Maker of Heaven and Earth
Notes
Transcript
Sermon
Sermon
I’m sure you’ve heard of the Hubble Space Telescope. It was put into low-earth orbit back in 1990 and gave us some great pictures of deep space. You may not know, however, that on Christmas Day of 2021, NASA put into orbit the James Webb Telescope. It’s up at a higher orbit and has more powerful lenses such that it’s about 100 times more powerful than the Hubble.
Last year on my birthday, NASA gave me an excellent birthday present with the reveal of the first image from James Webb, called the First Deep Field.
I highly recommend looking this up later, because seeing it from so far just can’t do the image justice. But, each of those blotches of light in that photograph is a galaxy, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. Even the faintest blip is a galaxy — there are several thousand galaxies in this picture.
And to put the picture in perspective, if you took a single grain of sand and held your arm out fully, the amount of sky covered by that grain of sand is how much is in this picture. We live in a big place.
I’m never not enthralled by the vastness of our universe. Our little brains simply cannot comprehend how big it is. We can talk about the fact that we currently estimate between 2 and 10 trillion galaxies, each with an estimated 100 billion starts, totalling to around 200 sextillion to 1 septillion stars, but those number stop meaning anything after a while.
When we look up at the night sky in ideal conditions, we might see 6,000 of them. That’s like standing at your front door, knowing there is a whole wide world out there and barely being able to see the welcome mat on your porch. We live in a fathomless world.
Turn in your Bibles to Nehemiah 9, on page 270 of the white pew Bible. We’re on our third week of the Apostle’s Creed, that ancient summary of the Christian faith.
The creed begins with telling us who God is through His relationships — the Father Almighty — and who God is through what he has done — Maker of heaven and earth.
Christians believe that everything that exists — from the largest, the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, which is 10 billion light-years wide to the smallest quark, you can fit a million of them on a grain of sand, and everything in between — traces its existence and its reality to the sovereign act of God the Father Almighty—maker of heaven and earth. God, the maker of heaven and earth, is both Creator and Sustainer of all that is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be.
This morning I want to answer two questions.
Who is this God who made the universe?
And why did God make the universe?
From Scripture, I believe that we can answer both.
Who?
Who?
We’ll start with the first. Who is this God who created heaven and earth?
Look at verse 6 of Nehemiah 9.
God is the Creator
God is the Creator
You, Lord, are the only God. You created the heavens, the highest heavens with all their stars, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to all of them, and all the stars of heaven worship you.
The God who created all things is none other than YHWH, the Triune God — one in being, three in person — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We can never depart from that truth, that we do not glorify and worship some generic, territorial God, but a God who is personal and relational, both within Himself and with His creation.
Some of you might be asking yourselves right now, why are we not in Genesis 1 if we are speaking about God the Creator? We could easily and rightly go to Genesis 1-2 for an overview of God’s work in Creation, but sometimes I fear that we get distracted by the language of Genesis 1 and become more concerned with the mechanics of Creation rather than the Creator Himself.
People interpret Genesis 1 in all sorts of ways: a literal creation with seven twenty-four-hour days; a progressive creation where the days correspond to long periods of time; a gap theory with a punctuated intermission of billions of years between v. 1 and v. 2; or a symbolic reading which is compatible with some form of theistic evolution.
But when we let ourselves be distracted by trying to impose a modern-scientific understanding onto the true and right and perfect narrative of Genesis 1, we forget that the creation story is most concerned with the identity of the Creator and His relation to the creation, rather than the specifics of how long it took.
J.I. Packer said this of the first two chapters of Genesis:
The message of these two chapters is this: “You have seen the sea? The sky? The sun, moon, and stars? You have watched the birds and the fish? You have observed the landscape, the vegetation, the animals, the insects, all the big things and little things together? You have marveled at the wonderful complexity of human beings, with all their powers and skills, and the deep feelings of fascination, attraction, and affection that men and women arouse in each other? Fantastic, isn’t it? Well now, meet the one who is behind it all!” As if to say: now that you have enjoyed these works of art, you must shake hands with the artist; since you were thrilled by the music, we will introduce you to the composer.
Genesis 1 and 2 were written to show us the Creator more than the creation. It was written to teach us about God more than to teach history and science. It was written to point us to the glorious one who did the work more than the work itself and to show us that our God is the God. And the God is the Triune God.
Creation is a cooperative effort by all three persons of the Godhead.
As we read in Nehemiah, God is the Creator. But, from other Biblical texts we see that specific roles were filled by specific members of the Godhead within the act of Creation.
Let’s quickly look at the three persons of the Trinity in Creation.
God the Father is the grounds of all creation. Look at what Paul writes in
yet for us there is one God, the Father. All things are from him, and we exist for him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. All things are through him, and we exist through him.
All things are from God the Father. He is the foundation of creation. And yet Paul also writes of the Son, Jesus Christ, that “all things are by and through him.”
Turn to Colossians 1, on page 668 of the pew Bible. I want us to see this, what Paul says about Jesus and creation. Actually, let’s start in verse 13. The point I want us to see is in verse 16, but the words are just so glorious about our Savior that I can’t have you turn here and not read them all.
He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.
In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
God the Son is the agent of God the Father’s plan and purpose to create. Jesus set the creative act in motion.
And finally, the Spirit of God was active in creation as the one who “hovered” over the deep to bring life into existence and He is the One who gives life, John says in chapter 6 of His gospel.
God the Father is the ground of creation, the Son is the principle of creation, and the Spirit is the divine power active in creation.
We live in a big world. But the world was created by a much bigger God. He made everything and nothing is outside of His realm.
He is a God who watches over and sustains that creation. He keeps it going. Many of the founders of the United States were what we call Deists — they believed in God, but believed that He had created the world and then left the world and the people to their own devices.
But God is not a hands-off God. When we say that God made heaven and earth, we mean not only that God is distinct from creation and sovereign over it, but also that loves his creation, He is concerned with his creation, and that He remains active in it.
Jesus said in Matthew 6 that every lily which blooms is clothed by God, every bird is fed by his hand, and that He cares for you so much more deeply, tenderly, and personally than every one of those.
Why?
Why?
And that, God’s deep and tender love for you brings us to the next question. Why did God create the heavens and the earth?
We know that God was not forced to create and that He did not create because He lacked something — He didn’t need creation. God was in perfect relationship with Himself in the Trinity from eternity.
So what would cause an infinitely glorious God in perfect relationship with Himself to create a finite world which He knew would fall into sin, be plunged into wickedness, such that He Himself would need to take on flesh, the Creator entering into creation and dying for it in order to save it from itself?
Look at Colossians 1:16 again, because we see the beginnings of an answer in the final prepositional phrase of that verse.
For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him.
Everything that has been created was created for Jesus. Keep that on a sticky note in your brain, cause I want to show you something else and then we’ll bring it all back to Jesus.
In Psalm 115, the writer equates God’s glory with His faithful love. God’s glory is most demonstrated when He displays His love and shows His faithfulness to others. Again, this happened perfectly in the Trinity. In love, the Father begat the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeded from them both as the bond of love between them, we’ve seen the Trinitarian love a number of times in the Book of John.
The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands.
For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing, and he will show him greater works than these so that you will be amazed.
Since God is love and is committed to displaying His own glory, God created so that He could share the eternal and internal love that existed between the persons of the Trinity with creatures. We were made for the purpose of receiving and enjoying God’s love and responding to that love in faithfulness.
By sharing His love with us, God was proclaiming and displaying His own glory.
And the way that God most faithfully displayed His love to His creatures was by coming for them, dying for them, and raising them up from their sin. The most glorious display of love is loving someone who does not deserve it. And God displayed that kind of love on a cosmic scale when Jesus went to the cross to save His people from their sin.
God’s love and God’s glory are most clearly displayed for us in the redemption purchased by the life and blood of His Son, Jesus the Christ.
And by that redemption, by dying to raise a people from their sin and to Himself, God was creating a whole new creation, Paul says in 2 Corinthians. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.”
And the firstfruits of that new Creation is the Church of Jesus Christ, His Bride.
God created everything for the purpose of displaying His own glory by showing perfect love toward that very creation which rebelled against Him. That love was shown by dying for their redemption so that a people could be saved and to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, but holy and blameless as a Bride. God’s sole intent was to create a people to be united to Him as a Bride for His Son. And now we’re back to Colossians 1:16, I told you we’d get back — everything was created for Him.
This whole world is the bridal chamber where we await to be presented in perfect holiness to our forever husband, our Lord Jesus Christ. When that union is consummated in the new creation, redeemed humanity will experience the full measure of the love and faithfulness of the Triune God. And we will participate in it as we share in the eternal life and in that bond of love between the Godhead.
From Genesis to Revelation, God’s glory is on display in His creation through the love of Jesus. That love is promised in Genesis 3. It’s revealed slowly but surely through the covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. It’s arrival is shouted by angels to shepherds watching over their fields. It’s power is shown in a torn temple veil. It’s victory resounds with the quaking of the earth as a stone is rolled away from a tomb outside of Jerusalem. And it’s finality will be announced by a trumpet and with the One coming on the clouds, saying with a loud voice, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
This promise of new creation is a promise of comfort, not just in the new creation, but now. God created all things, He takes responsibility for his creation, He sustains all things, and he will see all things through to glory.
It may not seem like God’s got everything under control. It’s OK to admit that, if you feel that way sometimes. Our kids aren’t going the way we thought they would. Our bodies weaken and we can’t do everything we once could.
Sometimes our church family fails us. You feel forgotten. Things are changing that have been that way for years and you can’t see at all how God could be in that.
We anxiously await medical tests and the results, sometimes even hoping that something does show up just so we can have an answer, even if it’s bad.
Sometimes it feels like this creation and this life we’re in is hanging by a thread. But God doesn’t even need a thread to uphold His creation, He has His Word. And by his word, everything is maintained according to His good purposes.
God will bring his children home by his providential care.
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
When we say those first words of the Apostles’ Creed, we speak about the faith which God has planted and that has sprung up from within us. We profess that we believe in the triune God. He is the all-powerful creator of the universe, revealing himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
When we say we believe, we express not only our assent to those truths about God, but also our trust and hope in God, the God who is first of all to us a loving father. Our God is almighty, he reigns over all things. Our heavenly Father is the creator, the author and architect of the universe, which is why we owe him our worship and our thanksgiving. He is making all things new through the love He showed to us through His Son, Jesus, to make us into a beautiful bride for Him and lead us into the new creation where we will share in their love forever.
Do you believe that?