Focal Passage: Genesis 2:7-9, 15-25
I have asthma. It is a family trait. My grandfather and my late mother-in-law had it. My oldest son has it.
Asthma constricts the airways and makes it difficult to breathe. When my son was very young, various times he was hospitalized with his asthma.
I remember distinctively watching him in his oxygen tent in the hospital, just waiting and praying for the medicine to kick in so he could breathe. He was laboring so hard. I prayed, “just breathe.” We take the act of breathing for granted. Somewhere between 18,000 and 30,000 times a day, we take a breath. We hardly think about it. Yet God does. When He breathes into us, He breathes the “breath of life” (v. 7).
First, before Adam, the first man, received the “breath of life,” he was formed from “the dust from the ground.” As in all Creation, God is the one at work. God is the one doing the action.
It is a continuation of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created …” The Psalmist in Psalms 100 says, “Know the Lord, He is God! It is He who made us.” This is God in action.
Lloyd
Second, God made Adam from dust. The Hebrew word for man is Adam, and the Hebrew word for ground is Adamah. The dust of the ground is embedded in his very name. It is just part of who Adam was.
He was “formed” by God as a potter fashioned his pots from inanimate dust. Psalms 103:14 confirms humanity being formed from dust, “For He knows what we are made of; remembering that we are dust.” When Adam’s life was over, his body returned to dust (Genesis 3:15). Thus, Scripture teaches from “dust” to dust.”
Third, God breathed life into Adam. God, who had just spoken the galaxies into existence, now comes face to face with His creation and, in a tender moment, intimately breathed into him life after He had intricately made Adam. God formed Adam and brought him to life with His very own breath. Adam’s body comes from the earth, but his life comes from the Lord God. Job 33:4 says, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”
Fourth, Adam’s sin plunged the world into sin. However, God, through Jesus, came to lift us up. In I Corinthians 15:47, Jesus is called the “second Adam.” “The first man was from the earth and made of dust; the second man is from heaven.” Jesus came to reverse the curse of sin by bearing all sin upon Himself when He died on the cross and rose from the grave.
Fifth, God never gave up on His people. As God breathed into Adam and brought him to life, so too did the second Adam breathe life into His people.
In John 20:21-22, “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’ After saying this, He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ ” Through Jesus, by breathing the Spirit of God upon them, God empowered His children to fulfill their purpose of taking the gospel to the whole world.
God breathed. And life happened! B&R
