I want to take a quick moment and introduce something new we are going to do here for 2020. We are going to blog through the Bible in 2020. At the beginning of each year, the church formally begins a Bible reading plan for the entire church. This year, we selected, Replicate Ministries F-260 Bible Reading Plan. If you are not familiar with this reading plan or the ministry of Replicate Ministries, I would encourage you to check them out at www.replicate.org (this blog and ministry is not affiliated with Replicate and gets nothing in exchange for promoting their ministry). What we are going to do here is that throughout the year, Pastor Justin and other guest writers will highlight verses that correspond to the day’s Bible reading. We are a little behind in starting this, but we are confident that we will catch up in due time. What will occur is normally once we catch up posting where we should be, there will be five days with a blogging through the Bible post. It is our prayer that this will encourage you and maybe even inspire you to begin the daily habit of reading the Bible. We would love to hear from you in the comments section on how God is using His Word to challenge you and grow you. Without any further delay, here is the first entry in the series.
Genesis 2:7 says, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into His nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
While many people view Genesis 1 and 2 as two separate creation stories, this isn’t the case. Genesis 1 gives us the general overview of creation, and then Genesis 2 goes back and gives us the anthropological view of creation. Throughout Genesis 1 we see that God “created” various things such as light, dark, the sun, moon, stars, animals, fish, etc. However, when it gets to describing God creating man it changes the word used. In speaking of God creating man it says that God “formed man.” This implies an intimate, special work of creation. In other words, man was created differently than the rest of creation. Then, in our verse we get another little nugget. We learn when life began for the first man. God formed him, but it wasn’t until God breathed into him that he became a living being. This is true not only for physical life, but more importantly spiritual life. The apostle Paul in Ephesians 2 says that we were “dead in our sins and trespasses.” That is, before Christ, we were not spiritually alive. However, from the moment of God saving us by His grace through faith, the Spirit came inside of us, and we were made alive. Are you spiritually alive? If you have never been saved by God’s grace, the answer to that question is, no you aren’t. However, God in His grace is calling out to you, desiring to make you alive in Him. He is doing this through no effort of your own, but He is pursuing you in His love because in His love He sent Jesus to die on the cross in your place, and to take the punishment for the sins you have committed. Therefore, since God has made a way for you to be alive in Jesus, how will you respond to God’s invitation? Will you choose life today?
One of the key takeaways from this text for believers is a reminder that our life is not our own. Again, using the apostle Paul’s words, Paul said that we were bought with a price (see 1 Cor. 6:19-20). I cannot give myself physical life or spiritual life. They are both gifts from God. Apart from the same Spirit who breathed into Adam and made him alive, breathing into me, I am not alive in Christ. But I also need the Spirit to sustain my life, and lead my life. Since my life doesn’t belong to me, but instead belongs to God, I need to live my life in such a way as to glorify God with the life He has given me. So the final question here for the believer is this, is my life pointing others to Jesus or am I living for myself?
If you have questions or if there is a way that we can help you understand how to be saved, or how to live a life that pleases God; we sincerely hope you will reach out to us. You can e-mail us at westlakebc@gmail.com or you can e-mail Pastor Justin directly at pastorjustin@westlakebaptist.org. We also want to invite you, if you live in the Smith Mountain Lake area, to join us on Sundays at 8:30 or 11:00 for worship.
By His grace and for His glory,
Pastor Justin