Will The Dust Praise You?

Sermon notes for 11/13/2005

Will the Dust Praise You?

Introduction:

Dust is anything smaller than one sixteenth of a millimeter in diameter. Dust is smaller that the width of a human hair. Dust can be made up of many things- dirt, pollen grains, tire rubber, salt, skin flakes, or bits of comets and asteroids. The dust from outer space that comes into our atmosphere is called cosmic dust.

Dust may be small, but its impact is very visible. When the sun is low in the sky, its rays hit dust particles at an angle. This creates the sunset colors we see. The sky colors change as the sun moves, striking the particles at new angles. The same thing occurs at sunrise, because the sun is low in the sky then as well.

The more dust, the more colorful the sunsets and sunrises. When volcanoes erupt or forest fires burn, they send a lot of ash and soot into the air. This ash dust makes sunsets colorful for a long time, until the dust settles. These colorful sunsets can occur hundreds, even thousands of miles from the fires or eruptions. That is because dust travels.

Dust not only travels, it lasts. It can stay in the air for hundreds of years.

Dust not only helps create beautiful sunsets, it helps create rain. Water that evaporates rises up into the sky as water vapor. It condenses by attaching to dust particles. Each raindrop needs a piece of dust to form.

WBTU:

A. For today, I want us to look at one question that David asks about dust. Read Psalm 30:8-10. “Will the dust praise you?”

B. The creation gives glory to the Lord. (Psa 19:1 NIV) The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. (Psa 19:2 NIV) Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. (Psa 19:3 NIV) There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

C. The Lord made the dust and the dust gives glory to the Lord. Here David is talking specifically about praising the Lord. Praising is usually associated with using the mouth and voice to offer admiration and commendation. One common way of praising God is through singing.

D. From the context here we see that David is really talking about himself. His question really applies to all of mankind.

Thesis: Will the Dust Praise You? Let’s talk about this question and how it relates to all mankind.

For instances:

1. We were created from dust.

A. (Gen 2:7 NIV) 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.

B. Mankind is made up of three parts: body, soul and spirit. (1 Th 5:23 NIV) May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mankind is more than just dust, the body, but everything that is flesh is dust.

C. (Gen 18:27 NIV) Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes,

D. While we move around our houses, we give off dust. Let me explain. The skin is often known as the largest organ in the human body; this applies to exterior surface, as it covers the body. It is also the heaviest organ, accounting for about 15 % of body weight. For the average adult, the skin has a surface area of between 1.5 to 2 square meters.

E. A snake regularly sheds its skin and we see the remains. We do something similar. Dead skin cells are being released all of the time by our bodies. They are constantly being replaced by more cells. This happens all of the time in our bodies. The dust which collects in our houses is composed of half atmospheric dust and half dead skin cells from our bodies. When we dust our houses or beat the couch and watch all of the dust come up, we are really observing our dead skin cells combined with other granules. This is why we have to regularly dust our houses because our dead skin cells are piling up around us. Some times people with asthma or allergies have a hard time with dust mites. Dust mites feed on the organic components (dead skin cells) of house dust. Their feces become part of house dust and can provoke bad reactions in humans.

C. This dust, our bodies, was originally designed to live forever. The dust in our bodies would never go back to its original form. However,…

2. We will go back to dust

A. Because Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which the Lord told them not to eat of our bodies will go back to dust.