Formed from the Ground, Breathed by God (Genesis 2:4-9)

Well, good morning. So as Jay mentioned, my name is

Andrew. I'm still reacclimating to

Frontier and still getting to meet you guys.

So if I forget your name when I see you and I just say hey

brother, let's play because I can't remember your name in the

moment, so forgive me of that, but I am excited to be with you

this morning. And so yeah, we're going to be

continuing our journey through Genesis.

And so if you while I talk, when I get your Bibles acclimated to

Genesis chapter 2, verses 4 to 9, feel free to do that.

Genesis 2:4–9

If you didn't bring a Bible with you this morning, we'll have the

scripture on the screen, but there's also Pew back Bibles

right in front of you. But so far we've looked at in

the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

So God is the originator of everything that exists.

And then we looked at how in particular, he created things.

He created all the plants, created the water, created the

landmass, He created the animals, He created the trees

that were good for fruit. He created all these things.

So we've looked at that so far. And then we've looked at how God

created man in his own image and why that's important.

And we've looked at God creating those humans and blessing them.

So we're going to build up off of that today.

So just so you know, today is going to be another, they keep

giving me like the teaser sermons where I get to talk

about a little bit and then somebody else gets to have the

really fun parts. What that's hyperbolic.

But anyway, I'm what a lot of what we're going to look at

today is it's kind of set up the the coming sermons.

So there are going to be some things that I would really,

really, really enjoy talking about today, but that's not my

purpose. It's not my time to do that.

So I'm going to set us up, build a little tension, have a

cliffhanger. So just know if I don't talk

about something, I'll hint at it because I'm just going to, but

it'll be fleshed out later on. But before we get started, I

just want to one just as I was singing with all of you, just

reminded of how unique Frontier is and the amount of like people

that have come here that God has gifted them with.

Great musical skills and vocal skills really early on in

Frontiers life, God just like was pouring in all these like

former worship leaders or people who are really good at playing

drums. Joseph Donifro is one of them.

Like day one. He's like, I can play drums and

frontier was is really unique in that.

So when you see our worship team later on, just encourage them

and stir up their affections for Jesus because they get here

early and they love Jesus and they love you.

And it was just a a good reminder of God's goodness to

this church. So this morning, Genesis chapter

Genesis 2:4–9

2, verses 4 to 9. If you are able to stand, do

that. If you are not able, stand in

spirit. Which is the sliding.

My wife keeps telling me to wear glasses, but she's not in here

right now, so she can't make fun of me.

All right. These are the generations of the

heavens and the earth when they were created, and the day that

the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no Bush of the

field was yet in the land, no small plant of the field had yet

sprung up. The Lord God had not caused it

to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,

and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole

face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man

of dust from the ground and breathed into it, into his

nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living

creature. And the Lord God planted a

garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had

formed. And out of the ground the Lord

God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to 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. This is the word of God.

Brothers and sisters, it is true and good.

You may be seated. Father, we thank you for another

morning to gather together as a church family.

And we're thankful that as we've sung earlier, that you are the

breath that gives us life, that you fill us with life.

And so even if we sung that song before, even if we've heard that

saying before, I pray that we would not take that for granted

this morning, that all of us in this room are here because you

have breathed into us that you've created us.

And we don't just have to be just a random collection of

strangers, But in this room right now, we are family, not

because of shared genetics, but because of the blood of Jesus

that covers us. And so help us to contemplate

that and help us to worship you in spirit and in truth.

It's in the name of Jesus that I pray, Amen.

So Tracy is my wife. I'm sure you've met her or

you've seen her because Cole made us come up here a few

Sundays ago. She's serving in Roots right

now. So I get to talk about fun

stories since she's not here. But we dated for six months.

We were engaged for four months. We've been married for this

year, will be year 14. But there was a phone call.

Tracy was went home for the summer during break from

college. And so we talked on the phone as

all dating couples do. And I'm not going to hang up.

Are you going to hang up? I'm not going to.

So we went through like a period of time like that, but there was

one night and I can still remember it my mind, I was still

living. I was living at my in my

parents' home, my little bedroom.

I can remember the whole setup of the bedroom, but we were

about to hang up and Tracy says, I love you and then hung up.

She was the first one to say it. And then she texted me back.

I think she texted me there. Yeah.

She didn't call me back. She texted me back and said I

didn't mean to say that. And I said, really?

And so that just created grounds for our relationship to grow.

I say I mentioned the story because what we see here in the

early pages of Genesis, we kind of see a shift.

And to our eyes it might look like an accidental shift, or it

might look like just a hodgepodge of things, but it's

really pointing us to the more particularities of what God is

doing and creating the world. So what we've seen so far is

God's creation. So Genesis chapter 1, we see all

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

of God's creation and then we get to Genesis chapter 2 and

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

there's another creation story. And so this causes a lot of

people to say, well, how can you trust the Bible?

Why are there 2 creation narratives?

Why does it say God created all these things and now we're going

back into God creating man again?

This has to be a mistake. The Bible is not trustworthy

because of these two creation narratives.

And so it leads many of people to not trust the Bible.

It leaves many of people to deconstruct their faith.

It leaves many people to look at the Bible and just say this is

not doing anything for me. You said this one page ago.

Now we're on this page and it's saying the same thing, like what

in the world is going on? Why should I shape my life in my

life? Be informed around this book and

so I want to walk through why you can still trust the Bible

because of this and I want to walk through why this is in this

particular section. There is a theory for there's a

bunch of people who are way smarter than me, but they talk

about like textual criticism and they believe that at different

times different people inserted things into the Bible and by

people I mean scribes and from different parts whether they

were part of. If you want to talk to me about

I don't need to talk about this right now you can talk come and

talk to me afterwards. I don't want to detract from the

point, but anyway, what I want to do today is to not just get

in the weeds like that's where I like to live.

As I was mentioned the last time I preached, but I want to show

you the position that God holds, the personality of God and the

personable miss of God and the purpose that God is showing us

in this passage. I'm not going to use that

language over and over again. I don't have, I'm a good Baptist

boy, but side stretched the limits of my alliteration and

three points right there. But I'm not going to dissect the

the sermon into those 3 categories, but we're going to

kind of, but there's going to be a lot of overlap and then coming

back to each of those categories.

But I want to show you why this passage is beautiful and why

this passage is where it is. So we've seen just the general

creation of God and the specific creation, the general creation

of man. Genesis chapter 2 is honing in

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

on specific creation. So God looks and he sees the

heavens and the earth. They were finished and the all

the host of them at the beginning of chapter 2 and God

takes a rest. And so we had Cole last week

talking about the the resting of God.

He enjoyed all the goodness that he had just brought into

existence. And then we see in verse 4,

these are the generations. OK, so our minds we hear

generations and what do you think like?

Well, my mom and dad, my grandma grandpa like we think of

genealogy, but this word generations has a has a

different meaning. It the, the Hebrew word for

generations is tolido. And this word is going to be

used over and over again in the book of Genesis and throughout

the rest of the, the Torah really.

But what it is used for is an introduction of new content

like, hey, we're going to talk about this now.

We're, we're shifting our focus. And so if in Genesis chapter 1,

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

it's talking about God creating the world in general, in

general, now we see that, hey, these are the generations.

So new section of content of the heavens and the earth when they

were created in the day that the Lord God had made the earth in

the heavens. OK, so we're shifting our our

gaze somewhere else like, OK, if we talked about this, here's

something new. So that's a really important

thing to notice because what we're going to see here is some

other words like in our English translations that are translated

the same word, but they are different in the original

language. So we kind of miss a little,

some little crumbs on the on the trail here when we're trying to

discern why isn't why is there a second creation narrative in the

scriptures? So new content.

So that's one thing to consider, but also what I want you to

think about is, and Cole did a great job at the beginning of

our Genesis series of talking about there are all these

creation narratives, right? Ancient Mesopotamian people,

they had their creation narratives and they came out of

violence that came out of I'm creating you so you can serve me

and feed me and grow food for me.

So everybody in the ancient Near Eastern world had a God in mind

that was being created. And so in Genesis chapter 1 we

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

see God, God, God, God, God. And that Hebrew word is elohim.

But we get to chapter 2 and something interesting happens.

Maybe you've already seen what happens verse four in the day

the Lord God made the earth. So now we see something very

interesting. God, God, God, God, God.

Now Lord God, God is revealing himself in a different way.

So we don't just have a generic God, we have a personal God.

We have Yahweh God. If you're probably looking at

your Bibles right now, you're going to see Lord and it's all

capital letters, but that word Lord is Yahweh, Yahweh God.

And I'll unpack like why this is even more significant in just a

moment. But the shift, and This is why I

want to try to show you like the the transition and and why you

can trust the Bible is that this isn't because somebody else

decided to just put things in here.

One of my favorite theologians, he says that Genesis 1 and 2 is

like an ancient tract, like anybody grew up with tracts

having to go do door knocking and try to evangelize the

neighborhood, So little pamphlets.

But he he says it's like luring someone into a story.

Like you're looking at Genesis 1 and you're being told God

created this and God created that and God created the

mountains over here. You're luring people in because

they're like, Oh yeah, I believe God.

And then you get to Genesis 2 and it's like the question would

be, but what God? And Genesis 2 says Yahweh God.

So it's God revealing himself in a, in a particular way, like

just like teasing along a story, just like having a a phone call

and you know that you love someone and then you tell them I

love you at the end. And you're the first one to

break the ice, right? The Genesis chapter 2 is

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

breaking the ice of this concept of, yeah, we know that God

created the world, but what God? Well, I'm telling you here in

Genesis chapter 2, this God created the world.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Yahweh God, the God of all gods, the supreme ruler.

This God has revealed himself to us and he's the creator.

Because who wrote Genesis seemed I want to take a stab at that

Moses. OK, so if Moses wrote this, what

did Moses go through prior to writing this?

Well, he encountered in Exodus the burning Bush right where God

comes to him and says, hey, this is who I am.

Because Moses is conflicted in Genesis or in Exodus chapter 3,

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

Moses is told, here's what I want you to do by God and he

doesn't want to do it. And then he just kind of as a

way to shrug off his responsibility.

He goes to, well, what am I supposed to tell him?

Your name is? And God tells him, tell the

people I am, I'm Yahweh. I just, I absolutely exist.

This is who I am. I'm the one that exists.

I've never been created. I'm never going to die.

I am. I absolutely existentially

exist. So go and tell the people this

is my name, right? So if that Moses, so if Moses

wrote Genesis under the influence of the Holy Spirit and

the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, if he encountered Yahweh

God in the burning Bush and he inserts that here.

I think what he's trying to do is to show that God doesn't just

have the position or the job title of God, but he also is

personable, that he reveals himself to his people

individually and collectively. And, and what we'll see here

with another word that I've been looking at this week, it just

shows that Genesis chapter 2 is just kind of taking things from

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

here and squeezing them down here just to prove the point, to

show the fine tuning of God, to show the forming and the molding

and the shaping that God does in creating the world.

It's not a retelling of the same story, but it's, it's a telling

the same story. Again, to prove a point, to show

that our God doesn't just throw things over here, throw things

over here and not care about them, but He fine tunes it and

he takes something that already exists and He fine tunes it and

He brings it into the shape that He desires.

And so we see in verse 5 it says this is a fun thing.

I read and nerded out a lot about this verse 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.

So again, you go back to well in chapter 1, it said that God

created all these plants, that God created man.

But what we're seeing here is that God is setting up a unique

space in the midst of everything that He already created.

So God is building out Eden. This is what I wanted to talk

about, but I was told I can't talk about it because we're

going to talk about it later. But God is creating his, his

home, the place that he is enthroned.

And he is specifically creating this, right?

So he's already created all the plants.

He's already created created the earth.

He's already created water. He separated the waters above

and below. He's already created man.

But what does that mean? Why now is he creating what

we're being told that he's creating these things?

Well, it's because he is creating a special unique place.

He created in general. Now he's creating in specific.

He's creating a location or something to happen and somebody

else is going to get the glory of being able to talk about that

specific location. But but it talks about a mist

was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of

the earth. Then the Lord God formed the man

of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the

breath of life, and man became a living creature.

So now we see the word formed come in here.

We've seen created several times already, right?

If you've been here and if you've read your Bible, you see

that over and over and over again.

But now it shifts to formed, the man of dust from the ground.

So this word form in Hebrew is yatsar, and it's synonymous with

created. So Barack Cole has talked about

that word. But this word is really

interesting because it's more of turning something into a desired

purpose. So God created, but now he's

taking what he has created and he's taking it further and he's

getting his hands dirty and he's turning it into what he wants it

to be exactly. Notice the the specificity of

what God is doing. He's created everything.

And I use the the Plato analogy last time I preached in Genesis,

He's got this. He created the Plato.

Now he's. Molding things out of this ball

of Plato that he's created. This is what this this section

of scripture is trying to point us to.

He not only creates, but he forms things into exactly what

he wants them to be. The ancient other ancient Near

Eastern myths, they don't get into this sort of specificity

because if you are molding, forming, shaping, that means

that you are more involved into the life of your creation.

That shows that God is intimately involved in his

people. That shows that God is

intimately involved with a tree. Like he cares about what type of

tree grows in this place he cares about.

Like I've got bird feeders. Like God created a cardinal that

is beautiful and all these little sparrows that just make a

mess of my bird feeders. And he created the blue Jay that

randomly appeared and he created the eagle that I saw fishing out

of the Des Moines River. But God is intimately involved

in being specific in what he creates.

Like that's amazing to think about.

He doesn't just say, you know, just like you pop something in

the microwave, like, hey, I made this meal versus like when my

wife stays up late and gets her, you know, gross looking

sourdough starter working and kneading it and rolling it.

I don't know, use that. Real people know what I'm

talking about. And then wakes up the next day

and then bakes it and does all that stuff like that's more

intricate, that's more specific. So when I'm thinking about my

wife working with her sourdough starter and riser, that's what I

think about here. God is intimately involved in

this process. He's getting his hands dirty.

That's what the imagery here is. Because what does he do?

How does he create and specify in shape, man?

He scoops up some dust and the liturgy that we had earlier was

perfect for this because we were created out of dust.

And God takes something that he's already created, scoops it

up, and then what does he do? Does he just look at it and hope

that something happens? Does he just throw it against

the wall and see what happens? No, he breathes life into it,

breathes life into the nostrils. It's, it's specific, it's

intimate, it's personable that God is not just like, you know,

and God could do it. He could just make things in a

way that they just happen. But that's not what text tells

us. It tells us that God is

intimately involved in the creation of man.

He could have just created the dust and then been like, well,

we'll see what happens. I'll wait a couple of centuries

and then if something happens out of this, that would be

great. That's not what he, that's not

what the Bible tells us. It tells us that he scoops up

something he's already created and he breathes life into it.

And this is unique language, like he gives life to the

plants, He gives life to the animals, but it says here that

he breathes life into man, into this dust, into the nostrils of

man. He and he creates what He wants

to create. So again, like we've seen like

separations in Genesis. So here's another further

separation of animal life and plant life versus human life.

God has provided this distinction.

Just as man is created in the image of God and animals and

plants aren't. They still reveal the glory of

God, but they're not created in the image of God.

God here separates how man was created breath of his breath

breathed into the nostrils of this this dust.

That's how God creates me. So there's a further distinction

and then we see in verse 8 again, I have to skip over some

stuff. I would like to nerd out with

you. We can get coffee this week, but

verse 8 and the Lord God planted the garden in Eden in the East.

I wrote, sorry, I want to talk about that so bad.

And there he put the man whom he had formed.

So again, it's a reminder he formed him.

He didn't just create him, but he formed him.

He got his hands dirty. He shaped and molded him in the

way that he wanted him to be. And out of the ground the Lord

God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the site,

and good food for 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.

So this is another interesting thing.

So in our English translations we see the Lord God planted the

garden, and then it says, And there he put the man whom he had

formed. Those words are pretty much the

same. So God plants a garden, then he

plants man in the garden. He, he rests the man.

So it's, it's a word that's similar to Sabbath.

It's a word that's similar to Noah's name.

Noah, like he rests him in the garden.

God rests this garden and then he rests his man in the garden.

If you think about those two things and then think about God

resting after he's created everything, and that's just,

that's very interesting to think about.

It's very beautiful to think about that God rests his people

in the place that he is just created and rested.

And then he rests over all the things that he has just brought

into existence and didn't do it Willy nilly, but did it very

specifically. So this is God forming Eden and

resting Eden. This is God setting up his

earthly home where heaven and earth overlap.

And that's your teaser for later on.

And then we see the tree of life.

So this place that God has created his heavenly home, he

places the tree of life, which is the source of renewal, the

source of life giving fruit. And then he also places this

thing called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And we'll talk about that later, which is super fascinating.

The payoff will come. I want to talk about it right

now so bad, but we'll we'll talk about it later.

So what do we do with all this stuff?

Thinking about God who recreate, we see.

We see a God as revealed to us in Scripture who creates things

in general, but then also is in the mess of creating things.

It gets his hands dirty. He shapes things, He forms

things. What do we do with that

knowledge? And why should we care about it,

right? Why should that cause us to

worship him? Why should that sway our opinion

of whether worshipping God is worthy?

Why? I think on a very human level,

if you just think about the people in your life just

talking. I've talked with a couple of

people about this, but you have like your two PM friends and

your two AM friends. You got the friend that you can

call it 2:00 PM on a Saturday and can come and help you with

whatever you have. And then you have your two AM

friends who you can call and no matter what, they'll drop it at

a moment whatever they're doing and they'll show up.

Judy Maxwell was our 2:00 AM friend when we lived in Des

Moines. Like whenever Tracy was going

into labor, like hey Judy, can you please come and watch our

other kid and take care of them while we go to the hospital.

I think the shift is we see a 2:00 PM friend in chapter 1,

which I'm not taking anything from the glory of the Lord, but

what I'm trying to say is he's also the 2:00 AM friend.

He's both of those. He's there for you in general,

but he's there for you in specific terms if you're in

Christ. And we see that shift here.

And so I think that's that should lead us to worship him to

know that he doesn't just care about you as Oh, you're my

little pet, give you a pound in the back.

But he's like, no, you're, you created my image.

I did this on purpose. I shaped you to be who you are.

I love you. I want you to be in my family.

I think it's that leads us to worship.

And there's a lot of times where I don't feel like I'm worthy of

that. But why?

And so I think it's, we have to go to Scripture and see you

decided God, you decided to do things the way that you did.

So even if I don't feel like I'm worthy of it, you say that I'm

worthy of your attention, worthy of your shaping, worthy of your

forming when we see people suffer and it makes no sense.

We talked about this earlier with the worship team, like

there's so much suffering that goes on and so much pain and

hurt and bad experiences and doesn't make sense.

But we know that God has shaped those people who are suffering.

He's shaped us as we're experiencing other people's

suffering. Like we can step into that too

and, and dirty our hands just like God dirtied his hands when

he created man. I want to end with this because

this is something I was thinking about today.

So not only did God dirty his hands and breathe life into dust

and create man, he also sent his son who didn't just dirty his

hands, but bloodied his hands so that you and I could be brought

into right relationship with God to be brought back into that,

that that shape that God had originally intended man to

experience and be molded into. And just like God created things

in general and then created them specifically and shaped them, if

you're in Christ, he's not done with you yet.

He's sanctifying you. He's still working on shaping

you and molding you. So I would encourage all of us

to think about that, to see that parallel of creating and

shaping, saving and sanctifying. Like those two ways of thinking

will change the way that you read the Bible.

It'll change the way that you wake up in the morning.

It'll change the way that you go to bed at night.

So think about your Yeah, think about those things that.

And that should lead us to try to meet our church's mission

statement of being the most joyful church in Des Moines.

If we understand who God is, we understand who we are and we

understand what God is doing through us.

And if you have any questions about any of that, go talk to

one of the pastors. Come find me, Talk to somebody

in your community group. And if you don't know that you

were created in God's image and that he has formed you, and if

you don't know that salvation alone is only in Jesus and that

you can be sanctified and changed, talk to one of the

pastors. We've got amazing pastors here.

I'm not one of them, so I get to brag on these guys.

So just, yeah, go talk to them. Don't, don't leave here today.

If you've got a question about any of this, don't leave today

without asking that question. Let me pray for us.

Father, I thank you for your goodness.

I thank you that you have created us, that you have shaped

us. And Father, I'm thankful that

because of Jesus that you create a new life again and that you

shape that new life. So help us to trust in Jesus.

Help us to see Him as the only, only way that we can experience

transformation in this life. Because we can try and try and

try to change things. We can try to change our diets,

we can try to read all the books, we can try to go to

counseling, and those are all good things.

But the only thing that can transform us inside and out is

Jesus. So help us to run to Jesus.

Help us to see how when we run to him, he points us to places

for transformation. But the place that he points to

the most is himself,