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20 Then God said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." 21 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." 23 So the evening and the morning were the fifth day. ~ Genesis 1:20-23
Today, we consider day 5 in the six days of creation. In a little less than two days, the fifth and part of the sixth days of creation, which were Thursday and Friday of the first week, God created every type of animal that exists. And so, on that first Thursday ever, God created the wildlife in the waters, birds, and other winged creatures, and all of the life in the sea.
In v.20 of today's passage we read, "Then God said, 'Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.'"
During the first three days of creation, God created the infrastructure needed for this world to operate successfully. Then, during days four through six, God created the animals, the fish and man to inhabit the creation that He had made. We are told the Earth is 25,000 miles in circumference and weighs approximately 6,586 sextillion tons. It hangs in empty space. It spins at 1,000 miles an hour with perfect balance. At the same time that it’s spinning at 1,000 miles an hour, it is moving through space around the sun at 1,000 miles a minute in an orbit of 580 million miles. Mind blowing!
In v.20 here we have the first appearance in Scripture of a very remarkable and important word. We are told that God brought forth in the waters "an abundance of living creatures." Those two words "living creatures" is a translation of a single Hebrew word which means "soul." Here we have the first appearance of creatures with souls. Animals, as well as humans, have souls, and it is the soul that marks the major difference between animal and plant life. The mark of animal life, even marine life and bird life, is that they can think and feel and decide. The three functions of the soul are the mind, the will, and the emotions. What sets man apart from other created beings is that we have a spirit.
In v.21 of today's passage we read, "So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good."
For the second time in this entire chapter the word "created" appears. The first use was in the very first verse of the chapter. It is significant that again we have this particular word brought in, because with its usage, God did something different. There had been no animal life of any kind before, but now God created different than He did before. Whereas before He created everything out of nothing, here God created the animals out of something that He had made before. This is important to point out because according to the fossil records, the major divisions of animal life as we know them, except vertebrates, appear nearly simultaneously very early in the fossil records. And in those fossil remains the crustaceans, for example, are found to be fully developed crustaceans. Of course, this contradicts the teachings of the evolutionists. Just as God created Adam and Eve as adult, He created all of creations as adult.
In v.22-23 of today's passage we read, "22 And God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.' 23 So the evening and the morning were the fifth day."
The fifth day of creation came to a close after God blessed and commanded the animals to multiply. This is the first time in the Bible that God commanded living beings to procreate. Animals are precious to God. In fact, when Job complained that God had mistreated him, God pointed him to creation to help Job understand His sovereignty and His goodness. Animals figured prominently in God's response to Job’s attempted indictment. In Job 38:39-41, God reminded Job that it is He who provided for the animals. According to Job 40, God also pointed out that he is more powerful than the feared Behemoth and Leviathan by the very fact that He is their Creator. While they may have been beyond Job’s reach, these creatures were never beyond God’s reach.
In response, Job acknowledged God’s sovereignty. In Job 42:6 we read, "I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes." The fact that God used examples from the animal world to convince Job of His sovereignty suggests strongly that this is part of God’s intended purpose for His creation of the animals. God has built wonder into animals, and by design, they point us all to the God of the Bible as the great and only sovereign. And, our response should be the same as Job's; respect, and honor and awe and wonder in the presence of our mighty God.
