Hub or Spoke? Why God’s Desire to Be Glorified Among Every Nation, Tribe, Tongue, and People Is In the Center of His Purpose For His Church.

Part 1: The Garden as Global Hub: Creation, Fall, and the Seed of Promise (Genesis 1-12)

Over the next 3 months I am posting a series (every two weeks, Lord willing) designed for us to examine God’s heart.  My aim is to clearly illustrate God as a missionary God who desires all peoples to glorify Him and see how He reveals this as a theme throughout ALL the Bible.  There have been large volumes written on this subject, so please understand, this series will merely crack the surface.  My hope, however, is that it will inspire you to dig deeper for yourself and motivate you to discover your place in the wheel!

In Part I of the series let’s begin “In the beginning…”  These words are familiar to most believers.  Many of us can quote the first verse of the Bible from memory.  As we work our way through creation in Genesis chapter 1, we continue to see after each day God saw that it was GOOD!  We see that after the sixth day as He had established His plan and saw everything He had made including man that it was ‘VERY GOOD’ (1:31).  We also see within His plan the reality that man was created in His own image… male and female… in His image (1:27).  What we see before the Fall is God’s perfect plan for His people.  We see all of creation under His order in perfect union and in perfect relationship with their creator.

If we’re not careful, however, we might easily miss verse 28 which I believe is one of the most important verses of ‘In the beginning’.  Verse 28 reads: 

“And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The key idea we see in this verse for this discussion is that God blessed them and we might say He blessed them to be a blessing.  He gave them dominion over…  It doesn’t say He gave them dominion over the garden alone.  The clear proclamation is they had dominion over the earth…  We should not underestimate the plan of God before the fall

Speaking of the fall though… Unfortunately, we have to move on from this beautiful picture of perfection.  We who grew up in the church have heard the story since Sunday school and/or Children’s Church.  All was as it should be and then came the apple.  Man (both male and female) were disobedient and it had disastrous consequences.  Consequences we are still living with today.  In chapter 3 of Genesis we learn about this great fall.  I won’t spend much time here because it is a familiar refrain.  Suffice it to say, we do not need to look very far to recognize the consequences of the fall.  Be it our own personal brokenness or the overwhelming brokenness of the world, the consequences of the fall are everywhere.  Needless to say, we’re not living in the Garden of Eden anymore.

There is good news though… even in post-fall Genesis, there is GOOD NEWS!!  We see clear Seeds of the ultimate redemptive promise of God through His son Jesus!  As early as Genesis 3:15 we see an illusion to the work of the cross and the resurrection as Jesus crushed the head of the serpent.  His ultimate plan is for blessing and redemption to all.  He does not intend for us to remain ‘fallen’!!  

There is so much more we could talk about in the first 12 chapters of the Bible that relates specifically to our topic, but for the sake of brevity I will end by reflecting on God’s initiation of  His redemptive plan through Abraham in chapter 12:1-3.  

“Now the Lord said[a] to Abram, “Go from your country[b] and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The first key point in these verses… ‘I will make you…”  We are reminded it is God who created the original perfect garden where all of mankind was designed to be in perfect union with Him and where He naturally received all glory.  In the same way it is God who initiates the redemptive plan through Abraham after the fall.  He says, “I will make of you…”  The story, however, does not end there.  If it did, we might believe God’s heart was only for a great nation called Israel and His intent was to bless it alone.  What we see, however, is that God blessed Abraham “so that you will be a blessing.”  He continues to show us that not only was Abraham blessed to be a blessing to his own family, but verse 3 ends by saying, ‘and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  

I hope you are not missing the significance of this covenant God made with Abraham!  God was creating in Abraham (and we see it clearly through the genealogy in Matthew) a blessing whose seed would lead to that of THE GREAT BLESSING himself… Jesus, King of Kings, Lord of Lord’s… The One for ALL blessing for all nations, all peoples.  The one whose birth we just celebrated.  You see how significant it was that He was born!  He was a part of a genealogy leading all the way back to creation, the fall, and yes… Abraham’s blessing!  Most importantly for this discussion though… It was for ‘all the families of the earth’!    

So, to wrap this up…  I hope you are discovering that even in creation, the fall, and Abraham’s story… God had a plan for ‘all the families of the earth’.  It is a plan of blessing!  It is a plan of redemption from the fall!  It is a plan that would ultimately come through a Jewish baby born in a manger.  But make no mistake, it is a plan that is not limited to only a few, or only one nation or only one people.  God desires His name to be known and glorified throughout ‘all the families of the earth’!  

Lord let it be!! The harvest continues to be abundant…  send workers oh Lord that we might see the fulfillment of your promise to Abraham so many years ago… that all the families of the Earth might be blessed!  Lord let it be as You have promised!