Let's turn back to Genesis chapter
1. Do you enjoy, now that we're
at the fifth day, these men have been reading Genesis 1 every
Sunday morning that we do this. And now with each day, I see
Christ in it as we read it. You see it in a way you never
saw it before. And today, our text is verse 20 through 23. So let's read that again. It
says, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature
that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the
open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales
and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought
forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after
his kind. And God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and
fill the waters and the seas, and let fowl multiply in the
earth in the evening and the morning where the fifth day.
Now let's begin this message with our favorite subject, our
God. Favorite subject. Verse 20 says,
And God said, Verse 21 says, And God created. Verse 22 says,
And God blessed. God said, God created, and God
blessed. Every single thing that is begins
with our God. We love our God, don't we? God said, everything that is
begins with His Word. It begins with His commandment.
He is the author of it. Every single thing that is. Every good thing that is. Not
only is He the author of it, He's the doer of it. Verse 21
says, God created. If anything is going to be done,
he's got to do it. He has got to do it. Except God
build the house, they labor in vain that build it. He has got
to do it. It is God which worketh in you
both to will and to do of his good pleasure. He said, I will
work and who shall let it? God said and God created. He created me. He created me. He created you. He owns us. He owns us. He's our master. He's our Lord. He is our King. We are his subjects. and how
glad we are to be his subjects. How glad we are. We each have
a favorite president of the United States of America. We all do. Of all the presidents throughout
any period of time, we each have one that is our favorite. I do. You do too, don't you? Have you
ever thought, oh, I wish I could vote for him again? I do. I really do. I'm not going
to tell you who mine is, but I wish I could vote for him one
more time, and then I wish he'd never leave office. One more
time. I wish I could be under the office
of that president one more time. Well, our ruler, The one who
reigns is the greatest king of all eternity. We have not seen
him with our eyes, but he's on the throne and he's in charge. He's in charge of my healthcare.
He's in charge of my money. He's in charge. He's the greatest king of all
eternity. He is the strongest. He is the wisest. Solomon was a wise king, but
a greater than Solomon is here. He's the boldest. He's the bravest. He's the kindest. He's the most compassionate. He's the most tender. He's the most merciful of all. He is the king of every king. That is our God. His kingdom
is an everlasting kingdom. You don't vote for Him, He's
never going out of office. Thy throne, O God, is forever
and ever. Verse 20, And God said. Verse 21, And God created. Verse 22, And God blessed. What are the blessings of God? Yay and amen. Ordered and sure. Where are they
found? Well, hold your place and go
to Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1. Verse 3 says, Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Christ. Every single blessing
of our God is found in Christ. Every single one. What are the
blessings in Christ? What are the blessings in Christ? I was sitting back in that study
this week and I like songs. And a song popped into my head.
So I opened up my hymn book and I read it. And I thought that
song, you could scratch out the title. A man wrote that song.
You could scratch out that title and write preacher's class at
the top of it. Open up your hymnal and go to
hymn number one. All right. Hymn number one. This is how every preacher on
the face of this earth ought to preach. It says, Oh, worship the king. All glorious above and gratefully
sing his power and his love, our shield and defender. The ancient of days from everlasting
to everlasting pavilion in splendor and girded with praise. Somebody
is going to preach. What do you say? Verse two says,
Oh, tell of his might. Oh, sing of his grace. Whose robe is the light. God
is light whose canopy space. Now watch this. His chariots
of wrath, the deep thunderclouds form. Fear this, God. Wrath,
the thunderclouds form, and dark is His path on the wings of the
storm. Thy bountiful care, what tongue
can recite? Who is sufficient for these things?
What tongue can recite? I think I want to preach who
is sufficient for these things. It breathes in the air. It shines
in the light. It streams from the hills. I
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. It streams from the hills. It descends to the plains. God
came down. God was manifest in the flesh
and sweetly distills in the dew and the rain. Frail children
of dust, from dust we are to dust we'll
return. All flesh is grass. Frail children
of dust and feeble as frail, in thee do we trust, nor find
thee to fail. He shall not fail. Thy mercies, how tender, how
firm to the end. Here's our blessing. He's our
maker. He's our maker. We belong to
him. How blessed we are. There's another
song that says, now I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ and
the Lord Jesus Christ belongs to me. Not for the years of time
alone, but for all eternity. He's our maker. The song says
he's our defender. How blessed we are. A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing. Roman says, if God before us
who can be against us. That song I just quoted says,
did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing.
We're not the right man on our side. The man of God's own choosing. We sheep need some defense. Our
king is our defender. He's our maker, our defender. The song says he's our redeemer. How blessed we are. We're about
to see this. Genesis one was written when
no sin was on the earth. No sin. And we've fallen from this perfect
creation here in Genesis one. But we're a blessed people because
somebody redeemed us. Somebody redeemed us. Who? Our
King did. Christ. Who did He redeem? All that are in Him. All the blessings of God are
in Him. He said, Greater love hath no
man than this, that a man lay down his life. And the last word
in this song says, friend. lay down his life for his friend,
friend of God. You start to get a hold of the
holiness of this God. You start to get a hold of his
wrath. Oh, and you will see the great
blessing of being his friend. Well, let's look at a few more
things here in Genesis one, verse 20 says, and God said, let the
waters bring forth abundantly. And we've seen from each day
in our Lord's creation that the waters are us. Okay, we are the
waters. Verse 2 in Genesis 1 says, And
the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the
face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters. God moved. God became flesh. God moved on the face of the
waters. Verse 7 says, And God made the
firmament, and that's a covering that touches
both heaven and earth. God made the firmament and divided
the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which
were above the firmament. And it was so. God divided the
waters, and that means He put a difference How did he do that? He put some of the waters under
the firmament, under the covering, under the blood of Christ. And
some he did not. Verse 9 says, And God said, Let
the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place. He called them out and he gathered
his people. And after all of that was finished,
he notified his waters of all that he had done. Verse 20 says,
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving
creature that hath life and fowl that may fly above the earth
in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales
and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought
forth abundantly after their kind. And every wing fowl after
his kind, and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them,
saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters and the seas,
and let fowl multiply in the earth in the evening and the
morning, where the fifth day. He said, Let the waters bring
forth abundantly. Life, creature life is what he
mentions right here. Verse 20 says, The moving creature. And what that means is the creeping
soul. What it means is insects and
bugs. Insects and bugs. And it says,
fowl that may fly above. That's birds. Verse 21 says,
every living creature that moveth. Verse 22 says, fill the waters
and the seas and let fowl multiply in the earth. Let me make sense
of everything I'm saying. Okay. Here we go. This is amazing. Everything we've said is wonderful.
And this is amazing. We're about to see how perfect
the word of God is. How perfect the word of God is
and how the, this word says the same thing on every page. All
right. There are at least 10,000 different species of birds. Right
now they found 10,448. So says Google. There are more than 30,000 different
species of fish, just fish. Think about all the types of
marine life in the ocean, all the different things in the ocean.
How many things are in the ocean? There are more than 925,000 different
species of insects, bugs, a million. Do you know how many creatures
here in our text He named specifically? One. Verse 21 says, And God created
great whales. Whales. That's the one creature
he chose to mention. Out of everything he could have
chosen to mention, he made sure to name a whale on the first
page of his book. A whale. Do you know a story
of a whale in the scriptures? The whale represents the grave. The grave. Spiritually, it represents death. Death. That's the only one he mentioned. Now, this is wonderful. God created
all these things. He created me. He created you. And everything that God has created
on this earth is going to die. Every single thing. Can you think
of one thing on this earth that doesn't die? One thing. The grass. There's not one thing on this
earth that doesn't die. Why? Sin. The sin that's about to enter
every creature in chapter three. Everything is going to die. Every single thing. I was talking
to a man on the phone about another man that we know in another state.
And that man has cancer. And the man I was talking to
said, his days are numbered. That's what he told me on the
phone. He said, man, his days are numbered. All our days are numbered. All of our days are numbered.
We cannot go one day past. It's appointed unto man once
to die, appointed by God. wants to die. The more we come here to worship
our God and the more we hear, and as we saw last week in the
sun and the moon and the stars, as God opens the mysteries of
heaven to us, the more we're going to see that
everything points to one event. Every single thing. Every single
thing on this earth. No matter who it is, no matter
where they are, no matter what they're doing right now, if a
man or a woman is out right now trying to gather up this world,
they're doing it because they know I got to get it now. It's going to die. Everything points to one event. The more clear it becomes that
everything is going to die, the more serious this becomes. The more serious this becomes.
We don't, you know, we can see if somebody's diagnosed with
cancer, well, yeah, his days are numbered, usually. Hard to see our own days, isn't
it? We can't get a hold of that until God opens our eyes to that. But the more we realize that,
the more serious this becomes. Man, I could walk out of here
and get in that truck and hit somebody and go meet God in just
a few minutes. I could go meet God. I could
go stand before God in just a few minutes. It could happen in just
a few minutes. As I speak, he could say, stop
breathing and I could go meet God in just a few seconds. Just a few seconds. Today is
the day of salvation. I'm 36 years young. Bear the yoke in your youth,
man. Man, this is serious. It's a
cold hard reality that everything here is going to face death. Every living creature. But God. He sent this word. This is why
we're here looking at this word. Word by word. He sent this word
to point us to one death. One death. That's what every
single word in this book is about. One death. The death of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Now turn with me to Matthew chapter
12. Matthew chapter 12, look at the
end of verse 39. It says, there shall no sign
be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. Our Lord
put that sign on every page of his book, starting on page one. For as Jonas was three days and
three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth. No sign is ever going to be given
but the sign of Jonah in a whale, Christ in the grave. It's on every page. There's nothing
else on every page but Christ in the grave. That front of our
bulletin says we're determined to know nothing save Christ and
Him crucified. What do you guys preach down
there? Christ in the grave. But He's risen. One death. Christ in the grave. That is the gospel. How can God
die? How can God die? That was God that was laying
there. That's the gospel. That's what
the entire book is about. As Jonah was in the belly of
the whale, even so Christ our Lord was in the belly of this
earth. What was He doing there? He was killing that sin that
killed His creation. killing it. He was paying the debt in redeeming
His people by washing them in His own blood. And while Christ
the Lord was in the belly of the earth, all whom God the Father
chose to redeem were in the belly of Christ. One of these days, the Lord is
going to open my ears to that. And he's going to open my heart
to that. While Christ laid there, I laid there. And all who died in him are blessed,
blessed people. All the blessings of God are
found in him. In him. I got to be in him. God said, God created. He created a substitute. He created a lamb. He created
a sacrifice. And back in Genesis one, verse
22 says, and God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply
and fill the waters in the seas and let foul multiply in the
earth. A number no man can number. Verse
23 says, and the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
This book has one theme. One theme. There's only one theme
in this book. Christ and Him crucified. Christ
and Him crucified. I want to see that on every page.
The Lord's got to open my eyes to see that on every page. Christ and Him crucified. I pray
that when Christ died, I died. Because when He arose, I arose. And He's seated at the right
hand of the Father, and guess where I am? Seated with Him. That's amazing, isn't it? That
is amazing. Well, I pray that God will bless
us, teach us, save us, put us in Christ. Stand together with
me. Let's sing hymn number one.