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11 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 So the evening and the morning were the third day. ~ Genesis 1:11-13
Today we continue our study of day 3 in the order of creation. At the beginning of day 3 there was just land and sea. There was nothing alive, nothing growing, just a barren landscape waiting for the hand of God to dazzle us with His magnificent mind. In the most amazing display of wisdom, love, and beauty, God provided grass, fruit, herbs, and trees. I can’t even imagine what the incomplete world was like when God had not yet added His finishing touch upon it.
In v.11-12 of today's passage we read, "Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth'; and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good."
By the end of the third day things on earth changed dramatically from the way they were just two short days earlier. It was so breath-taking that God said of it twice "it was good." Then God commanded the earth to bring forth fruit. For the first time in creation, God did not make something out of nothing. Rather, He commanded that which He had made to produce the life.
The phrase, "according to its kind," highlights the fact that there are vast numbers of fossils which show that there are modifications of both plants and creatures within a commonly recognizable group. Dogs are an example of this; there are many kinds of dogs, yet, the different kinds of dogs are of the dog family. Dogs, of whatever variety they are, never mutate into cats or horses or donkeys. They remain forever dogs as do all the other species.
Furthermore, it is quite evident that all living things possess this amazing power to reproduce true to type. It is incredibly difficult to produce real deviations. If we turned all the dogs loose and let them run together, in a relatively short time they would revert to a common ancestral type which would probably be very much like a wolf. The strains which we produced by careful selectivity would simply disappear. Thus modifications are contained within the limits of "each kind."
There has never been mutations that happen vertically, though there is certainly movement horizontally. This defies the evolutionary theory which believes in the principal of transmutation: that over a period of time a species changed and tails fell off and limbs grew. The only problem with this is there has never been any real evidence of this transmutation. If that were true, there wouldn't just be evidence--there'd be an abundance of transmutative forms in our world but they are nowhere to be found.
In the Bible, the third day is the day of resurrection, the display of the power of God to produce a new life. It is only that which takes place in the power of a new life, or a new birth, or a resurrected life, that can produce a fruitful humanity. It was on the third day that God called forth fruit upon the earth and there became fruit.
Further, the fruit of God is only produced by the life of God which is allowed to work in the soul of a believing human. In the same way that God commanded the earth to bring forth fruit, so He said to the Lord Jesus Christ to rise again and bring forth fruit in the lives of all who believe in Him as Savior. The only thing that makes the fruit possible is the fact that there is the life from Christ within. A Christian is a new being, produced by a new life that has been imparted to him. It is only when we possess that new life that there is any chance at all that we can be what God desires for us.
And, God looked at His world, filled with the beauty of plant life, ready for the animal life that was to be introduced into it, and said, "It is good." His created world pleased God. When the repentant sinner turns to God for forgiveness, God says of that: "It is good." Humility being given safe haven in the heart of a sinner pleases God. We are told in the New Testament that we must die first before life can emerge in and through us; just like a grain of wheat.
In v.13 of today's passage we read, "So the evening and the morning were the third day."
Once again a 24 hour day is described, and, God pulls back the curtain pointing us to the reality of the Fall of man when tempted to be defined by himself. I am so glad that God didn't stop with the bad news. No, He continued on to that third day when the Lord Jesus made it possible for our souls to be filled with hope through His resurrection and our trust in Him. Martin Luther once aptly said, "The cross is the victory, the resurrection is the triumph...The resurrection is the public display of the victory, the triumph of the crucified one."
The amazing part of the resurrection story was that it produced in the earliest Christians a deeper faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as God. It was against all odds and against all expectations, that those earliest believers believed further, especially due to the fact that believing as they did invited a greater degree of persecution from the unbelieving world. This is what God's recreative work renders in our souls, a deeper conviction that endures no matter what.
