Sermon on Genesis 1:26-28

Chapter 1:9-31

Now on the third day,

God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called the Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed, and fruit trees yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so (Gen 1:9-11).

Now the key here is the grass and the vegetables and the trees yielding seed after their kind. We've never been able to disprove this. Men have been planting grains of wheat for millenniums and he has yet to plant a grain of wheat and have a corn stalk grow out of it. They are "herb-yielding seed after their kind," each has its own little code within it that reproduces after its kind; very fascinating indeed.

Also, here we begin to see some of the inventive genius of God, creating seeds to produce after their own kind. But it would be necessary for those seeds to propagate themselves into other areas. And so I am always fascinated with the various kinds of ways that God designed for the seeds to propagate themselves.

There are some little seeds that grow in the pinecones. Now, if they would drop straight down under the pine tree, they would probably never survive very long because the mother pine would be taking too much of the nutrients from the soil. There wouldn't be room for it to grow, there wouldn't be enough light, and so the seed needs to get out away from the mother pine a bit. So what did God do? He designed a little wing on that seed. And when the pinecone dries, it begins to pop open, and the little seed falls free. But with that wing, it begins to spin almost like a helicopter rotor and it spins on out far enough away from the pine tree so that when it lands, it can fine a suitable place to grow up into a new pine. Marvelous accident! I wonder how long the pine tree could have existed before it decided, "I need to get my seeds out further" and it developed the little wing on the seed.

There are other seeds that when the pod dries out they explode. They pop and the seed shoots out, exploding kind of a seed. Then there are other seeds that put a little hook on the end of the seed, and you or an animal walks by, and that little seed hooks on to your pants and it gets a free ride or it hooks in to your socks. And so you get the feeling, an irritation in your ankle, and you reach down and pull that seed out and throw it down. Oh, you helped it propagate itself. There are other seeds that develop a quick-drying glue. The minute it touches you, it glues itself to you. But then, pretty soon, as the glue dries completely, it falls off and it has propagated itself. Other seeds surround themselves with a luscious tasting juice and all, and a little bit of meaty stuff, and so you eat, or the bear eats the berries, then later on he propagates the seeds in other areas.

The way that seeds are designed to propagate themselves are fascinating indeed. There are some seeds that build a little parachute. They sprout out a little parachute on top of the seed and they just wait for the wind to come along, and the wind comes and lifts the seed. And you see it floating through the air, its heading somewhere to propagate itself wherever the wind will let it drop and then it will burrow in and begin to grow.

The coconut seed is a fascinating seed; it's conquered the South Pacific. It put a waterproof husk around itself. And thus, when the hurricane would blow, the coconut would fall off and fall into the water, and it would be carried because of the waterproof husk. It would be carried across the ocean and be thrown up on a beach somewhere. And the surf would sort of cover it with sand, and it had enough water inside to support the roots until they could get deep enough to get their own water source. And of course a little coconut tree would come up and then he would begin to propagate across the South Pacific islands.

Fruit bearing seeds, vegetable-bearing seeds, grass bearing seeds, after their kind. Oh, what a testimony of the inventive genius of God in creation. As the Bible says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth sheweth forth his handiwork. And day unto day they utter their speech; night unto night their voice goeth forth. There is not a speech nor a language" (Psalm 19:1-3). And you just look around, God'll speak to you through the grass, through the vegetables, through the flowers, through the trees. Through His creation, as you look at the wisdom, as you study it, as God has designed the leaves to take and turn the sunrays into energy and, and all, and the photosynthesis processes by which the sun is turned into energy to feed the tree and all. Marvelous are His ways. Marvelous is His creative genius as you really look at the various life forms.

And the earth brought forth grass, and [vegetable or] herb-yielding seed after his kind, and tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. And God said, Let there be light in the firmament in the heaven (Gen 1:12-14)

Now, the word light here is "meor". The word light in Hebrew is "or". The word "meor" is a light holder. So let there be the "light holders" in the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years (Gen 1:14):

And so our time is calculated by the sun and the moon, and it is generally thought that the Earth's rotation around the sun was a three hundred and sixty-day year. That is what the Babylonian calendar was predicated upon, and there is a lot of evidence to show that also the Mayan, Incan, Chinese calendars where all predicated on a three hundred and sixty-day year. Somehow, the earth's orbit was changed around the sun, and now it is three hundred and sixty-five years, nine hours, fifty-six minutes, nine and four-hundredths of a second. What caused the change? We don't know for sure.

Emmanuel Vilikovski again in his book, "Worlds in Collision" as you get into the book, we'll find out that his theory that the introduction of the planet Venus into our solar system that caused the change of the Earth's orbit around the sun. Now, I don't know, it's very possible. He presents very interesting arguments. But yet, our year is measured by the time it takes our Earth to make its rotation around the sun. And the months were originally lunar months, the time it takes the moon to go through its full cycle, as it orbits around the Earth. So that, they are for signs, for times, for seasons and so forth; and so this becomes very interesting.

Now, if this is a process of "re-creation," then it would mean that on the fourth day, actually God did not create the sun and the moon on the fourth day, but He had now allowed them to be in their present, current positions in their relationship to the Earth, and he removed the shroud of fog, and all, from the Earth so that you can finally see the sun and the moon.

Now, we have evening and mornings, where we don't see the sun, cloudy days, cloudy all day long. I still know it's daytime, because there's light, but yet I don't see the sun. I know it's night because it's dark, but I don't see the moon, because there is a cloud cover that prohibits me seeing the moon or prohibits my seeing the sun.

Now, this fog, cloud cover could have been removed on the fourth day, so that the "light holder" becomes visible. It is difficult to explain how they could have an evening and morning without the rotation of the earth on its axis if the sun wasn't in position from verse one, and it wasn't created until the fourth day. How could you've evening and morning in the first three days? So, that seems to lend credence to the "gap theory" that the heavens and the earth were created in verse one, this is an account of re-creation.

Now the fog cloud's removed and the sun and the moon becoming visible and are now used to mark off years and days and months; used as time indicators and the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light holder to rule the night. Now, the moon we know has no light of itself, it isn't in conflict with the scripture. It's just called a light holder. A mirror can be in a sense a light holder, such as is the moon. It would fit with the Hebrew word "meor". It doesn't necessarily mean a source of light.

let them be for lights in the firmament in the heavens to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [and] he made the stars also. And God set them in the heavens [the firmament, in the limitless space of heaven, the rachowq of heaven] to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created the 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. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day (Gen 1:15-23).

Now as we get into the creation of the animal-type of life in the fifth day, first of all, the life forms in the water, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly," and my, the teeming life forms in the water! And again the design, and the variety! I love to go snorkeling over in Hawaii. The tremendous variety of life forms that I can see. Now, there are a lot of life forms that I can't even see, the waters are teeming with life forms. But I often wonder why God made such weird-looking fish, in such variety, and then the fabulous colors! It's just to me exciting, that God is not limited to just one design.

If you'd look around tonight you'd see that God isn't limited to just one design. Yet, we all possess the basic same, you know, the basic same features. We all have a nose, we all have eyes, we all have eyebrows, we all have---well, we, most of us, have you know, some hair at least. And you know, teeth, and mouth, chin, cheeks and so forth. And yet, look at the variety! You've got same, basically the same features, and yet we don't look alike at all! It just testifies to God's neat, inventive genius, and being able to take same basic features and just creates an infinite number of varieties.

God evidently likes variety. He makes every snowflake different. Every one of them is a perfect geometrical pattern, but no two snowflakes alike. Of the trillions of snowflakes that fall every year, God just likes variety so much. He doesn't make any two of them alike. And yet, they are so exquisitely beautiful when you look at them under a microscope. The geometric patterns and design. And so, of all of the millions of people, there may be some who look somewhat alike, and yet, you know, when you get to know twins, you'll be able to tell them apart at sight, because there's just enough difference between everybody. Though the twins may have come from the same cell, divided and thus, they have the same chromosome content and gene content as each other, yet the variations that develop, I just am amazed at creation.

I just love to see the different life forms. I love to see these crazy, little tiny bugs and I don't even know what they are, or where they're going, and I wonder if they know where they're going, but they know how to fly. Now, they fly in erratic patterns, and sometimes they can be pesky, but, they'll land sometimes, I'll read my Bible and they'll land on my Bible, and I'll just look and study them. And I'll think, you marvelous little creature, you, you can fly! You've got something over me. So designed, so constructed, that you can fly off of that page, and just the wide variety!

A fly, you hate them, but yet what fabulous design! Swept back wing design, and their ability to just hover, and then almost to fly backwards. I mean, you know, when you see them they just, they can dart in several directions, and then they can land on the ceiling and walk. And I've often wondered how close does he get to the ceiling before he flips over so he can land on his feet.

That's gonna worry you, isn't it? But, oh, how marvelous is our God! How infinite His wisdom! How great His creative genius in all of the life forms that we see. Now we have the basic life forms, the plant life forms, on the third day. Here on the fifth day, now, we have the more complex life forms. The plant forms of course, are necessarily rooted. The roots themselves are marvelous. They are able to go down and each little root is a chemical laboratory. And it is able to take out of the soil just the necessary chemicals to support that particular plant; able to tell the difference between the chemicals, knows just the chemicals that it needs out of the soil to feed the particular plant that it's coming from, to bring the moisture up out of the soil and all. Marvelous, absolutely marvellous!

But we get the more complex life forms that sort of are a little independent. They're not rooted, they're not grounded, they are mobile, and the various cycles that God has created, the whole process is just so marvelous indeed. The water, teeming with life, and then the air, and the many, many kinds of birds and the variety of birds that God has created. And those instinctive abilities in the birds!

I'm always fascinated by that little bird in Hawaii that goes up into the Aleutian chain in order to mate. During the summer, they take off from Hawaii and they fly all the way up into Alaska where they mate. They build their nests, they lay the eggs, they hatch their young. And then with the coming of winter, they don't want to spend winter in Alaska -- and who can blame them. And you have to almost envy them, spending their winters in Hawaii. They take off over the thousands of miles without suitcases, without spare gas tanks, without compasses or navigational equipment. And they come and fly right into Hawaii, sometimes they get into severe storms, one-hundred, two-hundred mile an hour winds that blow them off course, but somehow they find their way right in. You say, "oh, they remember the way they flew out."

How do they reckon? Some think they have some kind of device that tunes on the magnetic field of the earth. I don't know. But, really, they're not following the same path, so that argument's sort of shot down, because, really, the parents decide to leave for Hawaii before the kids are able to fly that far.

So, the parents fly off to Hawaii, leaving their kids in Alaska! But, it doesn't seem to matter, cause a couple of weeks later, their kids take off and they fly right to Hawaii. Never been there before, yet somehow, God has built into this little bird that kind of instinct; and that's a bird brain. And it's not a very big kind of a computer. Talk about microsystems! Oh, the wisdom of God, the wisdom of God. How thrilling to be able to see the design in nature, all testifying of the wisdom of the God that I serve. I'm so glad that I serve Him. I'm so glad that I know Him. Such a glorious God, so wise; all of these created life forms. Now, He created also the mammals, the great whales. He created the animals, the domesticated-type animals, all after their own kind.

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