Sermon preached on Sunday, May 19, 2013 at Garden Valley Chapel during our Sunday morning service based on Genesis 1:24-25.

Take your Bible if you will and open it to the book of Genesis 1, Genesis chapter one, where we continue our study of creation, with day six of creation.

It was the revered OT scholar Franz Delitzsch who said -

"Truly is this day thereby denoted as the crown of the others (the crown of all is the sabbath). The sixth day´s work has its eye on man. In advancing nearness to him are the animals created."1

That is where we will resume our study on creation, with the crown of the other previous 5 days of creation, beginning with the creation of all the land animals.

Allow me to read this new section and as always I invite you to stand in the reading of God´s Holy Word.

Read Genesis 1:24-31.

With the start of day six of creation, God puts a finishing touch on the habitat He had created for man.

If you recall He had filled the sea and skies with life on Day Five, paralleling with Day Two.

How God created has been the same as it has been on every previous day:

24 Then God said...
25 God made...

Those two expressions constitute a Hebrew parallelism. "God made" explains "Then God said." That is how clear Scripture is regarding creation. They are equivalent expressions.

It was instantaneous. Creation by fiat. He simply gave the command for things to appear...

24 Then God said... and it was so.

What He commanded was instantly made complete. It was made fixed and in place. That is how it has remained ever since.

As day six begins, we have the introduction of all kinds of land animals. We see this in v. 24 -

24 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so.

Everything from insects and worms to elephants and giraffes.

And they were all created instantaneously; one did not evolve from the other. Look at following verse, v. 25 -

25 God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

The order is changed. Nevertheless it is a threefold division that God gives that serves a shorthand way of designating all land-based creatures.

Notice the expression that God relates to us in v. 24 -

24 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures...

The power is not in the soil or anywhere on earth. Rather, it is found in God alone, in His powerful decree. But what a reminder to us!

The creatures that God made are composed of the very same elements as the earth. This is what we will read in Gen 2:19 -

19 Out of the ground [Heb. אֲדָמָה] the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.

When these animals die, their bodies decompose and go back to the earth - to the ground.

We are no different. That is exactly where the bodies of all mankind except Noah and his family went at the time of the Flood - back to the earth.

Adam if you recall was formed from the dust of the earth. We read in Gen 3:19 -

19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground [Heb. אֲדָמָה], Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”

In His infinite wisdom, God made this decree to man shortly after sin came into the world and it will be so until Paradise is restored.

Now the variety of what God created is truly astonishing and the sixth day of creation is no exception. It is truly a world filled with wonders that signify the wisdom and creative power of our Creator.

Three categories of land animals are given in verse 24. In the remainder of our time I want to look at these categories individually.

1. Cattle
2. Creeping Things
3. Beasts of the Earth