I recently spoke at Commission’s Leadership and Governance conference, for elders and trustees. They’d asked me to give them a bit of a biblical overview—you can listen to it here—and I started by showing them God’s good governance in Genesis 1.
My message went elsewhere over that, but I’d like to draw your attention to the pattern I highlighted.
As I’ve argued before, Genesis 1 starts with 3 days of form in which God gives clarity to the cosmos by separating one thing from another. Then this is followed by returning to each formed ‘realm’ to fill it with life and abundance. On the first of those God fills the distinction between day and night with the stars and the ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ lights to govern day and night.
God appoints governors to rule that ‘realm’ as his agents. His governance works through agents. The identity of the greater and lesser lights is an interesting question. Most point to the Sun and the Moon since they govern the day and the night in a sense. That’s not crazy, but it does seem to imply that the Sun and Moon are rational agents who can rule on God’s behalf. While that isn’t apparent in isolation, since the only other established agents are humans, there is a comparison drawn between us and the lights.
Perhaps the Sun and Moon aren’t in view, or perhaps the Sun and Moon aren’t what we think they are. Either way, some sort of spiritual power is appointed to rule over night and day on God’s behalf. As Lewis described in Voyage of the Dawn Treader on the occasion of Eustace meeting a star, Eustace tells the star that in his world stars are burning balls of gas, the star replies ‘that’s not what they are, it’s just what they’re made of.’ Our unenchanted view of the world finds the suggestion that the Sun might be a spiritual power untenable. Maybe we shouldn’t be so fast.
Whatever the lights are, once we’ve noticed the highly patterned nature of Genesis 1 we might expect to see another agent on Day 5, something given to rule the sea. We definitely see a final agent on Day 6, the man and the woman, who are given to rule over everything else made in Day 6 and the realm of Day 3, and over everything made on Day 5 as well.
On the fifth day we do meet a great creature who seems to be the pinnacle of everything that was made in those days, like the two lights in the fourth day and the man and woman on the sixth. We meet the tannin, the ‘great sea creatures’ in the ESV, or more accurately the ‘serpents’ or ‘sea monsters’ or ‘dragons.’ There is a moment in the drama where it almost feels like God is giving governance of the sea, the realm of death and chaos, to the dragons. Except that doesn’t happen, dominion over all that lives in the sea is given to the man and the woman.
In the New Testament, dominion over the whole cosmos is placed firmly in Jesus’ fist (Colossians 1) and his primary agent for this rule is the church. That’s our future, ruling the cosmos on Jesus’ behalf. All governance activity—including the work of Trustees in the church—is preparatory work for the new earth where we judge angels (1 Corinthians 6) and rule cities. We always start in God’s house, like Adam and Eve’s rule started in Eden’s garden and was swiftly cut short before they even extended it to Eden’s land, and we go from God’s house to the world. We’re meant to learn how to govern, how to exercise dominion, in the church in order to then exercise and teach that in the world. We’re supposed to mature toward teaching the world how to live.
Good governance is kingdom work.
And the dragons hate it.
I’m speculating now, but the fact the Enemy and his foul legions would actively oppose humanity’s rightful mandate to exercise dominion over the earth may have some roots in their pride being pricked about them not being given dominion over the ‘sea.’
Instead, it’s almost like the serpents of the sea are under mankind’s dominion along with the fish in the sea. These agents of chaos are, at best, insignificant in God’s grand order of the universe. They will become truly nothing in the future as the sea will be no more (Revelation 21) and they will be thrown in a lake, but one made of fire.
Their twisted attempts to govern will end in goodness, chaos will be wrapped up into order, and life will win. Good governance points in this direction.
Remember that at your next Trustees meeting.
Photo by Abbie Parks on Unsplash
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