So now as we continue our study of the primeval history of the book of Genesis, please turn with me to Genesis chapter 2. Genesis chapter 2, this morning we'll be looking at creation of Adam in verse 7. Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, when you found your place, please stand with me for the reading of God's word this morning. Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you that while we live, you continue to bless us with your word. Continue to speak to us, Lord, by your spirit, through your word and holy scripture. We've come now, Lord, to quiet ourselves, to hear and hearing and receive your truth. We pray, God, that you'd be pleased to instruct us, to encourage us in every way, as your people sanctify us by this, your truth. All this we humbly ask in Jesus' name, amen. So Genesis chapter two, verse seven, hear now the word of God. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. This world of ours, if we're to be honest, should not exist. The planet Earth sits spinning, deep within a vast universe otherwise filled with blazing stars and frozen moons, just delicately balanced there among the awesome powers of the cosmos, teeming with life. and apparently all alone and its ability to sustain life. Scientists increasingly recognize the mathematical impossibility of such a world. And yet here it is. And of all the unlikely life forms with which the planet Earth teems, no life form here is so utterly unlikely as the human being. Intelligent life. Emotional life. People in the earth loving and laughing, holding hands and sharing ideas, playing baseball, seeing how long they can hold their breath underwater, reading books, doing calculus, building sandcastles, building civilization. The human race is the most improbable thing in this most improbable of worlds. If anything should not exist, it is us. And yet here we are. The explanation? There is a God. Wise or powerful, the creator of all things that are, with whom nothing is impossible. That is God. Belief in God seems to some to be an extreme conclusion. On the contrary, nothing less suffices to explain what actually exists. God made us. God made our world. And he did it for his glory. That's the Bible's explanation. And to this day, it's the only really satisfactory explanation that there is. And here in Genesis 2, verse 7, among the mysteries with which God, our Creator, has been pleased to reveal to us, the Bible as His Word, is the strange recipe for the making of a man. I'm going to read this to you again, but first, seeing that you all are human beings, I want to ask you, how do you feel about this? about the way in which the Bible says God created our first father, Adam. For it says here that the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being. So how does that strike you when you hear it, knowing that this is saying something about you too? Is this obvious? Are you thinking, oh yes, of course, that's how God would make a man? Or does it sort of freak you out? Like the first time you learned where babies really come from? Does it smack of mythology? Does it offend you by its crudeness? Dust, indeed. Or as you try to imagine this moment in the Garden of Eden, do you picture something beautiful like a sacred dance? I think any of these responses would be understandable. My purpose this morning is not to advocate for one response over the others. Take Genesis 2-7 as you will. But what I hope to impress upon our congregation this morning is that what God is showing us about ourselves in Genesis 2-7 is important for us to know as we are living out our lives here in this world. It's important for us to know. I say that because people have, at times, misconstrued the makeup of man. And errors in anthropology have ugly consequences. We have seen them. For instance, when the human body is worshipped, things get weird. I think here of the bodybuilding, sunbathing craze of the late 70s and the early 80s. Human beings all oiled up, shining like buttered rolls in the sun. Just weird. Carcinogenic and weird. But things just as weird have happened on the opposite end, when the human body has been hated and punished, as in the strange case of the flagellates who strolled through medieval English towns during the Black Plague, beating their own backs bloody, thinking thereby to save their souls. Weird. Confusion about the human body leads to weirdness, confusion about the human soul, even weirder and I think more dangerous things. During the French Revolution of the 18th century, the monsters who made such efficient use of the guillotine with the very same men who deified the human mind, erected temples to the goddess Reason, and bowed down to her as the infallible arbiter of truth and justice. And more recently, the soul of 21st century man has suffered the indignity of being dismissed altogether as a non-entity, which I think we should appreciate is the ultimate blow to all human aspirations beyond a bare-knuckled material existence. My point is, we suffer for mistakes like this. Errors in our anthropology. We, human beings, we ourselves suffer, both body and soul. We have in the past, and we could again in the future. So as I address you from Christ's pulpit this morning, the point I'm making is that no matter how you take Genesis 2, 7, however it strikes you, whether obvious or odd, whether offensive or beautiful, it is an important verse in the Bible. Don't miss it. In order for us to be whole and to be humane in this world rather than fractured and veering towards insanity, we have to be clear about what we are. And who better to show us what we are than the God who made us? That's where we are here in Genesis 2-7. So what are we as human beings? First, God shows us in Genesis 2-7 that we are bodies. Physical bodies, very clear here. physical bodies made to act in the physical realm, to engage physically with other physical things here, to ride bicycles, to drink milkshakes, to hug our grandmothers. A million and more great human experiences in life are bodily experiences. And Christians, we should thank our Creator this morning that we are so constituted. These human bodies of ours are, in themselves, good. And much of God's goodness in this world is enjoyed by us as a bodily experience. Ironically, it is religious people who have tended to be most unappreciative of the human body. Esteeming it as so much carnal baggage with which our souls are burdened, misguided, religious zealots, many of them Christians, have blamed the body for all man's woes, heaped contempt upon it and thought themselves spiritual by denying it its rightful pleasures and neglecting its real needs. And I'm saying that's a shame. These Christians ought to have read their Bibles more carefully. Where are we here in Genesis 2? We're in the Garden of Eden. We're in paradise. Before the fall, the world as it was meant to be, everything that you see here now, including the human body of Adam, is part of the world that God made. And all here, according to the testimony of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, including the world's physical aspect, is very good. The prophet David, We read this morning, reflecting on how God had formed him in his mother's womb, said to the Lord in Psalm 139, 14, I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. That's David's appreciation of the creative work of God in the body in which he found himself. I had the pleasure in veterinary school of studying mammalian physiology. It's my favorite subject in vet school by far. Physiology is the study of how the body works in a state of health and it covers all the systems of the body. So the beating heart of the circulatory system and the oxygen exchange of the respiratory system and the electrical impulses of the nervous system. It's unfortunately we sometimes see such things as gross, because these bodies of ours are absolutely amazing, fearfully and wonderfully made. It's breathtaking in their complexity, impressive in their efficiency, and oftentimes absolutely beautiful in action. The teenage years notwithstanding, Our bodies are not awkward and ill-suited for life here on earth, but they are strong and graceful, a glorious testimony to the divine wisdom of Adam's God. I'm looking forward to the Summer Olympics in Paris this year, where we get to watch great athletes from all over the planet come together to compete in the Olympic Games. The gymnasts, the sprinters, the divers, power lifters. Every Olympic event presents its own physical challenge. The human bodies of our athletes rise to beat every last one of them spectacularly. It's quite a show. So yes, these bodies of ours are incredible. But still more incredible, according to Genesis 2-7, God made them out of dust. Perfectly consistent. the findings of modern science. When you break down the human body into its most basic constituent elements, there's nothing there that isn't in the dirt beneath us. Phosphorus, nitrogen, carbon, calcium. Physically, that's all we are. And yet out of that stuff, God made this. Compared to some creative genius making of popsicle sticks, a life-size working model of New York City. It's impossible. And yet here we are. The most ingenious creation of the living God. So as a people who respect Him, the Creator, let us be respectful of the wonder of His creative work. Our bodies are not just carnal baggage, not foul prisons from which our souls long to be set free. These physical bodies of ours are amazing, one of the two essential ingredients of our being, without which we are not fully human. That's how to think of the body biblically. Before I move on to the soul, I'll just add this, because it's a point that the Bible itself makes about our bodies, when God needs to take us down a notch or two. As wonderful as we are in our physical being, doing cartwheels on the lawn, or triple somersaults in the Olympic Games, withdraw the creative work of our Creator, and the gracious power that upholds us each moment while we live, and what are we? The answer is dust. To be swept away. Dust you are, God said to Adam when he sinned, and to dust you shall return. And I don't have to tell you that that's what happens to our bodies when we die, right? In a pitifully short amount of time, they just disintegrate. and returned to dust. When God needed to correct Adam's pride, that's how he did it. He just let him die and his body crumbled. Why such an undignified departure from this life? According to the Bible, it is to make a humbling point, which we should all get. I'll never forget seeing my grandmother's ashes set in a crude hole in the ground and covered with a shovel full of dirt. So that's it. That beautiful life comes to such a humiliating end in death. Yep. God is not playing. If we are blessed to live by his grace, exalt ourselves in our pride, God can and will humble us. So take care of your bodies, be grateful for the health that you enjoy, but take none of it for granted, because the God who gives us all good things can, with perfect justice, also take it all away. Now let's talk about our souls. Genesis 2.7. We see here God, having formed the body of Adam from the dust, breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and that is strange. And yet, there is something wonderfully intimate about it that I want you to see. The God here doesn't just give a distant order from on high for man to be quickened, get up and start walking about, but rather the artist himself, Having formed the body of this beautiful creature, Adam almost lovingly draws near, as near as can be, putting his lips to Adam's nose, breathes into man's lifeless body the precious gift of spiritual life. And this is not just a spark, mind you, as with a car battery, to get the thing going. God here breathes into Adam an actual spiritual substance that will henceforth be an essential part of him. And that is the soul of man. And it is that part of us that the modern materialists deny. Both the Bible and our own experience teach us that the body without the soul is just a corpse. Watch someone die and you'll see it. They're there one second, gone the next. Body's still there, but they are gone. There's something more in us, something more to us that is essential to our being than just our brains and blood, our flesh and our bone. And friends, as human beings, we deny that other spiritual part at our peril. And I'm not kidding. You want to see human beings in this world manipulated like puppets, reprogrammed like computers, kicked around like robots, and all in all treated in ways that are inhumane and degrading. So go on denying the existence of the soul, that'll get you there. This is the most sacred part of man, the immortal, morally responsible spirit in him. And it is the awareness of that God-breathed human soul that has always made us feel that it would be something like sacrilege to kill a human being and sell his body parts for profit. This is the darkest part of the sermon. I tell you, this world will be no better than a butcher shop if we in our 21st century sophistication become dismissive of the soul. A butcher shop. You can think of the abortion clinic if that's helpful. But we will be the meat. On a much lighter note, last Sunday, I enjoyed myself. Thoroughly. Got to spend the day with you all, my Christian brothers and sisters, preached a sermon on how wonderful it is to be a human being. The capstone of the day was when after the evening service, Anna Lee allowed me the pleasure of holding her little girl Winnie for a bit. It was a spiritual conclusion to a very spiritual day. At the vet clinic, I get to hold puppies and kittens often enough. I know you're jealous. It's nice. There's nothing so beautiful as holding a human child. When I was holding Winnie last Sunday in my arms, she was looking up at me with her eyes, and they were just searching mine. She was locked in and just searching my eyes. That's what I felt. She was wanting to connect with me. through the meeting of our eyes. And you know, we human beings have always looked into other humans' eyes thinking that in that way, perhaps, we could best see into their souls. Which is why those of us who have a guilty conscience have a hard time looking directly into other people's eyes. And this is a very early intuition, apparently. And the point is that looking into another person's soul like that is not just looking into their brains, right? We recognize the activity of the brain is involved in our mental processes as human beings, blah, blah, blah. Wonderful stuff. I love neurophysiology too. But looking into a living person's soul by looking into her eyes is something else, something of a higher order altogether. And when there is a connection, it is spiritual. It's not so necessary that we dissect and define that further, if such a thing were possible, as that we simply recognize that it is so. As a matter of biblical truth, personal experience, and common sense. Every human being has a soul. What is it, prophet of man, Jesus asked his disciples, if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul? Nobody has a problem understanding what Jesus is talking about. And everybody sees immediately the answer, and the answer is nothing. A man would gain nothing if he gained the whole world but lost his soul. The soul is the greatest gift that we have. It's the God-given life in us without which everything else in life is meaningless to us, including the body. As was shown in Genesis 2-7, it's when God breathed the breath of life into Adam's body that Adam became a living soul and not before. Without it, Adam, like all human beings, is just a body. Briefly beautiful, perhaps, as it lies there lifeless in the grass, but soon wasting away, returned to dust. So yes, I reiterate, appreciate your bodies. But for the body's sake, don't forget about or neglect your still more precious soul. So there you have it, the strange recipe For the making of a man, according to Genesis 2.7, simple, profound, and incomprehensible. Two ingredients, that's all. Body, soul. Both are good in themselves, but neither is complete or completely happy without the other. A human body without a soul is a corpse. That's no good. A human soul without a body is a life cut off from the physical world that it was meant to experience and enjoy. And that's no good either. Both body and soul are human and so finite not to be worshipped. Yet at the same time our souls and bodies are to be acknowledged and respected in pious appreciation of God's work, the most unlikely of all his creatures, the human beings. That is Biblical Anthropology 101, and it is a balanced and healthy view of ourselves. So biblical anthropology leads us to a larger question about the world in which we find ourselves as human beings. And the larger question is, why? Why, of all the worlds that God might have made, did he make this improbable? Why not a universe like outer space? Great fireworks display, spectacular lights and motion, but no living thing. Or if there were to be a planet on which live living creatures somewhere in God's universe, why not a planet just for plant and animal life without all the trouble of human beings? But let's face it, we have proven to be a lot of trouble. The answer to that question, I believe, is in a word, love. Human beings exist in the universe for the sake of love. God made us to love us and that we should love him and love one another. Search the whole universe. Only human beings are capable of this. It's the truly unique and ultimately important thing about us. This is what the French revolutionaries got wrong, I would say. They pretended to be all about man. But in elevating human reason above everything else, they only showed how little they really understood about man. We're not here above all else to reason. to do math and figure things out. We are here above all else to love and to be loved. And for us as human beings, love is a matter of body and soul. Our whole being. That's why God made us this way. The physical realm is the realm which God designs for us as human beings to experience the life of love for which we were made. And the human soul is what makes us alive to it all. Able to engage intelligently and emotionally and spiritually and so appreciate this life and all the love that is in it to the glory of God. Stars and trees, they glorify God in their way, we humans in ours, and above all else, I say again, love is our way. Without us in the universe, it would be a very different kind of universe. There would be lights and there would be animal life, but I'm asking, where without us would there be love? And so you see, when this man Adam sinned and fell, And all men with him sinned and fell, and darkness descended upon the world, and the suffering began. Do you know what God did? The Bible says He loved the world. That's what He did. That's what the Apostle John says in John 3, 16. God loved the world. Not some other world in some other universe, but this one. This world, the one so delicately balanced to sustain life, even our lives, in the Milky Way. This impossible world that God made and made for love, which has now fallen. God still then loved that world. And to save that world that God loved meant, above all else, God saving us, human beings. For this world became the world that it is, that is a world for love, right here in Genesis 2.7, when God first made a man. First formed the body of Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life. To save the world that God loved, the one that he had made for love, meant God saving that creature, from perishing in his sins. And so that's what God in love determined to do. And it's out of that love and that glorious purpose then that the most unlikely thing in this most unlikely world happened. And that is God became a man to save men. He came into the world by being born a man beneath a star in Bethlehem, an infant named Jesus, so named because the angel said to Mary, his mother, that this was the Son of God who had come to save his people from their sin. He lived among men as Jesus of Nazareth, who walked the regions of Galilee and Judea with his disciples in the first century, doing good and by the Holy Spirit, healing people everywhere afflicted with every kind of disease. And he died a man condemned. wrongly, nailed to the cross of Calvary, full of agony and indescribable pain, bearing his people's wrongs before his Father, all to save those people from perishing in their sins. And then He, the Son of God, as our Savior, rose again a man, still in our humanity, to which He had forever united His deity, now secured in Him, in incorruptible glory. A savior like this shouldn't exist in this world. It seems an impossibility that God should love human beings so, and especially sinful ones. And yet at Calvary, there he is. And the church has always strenuously maintained that its savior in becoming a man became fully man. Assumed to himself a human body and a human soul. Why? Because God came to save us and that's what we are. It's in that way that he made us, in making us, for a life of love. And so in order to save the world that was made for love, God's Son became fully man. That our sins being taken away, love might continue. Go on in the world for which the world was made. And that is human love and the enjoyment of God's love. And when I say go on, I mean go on eternally. For again, this is what the Apostle John says, John 3, 16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Human beings, as human beings, having everlasting life. Think of it. Bicycle riding, milkshake drinking, Grandmother-hugging creatures that we are, enjoying everlasting life and all the love of that, in the world that God made just as he intended. Physical enough to engage with the physical realm of God's good creation, and spiritual enough to appreciate his love in and through it all. That's what Jesus Christ, being both God and man, has given us in giving himself for us. That's how the God of Genesis 2-7 has loved the world. There's still a good deal of confusion in the world, isn't there? Confusion among human beings, about human beings, confusion about bodies, confusion about souls, and confusion about love. I was reminded yesterday that the month of June is Pride Month. I had forgotten all about Pride Month. A whole month! What did the month of June do to deserve this? But it's upon us now, so I'm bracing myself. It's 30 days of that rainbow flag being waved furiously in my face everywhere I go. Just to remind me, put me on notice, that homosexuals are not ashamed of their homosexuality. I get it. My first thought was, as I remembered this, Well, I just won't go anywhere in June if that's the way it's going to be. I'll just shut down all the devices. I'll hide in my basement until it saves to come out again in July. But then I thought, June. It's a lovely month. It's the last month of spring. And it's as much my world as it is theirs, so I won't be driven from it by a bunch of rainbow flags. And that's what I remember, that the church, as the bride of Christ, has its own flag, its own banner to wave in this world. In the Song of Solomon, it's the church as the bride of Christ that sings to her Lord and says, his banner over me was love. So if they're not ashamed to wave their flags, why then we're not ashamed to wave our flags? in the month of June, and not just in the month of June, but all year round and on into eternity, in every place all over this world, this world that wonderfully, for all its sin, God still loves. Our flag, Christians, is the glorious hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the hope in which my grandmother was buried a believer, believing that she would live again and see her redeemer. It's the hope by which I, her Christian grandson, hope someday that I will hug her again. So as we carry our banner in the month of June, Christians, I'm urging myself and you to see through these symbols through which people tell you so loudly who they are and all their confusion about who they are. The flags they wave, the shirts they wear, the words they shout, all the strange things that they do with their bodies, the piercings, the hairstyles, the tattoos, it's all to signal something. Let us see like Christ saw through all that static. And what will we see? You see a human being. Like you're a human being. The creature of God, made for love. Now remember that all the strange and degrading things that people as sinners do with their bodies is because those bodies are united to their desperately lost and unhappy soul. Souls confused about life. Souls that have believed the lie. Souls that are alienated from God. Souls that are hateful and hating one another. And yet souls that long for love and are always after it in the wrong way. It's pitiful. God has given us, us good news. for these other human beings in our world. The good news about a savior, the good news about his son. Whether they believe it or not is up to them. But some may believe, and those who believe will be saved, as we are saved. That is, saved from perishing in their sins. Important things may happen yet in the month of June. I remind you to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul said this, he said, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is true. It's a sad thing what sin does to people, body and soul, and what people being sinners will do with their bodies, meaning to gain the world perhaps, and yet thereby losing their souls. But Paul continues saying to the Corinthian converts, to the Christian faith, members of Christ's holy church, he says, and such were some of you. Some of you were homosexual. But you were washed. But you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. People can change, they can be changed, they can be cleansed. If we don't believe that, what do we believe? Faith that changes everything. And a person in his or her life comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And how shall they hear when all the preachers of the gospel are hiding out in their basements for an entire month? You want change? Come out and proclaim the good news. But I also remind you, finally, But Paul then turned to these Christians in Corinth, knowing that they were still living in that pagan society and its practices out of which they had come. And Paul said to them as Christians, he said, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Your bodies are members of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, he said. It was in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own. Paul said, flee sexual immorality, for you were bought at a price. And do you know what that price is? He says, therefore, Christians glorify God, your God, in your body and in your spirit. When you sin in your body, you sin. When you sin in your soul, you sin. It's the same you. Christ owns all of it. It all matters, you see. All of you matter. Love is an all-embracing thing. Body and soul are either saved together or they perish together. It's just how we're made. And so my prayer this morning is may the God who loves this world sanctify you, his people, completely. in life and bless you with the courage and compassion this month to love others as you have been loved and continually point them by word and deed to the one who gave himself to us in order to give us eternal life. But in the name of Jesus the Son, we pray. Amen. As we respond to God's word this morning, please turn with me to hymn number 253, A good old gospel hymn, there is a fountain filled with blood, number 253. And let us stand together as we sing.