"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God made man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." (Genesis 1:26-27) "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 soul." (Genesis 2:7) "And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree." (Genesis 2:9) "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind. ... Let the earth bring forth grass." (Genesis 1:24,11) "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. ... Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; Behold, He takes up the isles as a very little thing." (Isaiah 40:6,15) "Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie; to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity. Trust not in oppression, and become not vain in robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart upon them. God has spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongs unto God." (Psalm 62:9-11) "You turn man to dust, and say, Return, you children of men." (Psalm 90:3,RV,margin) "And Abraham answered, and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes." (Genesis 18:27) "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6) "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise." (Psalm 51:17) "Like as a father pities his children so the Lord pities them that fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust." (Psalm 103:13-14) "He raises up the poor out of the dust, and lifts up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory." (1 Samuel 2:8) "Awake, awake; put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come unto you the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake yourself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem; loose yourself from the bands of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion." (Isaiah 52:1-2) "I can of my own self do nothing." (John 5:30) "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, has God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are." (1 Corinthians 1:27-28) "And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, them am I strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9-10) "He gives power to the faint; and to them that have no might, He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint." (Isaiah 40:29-31) "Your dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, you that dwell in dust; for your dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." (Isaiah 26:19)
Out of the ground the Lord made man, the lower animals, and plants. All are from the dust, and all return to dust again. When they have returned to dust, it is impossible to distinguish between them. Their dust is all alike. That which makes the difference between them in life is the working of God in them. "All flesh is grass." (Isaiah 40:6)
Even though man, contrary to the design of God, eats animal food, the animal which he eats lives upon herbs, so that not only the first man, in the beginning, but every man, even to this day, comes from the ground. "Dust you are, and unto dust shall you return." (Genesis 3:19)
It is not necessary to make comparisons between man and any other creature. Go back to the origin of man, and consider him just as he is, namely, dust. What power is there in the dust? Look at the dust in the street; what can it do? Nothing. That is the power of man, for man is dust.
The lesson that we are to learn is that we have no more power or wisdom in ourselves than the dust has that lies under our feet. We are dust that has been fashioned by the hand of God into a certain shape, and the breath of the Almighty has come into us, giving us understanding. We have nothing to boast of over the dust that still lies in an unformed mass. "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Corinthians 4:7)
A very insignificant part of the dust, too, is man. In the sight of God, as compared with His vast universe of matter, all the nations together "are counted as the small dust of the balance." (Isaiah 40:15)
The dust that lies on the grocer's balance, which is so fine that it is not perceptible, and which makes no material difference in the amount of that which is being weighed, bears the same relative proportion to the earth that all nations together do to the universe of God. "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man, that You are mindful of him? and the son of man, that You visit him?" (Psalm 8:3-4)
God makes no account of degrees and ranks among men. The prince and the pauper are both made from the same dust. Let the prince be buried in all his robes of royalty, and the beggar be buried in his rags, and when they have returned to dust no man could tell which was born in a castle and which in a cottage. "Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity." (Psalm 62:9)
Men of low degree in the estimation of the world, are vanity; that would probably be admitted at least by men of "high degree;" but men of high degree are a lie, because they seem to be something when they are nothing; in reality both high and low are all together "lighter than vanity." Just as stated in the preceding paragraph, they are not of sufficient weight to make it worth while to blow them off the balances in which the universe is weighed.
Why should the spirit
Of mortal be proud?
--William Knox (1789-1825), Poem: Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud? (This was said to be one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite poems).
"Where is boasting, then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay; but by the law of faith." (Romans 3:27)
Man has nothing but what God has given him. He can be nothing of value, except as God makes makes him such. Just to the extent that man is anything different from what God's own life in him would make him, is he a disgrace and a curse. Man has no more ground for boasting than has the dust that the wind whirls about; for all that makes him different from that is the life of God in him. "You turn man to dust, and say, Return, you children of men." (Psalm 90:3,RV,margin)
Men forget that they are dust, and consequently they put themselves in the place of God, and that is lawlessness. Then God turns them again to dust, or contrition (not "destruction," as in the common version); that is, He allows something to come upon them to convince them that they are but dust, and absolutely helpless, and then He says: "Come again, you children of men." (Psalm 90:3,Coverdale,1535)
Just as in the beginning He made man of the dust of the ground, and crowned him with glory and honor, so whenever a man will be as passive dust as was that in the beginning, God will make a man of him, of whom He can say that he is "very good." (Genesis 1:31)
God's power to create is our hope of salvation. This working of God in the beginning, to make man of the dust of the ground, and His continued working to make men new when they are willing to be counted as only dust, is the hope of the resurrection, for it is the same working. "Your dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, you that dwell in dust: for your dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." (Isaiah 26:19)
Those who dwell in the dust shall awake and sing at the coming of the Lord; but the song that they will then sing will be the very same song that God now puts into the mouth of those whom He lifts out of the dust and filth of the pit. "Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but You have in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for You have cast all my sins behind your back." (Isaiah 38:17)
The power that converts is the power of the resurrection, the power of the world to come. It is the power that in the beginning made the heavens and the earth, and made man of the dust of the ground. What God has done, He can do, for His arm is not shortened, that He cannot save. "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear." (Isaiah 59:1)
Much as it goes against a man's natural inclination to regard himself as nothing but helpless dust, there is everlasting strength in the acknowledging of the fact, for it puts him where the Almighty Creator can lift him up to His own throne, and crown him with everlasting glory and honor. "He that humbles himself shall be exalted." (Luke 14:11)--Present Truth, November 10, 1898.