– God’s love to humans was shown when He created Adam in His glorious image, when He gave Adam His living breath and the freedom of choice. And today we study His love as He allowed humans being to reign with Him in this world.

– Christians often value God’s blessing in healing, giving financial fortune and being in peace and safe. Not many of us think about this kind of blessing, to reign with God in this world.

– But from the beginning, after creating Adam, God had given the command that he should take control over all living things that He had created, as it was written in Genesis and in Psalm:

GENESIS 1: 26 – Then God said: Let Us make mankind in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

SÁNG THẾ KÝ 1: 26 – Đức Chúa Trời phán rằng: Chúng ta hãy làm nên loài người như hình ta và theo tượng ta, đặng quản trị loài cá biển, loài chim trời, loài súc vật, loài côn trùng bò trên mặt đất, và khắp cả đất.

PSALM 8: 5-8 – You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of Your hands; You put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

THI THIÊN 8: 5-8 – Chúa làm người kém các thiên sứ một chút, đội cho người sự vinh hiển và sang trọng. Chúa ban cho người quyền cai trị công việc tay Chúa làm, Khiến muôn vật phục dưới chơn người: Cả loài chiên, loài bò, đến đỗi các thú rừng, chim trời và cá biển, cùng phàm vật gì lội đi các lối biển.

– With that command God wanted to share His dominion over all creatures and things that He had created.

– This willingness to share is not seen often in humankind, but it’s part of God’s virtues. Even in human parents we don’t see much this characteristic.

– When God wanted to share the control over the world to humans, it’s not that He could not reign over it by Himself, but because of His deep love for humankind.

– God is the Almighty God, as Jesus had said to His disciples:

MARK: 10: 27 – Jesus looked at them and said: With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.

MÁC 10: 27 – Đức Chúa Jêsus ngó môn đồ mà rằng: Sự đó loài người không thể làm được, nhưng Đức Chúa Trời thì chẳng thế; vì Đức Chúa Trời làm mọi sự được cả.

– God created Adam and Eve not because He needed them to serve Him, but because He wanted to share the control of this beautiful world with them:

ACTS 17: 25 – And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything. Rather, He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

CÔNG VỤ 17: 25 – Ngài cũng chẳng dùng tay người ta hầu việc Ngài dường như có cần đến sự gì, vì Ngài là Đấng ban sự sống, hơi sống, muôn vật cho mọi loài.

– To understand God’s love when He wanted to share the control of this world, we should look into this life and see how some parents behave to their children concerning the sharing of their wealth or their own homes.

– Many parents never let their children even touch their wealth until they already dead. That’s why people make their wills. And they even hid the wills from their children.

– May be there are some arguments that because of their children were unworthy of the parents’ trust, but look at the whole humans, who is actually worthy of God’s trust? But He still wants to share the control of this world with us.

– But as God is willingly to share, humans, in their turn, have abused this world instead. And they have went to extreme to either control it or destroy it.

– On one hand, people keep mining the earth, the nature, the seas to extreme level to satisfy their greed. A lot of species have gone extinct because of human’s action. Last week news declared the oyster population along U.S. eastern seaboard is already gone, particular severe in Florida.

(The Disappearing Apalachicola Oyster: Florida’s Fight to Save Its Prized Delicacy)

(Where Have All the Oysters Gone? Florida’s once bustling industry is drying up)

– On the other hand, the people who claim to protect environment have gone to the extreme, even to let a whole city burned rather than to cut a single dead tree, as it happened in California with the Camp fire that burned the whole town named Paradise.

– And for many years there are a list eco-terrorists that are watched by many nations’ law enforcements.

– As we can see in the reality of human’s life, people often abuse God’s blessing and use them to commit many kinds of crime.

– God created humans with beautiful bodies, but people used them to live immoral life. Most of them are beautiful and rich.

– God gave humans the soul and they have refused Him to worship idols instead. They rather worship flesh and blood and human’s imagination than God Who loves them.

– God gave humans the freedom of choice and they use it to go against Him. They have used their freedom to mock Him, even insulted Him everyday in their lives with their wickedness.

– God shared His control of the world with them and they abuse His trust for them. They either have destroyed it or use it as a reason to harm, even killed, others.

– When God took a human form to come to the world helping them correcting their mistakes, they even nailed Him on the cross.

– And as Christians, we should consider it: God calls us to return to Him, to be saved in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ so that we can be restored to the positions of sharing control over the world, and later, over the universe, with Him.

– To earn His blessing with that positions, we must proved ourselves worthy of God’s trust, which has been abused by human’s wickedness. That’s why God has asked to reject ourselves everyday:

LUKE 9: 23 –

LU-CA 9: 23 – Đoạn, Ngài phán cùng mọi người rằng: Nếu ai muốn theo ta, phải tự bỏ mình đi, mỗi ngày vác thập tự giá mình mà theo ta.

– But many Christians have refused to do that, they seemed loving this world more than God and the positions of sharing control of the universe with Him.

– That’s why the church either is half empty or Christians who come still live like unbelievers with thought, behaviors and actions not much different from people in the outside world.

– God wants us control of ourselves first before we can share the control over the universe with Him. That is the reason that God wants us live according to His standards and rules in the Bible. Without them how can we know we are in control of our selves.

– Carrying our crosses is the image of self-control that we Christians must exercise everyday. That is the challenge that we must endure. And if we prove that we can before God, we will be rewarded with the sharing of control the universe with Him when He comes back to Earth.

2TIMOTHY 2: 12 – If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we disown Him, He will also disown us.

2TI-MÔ-THÊ 2: 12 – Lại nếu chúng ta chịu thử thách nổi, thì sẽ cùng Ngài đồng trị; nếu chúng ta chối Ngài, thì Ngài cũng sẽ chối chúng ta.

– But beware, if we cannot endure the challenge by living according to standards and rules in the Bible, we will be disowned by God and never be able to enter His kingdom.

– So please make up your mind and do it accordingly, carefully everyday until we see Him on Earth with His glory.

– May God give us determination, strength and perseverance to carry the cross, to endure it all of our lives so that we will be sharing the control of the universe with God forever. Amen.