Good afternoon Church family, It was a pleasure to be able to praise our Creator together this past Sunday. As strange as it sounds to our ears, it’s true that God has made us priests to Him as we work in His presence. All of our jobs are priestly occupations where we work for God while He provides for us.
For me personally, I came away from my study in Genesis 2 with renewed faith on God as my provider and how that relates to my mission to work. “He provides for us so that we can work as opposed to I work so that I can provide for myself/others.” Understanding that perspective of work should free us up to work without primarily doing it for the motive of a paycheck. Instead, we need to trust that God has already provided for us so that we can work for Him in light of the fact that our body and our breath are works of God’s provision to make it capable for us to even be able to work. And if you work with that attitude of thanksgiving and posture of faith, all of your work will be an act of worship, “workship” as I said yesterday. And that is our priestly duty; not just working in a temple, but working on God’s planet earth, wherever that is for you, all for the glory of God.
Well that was a summary of yesterday’s sermon, but now I would like to mention 2 other lessons that we can receive from Genesis 2. The first one is a fun one:
(1) What came first, the chicken or the egg?
In Genesis, there is no doubt it’s the chicken as God seemed to create everything full grown, including man. So what came first, the baby or the adult? The adult.
Adam is formed as a mature man who is capable of reproducing (2:7). This makes a lot of sense because as I’ve observed kids; they would never survive on their own. This observation actually squashes any evolutionary belief. There is no chance in the world that the earth or humanity evolved because if they did, then mankind would have started out as children, and look at infants. Can they survive on their own? No. Look at adults, can they survive on their own? Yes. There is only possibility for the existence of humanity…God created the first human being a full grown adult ready to reproduce…and in 2:22, we’ll see that the only possibility for reproduction is that God created two matching pairs of humans, male and female, to be capable of reproducing. This design is sometimes referred to as “irreducible complexity” which means a design where different parts of the mechanism depend on one-another so that the whole structure could have never developed without somebody from the outside putting it together. A mouse trap is a classic example of this. For a mouse trap to be set up properly and ready to kill mice, the board, spring, and hook all need to be pressed together from a human. In the design of creation, and especially humanity, you can see that something as simple as reproduction could only happen if God created a man and a woman with different sexual parts that are designed to come together for reproduction. Clearly, only God could have created this. I know that we believe this as a Church, yet I always find my faith strengthened and soul inflated with worship to God when studying the way that His creation functions. It makes me praise God for all of the wonders of His world!
(2) When God makes man out of dust, it does more than clear up the age old debate of what came first, the chicken or the egg, it actually encourages us to believe that God really really cares for us.
I love what Psalm 103:14 says about this verse: In connection to how God deals with our sins and forgives us, it says, “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” That is to say that God cares for us like breakable and valuable pottery, and He is quick to forgive us when we ask for it because He knows how weak we are through and through.
Psalm 138:8 says “Your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” When considering how weak and fragile we are and made by the hands of God, it should convince us that we are very precious to God and He deals with us in proportion to our weakness. Psalm 103:10 says God “does not deal with us according to our sins.” In other words, He is incredibly gracious with our failings. Think about how many times you sinned in this life and God seemed to let you get away with it. It’s not because He is unjust, but it’s because He is gracious, remembering our weakness and how we’re made. We’re not only physically weak but we are spiritually weak. We cave into temptation far too easily (Consider Hebrews 12:3-4 which says just that). And God knows this. He is compassionate towards our weakness (this is not an excuse to stop fighting hard against sin!).
And in Genesis 3, you see this as God does not immediately allow Adam and Eve to die as a result of sinning. In fact, God clothes them from animal skins. He forgives them through a foreshadowing of His atonement in Christ. And it’s true of us too. God will show compassion to us when we sin because He remembers our frame, we’re made of dust. Our part is repenting and turning back to the Lord. And God’s part is compassionate forgiveness.
This is essential for us to remember because it’s very easy to assume that God is less patient than He is. Remember, He is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” He is so slow to anger, and He is very compassionate towards us, WOLC, as HIs children.
Let’s live with that proper understanding of our God and work for Him as His priests who are blessed to minister in His presence here on earth. Remember, He provides for you so that you can work, as opposed to you working so that you can provide for yourself.
With love in Christ,
Aaron
