DO IT AGAIN!
A few years back an older black gentleman, so I’ve read, made his first visit to Washington DC and to the Abraham Lincoln memorial. A deeply sensitive man, tried in the furnace of oppression where he and those he loved more dearly than himself had suffered greatly he looked long at Lincoln. Then he looked beyond Lincoln, to some one greater than Lincoln, someone who welcomed Lincoln’s service and he gently with deep passion prayed, “Do it again!”
God is always doing that: doing it again! He began right at our roots and offered fellowship and life in his presence and under his fatherly dominion to our parents. We went our own way and God brought curse and uncreation as a redemptive judgment as one of the ways he would keep his commitment to us.
He did it again in Genesis 9 when he gave dominion to Noah and his descendants, repeating the Genesis 1:26 commission; but the brave new world corrupted itself and we hear its God-denying insolence in Genesis 11 where the Fall narrative that began in Genesis 3 is completed.
He did it again when he brought Israel, his elect nation in Abraham, into Canaan as he did Adam and Eve into the garden but like Adam, Israel in its kings and leaders refused to exercise dominion in the image of God and he sent them into the judgment of Exile.
He did it again when he gave dominion to the Gentile powers beginning with Babylon and going through Rome. We find that rehearsed in the book of Daniel. In Daniel 2:37-38 we’re told in the terms of Genesis 1 and 9 that God gave to Nebuchadnezzar dominion which was to be exercised under God and in righteousness (Daniel 4:19-27). Like Adam, Nebuchadnezzar claimed godlike power and in his pride brought his world down with him.
The story goes on and the picture painted in the book of Judges about Israel is repeated in every age and in every nation.
It’s important to notice that the dominion speech from Genesis 1:26-27 is repeated at various times through the biblical witness and that the judgment which followed rebellion is repeatedly the speech of “uncreation”.
Babylon’s lost its dominion to the Medo-Persians almost (not quite) in silence when Cyrus’ troops entered the city via a river that ran into it but they were welcomed into Babylon by the priests who had their own bone to pick with Nabonidus and his regent Belshazzar. But that’s not how the fall of Babylon is depicted in Isaiah 13—14. There the downfall of Babylon is described in terms of a creation made mad by the God who brings “uncreation” (as he did in Egypt during the plagues).
Judah is finally judged for its sins but when Jeremiah describes it he sees it in terms of “uncreation”—the undoing of Genesis 1 (see Jeremiah 4:19-31).
In all the above and more, what does the human family experience in common in its passing ages?
We’re told repeatedly that God renewed his commission to humans to exercise dominion over the world in his image. Genesis 1 is re-enacted.
We are told repeatedly that redemptive judgment is carried out and it is spoken to us in “uncreation” terms coming from Genesis 3 and 6—8 and elsewhere.
Human sin is a single narrative; as a family we have only one story and that is of a refusal to exercise authority in the image of God; that is, in the way he exercised it in bringing creation into being and promoting life and harmony.
Human sin whenever or by whoever is linked to the original Fall and the consequent divine judgment.
Whatever the specific forms of our individual sins we all share in the essence of Sin; it has contaminated us all.
But God eternally made a commitment to his creation and in patience that defies description he refused to wash his hands of it.
In Jesus Christ he “did it again” and the dominion that Jesus now possesses and exercises in the midst of his enemies (Psalm 110) he will one day make fully public when he comes to right all wrongs and bring God’s eternal creative purpose to completion.
The NT elect has the unique destiny and mission to bear witness to the truth that God has “done it again” in Jesus.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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