TEXT: Genesis 1:20-23

SUBJECT: Henry on Genesis 1 #7

Tonight, with the Lord’s help, we’ll move on in the study we began a couple of months ago. It’s called Matthew Henry on Genesis 1. The book we’re using to guide us is Henry’s great Commentary on the Whole Bible.

Matthew Henry was a Puritan pastor and scholar who excelled at the Puritan method of teaching. What he does throughout his commentary is to explain the verse and then to apply it. In other words, he tells us what the verse means and what it means to us.

Thus far, we’ve worked our way through the first four days of the Creation Week. Now we come to Day 5 in which God filled the seas and the sky with living creatures—birds above and fish below.

Henry begins by pointing out the progress of creation. Most Christians recoil from the word, evolution—and you understand why. But the fact is, simpler things did come before things more complex. The Puritan doesn’t try to hide this or to explain it away. He says,

If you’ve read Genesis 1, you know this is true. First we have the creation of non-living things like water, earth, stars, moon, and sun. Then we have living things that lack all awareness, namely plant life. But now, on Day 5, we have the creation of living things with awareness. No one would say a fish or a bird is intelligent, but they know what’s going on in a way that a tree or a blade of grass doesn’t! Later, of course, we have animals even more sophisticated, and finally, we have the creation of Man.

This is what the verse says, and from it, Henry draws a useful lesson.

This is a very good thought and ought to be applied in two ways:

If the old creation came about gradually, from lesser to greater, then the same thing is true in the New Creation. The world was here and real on Day One. But it also a mess at the time! In the same way, the newest convert is truly saved, but his life in Christ is very little developed. He will grow in grace, but it will take some time. This means:

• We ought to be patient with our own growth in grace. Believers often become discouraged because they’re not growing in grace fast enough. The desire is good, but it’s not very realistic. A few people make amazing progress in knowledge and holiness, but most of us don’t. We ought to be willing to wait on God to make us what He wants us to be. Cooperate with Him? Of course! But patiently.

• We ought to be patient with the spiritual growth of other people. We often wonder why they don’t grow as rapidly as we have—and secretly imagine that they don’t because they don’t try as hard as we do or are inferior to us in some other way. Yet the Bible says we’re to "Bear with the weak", in other words, wait on God to make them what they ought to be. Should we encourage them? Of course! Gently correct them, if need be? Yes. But you cannot drive them with a cattle prod. And if they don’t live up to your expectations, that’s all right—they don’t have to!

The old saying was "Rome wasn’t built in a day". That’s right, it wasn’t—and neither was the world. If the Romans could build their Empire over centuries and God could organize His world over six days, we can be patient with His sanctifying work in our lives and in the lives of other people. That’s a sharp lesson from Matthew Henry.

The next one is equally interesting. The creation of fish and birds from the same seas reminds Henry of God’s sovereignty.

Fish and birds are very different creatures. They don’t look alike, sound alike, smell alike, or taste alike. One has lungs, the other has gills; one has feathers, the other has scales. One makes noise, the others—for the most part—are silent. Birds and fish are very different, yet both were made from the same material and by the same command of God.

What does this mean? It means that the Lord is not dependent on raw material, but is sovereign over it. You see this in the very different effects the Gospel has on sinners. Two men, alike in every way hear the same sermon: it hardens one and saves the other. How do you explain it? We’re all so worried to defend the fairness of God (and to prove that He is democratic) that we find things in one man that are not in the other (he listened closer, he was smarter, he felt his need more deeply, and so on). These things may be true in a secondary way, but the primary reason that one was saved and the other was not is the will of God—pure and simple sovereignty, Luke 10:21,

It was not John Calvin who prayed this way, but our Lord Jesus Christ! He knew there were secondary causes in a man’s salvation—or damnation—but He also knew that, in the end, it is God who chooses!

This means—if we’re saved—it’s not because of anything in us (less stubborn than others, for example), but something in God, Deuteronomy 7:7,

In presenting the sovereignty of God to saints and sinners, we have to be careful to not be obnoxious or lop-sided. It has to be presented alongside the doctrines of human responsibility and the Free Offer of the Gospel, but having said all that, we cannot flinch at the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in salvation. He decides who gets into heaven and who doesn’t. We cannot answer every question or satisfy every objection, but that’s all right, we don’t have to! We simply believe it because it is in the Bible—and it’s staying there!

That’s the second observation Henry makes on the passage before us.

The third thing Henry points out about Day 5 is the amazing variety of animals God created that day.

The Puritan died almost 300 years ago, yet even then there were primitive microscopes and he apparently enjoyed looking at things under them. What he saw amazed him at God’s great power and wisdom and love of variety. Needless to say, if he had the instruments we have, he would be even more enchanted at the wonder of God’s creativity.

I don’t know who Mr. Boyle is, but he is right in admiring an ant as much as an elephant. Both show the handiwork of an Almighty, All Wise and All Loving God. If this is true, you have a million things all around you—all the time—to praise the Lord for!

Yesterday I saw a big spider hanging between two trees. I admired the bug very much, but I forgot to praise the Lord for making it. How kind the Lord is for putting that much thought into a bug! And not only into a bug, but into you and me too.

The variety of creation teaches us a lesson: we have to let other people be themselves. One of the most common—and most true—criticisms of Reformed Baptists is that we turn out clones. We emphasize unity at the cost of diversity. This retards personal growth, but more than that: it dishonors God who didn’t make us all alike, but wants every Christians to be himself (or herself) under His Lordship.

If God didn’t make a trout the same as a catfish or a canary the same as a buzzard, let’s not put His People into molds of our liking either! Of course, I ought to be a good father, but there are billion ways of being a good father—not just one! We have to respect that and let others be themselves.

In the fourth place, Henry takes note of Providence. The Lord created every kind of fish and bird, but not every one of them!

Creation and Providence are different things. In the first, God created everything out of nothing, but in the second He creates everything out of something. The first apple tree was made out of nothing (at least in principle) while the apple tree in your back yard came from another apple tree.

But, setting aside that distinction, we also have to remember that both creation and providence are the works of a merciful God. The Lord who made all these wonderful things for Adam and Eve has given you many of them too! If they were thankful, you should be too. Even more than they were, it seems to me: For God gave them the world when they were innocent. He gives it to you when you’re guilty!

Henry wraps up this part of his commentary with a word to hunters and fishermen.

He does not say that hunting and fishing are wrong—nor that they’re solely for getting food. Judging from when and where he lived, I assume Henry himself hunted and fished. But what he says about the sports is worth saying again: don’t let them take your mind off Christ and your duty.

I have gone to church all my life and have only known two men (both of whom are in this church) who owned a fishing boat and didn’t use it as often as they could—on Sunday! It’s not that fishing is sinful or even fishing on a Sunday is always wrong. But it is wrong to allow hunting, fishing, or other sports to take you away from the things more important than they are.

In other words: God made the fish and birds to get your mind on Him and not off Him!

What’s true of birds and fish is also true of every other created thing that tempts us away from God—whether it’s football or your family, work or rest, money or art or anything else makes no real difference. The fact is: these things point us to the Lord and not away from Him! Let’s use them lawfully!