Word of Salvation – Vol.53 No.30 – August 2008

 

The God of Life

A Sermon by Rev John Haverland
Sermon 4 of 19, on Genesis 1-12

Scripture Readings:  Genesis 1:11-13, 20-25; Job 39:1-40:5, 42:1-6

Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

Theme: Out of his great imagination God created a variety of living beings with the ability to reproduce.
Purpose: To prompt us to humble praise to God for his great imagination and his gift of life.

There is a large cathedral in London known as St Pauls which was built in the late 1600s and completed in 1710. It was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, a famous British architect. He was also buried there in the cathedral. On his tomb there is a Latin inscription that translated reads, “Reader: If you seek his monument, look around you.”  In other words, the cathedral is a testimony, or a monument, to his life and work.

There is a somewhat similar message, but a much greater statement, inscribed in the stone above the entrance to the museum in Christchurch. Those who designed the museum engraved the words of Job 26:14 from the old King James version:
“Lo, these are parts of his ways:
but how little a portion is heard of him.”
In the NIV it reads:
“These are but the outer fringe of his works;
how faint the whisper we hear of him.”

This means that if you go through the museum you will see parts of God’s ways, the outer fringe of his works; but you will only see a small portion of all that God has done, a faint whisper of all there is to hear. Job wrote that out of a firm belief in God the Creator who made the world; and presumably the designers of the Christchurch museum also believed in this great God.

Today we want to consider the creation of the plants and fish and birds and animals and see how these declare God’s great imagination and his gift of life.

First of all then, they display GOD’S GREAT IMAGINATION
This is seen in the huge variety of life on this earth.

On the third day of the creation week God made all the plants and the trees, the herbs and grasses and shrubs and flowers. As you know, there are thousands of types of flowers — tulips and lilies and carnations and sunflowers — and then within each type there are many varieties.

Or think of all the different types of trees and shrubs, and then the variation within each species of those — all the different varieties of camellias and bottle brushes and azaleas.

If you wander around in the Botanical Gardens in the cities and towns of this country, you will see a small display of the great variety of God’s creation.

Think also of the creatures of the sea: the huge whales that swim in the oceans and the tiny little tropical fish that swim around the coral reefs; the giant sting-rays and the strange sea horses; and then there are peculiar crabs and crayfish and jellyfish.

And there are all the birds with all their amazing colours, especially the birds in Australia and South America. All these birds vary so much in size, from the giant albatross and the eagle down to the tiny rifleman and hummingbird.

And of course there are all the creatures of the earth; the massive elephants, tall giraffes, huge hippos, the striped zebras, the spotted leopard, the giant goanna, and then all the tiny insects.

A children’s hymn celebrates this creative work of God:

All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful—
the Lord God made them all.
Each little flower that opens,
each little bird that sings—
he made their glowing colours,
he made their tiny wings.

God made all this variety. It is estimated that the number of species of animal is well over two million. Genesis 1 tells us that God created the plants “according to their kinds” (vs 12); he made the fish and birds “according to their kinds”  (vs 21); the animals were made “each according to its kind” (vs 24).

Moses was not writing a biology textbook nor was he attempting a botanical classification. He did not define a particular species. Rather he used the word “kind” to describe a broad group, a major class of plant or tree or animal. This phrase, “according to its kind”, makes it clear that every living creature has its own distinct character and that there are clear lines between each type of animal or bird or plant.

There will be variation within each class or type and there will be some change and adaptation that takes place within a type. People have described this as micro-evolution. But there is no evidence for a change from one type to another. Organisms tend to stay true to type and if left alone they tend to go back to their original type.

The fossil record supports this description given in Genesis. That of course poses a big problem for evolutionists because the fossil record is missing all the links. The record does not show any intermediate life forms; there are no transitions from fish to birds, or from reptiles to mammals. Even Darwin recognised that major groups or divisions of animals appear suddenly in the fossil record, and that this did not fit with his theory. He thought that future fossil discoveries would support his theory, but that hasn’t happened. Despite all the digging around and hunting there are still all these gaps in the record.

This is where the creation account is a better model or description of the plant and animal world than evolution. Think of it like this: take the viewpoint of evolution and its starting point, and then project into the future the world you would expect to see in thousands of years time. Evolution begins with very simple life forms. Over the years these change and develop. According to the theory they evolve into higher life forms. But even given tens of thousands of years you would expect to see the same basic life forms; you would expect that everything would be quite similar because it all came from the same simple cell beginning. You would not expect to see great variety or many differences between one thing and another.

Compare that to the viewpoint of creation which says that right at the beginning God made a huge variety of creatures each according to its kind — a massive range of all sorts of creatures. If you project that ahead into the future, you would expect that variety to continue, and to see even more of that. And that is exactly what we do see. The biblical account of creation fits exactly with the way the world is, whereas evolution does not fit with the world around us.

More and more scientists are coming to this conclusion. They see that there are serious flaws in the theory of evolution and are questioning its basic assumptions. More and more respected scientists are coming to the conclusion that the world gives evidence of intelligent design and they believe there must have been a designer. They are not saying they believe in the God of the Bible but the evidence they present is in support of the biblical picture of God as the Creator.

We need a firm belief in the biblical testimony to God the Creator because the theory of evolution is so pervasive in our state schools and in the universities and polytechs (technical colleges) through the country. But Genesis 1 tells us that God made everything “according to their kinds”.

God created all this variety to be useful. Plants were provided as food for us to eat, trees for fruit, roots and leaves for medicine, herbs for flavour. The animals were given to us for the wool and milk they provide and, after the flood, the fish and animals were given to man for food and clothing. In many cultures when an animal is killed every part of it is used, nothing is wasted, everything has a use. That is true in our western cultures too. In the freezing works (or abattoir) every part of the animal is utilised.

But this great variety in the plant and animal world was not merely utilitarian, it was not there just to be useful; God also made it to be beautiful, to be pleasing to the eye, to be lovely to look at.

In New Zealand we have the privilege of living in a beautiful country with a wonderful variety of landscape — the glistening water and lovely inlets of the Bay of Islands, the spectacular majesty of the Southern Alps, the breath-taking beauty of the Southern Lakes and the fiords. All of these districts contain a great range of plant and animal life. Think of the magnificent beech forests of the West Coast of the South Island, of the huge Kauri trees in Northland, of the green grass on the rolling hills of the Waikato and of Southland. Think of the fantails that flit along as they follow you as you walk through the bush, of the cheeky Keas that are so clever and curious, of the Kiwi that goes hunting insects at night on the forest floor. [Revise all this for Australia where necessary.]

God made all this so that we might praise him for his great imagination.

Earlier in the service we sang Psalm 104 which described many of the plants and animals God made. After a long description of all these marvels the psalmist exclaims:

“How many are your works O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.” (vs 24)

An all wise God made all these living beings out of his infinite imagination.

What else can we do but praise him for all his marvellous works?
Psalm 104 again:

“I will sing to the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live…
Praise the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord” (vss 33,35).

St Francis of Assisi reflected this in his famous hymn:

“Earth ever fertile, day by day,
bring forth your blessings on our way;
Alleluia, alleluia!
All flowers and fruits that in you grow,
let them his glory also show:
O praise him, O praise him, alleluia.”

When you see a great Kauri tree that is a 1000 years old, do you stand in awe of the God who made this? When you hear the birds singing in the trees in the morning, do you recall that they are praising their Maker? When you see a beautiful rose opening up in the sun, do you remember that the Lord God made this and do you thank him for it?

“He gave us eyes to see them
and lips that we might tell
how great is God Almighty,
who has made all things well.”

The creation of all these living beings not only declares God’s great imagination but also proclaims him as the GIVER OF LIFE.

He created all these living things with the ability to reproduce. He made “seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it” (vs 11). An apple tree will produce apples with seeds that fall into the ground and germinate and grow into more apple trees. And so with many trees.

God made the fish and the birds and blessed them and said, “be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth” (v 22). And God gave all the animals the ability to reproduce according to their kinds.

Fertility is a gift of God the Creator.

The pagan religions of the ancient world perverted this gift of God. They ignored God the Creator and worshipped what he had made. They made a god of fertility and they distorted that terribly into a religion that promoted immorality and religious prostitution. People do this today, too. They make a god out of sex and they remove it from the context of love and marriage and they use it to manipulate and abuse and harm others.

But this ability to reproduce is a beautiful gift of God. God is the Creator, the Author, the Giver of life. He is in control of all the processes that make plants germinate and grow. He enables the birds and fish and animals to have young. He is in charge of all this. New life is a blessing from God.

When you see new spring growth around your home, will you think of God who enables plants to grow? When you pick a lettuce or tomatoes from your garden, will you thank God who provides these? When you see a little kitten or puppy or a new born lamb or calf, will you remember that these are works of God?

Yet, when we consider the gift of life we also know that sin has affected all of creation. You plant a tree and it might die. Disease may run through an entire crop of flowers. A ewe may deliver a stillborn lamb. A cow may have massive complications in delivering her calf. Cats may have kittens that are left to fend for themselves and then turn wild. The fall into sin has affected the whole world. All around us we see disease and decay and death. We see that in plants and in all the animals, and in ourselves.

Yet the Bible tells us that Jesus came into this world to deal with sin. He came to fight against disease, to defeat death, to conquer the Evil One. He did this through his life and especially in his death and resurrection. He came to redeem us to be his own, to buy us back, to make all things new.

Jesus has begun that process, but it is not yet complete. In Jesus Christ we are already saved, but we don’t yet experience the full joy of our salvation. That must wait until Jesus comes again for the second time. We are waiting “eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23).

But we are not the only ones waiting for this. “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Rom 8:22). When Adam sinned it affected all of creation — the ground, the plants, the animals, the birds, everything. But when Jesus comes again he will liberate all of creation from the power of sin and Satan.

Read Romans 8:19-21…

When that happens the entire world will again bear a clear testimony to our all wise God.

Now we only see a small portion of his ways, the outer fringe of his works; now we only hear a faint whisper of all there is to know. Then we will see the triune God in all his glory and we will spend all eternity marvelling at the display of all his wonderful works!

Amen.