God Made Creation for His glory
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The title of today's blog may sound very self-evident and simple, however in light of our culture's rejection of a Biblical worldview in favor of advocating a universe having popped into being by chance, it is vital for Christians to refocus their attention on the biblical doctrine of creation.
Yesterday we consider how God planned the universe. We discovered that the Triune God planned the universe by way of a Covenant that the Bible calls - "the Covenant of day and night". We pointed out that the entire creation is covenantal, in that God has pledged His faithfulness to complete it, that He created a moral & physical universe that reveals Hisglory. We also saw that His will cannot be thwarted. By understanding creation as having been pre-planned by God, His covenant of day and night also reveals that there is ultimate meaning and purpose.
Jeremiah 31:35 tells us: "thus says the LORD, Who gives the sun for light by day And the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; The LORD of hosts is His name". It is on the physical order that I want to blog about today as we consider a handful of thoughts about what exactly God made.
What were some of the things God made?
Obviously I'm not going to cover everything the Bible teaches about all that God made (there are some sixty passages on creation in the Bible!) Rather I just want to prime the pump for our thoughts, demonstrating that what God planned is deeply connected to what He made. Below are just a few:
1. He made the sun for the earth. The text of Jeremiah 31:35 tells us He gave the sun to be a light by day. Just as in the Genesis 1 text, where we see the earth made before the Sun, so we see that priority being reiterrated here. God pre-determined the sun's size and place in its stellar development. He determined where it was to be located in relationship to the Milky Way Galaxy. If we were closer to the Galactic Center, we would be bumbarded by the intense radiation of the higher concentration of stars. We are also located in an area that in comparison to the rest of the Galaxy does not have as much of the "Gaseous Dusts of Hydrogen" that pervades throughout the rest of the Galaxy. That location, some two-thirds of the way out from the Milky Way's center, puts us in a "just-right" spot to see a 360 degree view of our universe.
2. He fixed the order of the moon. The Bible goes onto tell us He fixed the laws governing the moon. The size (400 times smaller than the sun), the distance from the earth (240,000 miles), and its use in regulating the tides. During solar eclipses, the moon's size relative the the sun has it perfectly fit over the sun in the sky, making it the only moon of the nearly 200 moons we know of the Solar System that happens to be able to perform that phenomenon. We understand that the moon functions to act as a stabilizer brake, as well as push and pull on the magma deep inside the earth's core. If God had not made the moon, life on this planet would not remain long.
The moon's push and pull on earth's core is part of what regulates the magnetic field surrounding the earth, which in turns shields us from the harmful effects of solar storms coming off of the sun. If God had not put that in place, you would not just merely get a sun burn, the earth itself would be a lifeless, sunbaked globe!
3. He made the stars. This is one of the best understatements in the Bible. To realize the sheer enormity of one star in comparison to our planet is mind boggling. Our Sun is a million miles in diameter, with other known stars hundreds of times larger than it. According to the Hertzsprung-Russel chart of the categories of star temperatures and sizes, our sun is almost mid-sized star, making it "just-right", not too hot nor too cool. Between each star on average lies tens of trillions of miles. There are an estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and over 100 billion galaxies in our universe. The Lord indeed has made a big universe!
4. He determined how much water would be on earth. God pre-planned how much water would be on our planet. He uses the moon to regulate the tides, thus giving the ocean the opportunity to "roar" with its waves. He had created sub-terranean vaults that held as much as five-times as much water as are in our present-day oceans. During the flood of Genesis 6-9, those vaults were let loose and flood our globe. Some of that water was shot out into space, while the rest receeded either back underground or became out present day oceans.
5. He planned to include the cross in history. Acts 2:23 tells us that Jesus Christ was delivered up by the predetermined and foreordained will of God. The cross was central not only to God's purposes of redemption by also creation. This last point is a reminder to the reader that in scripture, we cannot seperate the doctrines of creation from redemption, since in redemption God revealed that His plans for creation have not been thwarted.
If we had more time, we could speak a little bit further on the Angelic realm, the unseen realm that we often read of in the Bible. At the end of Jeremiah 33:35 we read that God is the "Lord of hosts". That term "Hosts" refers to large groupings of things or armies. What all does God govern or "Lord over"? He is Lord over every creature and the billions of human beings living on our world. He governs the "hosts" of stars in our Galaxies. He governs the incalculable hosts of angels that serve Him and not on demon or even satan himself can do anything apart from His will of permission.
To say God made all things is truly glorifying to Him when we consider the testimonies of scripture and the discoveries of science. God planned creation for one purpose - to put on display His glory. (Psalm 19:1-6)
