"O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker" (Psalm 95:6).

Psalms 95-100 seem to form a unit with several common themes running through them, all involving praise to the Lord.

One of these major themes is the recognition of the Lord as maker of heaven and earth. For example, consider Psalm 95:5. "The sea is His, and He made it: and His hands formed the dry land." Thus, God made the earth, including both land and sea. But He also made the heavens! "For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens" (Psalm 96:5).

Higher and far more complex than any planet of the solar system or any star in the heavens, are the living organisms found only on Planet Earth--especially human beings--and He made these too. "Know ye that the LORD He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture" (Psalm 100:3).

It is significant that these verses all emphasize the activities of God as maker, rather than as Creator. In the first chapter of Genesis, both types of activity are stressed, the account finally concluding with the summary: "all His work which God created and made" (Genesis 2:3).

The two types of work are almost synonymous when referring to the divine activity, but not quite (otherwise "created and made" would be redundant). Specifically, the three acts of true creation in Genesis are the creation of the physical elements of the cosmos, the entity of biological life, and the spiritual image of God in man (Genesis 1:1, 21, 27). These entities God simply called into being, ex nihilo, by His omnipotent word.

Everything else, He made, or formed, or let be, out of the three basic entities that were specially created. He is both Creator and maker of all things, and we should worship Him as such. HMM