Sermon 39, Job 10:7-15
Joni Mitchell sings “we are stardust, million year old carbon” and all hippies, myself included, have enjoyed thinking about that.
Calvin doesn’t put it quite like that: “And what are we? We are all made of mud. We not only have it on our clothes or in our heels or our shoes, but we are all filled with it. We are only mud and rubbish inside and out.”
So stardust might be poetic, and a nice feel good spin, but more realistically and more recently we’re dirt, trash.
There are three things Calvin extracts from today’s verses that pertain to that. Namely:
- remember the material from which we were made which will bring humility
- remember the workmanship God put into us so that we might acknowledge our blessings
- remember that we are sustained by him so that we might acknowledge Gods goodness, power, and wisdom.
I am excited to read the Institutes, especially the opening section on the attributes of God. Calvin repeatedly uses a) goodness or kindness or grace, b) power, c) wisdom, and, less today, but usually d) righteousness.
Back to our creation. Calvin says God “has respect for his work and his workmanship”. And, of his own being and powerfully, “I did not form myself; God is not rising up against something strange; I am the work of his hands.”
Wow. Seeing that perspective clearly helps a lot.