Sermon preached on Sunday, April 21, 2013 at Garden Valley Chapel during our Sunday morning service based on Genesis 1:20-23.

Take your Bible if you will and open it to the book of Genesis 1, Genesis chapter one.

Where we begin looking at day five of creation, on which God populates the seas and the skies.

I invite you to stand in the reading of the Word of God.

Read Genesis 1:20-23.

The passage contains a very important verb that has not appeared since verse one -

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The Hebrew word is בָּרָא.

And as we noted previously, this word in the Qal stem is used solely for God’s activity. It is never used of human creation, but divine creation.1 God envelopes this verb and rightly so.

Thus far in our study of Genesis 1 we have seen the more broader term being used, God “makes” for example the “expanse” (v. 7), God made the “two great lights” (v. 16).

In other words, God is Creator as Is 40:28 proclaims -

28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth Does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.

And God is Maker as Is 44:24 affirms -

24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself And spreading out the earth all alone,

He is both Creator and Maker of all things. Praise be to God.

Yet what we see with the term bara is that Moses uses this term when he wants especially to stress that “the product is some kind of fresh start.”2

Hence the material universe (1:1; 2:4) is a fresh start because it came from nothing; here in our passage, the sea creatures (1:21) are new in that they are the first of what our account calls “living creatures.”

And as we shall see “man” (1:27) is a fresh start because the image of God is unique.

But here they are new, never seen before living creatures.

This is where Scripture makes a clear distinction between plant and animal life.

Trees and plants are nowhere in Scripture referred to as “living creatures” or as the Hebrew text reads, “living נֶפֶשׁ,” which is the term that is sometimes translated as “souls,” hence “living souls.”

Those designations are reserved for animals, insects, birds, fish, and humans.

*So what is life?