Holy Wind Bags And A Sacred Sanctuary

Holy Wind Bags and the Sacred Sanctuary

Genesis 2:4-7 & 1 Corinthians 6:9-20

INTRODUCTION… What your body does in a 24 hour period (http://www.bible.org/illus.php?topic_id=177)

* your heart beats 103689 times

* your blood travels 168,000,000 miles

* you breathe 23040 times

* you inhale 438 cubic feet of air

* you eat 3.25 pounds of food

* you drink 2.9 quarts of liquids

* you lose 7/8 pounds of waste

* you speak 4800 words, including some unnecessary ones

* you move 750 muscles

* your nails grow .000046 inch

* your hair grows .01714 inch

* you exercise 7,000,000 brain cells

Over the next couple of weeks, John will be giving a series of sermons focusing on our bodies and what the Bible has to say about it. So, today, I thought we would spend some time in the Word preparing for those messages by looking at Biblical views of our bodies. There are two passages that I think directly speak to us and give us a Biblical view of our bodies.

I. HOLY WIND BAGS (GENESIS 2:4-7)

READ GENESIS 2:4-7 = “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens-- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground-- 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

A biblical view of our physical bodies begins to develop in the beginning of the Bible in the book of Genesis. Most of the time when we think of the Creation story, we think of Genesis 1 and its account of the seven days of Creation. Genesis 1 contains a beautiful poem about the Creation of the Universe and our world. Genesis 2 begins with a summary of the creation story that uses a few different words that are key in our understanding of the human body.

Verses 4-6 describe for us life on this new planet Earth. It did not rain in the beginning, but the ground was watered from springs in the ground. This makes Noah’s story all the more potent when we realize that he was building an ark for the day when it rained. It hadn’t rained yet! The world, according to Genesis 2, was waiting for human beings. Human beings would tend the soil and plant and harvest.

The key verse is verse 7. Verse 7 gives us the beautiful view of human beings and our first Biblical view of our bodies. Verse 7 tells us that we are Holy Wind Bags. Verse 7 says, “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The vivid mental picture we get of God in verse 7 is a potter who sculpts a man from the dust of the ground or a carver who whittles him from a piece of wood. God, a little later, also intimately constructs a woman in verse 22. God makes human beings quite specifically and purposefully and with much thought. Human beings were not an afterthought of creation, but were the whole point. God also said in Genesis 1:26, “’Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” God made you and I with purpose. God made you and I as the crown of creation and not as something with left over parts.

Yet, that is not the most amazing thing in this passage. Verse 7 tells us that God breathed His own breath into us and man became a living being. Now, we know of course that many things on our planet are alive. Trees and flowers are alive. Ants and flies are alive. Bears and elephants are alive. Human beings share the created-ness with all of these things, but we are very different. We were formed by God and our life force comes from the very breath of the Creator Himself. Animals and people are both alive, yes, but only human beings are Holy Wind Bags. We hold the very breath of God inside of us! It is this breath that separates man from beast and gives human beings a distinct role in Creation. We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) and we share His very breath (Genesis 2:7). God saw to it that something of Him animates us!