Creator Of Heavens And Earth Series

Text: Genesis 1:1-2

Theme: Creator of Heavens & Earth

Greetings: The Lord is good and His love endures forever!

Introduction: This passage, however, contains a number of words and phrases that are used rarely, if at all, in other parts of the Hebrew Bible, making them more difficult to define with the kind of precision that we might like. The first thing the Bible tells us is that God is a creator. Creation is solely an act of God. It is not an accident, a mistake, or the product of an inferior deity, but the self-expression of God.

The Heavens and the Earth are created by God, they remind us of many things in life. I would like to leave with you three Spiritual qualities:

- The existence of God

- The existence of the Grace of God

- The existence of the Hope of Second Advent

1. The Existence of God:

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’. In these ten words, Moses states that God created all that exists. “In the beginning God created the heavens” (the universe) “and the earth” (this planet). The word “beginning” refers not to the absolute beginning of all things. Bereshith is not referring "from eternity" but "at the commencement of time."

God created everything out of Ex nihilo. Genesis 1:1 is not the beginning of God but the beginning of creation. God is the only One without a beginning. The Chandogya Upanishad 6:2:1 declares that before the world was manifested, there was only "existence" itself, one and unparalleled (sat eva ekam eva advitiyam).

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1). In Genesis 1, we read, “and God said”, his powerful Word created (Genesis 1:6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 29). Psalm 33:6 states, “By the word [logos) of the Lord the heavens were made” (Psalm 105:19, 107:20).

The four-dimensional space/time continuum (length, height, depth, and time) was created. This was literally the very beginning of time and the beginning of matter, energy, atoms, molecules, light, heat, stars, galaxies, planets, the sun and moon as well as the terrestrial globe we call the earth. It includes the entire cosmos created. The heavens and the earth have not existed from all eternity, but had a beginning (Deuteronomy 32:1; Psalm 148:13; Isaiah 2). So, the first statement is that God created all things, all matter, all stars, galaxies, the solar system, everything.

The Heavens and the Earth are one unit and has an inseparable existence. The ruah of God in Genesis 1:2 is “breath,” “wind,” and “spirit”. “The heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1; 2:1) are not two separate realms, but a Hebrew figure of speech meaning “the universe”in the same way that the English phrase “kith and kin” means “relatives.” The WORD and the creations are inseparable and have a longstanding relationship as many years as the creation exists. They are related to one another.

Tohu va-bohu: The fourteen Hebrew words in Genesis 1:2 talk on the Earth. “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:2, for example, says that “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Tohu has been translated as “chaos,” confusion,""emptiness,""nothingness,” and “watery waste,""formless," and""futile " was the state of things when God began to create. Bohu, refer to that which is empty or void (Genesis 1:2, Jeremiah 4:23).

Firmament: (Rakia), translated as “dome” in the NRSV, others as “firmament” “expanse,” and “vault” or space (NLT). It has the sense of something which is stretched out, spread out. The contextual meaning of "the expanse" was a land that separates waters from waters. It appears nine times in the passage (Genesis 1:6, 8, 14, 15, 17, and 20; three times in 1:7). Within the ancient Hebrew cosmology, only God allowed the waters from above and the waters from below into the bubble when needed for rain or rivers.

The Bible recognizes the existence of significant water vapour in the sky. The clouds of the upper atmosphere or simply the atmosphere itself. Others have speculated that a water "canopy"once existing in the upper atmosphere is no longer there. Without great temperature variations, there would be no significant winds, and the water-rain cycle could not form.

“The heaven was to the Hebrews a material substance (Exodus 24:10), a fixed vault established upon the waters that surrounded the circle of the earth (Proverbs 8:27), firm as a molten mirror (Job 37:18), and borne up by the highest hills, which are therefore called the pillars and foundations of the heaven (2 Samuel 22:8; Job 26:11); openings or closures are ascribed to it (Genesis 7:11; 28:17; Psalm 78:23). There are the same representations elsewhere.” (Knoble). The (šamayim) sky is dividing between the waters below and above it.The distinguishing between the waters also conveys a sense of the clear boundaries set in place in order to produce the ideal environment for life on earth.