Six Divine Days of Creation Part 3 – Genesis 1:20-25

Exposition of Day 5 and Day 6 (land animals) of Creation week. In this series, Genesis is interpreted as literal history.

The Word of God makes it clear that God created the world in six literal, 24- hour days. Ex. 20:11 “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.”

In this message we will briefly review days 1 to 4 of creation week and then study what God did on days 5 and 6.

DAY ONE: CREATION OF UNIVERSE & LIGHT (VS. 1-5)

DAY TWO: CREATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE (VS. 6-8)

DAY THREE: CREATION OF LAND, SEA & PLANTS (VS. 9- 13)

DAY FOUR: CREATION OF SUN, MOON & STARS (VS. 14- 19) On the first day God said “let there be light”. Now on the fourth day God says “Let there be lights”.

Day Five: Creation of Sea & Flying Creatures (Vs. 20-22)

Isaiah 45:18 says that God formed the earth to be inhabited. The 5th and 6th days of creation are dedicated to this final work of creation with the first living animals being created on day 5.

The Divine Formation of these Creatures (Vs. 20-21)

1. Creation of Aquatic Life
   1. ‘life’ = the first time this word appears. Vegetation has life but not in the same sense as animals and humans who possess conscious life.
   2. “bring forth” = has the idea of “to swarm or teem”. “The waters suddenly swarmed with swarming creatures.”¹
   3. “the moving creature that hath life” = these are living animals.
   4. “great whales” = a specific category covering the large aquatic animals. The Hebrew word is ‘taneem’ which is frequently translated ‘dragon’ in the O.T. which is the old English word for dinosaur.² So, this would also include sea monsters now extinct such as plesiosaurs. It would include the creature called Leviathan described in Job 41. “This terrifying aquatic creature with an impenetrable hide impervious to harpoons, fearsome teeth and a back covered in rows of shields. It even has firebrands streaming from its mouth and smoke from its nostrils.”³
   5. “every living creature that moveth” = a general category covering all other marine life such as fish.
2. Creation of Aerodynamic Life
   1. “fowl that may fly” = includes not just birds but all winged creatures. The word ‘fowl’ in Hebrew is a generic word for flying creatures. “The Hebrew classification is eminently practical – classifying creatures according to locomotion, rather than by the presence or absence of mammary glands or feathers.”⁴ Also, in old English the word ‘fowl’ had a broader scope. “A flying or winged animal; the generic name of certain animals that move through the air by the aid of wings.”⁵
   2. “fly in the firmament of heaven” = God designed these creatures to fly in the atmospheric heaven as visible displays of His creative power.
   3. Illustration of the Humming Bird: “The 300 species of hummingbirds vary in size from the giant hummingbird, with a length of about eight inches (20 cm), to the bee hummingbird, with a length of about two inches (5cm). The hummingbird can swivel its wings through an amazing degree of angles. The wings beat a figure eight patter 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 it uses to store the nectar. The tongue can go in and out at a rate of 13 times per second, and is stored by being curled up at the back of the bird’s head. Its tongue is also fringed so it can sweep insects from inside flowers. “It cannot survive on nectar alone, but also needs protein from eating insects. Without its special tongue it could never catch these.” (A Closer Look at the Evidence, July 14). One type of hummingbird is the fastest diving bird on earth. “A peregrine falcon diving toward its prey reaches a relative speed of 200 body-lengths per second. This is close to the 207 body-lengths that the space shuttle travels as it enters our atmosphere. Thus, the peregrine falcon was thought to easily be the fastest dare-devil bird on Earth. Scientists have now discovered that a 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 that near-miss pull up he experiences more than nine times the force of gravity. 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 and is more than twice the relative speed of a jet fighter running with afterburners” (www.creationmoments.com).⁶ Talk about a fast courtship!

The Genetic Boundaries of these Creatures (Vs. 21)

1. “after their kind” = said of both categories – marine and bird life.
2. This phrase appears 10 times in this passage. It implies both scope and limitation within a particular kind:
   1. The scope of a kind – a kind is a broader category than a species. There is room for much variation within a particular kind on account of the huge amount of information God has placed in the DNA code.
   2. The limitation of a kind – while there is scope for much variation within a kind, there are impassable genetic boundaries. These variations never lead to one kind transitioning into another. “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.”⁷
   3. The Creationists orchard model makes much better sense of the evidence as opposed to the Evolutionists tree of life.
   4. Illustration: Dogs – a pair of wolf-like creatures would have been sufficient for Noah to take on the ark. Evolutionists now admit that domestic dogs came from wolves only a few thousand years ago. In fact, an interesting experiment was conducted in Berlin where a female wolf and a large male poodle were mated.⁸

The Divine Blessing upon these Creatures (Vs. 22)

1. These creatures are clearly of a higher order in God’s creation than vegetation as they receive a blessing from God. Animals would not be the object of God’s love like humans but they would be objects of His care and concern (Matt. 6:26; 10:29). Leupold 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.”⁹
2. God’s plan for the animal kingdom is revealed in this blessing. It was God’s intention that the earth He had formed be filled with living things on the land, the water and the air. God wanted all parts of the world to be occupied by animal life. God is a God who loves life!

Summary

“Once again it is obvious that the orthodox evolutionary order is not the same as the order of creation recorded here in Genesis. Evolutionary theory says that marine organisms evolved 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.”¹⁰

Day 6: Creation Of Land Animals & Man (Vs. 24-31)

The Origin of Land Animals (Vs. 24-25)

1. The material God used. Land animals made out of the dust of the earth rather than spoken out of nothing. God could have created them out of nothing as he did with most of His other creative acts but He chose to make them out of the earth, giving them a close affinity with it.
2. The categories God made
   1. Cattle = likely a reference to domesticable animals.
   2. Creeping thing = all animals that crawl or creep close to the surface of the ground including insects and smaller reptiles. Likely also most amphibians and many small mammals such as moles, rats, mice etc.
   3. Beast of the earth = the large wild animals such as lions, elephants, hippos, dinosaurs etc.
   4. Illustration of the lion: “The lion is mentioned 150 times in Scripture…The Bible describes the lion as brave (2. Sam. 17:10), bold (Prov. 28:1), strong (Prov. 30:30), fierce (Job 28:8), stealthy (Ps. 10:9; 17:12; Lam. 3:10) and ravening (Ps. 22:13)…A male lion can reach 3 meters (10 ft) long and weigh 180-225 kilos (400-500 pounds). A lion can leap as far as 11 meters (36 feet) and run up to 80 kph (50 mph), but it can only run that fast in a straight line and for a short distance…A male lion’s roar can be heard by humans up to 8 km (5 miles) away and has been measured at 114 decibels. One Hebrew word for lion is “shachal,” meaning the “roarer” (Prov. 26:13). The lion’s blow is one of the most powerful forces in nature. “The leg, or forearm, as it is called, measures 19 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 8 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 off 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” (The Three Strongest Things in the Animal World, The Human Interest Library).¹¹
   5. This would include the creature called Behemoth described in Job 40:15-24. The description fits well with a sauropod dinosaur.
   6. Note: Dinosaurs were created on Day 6 of creation, not millions of years ago. “Dr. Mary Schweitzer, although a committed (theistic) evolutionist herself, has been rocking the evolutionary/uniformitarian world 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 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 much warmer climate proposed for dinosaurs). As she said on a popular TV show: ‘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’.”¹² Even the most generous calculation, based on the fossil somehow being kept continually below freezing point at – 5 degrees C would only allow for a maximum of approx. 6.83 million years which is only about a tenth of the assumed evolutionary age of dinosaurs.¹³
   7. Note: The typical response to such evidence is to try and develop more theories to support the disproven theory!

The Origin of Man (Vs. 26-31)

1. “The creation of man,” writes B.H. Carrol, “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.”
2. Erich Sauer writes, “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, as 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.”¹⁴
3. To be continued next message.

Conclusion

We stand in awe and say with the Psalmist, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:4) What a wonder that such an Almighty God would make us the object of His saving love. Will let the Creator create in you a new heart?

References

1. H Morris, The Genesis Record, Baker Book House Publishers, Michigan, 1994; p. 68.
2. The term ‘dinosaur’ was coined by Richard Owen (1804-1892) from the Greek words ‘deimos’ meaning “terrible, potent or fearfully great” and ‘sauros’ meaning “lizard or reptile”; hence, “terrible lizard”.
3. https://creation.com/media-center/youtube/leviathan-jobs-great-monster Viewed 4/11/21.
4. J Sarfati, The Genesis Account, Creation Book Publishers, Georgia USA, 2015, p. 224.
5. Websters Dictionary 1828, http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/fowl Viewed 4/11/21.
6. D Cloud, God’s Amazing Creatures, Way of Life Literature; p. 61.
7. Morris, p. 70.
8. Sarfati, p. 237.
9. H.C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, Baker Book House 1971, p. 80
10. Morris
11. Cloud, p. 65.
12. Sarfati, p. 242.
13. Ibid.
14. E Sauer, The Dawn of World Redemption, Exeter: The Paternoster Press; 1966, p. 41.