In The Beginning. Day 7, Created From Dust

In today's passage the author of Genesis backs up to provide us with more details of the creation story.

"This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." (Genesis 2:4-7) In Genesis 1:11-12 we found the Lord commanding the earth to bring forth vegetation on the third day of creation. All plant life may have begun as seeds in the ground since we are told in today's passage that the plants had not yet sprung up before the creation of the first human being. God didn't allow the vegetation to get out of control before He created man. Adam wasn't placed in a thick jungle that he had to cut his way through with a knife. He didn't have to chop trees or clear the ground. Instead God placed him on the scene at exactly the right time in order to maintain the beauty of the garden.

Verse 7 tells us that God created man from the dust of the ground. That ought to humble us. We sweep dust up from our floors and our porches. We wipe dust off our shoes when coming into the house. We spend a lot of time during our lives ridding our homes and vehicles of dust. We place no value on it and yet so often human beings who are made of this substance dare to live in opposition to the Creator. Who does man think he is when he defies the living God and refuses to live by His laws? As the Lord will say later on to Adam after Adam sins against Him, "Dust you are and to dust you will return." Who does man think he is when he boasts that he will put on his own impressive defense before the great Judge someday without Christ on his side? No wonder the author of Hebrews issued this warning: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Hebrews 10:31) The God we will face someday is the God capable of scooping dust of the ground and creating a living being with an eternal soul. We don't want to stand in His courtroom without Christ on our side.

We are made of this earth that we inhabit. We are made of a substance that we constantly try to eliminate by sweeping and dusting and vacuuming. Yet there is hope for us, lowly as we are, because Christ came in the flesh and took on our image so He could present an acceptable sacrifice on our behalf to God. As the Apostle Paul says: "The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second Man is of heaven...And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly Man." (1 Corinthians 15:46-47,49) Christ came from heaven to bear our image so that someday we can bear His image.

We are made from the dust. Someday our bodies will return to dust. And in between these two events we will do disobedient, sinful, and shameful things. Knowing that we have sinned and fallen short, the worst decision we could ever make is to refuse to be reconciled to our Maker through the only sacrifice of atonement that is acceptable in His eyes: through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who had committed no sins but who made Himself a sin offering for us so that we could receive righteousness through Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21) We are made from a substance that has no value to us---dust---and yet the dust that we are can be transformed into something so beautiful and so precious that the Son of God thought we were worth dying for. He saw what we were, but at the same time He saw what we could be. Because He loved us, He thought we were worth dying for. And our only chance of ever reaching our potential, of being what God wants us to be, of being anything but worthless dust of the ground is through Him: "Christ...the hope of glory". (Colossians 1:27)