We continue our verse-by-verse study in Genesis, picking up at chapter 1 verse 20:
If you want to listen to the audio teaching associated with these verses, you can find the Audio and Powerpoint slides in the Sunday Morning Teaching section: CLICK HERE
Genesis 1:20
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
We now find the beginning of self-replicating conscious life. This is the first time the word ‘life’ (Hebrew: ‘khah’-ee) appears in the Bible, and we find God makes a clear distinction between non-conscious plants and vegetation, and that which has a distinct self-awareness (specifically here marine life and birds). This distinction shows itself again in that which God originally gives for food (see Gen 1:29-30), and the fundamental difference is blood. Prior to the flood, only plants and vegetation were to be eaten – these do not have blood. Leviticus 17:11 states that “The life of the flesh is in the blood”, thus life and blood are inextricably linked; that which does not rely on blood for its survival is not truly alive – and here there is a profound deeper truth. By inference, we can deduce that blood was created on day five, and there is a profound significance here also; the number five is consistently used in the Bible to speak of grace – and God’s grace is dependent on the blood of Christ.
It is interesting to note that the first real life we see is from the water – symbolic in the Bible of the Holy Spirit. In fact, both water and that which soars above is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended as a dove at Jesus’ baptism. It may be a tenuous link, but Jesus said that “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). It could be argued that the first semblance of life on earth is seen in the water and the air, and real life comes likewise through natural (water) birth and by being born again of the Spirit – made possible by the blood of Jesus.
This is the last mention of the firmament in these verses, and as we noted, the implication from the Hebrew is that the birds fly ‘in the face of’ or ‘in front of’ the heavens.
Genesis 1:21
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Notice that in the previous verse, and again here, God commanded the waters to bring forth abundantly, and only a cursory look at the life in the oceans will confirm that they are teeming with life. From the great whales and sharks to elaborately coloured tropical fish, to the huge variety of shellfish, the Octopus, Jellyfish, turtles and the list could go on. It has been estimated that there are 228,450 known species in the ocean, and one recent article stated that scientists had identified almost 1,500 new creatures in the world’s oceans in 2014, including the Australian humpback dolphin, 139 sponges, a South African “star-gazing shrimp” and a giant, venomous, tentacle-free box jellyfish about 50 cm (20 inches) long. They estimate there are still as many as 2 million more yet to be discovered! The huge variety of life in the oceans is breathtaking; yet what is even more incredible is the design we see with these sea creatures. Evolution cannot explain this diversity, nor can it offer any mechanism to account for the sheer complexity of marine life. Take, for example, the dolphin; it uses a sophisticated sonar system, located in its forehead, to find food. This has to have been there from the start or it would be no use. There is no way this could have evolved, it has to be the hand of a Master Designer!
It is the same when we look at birds; they have hollow bones so as to reduce weight and enable flight; they lay eggs so their young develop outside of the body. Their reproductive organs atrophy outside of breeding season, again to keep their weight down. They have a very fast metabolism and lungs that open at each end – completely different to any other vertebrates. They have an amazing 450 breaths per minute and have a larger heart to cope with higher altitudes.
Feathers, which most of us think of as fairly simple, are actually complex. Coming off the main hollow shaft (rachis), they have side branches (barbs) that have even finer sub-branches. Theses sub-branches are joined together with barbules and their corresponding hooklets (hamuli). The combined effect is a lightweight yet strong feather that provides lift when in flight and a first defence against physical objects, sunlight and rain. Each feather is contoured with a leading edge to go into the wind and a trailing edge designed for the optimum aerodynamic efficiency.
Is anyone going to tell me that this came about by random chance? Is our government’s ‘high-quality science education’ wanting us to believe that mutations over millions of years produced identical yet symmetrical mutations in both the male and female of the species at the same time and in the same place, and that these mutations actually got passed on to the next generation? It is astounding that evolutionists have never been publicly called out on this ‘mutation’ mantra. A mutation is a loss or scrambling of genetic information. It cannot create anything new. What also is never mentioned in the text books, or when David Attenborough is presenting his heavily evolutionary biased nature documentaries, is that for every ‘beneficial’ mutation there would be 10,000 that are, at best neutral, but many of which would be lethal! How do you get successive mutations that all complement each other if each mutation is just a random unguided event?
Dr J.C. Stanford, in his book “Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome” concludes:
“We have reviewed compelling evidence that, even when ignoring deleterious mutations, mutation/selection cannot create a single gene within the human evolutionary timescale. When deleterious mutations are factored back in, we see that mutations / selection cannot create a single gene, ever. This is overwhelming evidence against the Primary Axiom [theory of evolution]. In my opinion this constitutes what is essentially a formal proof that the Primary Axiom is false.”
The following article by Ray Comfort in his ‘Evidence Bible’ also hits the nail on the head:
- If every creature “evolved” with no Creator, there would be numerous problems. Take for instance the first bird.
- Was it male or female? Let’s say it was male. How did it produce offspring without a mate? If a female also evolved, why did it evolve with differing reproductive organs?
- Did it evolve by chance, or did it evolve because it knew that it was needed by the male of the species?
- How did it know what needed to be evolved if its brain hadn’t yet evolved? Did the bird breathe? Did it breathe before it evolved lungs? How did it do this? Why did it evolve lungs if it was happily surviving without them?
- Did the bird have a mouth? How did it eat before it evolved a mouth? Where did the mouth send the food before the stomach evolved?
- How did the bird have energy if it didn’t eat (because it didn’t yet have a mouth)? How did the bird see what there was to eat before its eyes evolved?
- Evolution is intellectual suicide. It is an embarrassment.
Far from the science fiction that masquerades as fact is the reality that a wonderful God created all that we see, including the Woodpecker, which is an evolutionist’s nightmare! It has a super-strong beak to cope with all its hammering on wood, which in turn is seated in special cartilage to prevent it forcing its beak into its brain! Its eyes also shut at precisely the moment the beak strikes the tree to stop its eyes popping out! Its toes are not arranged like most birds with three claws at the front and a single claw at the back; the woodpecker has 2+2 to enable much greater grip when hanging onto a tree hammering away to find food.
Then there is the tongue! It is incredible. It goes down the throat, out the back of the neck, around the back of the skull beneath the skin, over the top of the eyes and terminates just below the eye socket.
We could talk about migration or the flight patterns of migrating birds that enable them to complete an eighty-eight-hour journey, in the case of the Golden Plover, by flying in formation. They could not complete the journey if they flew alone. This knowledge could not have evolved, it just shouts out there is an awesome Designer!
Gtting back to the text, notice also how God wants you to know that things only reproduce ‘after their own kind’! This is repeated 10x in chapter 1. Things NEVER reproduce something other than themselves, despite Charles Darwin’s wishful thinking!
Genesis 1:22-23
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
So this brings us to the end of the fifth day. Once again we have ‘erev’ and ‘boker’ as we move from less order to more order as God’s work of creation is almost complete.
Genesis 1:24-25
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
We could now list the countless numbers of land animals that exhibit such staggering complexity and design. If we take just one, let’s consider the Giraffe. They can grow up to 21ft tall and have a large & powerful heart to pump the blood up their long neck. The miracle is that when they bend down to drink they don’t pass out with all the blood that would rush to their heads, or worse still their brains explode! Yet God has built in ‘safety’ valves that close when the Giraffe bends down to prevent the otherwise inevitable. The next problem our Giraffe would face, however, is if it now needs to lift its head up and leave in a hurry – due to a nearby predator etc. – it would now faint as there would not be enough blood and therefore oxygen feeding its brain. Once again we see the brilliance of God’s design, for instead of the last valve in its neck it has a sponge in its brain that soaks up blood, this again prevents problems when it bends down, but also provides a sufficient reserve of oxygen if a fast getaway is needed! This all has to work or no more Giraffe!
So, all made after their kind, all made good, and all made originally to be herbivores (there was no meat eaten until after the flood).
Genesis 1:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
As we now move to God’s final work of creation, just like at the wedding in Cana, He saves the best until last!
Notice that we have the Trinity in this verse as God says “Let US….” The work of creation is attributed to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit throughout scripture.
The important thing in this verse is that Adam was made in God’s image and in His likeness. No other created being can claim this.
Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
We make an interesting discovery if we look at the Hebrew words in this verse. If we were to transliterate it into English it would actually read: “Created out of nothing, God, [the Alpha & Omega] Man in His resemblance. In His resemblance, God created out of nothing him, male – female, created out of nothing him“. In other words, God created Adam as perfect male and female in one. This helps to answer something some have struggled with regarding the creation of Eve. Eve was not created on day six, she was not created until the Garden of Eden, which occurred after the first 7 days. All God does in the Garden of Eden is to take the woman part he had already created out of man!
This is why we will see in chapter 2 that Adam states: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man“. It also defines marriage (contrary to modern society’s re-writing the rules), because when a man and wife are joined in marriage, they come back to as it was: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh“(Gen 2:23-24).
Genesis 1:28-29
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Man is given dominion over all God’s creation, and having already noted the complexity and design, there is clearly implied the mandate to look after the world that God has given us!
Genesis 1:30
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
As we have noted, the animals and man were all vegetarians prior to the flood. Up until the Fall there was no death, so no killing creatures for food. This again makes a distinction between that which is alive in the Biblical sense and that which is merely living. Plants have life, but they are not truly alive as they don’t have blood. Only that which has blood is alive. Only that which has the blood of Christ is eternally alive! (see John 6:54-55).
Genesis 1:31
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
This brings us to the end of the sixth day, and notice that it wasn’t just ok, it was the best it could possibly be! God doesn’t do His best, He does it the best!
This is the last time we see ‘evening and morning’ (in the Hebrew ‘Erev’ and ‘Boker’). God’s work of creation is complete and no new information will be added. God has taken the world from disorder to order.
(Above chart by Dr Chuck Missler – www.khouse.org)
More next week…
Every blessing,
Pastor Barry.
