Genesis Framework Part 21

Genesis Framework
GF 21 Discover the Power of Consecration
January 17, 2016
Part 21

The character of Adam’s natural revelation in a pre-Fall state was different compared with a post-Fall state.

He would have been naturally constrained by the sense of deity within to an natural awareness of his own priestly-cultic responsibility, which would at the same time been enhanced and conditioned by his internal response to the natural witness of God’s creation all around him.

Through natural revelation, Adam free of the spirit-deadening constrains brought on by the Fall would have known by the living activity of his spirit, and the revelation of the Godhead clearly seen in the creation all around him, that God was the One who is to be worshipped and thanked.

Romans 1:19-23
19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man -- and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

In addition to internal natural and external visual sources man would have received special revelation in the form of aural word directives from God, as to various particulars of his priestly duties in the Edenic sanctuary which could not be discovered from natural revelation.

Today we will look at how the consecration-principle belongs to the priestly office in addition to adoration and thanks.

The priestly office is the first office to which Adam was commissioned.

How could Adam have known that he was commissioned to a priestly office having various obligations to perform?

Before man faced the world and was sent into it with a royal or kingly cultural commission he began life as a priest before God, as a beholder of the divine Glory, confronted with the Presence-Face of his Creator.

The theophanic Glory-Spirit on the mountain of God, which constituted Eden as a Sanctuary, would have given Adam a visible focal point to man’s experience of the Divine Presence and a localized external orientation for his cultic ministry.

Again, no special revelation was needed at the beginning to inform Adam that he had cultic obligations to perform or that, in fact, he was commissioned to a priestly office.

Adam would have also recognized that he was intended to be a personal temple of God; and so, as a living location of God his Creator, he would accordingly present the thoughts of his heart before the Lord.

He would have been constrained by the sense of deity within, and his faith interpretation of the world, and himself as a theocratic creation, to personally express his faith-commitment of the world and himself in a response of adoration, worship, thanksgiving and the meditations
of his heart in giving word-songs of his mouth as acceptable priestly offerings to his Father and Great King.

NKJ Psalm 19:14
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.

NKJ Psalm 5:1
A Psalm of David. Give ear to my words, O LORD, Consider my meditation.

NKJ Psalm 7:1
A Meditation of David, which he sang to the LORD…

Along with adoration, consecration belongs to the priestly office, which consists of the positive dedicating of things to the holy Lord and, complementing this, the carrying out of the negative charge to keep evil away from the sanctuary.

The implication is more than clear, that Adam was to have resisted the devil from entering into his own thoughts and meditations as well as from physically entering into the sanctuary of God at the tree of judgment.

Had Adam made the first step in actually wanting to resist the devil and expel the blasphemous intruder from that place the power of the heavenly host would have come to minister to him and help him.

Matthew 4:10-11
10 Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.' "
11Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

Let’s take a closer look at this idea of the priestly obligation in terms of positive consecration.

In the context of the covenant relationship of man as a covenant servant or vassal king of the suzerain king, the state of the man is expressed as that of a tributary of the great king.

a tributary

A metaphor when applied to rulers, based on the physical analog of a river or stream flowing into a larger river or lake.

When the great king is the Lord God, positive consecration is expressed by the payment of tribute as a cultic act, a priestly dedication of holy offerings.

Recall that in the adaptation of the ancient suzerain-vassal treaty as a model for Yahweh’s covenant with Israel, just as it was customary for annual trips to be made to the royal court of the suzerain to pay the stipulated-tribute; translated to God’s kingdom, we discover an analog with
the annual pilgrimages of the Israelites to the temple with their offerings for the Lord, as symbolic expression of the positive consecration principle and the priestly office.

In addition, the cultic presentation before the Fall, of token offerings of man were offered to symbolically express his inward recognition of man’s dedication to God’s consecration principle by outward action, words of praise and thanks to God.

Thus, man’s priestly approach to God also suggests the appropriateness of outward token offerings related to human labor and dominion over creation.

Even though we have already discussed the idea of death existing in the prelapsarian world, that may have been too long ago to recall. But it does raise the question whether a pre-Fall ritual offering might have taken the form of animal sacrifice.

Since before the Fall, all creatures were subordinated to man’s dominion, and as we will discover, sacrifice and death would have been part of the original order of the particular expressions of the consecration principle, there would be no obvious objection in principle to man
having had the right to kill animals to provide himself with animal flesh for food, or animal skins for other purposes.

Psalm 104.21 seems to indicate clearly that the Creator had from the outset granted to predatory beasts to feed on other animals, to serve their own interests.

Psalm 104:19-21
19 He appointed the moon for seasons; The sun knows its going down.
20 You make darkness, and it is night, In which all the beasts of the forest creep about.
21 The young lions roar after their prey, And seek their food from God.

And if this is so, it would have been an anomaly if animal flesh had not similarly been consecrated in the yet higher interests of man, who was set in authority over all the earth-works of God’s hands.

Please look at this carefully-

Consecration is one of the chief structural principles of the covenantal order of life.

At its highest level, consecration has been identified as the essence of religion.

But at an elementary level it may be simply defined as the subordination of the interests of one person or thing to those of another.

The idea of subordination-consecration in creation order assumes various forms with sacrifice and death being especially important aspects of it.

For example, just look a the use made of the soil by the plants, the consecration principle is carried out as the soil gives up of the particulates of itself to the higher interests of the plants.

Also see how the air is utilized by the birds in their kingdom, and beasts of the land, as well as all creatures who breath air, they do not return air for air.

The elemental constituents of air undergo conversion and loss to some real extent in the exchange process, resulting in the production of carbon-dioxide.

Fish and creatures of the sea make similar utilization of the water of their kingdom.

In these simple examples, something more is involved; here is a royal exacting of tribute, an assimilation of lower elements into higher orders, and in the process these elements always incur conversion and loss.

We may appropriately regard this as an elementary form of sacrifice.

When something belonging to the organic, living level of creation, is sacrificially consecrated to the interests of a higher creature, as when plants are assigned as food for animals and men, death is an appropriate term for this form of sacrifice.

NKJ John 12:24
"Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.

NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:36
Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies.

We don’t have time to pursue this today, but the implications and ramifications are, as Trump would say, “are really huge!”

For example…

NKJ Romans 12:1
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service( worship).

So, in this elementary form, at least, death was therefore part of the pattern of consecration that constituted the world-structure from its beginning.

Since all creatures were subordinated to man’s dominion, and we have discovered that sacrifice and death were certainly part of the original order of creation as particular expressions of the consecration principle, there would appear to be no objection in principle to man having the
right to kill animals to provide for himself.

This conclusion is supported in Paul’s comments:

1 Timothy 4:3-5
3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving;
5 for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

Paul’s word reflect the terminology of Genesis 1.31, which is immediately connected to God’s statement concerning His provision of food for His creatures.

Genesis 1:29 - 31
29 And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.
30 "Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so.
31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Paul simply asserts that the foods some individuals were prohibiting (and probably meat is chiefly in view) were good and had in fact been created by God to be received with thanksgiving (consecration principle).

So, you don’t agree, based on the statements concerning man’s diet in Genesis 1.29 (And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.).

In Genesis 1.29 the explicit assignment of the plants to man for food is not restrictive, as though these were the only kind of food permitted to him.

The theme context here is that of man’s kingship over the animals and vegetable realms.

We are required to consider a great variety of ways animals were designed to serve man- not only as food, but as helpers in agriculture, as a means of transportation, as beasts of burden, etc.- the general fact of man’s dominion over them is all that is stated.

As for the vegetable realm, its usefulness as food for man is direct, whereas its usefulness as food for fattening of animals is indirect.

Moreover, there is a special literary purpose in this reference to the provision for the use of plants for food in Genesis 1.29, namely to prepare for the exceptional stipulation in Genesis 2.16f prohibiting the use of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Also, in Genesis 9.3, what is actually authorized to Noah was the eating of all kinds of meats, effectively removing the temporary prohibition against the eating of unclean animals which had been instituted for Noah’s family within the special symbolic situation in the ark-kingdom.

Genesis 9:3
"Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.”

By this an allusion is implied referring to the fact that the eating of meat had been permitted prior to the deluge.

OK, you say- what about the idyllic prophetic descriptions of a future world in which meat-eaters are turned vegan?

This is not a compelling argument for an objection to our present thesis.

For one thing, the future world is not a simple return to conditions at the beginning.

Also, if we are going for an literal sense of other related prophecies. Some portray the world to come where the redeemed are depicted as feasting, with no suggestion of vegetarian scruples.

If there is any evidence of the nature of the future condition to be discovered in the resurrection manifestations of Christ, the particular episode of the risen Lord’s eating of a fish for breakfast suggests a sacrifice of a living creature to the use of higher beings, so this ought not to be considered as an imperfection in the consecrated order of God’s creation.

Finally, we are to be priest-kings in the new earth, the kingly office implies the existence of a consecrated-order of a new creation.

Many will be surprised on the Day of Judgment when they discover that it was just as the Word of God says; only the righteousness of Christ is able to save you.All men are sinners and no one can save himself. God is just, so He must punish sin; but He is also merciful, moreover gracious, and offers His Son as the perfect sacrifice in order to purchase a place for you in heaven, which He offers to you as the free gift of eternal life. As we continue to examine man’s earliest duties with regard to the covenant of works, although they can be categorically divided into two distinct types of classes; one in relationship with God, and the other in relationship with fellow man, all covenant stipulations are expressions of the will of the Lord. The law of the covenant is the law of man’s image-sonship.

Jesus is God Incarnate

In order to pay the debt of our sins, He came from Heaven, having been sent by the Father, where He lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father even unto the shameful death upon the cross in order to pay the debt of your sins.This gift must be received by faith, believing that Jesus’ perfect life and Cross Work was His complete and necessary Atonement for your sins, in your behalf.Faith is a gift that comes by the Power of God the Holy Spirit working in a person’s innermost being. The Holy Spirit has the authority and power to quicken your dead spirit, to make it come to life. If you have not done so before this moment, ask Jesus to forgive you your sins, tell Him you’ve stop trying to be your own savior, and ask Him to come into your life right now, and to give you eternal life. Then, in faith believing, thank Him for the gift that He is giving you, the one He paid for in full in your place, in Jesus’ name,AMEN