From The Christian Reader:
God’s Family Business
by Robert Andrews
The Bible tells us that from the beginning the concept of the family has been in the heart of God. He has existed for all eternity in a “family” Himself: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And while we cannot know fully His motivation for His acts in time, (only what He has chosen to reveal to us), we can speculate that He desired to pattern His creation after that relationship He enjoyed within the Godhead itself. Paul says in Ephesians 1:3 that before creation God was a Father to our Lord Jesus Christ. We can imagine that that relationship was so satisfying, so enjoyable to Him, that He desired the “only begotten Son,” (John 3:16), to become “the firstborn among many brethren,” (Romans 8:29): a vast family of sons and daughters upon whom He could shower His love and affection, with whom He could share His vision and through whom He could accomplish His eternal purpose.
What father is there who has not had similar thoughts? If we have found purpose and meaning to our lives, is there not something within us that wants our children and grandchildren, our posterity, to share in that vision?
My grandfather, “Papaw,” was a natural-born entrepreneur, the kind of man everyone called a “horse-trader” in early twentieth-century Oklahoma. In 1912 as a young man he started a bank, then traded it for a drugstore in the little rural community of Stratford. The Bayless Drug Company was born. He parlayed that single store into a chain of seven drug stores throughout south central Oklahoma before he retired at eighty years of age. He lived to be 94 and, before he died, passed that original store on to his daughter, my mother, who owned and managed it for some twenty years.
Papaw’s only son died in his twenties of pneumonia, and he saw me, his only grandchild, as the one who would carry on his vision. I really tried to be interested in pharmacy as a profession, get a college degree in that field, and then get involved in one of my grandfather’s drugstores, realizing he would undoubtedly leave the whole thing to me as his only heir. Who wouldn’t want to inherit a ready-made, productive family business?
However, I had grown up in the city, and I couldn’t see myself living in a rural setting. Nor did I see any signs that led me to believe I had a talent for business (that has been borne out over my lifetime as I have continued to demonstrate an amazing ability to buy high and sell low). I can remember how hard it was to tell my grandfather, after my first year in college, that pharmacy didn’t really interest me, and I wanted to major in chemical engineering instead. Although he said he understood, and whatever I wanted to do was fine with him, I could see the disappointment written all over his face, because he knew that his life’s work, his vision, would not be passed on to his descendants. When my mother finally sold the original drugstore in Stratford, Oklahoma, it had been in the Bayless family continually for over three-quarters of a century. That drugstore was so much a part of our lives that it had become almost a member of the family with a life of its own.
The Eternal Purpose
God too has a vision, a master plan for His vast earthly family. This plan involves every member catching the Father’s vision and being involved with Him in the “family business”—the business of extending the righteous rule of His Son Jesus Christ over all the earth. This is the bottom-line purpose, the “eternal purpose,” for which you were created: to be a “kingdom-extender” for the kingdom of God.
Before God created man, it was decided in the council of the Godhead that he would be formed in God’s own image, after His likeness (Genesis 1:26). At least a part of that likeness was that man would exist as an individual, but he would also be male and female, alike as generic man, but different sexually, therefore creating the corporate family. Remember that God Himself was one God, but He had a triune personality: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, making up the Divine family. From the very beginning, then, we can see that God had in mind the family to accomplish His work on the earth.
The setting into which God placed His first family bears some investigation. Ezekiel 28:11-19 tells us that Satan, one of God’s created angels, rebelled against the authority of God Himself. His pride caused him to chafe at the subservient place he held, and caused Him to aspire to be “like the Most High,” to want to answer to no one, not even God (Isaiah 14:12-15). He had led one-third of the angels in heaven into rebellion with him (Revelation 12:4), and the earth had become the location of their evil activity.
It was into this battlefield that God placed Adam and Eve, His first human family. Eden was a beachhead that God had established in enemy territory for this newly created family, this “weapon for victory.” A part of God’s purpose for Adam and Eve and their posterity was to move out from that beachhead over all the earth as God’s faithful vice-regents, and to defeat God’s rebellious enemy Satan and his demonic hosts in mortal combat. This would then open the way for the rule of God to be established over all the earth.
Why did God give that all-important task to Adam and Eve rather than handling the job Himself with a snap of His own fingers? Why did He involve such obviously fragile and easily influenced representatives in such a crucial mission? Paul gives us the answer in Ephesians 3:10 when he tells us that God’s manifold wisdom is somehow demonstrated to Satan and his demons by using insignificant man to bring His enemy to defeat. He brings glory to His name by succeeding in His mission with such unlikely warriors. God, the creator of the universe, does not need to lower Himself to deal directly with such a rebel as Satan. He can get the job done with us!
During the War for Independence, England’s General Charles Cornwallis and 6,000 British troops were defeated at the Battle of Yorktown by George Washington’s colonial forces in what proved to be the decisive battle of the war. The formal surrender was set for 2:00 P.M. on the afternoon of October 18 in 1781. I stood on that parade ground a few years ago with tears in my eyes and listened to the recorded recreation of that momentous day. I imagined the lines of British troops, following their mounted officers, marching in columns four abreast to the head of the file, and laying down their muskets—some with defiance, some with tears, but all in defeat. The French and American troops were lined on either side of the file of British as the redcoats marched forward to surrender their weapons. The colonists were outnumbered, and certainly didn’t look like victors, as many of them were dressed in buckskins and homespun shirts, but they were the victors nevertheless.
General Cornwallis could not bring himself to surrender his sword to General Washington in person, so he did not attend the ceremonial surrender, claiming to be ill, and sent a deputy to perform that unpleasant task. Significantly, Washington refused to deal with Cornwallis’ deputy, but sent his own deputy to accept the sword. Military protocol says that one must deal only with those of equal rank1.
God in like manner sent a deputy to deal with Satan. Empowered with the imprimatur of the King Himself, man was sent to the Garden of Eden on a mission to recapture and occupy for the King the piece of real estate called earth. It would not happen overnight, but as Adam and Eve reproduced and filled the earth with their progeny, their army would grow, both in size, and, as they grew to trust the King more and more, in effectiveness as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment