Episode Details

Prayer

Dear Lord, I thank you for another new day of life – your day. All things belong to you, and I ask for your mercy for even the first few minutes of the day. I wake, and my thoughts gravitate to myself and my own interests, but the truth is that all things belong to you. Please help me, Lord, to live this day in entire submission to your will. I pray now as I read your word that you would be pleased to speak to me by your Spirit’s workings. Without you my mind is darkened and ignorant, I turn in upon myself and become fruitless. Please write your law upon my heart, and unite my heart to fear your name. Please renew my mind, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

Reading

Gen 1:20-23.

“And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21. So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23. And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.”

Meditation

We’ve considered the sea creatures, now what about the birds? What lessons can we learn from the creation of these avian wonders? Let’s begin by reminding ourselves that there is a God-intended connection between creatures and their environments. By placing fish in the sea, God shows us that he fills that which is formless with life. But what about the birds in heaven? What does God teach us by the creation of the birds? Well, to begin with, let’s remember what we learned about the heavens on day two.

As you will recall, God made the heavens, that grand expanse above the waters where the birds fly (Gen 1:20). But as we saw in the bigger picture of scripture, there are three heavens: the sky (v20); space (v15); and then there’s the heavenly dwelling place of God himself. Drawing these insights together, we discovered that the heavens are a symbol of heaven. God often uses the earthly heavens to teach us things about his heavenly dwelling place, and we saw that very clearly when we examined day two in detail. So then, it should come as no surprise that when God fills the earthly heavens with flying things, by extension he’s also got something to teach us about heavenly things. Here then is the first principle of our lesson: birds teach us about heavenly things.

We’ve already had an example of this in our studies when we looked at Exodus 19:4 where God said to Israel: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself”. God uses the image of an eagle here to illustrate something that he has accomplished. We see something similar in Psalm 91:3: “For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge”. Again, God is using avian imagery to teach us about his heavenly protection of us. Think about angels – those majestic, heavenly beings. God didn’t just give them wings for visual effect. Wings are a bird-like feature, and angels are described as having wings at times because they too are heavenly beings. Even the fallen angels are described at times using these kinds of concepts, for they too are heavenly beings – though corrupted (Eph 2:2; Matt 13:4,19).

Building on this, then, we can draw these things together and say this: God has connected heaven and earth. Yes, there is an expanse of separation, but the separation is not total. This is what we learn from the birds on day five. Notice in the text that it says that the fish fill the waters.