Jump Start # 350

Genesis 1:11-13 “Then God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them’; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a third day.”

  Creation—God’s first miracles and the origin of life. Many doubt these pages of the Bible. Many want to place this in the area of an allegory. Some cannot see science and Biblical faith as being compatible. Some view science as an assault upon faith and others that thoughts of creation belong in Sunday school and not science class.

  The only one that was there to know what happened was God. He knows. He witnessed and now He is telling all mankind what happened.

  Our verses today are in the midst of the creation account. This is not the only passages in the Bible that tells us that God created. Sprinkled all over the Bible, both O.T. and N.T. and references to God’s creation. In Hebrews 11 we find, “…what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” Our passage today takes place on the third day, which would have been a Tuesday. ‘How do you know that?’ you might ask?  In Exodus 20, when God establishes the Sabbath day, he defines for us a week. There it says, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” The Sabbath day was the last day, the seventh day. It was Saturday. We are looking at the third day, a Tuesday.

  Three simply thoughts for you to think about today.

• God placed within the earth the mechanisms to grow vegetation. The “earth sprout” is what the passage says. To do that, God had to make the soil rich enough to grow things. Interestingly, God does not make the sun until the next day, day four. We’d tend to think that the sun ought to be made first, then the plants. Not according to the creation model. There are those who want each day of creation to represent thousands or even millions of years. They do that to try to justify the age of rocks. Yet, if each day is millions of years old, how did these plants survive that long without the sun? Now if they are only one day old as Genesis tells us, and the sun comes the next day, not a problem.

• In the creation account, God placed boundaries and order.  The earth brought forth vegetation “after their kind,” fruit trees did the same, “after their kind.” Grass is not like trees. Trees are not like green beans. There are differences. Evolution would teach that long ago they all came from the same “mother plant” and through time evolved to what we have today. That’s not what the Bible says. From the start they were different. God made them to continue on, that is, they had seed within them. This would continue the process of bringing forth many more. Another thought here, we are looking at day three. On day six comes man. If man is to survive he has to eat. These trees could not have been little saplings that in a few years would have fruit on them. Adam would have starved by then. They had to have fruit on them at the beginning, which means they began as mature trees. To look at one, we might think the tree was 15 years old, when in reality it was only three days old. Our system of dating things may be off because of such things.

• The earth obeyed God. God said, “let the earth bring forth…” (v. 11). The next verse states, “The earth brought forth…” (v. 12). The earth was exactly what God wanted. He stated and it was so.

  Now comes one of the greatest mysteries of what happened on the third day, Can you and I believe it as God said it? Is it possible for God to do just what happened here? Could it be that God started everything suddenly. Evolutionists what a “big bang.” I’d rather have a “big God.” They want you to believe that matter has always been. I’d rather accept that God has always been. They want you to know that without any reason, some molecules started moving. They bumped into one another and produced a primeval soup from which all life came from. Everything living, they’d tell you, is related to each other. Time and chance and error has brought us to the final product. Now there’s no evidence for this theory, other than it just did. Through the years this theory has “changed” and ideas dropped and news added. And the bottom line, the only reason your feet are not where your ears happen to be is by chance. Talk about a leap in the dark and a system of faith!

  I accept what God says. Now you ask, how come? Because the truthfulness of the Bible. Fulfilled prophecies, historically accurate, scientifically correct, consistent unity of thought throughout. There is no other book like the Bible. If man wrote this, why can’t he write another like it? He can’t. Not by one person, but forty. Not in one lifetime but covering over 1,500 years, on three different continents and involving three different languages. We can’t agree on who shot JFK– let alone compile a masterpiece like the Bible.

  Proof of creation—the Bible. There are others, but this is the greatest. If you cannot accept the first page of the Bible, can you accept the last page? Can you accept any page? Those that discount the first page, take away God, His power and what He is able to do. Bottom line here, if God cannot create this world, how do I know that He can save my soul?

   The first page of the Bible ties into everything else. Believe it!

Roger