I can still remember one of the happiest, most contented moments of my life. It was years ago now. A friend of mine and I were spending a weekend on Mykonos, a 33-square-mile Greek island. It was early morning, shops were barely opening, I was restless. So I ventured out on my own, bought a gyro for breakfast, walked a little further on to a small stretch of beach (or what pebbly shore passed there for a beach). There I stood to eat, firm on the dry land, gazing out over the face of the Aegean Sea. Everything seemed at peace. The sky above was heavily choked with a ceiling of cloud, but the morning light was breaking through in layers of defined rays just above the stark and rugged form of an opposing island, another one of the Cyclades. The orange beams after the dawn glittered across the choppy waters. Looking up to heaven overhead, down at the dry land underfoot, out over the sea ahead, marveling at the sheer artistry of their arrangement, with a thankful heart I saw that what God had made was as really as good, as beautiful, as fearfully and wonderfully made, as Genesis promises.
In our exploration of this Genesis and its good God so far, we've ventured to the doorstep of eternity, trying to sneak a quick peak of God at home alone: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one Eternal Love. We've witnessed the grand outpouring of his love, wooing a universe into existence out of nothing by the authority and allure of his all-gracious Word. All things exist as expressions of the love of God, and to be loved by God as he shares the goodness of existence with them, and so displays the glories of his love. And yet, verse 2 shows us the face of an early universe which isn't ready yet to grasp and proclaim that glory. A raw world has a triple imperfection: it's dark, it's inhospitable, it's void of life. But all the same, the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters, over the matter of creation, nurturing and readying it for what God's about to do.
Last Sunday, we watched as God remedied the first problem, the darkness. “Let there be light!” Light is the basic medium of recognition and interaction, which makes beauty and form shine forth and helps us begin to understand the mystery of the God who saves us. And so, with the alternation of day and night, a framework is set up for the rest of God's works. Now, in today's passages ascribed to a second and then a third day, we'll find God at work addressing the second incompleteness of the raw world: the formlessness, the inhospitability.
So on the second day, we read about God wanting to divide up the waters, the same waters his Spirit has been hovering over (Genesis 1:6). He's going to divide them vertically, hoist some of them up and away from the rest that will be left behind below. And to make this separation happen, he makes what your Bible might call an 'expanse' or, if it's an older translation, a 'firmament' (Genesis 1:7). The Hebrew word refers to something that's stamped or hammered thin, like gold leaf (cf. Exodus 30:9; Isaiah 40:19). After it does its job, being lifted up to separate the waters above it from the waters below it, then he gives it the name 'Heaven' or 'Sky.' And that's the work of the second day (Genesis 1:8). Elsewhere in the Bible, this work is summed up as God “stretching out the heavens like a curtain, and spreading them like a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:22).
On the third day, we read about God turning his attention to those waters left below. So far, they've covered the whole earth, but God wants to gather them together into one place, just a portion of the earth, so that dryness can appear above its surface (Genesis 1:9). That's what God does. And after he does, he gives the dry the name 'Earth' or 'Land,' while the gathered and confined waters gets the name 'Sea' – which, in Hebrew, is always plural (Genesis 1:10). Elsewhere in the Bible, this work is summed up in that, though “the waters stood above the mountains” until then, yet “at God's rebuke they fled.... The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that God appointed for them. God set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth” (Psalm 104:6-9). He “shut in the sea..., prescribed limits for it, and set bars and doors” (Job 38:8-10). So God “spread out the earth above the waters” (Psalm 136:6). From here, the third day marches on, but this is where God sees things as 'good' for the first time since day and night began (Genesis 1:10).
If we go back and listen to past generations of Christians reading these days, we can of course find plenty of wisdom. But we'll also find that, as they read their Bible, they were trying their best to use its language to work out the universe around them in a way matching the science of their time, which shaped their questions and their answers. The trouble was, the science of the fourth century wasn't the science of the thirteenth or the seventeenth or the twenty-first. In theirs, the earth was the sink drain of the universe nestled in concentric spheres for each planet, the basic elements were fire, earth, air, and water, and bugs born straight from decaying matter. In our science, none of that's true, so when we read Genesis, we naturally read it differently.
It'd be possible for us to read Genesis and use it to come up with our own vision of the natural world, which we would then pit against what today's scientific knowledge holds. It'd also be possible for us to read Genesis by correlating its details with today's scientific stories, too.1 But if history's any teacher, Christians have usually gotten into trouble whenever we've tried to either build science out of the Bible's language or to marry it too closely to whatever the latest science teaches. When scientific discovery moves on, the Christians who look silliest in retrospect aren't the ones who most cherish Scripture but the ones who stayed too loyal to yesterday's science as if it were what Scripture taught. God has better things to do in Genesis than explain for us the stuff we're supposed to go figure out for ourselves. And so, in the way he inspired people to write the Bible, he doesn't override some of the assumptions they and their audience shared about the world.
All Israel's neighbors had a common way of picturing the world around them, where “the earth is the bottom of that flat gap in the primeval waters, and over the earth arches the firmament, on which the celestial bodies move along.”2 And so Israel also pictured the earth as a flat disk “spread out” wide (Isaiah 42:5). There's “water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4), as God “has founded it upon the seas” (Psalm 24:2), even as he “hangs the earth on nothing” (Job 26:7) and “on the pillars of the earth... he has set the world” (1 Samuel 2:8). Standing on the earth, there are “heavens over your head” (Deuteronomy 28:23), stretched out like a tent curtain (Psalm 104:2) or else “spread out... hard as a cast-metal mirror” (Job 37:18) and comparable to a “pavement of sapphire stone” (Exodus 24:10), held up by “the pillars of heaven” (Job 26:11). Above this heavenly pavement is God's throne (Ezekiel 1:26) and a “sea of glass like crystal” (Revelation 4:6).3
God, in his wisdom, chooses not to meddle with that, not to give them a medical text or a blueprint for space exploration, not to replace their world picture with a medieval or modern or future world picture, because that wouldn't have been nearly as useful to them as using their natural vision to convey his supernatural message.4 So, when Abraham's hometown neighbors believed that creation really kicked off “when heaven had been separated from the earth, when the earth had been demarcated from heaven,”5 God doesn't waste time in Genesis arguing with it. So in the first three days of Genesis, nearly every work God does is to separate things: day from night, waters from waters, sea from land. And yet day interacts with night, sea and sky interact with land: “for every separation established..., an integral connection is forged,” because only after clear separations can God selectively bring things into contact in constructive ways.6
To ancient people, the sky overhead, the firmament, was like a roof, and the earth below was like a floor. The world was a great big house, a palace protected, a habitat which provides shelter, keeping chaos and danger at bay so that life could be capable of thriving within.7 People in the ancient world were terrified of the thought of it all crashing down – the firmament could crack and crumble, the sea overtake the land.8 If these separations ended, it'd be the end of the world. But Israel lived with an abiding faith that God's love for creatures is too great to let it all collapse without a purpose. And so he's built the house well, and made it a well-ordered place with systems set up to provide diverse environments ready for different kinds of life.9
The Babylonians credited the separation to Marduk: they thought that after he killed the ocean goddess Tiamat, he stretched out her skin to make a firmament that held back the half of her waters above it, and he built her head and lower half into the earth, and then used her tail to make a pulley, and handed this rope to his dad Ea, who lived in the waters under the earth and, holding this rope, would keep the universe from crashing in on itself.10 The Egyptians believed in a god named Shu who held up the sky goddess Nut to keep her away from the earth god Geb, and so held them, his children, apart by his power.11 The Greeks, imagined the Titan Atlas, whom Zeus compelled to “hold the broad sky in his hands..., and on his tireless shoulders and his head he props up heaven.”12 But Genesis says forget Marduk and Ea, forget Shu, forget Atlas – the one true God issues a simple command, and that's enough to make sky and sea and soil and keep them all in their places. Heaven and earth and sea aren't gods, but there is a God in control of all things who holds them where they belong.
And so we hear of God as “the One who by his strength established the mountains, being girded with might,” who equally “stills the roaring of the waves” (Psalm 65:6-7). We're assured that “when the earth totters,” God is the One who “keeps steady its pillars” (Psalm 75:3), and that God “placed the sand as a perpetual boundary for the sea,” so that “though its waves toss, they cannot prevail” (Jeremiah 5:22). “When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,” says Jeremiah, “and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth; he makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses” (Jeremiah 10:13). We may now say yes to his question to Job, “Do you know the balancings of the clouds?” (Job 37:16), but does that make the experience of a great storm any less incredible? As exploration expands our knowledge of how this great habitat and all its features works, Genesis reminds us that it's God's power at work through nature.
So “stop and consider the wondrous works of God!” (Job 37:14). He made the mountains. He carved the valleys. He shaped the beaches and the islands. He stirs and calms the seas. His are the storm clouds, the lightnings, the winds. Every framing of scenery – that's his artwork. Isn't it awesome? Look at the Grand Canyon, gaze across the Atlantic at sunset. Survey his work “from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam.”13 Doesn't it inspire your wonder? God made all this for our habitation!
And in his work of creation, he prophesied what was to come. If he made our habitat by dividing sky and sea and soil, how else could Israel emerge as a nation? He divided the waters again and revealed dry land in the sea for the Hebrews' escape from Egypt. Much as our nation was born out of a “separation,”14 so Israel was thereby 'separated' from the other peoples of the world (1 Kings 8:53). Foods clean to eat were 'separated' from those unclean to eat (Leviticus 11:47). In fact, the LORD said it was precisely because he'd 'separated' Israel from the peoples that they had to 'separate' their food (Leviticus 20:24-25). Then God 'separated' the Levites from the congregation of Israel (Numbers 8:14), and the priests were especially “separated to sanctify the most-holy things” (1 Chronicles 23:13). And a major job of Israel's priesthood was to guide them in 'separating' things, drawing right distinctions and boundaries in their lives: “You are to separate between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the LORD has spoken to them by Moses” (Leviticus 10:10-11). “You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26). Holiness was all about separations, just like the separations that made the world.15
But Ezekiel saw that in the end, the priests “have made no separation between the holy and the common, neither have they made known between the unclean and the clean” (Ezekiel 22:26). And so, where Israel was supposed to be separated from sin for God, Isaiah charged that “your iniquities have made a separation between you and God” (Isaiah 59:2). In the end, not even Ezra and Nehemiah's words could fix it. More was needed.
And so God sent his Word into the world. Just as the earth was buried in the beginning under the deep but then emerged on day three, so that was a picture of Jesus, the True Earth, resurfacing triumphantly from Death's Deep on the third day.16 This One “who fixed the first boundary, who hung the earth, who tamed the abyss, who stretched out the firmament” now became “our high priest, holy..., separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26). As our High Priest, he undoes the bad separation between souls and God, and redoes the true one between souls and sin; he unwinds the former separations of diet and of race, and forges a new separation between the new humanity and the old (Mark 7:19; Ephesians 2:14). As he separates us from sin and death, we're “brought together into one congregation of faith,” one Church built on Christ the Rock; and he is the mountain whom we climb to pierce the very skies above in him.17 “Therefore... be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you” (2 Corinthians 6:17).
For “Christ has welcomed you” (Romans 15:7), and “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). He is our sky, our sea, our soil, our hospitable environment. With him as “a shelter from the storm and rain” (Isaiah 4:6), “we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling” (Psalm 46:2-3). Better than the beauties of the landscape and seascape around us, better than the glories of the firmament above, is “to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD,” of the Lord Jesus Christ, “the Holy One” who has also “made you beautiful” (Psalm 27:4; Isaiah 60:19) “with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4). For if the gathering of the sea and the land is good, then (as one old saint said) “surely the gathering of such a church as this is more beautiful, from where there is sent out in our prayers to God the mingled voice of men and women and children, as of some wave beating upon the shore.”18
As the gathered church, we look back and read that “the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God” (2 Peter 3:5). But equally we know that “by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (2 Peter 3:7), after “the angels... come out and separate the evil from the righteous” (Matthew 13:49). When “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (Revelation 21:1), then we're promised “a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). And this habitat made new by Christ will be no less protected, hospitable, or beautiful than the first. Just the opposite, it's the promise latent in the sky and sea and soil we do now see. And “he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence” (Revelation 7:15), as they're separated from all former things.
This week, go boldly into the habitat God made for you. Rejoice in faith that he holds everything separate and connected, balancing all things and keeping so many complex systems running so that you can thrive within. And as he separated sky and sea and soil, understand that he separated your soul, set it apart from unclean things like sin and death, and for himself in Christ, to be the abiding habitation of his Spirit. He welcomes you, not just into his world that he so wondrously made, but into his life which is unmade, and into the new creation he's making even now. So be separate. Don't be fueled by unclean habits, but dine only on a clean diet of faith and hope and love, on “all that is good and right and true” (Ephesians 5:9). Draw right distinctions and boundaries in your life, as the Wisdom of God teaches us. “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15), following your High Priest from sea to soil to sky to new creation. And may “God shed his grace on thee, / till souls wax fair as earth and air / and music-hearted sea.”19 Amen.
1 Jeffrey Greenberg, “Geological Framework of an Evolving Creation,” in Keith B. Miller, Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Eerdmans, 2003), 127-128; William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder (Oxford University Press, 2010), 51, 70.
2 Dirk L. Coprie, Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology: From Thales to Heraclides Ponticus (Springer, 2011), 3; cf. Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Eisenbrauns, 1998), xii, 243-340.
3 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 41.
4 John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (IVP Academic, 2009), 60; Paul Copan and Douglas Jacoby, Origins: The Ancient Impact and Modern Implications of Genesis 1-11 (Morgan James, 2018), 51.
5 Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, lines 8-9 (c. 2100 BC), in Alhena Gadotti, “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld,” and the Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle (De Gruyter, 2014), 154. See also Song of the Pickaxe, lines 4-5, in Jeremy Black et al., The Literature of Ancient Sumer (Oxford University Press, 2004), 312.
6 William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder (Oxford University Press, 2010), 71; Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant, Maggid Studies in Tanakh (Maggid Books, 2017), 10-11.
7 Bryan C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis: A Study of the Use of Time in Genesis 1-11 in Light of Its Ancient Near Eastern and Literary Context (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 67.
8 Dirk L. Coprie, Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology: From Thales to Heraclides Ponticus (Springer, 2011), 9.
9 John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (IVP Academic, 2009), 56-57.
10 Enuma Elish IV.137-140; V.53-68, in Wilfred G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 95, 101.
11 Coffin Texts spells 75, 78, in R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, 3 vols. (Aris & Phillips, 1973-1978), 1:77, 81.
12 Hesiod, Theogony 517-520, in Catherine Schlegel and Henry Weinfield, tr., Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (University of Michigan Press, 2006), 39.
13 Irving Berlin, “God Bless America,” 1938.
14 Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776: “When... it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to another..., they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
15 Mark S. Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (Fortress Press, 2009), 79, 90.
16 Anastasius of Sinai, Hexaemeron 1.5.4; 3.7.1, in Orientalia Christiana Analecta 278:17, 75.
17 Anastasius of Sinai, Hexaemeron 3.5.1, in Orientalia Christiana Analecta 278:69.
18 Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron 4.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 46:65.
19 Katherine Lee Bates, “America: A Poem for July 4,” The American Kitchen Magazine 7 (1897): 151.
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