Into the third Heaven

OIKOS is a fantastic ecumenical initiative in Brigg, that run a Christian shop, a Food Bank, a Community Pantry and more! I was asked to write some short 'thoughts to start your week' for October 2023 for their Facebook page. This is an expanded version of the thought for 22nd October.

A few weeks ago I mentioned what is probably one of my most often-quoted verses from the Bible: Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” This contains two truths: firstly that creation itself has a 'voice' to praise God and secondly that creation can teach us about God. The first concept is slightly harder for us to get our heads around as we tend to think of creation as being inanimate. We can understand creatures praising God, after all the final verse of the book of Psalms says “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” (Psalm 150:6), but there are plenty of places in the Bible that speak of other parts of creation praising God. For example: “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12) and Psalm 148 exhorts many things to praise God including the sun, moon and stars; 'waters above the skies' and ocean depths; lightning and hail, snow and clouds, and stormy winds.

We previously looked briefly at the second concept and in particular what harvest could teach us about God, but this week I watched a YouTube video that made me think about Psalm 19:1 in a different way.

The channel was by Nate Morgan Locke who calls himself a 'Reformed Mythologist' and makes videos about “How the stories we love point to the greatest story of all.” In this particular conversation he was talking to the Revd Dr Paul Blackham, who has a podcast snappily titled “The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation”. One of the things that Blackham talked about was how the Bible often refers to the 'heavens' in the plural, it's there in Psalm 19:1 and indeed it's there in the very first verse of the Bible (Genesis 1:1). He then links it to Paul's statement in 2 Corinthians 12:2 about the man (probably Paul himself) who “was caught up to the third heaven”.

The Biblical worldview has three 'heavens': the first is what we call the sky or the atmosphere; the second is space or the universe; and the third is where God has his throne. So what is this teaching us? Well just as being in the first heaven (at the top of a tall building or mountain, or in a plane) makes us awestruck at the vastness and grandeur of it, so when we 'zoom out' into the second heaven we realise that our awe at the first heaven is nothing compared to our awe at the vastness and grandeur of the second heaven. Then, 'zooming out' again we can imagine that the vastness and grandeur of the second heaven is nothing when compared with the third heaven. And so we start to grasp how mind-blowing the glory of God is (if that's not a contradiction!)

When faced with this scale, Blackham goes on to say, it might be easy to think that us tiny humans with our tiny lifespans are utterly unimportant and irrelevant. But the Bible doesn't want us to do that, instead Psalm 8:3-4 says “When I consider your heavens...[what are] human beings that you care for them?” The God who dwells in that mind-blowing third heaven cares so much for humanity, cares so much for you, that he came down to Earth in Jesus to save us (Philippians 2:6-8). No wonder the whole creation praises God!

Photo by Mohammad Alizade from www.freelyphotos.com/Collections/Biblical-Imagery/i-vdVrGmz/A