Episode Details

Prayer

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth is it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one; for yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.

Reading

Psalm 105 & 1 Cor 12.

Gen 1:6-8.

“And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7. 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. 8. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.”

Meditation

There is a logical and necessary connection between days one and two in the Genesis prologue. On day two, God very much builds upon the purpose revealed in day one. In our studies of day one, we saw that God’s purpose was to shine his glory into the creation as he filled the creation with his presence. As we consider God’s purposes in day two, the very first observation we can make is that God creates heaven. That’s what day two is all about. Day one was all about light, day two is all about heaven. That’s what the text says! God makes an expanse (v6-7), and he gives this expanse a name: “heaven” (v8). Heaven is the subject of day two.

It would be easy for us to overlook something significant here, and it’s the fact that God himself names this expanse. He creates the expanse physically, and then he puts a name to it, a word. Now this is important, because God does not waste words. He did not call the expanse “heaven” for no reason. He didn’t give it that name because he couldn’t really think of another one. No, this naming is deliberate and significant. The question is: Why did he call it heaven? This will be a slightly longer meditation, but it will need to be if we are to properly answer that question. To begin our answer, I’m going to start us off with two general observations about heaven.

The first observation is this: there are three heavens. In the broader sense, the scriptures use this term “heaven” in three different ways. In the first place, it can be used to refer to the atmosphere of our planet. For example, in Genesis 1:20 the scriptures say that the birds fly across “the expanse of the heavens”. As we know, that’s a reference to the atmosphere. This is the sense in which day two is using the word as well. The second way in which this word can be used is in reference to space. For example, on day four (Gen 1:14-19) we have a description of the sun, moon, and stars as God sets them in “the expanse of the heavens”. It’s the same word again in the Hebrew. Finally, this word is also used in reference to the dwelling place of God himself. Psalm 2:4 speaks of the Lord sitting in the heavens. In Psalm 115:3 we read: “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases”. In Matthew 6:9 in the Lord’s Prayer we learn that our Father is in heaven. God, as a spiritual being, and not having a body like men, does not dwell in the physical heavens of space or atmosphere, he dwells eternally in his heavenly dwelling place.

So then, in the biblical worldview, there are three heavens. There’s the atmosphere, there’s space, and there’s the spiritual dwelling place of God. The Apostle Paul actually makes a reference to this in 2 Corinthians 12:2. In that passage he says: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows – and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” There is probably much that could be said about this verse, but the only thing I’m going to point out is that phrase that Paul u