Harmony in Fullness
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Filling without form is chaos. Form without filling is pointless. Whenever we move, we experience both of these phenomena. Before we moved back in July, we were imagining what the house would look like and how we could arrange everything. The day before the closing we walked through house one last time. It was empty and trying to imagine where everything would be was difficult. We had the form (we knew whose bedroom was whose, and how we wanted to use the space, but all that thinking was rather pointless without our stuff there to put in place). Once we moved later in the day, we had the filling without any form, and it was chaos. Boxes and furniture everywhere as we tried to organize our lives in our new living space. We needed both form and filling, but we need them together.
relates that before God created there was nothing.
The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
In the first three days of creation, God added form. He created light, He separated the waters to make the sky, and He gathered the waters to make dry land with plants and seas. But all of this order would have pointless without the next three days, when God filled creation. Because He is God, there was no chaos in the filling like when we moved into our home, but God gave a point to the sky, and the dry land and seas by filling them with what He made.
Many people see a parallel connection between the first three days and the last three day of creation. Day one God formed light; day four God filled in that light with sources of light. Day two God formed the sky by separating the waters; day five He filled the sky and water with birds and fish, respectively. Day three God formed the dry land and plants; day six He filled the dry land with animals and humanity.
Today, we are going to focus on God’s filling of creation in the the last three days of creation. And as I consider God’s work in filling creation, the focus that stood out was the response of worship.
God graciously filled His creation; therefore, we must worship Him alone.
God graciously filled His creation; therefore, we must worship Him alone.
Before I go further, I think that it is important for us to define what worship is. Worship can be one of those words that we throw about without really defining. We talk about our worship services and about worship music, but what is worship. There are two important aspects of worship. One is knowledge - in order to worship God we must know Him, rightly. You can’t worship God for being evil because He isn’t. You can only worship God for what He truly is and that takes knowing truth. The second aspect of worship is love. You must love God rightly in order to worship Him. I can love Christa and I can love God, but I don’t love them the say way, and to love God in the same way as I love my wife is dishonoring to God. I can love God, Christa, and a good steak, but to love all them the same is dishonoring to both God and Christa. This is not to say that our love for God isn’t emotional, but that it isn’t all about emotion because it is tied to knowledge. So in combining these concepts, I believe John Piper defines worship well when He says, “True worship is a valuing or a treasuring of God above all things.” In order to value or treasure Him, you must know Him for who He is, but in response to that there is a right love that expressed in valuing that is expressed. When we gather for worship services here, this is our aim to draw people into valuing or treasuring God above all else because they see Him and know Him for Who He is, and the respond rightly to that knowledge.
Why does God’s gracious filling of creation motivate us to worship Him alone? The second half of the creation week reveals three qualities of God that ought to result in worship.
I want you to note something as we look at these three qualities. These qualities are all over the creation week and even in each of the last three days of the creation; however, each quality is given more emphasis in certain days than in others. So we will look at each day separately noting their emphasis even as we recognize that these qualities are seen in the other of the days of creation as well.
I want you to note something as we look at these three qualities. These qualities are all over the creation week and even in each of the last three days of the creation; however, each quality is given more emphasis in certain days than in others. So we will look at each day separately noting their emphasis even as we recognize that these qualities are seen in the other of the days of creation as well.
God’s filling magnifies His transcendent nature (1:14-19).
God’s filling magnifies His transcendent nature (1:14-19).
God’s transcendent nature is most clearly seen in His creation of the sources of light on day 4. This day is recounted in 1:14-19.
Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
As we look at these verses we notice several of the themes that we emphasized last week. Again we see God speaking, we see God sovereignly dividing, we see God interpreting the day as good and His provision of stepping into time, but there are other emphases that come out as well.
We all know what was created on this day, but did you notice that the Scriptures only refer to them as sources of light, but never name them? This is rather striking especially since, God has been naming things all through the first three days: day, night, heavens, seas, earth, but here God does no naming. Why is that?
God through Moses is trying to make a point, one that is antimythical. It doesn’t take a very deep survey of history to see evidence of pagan humanity worshipping gods other than the one true God. Several of these false gods are tied to the sun, moon, and stars. In fact, several of our names for celestial bodies even beyond the sun and moon are connected to mythological pagan religions.
The focus in these verses is on the purpose for the sources of light and how they fit God’s purpose for signs, seasons, days, and years. The emphasis of these purposes reveals that far from being gods, these sources of light are created by God and ruled by God. Any ruling or dominion they have is derived, as v16 notes.
God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
This emphasizes the transcendent nature of God particularly in relationship to other gods. God is transcendent which means that He is far, far above and greater than His creation, and to worship His creation instead of Him is not only the height of rebellion, but it is also the height of foolishness. points out the connection to rebellion
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
To exchange the glory of the transcendent God for images of creation is to bury the truth about God beyond recovery. And reveals the foolishness of these practices.
Those who fashion a graven image are all of them futile, and their precious things are of no profit; even their own witnesses fail to see or know, so that they will be put to shame. Who has fashioned a god or cast an idol to no profit? Behold, all his companions will be put to shame, for the craftsmen themselves are mere men. Let them all assemble themselves, let them stand up, let them tremble, let them together be put to shame. The man shapes iron into a cutting tool and does his work over the coals, fashioning it with hammers and working it with his strong arm. He also gets hungry and his strength fails; he drinks no water and becomes weary. Another shapes wood, he extends a measuring line; he outlines it with red chalk. He works it with planes and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like the form of a man, like the beauty of man, so that it may sit in a house. Surely he cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow. Then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself; he also makes a fire to bake bread. He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven image and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he eats meat as he roasts a roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire.” But the rest of it he makes into a god, his graven image. He falls down before it and worships; he also prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god.” They do not know, nor do they understand, for He has smeared over their eyes so that they cannot see and their hearts so that they cannot comprehend. No one recalls, nor is there knowledge or understanding to say, “I have burned half of it in the fire and also have baked bread over its coals. I roast meat and eat it. Then I make the rest of it into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood!” He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside. And he cannot deliver himself, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”
You might here these verses and chuckle at the foolishness of this kind of idolatry and maybe even thank God that you are not like those pagan sinners, but let me challenge you that your heart is just as idolatrous as theirs.
Of course, we are much more sophisticated in our idolatry. We would never form an idol out of wood, instead we let someone else form our idol for us and we pay for them. If worship is the valuing or treasuring of something above all others; then some of us are worshipping vacations, sports, food, vehicles, clothes, electronic devices, tradition, and worst of all ourselves. If true worship of God is the valuing or treasuring of God above all things, then some of us need to do some heart evaluation to raise our love for God because He is transcendent above all else that we could even consider worshipping.
The first quality of God evident in His filling that drives us to worship is His transcendent nature, now secondly notice His gracious blessing.
God’s filling magnifies His gracious blessing (1:20-23).
God’s filling magnifies His gracious blessing (1:20-23).
God’s blessing is notable for its appearance later when God creates man, but the only other place that God blesses creation during the week is in 1:20-23.
Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
In addition to the blessing of the birds, there is another unique element used in these verses. We see the word created for the first time in the narrative since v1. It appears in v21
God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
It seems that the use of the word create here is again deliberately antimythical. The pagans worshipped sea monsters because of their great power, but the Bible reveals God not only as having created the sea monsters but also subduing them.
You divided the sea by Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
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So also
In that day the Lord will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, With His fierce and great and mighty sword, Even Leviathan the twisted serpent; And He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea.
Recognizing that the pagans that surrounded Israel in the land of Canaan would seek to draw them into the worship of their false gods, Moses, under inspiration, dispels the idea of not only of the worship of the sources of light, but also the idea that the unknown creatures of the sea were somehow deities. But this is not the only antimythical element to these verses, the blessing also is such.
This blessing is recorded in v22
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; Awake as in the days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not You who cut Rahab in pieces, Who pierced the dragon?
God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
The pagans worshipped false fertility gods that they believed brought abundance to their crops and livestock. But just as God created the sea monsters, so also He is the source of blessing and fruitfulness. Baal was one of these fertility gods that Israel had to contend with, and year after year Israel forgot that the same God who brought them out of Egypt was the one who could provide rain and give abundance to their crops.
When Moses reminds Israel of God’s blessing for obedience, he addresses this matter again.
“Then the Lord your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your cattle and in the produce of your ground, for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, just as He rejoiced over your fathers;
Again, we are unlikely to worship fertility gods like sea monsters or Baal, but there are a couple of implications here worth noting.
First, who do you look to for your provisions? Unfortunately, even some Christians think that “God helps those who help themselves” is a Bible verse. Even while we don’t pray to fertility gods, we are guilty of self-sufficiency. We bow to the gods of the stock-market, the government, and banks instead of trusting God for His provision.
“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Another implication is that of worship. If true worship is the valuing or treasuring of God above all things, then we ought not allow the blessings that God gives us to replace the God who gives them. We don’t worship grace; we worship God for His grace in giving. Just as we don’t let the creation itself become the god that we worship, we must avoid allowing the blessings that God gives become the god that we worship. When we see God filling the earth, our attention is turned to Him and we are driven to worship Him alone.
So we see that we must worship God because of His filling magnifies both His transcendent nature and His gracious blessing. Lastly please note that God’s filling magnifies His life-giving power.
God’s filling magnifies His life-giving power (1:24-25).
God’s filling magnifies His life-giving power (1:24-25).
God’s life-giving power becomes most evident on day 6 of creation and although we will only touch on the beginning of that day, please note that this reality runs through the whole of the day. This morning let’s just note 1:24-25
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
There are a couple of ways that we see the particular emphasis on God’s life-giving power in these verses, even though we see it throughout the narrative.
Note, first, that God creates living creatures here. This draws a rather stark different with what else the earth brought forth in v12.
The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
Apparently, while plants are sort of living in that they grow and reproduce, they are not living in the same way that animals are. The word living or a cognate word is used three times in these two verses to make this point and it is used again in when God refers to the animals of day 6 as “every living thing that moves on the earth.”
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Secondly, please note that these verses repeat the idea that these animals were to reproduce after their kind. As one commentator notes, “The Creator makes creators.” The living beings that God creates as well as the birds, fish, and even plants are created to be self-propagating. God gives life the ability to reproduce life.
The gift of God providing procreative life is evident in God’s opening or closing the wombs of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Hannah, and Elizabeth.
The implications of this are three-fold:
First, remember that God’s life-giving ability is closely connected with His the spiritual life He gives. provides a great illustration of this
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry. He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, You know.” Again He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’ “Thus says the Lord God to these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. ‘I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the Lord.’ ” So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.” ’ ” So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.’ “Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. “Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. “I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,” declares the Lord.’ ”
Maybe you are here today and you are confused about what has been going on. You aren’t really sure you understand everything I’ve been talking about, and maybe even considering God as creator is mind-boggling. Or maybe you are here and you’ve heard all this before, you give verbal assent to these facts, but have never considered how this truth impacts you.
You are like those bones, dead and dried up spiritually, because of sin, evil that you have done. You are without hope, direction, or life, but God specializes in giving life to what is dead. He takes those who are dead in their sins and makes them alive in Christ. The reason He can do that is because He takes your sin that you deserve to pay for puts it on Jesus who had never sinned. He killed Jesus to pay for your sins and then takes Jesus’s goodness, His righteousness and places it on those who will depend on Him to make them righteous. Will you believe today? Repent of your sin and turn and trust God to make you righteous.
A second implication is for those of you who are already trusting God to make you righteous. If God gives those to whom He gave physical life the ability to reproduce themselves physically, don’t you think that those of us who have received spiritual life have some responsibility to reproduce ourselves spiritually as well? Are you seeking to reproduce yourself spiritually? Who is there in your life that you could lead into being a follower of Jesus? What about your neighbors? your co-workers? that person who always helps you at the bank, or the salon, or the auto-repair shop? your kids? the kids around here?
Don’t shirk your responsibility to be spiritually self-propagating.
Thirdly, don’t miss this opportunity to worship. The only people who can truly worship are those who have been given spiritual life by God’s life-giving power. Value and treasure of God above all things because He gave you abundant life.
Worship God because He is the creator, and He is the filler of creation.
Worship God because He is the creator, and He is the filler of creation.
In my younger days, I was crazy about sports. I played sports, I watched sports, my friends and I talked about sports, my favorite show was Sportscenter. It is easy when you love sports to love them too much, and I think I did. In fact, what happened was that I valued winning above anything else. Now this is incredibly ironic because I hardly won anything. I have never been a part of any real championship team that I can remember. When you value winning above anything you start to think about yourself and others in light of how much you’ve won. I vividly remember the night that my dad came into my room to tell me that my friends in Illinois had won the state soccer championship. We now lived in Wisconsin, having moved a year and a half earlier. I was a senior and the school I was going to then, didn’t even have hardly enough people to field a full soccer team, and when we did we got crushed by schools much bigger than ours. I remember how my heart sank. I loved soccer and that should have been my championship too. But alas!
I worshipped winning, and do you see what it did to me? There is evidence in Scripture that we become what we worship, and the way that plays out is that our identity becomes tied to the thing that we worship. When you worship winning, if you don’t win, you identify yourself as a loser, and you start to hate winners. God’s creative work drives us to worship Him to value Him above anything else, and when we do that we become like Him. God becomes increasingly satisfying and our valuing of Him grows. This is why what we worship is so important. This is why we can’t worship creation, because what we worship becomes so intricately connected to our identity. May God grant us the grace to know His transcendent nature, His gracious blessing, and His life-giving power so that we might worship Him in all of His glory and find our identity in Him.