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And thank you for that ministry in song. It's always a blessing, isn't it, when the song is built so closely around a verse of scripture. I think we need a little bit more juice on this thing, okay? Thank you. Genesis and chapter one, if you have your Bibles there this morning, Genesis chapter one, all sorts of things happening in the sound room. Don't be distracted. We're upgrading things there. We have a couple of new cameras being tested and all sorts of things going on. Hopefully the sound people will be able to get something out of the message today along the way. Right, Genesis and chapter 1 please. Genesis chapter 1 as we continue in our Sunday morning series through this very powerful book, the very first book of the Bible. And what we're going to do this morning is we're going to read from verse 1 down to verse 25, actually we'll do verse 26, sorry. And what we'll do is we'll read responsibly this morning. I'll read the first verse, you read the second just to keep you awake and in tune and we'll go through the chapter that way. So reading from verse 1, Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water, and the earth was made of flour and water And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day. God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the 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 let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made two great lights, a greater light to rule the day, and a lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the 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. 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. and the evening and the morning were the fifth day. God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and God saw that it was good. Okay, we're dealing with the theme, six divine days of creation. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the word of God. We thank you how your word begins with the words, in the beginning, God. How we thank you. that there is a God, that you are real, that you are the living God, and that you have revealed yourself to us. You are not a God who is distant from us, Lord, though you are above us and over us. We thank you that you are a God who has made himself knowable, who spoke, a God who moved, holy men of God of old, to pen the scriptures that we might have the truth and so Lord we commit this time of preaching to you Lord we just confess before you the the smallness of our minds and the how tiny our intellects are compared Lord to your infinite wisdom and we just pray therefore for the help of of the eternal Spirit of God in both the preacher and the hearer, that we might understand your word. We thank you, Lord, that you have revealed your word to us in plain language that can be understood by our human minds, and we pray with the help of the Spirit. And so we pray that you would minister to us. Meet the need of every heart as only you can through this message, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that God created the world in six days. Exodus 20, 11 key scripture there, we probably should memorize this actually, as part of our scripture memory program for the book of Genesis. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." So very plain, very clear that the Lord made the heaven, the earth, the sea and everything that in them is in six literal days. Now we know that God is of such great power that He could have created everything in just an instant, couldn't He? Absolutely. But God created as part of his wisdom, time and established time for man. And so that's why God worked within that six of the seven day week, the six days of activity followed by the seventh day where he ceased from his activities, establishing the seven day cycle for man and the principle of one day in seven of rest. And we're going to talk about that in a later message. And so this is the wisdom of God. God has created all things and he did so in six days. So let's just briefly recap where we've been so far without spending too much time in revision. So we can get on to days five and six this morning. Now, we're not gonna get through the creation of man, we'll touch on it at the end, but I feel that it really needs to be dealt with in a single message on its own because it's such a big subject, because the creation of man is really the pinnacle of God's creation. It's the climax of God's creation, man made in the image of God. And so we want to make sure we give enough time to that next week, God willing. But in day one, we have described for us the creation of earth, space, time and light. It's very important that you see that the first five verses here have to do with day one of creation. In the beginning, that's the creation of time. God created the heaven, that's the creation of space. And the earth, that's the creation of mass. And so we live in a time, space, mass, universe. And so God created those elements in their basic form. They were yet to be formed and shaped. The earth was without form and void. There was the presence of water there, again in a basic form. But then we see God will do a further work later of shaping those things into what he had for them. Then we have day two, which was the creation of the atmosphere, referred to in the chapter there as the firmament. And very important, we understand in the pre-flood world, there was a water canopy above the earth. So God divided the waters beneath the firmament from the waters above the firmament. And so this would create an ideal environment for the world. We no longer live in that ideal environment. But that was the case before the before the flood. And so we have three heavens in the Bible. There's the atmospheric heaven, where the birds fly. We've just read about that this morning, how he created Phau to fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, okay? So quite clearly, it's a reference there to the space, the atmosphere there where the birds fly. Then we have the stellar heaven, and then we have the heaven of heavens, the abode of God. Then we looked at the creation of land, sea and plants. And then we dealt with the creation of the sun, moon and stars. And there was to be the greater light, which is the sun to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night. And the purpose of these lights was to give light upon the earth. So on the first day, God said, let there be light, On day four, he said, let there be lights. Day one, let there be light. Day four, let there be lights. He made these heavenly bodies to be the medium through which light would shine. Then we have the stars referenced there as well. He made the stars also almost expressed as an afterthought, just expressing the awesome power of God that God can create these things. Well, we come now this morning to day five, the creation of sea and flying creatures. the creation of sea creatures and flying creatures. Now it's very interesting in Isaiah chapter 45 verse 18 the Bible says for thus saith the Lord that created the heavens God himself that formed the earth and made it he hath established it he created it not in vain he formed it to be inhabited, I am the Lord and there is none else. And so we see that God works to a point in the first four days, but we now get to day five and six, where God is going to carry out that purpose for the world and fill it with inhabitants. There's going to be animal life, there's going to also be a humankind as well. And so that's what we see God doing on days five and six, making or bringing to pass that purpose for earth of making sure it is inhabited. Okay, so let's consider day five. Notice firstly, the divine formation of these creatures. Okay, the divine formation of these creatures, verse 20 and 21. And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life. and fowl that may fly upon the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 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. So we have, number one, the creation of aquatic life. the creation of aquatic life. And in fact, this is the first time that the word life appears in the chapter and the first time that life, the word life appears in the Bible. Now that's interesting, isn't it? Because we know that plants are in a sense living things, but not in the same sense as the animal kingdom. So we see there is an order and a priority given here. God is creating animal life, and then we will see human life created as an even higher life form again in the perspective of God, because man is created to be an image bearer of God. So vegetation has life, but not in the same sense as animals and humans who possess conscious life, okay? And that's the difference there. So, God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature. That phrase, bring forth, is an interesting word. It means to swarm or to team. Okay, so here God speaks and all of a sudden the waters were teaming and swarming with life. One thing you see in the creation week is that our God is a God who loves life. God is a God of life and God didn't want just a few living creatures to inhabit his world. God wanted an abundance of creatures. God wanted that multiplication to be taking place and for the whole earth to be filled with life. And, you know, each of God's creatures are really an object lesson to us, aren't they, of the amazing wisdom and power of God. Now, we understand that God's creatures today in the world is under the effects of the curse. So we have to bear that in mind, that they don't perfectly speak to us of God's character and of the original creation. But yet we can see so much of God's wisdom and power in the creatures that he made. Now we notice that there is a specific category of sea life that is discussed here. God made great whales. Verse 21, and God created great whales. And so obviously this would include what we know today as whales, and it's a specific category of the larger aquatic animals. Amazing creatures, the whales, that God has made great testaments to the almighty power of God. But there's something very interesting about the word whale. in the Bible here in Genesis 1, it comes from the Hebrew word tanim, or tanim. And this word is frequently translated dragon in the Old Testament. Okay, so we're not correcting the King James here, we're simply doing a word study. So the word whales, the Hebrew word is a fairly broad term that encompasses not just the specific creature we know today as whales, but also it would include sea dragons or sea monsters. Amen? All right, and so that's what it means. Very often you study the word, it's translated serpent, or it's translated as dragon, and dragon was the old English word for dinosaur. It wasn't a mythological creature. Dragons were real, okay? Creatures that God made. The term dinosaur was a term that was coined in the 1800s by a man called Richard Owen. And that word dinosaur comes from two Greek words, daimos, meaning terrible, Potent or fearfully great and Soros meaning lizard or reptile you heard of the term sauropod Okay, and hence meaning terrible or fearful lizard So on day five when God created the sea creatures it included not only The fish and the whales and the dolphins and these other creatures, but it also included creatures that very likely are now extinct the sea monsters the sea dragons So Leviathan would be one of those. Remember reading about him in Job 41. Let me turn there for you and read you the chapter. God gives Job a creation science examination. And it's amazing to hear God's description of this creature. Moreover the Lord answered Job and said, Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? Job 41 says, Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord, which thou lettest down? Canst thou put a hook into his nose, or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make many supplications unto thee? Will he speak soft words unto thee? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant forever? Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? Shall the companions make a banquet of him? Shall they part him among the merchants? Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? So obviously this creature's powerful enough to cope with harpoons. Or his head with fish spears? lay thine hand upon him remember the battle do no more behold the hope of him is in vain shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him none is so fierce that dare stir him up who then is able to stand before me who hath prevented me that i should repay him Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine. I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion. Who can discover the face of his garment? Or who hath come to him with his double bridle? Who can open the doors of his face? His teeth are terrible round about. His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so near to another that no air can come between them. So whatever this creature is, it's got very close scales so that air won't come between them. So very strong armor there. They join one to another, they stick together that they cannot be sundered by his kneesings. That's an old English word meaning sneezings, okay? By his sneezings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Listen to this, out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. fire-breathing dragon. It's not just a mythological idea. It's described here in the Bible. This creature called Leviathan had the ability to create some sort of fire coming out of the mouth. There's probably some sort of chemical reaction like in other creatures that God has made to create heat. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke as out of a seething pot or cauldron. His breath kindleth coals and a flame goeth out of his mouth. In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him. And we go on and on there. You can read the rest of the chapter. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot. He maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. He maketh a path to shine after him. One would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his like who is made without fear. He beholdeth all things. He is a king over all the children of pride. And so that's just one of the great creatures, the great tannums that were created on day five of creation. So we're talking about aquatic life. It would include things like whales and fish and all the things we're familiar with, but also these great sea creatures that God made as testaments to his almighty power. Then we have a more general category, so we have great whales as a specific category of those larger aquatic animals. Then we have the broader category here encompassing all other forms of marine life there, every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly. So we have the creation of aquatic life. Then we have the creation of aerodynamic life. Aerodynamic life. In other words, creatures that can fly. And God said, let the water spring forth abundantly, the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, we've read that, and it says down the bottom of the verse 21 there, and every winged fowl after his kind, and God saw that it was good. And so God made the bird life, we could say, but not just birds, but all winged creatures. The word fowl in Old English had a broader scope than it does today, and it's the same with the Hebrew word. It's a generic word that covers all flying creatures. In fact, this author here makes an interesting point. He says, the Hebrew classification is eminently practical, classifying creatures according to locomotion rather than by the presence or absence of mammary glands or feathers. So here we have God's divine categories in Genesis 1. Scientists have created all sorts of species and things and they are not inspired. Could I just remind you that science is not inspired. Scientists make lots of mistakes. Okay, just like the medical profession makes lots of mistakes. All right. So we don't look to science as being inspired. We believe the Word of God is inspired. And so we find this great wisdom in these categories that God has created. And so they're categorized by locomotion, by their ability to fly, as opposed to some of the way we tend to break up the species and things. So, as I said, the word fowl had a much broader scope. In Old English, Webster here defines it as a flying or winged animal, the generic name of certain animals that move through the air by the aid of wings. It's very good. If you want to get a good sense for the Old English words, which are in the King James Bible, I recommend you go to Webster's Dictionary of 1828, and very often you'll get a good, accurate definition of the Old English there. So God designed these creatures to fly in the atmospheric heaven, okay, to fly in the open firmament of heaven. And don't they provide visible displays again to us of the wisdom of God. Amazing. I hope that you at times pause to consider the creatures that God has made and the amazing design and complexity. In fact, the more you look into creation and just every animal and all the intricacy of the design, it just, I tell you what, we should be worshipers today, not skeptics. We should be worshipers. The more we discover of God's creation and of his might and of his power, it should make us in awe and wonder of God, shouldn't it? Take the hummingbird as an example. Many different examples we could talk about, but let's take the hummingbird for an example. And this excerpt is taken out of David Cloud's excellent little book called God's Amazing Creatures. It's a great one for the family to read. And it says here in the book, the 300 species of hummingbirds vary in size from the giant hummingbird with a length of about eight inches or 20 centimeters to the bee hummingbird with a length of about two inches or five centimeters. That's pretty small, isn't it, for a birdie? The hummingbird can swivel its wings through an amazing degree of angles. The wings beat a figure eight pattern which allows it to hover and fly backwards by moving the wings in a circular path over its head, sideways and even upside down. Its long thin beak is designed to feed on the nectar of flowers. Its tongue has two furrows that is used to store the nectar. The tongue can go in and out at a rate of 13 times per second. Wow, you kids poke your tongue out at your brother and sister? Imagine that if you could poke it in and out 13 times. And is stored by being curled up in the back of the bird's head. That'd be good if some of us could roll our tongues back, wouldn't it, sometimes and keep them out of the way. Its tongue is also fringed so that it can sweep insects from inside flowers, and God's designed them that way because they cannot survive on nectar alone, but need protein from eating insects. and without a special tongue it could never catch these. Now, one type of hummingbird is the fastest diving bird on earth. It's called Anna's hummingbird. And to give you an example, for many years they believed that the peregrine falcon was the fastest diving bird because it would reach a relative speed of 200 body lengths per second. 200 body lengths per second. That is close to the 207 body lengths that the Space Shuttle travels, okay, when it enters our atmosphere. So for many years they thought that the Peregrine Falcon was the fastest daredevil bird on the Earth. But they have now discovered that this little pink male hummingbird, called Anna's hummingbird, is the real top gun among the birds. As part of its mating ritual, a male hummingbird will try to impress a female with his speed and acrobatics. First, the male will fly up to about 90 feet above the ground, then he begins a power dive. As he nears the female, he pulls up, ascending again. During the near-miss pull-up, he experiences more than nine times the force of gravity. Talk about a fast courtship, eh? A whirlwind romance there. Some of you guys need to learn skydiving to get a wife, okay? His relative speed during descent is 385 body lengths per second. That's almost twice the Peregrine Falcon's relative speed. It's faster than the space shuttle entering the Earth's atmosphere, comparatively speaking, and it is more than twice the relative speed of a jet fighter running with afterburners. It's amazing, isn't it? Incredible. And seems to be a feature of male life, that they try and impress the females. And sometimes men don't do a very good job of it, do they, in the human species, spinning their tyres on the church car park. I remember that happening at Southgate, a number of the young guys used to do that. And I once asked my wife, her girl was really impressed by that. She said, no, not really. That's a bit of a disappointment to find that out. And so that's day five, creation of sea life and creation of flying creatures. Now let's consider the genetic boundaries of these creatures. This is very important and it's something we've touched on before. But if you look at verse 21 in your Bibles there, verse 21 says, 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. So there are genetic boundaries that God has put in place for his creatures. And that's exactly what we see, isn't it? In nature, we see variation within a particular kind of animal, but we do not see that kind transitioning into another completely different kind. Okay, so it's the complete opposite to what evolution teaches and guess what? The fossil record backs up the Bible. Where are all the transitional fossils? If we've had billions of years of the so-called evolutionary process of microbes to man, where are all the missing fossils? And the few so-called links they've found have been debunked many times over because what they're doing, they're going to the ground as archaeologists and desperately trying to find something to fit the theory. That's the wrong way to approach science, by the way. You should allow the facts to lead you, rather than going in with that preconceived idea that you're going to try and find something. I mentioned the Lucy example, how that's often used as supposedly an example of a transitional fossil, but it's only 20% of a fossil, and the bones come out of 20 tonnes of sediment over a 50 square metre area. And so there's a big, massive question mark if those bones are even related to the same skeleton. But these are the attempts of man, they'll do anything but accept the Word of God. And as the theory of evolution is disproved time and time again, instead of dispensing with the theory, they come up with another theory to try and protect the original theory. Don't call that science. Science is supposed to be you test the theory, and if the theory is wrong, you chuck the theory out and start again. But they don't do that with evolution. They come up with theories upon theories to support the theory. And the real reason for that is they don't want God. That's the real reason. That's the real reason behind it all. So we see there are these genetic boundaries in God's creation and I believe it's ten times we have the reference to kinds in this chapter. Okay, relating to vegetation there in verse 11, verse 12, and then of course all of God's creatures reproducing after their kind. So this whole idea of transitional life forms as espoused by evolution is foolishness because what you find with God's creatures is that they need all of the components as an organism, the way they're designed, they need all of it functioning there in order to live. they would die. If you've got these intermediary forms, they would simply die because everything, God has designed them as complete and functional creatures. They've got to have all of their abilities and all of their, you know, all of those things available. And so the idea of evolution is very foolish, as pointed out by this little illustration here of the dinosaur who falls off the cliff there and says, oops, I'm only half evolved. Now when we think about kinds, it indicates both scope and limitation. Let me explain what I mean by that. So within a kind there is scope. But it's not scope without limits. There is scope for much variation within a particular kind on account of the incredible amount of information that God has placed, that God has designed his creatures to be able to reproduce and produce a lot of diversity with different feather colors and all sorts of amazing things. God is a God of tremendous variety. So when we talk about a kind, there is scope. It's a much broader category, by the way, than species. And so that's entirely consistent with the Bible's account here. We should not be surprised to see within a particular kind a lot of variation. But what they do is they try and take that and then use that to then argue for macroevolution, the transition from one form of life into another. And that's dishonest, because creationists would agree with evolutionists on that point that we can expect to see within a particular kind all sorts of variations. So you see tremendous amount of variation within the dog kind. Tremendous amount of variation within the horse kind, or tremendous amount of variation with the various types of birds. But those variations never lead to something entirely different. So while there is scope, there is also limitation there. There's the limitation of a kind. God has placed these genetic boundaries which absolutely cannot be crossed. And again, the evidence supports the Bible's account here as we look at the living things as well as the fossil record. How do they know, by the way, how can they identify so many of these creatures that are supposedly millions or even billions of years old in the fossil record? Because they look similar to the ones that are alive today. Have you thought about that? How can they identify, oh, that's a fossilized fish, or that's a fossilized bat, or that's a fossilized frog? Guess why? It looks like a frog. It looks like a fish. It looks like a bird, okay? And then you have the living fossils, things that were supposedly millions of years old, and oops, they're still alive today, like the Wollemi Pine. The Wollemi Pine was supposed to have been extinct and I forget what age category they put on it, whether it was thousands or millions of years extinct, and they found one in the Blue Mountains. How did they know it was a Wollemi Pine? Because it looked like a Wollemi Pine. Right, so there is limitations. There's that genetic boundary that God has created. So within the kind, yes, there's a lot of scope for variation within each of these kinds, but there's also an impassable barrier that God has created. It doesn't matter how much the evolutionist tries to say otherwise, the facts prove God's word every time. So Henry Morris on this point says the actual biochemical reproductive systems of the animals were programmed to assure the fixity of their kinds. Modern genetics has shown that all replicating systems function in the framework of the marvelous information program in the DNA molecule. The DNA for each kind is programmed to allow for wide individual variations within a kind but not beyond the structure of the kind itself. Okay, that's what we see. What we have, you must understand, is we do not have religion and faith versus science in this debate. That's how it's always... I always want to present it to you that way. Oh, OK, yeah, you have faith, you have religion, but I'm on the side of science. But doesn't the word science get thrown around a lot today? We've just got to follow the science with climate change. We've just got to follow the science with this and got to follow the science with that. Well, just double-check the facts there, OK? Now... So that's the reality of things. We need to be aware of that. So what we have is not science versus faith at work here. We have two competing historical accounts. Because if the scientist is talking about in the beginning, or the believer is talking about in the beginning, neither of them were there, and so therefore we're talking about something that is historical. So what we have is two competing histories. We have the evolutionist account of the history of the beginnings, versus the historical account as given in God's word from God himself. Which one are you gonna stick with? I think I'll go with God's history of the beginnings, because he was the only one that was there, wasn't he? But what we can do is we can look at the facts in the present, we can look at nature, we can study and we can see which model best fits the evidence. And time and time again we see that observational science, what we can see in the present, very much confirms the biblical account of things. So therefore we would reject Darwin's concept of the evolutionary tree. This is a scan of his journal and you notice he says there, I think. Not I know, I think. He's thinking that perhaps this is the way it is, starting off with a lower life form, from the goo to the zoo to you up here somewhere. or to give you a more modern diagram of this. The only place, by the way, that this tree exists is in the textbook. It doesn't exist in the fossil record. If the evolutionist is honest, this tree's got branches chopped off everywhere and there's all sorts of missing, but there's a lot of things in the textbooks. It looks lovely, but it exists in the textbook, doesn't exist in reality. The fossil record does not confirm the idea that you come out of the pond scum there. Rather, what the evidence presents is what we would refer to as the creationist orchard. This ties in a bit with that video we watched, doesn't it? The creationist orchard. So yes, we see within a kind All sorts of branches here, all sorts of variation, but there's a... rather than the concept of a single tree, so this idea of microbes to man, we have separate kinds created at the same time by God, and each one exhibiting lots of different variations, but still staying within their relative kind. Can you understand that? Okay, so we believe in the creationist orchard, not the evolutionary tree of life. So a good illustration of this would be dogs. All you need for the dog kind is not all the little pooches running around today. All you need is a common ancestor, two wolf-like creatures coming off of Noah's Ark, and within the DNA pool there, they have more than enough capacity for the whole dog line there. In fact, you find all of the more you, a lot of the different variations are done by breeding out certain characteristics. So there's a loss of information. With mutations, there's a loss of information, which is strange, isn't it? Because evolutionists are saying that mutations is what drives creatures going the other way. So the way we get creatures evolving is through mutations. Only problem is, as far as I'm aware, mutations always result in a loss of information, not a gain of information. So if you're losing information, that means actually creation is devolving, not evolving. So when you're looking at, I better not offend anybody here, but little poodle or chihuahua, just think mutations, okay? Think little squirmy bundle of mutations, because that's why they get sick and die and all sorts of things, because they're just at the lower end of the gene pool there. We love them, don't we? I mean, I'm not trying to be nasty. I'm not a dog hater by any stretch of the imagination. I've lost some of you right there. Evolutionists now admit that domestic dogs came from wolves only a few thousand years ago. They even acknowledge that. In fact, an interesting experiment was conducted not too long ago in Berlin where a female wolf was mated with a male poodle, a large male poodle, and they had puppies. Again, it shows that wolves and dogs are all part of the same gene pool there. Now notice please the divine blessing upon these creatures in verse 22. Now this is very interesting. This is the first time God has pronounced a blessing on part of his creation. As we go through creation week here, this is the first time God pronounces a blessing and he does so upon the animal kingdom. Then he'll pronounce a second blessing upon man when he makes man. So it shows that animal life is of a higher order in God's economy than vegetation. So that refutes the greeny idea, doesn't it, that trees can feel things and they're bleeding and out there screaming in the forest to the trees. That's not correct. It's inanimate life. It's not conscious life. A tree doesn't feel anything when you cut it down. So these creatures are clearly of a higher order in God's creation than vegetation as they receive a blessing from God. Now, we need to add here that animals would not be the object of God's love like humans, but they would be the objects of His care and concern. Remember in the New Testament how the Lord Jesus said that when a sparrow falls, it doesn't fall to the earth without who? The Heavenly Father. but you're of more value than many sparrows. So we're not putting mankind and animal kind on the same level, they're not, but the animals are blessed of God and they're given the ability to reproduce by God and they are in a higher order of things in God's creation as far as God sees it. One commentator writes, on the whole an entirely new type of being has come into existence. Creatures that breathe and are animated and have power of their own volition to go from place to place. And what's the key difference between the animal kingdom and mankind? Well, man was created with a spirit. an eternal spirit. Man is eternal, the animals are not eternal. Ecclesiastes makes that very clear. When the animal dies, its spirit goes down to the earth. If a man dies, a woman dies, the spirit returns to God who gave it. So we were created in the image of God, not the animals. And we also have an eternal spirit the animals do not. But they do have a soul in the sense that they can feel, they can think. A dog can feel happy or sad, right? You give the dog a smack on the nose and its tail goes like that. It has feelings, sentient life. But they do not have the capacity as we do to know God. And when they die, they don't go to the big kennel in the sky, unfortunately. Um... So God's plan for the animal kingdom though is revealed by the blessing that he gives. Can you see that? Look there at verse 22 again. God blessed them saying, what did he say to them? What did he say to the animal kingdom? Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let fowl multiply in the earth. So can you see that God wanted the creatures that he had made to reproduce and to reproduce abundantly. He wanted every part of the world to have living creatures in it. So God is a God who loves life. Now once again, says Morris, it is obvious that the orthodox evolutionary order is not the same as the order of creation recorded in Genesis. Evolutionary theory says that marine organisms evolve first, then land plants, later birds. Genesis says that land plants came first, then marine creatures and birds simultaneously. Furthermore, if anything, the largest sea animals were the first, again contrary to evolutionary theory. So could I just say there's absolutely no way that you can try and blend evolution with Genesis 1. They just contradict each other on so many points. God's order of things is not the evolutionary order. So you cannot, not honestly as a Christian, unless you're just deceived and you don't know, you haven't been taught, but you cannot honestly take the text of Genesis 1 and fit billions of years of evolutionary history in there unless you are going to do violence to the text. Right, we come now to day six, the creation of land, animals, and man. Genesis 1, 24 and 25, and God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind. And it was so. God made the beast of the earth after his kind and cattle after their kind and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, you get the message, and God saw that it was good. So we have the origin of land animals. The origin of land animals. Now notice the material that God used. Up until this point, God has spoken everything into existence out of nothing. Now, for the creation of land animals and the creation of man, God uses something he's already made, namely the dust of the ground. That's interesting, isn't it? Now, it's not that God couldn't have spoken creatures into existence. We know he's got the power to do that. We've seen that already in Genesis chapter one. But in the wisdom of God, he chose to form the creatures out of the dust of the earth. And he chose to form man out of the dust of the earth, perhaps giving both the land animals and man a certain affinity with the earth. So that's what it says there. It says let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind cattle and creeping thing. Now we notice several categories that God made here. There's cattle. This would cover animals that are easily domesticated. We have creeping The creeping thing, which would be all animals that crawl or creep close to the surface of the ground, including insects and smaller reptiles, small mammals such as moles, rats, mice, etc. Then we have the beasts of the earth. These are the larger, wild animals, such as lions, elephants, hippos, and so on. How many of you like hippos? Anyway, my wife loves hippos. She thinks they're great. Let's look at the example of a lion. We don't have time to talk about all of the creatures that God made, but let's just think about the lion as an example of one of the beasts that God made to dwell on the land. The lion is a significant creature in the Bible. It's mentioned 150 times in the Bible. The Bible describes the lion as brave, 2 Samuel 17.10. Bold, Proverbs 28.1. Strong, Proverbs 30.30. Fierce, Job 28.8. Stealthy, Psalm 10.9. And ravening, Psalm 22.13. A male lion can reach three meters or 10 feet long and weigh 180 to 225 kilos. A lion can leap as far as 11 metres or 36 feet and run up to 80 kilometres per hour, but only in a straight line and for a short distance. A male lion's roar can be heard by humans up to 8 kilometres away. It's loud, isn't it? And has been measured at 114 decibels. Seth's going to have nightmares tonight. One Hebrew word for lion is shakal, meaning the roarer, the one who roars. Now, some of these features we're looking at now, lions under the curse, but still tells you something of the power that God gave them. The lion's blow is one of the most powerful forces in nature. The leg or forearm, as it is called, measures 90 inches around and is made up of the hardest of hard bone, with muscle and tendons as strong as the strongest wire. The foot measures eight inches across. When this foot strikes an animal, the lion shoots out its terrible claws which are hidden when it walks inside the joints of the toes. These claws are like great hooks made of yellow horn. They tear the flesh of an animal as we would strip the peel from an orange. The force with which these claws are driven is almost more than we can believe. The forearm of the lion is worked by great muscles at the shoulder and the blow which it makes is really like the blow from a steam hammer. No wonder that it can kill a man or a big animal with ease. What a picture of the devil, eh? The roaring lion, don't you get a picture of that? And boy, how he just wants to pound you, one big paw strike, and slam you into oblivion in the Christian life. But as we think about the lion, the creature, literally, what a testament to the almighty power of God. But these beasts would also include the dinosaurs, okay? Like Behemoth, described in Job 40, 15 to 24. Let's read this description for a moment. Behold now, Behemoth, which I made with thee, he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar. Sounds like a big tail to me. The sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass. His bones are like bars of iron. By the way, the Word of God is not describing a mythological creature. This is not a fable. Obviously God is discussing something with Job that Job was familiar with. That means dinosaurs and man lived together at some point. Contrary to evolutionary theory that says that dinosaurs are 65 million years old. He is the chief of the ways of God. He that made him can make his sword to approach unto him. Surely the mountains bring him forth food where all the beasts of the field play. He lieth under the shady trees in the covert of the reed and fens. The shady trees cover him with their shadow. The willows of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinketh up a river. Sounds like he's thirsty. and drinks a lot, and hasteth not, he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan, that's a river, into his mouth. He taketh it with his eyes, his nose pierceth through snares. You're not going to trap him real easy. So, therefore, on day six, God created the cattle, the creeping thing, and the beast of the earth. That would include the dinosaurs. So dinosaurs were created on day six of creation, not millions of years ago. And it's very interesting because if dinosaurs are millions and millions of years old, 65 million years old, then why is it that they're discovering soft tissue and blood in dinosaur bones? A doctor by the name of Dr. Mary Schweitzer, she's a committed evolutionist, a theistic evolutionist herself, but she's rocked the evolutionary uniformitarian world recently with, or over a number of years now, with discoveries of soft tissue in dinosaur bones. These discoveries have included ligaments, blood and bone cells, flexible blood vessels, proteins like collagen, osteocalcin, actin and histones, and DNA. But, says the author here, under measured rates of decomposition, they could not have lasted for the presumed 65 million years since dinosaur extinction, even if they had been kept at freezing point. Never mind the fact that a much warmer climate is proposed for dinosaurs. Let me just show you a short clip here from the BBC. Now, the sad thing is, again, this is an example where people, because of the blindness of their hearts, will not allow the evidence to lead them to the truth. This doctor who is a theistic evolutionist, a theistic evolutionist is someone who acknowledges the existence of God but believes that God used evolution to create the world. Rather than seeing the clear implication that the discovery of DNA in dinosaur bones clearly shatters the evolutionary theory, They try and come out with other theories to then try and prop up the disproved theory, and that's what she's done. It doesn't come through the video here, but from reading, that's what she does. She tries to come up with a couple of theories as to why we would be discovering these things when we're not allowed to. We shouldn't be. And that's the blindness, isn't it, of the human heart, rather than saying, clearly there's something wrong with evolution here. But this is a short video about this discovery. At first, there appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary about this bone. But this bone turned out to be rather special. Because what she was looking at when she placed the slide under the microscope had never been seen before. Staring back at her was something that shouldn't have been there. It looked like a red blood cell. And its chemical composition included a heme, a part of hemoglobin which helps carry oxygen in blood and gives it its red color. I was shocked. I was really surprised. Okay, you see how they said it shouldn't have been there? Well, according to evolutionary theory, this is the problem they're grappling with. On a popular TV show, she said, when you think about it, the laws of chemistry and biology and everything else that we know, say that it should be gone, it should be degraded completely. She goes on to state in a scientific paper, the presence of original molecular components is not predicted for fossils older than a million years. So that presents a real problem, doesn't it? If dinosaurs are 65 million years old and DNA can only survive in a bone for up to a million years, you've got a massive problem, don't you? Where's the evidence leading us to? Clearly dinosaurs are not 65 million years old. It supports, doesn't it, the young Earth creation position, that dinosaurs are not actually that old after all. In fact, some could still even be alive. There's a huge swamp in Africa that is largely, I forget which country now, I have to check my facts again, it's largely unexplored and the local Africans talk about a certain creature, they have a name for it, that sounds like a dinosaur. Seth's definitely getting nightmares tonight. Okay. All right. In the Genesis record, it explains that even the most generous calculation based on the fossil somehow being kept continually below freezing point at minus five degrees Celsius would only allow for a maximum of approximately 6.83 million years. That's the most generous calculation. Very unlikely. If it was possible to keep that fossil at minus five degrees for all those millions of years, although apparently they're supposed to be fossilized in a tropical environment, then that would be the maximum. So again, even if we give them that and stretch it out to nearly 7 million years, it's still a huge dilemma for the evolutionists because clearly the age that they have assigned to dinosaurs is wrong. But for us as believers, we're not surprised at all. We're not surprised at all because dinosaurs are not that old. The earth is only around 6,000 years old. And those fossils were deposited during Noah's flood. And that's why we can find those things in dinosaur bones. I think the Lord allows these discoveries to be made to just show the foolishness of man sometimes. The foolishness of man. The wisdom of man is foolishness with God, 1 Corinthians 1 says. Okay, so God looks upon the creatures he has made and saw that it was good. We have that all the way through the passage. Finally now we have the origin of man. We're going to delve into this in our next message next week, God willing, in detail. But just to read a couple of verses there, verse 26, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. Baptist theologian B.H. Carroll says that the creation of man is the last and highest stage in the production of organic life. Every step in creation so far is a prophecy of his coming and a preparation for it. Could I just say briefly in closing this morning, we're going to delve into this more next week, but could I just say you are not a glorified animal. You are not on the same level as the animal kingdom. You are not a glorified monkey. You might feel like it sometimes. I tell my kids sometimes, the way you're acting, please don't provide any more evidence for the theory of evolution. But you understand there. But you are creating God's image. God created you with a special purpose. God created you for his glory and for his pleasure. God created you to know him personally. Don't believe the lie of the devil that you're just some evolved creature with no morals and that there is no God that's foolish. Eric Sawyer writes, all this extravagance, talking about the creation, all this extravagance to provide for man a home. Yea, more than a home, a university in which to learn about his loving creator. Man is the image and glory of God is placed in the earth as the king of creation. He walks erect, with his face uplifted to receive the radiance of God's face. How unique man is! Another great chasm has been crossed, the chasm between man and non-man. So we say with the psalmist, don't we, when I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? In reality, with a message like this, we're simply touching in a tiny way the surface of God's amazing creation but I hope you'll come away from Genesis 1 not just with an evolution creation debate but as a believer you come away with a renewed sense of the awesomeness of your God that you would be in awe and wonder of a God of wisdom and power and might. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would help us to understand these things. We thank you for the creation you have made. We thank you for your wisdom, Lord, in all the things that you have made. We pray that you would touch any hearts here this morning, those who may not know you as saviour. May they come to recognise that they are not an evolved accident, Lord, but created in your image to bear your image and to show forth your glory Lord, how that image was marred when sin entered into the world, but we thank you that the plan of redemption had been formulated before the world even began, that Christ would come and bear our sins. Lord, we just bow in worship and in awe and in wonder of your amazing grace, Lord, that you would restore us as sinful creatures unto yourself and again allow us to be image bearers of thee. Bless us now, we pray. Bless the remainder of our day we ask and bring us back tonight with hearts ready and open again to receive your word we pray in Jesus name. Amen.
Six Divine Days of Creation Part 3
Series Genesis Series
Exposition of Day 5 and Day 6 (land animals) of Creation week. In this series, Genesis is interpreted as literal history.
Sermon ID | 116211129431796 |
Duration | 1:00:38 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday - AM |
Bible Text | Genesis 1:20-25 |
Language | English |
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