Can you imagine what Moses says here, a group of people
being given a land “with great and good cities that you did not build, and
houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did
not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant.” That is a very strange idea to think we could
walk into some place like Black Mountain and take up whatever house we wanted
and take over the businesses there and run them as our own. It happened in Rwanda in the memory of some
folks I know, but it wasn’t a God thing.
People began killing their neighbors in the 1960s and others then
decided to flee the country over the next 30 years, walking away from their
lives, homes and businesses and others then simply took them over. The Lord gave the Land and everything in it
to the people of the covenant but it wasn’t empty to begin with, it was filled
with Canaanites, who go back to Genesis 9.
I get a bit squeamish about such an idea but I also have to balance that
with the reality that God created all things and that we were created in His
image and for His glory and that we are rebellious. It is His and He is a jealous God, not only
for those with whom He is in covenant but also for all of us. We have responsibility for our own actions. CS Lewis wrote, “The ancient man approached
God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the
modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock.
He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being
the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The
trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is
on the bench and God is in the dock.”
How does the fact that the Word, that existed in beginning
with God, in other words, before there was anything at all in the universe, and
through whom all things came into being, became flesh and dwelt among us,
change your ideas about accusing God of being a ruthless killer in that first
lesson? He loved His own image and His
own creation enough to come to save those who would believe. Not all believe, but those who do are given
the right to become children of God. Not
all who live among us today will see eternal life and yet He has not left
Himself without witness and those who do not believe reject the evidence of the
witness of creation and the witness of the church. Who knows what evidence the Canaanites
rejected prior to their being thrown out of the land? Paul’s argument in Romans is clear, neither
Gentile nor Jew can proclaim ignorance or innocence. We may deny creation ex nihilo by God but our
denial doesn’t change the fact that it is a witness to Him.
The Father made much of the Son and the measure of our love
of God is making much of the Son. That
glory is not shared because, while there may be more than one person of the
Trinity, they are of the same being or substance while we are of another
substance, the dust of the earth, the stuff left over from creation. The nobility of man comes from His taking on
flesh and dwelling among us and that fact alone changes everything about
mankind’s self-understanding and our understanding of the distinction between
us and the rest of creation. The
incarnation sets us apart, not scientifically, but ontologically, we are more
than dust, we are image bearers and Jesus is the perfect image, the exact
imprint. That fact has huge
implications, that we, all of us have great dignity and that we have great
responsibility to the rest of creation as God’s chosen stewards. We are in the dock because we were created in
His image and given that responsibility.
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