Hold It Together - Genesis 1:6-20 Series

We’re studying the book of Genesis and we start, of course, with Genesis 1 which is creation. Last week we looked at God created the heavens and the earth. We looked at day one where God created light. One of the things we said is here’s what happens when you start to look at creation. There is a message that goes out. That message goes out just by looking at creation. What is that message? If you’re online and you know what that message is, would you take a moment and write it in the comments? What is the message that God has for us when we look at creation? What is the message that He shares with us?

This week on Friday evening I was in my office. I looked out the window and saw a sunset happening. Friday night. Maybe you saw it. It was a magnificent sunset. Pink lines all over the sky. I quickly went out of my office and walked a little ways just so I could see the sky. As I stood out there I’m hearing this declaration of God that comes by. What is that declaration? Tell me. What is the message that God says through creation? Do you remember? “Worship me, worship me.” So when we look out at the beauty of creation we hear those words “worship me.”

The problem is we don’t know what to worship just by looking at the scriptures. Some people mistake that to be worship creation itself. Some people worship creation instead of the Creator. They misunderstand the message. That’s why we’re eager to share with people the message of Jesus Christ, the message of who God is so that they can say oh yes, I’ve been waiting for this. I know I need God. I’ve been wanting to worship Him. Now I know who He is. So people then can come and they can worship the Lord and know Him. There’s a message communicated by creation that says “worship me.”

Today we’re going to talk about a second message that comes when we understand creation. But it only comes to those who understand there’s a Creator. Some of those are Christians, believers, who know Jesus Christ personally. Some don’t know Him yet. But what they are already acknowledging is there is a Creator and they’re waiting for this next step, and that is to accept Jesus Christ into their lives and He will change their lives. The message is this: “Hold it together.” Don’t you wish you could get that message regularly? Hold it together. I need to hold it together.

But again, that message could be misunderstood, believing that I need to hold my whole life together when really God wants to hold our lives together. He’s going to say that when we get to Colossians 1:15-17. I’m going to show you that at the end of our teaching today. But in order to see that God holds our lives together, I want to go to creation and see how He holds creation together. Because if we look at creation, we understand what God is doing, it makes it easier for us to say, “Okay, God, I will give you my life. You’re obviously capable to do that. I want to give you my life.” There's some people who don’t believe that God is capable. We’re going to talk about that today.

Well let’s go to our passage in God’s word. This is day two. I’m going to take this in days. So you can see at the top it says what day we’re in. So here we are in Genesis 1:6-8 in day two. It says – And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

So on day one God created light. Not the sun and the moon yet, but He created light. Just His glory lit up everything. It was the glory of God giving us an indication of what’s yet to come. That Jesus would be the light of our life. That we can enjoy who God is. He lights up our own being.

In day two God creates the atmosphere. Now in the atmosphere is a very important part of what holds our world together. We’re going to talk about what holds the world together as God is holding it together. But He uses the atmosphere to do it.

The atmosphere is this space between the Earth’s surface out to about sixty miles. It goes up that far. That’s the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s held to the Earth by gravity. It’s made up of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen. That’s significant. It’s a very important ratio that makes up the air that we breathe and so on. If the oxygen level were greater on the Earth, things would start catching on fire and blowing up. It would be combustible. Just the right amount of chemicals in the air, gasses that exist there.