Like Father — Like Son, Part 1

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If you plant a corn seed, you expect a corn plant.  If you plant a bean seed, you expect a bean plant.  Why?  Because kind produces kind,  like produces like.  The seed determines the result.  ‘Like father, like son’, a longtime favorite expression of many, is actually a grand truth that we see manifested regularly in our world--a truth that started long before our time, way back in the beginning of the world, a truth that was created by the Creator just as surely as Creation itself--and it’s all about His Glory!

In the beginning, God created both the heavens and the earth.  Once God created the earth, He created light, which He then separated from the darkness.  God called the light day and He called the darkness night.  It is fascinating to think of the fact that God created light before He created the sun and moon, before He created the stars, in fact, before He created any luminaries at all...

God continued with His creation and made the expanse.  He separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse.  The Spirit of God had hovered over the surface of the waters which were covering the earth (Genesis 1:2) and now (Genesis 1:6) God separated those waters into two places--one part was below the expanse and the rest of the waters were above the expanse.  God called His expanse heaven.  Again, it is a lofty thing to ponder--waters on the earth and waters above the expanse of heaven.  Held there by... God.

Two days of creating had passed when God gathered the waters which were below His heavens into one place and He called for dry land to appear on the earth.  The dry land He now named earth and the gathering of the waters He named seas.  The seas were in one place, not many as they are today; there was only one piece of earth showing and the rest of the planet was one big gathered bunch of waters.  God would change that one day...

Before this third day was over God commanded the earth to sprout vegetation--plants which had seeds in them, and fruit trees--trees bearing fruit with seeds in the fruit.  Let me say this more clearly with a little help from the original Hebrew of the Genesis account.  These weren’t little tiny plants--they were full-grown mature plants, each created in the state of sowing its seeds.  Each of the seeds which the plant sowed would produce another plant of the exact same kind.  Each plant ‘A‘ was created yielding and scattering plant ‘A‘ seeds!  Each plant ‘Z‘ came with plant ‘Z‘ seeds ready to reproduce more plant ‘Z’s!  And in the same way, each fruit tree was created with fruit already on it!  And inside of each piece of fruit were seeds, each seed ready, willing, able, and commanded to produce another fruit tree exactly like the one it came from!  Grass made more grass, and trees produced more trees--after its kind, after its kind, after its kind, over and over and over again.

God did not need anything to hold His light, but just a few days after He created light, He made many lights, light-bearers, or luminaries, which He used for many things:  for separating the day from the night, for signs, for seasons, for days, for years, and for lighting the face of the earth.  He made two great lights (we call them the sun and the moon); one to govern the day and one to govern the night.  Remember what the day was?  It was the light God created on that very first day.  Think that through for awhile and then praise your marvelous Creator!

On the fifth day of creation God created living creatures in the waters, including great sea monsters, which would populate abundantly after their own kind.  God blessed them by saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas.”  Do you see a connection to the vegetation and the fruit trees?  God caused the living creatures in the waters to produce after their own kind--kind produces kind, just like He caused the vegetation and fruit trees to do.  Not only did He make them with the ability to reproduce and give them a command to reproduce, but He created them in the act of reproducing--swarming!  In other words, as soon as God was finished creating living creatures in the waters, there were more, and more, and more... and each looked like the one that had produced it!

On that same day He also created birds flying above the earth in the expanse--the very expanse which He created three days earlier.  And once again, God created them producing after their own kind, starting the moment He created them and continuing, well... right up until now!  And, just as He blessed the living creatures in the waters, He blessed the birds by saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

On that last and final day in which God created, He told the earth to bring forth living creatures after their kind.  The earth immediately brought forth cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth.  God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and He made cattle after their kind, and He made everything that creeps on the ground after its kind.  Are you starting to see a repeated pattern here?

Finally, God created man--and when He did, He created man in His Own image!  Do you see it?  After His Own likeness!  He ordained for man to rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, over the cattle--over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.  God says it over again (actually four times in all)--let’s make sure we listen!  God says that He created man in His Own image.  God says that He created man in the image of God.  Wow!!!  God blessed them (man--male and female) and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply.  Can you see the amazing  pattern repeated once again?  

Question:  God created man, male and female, in His image, and told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.   What, then, would the earth be filled with?  Whose image?  Whose Glory?

Everything God created was part of a perfect plan to bring Him Glory; He looked at all He had made and He beheld that it was very good.  What do you think He was referring to?  Do you think His ‘very good’ was referring to just the things He created on the sixth day?  Or maybe just man?  Do you think His ‘very good’ was referring to all the things, every thing He had created from the beginning, each individually?  Or do you think His ‘very good’ was referring to all that He had made, not individually, but as one great and glorious plan--His plan for His creation--His plan for His Glory--His plan for THE SEED?

I know I am jumping ahead a little, but I just can’t help it!  You see, God did have a plan, and it was a plan to bring Him Glory!  He would receive His rightful and due Glory through THE SEED.  If you will stick with me here through a few blogs, I hope I can help you to see a very basic, yet one of the most over-looked (or under-believed), truths in the entire Word of God!

© Sharon Jensen 1999-2022