The Marvel of Living Creatures: A Fifth Day

[0:00] Genesis chapter 1. We return after a couple of weeks of being away in Colossians. And we are dealing with day 5.

[0:16] The title of my message, The Marvel of Living Creatures, A Fifth Day, A Fifth Day. And so by day 5, imagine with me, based on what we've covered so far, God has done a wonderful and incredible work of creation for 4 days now, 4 24-hour days.

[0:43] By day 5, the world must have been remarkably beautiful. Oh, I just want you to imagine it with me for a moment. It is full of mature, green, lush vegetation, edible plants, beautiful, fully mature fruit trees, bearing their fruit already.

[1:08] There are no thorns, no briars, no thistles, no weeds. So the grass is soft and thick underfoot.

[1:21] The seas and the lakes and the rivers are pristine and glistening in the landscape. And you see it? It is just beautiful.

[1:33] All of the earth's sounds are natural to what God has made. Imagine that now. That's hard for us. In an industrialized world, we're used to constantly hearing the echoes of machinery or automobiles or a plane flying overhead or whatever.

[1:55] I was out in Crozet on the Appalachian Trail a few weeks ago. And I was standing out in the middle of a forest, top of a hill that I went up. And I'm looking out over everything.

[2:05] And I'm just standing there with the wind blowing. And it was beautifully quiet. And the next thing I know, I hear a plane. Shoot. And then I thought, what must it have been like for the Indians?

[2:19] Before any of that going on, they're standing in the forest like this. And there is just nothing but the sounds of nature. All of the earth's sounds are natural to what God's made over the past four days.

[2:34] There's a sweet sound of everything being at peace. There's nothing to taint or mar what God has done.

[2:45] And in the first four days, four times the Bible says, and God saw that it was good. Four times in four days.

[2:56] And God saw that it was good. But as good as it is, it's not yet complete. There is nothing on earth to fill the skies, to fill the seas, the waters, and the land.

[3:13] It is, and get this now, it is an uninhabited, habitable planet. It is ready to receive what God made it for.

[3:29] It's as if creation is just sitting there in this pristine environment, just ready for everything to break forth and it be able to fulfill what God made it to do.

[3:44] It's a house for living creatures. A home for living creatures.

[3:55] And so it's time for God to make them, these living creatures. And that's where we'll begin. We'll pick it up. As I've done, Roman numeral one, down now through five, day five.

[4:06] God's good way. That's what we're highlighting. God continues to say, and it was good. God's good way. A fifth day. The living creatures of water and air.

[4:17] This won't be all the creatures that God's going to make. He'll also make some on the sixth day. And the crowning achievement on the sixth day, as you know, will be mankind. So we're going to look in typical fashion that we've been doing throughout the study of the creation account.

[4:32] This little outline that we're using, we're going to look at the good of God said. That's how it all begins on day five. As with every day, God has to speak everything into existence.

[4:43] So the good of God said, and I want you to notice with me the passage that we'll be looking at, the verses we'll be looking at this morning, verse 20. Then God said, let the waters team with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.

[5:06] God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves with which the water swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind.

[5:21] And God saw that it was good. Verse 22. God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth.

[5:42] There was evening and there was morning. A fifth day. Well, friends, right away in our passage for today, right away, God uses the Hebrew language to emphasize the instantaneous prolific creation of all water creatures.

[6:05] Then God said, let the waters team with swarms of living creatures. Team, the word, the Hebrew word team there for team is sharats.

[6:20] And swarm, the Hebrew word for swarm is sharets. They are different forms of the same word. That's why they sound almost identical to one another.

[6:30] Just different forms of the same word. Some of your translations may even say, let the water swarm with swarms. The idea is emphasis. He's piling these concepts on top of each other to form an emphasis for us.

[6:46] Together, these words define then small animals found in large, large quantities or numbers in water, like the schools of fish that we see.

[6:59] The important thing for us to understand in what the Hebrews are saying here in the Hebrew language is that God said this and it was an instantaneous reality. Myriads and myriads and myriads of water creatures were brought into instantaneous existence so that the seas are now just full of these teeming, swarming schools of water creatures.

[7:27] Amazing, isn't it? And we allow for that because this is our sovereign creator God who can speak these things into existence.

[7:38] The words then are used to highlight the abundance. Now catch this, the abundance and the movement, the movement of great swarms of sea life.

[7:52] The sea then is alive in a very different way from how plants are alive. I'm sure that as we were able to go back and look at the earth as day five began, again, the earth would be so beautiful and lush and wonderful and at peace.

[8:14] And oh, how that must have seemed. But now, now there's going to be noise. Because he's going to make these critters and they're going to be in these environments and it's going to be filled with the sounds.

[8:27] Listen, the sounds of life. I don't know. I've heard the wind and trees and it's beautiful and calming. I have heard trees rub up against each other and make creaking, groaning sounds.

[8:44] Do plants make noise? I don't know. You have to help me. Do they? Do they make noise?

[8:56] I don't know. But I know critters do. Critters do. Are you saying yes, Suzanne? Grasses? Yeah, but the wind blows them.

[9:08] But I'm thinking of just a plant. All right. Come on. Help us out. Poinsettia. Yeah. Poinsettia. Poinsettias.

[9:19] That's what we say. Where I come from. No. So I'm just trying to point out to you what they're pointing out. This aliveness is very different from the aliveness, if you will, if you'll allow, from the first four days.

[9:34] Look, God has made things alive. The sun in its own way is alive. The sun in its own way is alive in that it's doing what God created it to do. But it's different, isn't it? We understand that.

[9:46] We get that. That's what's being told to us here in the way that the Hebrew is put together. All of this is emphasizing abundance.

[9:57] Instantaneous abundance. That's instantaneous abundance. Just like fruit trees already bearing fruit. There they are. And they've got apples on apple trees and oranges on orange trees and that kind of thing.

[10:09] That's what's going on. He also goes on to say in the text then, and let the birds, the birds now fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.

[10:21] So we understand the heavens now being described within our atmosphere, the sky. This is the sky. And just like the sea creatures teeming and swarming in the waters, now the birds are being pictured as filling and flying.

[10:39] In the sky in great swarming varieties. And what all of this shows is that these critters were made for these spaces. There were water creatures living in the water where they belong.

[10:55] God made the water for them and readied the water for them and then he put them in it. In numbers, mature, ready to go, doing exactly what God designed for them to do.

[11:07] And then he made the birds. And he put the birds in the air doing what he designed for them to do. He made the expanse and separated the expanse.

[11:19] And we have space. You notice they're not up flying around in space. In the darkness of space beyond our atmosphere. They're flying in the expanse where he separated it.

[11:29] And he put boundaries below and above. And he knew in that expanse what he was going to do with it. So this is the sky. These are the sea creatures.

[11:40] These are the flying creatures filling the space in which they belong. Well, not according to evolution, of course. Now, can you imagine if this were not the case?

[11:51] Do you believe that God was sitting up in heaven and he made the sea, the waters, the rivers, and the streams? And then he made the expanse and did all of that that we've already studied and looked at.

[12:05] How he separated everything and made the atmosphere and the breathable air for us and all. He did all of that. And then he stepped back and he looked at Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This is the Father and the counsel of the Godhead.

[12:16] And he said, yeah, I don't know. Something's missing. And the Holy Spirit said, oh, oh, I know. Let's put things that, you know, let's put that kind of stuff in the water.

[12:27] And so, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. And so, boom, yeah, I'm being ridiculous, obviously. And then maybe Jesus spoke up and said, oh, oh, and I know, I know. We can put little flappy things in the air.

[12:40] But this is evolution. This is evolution. This is even Christians who will concede that maybe there is a God. There is a God who designed and that God was in the process.

[12:53] But we still need science to help us out and give us millions of years of progression and development. So the expanse is ready and the waters are ready, but the critters aren't ready.

[13:05] They're going to need millions and millions of years to get to the point where they can do the kinds of things that we see them do now. Or was there a great designer who readied a world to create the living creatures and put them in it and put them right in the places where they were perfectly designed to be?

[13:22] And from day one. In terms of their creation, they were doing what God made them to do in the place that he made for them to do it in.

[13:34] Now, that's what the Bible says in clear terms. That's what we're reading. And so we camp there. Evolutionary theory. Holds that sea creatures and birds evolved from land creatures.

[13:47] And that the complexity and diversity in nature developed over millions and millions of years from simpler systems.

[14:00] And all of that happened randomly. There were very, very simple systems of life that began. Nobody knows how. Where did all that even start?

[14:11] Nobody knows how. This is all guesswork. But from those very simple one-celled, simple-celled systems came the complexity and diversity of what we see today.

[14:22] And by the way, what you are sitting here today in the way of a system and a machine, if you will, the way you function in your body, to the complex systems that we see in our world, whether it be other animals or whatever, all of that took millions and millions of years to develop.

[14:39] And now let's put the punctuation on the end of it here. It's a matter of time. Randomly. By chance. And that's why it takes millions and millions and millions of years, because it has to develop on its own, by chance, randomly, with no system involved.

[15:01] Now, friends, that takes a lot of faith to believe something like that. What I'm pointing out to you is such is the mind of the unbelieving person.

[15:14] What are we told in Scripture? That the unbelieving mind is hostile to the things of God. The unbelieving mind hates God and hates the things of God. And it isn't any different with the creation account of an almighty God, a designer, creating all of this and making it the way he made it, and then putting what he wanted where he put it to do what he designed it to do.

[15:37] We don't need millions of years in that. We need to just read the Bible and take it for what it says. There's no reason to look at this as mythology, allegory.

[15:48] The creation account actually reverses both of these false notions, that things develop from simpler systems and they develop randomly. No. The complexity and diversity of water creatures and birds provide absolutely no scientific evidence that they evolved from simpler systems.

[16:06] None. I don't know what you've read and what you've been told in your biology classes or whatever. There is no scientific concrete evidence that any of this developed from simpler systems into the complex systems we see today.

[16:25] And the order of creation is unmistakably clear. God made the water creatures first, then the birds. The birds are wholly distinct from what swarms in the waters of our world.

[16:41] So these are two different kinds of creatures. Not one kind of creature that all the other creatures came from. No. Now, I'm going to hasten on because where we're going to spend most of our time is on this next point.

[16:57] And then I'll just have a couple of things to say in the final point. This is where we'll spend most of our time. Look. It's the good of God created in verse 21. In verse 20, then God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms or team with swarms of living creatures.

[17:14] Let the birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens. Verse 21. God created the great sea monsters in every living creature that moves with which the water swarmed after their kind in every wing bird after its kind.

[17:31] And God saw that it was good. Following on, if you'll notice in the text, following on verse 20 where God said, we have verse 21 beginning, God created.

[17:44] God said, God created. God created in verse 21 is the result of God said in verse 20.

[17:55] The result of God speaking. It fills out verse 21. God created fills out the command of God said by describing what immediately took place when God spoke.

[18:10] So while verse 20 dealt with the abundance of smaller marine life, now the great sea monsters are mentioned.

[18:21] And that's pretty much a literal translation. So listen now. These are not dinosaurs. That's day six. The word for sea monster is actually tanin.

[18:34] Tanin. It can also mean sea dragon, sea monster or serpent monster and crocodile. The phrase that we see in our text, every living creature that moves, that phrase is used in the context of describing water creatures.

[18:54] You see that? It's about water. So we're obviously talking about larger creatures living in the water. Larger than maybe what we saw in verse 20 when he talked about the swarms teeming in the ocean, the great schools of fish.

[19:12] Now we're talking about a larger size aquatic creature made for the water. Here again, movement is emphasized in the sea. Movement is emphasized in the text.

[19:24] These larger creatures were made to move about the waters. So you might begin to think of all of these great big creatures in the sea and in the rivers and all.

[19:37] And you think, wow, they're migrating. So maybe migration comes to mind. But I thought immediately of the gracefulness and fluidity of these great big creatures when you see these documentaries of them swimming in the water.

[19:53] So these would be what? What's the first big sea creature that comes to mind when you think of a sea monster? A whale. Absolutely. So God is making whales.

[20:03] Whales, dolphins, they're in a whole other class of sea creatures beyond the gilled fish, aren't they? Why is it that a whale is different from the gilled creatures that are swimming in the schools under the water?

[20:15] Because they're air breathers. Right? They come up and then they dive. You know, I read that I think it was, it might have been a sperm whale, but I think it might have been the humpback whale.

[20:30] Can dive, they get air and they can dive and they can go, I don't even remember how far it was, but it was like miles. They can go multiple miles under the water and they can stay under the water for two hours before they come back up for air.

[20:46] God made those creatures like that. They didn't develop into that. He made them that way. And he made these creatures on day five. So all of these different creatures, everything that moves, every creature that moves, he's talking about every creature that moves in the water, were created on day five for the context of the water.

[21:09] They're moving, they're living. So these are large creatures built for aquatic life. Now you say, how large? Well, a whale's pretty big, isn't it?

[21:21] But we have a record of other creatures as well. And so I would like to introduce you to this one. Spinosaurus.

[21:35] Spinosaurus. It's a creature bigger than T-Rex. Paleontologists have known about this animal since finding parts of its skeleton in 1910.

[21:46] They took educated guesses about the dimensions of the animal from fragments of the skeleton at that time. But in 2014, they found a more intact skeleton of this creature.

[22:02] In particular, they found a complete tail and a good portion of the spine. And what this did was it helped them realize that this particular animal was made for the water.

[22:20] Made for the water. Was Spinosaurus a dinosaur at all? I'm not going to solve all that.

[22:31] I'm just suggesting to you that this is a critter that looks like God made it on the fifth day for the water. If it was made on day five, then it's not a land creature.

[22:42] In 2001, in the movie Jurassic Park 3, you will see, if you've seen this movie, you'll see Spinosaurus running around on land killing T-Rex in a great battle.

[22:57] And then running around and terrorizing all the people all over the park. But it was pure conjecture that led to that image. Hollywood, in their conception of Spinosaurus, they were just following secular paleontologists who considered Spinosaurus primarily a land animal who hunted in shallow rivers.

[23:20] Now, personally, I'm glad this thing's extinct. Doug, can you imagine you and I out on your boat? No. If I knew that critter was in, or even possibly could, there'd be no boat for me.

[23:34] I'd be on the shore and I'd be watching and whoever was behind the boat skiing and doing all that, this thing wouldn't come after them. They'd get your boat. The boat would be gone.

[23:44] This thing is huge and obviously ferocious. Those teeth are over six inches long that you saw in that skeleton. So I'm personally glad that this puppy is extinct and we don't have to live around him anymore.

[23:59] Turns out, the skeleton that they found in 2014 had short stubby hind legs. Just like that of a hippo. And arms like T-Rex.

[24:11] But the one feature that amazed everyone was its tail. Its tail was 17 feet long. You guys, do we have any...

[24:21] How long is... I meant to measure this. How long do you think this room is? What would you say? Okay. Going this way?

[24:34] Okay. So that'll give you an idea of how big this thing was. It was shaped like a giant paddle. Evolutionary theory teaches that natural processes, you might read that's code for random chance, over millions of years, turn fish into lizards, lizards into dinosaurs, and dinosaurs into birds.

[25:00] Likewise, Spinosaurus' tail adapted and evolved over millions of years, they say, by natural processes, where its original dinosaur tail changed into a paddle form to adapt to its water environment.

[25:16] To support this theory, there would be, then, you would think, or should be, some type of evidence of this transition and this transformation in the fossils they find.

[25:30] That is not what they find. Across the spectrum. In an article by the Institute for Creation Research, they commented on this and said, Spinosaurus was most likely created by God on day five for the water.

[26:35] In fact, there are many creation scientists that I read who believe that Spinosaurus is a really good candidate for the Bible's Leviathan, who played in the water, was a water creature.

[26:51] Leviathan was a water creature. But, but, not if you listen to the folks at National Geographic. Look, they say that it lived, what, a hundred million years ago.

[27:09] In some accounts that I read, it's 165 million years ago. Its tail, they quote, I quote from them, is the most extreme aquatic, aquatic adaptation ever found in a large predatory dinosaur.

[27:25] So, they're saying that the tail adapted over time to a water environment. It wasn't made that way. It didn't start out that way. It's a land animal that had a, you know, long, wispy tail, just like most of the other dinosaurs.

[27:37] And that that tail, over millions of years, became paddle form. Now, again, I just put to you, that takes a lot of faith, doesn't it? A lot of faith. There's no fossil evidence at all to tie what they're saying with what they find today as they dig these things up.

[27:58] There's no transitional evidence of any of that happening. And yet, they, they, I'm telling you, rather than believe the account that God's giving us here, we dig the stuff up out of the ground and we see what it is and still, no, no, no, no, no, it can't be that.

[28:16] It's got to be this. Even though we can't find any evidence to support it, it's got to be that. Why? Because we can't believe that it's anything any different. We can't believe in a God who would create something like that.

[28:29] Well, as a predatory dinosaur, it would be a day six creature, which, God willing, we'll get to next time.

[28:40] But they claim its tail evolved over millions of years to adapt to its environment. The Bible tells us very plainly, very, very plainly, God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves in the water, with which the waters swarmed after their kind.

[29:02] It was amazing to me as I continued to read, and this was more evidence of the global flood, they found, they have found skeletal remains of this creature all over the world.

[29:14] God is emphasizing movement, and he's highlighting the very special life that he gives to living creatures.

[29:28] The Bible tells us that even Spinosaurus answered to its creator, right? Amen, even Spinosaurus. I want to go a little further with this.

[29:39] This is remarkable for the Hebrew people. Why? Now, you and I use this today, and we understand that as we encounter the teachings of evolution in our culture and in our time, which is a relatively modern thing, we are using this to say, now, wait a minute, that doesn't jive with the measure that Scripture takes for creating all of the creatures and all that God did.

[30:04] We can't take what you're teaching us and put it into the Scriptures because the Scriptures don't start there, and that's not what the Bible says. So we measure what you're saying against what we believe in the Scriptures and what it says, right?

[30:17] That's what we do. This is the measuring tool. The Hebrews, however, didn't have evolution to deal with. So what is all this about for the people who are reading this for the first time under the leadership of Moses?

[30:31] It's remarkable for the Hebrews as they heard this because ancient peoples greatly feared sea monsters in particular. Canaanite mythology deified these sea monsters and worshiped them.

[30:46] But for God, according to Job 41, this great beast is nothing more than a pet. I want to show you.

[30:57] Go to Job 41 if you would. Remember, Job is right before Psalms. We're not going to read the whole thing, but the whole thing talks about Leviathan.

[31:08] Now, I'm not saying that this is speaking directly about Spinosaurus. I'm saying it's speaking about Leviathan. There are many creation scientists who think Leviathan could be Spinosaurus.

[31:20] There are others who have thought of it as being a great crocodile. I don't think that fits as well. But notice in Job 41. Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook?

[31:33] That would be no. Can you press down his tongue with a cord? In other words, can you capture him and put him on a leash like you would a dog? No.

[31:45] Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make any many supplications to you? Will he speak to you soft words?

[31:57] You know how when you pet a cat and it purrs? I can't do a cat. Or when you do a dog and they just look up at you and just melt as you. This is the image. Can you take Leviathan?

[32:10] And can you make it this calm pet in your hands? Will he make a covenant with you? Will he? Will you take him for a servant forever?

[32:20] Will you play with him as with a bird? Or will you bind him for your maidens? Give him as pets to you? No. Will the traders bargain over him?

[32:33] Will they divide him among the merchants? Can you fill his skin with harpoons or his head with fishing spears? Lay your hand on him. Remember the battle.

[32:44] You will not do it again. Behold, your expectation is false. Will you be laid low even at the sight of him? No one is so fierce that he dares to arouse him.

[32:58] Who then is he that can stand before me? Who has given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

[33:10] God is saying, I made him. I can play with him. He's nothing more than a pet to me. He'll go on to say, all of your spears and your arrows and your iron instruments are but nothing against a beast like this.

[33:23] You can throw your sling stones at him and they crumble to dust when they hit him. God says, I play with him. I call him by name and sue them. And he does what I want him to do.

[33:37] The point is God's sovereignty over all creation. And that's the point of the creation message. That's why at Grace Church we stand on this as a hill to die on.

[33:49] This is introducing us to the sovereignty of God as creator of all the universe so that all the universe should bow down to him as its creation. Even the parts of creation which intimidate us and tempt us to fear or to even move to false worship are under the hand of Almighty God.

[34:12] The sea creatures and the birds on day five, the fruit trees and plants on day three, the land creatures God is going to make on day six, all were made to propagate, notice in the scripture, after their kind.

[34:28] They were fully mature and functional from the moment God spoke them into existence. That's the part of the text that's being emphasized in after their kind. God said, God made, God created, and there they were in full functioning form.

[34:45] They didn't need any more development than that. Ten times then in this chapter, in chapter one, ten times in chapter one, the phrase, after their kind, is used.

[35:00] So one of the foundational tenets of evolutionary theory is that life on our planet came from, as I mentioned, one organism. And they don't mean that God made everything.

[35:14] That's not what they're saying by one organism. That's what we say. We say one God made everything in the way that he made it, and we give him the glory for it. That's not what they're saying.

[35:26] Henry Morris elaborates on this for us. The evolutionary dogma that all living things are interrelated by common ancestry and descent is refuted by these biblical statements, as well as by all established scientific observations made today.

[35:46] Friends, the Bible clearly tells us that God made different kinds by speaking them into existence from nothing.

[35:57] Within these kinds were all the genetic building blocks for propagation and hybridization. Now, interestingly, in 1 Corinthians 15, 39, the Apostle Paul is explaining how God will make our resurrection bodies different from our earthly bodies.

[36:21] All right, we've heard this, we've seen this, but that even in the new heavens and new earth, we will continue to have a kind of body.

[36:34] We will still have a body. We will eat. It will be like that for us, even in the new heavens and the new earth. Paul takes that teaching about our resurrection bodies being different from our earthly bodies, but still being a body.

[36:51] He takes that, and then he draws on an analogy about that from creation itself to help make his point. All flesh, he says, is not the same flesh.

[37:07] All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men and another flesh of beasts and another flesh of birds and another of fish.

[37:19] So the kinds reproduce within their kind. They do not make new kinds. You cannot take a reptile and get a bird from it, much less fish.

[37:37] You cannot take a primate and make a man from it, a human being. You cannot do that. It's scientifically impossible for that to happen.

[37:49] It takes a lot of faith to believe stuff like that. The idea that birds then evolved from land creatures is full of all kinds of, no pun intended, all kinds, of insurmountable problems.

[38:07] Now I want you to just think about this with me. Not the least of which is how bird lungs and reptile lungs are completely different. This is the point of kinds. Kinds in the text.

[38:20] God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the water swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind.

[38:33] And God saw that it was good. Bird lungs and reptile lungs are very, very different. So the question then comes, well, how did reptile lungs evolve into the complex breathing system of birds?

[38:51] How did that happen? Well, the answer by evolutionists is that it took millions and millions and millions of years for this to happen. In reptiles, air goes in two directions.

[39:05] It goes in and goes out. Bird lungs function in an astounding way. The air travels in only one direction.

[39:19] In and a continuous loop. This breathing process in birds involves multiple air sacs and even their hollow bones as part of the breathing apparatus in birds.

[39:32] Blood moves through their lungs in the opposite direction of the air to provide the most efficient oxygen uptake.

[39:45] Random. Millions of years it took for that to take place. All this came about by chance over millions of years. There is no scientific way a transition of breathing processes could take place from reptiles to birds.

[40:04] But that's what they teach. Even small changes in stages over great periods of time would kill the host.

[40:16] Any aspect of a transition in lung function and in breathing capacity like that would be death producing at any level.

[40:30] They couldn't do it. But a great designer who made them to breathe that way from the very beginning could do it. And that's what he did. One system for men one for beasts one for birds and one for fish says the Bible.

[40:47] This is supernatural. It is miraculous. It is creative genius beyond anything we can compare to or conceive of based on our world and what we can know from history.

[41:03] We take all of this on faith that the Lord is telling us the truth in just the way he's written it to us. We don't have any problem telling evolutionists and people who want to spurn the scriptures that we take what we read on faith.

[41:20] If they come to the point where they say well that's just you're just you're just choosing to believe that. Yeah pretty much that is what it boils down to. But can I tell you where my ability to believe all of that comes from?

[41:35] It's a gift. It's a gift given to me by the one who wrote this and the one who did all of this from the very beginning. He gave me the gift of faith that I might believe that he is who he says he is and have life in his name.

[41:51] This is always going to be about faith and it's why we stand here where we stand. You are not a lesser thinker than anybody else out there because you believe in the creation account.

[42:07] Now people out there will say I can't believe that you believe that. That is so unscientific. This is the most sophisticated explanation for origins that exists. Bar none.

[42:18] Don't back down. Don't be intimidated. You may not be able to argue all of the different things they throw at you in words that long. That I can't even pronounce. You just come to the scriptures and say this is God creating the world and then go down to Colossians chapter 1 and say and here is the name that is given above all names and it says here that he made all this and created all this and that all of us is held together by him.

[42:45] His name is Jesus and we believe that. He made me and he made you and he made you for a purpose and that purpose is for you to glorify him. And he loved you enough to send his son to die for you on the cross.

[42:58] That's the God of creation and we won't back down one iota about who this God is as he reveals himself to us in the creation account. It's all supernatural and we take it on faith.

[43:10] That brings us then to the phrase notice living creatures living creatures. I've skipped over it until now. It's used twice in this passage.

[43:21] It's the first time that God's used it in the creation account. So it stands alone. The Hebrew word is nefesh. Nefesh. It has to do with the throat or the airway.

[43:38] It literally means that which breathes. It's used here to refer to the distinct life of animals. It will be used in chapter 2 verse 7 for man as a living soul.

[43:53] A living nefesh. The point is that humans and animals are alive in different ways from each other and different from vegetation.

[44:06] So even within life itself there is a distinction about that life that points to God as creator and designer.

[44:18] It's just beautiful and amazing. God is going to sharpen these distinctions that I'm talking about now in what he does on day 6.

[44:29] We'll have to wait to get there. Notice again with me in verse 21. God created. God created. He spoke and he created. the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves in the water with which the water swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind and God saw that it was good.

[44:54] The goodness of God is reflected in what he made to be good. It's one more reason why we stand in solidarity and in faith in the Lord on this account and we don't play with it.

[45:10] We don't try to read myth into it or analogy into it or millions of years or gaps or long segments of time. We allow it to stand for what it is.

[45:21] Why? Friends, because the goodness of God is reflected in what God has written to us about what he did. We are seeing something of the nature and character the love and compassion of our God to make a world that was created for the purpose of these living creatures to have life.

[45:44] And at the very end of all of this he's going to cap it off with us and give us a place to live so that we can know him and be with him and walk with him.

[45:56] And then Genesis 3 will happen. Won't it? But then God's going to do something about Genesis 3. And now God does another first.

[46:09] Seeing that all of this is so good he blesses these creatures. The good of God blessed. Verse 22 God blessed them and here's what he said Be fruitful and multiply fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth.

[46:31] Friends God blessed these water and air creatures by enabling them to fruitfully multiply. Isn't that what it says?

[46:41] God blessed them. How did he bless them? He blessed them in the place of being able to be fruitful and multiply. That's the blessing. I bless you and now create within you this ability to multiply yourselves and fill the earth with what you are doing what I designed you to do to reproduce and keep the seas and the skies filled with multitudes of your kind.

[47:09] God spoke this command to them be fruitful and multiply. His word gave them the ability to reproduce life. Do you hear me? God gave them this command by spoken ability and in doing that God's word gave these creatures the ability to reproduce life among themselves.

[47:34] God's word gave them life and the ability to reproduce life. God's word did that. That doesn't sound too strange to us does it?

[47:47] That God's word gives us life. His living word is life for his creatures and brings life to his creatures. He caps it all off in verse 23.

[48:01] There was evening and there was morning a fifth day. Will you pray with me? Father, there's so much to say and so much that we could look at and explore just looking at the creatures of the sea, both the former creatures that are now extinct and the creatures that live today.

[48:27] They're a marvel, God. They are a marvel. We could look at different kinds of birds and all these creatures that fly and marvel at the variety and the complexity.

[48:43] I don't understand how a hummingbird is at my window for the summer and delights me and then flies thousands of miles across open ocean and comes back again.

[49:00] I don't know how they do that, but you do. You designed them to do it. There are just so many wonders, so many things that capture us as we look at them and contemplate what we know of what you've made.

[49:16] And that complexity and diversity and variety astounds us and we should allow it to arrest our hearts and draw our hearts into worship because you are the great creator behind all of that wisdom.

[49:32] Wisdom too great for us for sure, but not so great that we can't be awed by it and be brought to worship you. Thank you, God, for making us as we will, Lord willing, see next Sunday that your crowning achievement and all of this creative activity are human beings.

[49:51] And thank you that we can say even now that you made us in your image to reflect your character and to showcase your goodness on the earth. Thank you for all these wonderful truths, Lord.

[50:04] I pray that you'll help your people go out this week just with a wonderful confidence and a great growing compassion for those who are lost in the lie of evolution, denying the creator and missing the joys of knowing you as our great designer and then the purposes for which you made us.

[50:25] We know why we're here. You've put us here to know Christ and to glorify him in all ways. And so we live our lives that way, straightforward and simple and true. Thank you for helping us face the complexities and diversities of life, the trials and the hardships and the grief, the sadness, the loss, because we know that you are sovereign and you have made us to know you as sovereign.

[50:50] Thank you for all these blessings in Jesus' precious name. Amen.