HOLY CONFIDENCE IN BETTER THINGS
“From dust you came, and to dust you’ll return.”[1] Truly, “all flesh is grass,”[2] and few things confront us with the simplicity of our origin and demise better than this adage. While Job would pontificate further that we enter this world naked and empty-handed, and we’ll leave it in the same state,[3] our Maker reminded us even in the earliest consequences of Eden’s treason: we are made out of dirt. It’s no wonder that it does our body profound physiological good to simply stand on it.[4]
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.[5]
Just as we were warned, “the day you [disobey] you will surely die,”[6] and immediately upon disobeying, both the man and woman in the Garden were staring down the barrel of their own mortality. Immediately, we knew we were standing on our own graves. The very dirt we came from would be the dirt that buried us.[7] But the man in the Garden, Adam, immediately saw a future free from death:
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.[8]
I believe this is Scripture’s first nod to the resurrection. If you’ve just partaken poison and received a catastrophic death sentence—much less gotten kicked out of Paradise and an angel now stood between you and the Tree of Life with a sword swinging in every direction while on fire[9]—what confidence could Adam possibly have to call his wife (who was the first to buy the lie) “the mother of all living” if not that the dead would yet be plucked from the dust again even unto immortality?[10]
The breadth of the biblical testimony makes it clear the Lord never went a day without the resurrection of the dead in mind. Even in Eden, just before Adam was condemned to days of difficulty and adversarial resistance from the ground he’d thus far peacefully kept and cultivated, the LORD had set His eyes on the bloodthirsty serpent and given him the worst sentence of all:
So the Lord God said to the serpent:
“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”[11]
If we flash forward a minute, with the luxury of living with the prophetic texts not only in hand, but in a language anyone reading this article can understand, we can live in confident view of how this collision of two seeds will play out. The Lord promised a Deliverer who would be explicitly the woman’s Child—not Adam’s—and thus a virgin birth was whispered through the Prophets.[12] His birth would occur before she even went into labor,[13] but once she did, the whole world would be ushered into the “re-Genesis,” the “beginning again,” the wholesale redemption and resurrection of everything the serpent stole (no wonder all creation groans and even rocks threaten to cry aloud).[14] This Seed of the woman will return on the clouds—like only YHWH can—to rescue His city, His people, His stage He set to reveal His character to every nation promised blessing through the Everlasting Covenant cut with Abraham.[15] He will resurrect His own, and we will reign with Him, working under His strategic leadership to undo every wretched crime we’ve wrought on the earth in His absence. This process will take 1,000 years, which is remarkable either way you consider it, during which the Dragon will be chained in prison. Once we’re done, he’ll be released to sift the nations one last time. Anyone who buys his lies and prefers his leadership will join him in the lake of fire prepared for him and his hordes.[16] Those who were not raised in the first resurrection will be brought up in the second, and we’ll all stand before the Judge of the ages as He sentences the quick and the dead.[17] Those who confess the name of Jesus will be with the Father, Son, and Spirit of God forever, with unrestricted access to His Garden City and the Tree of Life.[18] (No angels swinging swords of fire this time.)
While the prophets favored poetic prose (who doesn’t, when recounting the dynamics of a dream?) they are not vacant words for abstract ideas with limited philosophical shelf lives. These are real promises for real places with real people. There really are sandy coasts of far-flung islands who are first to see the dawning light.[19] There really are cities we’ll govern and restore.[20] You really will be with the Lord and your loved ones (in Christ) in the resurrection, and He really is as good as He says He is.[21] The serpent, the Dragon, our adversary and accuser, really is real, and he really will spend forever in a lake of flames paying for his crimes against God and creation.[22] There are very real, very literal implications for the dust of the earth—both your body and the dirt you stand on.
God’s dream required dirt to build; and not one word from His lips returns to Him void. He will not lose His Paradise to a snake; He entered the storyline to win back everything stolen and put His manifold wisdom on display.[23] Consider the tangibility of this incredible prophecy regarding the age to come, when God stands again on the dirt He spoke into play, re-christens David’s throne, and reigns:
Now it shall come to pass in the latter days
That the mountain of the Lord’s house
Shall be established on the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow to it.
Many people shall come and say,
“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
And rebuke many people;
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war anymore.[24]
Human existence, our labored experience since the treason of Eden is not the Plan B for God’s sovereign, eternal purposes. It was the Sovereign who planted the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was the Sovereign who allowed the snake to slither into Paradise. It was the Sovereign who waited in the wings while the Devil whispered the first lie to a little girl who wanted more; it was the Sovereign still who promised her the coming birth of the “Lamb slain before the foundations of the world,” before “Let Us make man in Our Image,” before “Do not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” before “Where are you?” and before “What have you done?”[25] Before “Let there be light,” the Word was destined and decreed to “become flesh” and dwell amongst the sons and daughters of the man and woman who once walked with God in the cool of the day.[26] He decided upon Himself to lay down His life, put “greater love” on display, and “shed the blood of the Everlasting Covenant.”[27]
It is for this Sovereignty we can grab ahold of hope, the kind that fills the sails of our souls and brings us to completion, the kind that does not disappoint, let us down, or leave us hanging.[28] The hope that will answer the door in the middle of the night with a smile on His face and lead us to a feast in front of our adversaries.[29] The hope that firewalls our souls from shame is the hope that illuminates the manifold wisdom of God displayed through His ransomed family, this living room full of former enemies, showing off what only He could do with weak but willing hands—and the only heads that will hang in shame are those of the devil and demons dumb enough to challenge Him.[30]
The “joy set before” Jesus[31] was and is His Plan A; these holy dreams are not for the clouds, and they’re not simply to comfort you in your sleep. They’re the dreams that’ll apprehend you in the sleep of the saints,[32] gather your dust back into a frame, and breathe life back into you again—safeguarded forever against the schemes of the enemy. They’re the dreams that’ll raise you to immortal life in the resurrection, and put your feet back in the Garden your grandparents started out in.[33] You’ll be able to look at your LORD when He puts a plowshare in your hand and, with a gleam in His eye, gives you a plot of land to tend and keep again. These are the dreams you can grab ahold of; the kind of dreams with dirt and soil on them. Grass will grow from them. You will live again.
Live for the first resurrection.[34] Remember, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”[35]
Maranatha.
NOTHING IS MORE ROCK & ROLL THAN GETTING RESURRECTED FROM THE DEAD WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMES ON THE CLOUDS IN POWER AND GLORY, SLAUGHTERS THE ANTICHRIST, AND DESTROYS BABYLON IN AN HOUR
A NEW ALBUM FROM FAI STUDIOS
Stephanie Quick is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Genesis 3:19
[2] Isaiah 40:6b
[3] Job 1:21
[4] Empirical examples:
Oschman, J., Chevalier, G., & Brown, R. (2015). The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Journal of Inflammation Research, 83. https:// doi.org/10.2147/jir.s69656
Sinatra, S. T., Sinatra, D. S., Sinatra, S. W., & Chevalier, G. (2023). Grounding – the universal anti-inflammatory remedy. Biomedical Journal, 46. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S2319417022001706
[5] Genesis 3:18-19
[6] Genesis 2:16-17
[7] Genesis 2:7
[8] Genesis 3:20
[9] Genesis 3:22-24
[10] 1 Corinthians 15:42
[11] Genesis 3:14-15
[12] Isaiah 7:14
[13] Isaiah 66:7-9
[14] Matthew 19:28; Luke 19:40; Romans 8:22; 11:15
[15] Genesis 12:3
[16] Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:1-10
[17] 1 Corinthians 3:9-15; 4:1-5; Revelation 20:11-15
[18] See Revelation 21-22
[19] The Ring of Fire in the South Pacific is consistent with what is geographically described in Isaiah 24:14-26. It is also home to the furthest inhabited geographic locations from Israel. Truly, the “ends of the earth.”
[20] Luke 19:11-27
[21] 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
[22] Revelation 20:10
[23] Luke 19:10; Ephesians 3:8-13
[24] Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-3
[25] Genesis 1:26; 2:17; 3:9, 13
[26] See Genesis 1-2; John 1
[27] John 10:18; 15:13; Hebrews 13:20
[28] Romans 5:1-5; Philippians 1:6
[29] Psalm 23:5; Luke 11:5-8
[30] 2 Chronicles 16:9a; Isaiah 40:31; Ephesians 3:8-13
[31] Hebrews 12:2
[32] Daniel 12:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:14
[33] See Revelation 22
[34] Philippians 3:7-15
[35] Matthew 22:32; Mark 12:27; Luke 20:38
