Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 214th episode. In this episode I’m bringing you another edition of Bible study content I’m creating for my church. This content is every bit as professionally produced as my normal episodes on MHB — and my intent is to continue cross-publishing them for your benefit. So without further delay I bring you: Summit Bible Study.
Hello friends and thank you for listening to another Bible study. Today we are finishing our work in the first chapter of Genesis. So we’ll examine verses 20-31. The primary purpose of the Bible is to establish who God is, who we are, and how we might relate to Him. Such revelation logically begins with the creation of the universe. Where did all of this come from? How did everything as we know it begin? This starting point has been the focus of our study in Genesis 1, emphasizing the importance of God being our Creator. God’s creation of the heavens, the Earth, and everything in them is foundational truth upon which the rest of our worldview is built. God’s role as Creator helps us to make sense of the rest of His character. Understanding who God is as our Creator allows us to maintain proper perspective as we develop our relationship with Him as our Master and as our Savior.
We know God’s title as Creator is important because idolaters and secularists have combatted this title for all of human history. Ultimately, whoever created the universe is very likely the sovereign authority over its nature and its purpose — including the nature and purpose of ourselves. As we’ve reviewed the first four days of creation we observed God create light on the first day, the firmament on the second day, the oceans, dry land, and vegetation on the third day. As we explored the fourth day we saw God create the greater lights which are the sun and the moon — then finally He populated the cosmos with innumerable stars — each of which He knows by name.
In the previous study we discussed how significance in the sight of God is not equal to magnitude. Despite the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, scripture indicates God’s prioritization is on Earth — and specifically on humanity. The creation text boldly proclaims God created the sun, moon, and stars to serve planet Earth. Humanity’s conflating size with significance has resulted in millennia of idolatry presented as worship of celestial bodies. This kind of idolatry is particularly offensive to God because the cosmos belongs to Him and He created it to serve us — yet we’ve reversed course and began to serve it. We saw God prepare the Earth for habitation and noted how because of His unbroken chain of providence, even today, we live embedded in this first creative miracle. The food you eat has descended down an unbroken lineage tracing all the way back to this first miracle where God spawned the vegetation, trees, and fruits bearing seed of their kind ex nihilo — which means from nothing.
Today we’ll finish this chapter by reading about some of God’s most impressive creations ex nihilo. Specifically we’ll see Him create all aquatic life and all birds on the fifth day. On the sixth day He creates large animals like livestock as well as everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. Then finally, still on the sixth day, God creates the crown-jewel of all His work: human beings. Scripture says, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” The final verse of this chapter presents God surveying all that He had made across six days and evaluating it as very good. So let’s begin our study by reading verses 20-23:
Gen 1:20-23
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.
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.
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.
Across the first four days of creation we saw God create majestic yet simple things. The complexity of His creations gradually increased with each day. In the first two Bible studies we admired the mathematical precision of the physical constant of the universe. It’s a work of art of the highest order. But even more complex are the living beings He creates which depend on this precision. They are like jewels embedded in the crown of His design. This gradual increase in excellence teaches us that across the span of our lives we should endeavor to make our own works more excellent.
We should press into advancement so that the works we accomplish at the end of our race might be our best works. We you begin any kind of work you’re going to do it badly at first. It takes diligent practice and repetition to achieve mastery. As Christians we should not be afraid of these first stages of poor performance. It’s not that God’s performance was poor during the first stages of creation, but there’s a reason why His most advanced designs came at the end and rested upon His previous work. Expecting to start out at the top of our own craft is dispiriting and causes inappropriately founded resentment. You may begin to think the system is biased against you when in reality the most impressive works are built one step at a time — even when God Himself builds them.
God creates the fish and the birds on the same day, and depending on which translation you use you’ll read that both were brought forth by the waters. Birds emerging from the water doesn’t make sense when we evaluate it using only second and third-order natural causes — but neither does plants growing before the sun exists. God is doing it this way not to give us a biology lesson — rather to demonstrate that the power of His first cause and His ability to sustain what He’s created is entirely independent of these second-order natural causes.
In Peter’s second epistle to the believers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, he warned them that in the last days dubious attitudes would emerge concerning the truth of God’s creation account. Peter reminded them, “That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
The willful blindness of the scoffers which Peter addresses in these verses is targeted directly at God’s power as the Prime Mover and Ultimate Sustainer. The scoffers are doubting anything in the creation story which appears in conflict with their own understanding of natural science. But their doubt isn’t coming from some higher form of knowledge which invalidates the creation account — Peter says this attitude is the consequence of them walking after their own lusts. So as Christians, when we read about God’s creative miracles, we need to guard ourselves against the kind of faithless skepticism which may be originating in our sinful flesh.
When God says, “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.” He’s not saying the waters themselves had productive power. God is the one who created the fish in the waters out of nothing, and God is the one who created the birds who flew out of the waters and into the sky. God’s command is what let them be brought into being. During this day God also created many of the insects we are familiar with. Some of them insects of flight, some ground insects, and some who live in and around the waters. As human beings we have a bias towards large things, and so we often see the larger mammals as more majestic than insects. But close examination of insects like ants reveals the wisdom of God every bit as much as we see in the more glorified animals.
In this moment of creation we observe delineation between the different sorts of birds and the different sorts of fish. Scripture says God created each of them after their own kind. So from the very first act of creation there was genetic variety among the sea creatures and birds. You might wonder why it’s necessary to mention that — but there’s actually powerful polemic evidence the fossil record which stands against the secular story of molecules-to-man evolution. This evidence is called the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion refers to a part of the fossil record wherein virtually all body-plans or “kinds” of animals appear all at once. The Cambrian Explosion is hard evidence contradicting the secularist narrative of billions of years of slow evolution moving one transitional form into another until we end up with the complexity and variety of life we see today. God spoke and a diversity of animals appeared immediately.
When scripture describes God creating the sea creatures, it makes specific mention of whales. We mentioned human bias towards large animals, and indeed this bias is not entirely without cause. The whales are mentioned by name in this passage because their size, strength, and dominance exceeded that of other sea creatures. The whales revealed the power and greatness of their Creator. Some interpreters believe whales are the same creatures referred to in Job when God mentions “the leviathan.” When you reflect on the intelligent design of so much of God’s creation, especially the animals which have the spark of life, the most logical reaction is to praise and worship God. The diversity of body plans, sizes, and instincts found across the animal kingdom makes the story of macroevolution untenable and the story of creation inescapable.
After creating this multiplicity of life, we see God bless them and command them to be fruitful and multiply. While death did not enter the creation until the Fall of Man, this blessing for life and procreation is a foreordination of what would become necessary in God’s perfect plan. Part of the reason for this command is that life is a fleeting thing. From the moment we’re born we begin progressing towards our inevitable deaths. We should not view our lives as having the strength and immovability of a stone — rather we should view them as delicate and vulnerable as a flame which at any moment could be extinguished. Our God-given desire for procreation is the Lord’s way of continuing the chain of life despite this vulnerability. It’s part of God’s character to bless His own works and the works God does shall stand for as long as He determines it. Nothing or no one can put a stop to what God has set in motion unless He first wills it to stop.
The animals were generated by the creative power of God, and from that moment forward they were preserved by the providential power of God. Fertility and procreation are a direct consequence of God’s blessing. This is something we should remember when our crops and livestock multiply abundantly. We should also remember His blessing when we have children — and we should understand that children are a gift from God. Job testifies to the blessing of God’s providence in Job chapter 12 when he rebukes his accusers by challenging them, “But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you; And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you. “Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you; And let the fish of the sea declare to you.“Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the Lord has done this,In whose hand is the life of every living thing, And the breath of all mankind?” As Christians, when we do any kind of activity outside in nature, it benefits us to open our eyes and pay attention to all of these living creatures. It’s good for our spirit to contemplate the wisdom, power, and goodness of God who created them. It positions our hearts to worship and to stand in awe of Him. Let’s continue with verses 24-25:
Gen 1:24-25
24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so.
25 God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
This first part of the sixth day of creation shows God creating more animals to walk the Earth. During the fifth day He prioritized the fish of the sea and the birds of the air so now the focus had shifted to land mammals and creatures that scurry along the ground. This creation day brings forward the animals which humanity would use as livestock like cattle. Just like before, in this instance the creative power originated in the word of God. The animals emerged from the ground not because of the ground’s ability to produce them — but simply because God commanded it. These animals came forth according to their kind which means they conformed to the exact specifications of the eternal counsel of God concerning their creation. They appeared exactly as He had in mind.
It’s worth noting the astounding diversity God created in the animal kingdom. This is something we easily take for granted, but the manifold wisdom of God is reflected in the designs of the things He has created. Some of the animals were wild, others more easy for man to domesticate. Some were herbivorous and others carnivorous. He made bold, majestic animals like lions and He also made clever, sneaking animals like foxes and snakes. Some animals He made with a purpose to work like horses, while others He made with a purpose to provide sustenance like sheep. There were even some creatures fit to satisfy both offices — like oxen. And then there were some who could never be entirely tamed like tigers and other predators. Diversity for its own sake is not a strength nor is it a desirable goal, but diversity given by God according to His designs makes for a better, more interesting world. Let’s continue with verses 26-28:
Gen 1:26-28
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
The first thing we notice about this passage is that, despite this still being the sixth day of creation, this next creative act is given its own space by repeating the demarcation, “Then God said.” Also notice how humanity is the very last creative act of God. He didn’t create human beings until everything else was already finished. This is in part to prove humanity had no hand in assisting His creative work. This is why God’s able to challenge Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.” Being created last helps us remain humble and reminds us that all worlds belong to the Creator God.
I think this truth also shines light on the comprehensive sovereignty of God. God’s challenge to Job concerning the creation was a response to Job questioning the will of God. It established a framework of authority which suggests God has done what He has done independent of us and God is going to do what He is going to do whether we like it or not. In the New Testament James sharpens this point by saying, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.” This view of God’s sovereignty need not inspire fatalism, in fact I think the opposite is true. We’re able to live and breathe easily solely because of the fact we serve an omnipotent God who is in control of everything down to the smallest detail.
Creating human beings last is also symbolic of God’s affection for us. Remember how we said God’s creative order starts with the simple and gradually increases in complexity. His final act of creating human beings in His own image is His most magnificent and complex creative work. Across the first five days of creation God had been preparing the universe for human occupation, and He dignified us by ensuring all was complete before He brought us into being. From the moment of our creation, we’ve been able to explore and contemplate the things our heavenly Father has made and comfort ourselves in them. We still do this today, which is why so many Christians claim to feel closest to God in the midst of nature.
While there are important distinctions between man and beast, one commonality is that we were created on the same day from the same earth. This means we have instincts and desires which, if we fail to subdue them, can make us more like wild beasts than like sophisticated men. The language introducing the creation of man is also different from everything which came before us. Notice in the previous creation days how God says, “Let there be light, let there be a firmament, let the waters bring forth and let the earth bring forth.” We’ve already established that God Himself is creating by the power of His word at every turn — but it’s interesting to point out how He explicitly says this for the creation of humanity. The language shifts from letting some part of the creation bring forth another part into, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”
What does this change in language signify? Well when God is declaring over the universe that each new layer should be brought forth into being — He’s creating from a position of authority. He’s like a king giving orders to the creation. But when He creates humanity there’s a kind of affection and intimacy symbolized by Him creating them directly with no intermediary structures. God’s creation of humanity was an act of love and He did it with a great sense of joy. In Proverbs chapter 8, when the personification of wisdom is speaking about creating the universe alongside God He says, “Then I was beside Him, as a master workman; And I was daily His delight, Rejoicing always before Him,Rejoicing in the world, His earth, And having my delight in the sons of men.”
The narrative across the creation account gives us the sense that each phase of creation was simply preliminary to this final act of creating man. It’s as if this was the creative work God had been looking forward to during each creation day. In the very first verse of Genesis it says God created the heavens and the earth. Humanity is distinct among all of God’s creation because within us is created both flesh and spirit, both heaven and earth.
Also notice the plurality in the name of God given at the creation of humanity. It says, “Let Us make man in Our image.” We know Father, Son and Spirit are together from everlasting to everlasting — but the explicit mention of all three during the creation of humanity indicates they counseled together as they considered the creation of us. We owe our creation, and therefore our entire existence, to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So now when we are born-again in baptism we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are created by a triune God and so the highest purpose of our life’s design is to be dedicated and devoted to a triune God.
We read in this passage that human beings are made in the image of God according to His likeness. The terms image and likeness complement each other here to deliver the meaning that human beings are nearest in resemblance to God than any other creature He has made. Despite this resemblance there remains a near infinite distance between us and God. A distance so great it is rendered impassable apart from salvation in Jesus Christ. Jesus alone is the incarnate image of God’s person. He is the Son of His Father God which means He is of the same nature as God.
When we talk about humanity being made in the image of God the idea is more like the image of a king stamped onto a coin. While we bear His image, we ourselves are not God the way Jesus is God. We can attempt to describe the image of God by subcategorizing it three ways. The first is that man resembles God in the nature and constitution of man’s soul. God does not have a physical body the way we have physical bodies in this life. It’s true God honored the physical body of man through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Jesus put on mortal flesh so that He might reconcile the mortal flesh of man to His Father. In the same way, when we enter into Heaven we will put on the glory of an eternal body just as Christ has an eternal body.
The physical body of human beings is designed by the same God who created the heavens and the Earth. Since we share in the same essential platform as the incarnate Christ, we may conclude God designed humanity’s body-plan to match His design for Himself in the fullness of time. All this means is that our glorified bodies in heaven will not be entirely distinct platforms from those we have right now. It’s just that the bodily consequences of sinful vice and the disease of fallen nature will be expunged from them. Our bodies will be good as Christ’s body is good.
Our souls bear the image of God because they are intelligent and immortal. Our spirits are actively engaged and they’re able to influence others as well as be influenced by others. We use our souls to create actuality out of potential futures in the same way God created actuality from the precosmogonic chaos during the first day. Of the ways in which we resemble God, our souls present the clearest image. This is because our souls are made up of understanding, will, and the energy for action. The living soul is the condition of the lights of consciousness being on as opposed to off. I don’t believe we have a will that is entirely free of influence and external control, but we do have a will nonetheless. One of the key measurements of a person’s sanctification is the extent to which his will begins to recognize and align with God’s sovereign will.
The second subcategory of God’s image on us is the authority He has granted us over the creation. God said, “Let us make man in our image, and let him have dominion.” One of the fascinating aspects of human beings is how powerful they are despite being so fragile. There are not many parts of the world where we could survive without the power of intellect. We don’t have the same natural tools as wild animals and yet we’ve subjugated even apex predators to our own will. We don’t need retractable claws or a sharpened sense of smell because we use our intellect to develop artificial tools for surviving and thriving in even the harshest climates. The animal kingdom fears and serves man in the same way man must fear and serve God.
The third dimension of God’s image is found in our knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. God is holy and Jesus lived an upright life. Listen to what Paul says when he encourages the church in Ephesus to live as Christians:
Eph 4:17-24
17 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,
18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;
19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
20 But you did not learn Christ in this way,
21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus,
22 that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,
23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
24 and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
The image of God is revealed in humanity to the extent that their minds are renewed and they practice holiness. None of us represent this image perfectly as Jesus did, but our continued sanctification implies a clearer representation across time. Jesus is upright and during His incarnation He shaped all of His natural power to conformity with the will of God. Jesus sees all things clearly — this includes Himself, the Father, and the world. There are no mistakes or incompletions in His knowledge. Throughout His life on earth He complied readily and universally with the will of the Father without hesitation or resistance. As we continue to grow in our likeness to Christ, we also begin to see all things with increasing clarity. To have the mind of Christ is to see God, yourself, and the world as it actually is — with one-to-one mapping.
Part of being Christlike means your affections are well-regulated and you are not possessed by any appetite or passion. It means your thoughts meditate on all the best things and you are no longer enslaved to vanity or to a defiant attitude. Before the Fall, this was the condition of Adam and Eve as well. They lived holy, happy, upright lives. Such an honor bestowed upon man to live in the image of God is why Christians have deep respect for human life today. We should not harm each other with our words or our actions because doing so is an affront to this image which has been given to us. It offends God when we debase ourselves in service to sin because such wickedness besmirches the honor He’s given us. You can’t deface the image of God in your own life without paying consequences for it. The more you vandalize the image of God with your own sins and evil, the more corrupt you become and the further you fall. Extend this process far enough and you’ll no longer recognize God nor will anyone see the light of God in you.
When God makes man He speaks and the creation event immediately follows. One of the ways God is distinct from us is that our words and actions are separate while God’s words create actions. Part of the reason God’s word has immediate consequences on reality is because God never lies. Every word God speaks is absolute truth. A greater measure of human character is found in their actions because it’s easy for human beings to say one thing while doing or believing something different. One of the reasons lying is so dangerous is because it attempts to form an actuality which is incongruent with what’s real and true. Reality rejects the lie and destroys the falsehoods built on it. If you get caught up in a structure of lies when reality snaps back at it, it’s easy for you yourself to become collateral damage in the destruction.
Verse 27 of this passage shows us that God made human beings male and female. This is an example of another basic truth which humanity has gone to great lengths to subvert. Some of us have constructed a massive set of false premises concerning transgenderism which has resulted in enormous numbers of people inhabiting a structure of lies. As the truth continues to reassert itself, these people end up paying the price for it. God created Adam first and then He created Eve from the bone of Adam.
It’s useful to notice how God created just one couple to be bonded in marriage. Adam and Eve. He didn’t create Adam and then supply him with a harem of wives and concubines. Polygamy was never part of God’s plan for marriage. Jesus Himself references the creation when He’s speaking against divorce in Matthew 19. He’s explaining how marriage was always implied in God’s plan by designing human beings to be male and female. The union in marriage where one man and one woman join to become one flesh was instantiated in God’s plan even before the Fall. God hates divorce and divorce was never something people should do lightly. In Adam’s case, there was no other woman for him to marry should he choose to put away Eve. He had no other options. It’s unclear how many marriages today would function much better if both spouses treated the marriage as if there were no other options.
Angels are immortal and it’s not part of their design to propagate their species — consequently they are neither male nor female. Human beings no longer marry in heaven because in heaven we become eternal as well. Biological sex is given and purposed for the union of man and woman in marriage. In the present, mortal realm, our ability to be fruitful and multiply is the only protection we have against aging and eventual death. The candles of this world can only remain lit by reproducing themselves in other candles.
God began the human race through one man and one woman so that despite our multiplication into many nations, we might be compelled to love one another. We might remember our common humanity and the truth that all of us are descended from a common ancestor. When God instructs Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, He’s simultaneously granting them a large inheritance. Part of God’s command to multiply was that this multiplication might fill the Earth. God’s design was that humanity would spread to every region of the planet and subdue it. Human beings were made to dwell upon the face of all the Earth. In the previous studies, we discussed God’s intent to prepare the planet for human occupation. It is at this moment that His intent is made explicit to Adam and Eve.
Our purpose was given that we might govern the planet and receive the kindness of God’s providence daily. The lesser creatures on Earth are beneficiaries of God’s providence as well, although they may not know it. Since we were given the capacity to know God and to recognize His providence, it’s our responsibility to honor Him and praise Him for it. The preeminent purpose of our mortal lives on Earth is to bring glory to God in the way we live. Along with this purpose, we really are in a holding pattern of steady growth and sanctification which prepares us for a better state of being in heaven.
When we talk about fruitfully multiplying, it’s important we remember that fertility is decided by God. Having many children is a reflection of God’s blessing on you. Concerning God’s agency to create and give children scripture says, “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward.Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth.Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them…” Without God’s promises and without God’s blessing, one generation would not be able to pass into the next. God is in charge of who is conceived and when. Psalm 139 famously reads, “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.” God’s direct control over creating every individual within the womb is the primary reason abortion is such a heinous sin. To abort an unborn child is to dispatch a person who is fearfully and wonderfully made before he or she even has a chance at life on Earth.
After giving them instruction to be fruitful and multiply, God tells Adam and Eve to subdue the Earth and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. There is no doubt humanity has subdued the Earth. We have dominion over the animal kingdom. It’s true there are natural disasters and other functions of the planet which bring us to our knees in helplessness — but by and large we’ve become so technologically advanced that we can travel anywhere and live in most climates easily. Animal life and biological ecosystems are upheld simply because we draft laws to protect them from ourselves and others.
This dominion is given to us by God both for our survival as well as a free extension of honor from God. God placed man in an honorable position so that man might realize the love God has for him and be more strongly inclined to bring honor to God. He didn’t create us as helpless prey animals doomed to suffer the reality of predators on a harsh planet. He gave us a home suitable for life and gave us the ability to domesticate wild things. Despite the power we have over God’s creation — it is merely a shadow of what once was before the Fall. Before sin entered the world Adam and Eve were able to live in peaceful equilibrium with their environment. This peace will be the condition of humanity and animals within the eternal, redeemed creation of the future.
Until that glorious moment we must live in a fallen world, but we’re able to do so because of God’s unfailing providence. God gives us what is necessary to support our lives and safety and He even gives us a better name than we had before original sin. Because of Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross, we are able to be called redeemed in Christ. To be redeemed and to belong to Jesus is an even better state of being than the paradise lost by Adam and Eve. Let’s continue by reading verses 29-30:
Gen 1:29-30
29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.
Scripture says God preserves both man and beast, and this preservation is highlighted in these verses. This passage represents the third part of the sixth day’s work, but we don’t see any ex nihilo creation events. We see an ordination from God which determines every green plant shall be food for both man and beast. In the pre-Fall created order, there was no need for carnivorous diets. Man was given green plants, fruits, and other products of the Earth to be his food. The same was true for the animals. We don’t see any instruction to eat meat until after the Flood in Genesis 9.
I want to be careful here. I love eating meat and the thought of a vegan diet is untenable to me. But it would not have been this way before the Fall. My craving for meat is a consequence of the cursed creation. Fruits and vegetables would have been sufficiently satiating in the pre-Fall created order. Humanity was made out of the earth and so we were maintained out of it. Our earthly sustenance keeps us alive and so we should thank God for that. But even this sustenance is temporary and can’t stave off death forever. Jesus gives us the kind of living water from which once we drink deep — we shall never thirst again.
God knows what you need to survive and from the richness of His own love He gives it to you. Only in Christ Jesus may we have all the supports and comforts of this life. Today His providence is so bountiful that most of us have lost the ability to hunt for or grow our own food. We simply take a short trip to the grocery store and all the food we could possibly imagine is right there for us. As we live and thrive in the Lord’s bounty, it’s important that we remember to thank Him and to live in His glory. With the exception of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve lived in contentment concerning their food. God supplied food for their lives, and so they did not demand food for their lusts. This should teach us to be thankful for the providence of God and not to miss it by always coveting the next best thing.
In addition to providing food for humanity, God also provided it for the animal kingdom. All creatures, even those we know as carnivorous today, were given diets of greens, fruits, and the bounty of the earth. God cares about animals. God cares about animals probably more than you do. No creature is small enough or insignificant enough to escape His careful gaze. His faithful providence for the animal kingdom is another reason we should praise and glorify God. He satisfies the daily desire of every living thing and allows them to feed at His table every day. God is a rich and bountiful steward of the Earth, and this should encourage us to vest our faith in Him that He will give us what we need to eat and what we need to drink. We don’t need to resort to soliciting manipulative trade deals or stealing goods and services in order to be fed. God provided for Adam and the animal kingdom despite their lack of reciprocity. He still provides for humanity and the animals without reciprocity. So He certainly won’t allow His saints to deteriorate into privation while granting sustenance to all these lesser creations. God feeds His birds, and so we can rest assured He will feed His human babies. Let’s finish this study by reading verse 31:
Gen 1:31
31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
This final verse of chapter one wraps up the creation with an evaluation of God’s finished work. The results were without flaw. Everything God made was very good and was given for a very good purpose. Two facts worthy of note in this evaluation are these: God’s work is perfect, and God will always finish what He started. This verse also gives us the first explication of God’s omniscience. Scripture says God saw all that He had made. This means He could see everything He had made all at the same time. This remains true of God today. All the work of His hand is still under His eye. The omniscient Creator God who made all things still sees all things. This includes ourselves at every turn of our daily lives.
God knows all things about His creation and so for Him to judge it as very good means it was objectively very good. There’s no theological grounds from which to suggest God’s initial creation was somehow less than it could have been. This means the Fall of man and the redemptive work of Christ — planned in the eternal mind of God from before the creation itself — was part of God’s very good design. Watching God reflect on the products of His own wisdom and power sets an example for our own contemplation today.
God has given us the ability to reflect on our ways and to judge the quality of our decisions based on the fruit they produce. It is a Christian obligation of sanctification to continually self-evaluate and aspire to a truthful understanding of yourself. Where are you falling short? What parts of your life are bearing bad fruit? These are indicators of the things which must be changed as you are shaped into the image of Jesus Christ. Psalm 119 encourages us to consider our ways and turn our feet to the testimony of the Lord. This means using the scripture as plumb-line to determine what’s righteous, true, and good in our lives.
At the close of each day it is wise for a Christian to reflect on his or her choices and the quality of one’s work. We should commune with God in prayer and ask Him what we did which we shouldn’t have done and what we failed to do which we should have done? This process should repeat in kind when we arrive at the end of a week and begin our Sabbath rest. Self-evaluation and meditation on the word of God should be a part of every healthy Christian’s life consistently until they finish the race at the end of their lives. No Christian should come to the end of their life unaware of the sins standing between himself and God. The principal office of God’s Holy Spirit is to point these things out to us and equip us to overcome them so that when we face the grave — we can do so faithfully and we can do so in repentance for our sins.
Notice how God waits until His work is complete before He declares it to be very good. If anyone has the authority to make premature assumptions about the quality of His work — it’s God. As Christians we should resist making pronunciations until we’ve heard the entire case or until the work is complete. Very often we don’t notice how many mistakes we’ve made until we get to the other side of something. Part of Christian humility is understanding we’re going to perform poorly at new tasks until we’ve developed a mastery of them. Unlike our first efforts, God’s first attempt at creating the heavens and the earth was entirely well-executed and there was no flaw in anything He made. The definition of flawless in this context simply means the created order perfectly matched the vision God had in mind before He made it.
To call the creation “good” also implies it was fit to satisfy the purpose for which God designed it. In philosophy this is called a platonic ideal — it just means we’re able to objectively judge the quality of something based on that thing’s ability to fulfill its purpose. So if I say I have a bad knee, a bad knee is different from a good knee only insofar as a bad knee is incapable of performing the purpose of a knee. The purpose of the creation was to provide habitation for humanity and to glorify its Creator God.
The purpose of the creation is what accounts for the difference between God evaluating it as “good” across the first 5 days and then “very good” on the sixth day once He creates humanity. The world God creates is good insofar as it is prepared to receive human beings and itself declares the glory of God. The entire project becomes “very good” with the arrival of man because man is the fulfillment of the creation’s purpose in that man receives the Earth’s abundance and man verbalizes the creation’s declaration of the glory of God. Man puts into words the same praise and honor the creation itself extends to its Creator. The creation of man marks the emergence of God’s most complex work and the finishing stroke to the harmony He had developed across the six days of creation. The creation exists is layers of harmony much like a sophisticated piece of music.
As we’ve studied the first chapter of Genesis we’ve had the privilege to walk through the scriptures and appreciate how God made the world in six days. Based on what we know of God, we may conclude He could have easily made all of this in an instant. In one instant He declared “Let there be light.” and there was light. It would have been just as easy for Him to say “Let everything come into being.” and everything would appear in an instant. God is able to bring the dead back to life in an instant as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15 when he says, “Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.”
So if nothing is too difficult for God to perform in an instant, why did He take six days? One reason is to show us He is a free, authoritative agent of His own will. God does His work in His own way and in His own time — even when His ways and His timing make no sense to us. If God’s going to freely choose to take His time in the creation of the universe — when He obviously doesn’t need to — we should rest assured when He takes time in answering our prayers or providing for our own lives.
God also worked six days and rested on the seventh day in order to set an example for us. Although we can strive to comprehend God creating an entire universe in an instant, it’s difficult for us to relate to that kind of omnipotence. We ourselves would suffer negative consequences if we never took time to rest. God resting on the seventh day is what makes the Sabbath holy and gives us reason to follow it. God knew that Sabbath would be so integral to us stewarding our relationship with Him that He demonstrated it for us in the creation of the universe.
The creation account in Genesis 1 finishes by reminding us God has reflected upon His creation and declared it to be very good. This is why all of us today are able to experience a general revelation of God in the things He has made. Yes it’s true that creation groans under the curse of the Fall, but it remains the very good creation God made from the beginning. Perhaps most importantly, to witness the power and omniscient wisdom God demonstrated to create the universe gives us more reason to praise and worship Him. His works testify to the glory of His name and may we join that everlasting chorus for as long as we live and forever into eternity.
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