[Music] Day two is part of the forming section of the creation week. God first creates an earth that's formless and void and dark. He creates light. He makes light to illuminate the dark world. Then he begins to form it, and then once it's formed, he begins to fill it. The first act of forming, you could say, is the creation of light in the separation of light and darkness. But then he creates the firmament and inserts the firmament between the waters above and the waters below, and that forms an above and below. It forms a world where there are waters in heaven and there are waters on earth, and that distinction runs through the entire Bible. When people go into heaven, they see a sea of glass in front of God's throne, and those are the heavenly waters. Sometimes the heavenly waters come down. We have a distinction in Exodus between the land that Israel was going into and Egypt where they came from, and the distinction is made in terms of waters above and waters below, the rain from

heaven. God waters the land, the land of Canaan that Israel is entering, rather than water coming up from the Nile, ground water, or rising from below to water the land of Egypt. They're going to get water from heaven that's going to water their own land. So, the first form that we have in the creation is this distinction between the waters above and the waters below. The Hebrew term for the firmament is rekiah, which means something that's beaten out, beaten flat. It's used to describe a piece of metal, for example, that's beaten into a sheet. And at least that's the appearance that the firmament has. If we look up to the sky, we look at a dome, that's the firmament, and it looks like a piece of blue material, solid material, that's been beaten flat. But when we actually look at the rest of the creation week, we see that the firmament is not just that barrier. The firmament has depth. That is a barrier, but it has depth. We know this from day four when

God inserts into the firmament the Sun, Moon, and the stars. The Sun and Moon, the stars become a symbol, visual, visible from Earth, a symbol within Earth, within the system of Earth that resembles the glories of heaven. That's one of the reasons why we're caught, why the firmament is called heaven after it's formed in day two. It's an earthly image of heaven, and the Sun, Moon, and stars that are put in there are an image of God and his glory, with the stars being symbols of the sons of God, the angels that are surrounding him. And so, in the creation week, we had this built-in analogy, this built-in metaphor between the highest heaven where God is enthroned and the earthly heavens, which are the firmament.

The Firmament: with Peter Leithart

The Firmament: with Peter Leithart