Overview
This Montana Christian Festival teaching considers the witness of the animal kingdom as part of the witness of God’s creation. Rev. Kip Holdren examines animal kinds, instinct, adaptation, relationships, sacrifice, and biblical illustrations of redemption and care. The speaker connects observable features of the created world with Scripture, emphasizing design, order, provision, interdependence, and the Creator’s care.
Transcript
The Animal Kingdom and Romans 1
Okay, are y'all ready to hear about the witness of the animal kingdom? Oh yeah! So all the way from Hotchkiss, Colorado, please welcome Kip Holdren! In Romans chapter 1, let's take a look at this verse, it's really interesting to read through this. It says, For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. As we look at this foundational verse for our time being here, it's important to understand the time frame that we're talking about here.
When we look back in Genesis, Gene took us back into Genesis earlier. Genesis chapter 1 says, In the beginning, now how long ago was that? Nobody really knows for sure, but whenever it was, it was in the beginning. In the beginning, what did God do? He created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1-1.
Then we got Genesis 1-2. It says, And the earth became without form and void. And Isaiah tells us that when God created it and He formed it, He didn't do it to be without form and void.
So it became that way through this huge catastrophe that destroyed the original creation that God had made here. Then in Genesis 1-3, we have the reboot, where God looks at it and says, I've got to fix this mess. So the time frame that it's talking about here in this creation is not Genesis 1-1.
It's talking about Genesis 1-3 and after that. Gene went through all that with us. So keep in mind that this isn't the original creation we're looking at, but since that reboot, now this is what we have as a result of that.
And it says here that the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are not just seen, not just if you look really hard, you might be able to find some kind of an idea. No, it says it's clearly seen. It's clearly seen.
It's what? Clearly seen. That means it's a no brainer. It's obvious.
You can't miss it. It's clearly seen. And by the way, that's the only usage of those words in the whole Bible is right there.
That tells you this is kind of important. Pay attention here. This was clearly seen and understood.
Clearly seen and understood and that understood word comes from a Greek word meaning the intellect, the mind. So anybody with an intellect that uses their mind, it's obvious that there's something out there beyond these trees that made all of this happen. To the point, the Bible says that they are without excuse.
It's inexcusable for anybody not to realize this. Indefensible for someone not to recognize this. So when we read this whole context of Romans chapter one, you kind of have to back up a bit to about verse 14, 15 in there and then you read all the way through verse 25.
Let me set the scene for you. Okay. God's creation masterpiece provided the beauty and the wonder of this earth for man, his prized creation to enjoy.
That's where it started. But rather than looking at all of this work that was done and acknowledging what was obvious and praising the God who put all this together as the divine source of this creation, these individuals is talking about here in Romans, instead of doing that, here's what they did. Rather than referencing all these things and looking at God and acknowledging the beauty and uniqueness that went into all this, what they did is they looked at all this creation and said, wow, look at this tree.
Wow. Look at this cow. Whoa.
Look at the sun. Look at the moon. Look at these stars.
I think we'll make them gods. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to make images of all of them.
So we're going to make a tree image here and a cow image and a sun image. And then we're going to worship the images that we made that represent the created thing of the original God, rather than worshiping the God who made all this stuff to begin with. Pretty bizarre, isn't it? Okay.
That's what this verse here is kind of putting forth. Look, it's inexcusable for anybody to be that dumb. Okay.
Okay. I'm glad people are laughing because that tells me that you're not in that category, right? So it's great that as we look at all this stuff that we're going to be looking at, we don't have to approach it from the point of, okay, I'm up here to prove to you that there's a God out there by looking at all this stuff. What we do is we can look at all this stuff and say, wow, the better I can understand this, the more detail and uniqueness I can see in all this, the greater appreciation I have for the God who put all this together for our enjoyment and blessing.
That's really where we approach it from, being here this weekend, not to prove that there's a God, but to really understand how wonderful God is to put all this here for our enjoyment. So we're going to look at some things in the animal kingdom. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have no credentials.
I don't have a degree in animal anything. I've lived around animals most of my life. I've had some experience.
I've trained some animals through my life. Most of my experience has been with dogs and horses. I've done a little elk hunting with some of the people here, even, and some fishing, and been out in wildlife quite a bit, but I don't really have any credentials, so I'm just going to share some of my observations, okay, and things that came to me as I was working the Word on putting this stuff together.
By the way, Gene, it was Carolus Lineus. There you go. That ring a bell? See, how many know who Carolus Lineus was? All the biology people, oh yeah.
Okay, so when I took, I think it was high school biology, we learned that there was this structure of all living things put together. When I took biology, there were two kingdoms, animal kingdom, plant kingdom. Then in doing my research for this, I found out that in 1990, they added another kingdom, the kingdom of fungi, because you got these little things.
They aren't really plants, and they aren't really animals, so we got to kind of give them their own deal here. But, you know, I even remembered, you know, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Ring a bell, anybody? Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. I had to pass the test that said that, right? So when you look at the animals, they really, we're going to discount fungi because that wasn't even around in Romans 1. So we're going to look at animals are like half of all the living stuff that's here. That's the kingdom of animals, and it's big, and so we got people that are going to talk about different parts of the animal kingdom.
But biblically, in the Bible, there are over 100 different animals that are mentioned in the Bible. The biggest animal, Gene talked about micro to macro and macro to micro. The biggest one I could find was a great fish, which, you know, like a whale or something like that.
The littlest one I could find mentioned was a gnat. So, I mean, you got a pretty diverse range of size here from great fish to gnats. Imagine that.
So, and these animals, some of them swim, some of them fly, some of them walk, some of them crawl. The Bible even says some of them creep. You know, I want to stay away from those creepy ones in your tent, right? So, some of them, they get around in all ways.
They're used figuratively many times in the Bible. There's a lot of similes in there, you know, where it talks about wise as, swift as, harmless as, and it compares it. So, there's a lot of comparatives in the Bible for us to look at these different examples of these animals and think, oh yeah, oh yeah, I get it, oh yeah, that makes sense.
They're often used too in object lessons. We're going to be hearing from Mark about insects, but my career that I just retired from was as a financial advisor, and ants were one of my favorite ones. We were talking about this last night about the ants.
And in Proverbs it says, don't be a sluggard. Go to the ant, you slugger, and consider her ways. What does ant do? In the summertime, says, she gathers up her meat.
Created Kinds and Purpose
That's the stuff she needs to eat. But in harvest, she gathers her food. In the fall, she gathers, why? Because there's nothing to eat in the winter.
There's going to be a time in her life that that ant is going to want to eat, and there's no food around, so you got to prepare materially for the future. And I think it's Proverbs 13, it says that the heart of the slugger desires, and it's got nothing. All they do is wish they had something.
But the diligent, they're going to be fat, or they have plenty. So the object lesson there is, again, what does the ant do? Well, gets ready for the future. So what do we need to do? Don't be a sluggard.
So it's interesting how God uses these animals to teach us great lessons. As far as the animals in there, the animal most mentioned in the Bible, no guesses here, animal most mentioned in the Bible, sheep. Sheep are mentioned 122 times, lamb or lambs, 203 times.
Ram or rams, 162 times, for a grand total of 577 references in the Bible to sheep. Now think about that for a minute. The next most often mentioned in the Bible, goats.
Goats are mentioned 172 times. Bulls or cattle are mentioned 171 times. Donkeys or asses, 154 times.
Horses, 166. Lions, 145. Oxen, 98.
Camels, 71. Dogs, 42. Eagles, 30.
And cats, zero. Just saying. That was God's idea, not mine.
But the biggest concentration of where animals are talked about in the Bible is really interesting, it's actually in Leviticus, where God was talking to Moses about clean animals that they could eat, and unclean animals that they couldn't. And he details it out. You can eat this, and this, and this, and this.
If it has this, and this, and this, it's okay. If it doesn't have that, and that, and that, no deal. By the way, he said, don't eat the creepy things.
Okay? So it's interesting that so many of the animals are listed there. I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 25, we're gonna look at a verse there. But it's not surprising to me, as I work through this, that sheep are so often mentioned in the Bible, and lambs, especially given the background of how they are referenced in terms of God's great plan of redemption, and the sacrificial aspect of sheep and lambs throughout the Old Testament.
And it says there, let's look at, by the way, Jesus plays into that deal too. Because he shows up at the river Jordan to see John the Baptist, and John says, behold, the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. And that really ended the whole sacrificial deal about sheep.
That was the ultimate sacrifice there. And in Matthew 25, look at verse 32 there. It says, well, 31, when the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations.
And he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left hand. And we know the oriental culture, the figurative use of that is that the right hand was the hand of blessing, the left hand was the hand of cursing.
So here's a tip for you, don't be in the goat pile, okay? We want to be on the sheep side of things. Since my experience really evolved a lot around horses, and that I once went through the Bible and looked up all of the verses that talked about horses, because I wanted to learn what the Bible said. If I was going to know about horses, I probably ought to go to the source of creation, right? Make sense? And it is interesting in Genesis chapter 47, it records the great famine that took place there.
And Joseph brought horses from all over the world into Egypt, and he traded them for food. There's a famine, people were hungry. Hey, we want some corn, we want some wheat, we want some oats.
Okay, give me some money. I don't have any money. You got some cows? I don't have any cows.
You took them last year. What about sheep? No, you took them the year before. Got any horses? Well, yeah.
Okay, bring them on over here. I'll trade you for some corn. He brought all these horses into Egypt.
And it's interesting when you follow that, in Exodus chapter 14, we have the record of Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. They get to the Red Sea. God parts the Red Sea.
The children of Israel go through it. But Pharaoh chases after them, and he sends out what? His horses and chariots. The Red Sea closes and kills all those horses, destroys the chariots, drowns the drivers.
Pretty interesting, all those horses that Joseph brought in, a bunch of them got destroyed in the Red Sea. They never made it through. And in the Bible, many times horses and chariots are a representation of the military strength of a country.
If they have so many horses, so many chariots, and all that. In 2 Corinthians 9.28, it shows that the horses were brought to Solomon, King Solomon, as gifts from all over the world. Solomon was a rich dude.
And in 1 Kings 4.26, it says, Solomon had 40,000 stalls for his chariot horses spread across the kingdom in the storage cities. 40, boy, I would hate to be the royal stall mucker. Dude, 40,000 stalls full of chariot horses spread all over the country.
That, again, illustrated the military might of Solomon's kingdom. There's some things about horses that we can learn. I want you to, has anybody ever not seen a horse, by the way? Okay, I want you to imagine a horse.
Look, his head is right there. When you look at a horse's face, the most unique and striking characteristic is their eye. If you look at their eye, their eyes are up in their head.
They're set wide apart, kind of on the side of their heads. Very large, very alert. It gives them almost a 360 degree vision.
Even when their head is down and eating, they can see almost 360 degrees. The one place they can't see is right behind them. Anybody ever heard, don't ever walk behind a horse? Not true.
Depends on what kind of a horse you're talking about. If you're talking about a wild horse or a bad habit horse, yeah, it makes sense. But trained horses, that's really the best way to get from one side of the horse to the other is to walk behind.
Just let them know you're there. Pat them on the rump there. Talk to them.
The thing that is dangerous is don't ever walk up behind a horse. Because they can't see you. And by the time they hear you or sense that you're there, their immediate reaction is self-preservation.
Instinct, Ability, and Adaptation
And a horse that has an enemy that close, it's too late to flee. So the flight characteristic is ruled out. What's number two? Fight.
What's their best tool? Their feet. Guess what? It hurts. So don't walk up behind a horse.
But if you have to go around them, just let them know you're there. And when you approach a horse, you should always approach from their line of sight so they can see who's coming. They know what's around.
Just let them know you're there. You look at their head, their ears, small ears. Real alert and attentive.
A horse's ears tell you where their attention is focused. And here's something. They can't lie.
They can't say, I'm going to put my ears over here so that the dude thinks I'm looking at the trees, but I'm really kind of checking out what's going. If something's going on over there, that ear goes whoop. You can tell exactly where their attention is.
You just look at their ears and that'll tell you. You know, nostrils, big nostrils. They can take in a lot of air.
Really unique features. You know, about the eye. Horsemen will tell you that the eye is the key to a horse's temperament.
You can look them in the eye and tell what kind of a temperament they have. Also, I was taught when you're training a horse, sometimes they really kick you off. But my uncle told me, don't ever look a horse in the eye with anger when you're training them because it breaks trust.
Interesting, huh? Yeah, real interesting. You know, when you think about a horse, let's say there's a horse, little imagination here, okay? Horse standing out here on the grass, grazing, okay? When you look at that horse out there on the grass, you know, their body. You look at their legs, strong, powerful, long legs.
That's their primary means, again, of self-preservation is getting away from their enemies. When a baby horse is born, when it's full, their legs are almost full grown at birth. About 80% grown when they hit the ground the first time.
So they can keep up with the herd when the predators come. Well, wouldn't it be something if our kids' legs were 80% grown? Moms are saying, no, thank you. I don't want any part of that deal.
But horses, you think about that horse standing out there, I mean, big muscles, you look at their chest, lot of lung capacity there, deep breath, lot of oxygen process there, gives them great strength, great endurance, even their tail, very efficient fly swatter. They'll whip it around there, really interesting. And here's another thing, their neck.
Look at their neck. Here's something I know is pretty interesting. I know, observation-wise, here you go.
Their neck, their head's on the end of their neck, right? Their neck is long enough so that their head can reach the ground. Pretty cool, huh? I mean, what if they had a neck like that was this long, and their legs are this long, so they got to lay down to eat or something. No, God put it together so that their neck would be long enough to let their head reach the ground so they could eat when they're standing up.
I thought that was pretty cool. You know, animals have varying degrees of intelligence, too, based upon the size and the development of their brains, the balance between gray matter and white matter in their brains. Some animals learn things real quickly, but they forget them.
And some animals learn things very slowly, but they remember them for a long time. That's the category that horses are in. Horses learn over and over repetition.
It takes a long time to get it through to them, but once they get it, they know it. And, you know, I've trained horses and been away from them for years and come back, and they still know how to do the tricks I taught them to do, you know, 10, 12 years ago. They remember that.
They're really great. Also, selective breeding has made it available to enhance certain aspects of animals. You take horses, for instance, because you've got jumping horses, and you've got draft horses, and you've got horses that are really adept at working livestock.
You've got running horses, and they're all unique in their own way. Dogs, the same way. You've got dogs that are great herd dogs.
You've got dogs that are really good hunting dogs. You've got dogs that their natural ability in breeding and the capabilities that they have make them really good guard dogs or search dogs. I have two daughters, and they each have specially trained dogs with them.
My one daughter's son is on the autism spectrum, and they have a dog for him that helps him deal with the anxiety of being in crowds and among people or even being by himself. He used to wake up in the middle of the night, scream and run, jump in bed and everything. When they got Branch for him, Branch would go lay down by his bed, no more getting up in the middle of the night.
Amazing, isn't it? My other daughter has food sensitivities, and she's got a service dog, has the best everything. She has food sensitivities, and oftentimes out in public, she can't tell whether the food is okay for her to eat or not. She has her dog with her, and she can take a little bit of food, say at a buffet line or whatever.
She can put it on her plate, put it down in front of the dog. If it's okay for her to eat, dog just stands there. Kelly just stands there and looks at her.
If Kelly smells that and it's not good, she sits down. It's like, nope, don't eat that. Amazing, isn't it? And God put all these capabilities in these animals and how unique they all are.
It's just fascinating. Now, turn to James chapter three. There's an interesting verse here.
Like I say, I grew up around livestock and trained a lot of horses. And I knew by experience, this is kind of, well, duh, you need to put a bridle on a horse in order to have control of them. Well, I knew that.
Okay, you bridle the horse and then you can get on and control them. James chapter three is real interesting because it tells you a lot about that. Look at verse one.
My brethren, be not many masters knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation for in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man and able to bridle the whole body. Behold, that means pay attention here.
We put bits in the horse's mouths and that they may obey us and we turn about their whole body. A horse's mouth has a unique design. It's a long head.
Remember the horse's head. They got their biting teeth in the front. They got their grinding teeth in the back.
And then there's a space in between them that's just gums. Well, that space is sensitive. Okay, so you put a bit in their mouth and when you want to make, when you're training a horse to turn one way or another, you have the range in your hand and you pull on that side and that pulls the bit down into that tender part of their gum.
Okay, now here's something to remember. Horses are basically lazy and selfish. I know that doesn't fit the glamour picture, right? They're lazy.
Animals in Biblical Imagery
They only want to do as much as they have to do and they're selfish. They'll only do what they think is in their own best interest. So here's the principle of horse training.
It's called pressure. Horses, when you pull on the bit, it puts pressure against that gum. Guess what? Ouch.
So what do they do? Oh, they move their head over that way to relieve the pressure. Why? Because they're selfish. I want to get rid of the pressure, so I'm going to move my head over there.
Once you got their head over there, if their body's going, they can't walk like this very well. So what do they do? Well, they walk this way because that's easier for them to walk in a circle then than it is to walk straight with their head bent over here. Now, when you're training a horse, they say, you know, some horses do what they call neck reining.
So you don't have to pull on the bit to get them to turn their head. You just move your hand over with the rein. Well, here's how you train them to do that.
First of all, you get them responding to this thing. And then with your reins, you got one over here, one over here. So if I want to go to the left, what I do is I move this right rein over against the side of their neck.
And then I pull on the left rein, which puts pressure. Then they move their head. And we do that a bazillion times.
And over time, the horse figures out, wait a minute, touch on the neck, pressure on the mouth. If I move my head before the pressure on the mouth, when that rein touches up here, I'll move my head over there and then I don't have to deal with the pressure. It's just a learned response.
Touch, pressure, turn my head, my whole body goes. And that's a key. Horses always move away from pressure.
They don't want you to push on them. They'll move away from that unless they think you're challenging them. You put too much pressure on them and then they want to push back.
Oh, yeah? I'll show you. But that's why when you teach them that, you can move, you can move a thousand pound horse with your little finger. Really easy.
Because they're trained to move away from pressure. And by the word, by the way, that word there in verse three, where it says that they may obey us, that word obey, it's from a word that means to persuade. You can't make a horse do it.
But you can persuade him to do it. And the idea is that you want to persuade the horse through the use of pressure applied in different ways at different times to where if they move away from that pressure, that's where they're most comfortable. So you want to get the horse to where the most comfortable place for them to be is when they're behaving correctly.
Does that tell you anything about training people? Raising kids maybe? Little pressure here? Oh, that's not very much fun. So I want the horse to know that when he's doing the right thing, that's where he's going to be most comfortable because he's selfish. So the quicker he can get to the right place, the happier he's going to be.
Pretty cool, huh? Here's another one. It's in Psalm 32. And I want to read this from the Amplified Bible.
Says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you who are willing to learn with my eye upon you. Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, whose trappings include bridle and rein to hold them in check.
Otherwise, they will not come near to you. In order to train a horse, you have to have some point of contact with the animal. You can't just train a horse out there across the field.
You have to train them with a point of contact. That's what the bridle and the rein do in the training process is it gives you a point of contact. And it says here that a horse has no understanding.
Now, in the New Testament, there's a Greek word that's often translated sunesis. Anybody ever heard that word? And it's used to describe the confluence of two rivers into one. So we got this river over here and we add this river over here and we end up with this river down here.
That's understanding and a horse can't do that. A horse can only learn by personal experience. A horse can't watch another horse and say, oh, I could probably do that.
They can't get there. I'll give you an example. My horses don't like to eat their hay out of the feeder.
They like to eat it off the ground. So I put the hay in the feeder. They pull the hay out of the feeder and throw it on the ground so they can go eat it.
Now, I kind of get that. They're grazers by nature and that kind of thing. So they like to eat off the ground.
OK, here's another thing about my horses. They don't like to eat hay that has crap in it. Well, that makes sense too, right? While they're standing there eating their hay off the ground, they invariably crap on the hay.
They can't figure this simple principle out. I should either eat where I don't crap or crap where I don't eat. But they have no understanding.
So look, don't be like a horse. OK, figure that one out. You know, as I worked on this and all the great things that you can learn as we look at the different animals in the Bible, one of the things that really, I mean, it was like getting kicked by a horse in a sense.
I want you to turn to Genesis chapter 3 because some interesting things took place there. Gene kind of touched on this when he went through because Genesis chapter 3 is where Adam screwed up the whole deal. In Genesis chapter 3, we have the record of the fall of man, where man, through his disobedience, gave up dominion of all of this creation that God had made for him to enjoy.
And he gave that up. And here in the record of this in Genesis chapter 3, if you look at, it's like verse 9, God's looking around for Adam and he said, where did you go? He said, well, I heard your voice. And he said, I heard your voice in the garden in verse 10.
And I was afraid because I was naked. It's interesting that that usage of words there of the nakedness of man used to represent his sinfulness. And he became aware of his nakedness and he got afraid.
And immediately in this record, you see how God goes to work to address the nakedness, the sin of man that just took place there. And in verse 21, you got something here that just takes my breath away. In 21 says, unto Adam also and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them.
Hold on a minute. Where do you get coats of skins from? Animals. That's the first record of an animal dying.
And I can't imagine the impact that that would have had on Adam and Eve to see because of their nakedness, their sinfulness, of their disobedience. Now God has to take one of these beautiful, innocent creatures and kill it to get the skin off to cover man's nakedness. How devastating would that be? And I bet he made them watch.
Sacrifice and Redemption
Look, here's what the result of this is. But how God immediately went to work to cover that. And I'm just going to guess here, it was probably a sheep.
Knowing what I know about the rest of the Bible and the symbolic use of sheep through the word in terms of the sacrifices in it covering for sin. And that must have been absolutely horrible for them to have to witness that and to see this is our fault. Because we know the significance of how it relates to Jesus Christ, who was, as we know, you know, John said, behold the Lamb of God.
And guess what? He was sinless. He never screwed up. And he had to die to cover our nakedness.
Wow. You know, man's sin necessitated a huge response on God's part. And an immediate response on God's part.
That's where the whole thing started in Romans chapter 120 that we read there. It says that the acknowledgement of God behind all of this is a no brainer. That's obvious.
It's clearly seen to anybody with an intellect. But the acknowledgement of God really is just the first step on this whole salvation continuum that God put in place in Genesis chapter 3, where the plan was to eventually restore this fallen creation back to its original intent. Acknowledging that there's a God.
Great. You know, James says, oh, you believe there's one God? So, devils believe that too. Just acknowledging that there's a creator up there does not bring a person to a point of decision.
But you put Jesus Christ in the mix. Now we got to make a decision. Now it's put up or shut up time.
Everybody says, oh, I believe in God. Except for a few idiots, you know, but that's no big deal. Find somebody.
Oh, do you believe in God? Oh, yeah, I believe in God. Christians do. Buddhists do.
Muslims do. Hindus do. They all believe in God.
So, I'll tell you what the deciding factor is. Where do you come down on the Jesus Christ issue? Because Jesus Christ makes you make a decision. Jesus Christ is the crisis of life in every man and woman's life.
And that's where Romans takes us if you keep reading. When you finally get to chapter 10 in Romans, what did it say? You confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus. Believe in your heart, God raised him from the dead.
Thou shalt be what? Saved. Because that is the deciding issue. That is what decides yes or no.
Dead or alive. Sheep or goats. And you know what? Another interesting thing.
Romans chapter 1 tells us that anybody with a brain can figure out that there's a God. They don't need somebody to tell them that. But if you read Romans 10, after the new birth verse we just talked about, it says, so you have to call on the name of the Lord Jesus.
But how can you call on him if you don't believe? And how can you believe on him if you haven't heard? And how can you hear unless there's a what? Preacher. And guess what? Jesus ain't here anymore. He was the original, right? He's the one that told Peter, James, John, Matthew, Andrew, Philip, you know, Mary, finally Paul.
He did the preaching. But now he has given up that responsibility to us. Nobody's going to know about Jesus unless you tell them.
That ministry, it's called of reconciliation. That means putting it all back together is up to us. That's it.
So it's great that we believe God. But boy, you got to take the next step to God's plan of restoration of all this creation and enter Jesus Christ. So when we think of the witness of God's creation in the animal kingdom, I can't help but think about the lamb.
About the figurative references to the lamb of God, because once Adam lost it, God's creation masterpiece had been spoiled. And now it has to be put back together. So so Adam's failure brought chaos to all of this perfect realm that God had put together for man, who was his masterpiece.
To enjoy. It was all here for man to enjoy. Man was the crowning work of all of this.
And God put this here for us to enjoy. And then Adam decided to have an experimental station. And he experimented with this freedom of will aspect to figure out if he could be like God.
Well, guess what? The experiment failed. Miserably. And we were left with chaos.
And immediately, God had to step in to start this whole process of restoration, putting it all back in place. So what was the plan? The second Adam. Well, what are the criteria? Well, it had to be a lamb from the flock.
The second Adam had to have the same limitations and capabilities of the first. You don't get to hedge. Here's the deal.
That challenge was so much greater because his environment would no longer be that perfect Eden setting. He had to enter the scene in a world of chaos. He had to wrestle from the hand of the God of this age, that dominion, take it back and conquer it with all the limitations of humanity.
See, Adam lost home field advantage. Now Jesus has to earn it back. So what does he do? He comes in.
He would have to do that. This was God's only shot and man's only shot at restoration. The plan had to work or nothing.
This lamb was unique in that he was the begotten son of God and in him dwelled all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He manifested all of the Godness that a human being could epitomize by his perfect obedience to God's will. And when we talk about the witness of God's creation, he did it to the point that in order to see God the clearest, it's not in the tree.
It's not in the animals or the stars or the insect. It's in Jesus. Colossians says that he is the image of the invisible God.
You can't really see God unless you see him through the prism of the Lord Jesus. That's the only way you can really see the creator. And through his obedience, he rose to the status of the firstborn of all creation.
Learning From the Creator’s Care
That's our Lord. Thank you. You
Key Takeaways
- The the witness of the animal kingdom presents observable patterns that point to order, purpose, and design.
- Creation can be studied as a classroom that deepens respect for God when it is considered alongside Scripture.
- Natural systems display provision, boundaries, interdependence, and remarkable specialized abilities.
- Romans 1 supplies a biblical foundation for perceiving invisible qualities of God through what He made.
- The proper response is gratitude and worship of the Creator rather than worship of the created world.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the witness of the animal kingdom reveal about God?
The teaching presents the witness of the animal kingdom as evidence of purposeful design, ordered systems, provision, and care that direct attention to the Creator.
How does the teaching connect nature and Scripture?
The speaker compares observable features of creation with biblical passages, using the natural world as a classroom that illustrates spiritual truths.
What response does the teaching encourage?
It encourages attentive observation, gratitude, humility, stewardship, and worship of God rather than worship of the created world.
Scripture References
Romans 1:19–20; Psalm 19:1–4; Genesis 1; Romans 1; Proverbs 13; Matthew 25; 2 Corinthians 9; 1 Kings 4; Psalm 32; Romans 10
Verification Note
Prepared from a recovered transcript. Verify proper names, technical terms, quotations, and verse wording against the original recording and a Bible before publication.
