Cosmology of Genesis

Concerning the Word of Life

Thoughts in the Beginning

Genesis 1:1-8

John 1:1-5

I John 1:1-4

A Sermon Prepared for the Hollywood Presbyterian Church

Rev. Stephen A. Herring

January 3, 2010

On the second day of creation God made a firmament which would separate the waters below from the waters above.  “And God said; “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”  And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.  And it was so.  And God called the firmament Heaven.  And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.”  (Genesis 1:6-8)  We usually read this scripture with a condescending attitude toward the ancient people who first heard these words.  On a superficial level we can see that the ancients could see water above heaven and water below the earth.  After all, if you dig a hole deep enough, you find water, and water falls from the sky every time it rains.  This led to a concept of water above and water below.  That is usually all we ever do with this scripture.  We see it as just the quaint way the ancients saw the world.  We do the same thing with the firmament because the ancients thought that the lights of heaven had to be hung on something.  A structure was necessary to hold the heavens together. The Hebrew word for firmament means a spread out surface, like a bowl of gold hammered out into a thin hollow structure.    

What happens though if we take these scriptures as revealing some deeper truth about God, about nature, and about us?  What can we gain by seeing waters below heaven and waters above heaven?  What can we gain by understanding the firmament, the structure between the waters above and the waters below? 

We know what the waters below are.  They flow from our streams to our rivers to the sea and back again.  As Solomon says; “All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.”  These are the waters which are below.  These are the waters from which our physical being is composed.  These waters are being constantly recycled from ocean to rain cloud, from puddles to streams to rivers.  Along the way we drink these waters, and for a time they make us who and what we area in terms of our physical body.  Our body is between 60 and 75% water.  It is interesting to note that the percentage of us that is made up of water depends on how old we are.  Young people have more water in their tissues than old people.  As we get older we dry up.  Such is the way of the water below the firmament, the water of earth.  If we have it we live, and if we do not have it we dry up.      

Above these waters are another set of waters which are divided, distinguished, or separated from the waters below by a structure called “heaven.”, or, more accurately, “the heavens.”  I believe that the heavens describe all of the multitudes of experiences we need to go through in order to find our way and to understand the fullness of life on the other side.  The multitude of heavens is revealed to us by Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.  Here he says; “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.”  Right there we see that heaven is plural, there is more than one, and we find full communion with Jesus at a higher level, the third heaven.  By the way, we also note that Paul brings us no images from the third heaven, only words, “that cannot be told, which man may not utter.”  At the lower levels I believe heavens include all the joys and all the glory we experience all through our lives.  This is why we know by common sense that we need to experience joy in the here and now if we are going to be open to joy in the hereafter.  Likewise we know that we will find hell in the hereafter if hell is all we know and all we make here on earth. We all know that there is such a thing, at least momentarily, as heaven on earth and hell on earth.  It stands to reason that each of these existing in a moment here on earth is a precursor to heaven and hell existing eternally on the other side.     

Above the firmament of the heavens, above the multi leveled realm of all goodness and all glory, and all the refractions of multi-colored light, there exists a place where God has stored the higher waters.  These are the waters above the firmament.  This other water comes from above and belongs to what is above.  This water is above heaven.  Think about that for a minute.  Water above heaven?  How can that be?  The scriptures lead us to give this special water from above several names, and to see it in several different ways.  The scriptures give us a set of symbols we can use to grasp the concept of this water from above the firmament.    

At the very start, on the first day of creation we know that the “Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”  (Genesis 1:1)  This means that these waters are from the beginning, they are from God, and they exist in relationship to the Spirit of God. 

Jesus teaches us about something called “Living Water” (John 4:1-42, John 7:37-39)  We obtain this living water and we become sources of it in our own right by faith in Jesus. 

In Revelation we find reference to “The water of life” (Revelation 21:6)  This fountain belongs to us as part of a new heaven and a new earth which we will obtain after the end of physical time. 

Ezekiel had a wonderful vision in which he saw water flowing as a mighty river from the temple.  “And wherever the river goes every living creature which swarms will live…everything will live where the river goes…their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary.”  (Ezekiel 47:9-12) 

This is the water in which Jesus offers us the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.  “Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.”  (John 3:5)  This is in the same passage where Jesus tells us we must be “born from above.” (John 3:3)  I see a connection between birth from above and waters from above.    

The water below the firmament is the water of Baptism, but the water above is connected somehow with the fire of the Holy Spirit.  As John the Baptist says; “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I. … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with Fire.”  (Matthew 3:11) 

This is also the water of the Torah, our delight in the Law of the LORD on which we meditate day and night, and by which we become “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1) 

I believe that from the moment of creation, God left some water here so that we could possess the gift of physical life, and that this stuff we call life also waits for us on the other side of this world.  Above heaven we will find life once more, only that life will be eternal.  It will last forever.  Life down here is temporary.  It comes and it goes like rain clouds.  We dry up and we die.  Beyond this life we will find the original source of life itself.  We will find the living water of Jesus Christ. 

Today we must learn the faith of Jesus so that we can approach that living water when we come to the other side.  I believe that the fountain of living water and the fire of the Holy Spirit are basically the same thing.  In John 7:38, Jesus says; “He who believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.”  John adds these words in verse 39.  “Now this he said about the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive.”  If we know Jesus and are ready to meet Jesus, his Holy Spirit will be like a fountain of living water.  We drink from this water now, and we will drink from it for ever on the other side.  On the other hand, if we do not know Him and we are not ready to meet Him, our experience of the Spirit will feel like fire.  In this way we can understand the Holy Spirit as being both living water and fire.  My advice is to be ready for the living water, not the fire.  The key is for us to quit being burned up by the fires of adversity here, and to drink instead of the fountain of living water which is the abundant grace of God available to us in every moment. 

The water above heaven is the water of life.  It comes down here to earth whenever someone speaks the word of God by scripture or by revelation of the Spirit.  A word of grace and love spoken today brings a drop of living water like a rain drop in a dry and thirsty place.  The testimony of Jesus works miracles.  This is because “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”  (Rev. 19:10)  One of the things we need to do as a group is to cultivate the gift of prophecy within us. 

By this gift we can see that the waters above the heavens spoken of in Genesis 1 are the waters of life spoken of by Jesus and they are also the same thing as the fire of the Holy Spirit.  In the Spirit, water and fire become the same thing.  We also know this because of the equation of light and life.  John says; “In him (the LOGOS Word) was life, and the life was the light of humanity.”  (John 1:4)    John tells us that this life was from the beginning.  We have heard it as a spoken word.  This is the word of life, “the life was made manifest, and we saw it and we testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.”  (I John 1:2) 

All of this allows us to draw a connection between the waters which were above the heavens with the light, fire, and life of Jesus Christ.  This connection allows us to testify about the eternal life we have been given. 

All of these symbols allow us to talk about the same thing, the same amazing force in which we live and move and have our being. 

The Waters above the firmament mentioned in Genesis 1:7 equal the Waters upon which the Spirit of God was moving in Genesis 1:1.  These waters are essentially the same as the life and light of the LOGOS Word as described in John 1:1.  This is JESUS as we know him in the personal relationship of our faith.  He is the Light of Humanity (John 1:3) He gives us the fire of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11) This fire is the same thing as the Living Water of Jesus, which in turn is the same thing as the Word of Life delivered to us by the testimony of John.  (I John 1:1)  This in turn connects back to the rivers of water offered to us by the Torah as mentioned in Psalm 1 and the rivers flowing from the temple in Ezekiel 47.  It all connects together in and through our faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  He guides us through the firmament, the structure of the heavens.  He guides us through all the joys and sorrows and diversity of human experience, on to the final glory which is the creating power of Almighty Yahweh. 

Hold out your hand and look at it.  Realize in this moment that you are alive.  You are living, full of life.  You are filled with the light of life.  You are filled with the water of life.  The life within you is the same thing as the light which first shined at the command of Almighty God at the start of creation.  The light is the same light and the life is the same life.  It all comes from the same place and it all goes to the same place.  In Jesus Christ, we belong to God and God belongs to us.  There is no separation and no distinction.  All life comes from God and it belongs to God.  We came from God in the beginning and we will return to God in the end.  Amen.