Green Baggins

Genesis 1:9-13
Where I grew up, we had a large lawn. I often tired of mowing the lawn. It was a large lawn, and it had many trees and difficult hills to work around. I only sometimes appreciated its beauty. But we are supposed to appreciate the beauty of land and verdure.

We saw in the last sermon that God separated the waters above the firmament from the waters below the firmament. The firmament was a solid dome that made life possible on earth. However, if you are a careful reader, you will notice two things that do not appear on the second day of creation. The first is that there is no statement, “And it was so.” That is, there is no statement of the fulfillment of God’s command. Secondly, there is no evaluation of the work by God. During the creation week, after God has done something, He will normally look at His handiwork (like any craftsman), and pronounce it good. That does not happen on the second day. The reason for that is that the work which started by making the firmament was not done yet. The purpose of the firmament (in addition to what we learned last week) was to allow another separation to happen between land and sea. Land and sea could not be separated until the great cosmic sea was separated from the other waters. Otherwise, something like the flood would happen. Notice then, that the divine benediction occurs after the land and sea are separated, right in the middle of the third day’s work. So this first work of the third day is really a continuation of the work of the second day.

So what happens in this work? The seas that were underneath the firmament are gathered all into one place, so that the dry ground will appear. Again, we see here that God is directing this creation with mankind in view. He knows what mankind will need to survive. He knows that the man He will create is a land animal. He comes from the land, lives on the land, and goes back into the land when he dies. So land must be available for the man to live.

Notice something else that is interesting. This is the last act of separation that God does in the creation week. It is also the last act of naming that God does in the creation week. The reason for this is that this act of land and sea finishes the first part of creation. If you remember, there were three imperfections that Moses describes about the creation week: darkness, formlessness, and lifelessness. The first “problem” God fixes on day one with the creation of light. The second problem is now completely taken care of: there is the firmament, across which the birds will fly. There is now the sea, in which the fish of the sea will swim. And now there is dry land, on which animals and mankind will live, eating the fresh plants that God will put there.

This brings us to another observation about the creation week. There are two sets of three days in the creation week. The first three days sets up the realms over which the creatures of the second set of three days will rule. Day one is the creation of light, and therefore time. Day four is the creation of the rulers of the day and night, namely, the sun, moon and stars. Day four therefore corresponds to day one. Day two involves the creation of the firmament and the separation of the seas. Now, nothing lives in the seas above the firmament. However, the fish of the sea live in the seas below the firmament. The birds of the air fly across the face of the firmament. They rule the air. So day five corresponds to day two. The focus of day three is the land, not really the sea. So on day six, God creates the animals (who dwell on the land), and mankind (who rules over everything). Day six therefore corresponds to day three. So here we have it: Day one and day four are linked; day two and day five are linked; and day three and day six are linked. Days one through three are the creations of the various realms in which living creatures move: and days four through six are the creations of the various living and non-living things that rule or dwell in those realms that were created in the first three days.

God separated land from sea on this day in creation. This points us to another time when dry land began to appear. After the Flood, when the waters began to abate, dry land eventually appeared such that when Noah sent out the dove, eventually the dove did not come back. There is grace when land appears. When the Israelites went through the Red Sea, and God parted the waters so that the Israelites could go through on dry land, God was giving grace to the Israelites. When the Israelites went through the Jordan river into the promised land, and the river was gathered together into one place, the Israelites could then go through on dry land. When Jesus was raised from the dead, He went through the heavens, as the writer of Hebrews says, and Jesus prepared a place for the church in which to dwell. That is our ultimate dry ground. Instead of drowning in an ocean of sin and misery, Jesus gave us the opportunity to be heirs of the kingdom of life. You can’t live in an ocean of sin. God has to separate the waters so that you may walk on dry ground in the kingdom of God. Only God can do this. We cannot separate water from dry ground any more than Moses could of himself. But with God on your side, the dry ground will appear. We must believe in Jesus Christ.

Of course, there are remnants of the ocean of sin still left in our lives, aren’t there? The ocean is hard to hold back. But we have the Holy Spirit to help us. That is why we can slowly but surely push those waters back, those waters of anger, envy, lust, bitterness, pride, covetousness and all other sins that so easily entangle us.

The second act of creation on the third day was the creation of all vegetable life. All plants, grass, trees, shrubs have their origin on this day. The word vegetation is a rich word. It has implications of fresh rain-kissed verdure. Verdure means lush, green plants. God provided a rich carpet of green to cover the land that had just appeared. That, by the way, is how the two creative acts of the third day are related. The land appears, and is then adorned. The emerald color of the earth is rich indeed. Did you know that the color green has special properties? It has the power to calm the soul. It is a restful color. God did not have to give us this green carpet. He could have made it red. Red is a color that is exciting. It makes people do everything quicker. Some restaurants have discovered this and have put red in the restaurant to speed up everyone’s eating, so that they can make more money. Higher class restaurants, on the other hand, want their guests to enjoy and savor the experience, so they put more green on the walls. So, if you want to know what color you should choose for your carpets, green is a good color! We should make the point that God created the plants in miraculous speed here so that when mankind was created, he was not placed into a barren environment. We should not think of this as strange at all.

Now, Moses is here again fighting against Ancient Near Eastern religion. Those religions thought that fertility was in the hands of various gods. They would make great sacrifices to insure fertility. This way of thinking was to become a great snare to Israel. Baal worship was enticing for several reasons. First, it would seem to insure a good harvest. Secondly, Baal worship for the fertility of the soil often involved cult prostitution. It was thought that fertility in sexual intercourse was connected to fertility for the soil. If Baal had sexual relations with his consort Asherah, that act was thought to result in fertility for the soil. So humans having sexual intercourse was thought to encourage Baal to have intercourse with Asherah, so that, in turn, the soil would be blessed. You can see why this religion would be appealing to the Israelites. That is why Moses takes such great care to state clearly that God gives fertility to the earth.

The word vegetation is an all-inclusive word. The two categories mentioned here are two kinds of vegetation. There are plants that bear seeds on the outside, and there are trees that have fruit with seeds on the inside. Notice here that God creates them according to their kinds. Here is no evolution from one kind to another. God gave each species the power to reproduce itself. God did not give each species the power to mutate into another species. There is such a thing as adaptation, or what we would call micro-evolution. That happens when a species adapts to its surroundings. But micro-evolution is a far cry from macro-evolution (species changing into other species), nor does micro-evolution prove that macro-evolution can happen. No, each species has its own DNA code that does not change its basic shape, no matter how much adjusting it can do.

Notice one more interesting thing about the creation of vegetation: God gives the power to the earth to bring forth these plants. Up until now, God created everything simply by speaking the word, and it happened. Now, however, God uses means to create. This does not mean that God’s power is in any way less. The earth would not be able to bring forth all this vegetation unless God had given that power to the earth.

What does the creation of vegetation tell us about Jesus Christ? Well, Adam was charged with taking care of all this vegetation. He was called a gardener. There were two purposes for Adam’s gardening. The first was to tend the plants and trees that grew in Eden. The second was to guard the garden. Moses says this in 2:15. This guarding was presumably that Adam should guard the garden against Satan’s attack. This Adam failed to do. After that, the gardening would not be so easy. I do not need to tell farmers how difficult it is to get crops out of the soil. All Adam needed to do before the Fall was to control how fast the stuff grew. He didn’t need fertilizer, or cultivation to keep the weeds down, or spray to deep disease away. But now, look at how difficult farming is! You have to do all of those things. And even then, you are not guaranteed a good harvest, because there is the completely uncontrollable aspect of the weather.

For all of time after the Fall, we have been trying to get back to Eden, and the ease of that kind of farming. Look at the temple. It was decorated to look like Eden. Look at Song of Solomon, where the lack of shame in marriage looks back to Eden. I want us to look at a very interesting passage in John’s Gospel. After Jesus’ resurrection, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb to find Jesus. She finds him, but does not know who He is. Jesus then says to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Then Mary, supposing him to be the gardener, asks Jesus if he knows where the body is. That detail about the gardener is not accidental. In fact, it is ironic. Jesus actually IS the gardener. Remember, earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus says that His body is the temple. The temple was supposed to remind one of Eden. Now that body is resurrected. Jesus’ body is the new Eden. So, a new creation is here because of Jesus’ resurrection. That means something for plants and trees on earth, especially how they relate to human beings. There is hope for a return to Eden. Actually, there is hope for something better than Eden. Eden was something that could be lost. The new creation can never be lost. We should believe in Jesus Christ, the new and perfect gardener, who even now is preparing a place for us far more beautiful than even Eden.

So, what does this mean for us? How are we to think about the environment? Moses would surely not have us worship the environment, as many environmentalists do. That was the very thing he was arguing against in the form of Baal and Asherah worship! But plants and trees are the creation of God. As such, we are stewards of plants and trees. We are not to subject them to needless waste. If we kill a plant or tree, we should have a good reason for doing so. There are good reasons for doing so. Conserving the environment does not mean letting everything just take its natural course. We are to tend forests, which means that we will log them, especially the old, dead trees, and plant new trees. It means we will try to learn as much as possible about the soil, so that we can know how to get crops out of the soil without taking everything out of the soil. It means being responsible farmers. This is, after all, our food. Before the Fall, it was the only source of food, since there was no animal death before the Fall. Much as I hate to say it, vegetarianism was the rule of the day before the Fall. However, God has blessed the eating of meat after the Fall, especially in Leviticus, where the clean and unclean animals are designated for either food or abstinence from such food.

What we have seen then is that God created land, and then made that land fruitful. May He work in us, so that the soil of our hearts may produce a crop a hundred-fold what was sown. Let us not be rocky soil, or soil by the path, or soil choked with thorns. Let us be good soil. Let us cultivate the Word in our hearts. Let the Word grow richly in our hearts as we sing and make melody in our hearts to the Lord.