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29 And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so. 31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. ~ Genesis 1:29-31
Today, we close out our study of Genesis 1 which is of the world that God created as we know it. God created from the least complex to the most complex which should inspire us to do the same with our own works, ever improving on what we do. God created this world by the power of His Word, the very same power whereby He re-creates the sin trapped souls of those who come to an end of themselves and who cry out to Him for salvation.
In v.29-30 of today's passage we read, "And God said, 'See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food'; and it was so."
On the sixth day, God created all of the beasts of the earth and He created man, thus completing His creative effort. God did His work in 6 days to show us a good and proper cycle of living; taking one day a week off for rest and relaxation. And also, these six days are representative of a greater picture in redemptive History. God concluded His works on the sixth day and, as we will see, He rested on the seventh.
Today's verses remind us of what was available for man to eat after God created him. The intended food for man included the grains of the fields, and the fruit of trees. So Adam and Eve first were vegetarian, they could eat every plant yielding seed on the surface of the earth, every tree yielding fruit with seed in it was food for them. Man and animals were all vegetarians at creation because there was no death on the earth; nothing died. God established this as the original fixed pattern. It was permanent at that time. The words, "it was so" indicates its permanence. Its permanence ended with the Fall of man. Interestingly, according to Isaiah 65:25 when the curse is removed, during the Millennium, all carnivores will eat plants again.
In v.31 of today's passage we read, "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day."
After earlier making His pronouncement about the food available for life on earth, God expanded on His previous descriptive statement of the first five days as, "It was good." Here, He expanded it by saying, "It was very good."
The narrative here smacks in the face of the evolutional adige of, "The survival of the fittest." Before sin entered into this world it was that everything that God created including the food for the animals and man was "very good." This provides for us a peek into life with God at the helm. In Matthew 4:4, the Lord Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." When God provided bread as the basic food of man, bread made from the grains of earth, the seed-bearing plants and the fruits, He intended that such physical bread would be a picture of the bread desperately needed at the psychological and spiritual level of man as well. In fact, the whole of scripture teaches that the Lord Jesus is the end of all of our desires.
The "bread" is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ who said, "I am that bread of life, he that eats of me shall never hunger." Then in Matthew 6 the Lord Jesus said, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"
In the same way that God provides for the birds and the animals and the flowers, He provides for the one who seeks Him for his daily needs. This is why the Lord Jesus went on to say, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. and all these things shall be added unto you." That's a great deal, especially when we consider that that which we trust the most will define us the most. As long as we keep our focus on trusting God for our daily needs, we will discover that we will never come in second as we seek Him first.
