Dust

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NOTE: I’m teaching a churchwide Bible study on Genesis TONIGHT (8/31), 6:30-8:00 PM. There is a lot in Genesis 1-11 that we don’t have time to look at in a Sunday morning sermon, so in this Bible study we’ll talk about: Cain and Abel; the Nephilim in Genesis 6 (CRAZY STORY); The Flood; and literally anything else folks ask about during the Q&A. Can’t make it? Check out the livestream.

 
 

Genesis 2:4-14

4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

 
 

Man is created out of the dust.

Today, we know how to specifically identify the various components that make up a living body—carbon and hydrogen and oxygen, etc.— but the Bible’s ancient words still suffice: we are made of dust.

It’s not what our bodies are made of, however, that gives them life; what gives us life and sustains our lives is the breath of God himself.

Every time you take a breath, you are receiving God’s breath. Yes, the air you inhale contains oxygen, but oxygen alone won’t make a dead body live—it’s God’s Spirit that does that.

This is why praise is therefore such an appropriate act: when we praise God it is the very breath we receive from God that makes our praises possible. God gives to us, and then we give back to him.

Take time today to breathe. And praise God for it.

 

P.S. This weekend is Labor Day weekend; going to be out of town on Sunday? Come to Thursday night church instead, 6:00 PM. I’m REALLY fired up about what I’m going to preach on this week.

The Fifth Day

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Genesis 1:20-23

20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

 
 

The ESV translation lets us down a bit in its translation of Day Five. In v. 21 in our translation, we read of “the great sea creatures” However in Hebrew, the text is much more evocative—it literally speaks of “sea monsters.” Why does this matter? You and I know that what ancient peoples called “sea monsters” are only the marvelous and mysterious creatures that God put in the deep seas—whales and the like. The Israelites were not a seafaring people, and were terrified of the Deep, but even ancient mariners had only the briefest of glimpses of these majestic animals. The nations surrounding Israel spoke of dark powers at work in the seas and sacrificed to the sea monsters to keep them safe on their maritime voyages.

How foolish, says Genesis 1—everything in the seas was made by God, even the sea monsters. Don’t worship the sun, and don’t worship the sea monsters, says the Bible.

God is so creative: He even made the whales!

 

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P.P.S. I’m preaching on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil this Sunday. 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 AM. Don’t miss.

The Fourth Day

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Genesis 1:14-19

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

 
 

The sun (and with it the moon and the stars) is not created until Day Four. But, how can this be, since we’ve already had light and morning and evening since Day One (not to mention plant life since Day Three)? Isn’t the sun required for these things to take place?

Ancient peoples knew more from personal experience about the sun, the moon, and the stars than we do—the movements of the heavenly bodies were part of their intimate, daily experience, whereas we spend very few nights of our lives out of doors—and they certainly understood that you can’t have morning and evening without the sun. The strange detail of God waiting to create the sun until Day Four is yet another indication that Genesis 1 is not trying to give us scientific knowledge as to how things were created, other than to say that God is clearly the cause and Creator of everything. Rather, one of the things Genesis 1 is trying to tell us is that nothing in all of creation is divine, and therefore nothing in all of creation should be worshipped. The sun has been worshipped widely since the earliest days of humanity; Genesis 1 makes it clear that such worship is foolish idolatry: only God is worthy of worship. The sun is powerful, and God gives it the responsibility to rule the day, but nevertheless the sun is created just like everything else there is, seen and unseen.

I doubt very much that any of us literally worships the sun, but I am certain that many of us struggle with idolatry, which is the sin of thinking that the things God made (money, sex, power, possessions) are more important to our lives than God himself.

One way to avoid that mistake today: give God thanks for what you see.

 

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P.P.S. I’m preaching on Genesis 2-3 this weekend: 6 PM Thursday (TONIGHT!) and 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 AM.