God’s World
Exodus 15:16b-18 …till your people, O Lord, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. The Lord will reign forever and ever.
God Created the World and He Cares for It
Nehemiah 9:6 You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.
Isaiah 34:15-35:2 There the owl nests and lays and hatches and gathers her young in her shadow; indeed, there the hawks are gathered, each one with her mate. Seek and read from the book of the Lord: Not one of these shall be missing; none shall be without her mate. For the mouth of the Lord has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. He has cast the lot for them; his hand has portioned it out to them with the line; they shall possess it forever; from generation to generation they shall dwell in it. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.
Isaiah 40:12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
Isaiah 40:22-23 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
Isaiah 44:24-28 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish, who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited,’ and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built, and I will raise up their ruins’; who says to the deep, ‘Be dry; I will dry up your rivers’; who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall fulfill all my purpose’; saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’ and of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’”
Isaiah 45:8-13 “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit; let the earth cause them both to sprout; I the Lord have created it. “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’? Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’” Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him: “Ask me of things to come; will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host. I have stirred him up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways level; he shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward,” says the Lord of hosts.
Isaiah 48:12-13 “Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together.
Isaiah 66:1-2 Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
Jeremiah 9:10 I will take up weeping and wailing for the mountains, and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are laid waste so that no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard; both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled and are gone.
Joel 2:18 Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.
Quotes
“But we may inquire further into just what the divine designer and artisan is making in Genesis 1. A world, yes. But what kind of world? A preliminiary answer is suggested by the common portrayal of the cosmos in the Old Testment as a building. Often pictured with a vault or roof overhead (the firmament or the heavens) resting on ‘pillars” (‘xi; from xi, to stand), which are usually the mountains, the world is founded securely upon the primeval waters (see, for example, Job 9:6, 8; 26:11; 37:18; Psalm 75:3; 1 Samuel 2:8). Thus verbs of building are often used for the act of creation, especially yasad and kun, which have a largely overlapping semantic range and are rendered variously ‘to establish, found, secure, make firm.’ God is said to have founded or established or secured the earth, the heavens, the pillars of the earth, the deep, and so on (Proverbs 3:19; 8:27; Psalm 33:7; 75:3; 104:5; 119:90; Job 28:26; 38:4; Isaiah 48:13; 51:13, 16; Zechariah 12:1; Amos 9:6). We even find references to the ‘foundations’ of the mountains, the heavens, or more usually the earth. This latter expression also turns up in many New Testament texts (for example, Matthew 13:35, 25:34; John 17:24; Ephesians 1:4; Hebrews 9:26).” – J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. (pp 77-78)
“But is it possible to specify further the metaphor of the world as a cosmic structure? Suppose we press the question, what sort of building is God making in Genesis 1? Although not immediately obvious, the unequivocal answer given from the perspective of the rest of the Old TEstament is this: God is building a temple. The notion of the cosmos as temple has its roots in the andcient Near Eastern worldview, in which temples were commonly understood as the royal palaces of the gods, in which they dwelled and from which they reigned. Furthermore, creation, followed by temple building and then divine rest, is a central theme in Mesopotamian, and perhaps Ugaritic, mythology (both Marduk and Baal havfe temples built for them after their conquest of the chaos monster).” – J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. (pp 81) He then talks about Isaish 66:1-2 and then continues saying, “The texst does not say that God has no need for a temple, merely no need for a humanly constructed one, since God has already (by his own ‘hand’) built a cosmic sanctuary, and that should be sufficient. And this sanctuary in which God dwells is also portrayed as God’s palace, from which God reigns–hence the language of throne and footstool. The cosmic temple, in other words, is clearly equivalent to God’s kingdom.” – J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. (p. 82)
“Heaven and earth will rejoice, because in that new world wrought by God there will be no more userpation of people’s homes. Those who build will stay around to inhabit, those who plant will survive to harvest and enjoy their produce. No more people being taxed out of their homes, no more losing their vulnerable homes to the right of eminent domain, no more rapacious seizure by war. When the newness comes, every person will live safely under a vine and fig tree, safe, unafraid, at peace, with no more destructive threats or competitive anxieties.” – Water Brueggemann, Celebrating Abundance: Devotions for Advent. (p. 7)