Genesis 2:7 NIV
…the Lord God formed
the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life, and the man became a living being.
What Does Your Earthiness Say About Your Worth?
My senior year in high school, I took the highest
level of math our school offered.
Everyone in the class was planning on attending a major university and
were counting on a good grade to enhance their chances of being accepted or
getting scholarships. That is, everyone
except me. I am not sure why I was in
the class; I had no intention of studying, I guess I just thought it would be a
fun class to take. The teacher was the
strictest in the school. Her name was
Miss Sims and she was it seemed in her seventies although looking back she was
probably younger than that. Everyone
called her behind her back Sargent Sims and she definitely fit that nick name.
She had a practice of each class making one of the students go to the
blackboard and in front of everyone work out a problem from the homework. Having the last name Walkup was convenient
for me although I knew the time would come when eventually my name would be
called. It was. Of course I had not done the assignment and
although I listened carefully to all that went on in the class, I had no idea
how to work out the problem she gave me.
I slowly wrote the problem out on the blackboard, then began to just
stare at it. I may have thought that if
I stalled long enough, Miss Sims would help me.
She did not. She left me there to
“hang in the wind”. Finally Miss Sims
called to me from her throne, “Mr. Walkup, you don’t know what you are doing,
do you?” I shook my head “no” and with all
the stiffness her personality possessed, Miss Sims sent me back to my
seat. My friends looked over at me with
pity in their eyes, embarrassed for me.
I just stared straight ahead, feeling like dirt.
To compare someone to dirt is to imply he or she is
worthless. And if you are “dirty”, it
means you are morally corrupted. Have
you ever felt like dirt? Perhaps you
were a failure in athletics or your grades weren’t good. Maybe you loved someone that did not love you
back. Perhaps you got mad and were
embarrassed afterward by some of the things you said. Have you been fired? You probably felt like dirt then. You might have gotten drunk or high and
afterward felt like dirt. Maybe you took
an entrance exam or a placement test and didn’t do as well as you hoped. It could be that you don’t feel
respected. Has there been a time when
you felt like dirt?
As we started to discuss this last week, the Bible
indicates that all of us should feel like dirt and for good reason. We are.
The first of us was made out of the dust of the ground and everyone
since is descended from that man of dirt.
The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis
2:7 NIV) Should we be embarrassed? Does
this make us automatically inadequate?
There is something critical to remember when we consider how we were
created. The dirt is the fundamental building block of everything God put
together for us. The creatures are from
the dirt, the plants are from the dirt and of course earth itself is from the
dirt. Unlike the angels, the demons and
Satan, we are connected to everything of earth.
It is our glorious heritage to be linked to all that we see and touch
and smell and taste and hear. God could
have created us completely separate from this universe, a distinct outsider but
He did not. He created us a part of it. We will return to this but it cannot be
overstated that God made earth our home by creating us a part of it. We are perfectly fit to do what our Lord made
us to do, rule over the earth and make it bend to our will. God blessed them (Adam and Eve) and said
to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue
it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every
living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28 NIV) Remember, Satan was cast down to the earth:
we were made part of it.
Now we must address the matter of our humiliation.
Being earthy is to our glory but sin brought our disgrace. After the Lord made us from the earth, the Lord
breathed spirit into us. Immediately we
became what the Bible calls a living soul or “nephesh”: spirit and earthiness
together. We were, unlike any other
being, the glory of God and the glory of earth combined. Nothing else in the universe or beyond the
universe could make that claim…not the angels, not Satan and not even God was both. We were glorious, glorious with God, glorious
with perfect earth. To understand our
humiliation, we must rethink what happened for Moses when he went before God in
His glory. The very first time Moses
came into the presence of God, something about his body, his earthy body
changed. When Moses finished speaking
to them, he put a veil over his face.
But whenever he entered the Lord's presence to speak with him, he removed
the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what
he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put
the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord. (Exodus
34:33-35 NIV)
It must have been spectacular for Moses to
experience his body transformed in some supernatural way by being with
God. But why did Moses put the veil over
his face after he met with God and the people saw the radiant transformation
caused by God’s glory? The Apostle Paul
tells us Moses was embarrassed by how the glory faded. We are not like Moses, who would put a
veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance
was fading away. (2 Corinthians 3:13 NIV)
How very human of him; when he realized that he could not retain, due to
his sin the radiance being with God provided him, Moses covered his face so he
would not be embarrassed by everyone knowing it. We assume that Adam and Eve desperately tried
to cover themselves because they were humiliated by their nakedness in regard
to their genitalia. The Bible never says
that. It simply says that they sewed
fig leaves together to cover their nakedness and later after handing down the
consequences of their Sin, the Lord made clothes for Adam and Eve because of
their humiliation in being naked. The Lord God made garments of skin for
Adam and his wife and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21 NIV)
There was in the bodies of Adam and Eve something of
God that may have been as dazzling as the face of Moses or of Christ on the
Mount of Transfiguration. There he (Jesus)
was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes
became as white as the light.(Matthew 17:2 NIV) The purity of body built by
the hand of God is not known to us now but could it have been any less glorious
than was Moses’ body when he met with God for just a short time? When the glory of God left the bodies of Adam
and Eve, they were appalled by how horrific their fall and all they could think
of doing was covering their once glorious bodies. Sin did not make Adam and Eve suddenly naked;
sin made Adam and Eve unfathomably lifeless in their looks. What is most horrific in regard to our bodies
now is that we no longer even give a thought to our lost glory as God’s special
creation; we pay far more attention to is the lust our bodies generate in one
another.
Now we must in a much too cursory manner describe how
God’s plan for putting humanity together as both earth and spirit worked out in
the undoing of all the damage Satan’s rebellion against God brought to the
universe of humanity. When God became
fully human, completely earthy, He did so for one purpose. God made him who had no sin to be sin for
us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians
5:21 NIV) Our Lord became sin, not just sins but Sin in its entirety. This could not be done spiritually; it could
only take place in the earthy realm of humanity. In the body of Christ, that earthy body, the
Sin of mankind was taken and then crucified.
It was not through angels or any supernatural force that God took apart
Satan’s hold on the universe but through a human being, a human being made out
of dirt, out of earth that our Lord ruined Satan. Satan, and the demons that joined him, cannot
be brought out of their rebellion; as just spiritual beings and that is all,
they can only be sent into hell. But
people, earthy people can have their sin taken out of them which is what God
was able to do when He was crucified.
Once Christ rose from the dead, Satan was completely wrecked because he
no longer has death to keep humanity from God.
The body of creation can be remade, and the resurrection of Jesus
confirmed it, and so the victory of God as man became also the victory of man
as earthy soul, completely remade without sin and God will do this. Not only that, God can come into our body and
join us in it so that His spirit can empower our spirit to live out the perfect
life of Christ in actual ways.
Because of what Jesus Christ did in an earthy body
which has its origin in dirt you can be a perfect overcomer of sin in actuality
and not in some mythical, imaginary sense.
Unlike Adam who failed in perfection and holiness, you will not
fail. You will live out every word of
God’s commandments, every word in the Sermon on the Mount and you will love
perfectly God and all the people you have in your life. The Great Society of perfect union with God
and all His people will come to pass because our Lord became an earthy part of
us and in the cataclysmic work of His crucifixion and resurrection we all are
joined in what He did. This work of
God’s salvation starts now. With Christ
our Savior part of us, we can today work out what God has worked into us,
holiness and real love. Never say you
can’t when God in you says you can. Paul
was not just blowing steam when he said to you, “I can do everything through
Him (Christ) who gives me strength.” (Philippians
4: 13 NIV) Unlike the demons and all
spiritual beings in rebellion against God, you can in your glorious earthiness
be made new and live a perfectly holy and good life. In Christ, you can do what is right and have
all the joy of Christ working in you.
