strife beginning between husband and wife and continuing between brother and brother human fertility and creativity and Dominion all were frustrated by his curse on the ground God subjected the creation to Futility so that the whole creation has been groaning in the pains as in the pains of childbirth Right up to the present time says Romans 8 22 indeed man's wickedness increased through the generations following Adam and Eve until at last Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time and the Lord was grieved that he had made man on the Earth and his heart was filled with pain so the Lord said I will wipe mankind whom I have created from the face of the Earth men and animals and Creatures that move along the ground and birds of the air for I am grieved that I have made them But there was a man One man who was a righteous man blameless among all the people of his time and he walked with God Through Noah whose life and calling prefigured Christ's God saved the human race and all the rest of the earth I am going to bring flood waters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens God told Noah every creature that has the breath of life in it everything on earth will perish But I will establish my covenant with you and you will enter the ark you and your sons and your wife and your sons wives with You you were to bring into the ark to of all living creatures male and female to keep them alive with you In the ark the world human And subhuman alike was saved prefiguring the salvation of the world through Christ What happened through Noah was but a foretaste a mere glimmer of what God would later achieve through his son?

Who as we have already Learned from Calvin and Athanasius became the restorer of mankind and the deliverer of all flesh and of all creation Christ the last Adam is the image of the invisible God the firstborn the preeminent one over all creation Even the radiance of God's Glory in the exact representation of his being Hebrews 1 3 in his life. He exercised a wise righteous and life-giving Dominion over the earth itself calming a storm over plant and animal life multiplying loaves and fishes and Even over human life healing the sick and raising the dead. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, and by his death saved us from Christ's wrath, reconciled us to God, gave us the gift, excuse me, of righteousness, and restored us to life, So that now those who are his are being restored in knowledge and righteousness and holiness Having died for us He rose again from the dead so that for All who have died with him just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father We too may live a new life set free from slavery to sin and made again the servants of righteousness And of God himself according to Romans 6 in Christ the incomparably great power of God was displayed, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 1, 19 through 23.

That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms far above all rule and authority power and Dominion and Every title that can be given not only in the present age But also in the one to come and God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be The head over everything for the church, which is his body the fullness of him who fills Everything in every way he is the head over everything For the church he's not only the head of the church for the church, but also of everything else Having risen from the dead Christ now sits at God's right hand from whence he must reign until he has put all His enemies under his feet including death the last enemy Then the end will come When he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all Dominion authority and power For God was was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him and through him to reconcile to himself all things Whether things on earth or things in heaven by making peace through his blood shed on the cross The effects of the atoning death the victorious resurrection and the triumphant ascension of Christ then sweep over all creation including man animals plants and even the ground itself They include the restoration of the image of God and the redeemed, and through them, and by common grace even through many who are not redeemed, the restoration of knowledge, holiness, and creativity in working out the cultural mandate, including human multiplication, subduing and ruling the earth, transforming the wilderness by cultivation into a garden and guarding the garden against harm because of what Christ has accomplished The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed For the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice But by the will of the one God himself who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God that glorious freedom for the sons of God and for the whole of creation is the cosmic consequence of Christ's crossword.

Let's pray. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we do worship and adore you. We see you as pantocrator, the all-powerful ruling over all things, seated on the throne in heaven at your father's right hand and subduing all of your enemies and we thank you for the impact of that in our own lives I thank you father that because of the spread of the gospel and the spread of the biblical worldview and its understanding that you a rational God made an ordered universe to be understood and to be ruled by rational creatures made in your image We have gone from a time through most of human history when Half of all children would die before age five, and one life expectancy at birth would be 27 to 28 years, to a time in which in most of the world fewer than one in a thousand children die before age five, and where life expectancy at birth is now 80 years. I thank you Father for these signs of growing life among your people But especially I thank you for the sign of spiritual life. The spread of that gospel, the spread of that good news that men can be reconciled to you, sinners set right with a just and holy God by the atoning work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

When that gospel is preached and your Holy Spirit empowers it, uses the word to convince men of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, men and women, boys and girls are brought to repentance and given the gift of faith, and so have new life in Him, are acquitted of all of their trespasses and declared righteous in your sight. The first fruits of a wider reconciliation of all things to yourself. We praise and adore you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name Amen So thank you very much We actually have a couple minutes. Is there any questions?

Kind of used to being in classrooms. Anybody got a question? Yes Well for one thing it means that we should recognize that as Christians, we are called to a world-transforming task. We still have the dominion mandate of Genesis 1.28, where God blesses Adam and Eve and says to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have Dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds the air and everything that moves on the face of the earth We are all called to be a part of that Dominion. There is a there's a legend about Martin Luther I've sought and sought for for credible authentic primary evidence of this and Unfortunately, it can't be traced earlier than the early 19th century Nonetheless, it's such a nice legend I can't help mentioning it Martin Luther was once Asked that if he knew that he were going to die that day.

What would he would do? He would plant an apple tree Is the legend now it suits Luther's character, I think very very well Even if it's not Actually historical but Luther understood that God has called us to live in this world Not to not to live as if we were not a part of it And so, You know, I think we all can can pursue a variety of vocations that all serve God now This is legitimate about Luther. This is historical Luther of course taught the doctrine of vocation that all all believers have Callings in God and indeed that all honest lawful work is itself blessed by God and so Luther even said for example that if you were the executioner the guy who lopped off people's heads when they were condemned you should do it with all your heart and be the best executioner you could be because that was a lawful a holy calling to execute judgment so the engineer the doctor the the street sweeper the baker the painter whatever is your gift and your vocation you can do that knowing that that itself is a service to God we need oh how desperately we need in the Christian world to throw off the sacred secular distinction and to realize that all of this world is under the rule of Christ.

All of it is to be being transformed by us. Okay, so that's where I begin. I mean to give you one specific example I love engineers I'm really like I'm not an engineer I didn't do well in mathematics I can't do any of the things that engineers have to do, but I love engineers Because their basic calling in life is to solve problems You know find something some problem and an engineer sets out to figure out a way to solve it. I think that's a wonderful thing. And so, for example, in the field that I work in so much with environmental stewardship, right?

There are all kinds of byproducts of our productive activities, of our creative activities, some of which are harmful. We call them pollution. Good engineers look for ways to limit the amount of pollution that comes out of any given process they also look for ways to turn pollution into Resources so they can actually be useful and and and help other people We used to have no idea what to do with the highly toxic Waste that came out of nuclear reactors and now we use it in all kinds of different medicine medical applications we use it in smoke detectors it's amazing engineers figured out how to do that so engineering is a great calling for Christians but every other lawful Honorable honest work is a calling for Christians and we can pursue that Knowing that Christ will bless our work in that because that's part of what he came to do, right One more time for one more. Is that all right? Okay, any other question over here Yeah, let's say did you want two or three hours in response to that?

Well the first thing I can tell you is that I have a I have a lecture on DVD over at my exhibit table called godly dominion versus environmentalism and That whole lecture is designed to do exactly that to answer exactly your question You know the the thrust of it would be this the vast majority of the environmental movement works from an anti biblical worldview and theology and ethic most of the environmentalist movement in the United States has through the last 50 years or so been Naturalistic atheistic secularistic and denies the creator creature creature distinction that way by just denying that there is a creator Increasingly over the last 30 to 40 years or so and especially in the last 20 years a lot of the environmental movement is pantheistic it equates God with the world with the with the cosmos and This also denies the creator creature distinction in either of those Systems of thought you wind up worshipping the creature rather than the creator you've turned something else into God Now what also happens in this is that? Since you no longer have the God of the Bible in whose image man is made you lose the imago dei in man and so environmentalists almost to a person Consider human beings basically consumers and polluters.

We're using up Earth's resources Earth's resources. That's an interesting way of Putting it they belong to the earth, right though Psalm 115 verse 16 says that God gave the earth to men, right? We're Using up Earth's resources and we're polluting the planet while we're at it. We're poisoning the planet The Bible gives us different sense you saw from what I just said about what man is We can be creative productive stewards as God is in whose image we are we are made and we can actually make more Resources than we consume that's a strange idea, but I tell you it is true and I've worked it out very thoroughly in my book Prospects For growth a biblical view of population resources in the future which unfortunately is out of print But you can still find copies on Amazon used One point in that I put it this way that the average American male This was written back in the 1980s The Average American male produces 13 times as much as he consumes in his lifetime Those are solid economic figures and the average American female produces six times what she produces in her lifetime Which tells us that men are much better than women of course right except that the average American female produces the average American male.

Anyway, there are all kinds of different ways that I could build on that, but I'd encourage you to perhaps check into that one lecture, Godly Dominion versus Environmentalism over at the exhibit hall. Thank you very much and God bless you all.