" H E A R, O E A R T H ! "

O Earth, Bring Forth!

Genesis 1 reveals what was the earth’s primary role in God’s programme.  The earth variously plays the roles of helper, witness, recorder, executor of judgment, etc, but in the beginning, its role was creative, in response to the higher authority of God.

We find in Genesis chapter 1, that there were seven instances when God used the creative word, commanding something to come forth.  But only three out of those seven times did He use the expression, "Let there be...," by which He spoke something into existence out of nothing (Hebrews 11:3), and that is in verses 3,6, and 14.  The other times, He did not say “Let there be....”  He commanded what was already in existence to bring forth what was not yet in existence.  Three times He addressesd the earth to bring forth, and once He addressed the sea to bring forth (verses 9, 11, 20, and 24).  In those instances, He created something out of something, not something out of nothing, as in the other instances.  It  would seem, then, that God was Himself thus making  use of the creative forces He had already embued the earth and the seas with.

In the beginning God said, “Let there be light,” and “ Let there be a firmament,....”  etc.  But when it came to creating the inhabitants of the earth (plants and animals), He commanded the earth to bring forth.  He said, “Let the earth bring forth grass...,” and we read that “it was so" (vv. 11:24).  Even man, the last of the 'inhabitants' of the earth, was 'brought forth’ from the earth, although not by the spoken word but by God’s creative process of moulding the clay into human form before breathing into it (Genesis 2:7).   The earth, in obedience to God’s creative word, brought forth plants and animals; and the sea brought forth the fishes and whales and all the creatures in the waters, also in response to God’s spoken word of authority (v.20).

In fact, all the living things (plants, animals, man, fishes and birds) were produced (as the NIV puts it) by the earth and the seas. 

The earth and the seas and the heavens, from the very beginning, have always listened to God, and they will listen to those who would speak the creative word to them in the stead of God.  The devil or sin would suppress the powers of their creativity for the benefit of man, as God said that Cain’s murder of Abel  would result in the earth not yielding its strength or fullness or maximum to him (Genesis 4:12), but our creative word, spoken with the seal of our God the creative God, can loosen its creative potentials for our benefit. Amen.

The earth and the seas may also co-operate with God, or His agent, in the same way to ‘bring forth’ creatures of judgment upon a people.  Examples abound in the judgments which God brought upon Egypt through Moses. As shall be shown later on in more details, the earth, the seas, the air, the heavens, all conspired at one point or the other against Egypt.  For instance, the seas ‘brought forth’ frogs in judgment  upon the land; the earth ‘brought forth’ lice; the air carried the ashes coded with the message of boils, over the whole land; and the heavens rained hails and fire upon Egypt (Exodus 8:11). They were, as in Genesis chapter 1, performing their creative function, but in judgment,  against Egypt.

If the earth could bring forth lice, it could also have brought forth scorpions and chariots and horses and men of war, if that had been the prophetic directive.  If the seas could bring forth frogs, then they could also have brought forth crocodiles and vipers and fearsome dragons and even warships against the land?

Once upon a time, Jesus told His disciples to cast their net into the sea, and they obeyed and caught great fishes in the same sea where they had toiled in vain for a whole night and day.  It would seem to me at this point that the sea had to ‘bring forth’ great and many fishes at the word of Him by whom the whole world, even the seas, were created.  There was another time when the river brought forth a fish, a special fish that had money in its intestines, with which Jesus and Peter paid a tax (Matthew 17:27).  The seas brought forth wealth unto them.

Although the earth and the heavens were created with a  mandate to respond to us we who operate God’s authority, sin has generally made it not quite the case.  But in every generation, there have been people who recognised and used this right.  For instance, prophets Elijah and Elisha, at different times each, made the heavens to withhold rain from Samaria, so that not even the famed rainmakers could bribe the heavens to bring back the rain.  The earth and the heavens had to listen to the voice of the men of God.  They would not give rain, and the earth did not receive rain.  In Elijah’s case, for instance, while the earth and the heavens were thus bonded with the prophet to deny Samaria water supply, a brook kept supplying the man of God with water until God relocated him to  Zarephath. The earth can bring forth.