Tony Evans - Understanding Your Right to Rule (05/19/2017)
In a new series titled "Lost and Found: Reclaiming Your Spiritual Authority," Dr. Tony Evans explains that from the very beginning in Genesis 1:26-28, God gave mankind—both male and female—the dominion mandate to rule and manage the earth. He argues that believers have lost this authority, leading to chaos in their personal "gardens," and calls them to reclaim their God-given right to rule by integrating their spiritual identity with their physical responsibilities.
The Lost Authority
We have a lost and found here at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, where things that have been lost are kept until they are claimed. Our lost and found has been accumulating, either because people don't know something that they had has been lost, or they do not care that it has been lost because it has little value, so they don't come get it.
Most of the things in the lost and found, by the way, are Bibles. That goes for inordinate amounts of time unclaimed, therefore unused. Today, we begin a new series I'm calling "Lost and Found: Reclaiming Your Spiritual Authority," because a lot of us have lost ours and don't know where to find it.
We're going to address what God intended and what God intends for your call to rule your world. You're called to rule your world. Many of us have lost, given up, abdicated our right to rule. Because we have abdicated our right to rule, we are being ruled by that which is illegitimate. We are being ruled by circumstances, people, problems, challenges that call the shots for us because we have lost sight of our spiritual authority.
The Foundation: The Dominion Mandate
Today, I want to deal with the foundational theology of our spiritual authority and our right to rule the world, which will lead us into the responsibility of ruling our world. In Genesis chapter 1, in the beginning, God is demonstrated His creative genius through the creation of the world simply by the word.
God has spoken, and over and over and over again we read, "and it was so," and "it was good." God has, through five days, created a spectacular earth with all the nuances and idiosyncrasies necessary for life to be fully lived. And then He comes to the sixth day, and He sends forth His crowning achievement.
Verse 26 begins with "and God said." Verse 27 says, "God created." Verse 28 says, "God blessed." So, and whatever I'm getting ready to say to you, you can't disconnect God from it. God delegated to mankind the full responsibility for caring for His creation.
God moved—watch this—from direct control, 'cause up until this time God's doing all the work. It wasn't all that hard, but He was doing it. God was taking care of everything. God was setting stuff up. God was saying, "let it be," and it was so. But on the sixth day, when He creates man, He says, "We're going to turn over the running, the ruling, the management, the stewardship, the handling of earth, and we're going to place it in the hands of man."
Ownership vs. Management
God has endowed the human race with both the opportunity and the responsibility for handling stuff He made, because everything that man is managing is based on what His creative activity brought into being. "I am going to—we are going to—let us... we're going to give man dominion." It's called the Dominion Mandate or the Cultural Mandate.
We're going to give man the dominion of the world that we have created. Now, this explains a whole lot, because if God turns over to me and you and to the world the decision-making ability with regard to the well-being of the planet, that explains why so much stuff is messy. Because God has turned it over.
And with giving the responsibility, He has also given the freedom to make the decision about the direction that the earth will go. So if the earth goes bad, it's because the decision to make it go bad has been handed over to the human race. Now, I don't want you to misunderstand me like some who are deists do.
Many of our founding fathers were deists, and deists held that God created the world, then He kind of wound it up, disappeared, and let it unwind as it would. No, no. God has not given up His ownership. "The earth is the Lord's, the fullness thereof; the world and all they that dwell in it." He has not given the ownership, but what He has given is the managerial responsibility.
And all of us know you can turn something that you own over to somebody else, and they can mess it up. It's not because it wasn't right when you turned it over; it's that they became fools in handling it. So, "let them rule." This authority to rule is no small thing. And let me show you how big it really is.
God Waits on Your Decision
It's so big that God will regularly wait on your decision before He decides what He's going to do. In Second Peter chapter 3, it says, "and God is waiting on you." God is waiting on you. That's why some things take years and decades to get right, 'cause God said, "I'm waiting on you. Let you rule. I'm waiting on you. I'm waiting on you, 'cause I've turned this over to you."
So now, all of a sudden, you have become very significant. You're not just a bunch of dirt thrown together to be here, exist, and die. God is waiting and saying, "let them rule." We were created to manage the third planet from the sun, for good or for bad, which explains why whenever God wanted to do something on earth, He had to find a person.
He didn't just come down and do it; He found somebody through whom to do it. He didn't just do it. He creates an Adam; He finds a Noah; He locates an Abraham; He finds a Moses; He raises up a judge; He identifies a prophet; He dubs a king. And when stuff really got bad, He becomes a man. He becomes a man because He must rule through a man, through a human being. "Let them rule."
Created in God's Image to Rule
The devil doesn't want you to hear this series, 'cause you might start thinking like a ruler. You might start acting like a ruler. You might start talking like a ruler. You might start walking like a ruler rather than simply a ruined one. He says, "let them rule." God has given legal authority within His boundaries to operate in history. You are God's go-to. He mirrored Himself in you.
He created a reflection. This reflection of God in you is a spiritual nature. So God, in the physical being, created a spiritual reality. It says, "God breathed into the nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul." There was an immaterial part that was placed in Adam that does not belong to any other of the created order. It says man, and man alone, was created in the image of God, where the spiritual was placed in the physical.
No place else. Evolution is not just a system of how things came about; it's a philosophy of identification. It's who you are, which is why the evolutionist must get rid of God because he can't track this thing back to God. 'Cause if he tracks it back to God, he's got a problem. Come on. He must, to be consistent, be atheistic in his argumentation until he makes a monkey out of you.
You have been created in the image of God, and therefore, watch this, there has been the spiritual, immaterial deposited in the physical in both male and female. But it's not only ontological; it's not only your state of being; it's also functional.
The Spiritual-Physical Integration
What do I mean? God has already said, "let them rule." Why do I need to know I've been created in His image? "Because when they rule, I want their rulership to be connected to me. I want them to mirror me. I want them to reflect in the physical their reality in the spiritual. I do not want them to rule apart from me. I want us to be 2 Corinthians 6:1 workers together. I'm going to provide the spiritual 'cause they have my image; they're going to provide the physical 'cause they're living in a physical realm."
So the way I get my spiritual done in a physical realm is through a being that has both. He's got the spiritual because he has my image; he's got the physical, so he can go places on the planet in a physical way because he has brought the two together. What the enemy has done is caused us to separate the two apart.
So we got the spiritual on Sunday, then I got to do the physical on Monday, and the two become disconnected, schizophrenic; the two become separated. He says no. You have been created with the divine stamp, the divine mark. God still owns, but man governs. He is to mirror, ontologically and functionally, in this world the rule of God, both male and female.
Your Garden to Rule
God's call is always the same; it is to spread the knowledge of God. That's why He said, "be fruitful and multiply." See, Adam wasn't to rule the whole earth; he was supposed to rule his garden. It was mankind that was ruling the whole earth. That's why it was "be fruitful and multiply." In other words, reproduce people that go other places that set up new gardens for the rule of God.
And everybody has a garden that you're supposed to be ruling. Everybody has a sphere, a world, that the rulership of God is to be manifested in. There was no sin at this point; there's no rebellion at this point. This was God's plan. Satan's job is to corrupt that plan, to destroy that plan, to wipe out that plan so that you become the tail and not the head, so that you lose who you are, and you spend all your life searching for something you'll never find because it's in the lost and found.
Some of you are hearing for the first time that my position is created as a ruler. You didn't know that. Some of you, you didn't know that that was God's intention for you because you possess the image of God deposited in you; you have the spiritual nature. Oh, everybody wants to rule; everybody wants to call a shot; everybody wants to be the boss.
But what they don't want is the image. They do not want the spiritual being integrated into the human rulership, and so God is cast aside, and we have to live with the consequence. We have to live with the consequences of ruling without the image. So you have to understand: you were created in the image. "Let them rule, and I'm going to wait on them to rule, however long it takes. I'm going to wait on their decisions." And that's why in the Bible you have all these delays taking place.
What It Means to Wait on the Lord
By the way, let me tell you what it means to "wait on the Lord," because some people get this confused, too. To wait on the Lord does not mean sit down and do nothing. Let's get that. To wait on the Lord simply means don't go outside of God to get it done. To wait on the Lord means using God's methods, using God's direction to get it done. But don't go outside of those guidelines to get it done.
Don't run the ball up into the stands and out into the concession area and then out into the parking lot talking about "touchdown." That's outside. Don't go outside of the ordained to get it done. That's what waiting on the Lord means. So He says that you have been called to rule as a human race.
The application is your garden, your particular world—we'll talk about that next time. But the idea here is that is what God had in mind. And many of us have wasted years of our lives because nothing is being ruled for the kingdom of God; we're still trying to make it. The third thing: verse 28, "God blessed them."
The Nature of God's Blessing
"Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth; subdue it; bring it under your control; rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. God blessed them." All right, everybody wants to be blessed; everybody wants a blessing. Let's remind you what a blessing is.
A blessing is enjoying and extending the goodness of God. Let me tell you how He blessed them. He didn't just say "you're blessed." It says He blessed them. Then let me tell you how He blessed them. Watch this now; this is big. He blessed them by resourcing the place where they were supposed to rule. It says He resourced what He called them to do.
In other words, He didn't call them to do something that He didn't provide what was needed to get it done. Let me tell you what a blessing is: a blessing is when God resources your calling. A blessing is when God provides what is needed to get done what He told you to do. You know you've been blessed, one, because you're enjoying the goodness of God in spite of the trials and tribulations associated with it.
And there's something left over. Contentment is giving me what I need. It becomes a blessing in the fullest sense of the word when what you've given me for my needs I can spill over and use to be a blessing to somebody else. 'Cause remember, Abraham was blessed to be a blessing. His name was made great 'cause through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
So when God blesses you, there's going to be something that can overflow to somebody else. It will never just stop with you. He resourced what He wanted them to do. He made provision for what He expected them to get done. He said, "be fruitful and multiply," but He gave them what was necessary to do it. He told them, "I want you to eat," but He planted the trees and planted the fruit so they would have something to eat.
In other words, He didn't just tell them, "go rule," and not provided them the wherewithal to get the rulership done. The beautiful thing about ruling your world is God supplies for the world He wants you to rule, and then you become blessed.
The Right World to Rule
See, a lot of folk are going out to worlds they were never approved to go to and wonder why it's not working out. It's not working out 'cause you're not in the right world. You're trying to cross over into somebody else's world. A charge to keep you have, a calling to fulfill. God supplies what He calls you to.
Once you leave what He's called you to and you're trying to rule other folks' world... that's why the Bible says, "work out your own salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure." He has for you a world to rule. He will bless you for the ruling of that world, but He's not interested in helping you rule somebody else's world or helping you help the devil to rule yours.
He said He created them, He said it, He created it, and then He blessed it. Their job was to do it. Folks say, "I'm waiting on God." God's looking down saying, "I'm waiting on you." Like the guy was sitting next to the telephone talking about, "I prayed, I prayed, I need a job. I prayed, I prayed, I prayed, I prayed. I asked God to give me a job. I know this phone's going to ring. I know this phone's going to ring." Fool, you better get up, get dressed, and go job hunting.
Active Partnership with God
Oh yeah, God... when's the last time you've seen a bird? You know, the Bible says the birds don't worry; the birds don't get ulcers; the bird doesn't need Pepto-Bismol, none of that. The birds don't go through all of that. And yet the Bible says, "and God supplies their needs." You know how many birds there are? God supplies their needs.
Now, when's the last time you seen a bird on a branch with his beak open, waiting for God to drop worms from heaven? When have you ever seen that? You never seen a bird waiting on the Lord, quoting the Bible: "Yeah, you said you supply all my needs. I need a worm." You never seen a bird do that.
But a bird is confident that when it goes worm-looking, it's going to go worm-finding. It's going to—God's got a worm for me someplace—so that bird can be confident. But it's going to fly and go somewhere, knowing that the provision has already been made. God said, "I'm waiting on you." Two years have gone by. "I'm waiting on you. Let them rule." There is responsibility and involvement in the creative process.
God will go with you; God will rule with you as long as His image is being kept consistent as a part of you. The problems in our world today—people say, "How can there be a good God and there be so much pain?" "Let them rule." "How can there be a good God and there be so much war?" "Let them rule." "How can there be a good God and there be child abuse?" "Let them rule." "How can there be a big God and there be so much crime?" "Let them rule." God has decided: you can rule with me, or you can rule without me. But you get the rule.