Link to the Lesson on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lZ30Y4qp5VY
All other days in prep for day 5. The Earth / “us” are ready to support animate life.
As we’ve progressed through God’s plan for our re-creation, God has been developing us. We started out void and without form. We received the light within us, which allowed us to see El Elohim for who He is - not just our Father, but King of kings and Lord of lords. He separates the waters from the land exposing fertile ground. The first evidence of growth are the plants. Then God creates the lights, which we broke down into more detail last time.
Now comes this interesting Day 5, where God makes the birds and the fish. That is what we investigate today.
#Bible, #Creation, #OurCreation, #GodsPlan, #Disciples, #GodsCharacter, #GodsNature, #ChristianDevelopment, #HCJC, #HCJCministries
Kick off Video:
Bible Project: Wisdom:
Dr. Ravi Zacharias answers “can’t we just be good?”
Link to the Lesson on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lZ30Y4qp5VY
Our path to Re-Creation - Day 5
God Preparing Us
Understanding Our Reality:
When God re-creates us, He is molding us into His likeness and the image of Himself.
As He does this He is working on our heart.
And with our newly created Godlike heart He wants us to see the world the way He does
The Heart - Last week in Hebrew we learned that the heart is the center of your:
Physical life or our literal organ
But it is ALSO:
Intellectual life or thought (mind)
Desires of your heart, and choices made based on these (will)
Emotional life or feelings (emotion)
In the New Testament, Jesus says in Matthew 22:37-40 (MSG)
37-40 Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
Scripture for Day 5
Understanding our reality, both physical and spiritual, with God’s perspective is quintessential.
Which brings us to our main Scripture for this lesson:
Genesis 1:20-23 (MSG)
20-23 God spoke: “Swarm, Ocean, with fish and all sea life!
Birds, fly through the sky over Earth!”
God created the huge whales,
all the swarm of life in the waters,
And every kind and species of flying birds.
God saw that it was good.
God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Ocean!
Birds, reproduce on Earth!”
It was evening, it was morning—
Day Five.
Genesis 1:20-23 (NASB)
20 Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” 21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
What are the Fish and Birds?
When plants showed up on Day 4, there was this “growth”
Metaphorically we’re like, alright, I can wrap my head around that.
But then come these fish and birds on Day 5, and it’s like - wait. Whaaats goin on here?
The Fish and Birds are Our Thoughts
First of all, the fish and birds represent our thoughts.
But not just any thoughts - Godly thoughts. How do we know?
1. We’ve received salvation through Jesus - Day 1
2. We’ve come to see God above us - Day 2 And remember, Heavens and Godly things are up - so, birds.
Now God really goes to work:
3. God separates the things in our life, the waters and the land - Day 3
God is pulling the things we’ve put into ourselves through foolishness out
This is a part of what the Bible refers to as “pruning”
4. God BEGINS to grow things in us - Day 3
He does this, persisting things by His will, not ours
5. God creates the Lights of the Heavens, the sun and moon - Day 4
This Light is the Truth of God revealed to us
TIP - we should be paying attention to this Truth!
To adjust the lense, let’s apply this model:
We should all understand school.
The teacher teaches, we learn
The teacher tests, we demonstrate what we learned by taking tests
Our re-creation is God’s curriculum
God is our Teacher, we learn
So, follow this:
In this simplified model we see how God is molding our Heart.
Our Heart is the center of our mind, will, and emotion.
Our mind will and emotion are our soul
Our soul is the part of us that connects our body, soul, and spirit
It is the center of our identity
Thus, as God re-creates us, He works from the center of who He made us to be
The Fish and Birds are Types of Thought
We remember that the things of Heaven are above. Things of the world below.
Fish = material thoughts
These are thoughts about our physical existence:
- Our bodies
- Our stuff
- Power
- Self Esteem
- Etc...
Not all things in this lower world are tangible.
How we identify ourselves, other people and things, and the relationships between
These are intangible
God made these things, and calls them good
The enemy wants to hijack these thoughts by cutting them off from God. How?
Birds = spiritual thoughts
We can tell that these represent our spiritual thoughts because:
They are higher
They “fly” or animate in the Heavens
God is the author of all that is True and Good.
He is the source of our Heavenly thoughts.
We are made to have these types of thoughts.
Our design as worshipers is to orient ourselves to Him and give thanks in praise and worship.
The many gods problem.
- One problem leveraged at Christianity is called “the many gods problem.”
- That’s a lesson by itself that I won’t get into in this lesson.
- But this shows us the purpose of the many gods.
The enemy’s strategy:
At various times, Lucifer and the “sons of God” fell to Earth.
As fallen angels, they went about creating fallen gods.
In other words, the false gods behind everything idolatrous are these.
Because we are designed to worship, the enemy gave these false gods to man.
Through temptation, the enemy lured worship away from the True God to himself.
In this way, Lucifer made himself “like god” in his own mind.
But this is temporary, and is something the El Elohim, King of kings, Lord of lords, will resolve.
Expressing our Changing Heart
There is a sequence in the Christian Faith:
Redemption
Righteousness
Worship
- This sequence is not just logical, it is chronological.
- The impact of the message of Jesus Christ, in its redemptive foundation is the only thing that has worked to change the hearts of some against the other.
This progression is absolutely correct.
The evidence of this process is in the demonstration of our behavior.
If there is a change in behavior, it is different from Day 0.
In other words, the change is a demonstration of God’s Character or Nature
Or effectively, His Wisdom!
A look at the Wisdom study by Bible Project:
Proverbs - is portrayed as a wise female teacher.
Hoak - Ma = wisdom = an attribute of God Himself
Wisdom - portrayed as “lady wisdom,” makes herself available to anyone willing to listen
You possess wisdom when you put it to work
Fear of the Lord = learning God’s boundary lines and NOT crossing them
To do these last two things…
BEFORE we can do anything, we MUST think about it.
This thinking before putting to work are the thoughts that are risen within our hearts (or minds)
Thus, the expression of our changing heart is to begin thinking like God.
Isn’t that amazing?
That God would make us in a way that allows us to think like Him.
Last time our lead off video focused on our hearts.
The story of our re-creation is all about our heart!
You can look at Day 0 as the state of our heart.
Days 1 to 4 have been PREPARATION
Day 5 gives rise to Godly thoughts about Heavenly and Earthly things
- Birds = spiritual thoughts (because they are higher)
- Fish = material thoughts (thoughts about material things in a way God calls “good”)
But lest we forget, let’s remember what God says about His thoughts:
Isaiah 55:8-11 (MSG)
8-11 “I don’t think the way you think.
The way you work isn’t the way I work.”
God’s Decree.
“For as the sky soars high above earth,
so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth,
Doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,
So will the words that come out of my mouth
not come back empty-handed.
They’ll do the work I sent them to do,
they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.
With God’s thoughts working within us:
Our knowledge about how to act in our material world comes from our spiritual understanding
These are connected, not separate
Wisdom flows directly from our Lord Christ Jesus forming our spiritual thoughts
Spiritual thoughts flow to material thoughts
This all gives us a Godly understanding
And we BEGIN to act from Love - the Love of Jesus living within us
Days of our Re-Creation
We become a new person
We learn to acknowledge God - Jehovah Jesus
We learn to learn from His Word
Then we must practice what the Word teaches
Being led by the values of our Father - Evidence of His Character alive and at work within us, as demonstrated by “our character” or His Character IN us
Grow our faith or letting His faith grows in us
Resting in Peace with God
Comments