The Grubers

There is a pattern throughout the Bible revealing God’s God desired to order this world. He reveals what it looks like and the path there.

What is God’s ideal for this world?

Isaiah 65: 20-22

Micah 4:4

Each of them will sit under his vine And under his fig tree, With no one to make them afraid, For the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

In these we are at peace, fully owning our land and living on the produce of it. We aren’t selling our time to others for scraps of bread. We aren’t living in fear of others destroying our homes and lives.

What is God’s ideal to get there?

God’s ideal started in the garden, even before the fall when God gave a family the assignment to take dominion of the earth –  

Genesis 1:28 – God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

This command turned into a pattern and a covenant with Abraham when God said – 

Genesis 17:6-8: I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

The pattern continued when He organized Israel by families – 

Number 1:18-19: Then they registered by ancestry in their families, by their fathers’ households, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and upward, head by head, just as the LORD had commanded Moses. So he numbered them in the wilderness of Sinai.

In Psalm 127:3-5 He described children as one of the ways we expand dominion – 

Children are a heritage from the Lord,

offspring a reward from him. 

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior

are children born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man

whose quiver is full of them.

They will not be put to shame

when they contend with their opponents in court.

In Proverbs 13:22 God describes a good man by his impact on his grandchildren

A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children

In Proverbs 31 verses 23 and 24 he showed a family working well taking dominion. The gates are where the rulers sit. The husband is there because the family is well run.

Her husband is known in the gates,

When he sits among the elders of the land.

She makes linen garments and sells them,

And supplies belts to the tradesmen.

The New Testament doesn’t rescind or abandon this pattern. In fact, the great commission in Matthew 28:17-20 is a restatement of Genesis 1:28 with the benefits of the new covenant layered in – 

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

In Ephesians 3:14-16 Paul tells us that families (not individuals) draw their identity from God – 

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name

The culmination of history in Revelation 19:9 our gathering is described as a family gathering – 

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The Bible starts and ends with a family!