Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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So also

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

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.

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.

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).