The Breath of Life
The Story of the Old Testament: Genesis • Sermon • Submitted
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Prayer
The Great Mystery
There’s an open prize available to anyone who can solve one of life’s great mysteries - $10 million, offered by Evolution 2.0. It’s quite a serious prize, backed by private equity investment group, first announced at a meeting of The Royal Society of Great Britain, one of - if not the - most prestigious science organization in the world today.
All you have to do to win $10 million is to prove the origin of life by natural causes. In order to do that, you have to identify a naturally occuring code, code that has the ability to rewrite itself.
You may be asking yourself (or you may not), why this, why a code? Here’s why this is so essential - no one knows where the first code, the genetic code, came from. And this is the heart of the mystery of the origin of life, what we have no clue about.
Listen to this description from herox.com, a website that features list of prizes for challenging innovation questions. This is their description of the great mystery of the origin of life, and why it’s so amazing:
“Every cell reproduces itself from the digital instruction, stored in DNA. DNA has the same features as modern digital devices…plus an ability to adapt that beggars the imagination.
How do living things repair and heal themselves, adapt to any situation you can imagine and make choices?…Cells re-engineer themselves in real time, in hours, in minutes…How do cells “know” how to evolve? No human software does that. Give software millions of chances and billions of years and all it will do is crash. But life adapts relentlessly. How does it do this? What do cells know that we don’t?
And what about consciousness? In the human realm only conscious beings create and modify code? Where does consciousness come from? Are cells self aware?”
I hope you’re seeing how absolutely amazing living cells are - and why they absolutely befuddle scientists, what they are capable of. This is why, according to Stuart Kauffman, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, “The great overarching mysteries are: How did the universe come to be? What is consciousness? What is life?”
Currently, no one has answers to these great mysteries - at least not natural causes (why $10 million prize is still unclaimed).
But I think that prize will never be claimed, doesn’t matter if it was $10 billion - because the prize assumes that life emerged naturally, by purely chemical chance or some say, by chemical evolution. But the Bible tells us another story - that these great overarching mysteries have a supernatural cause (one beyond nature), they have their origin in God.
Which is what we started with last week, looking at Genesis 1, which told the story of how the universe, the cosmos - or as the Bible says it, the heavens and the earth, came to be. This week, in chapter two, we’ll see the origin of life and with it, consciousness.
The Breath of Life
*Genesis 2:4-25…the reading of the text*
A few quick notes - this is not a different creation story, but a secondary one. It goes back around describes the creation story from a different perspective, particularly focusing on creation of man and the role God has given us.
First thing we see in this story is life, the origin of life.
The narrative begins with a barren earth, no vegetation because there is no water and no workers. But God remedies that first with streams - or the Hebrew word here can mean mist or spring - image of water making its way up from the ground and saturating it.
And then, not just water, but workers, someone to work the ground. We saw in Genesis 1 that this was to be the role of people, who were given by God dominion over all the earth, to fill and subdue it. Here we have the creation of man in greater detail.
The Bible tells us that God forms man out of the dirt, the dust of the ground. There’s a play on words here - the Hebrew word for man is adam (Adam), who is formed out of the ground, adamah.
And this is literally true, we are made up of dirt. Or, more precisely, our bodies are made of the exact same elements that everything is made of - dirt in your backyard, sand at beach, rocks, sea water, fresh water, air - everything.
I’m sure many of you remember learning about periodic table of elements in school. That’s the list of what everything is made of. 99% of our body is made up of six elements: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus - and then we have trace amounts of potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium.
And that’s the easy part - chemical composition, the elements (dirt) that we’re made of. But here’s where the great mystery enters in, because some of these chemical compositions - including us, are alive. Have cells filled with digital code that reproduce and regulate and adapt - adapt in a way that hero-x describes it by saying it “beggars the imagination”. There’s a vast, vast difference between nonliving things and things that are alive.
So that’s the big question - what makes things alive? How did life come about? In our human experience we’ve never seen life come from non-life - as far as we’ve seen life always comes from other life. So how did it first start? Bible describes it this way: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
We have no answers to the origin of life because it is beyond us - God is life itself, the eternal one, who has always existed. He is the source of life, we live - everything that lives lives because God breathed life into it, into us.
It is the power and glory of God to create living things - man - packed with cells so intricate, complete with code, instructions to heal and repair, adapt relentlessly, re-engineer themselves. All the stuff going on in your body all the time and we’re completely clueless about - you bump your toe and immediately body goes into alert - pain signals sent to brain.
Spiritual Formation Group - conversation about drinking water, how much we’re drinking: When you’re thirsty, it’s because there are proteins in the cell that regulate amount of water, these sensors - not enough, so they send signals through other proteins that carry messages to other parts of the body, those cells have receptors to receive the messages, tell other proteins to respond accordingly - to hold on to the water in your body, to stimulate our sensation of thirst (give some water, dummy!).
Wendy and I gave blood this week, when you give blood, every five seconds or so you have to give a gentle squeeze to keep blood flowing. That’s because of the amazing healing work our cells immediately kick into - blood cells start coagulating in order to seal off the wound.
On and on it goes in all these ways, all time, and you and I aren’t doing anything to make it happen, code within our cells kicks them into action. Do you remember the quote I shared at the very beginning - ability of cells, “know” how to evolve. And yet any software we write, left to chance and time will inevitable crash, it can’t sustain itself. The reality is the more we discover about building blocks of life, the intricacy of cell - and way different cells interact, the complexity of genetic code, the greater mystery of life has become. And more in awe and wonder of God we ought to be…we live because God breathed his life into us. He is the author of all life!
Not just great mystery of life we see here, but great mystery of consciousness as well.
God has given us the gift not just of life - which we share with plants and animals, but the gift of consciousness. We are aware. We are self aware. We think, rationalize, discern, we make decisions. And there’s no biological or chemical explanation for consciousness - it’s a huge puzzle for scientists and philosophers, at least those who are seeking a purely natural cause.
Now some animals have varying degrees of consciousness - in fact, we often marvel at the level of intelligence displayed in many of our four-legged friends, how smart they are. We see remarkable intelligence in primates, and even many sea creatures - dolphins are a great example, though I’m fascinated by the fact that the octopus is apparently a very smart creature.
But humans have a unique capacity here - our level of memory, thought, reason, self-awareness and moral decision-making is far above and beyond that of all the other animals.
Exactly what we see in this story. Man is given the role and responsibility to rule over creation. He is to tend the garden. The other living creatures come before him to be named. Man is given the gift of consciousness. We are aware. We think through and make decisions.
No where is that more evident than in the decision God gives the man in which trees to eat the fruit of.
The story goes into detail describing God’s planting of the garden with all of its abundance of all sorts of trees with all sorts of fruit, that are both pleasing to the eye and good for food, in other words, they are both beautiful and beneficial.
Then it speaks of two trees in particular, trees placed in the middle of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Adam is given the explicit command - he may eat of any tree of the garden - all these vast array of trees filled with all sorts of fruit - except this one tree. He is forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God explicitly warns him, if he eats of it he will certainly die.
Now some may argue that he’s not really given freedom, since he can’t eat of that tree or he will die. But he does have freedom, he has freedom to choose to eat from that tree just he like does any other tree, the consequences just happen to be very different.
Adam is free to think through and consider the options and make a conscious decision. We see God’s gift of consciousness right here. And it’s an amazing gift, we are truly free creatures (now, as we’ll see in a few weeks, we lose that freedom through the enslaving power of sin on us), but it’s clear here that we have wills of our own we are free to enact.
This is the great risk of God. As free, conscious beings we can choose to obey God, live according to his commands, how he made the world - and us - to be. We can choose to listen to him, to be with him - to love him. Or, we can choose not to. We can choose our own way, what we desire, our priorities, to give our devotion elsewhere. We can choose to dismiss and reject God.
It’s an amazing thing to consider, that God choose to make us conscious beings who are free to choose. And God did it because God knows that love, true genuine love, must be freely given. It cannot be coerced or compelled or automated. And God desires to be in loving relationship with us - he freely gives of himself to us in love, and gives us the choice, freedom, to decide whether we will willingly give ourselves to him in love in return or not.
This says so much about the character of God - his humility to choose to create beings, instill them with life (his life breathed into us), give us consciousness, freedom to choose for or against him. The humility of that risk.
One of ways we say “yes” to God, choose for him, is by engaging in Spiritual Disciplines. We intentionally, consciously seek to put God at the center of our lives. To engage in exercises that train our souls, open us up to the Holy Spirit and his work in us so that we might become more like Jesus because we believe that life is found in him.
In last week’s passage, Genesis 1, we saw over and over again God stepping back and looking at creation, celebrating it’s goodness. And God saw that it was good.
As a spiritual discipline, I want to encourage you to engage in same act, of paying attention to God’s creation, the goodness.
And in particular, signs of life since that’s been our focus this week, God’s wonderful gift of life, this great mystery. Be attentive to signs of life as a spiritual discipline…I already saw some plants emerging from ground…wound healing…attentive to your own breathing, breath of life…the “life” in your pet…even experience of physical pain, when you stub your toe!
And as you do, praise God, be in awe and wonder of life, and the one from whom all life flows.
Second exercise I want to encourage you to consider involves God’s gift of consciousness, gift of being able to think, to choose. Choose God this week - daily, as your arise, commit yourself to God. Express your love and devotion to him, your willingness to be obedient to him in all things. Choose to love God as he loves you.
Let me finish with this: So much of this chapter speaks of life, God’s beautiful gift of life. God breathing his life into us...Garden filled with all sorts of trees that are both pleasing to the eye (beautiful) and good for food (beneficial) - and one of those trees is the tree of life itself (by the way, as a side note, we see our return to the tree of life in Revelation 22, very last chapter of the Bible, we will be given access once more!). Even the restriction against eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - don’t do it for you will certainly die. God doesn’t want us to die, he wants life for us.
And we didn’t even talk about life we experience in doing good and meaningful work - Adam tending the garden, naming all the animals. Or life we can experience in marriage, “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone”, two become one flesh - to create more life!
Story finishes with this brief but beautiful image, “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” The image captures essence of being fully alive - truly comfortable in your own skin, you might say. It’s an image of abundant life (no shame, guilt, fears, insecurities, self-consciousness - free from all that, just to be.
I believe that’s the life God intends for us to have. This morning, as we finish, my hope and prayer is that as your consider life, your life, your consciousness - ability to think, be aware, to choose, that your heart would resound with thanks and praise to the God who gave you these great mysteries, these precious gifts.