Earthy Lives What Are We?

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.

Earthy Lives

Recently we went camping and it was quite the adventure.  Of course we forgot major items…like pillows, a bin for washing dishes, a first aid kit.  Fortunately no one got hurt, we figured out a way to wash the dishes and who needs pillows when you have arms where you can rest your head.  We were surprised when we got to the campground by the weather.  We should have known better than expect warm weather like we had at home.  The campsite was right by the ocean a couple hours north of San Francisco which is famously foggy in the summer.  Not only was the fog so thick that we could not even see the ocean despite it being right next to us but it was freezing cold.  I was the only one without a sleeping bag and the blanket I had was too small so I tossed and turned all night trying my best to get warm.  The next day I sat next to the fire and did not wander far from it.  The funny thing about camping is that we intentionally go somewhere where we will be dirty all day, smell like we came out of a forest fire, have to go outside into the cold in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, get bit in the evening by mosquitoes and have no access to our cell phones.  For a few days, we were “earthy”.

When you think of someone as being earthy, you probably have one of two ways of interpreting the description.  One, the person is interested in the environment, not into technology, grows vegetables, rides a bike to work and doesn’t take showers very often.  Earthy people avoid shaving, live in rustic settings, are either strongly for guns or against them, let strange animals wander about on their property.  Another way to think of one who is earthy is that the person is casual, easy to get to know, does not try to impress others but is always “just themselves”.  Earthy people are relaxed and comfortable with themselves, may belch in public and are unconcerned about how they pronounce words or their choice of words.  But when we talk about being “earthy” with regard to our discussion today, it will be to describe what the Bible literally says about you.  You are earthy.

To do justice to the discussion of the earthiness of humanity, we must take a brief journey into the far ancient past.  The Bible is rather opaque in its account of what took place before the six days of creation and the putting together of Adam and Eve.  The Bible provides some hints at what occurred and we must admit that we might be wrong about what we think it is saying.  In the quite old book of Job is a fascinating passage that is generally overlooked.  "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?  Tell me, if you understand.  Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!  Who stretched a measuring line across it?  On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?  (Job 38:4-7 NIV)

What the NIV translates as angels is literally in the Hebrew “sons of God” but “angels” is precisely what the verse is describing.  There was a time in very ancient history when the earth’s structure was being put together that the stars “sang together and the angels shouted for joy.  Before Satan rebelled against God and threw the universe into chaos, there was great happiness at what God had done among the spiritual beings He had made.  The angels cried out their tremendous pleasure at God’s work.  But then the cataclysmic insurrection took place among the angels.  How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn!  You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!   You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.  I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High." (Isaiah 14:12-14 NIV)  This passage, although it is used metaphorically to describe the actions of the king of Babylon, also tells us about the rebellion of Satan and Satan’s allies among the “sons of God’.  Rather than submitting themselves to God during the early days of the universe, Satan incited anarchy among the angel beings (the morning stars) so that some joined Satan in the fight against God’s rule and others stood with God as Sovereign Lord.

Jesus refers to this war on God when He responded to the joy of the seventy-two disciples who during their mission trips found the demons submitting to the name of Jesus.  He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18 NIV)  Where did Satan fall when like a lightning bolt Satan was cast down from heaven?  Isaiah 14 tells us it was to the earth.  Revelation 12: 7-9 agrees.  And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.  But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.  The great dragon was hurled down — that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. (Revelation 12:7-9 NIV) Our Lord saw this before He became a man born in a manger.  He saw this before the earth was made the home of humanity.  Now, we are going to speculate about something and we might be wrong in this but it seems to be the case.  There is a fascinating set of terms our Lord uses to describe the earth before the six days of creation.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  (Genesis 1:1-2 NIV)

So in the beginning when Satan and Satan’s fellow anarchists existed and the angels who were loyal to God existed, the heavens and the earth existed.  Isaiah tells us of the existence of heaven and earth when the terrible rebellion took place. How long the heavens and the earth existed before the six days of creation occurred, we have no way of knowing.  But if Satan and Satan’s allies were cast down to earth it is not surprising to discover something rarely discussed about the earth before God prepared the earth for the coming of mankind.  It was as the NIV translates it, “formless” and “empty”.  These two English words do not give us the complete picture of what the earth was like during that time.  Formless and empty are translations of two Hebrew words that rhyme: “thohu” and “vohu”.  The first, thohu, speaks of wreckage and chaos.  So before God made the earth ready for mankind, it was wrecked and full of chaos.  The second term, Vohu speaks of that which is under judgment.  So the earth, at the time the six days of creation began was under judgment and wrecked.

In Genesis 1: 3, God reclaims the earth for His special creation, prepares it with loving care for the “apple of His eye”, those made in His own image, humanity.  The chaos is pulled into order, the wreckage becomes a beautiful paradise and then at the pinnacle of the six days, God crafts man out of the dirt of the earth and breathes a spirit into him.  People are not just spiritual beings, they are earthy and spiritual, a part of the earth and a part of God.  But Satan was not willing to idly sit by while God established a new society on the very spot where he had ruled.  Satan, as a serpent, tricked Eve into rebelling against the God who gave her life and Adam chose loyalty to his wife over the clear command of God and together, Adam and Eve pulled the universe into chaos once again with their Sin and rebellion against God, the perfect environment for Satan to flourish.

Satan is called the “god of the world” in 2 Corinthians 4: 4 in the KJV, the “god of this age” in the NIV.  Both are correct as the Greek word that is used in the verse can be translated either way.  Satan has authority both in this age and in the world where the Lord cast him.  Here though is the key point.  The full verse reads, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (NIV)  Satan’s chief skill set is to convince people they don’t need Jesus Christ and that they are better off not involving Him in their lives.  Paul’s accusation leveled against a sorcerer says much about the sorcerer but even more about Satan.  "You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?” (Acts 13:10 NIV) If Elymas the sorcerer was a child of the devil, an enemy of everything right and full of all kinds of deceit and trickery, what does this say of the devil?  We must be careful here to realize that Satan is known most for fooling the world and shifting the world’s opinion of what God is really doing.

No one ever thinks they have been caught in a trap of Satan’s.  Eve didn’t.  She thought she made the decision all on her own to eat the forbidden fruit.  Adam simply chose Eve over God.  You never enter into one of Satan’s schemes thinking you have been fooled.  Otherwise you would see right through it.  When you come alongside Satan in his rebellion against God, you don’t generally think about Satan at all.  You are just mad, you feel like you have been treated badly, you want something you don’t have, you are frustrated, you are having too much fun, you are bored.  Satan doesn’t attack God when he comes after you; he gives you an option that makes sense.  David didn’t commit adultery with Bathsheba because he wanted to rebel against God!  He slept with her because it seemed reasonable to him and it was reasonable to Bathsheba.  Peter did not stand up to Jesus’ insistence that He would soon die because he was fed up with Jesus; he did so because he thought Jesus was being too pessimistic and not trusting the Father enough to see Him through this new crisis.  Jesus knew this contention of Peter’s came straight from Satan and made that clear when He demanded, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." (Matthew 16:23 NIV)  Satan makes certain that when we rebel against God, it seems reasonable to us and perfectly normal.

Satan’s great plan; it is his plan since the earth was in chaos and he saw what the Lord did in six days, was to somehow cut off the connection between heaven and earth, to make humanity self-reliant, independent, secure.  Satan does not want us broken-hearted, depressed or sick.  Satan wants us confident, sure of ourselves.  Satan wants us not needing God, functioning well without Him.  But when we begin to see who we really are, when our false sense of independence starts to unravel and we realize that we are sinners and we have an emptiness and real brokenness that only God can make right, the sham is uncovered.  Satan is the liar and father of all lies and life without God, without Him at every inch of it will fall apart.  Jesus Christ did not die so that we might live free of God at times but that in every way we build our lives in Him.  We seek Him with every decision we make, turn to Him at every moment, trust Him with every part of our day.  Satan has fooled the world into thinking we don’t need God.  We don’t have to turn to Him, don’t have to seek Him with our decisions and circumstances.  It is a lie.  Every inch of life needs Christ to fill it and you are not the exception, you are the rule.  Turn to Christ!  Turn to Him again and again.  Don’t stop turning to Him.  He is your Savior…not just for Heaven but also for Earth.