Title Growing Faithful 2/Genesis 1: 24-25
Content Source: Gwangju Eunpyeong Church Student Council
◎Genesis 1:24-25 ◎Explanation on Genesis (19) - Growing believers
These animals have a food chain. Why is the deer running around? A leopard is chasing you from behind, so you risk your life. Also, leopards chase after death in order to survive. However, the strange thing is that this food chain has continued to repeat the history of mankind and continues to descend in an appropriate manner, even after thousands of years have passed. Why? It's right there on the ground. Verse 24 says that the earth is the living creature. In other words, the starting point of all living things is the earth. And we should pay attention to the fact that the sentence structure is active, not passive, when this land tells us to give birth to living things. This is because God has commanded that through the earth, plants, which are the most basic stage of the food chain, can be supported by animals. So this food chain is never broken. Herbivores graze on grass and carnivores eat herbivores, keeping the animal world exciting.
God divides these animals into three main categories. It is expressed as livestock, creepers, and beasts of the earth. Here, livestock are animals that are closest to human life, mainly domestic animals (cows, horses, pigs, sheep, dogs, and chickens). Creepers are things like reptiles or worms (snakes, earthworms, leeches, maggots, silverfish, centipedes, etc.). And the beasts of the land are mainly wild animals (lion, tiger, leopard, wolf, etc.).
Through today's sermon, we discover two important lessons.
Second, the lesson learned from the creation of animals is “service in silence.” In verses 24 and 25, God created living things out of dust, but he created livestock, creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind. I mentioned that ‘livestock’ here refers to livestock raised at home. As a supplementary explanation, ‘livestock’ means ‘a silent beast’ or ‘a burden-bearing animal’. This tells us that livestock were created to serve silently, not against humans. In fact, animals do great service to humans without saying anything. In other words, some animals serve humans for farming, some for carrying loads, some for transportation, and some for sacrificing themselves as food. We can imagine ourselves in the presence of God through the fact that they do their work in silence while doing their own work.
This is the conclusion of today's sermon.
Ladies and gentlemen, we learned through the Word that we should respect the individuality of others through the creation of animals and use our talents for God by maximizing each individual's individuality. And that personality was not given to show off, but tok! Tok! You must realize that it was not given to you to use out of the blue, but to serve God in quiet silence. Just as livestock silently serve man, so should we expect and live up to the creative principles that bring out their individuality to the fullest in silence for the Lord.
Prayer!
Heavenly Father! Thank you for giving individuality to our individuals. May this personality be used not for the world, but for You, and above all, when it is used, serve in silence and obedience!