God created the earth-- Genesis 1:1 (NLT) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
People are the caretakers of the earth-- Genesis 1:28 (NLT) Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.
The earth was cursed because of sin-- Genesis 3:17-19 (NLT) 17 And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. 3 18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. 19 By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.
The earth belongs to God-- Psalm 89:11 (NLT) The heavens are yours, and the earth is yours; everything in the world is yours—you created it all.
The earth was created for God’s glory through His Son-- Colossians 1:15-17 (NLT)
15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, 16 for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see— such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. 17 He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.
Jesus sustains the earth-- Hebrews 1:3 (NLT) The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.
"Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation Verse Finder, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, Under: "EARTH".
Edythe Draper, Draper's Book of Quotations for the Christian World, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1992), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, 165-164.
