“From dust you have come and dust shall return, repent and believe the Gospel.”
These are words I’ve spoken over people countless times on Ash Wednesday. The first part of the line is spoken by God in the Garden of Eden.
by the sweat of your face you will eat bread — until you return to the fertile land, since from it you were taken; you are soil, to the soil you will return.” (Genesis 3:19, CEB)
God spoke these words over Adam after he and Eve sinned against God. There in the Garden of Eden they had all they would ever need. They even had a relationship with God where they were walking and talking with Him. Still, they wanted more.
The devil spoke to Eve, “Did God really say?”
The snake was the most intelligent of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say that you shouldn’t eat from any tree in the garden?” (Genesis 3:1, CEB)
Eve responds how the one tree was off limits for them.
2 The woman said to the snake, “We may eat the fruit of the garden’s trees 3 but not the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. God said, ‘Don’t eat from it, and don’t touch it, or you will die.’” (Genesis 3, CEB)
The snake uses all the ways the world pulls at us, trying to get us to turn away from God. We think God could never really know what we need. The fruit, the act or the feeling right in front us, looks so good.
4 The snake said to the woman, “You won’t die! 5 God knows that on the day you eat from it, you will see clearly and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 The woman saw that the tree was beautiful with delicious food and that the tree would provide wisdom, so she took some of its fruit and ate it, and also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis 3, CEB)
This isn’t merely not listening to God or breaking a rule. This is choosing not to trust Him, to say you really aren’t my God. I am.
With this act, sin comes into the world. Humanity changes. We will die. Our ability to image God is crushed. On our own, dust is what remains.
Thankfully, we face this reality in the shadow of the cross, knowing God hasn’t abandoned us. Rather, He provides a way for us to have a restored relationship with Him, and to defeat death.
Consider this passage the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 (CEB),
46 But the physical body comes first, not the spiritual one—the spiritual body comes afterward. 47 The first human was from the earth made from dust; the second human is from heaven. 48 The nature of the person made of dust is shared by people who are made of dust, and the nature of the heavenly person is shared by heavenly people. 49 We will look like the heavenly person in the same way as we have looked like the person made from dust.
50 This is what I’m saying, brothers and sisters: Flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s kingdom. Something that rots can’t inherit something that doesn’t decay. 51 Listen, I’m telling you a secret: All of us won’t die, but we will all be changed— 52 in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the final trumpet. The trumpet will blast, and the dead will be raised with bodies that won’t decay, and we will be changed. 53 It’s necessary for this rotting body to be clothed with what can’t decay, and for the body that is dying to be clothed in what can’t die. 54 And when the rotting body has been clothed in what can’t decay, and the dying body has been clothed in what can’t die, then this statement in scripture will happen:
Death has been swallowed up by a victory.
55 Where is your victory, Death?
Where is your sting, Death?
(56 Death’s sting is sin, and the power of sin is the Law.) 57 Thanks be to God, who gives us this victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! 58 As a result of all this, my loved brothers and sisters, you must stand firm, unshakable, excelling in the work of the Lord as always, because you know that your labor isn’t going to be for nothing in the Lord.
When we trust in the work of Jesus Christ, we don’t die. Death is defeated!
Blessings,
Pastor Matt
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