The restoration sequence:  Sun, water, dry land, grass and plants.
The food chain had to be restored first—so animals would have something to eat.  I think it is interesting that the seeds were already on the earth.  Left over from when they were created way back in verse one.  They were there.  They hadn’t sprouted because of the darkness that was upon the face of the earth.  The lack of sunlight had kept the seeds from sprouting, growing and reproducing.  The sun was blotted out--science shows us that--from ice cores.  And that the darkness on earth lasted for sixteen years. 

I read somewhere that in excavating the pyramids, archeologists found kernels of corn.  They planted the corn, and some of it sprouted—after thousands of years.  The Bible says, “Let the earth bring forth grass...whose seed is in itself, upon the earth.”

Seed may be dark, and dry looking.  But inside, there is something that man hasn’t been able to reproduce.  Life.  Rocks are also dark and dry looking.  But rocks don’t sprout.  They don’t have life inside.  Seeds have the power to “…bring forth…”  Life!  Something man can't duplicate.  

I watched a Science documentary the other night, (I am hooked on Discover, Nova, Drain the Oceans, and National Geographic) that said that grass is the most important life sustaining plant on the earth.”  Interesting, that the exact plant, grass—is the plant that is written about in Scripture.  In verse 11 it says, “Let the earth bring forth grass…”  Food for the animals.

It sounds like water was not only already on the earth, but it was also in the atmosphere. “Waters which were above…” 

Once the sun broke through, the Bible says that on the third day, in verse 9, God said, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and Let the dry land appear…”  Dirt.  Soil. Dry land.  The medium for growing things.  You now have waters below the heavens gathered into organized oceans, lakes, rivers and ponds. You have waters above the earth organized as water clouds that can mist the plants. (There was no rain until after the flood?  When we got a rainbow.)  Everything is ready for the plants to appear again so that the food chain can restored.

God was ready to Let plant life appear on earth once again.  He says, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth…” (!) The seed was already there upon the earth.  Seed left from previous plants?  That’s how that passage reads.  It certainly doesn’t say he created plants in this passage.  It says the seed was already there...waiting on the sun to clear.

I love the way God took His steps.  First the sun, water, land.  Then plants…you can’t have plants without those three elements being restored into a working climate.  First things first.  You have to have plants, because new animals are about to appear next in the order of the steps God took.  

SUNSHINE 

Genesis 1:3 says, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light…”  He didn’t create it.  He had already done that in verse one when "In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  

He most probably just rolled back the dense smoke left by burning sulfuric compounds in the atmosphere that had been blotting out the sun.  He let it disperse--that thick dark atmospheric mess that had caused all of the plants to die, the event that probably happened (Biblically) between verse one and two in Genesis--which ultimately killed all plants and the dinosaurs.

We have records that were left in the strata of earth that tell us what happened, and when it happened. (Dated by carbon decay rates and ice core sediments.)  Our entire earth contains a treasure trove of history in sediment, just waiting to be discovered and scientifically dated.  God’s rules of Physics and Chemistry are miracles.  Part of His creation.  He is the ultimate, creative scientist.  We, on the other hand, only discover what is already there that He created.  Someone may get a Nobel Prize in Chemistry or Physics for their discovery, but they didn’t create what they discovered.  God did.

The second day, in Genesis 1: 6-8, God said, “…Let there be a sky in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters…under the sky from the waters which “were” above the sky…and the evening and the morning were the second day.”   Everything in Genesis is becoming clear.  And accurate. 

            1. Create: "Take absolutely nothing and design a perfect thing that has never before existed."

             2. The word made  means to take something that already exists and design something else, something different that is useful.  In other words, you have to have preexisting stuff to start with. God uses this word made over and over again after the first verse in Genesis.

I’m reminded of the of the little dresses I “made” for my daughters when they were young. I took fabric, thread, a pattern, buttons, and scissors and used those things to make something that didn’t look like any of those things I had used to do it.  I made something.  I made a dress.  The dress was unique, but it wasn’t created.  I had to use things that "already existed" to end up with something else—a dress.  I made it.

            3. The third word, Let, means to allow something to happen.  Such as: I’m going to let the dog out.  Or:  I’m going to let you borrow my car.  

You  don’t create anything, you don’t make anything, you just allow something to occur.  And again, God uses this word “let” over and over again in the first chapter of Genesis.  

Genesis 1:3 says, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light…”  He didn’t create it.  He had already done that in verse one.  

As we continue to read, the word I’ve been talking about, the word create,doesn’t occur but two other times in the Genesis story.   It occurs in verse 26, when God creates new kinds of animal forms. And it occurs when he creates man. Other than that, from this point on in the Biblical account in Genesis, the Bible uses words that have very different meanings from the word create.  They are words of restoration.   God begins something new.  The last part of verse two says: “…And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”  Now, God is going to reconstruct.  God is now going to make things, and let things happen.

 TWO OTHER WORDS:

 After the first verse in Genesis, in which the word create describes what God originally did, different words are used. They are the words, Made, and Let.

Again, remember that when you are reading something, it requires a definition of the words that are being used.

The word made means to take something that already exists and design something else, something different that is useful.  In other words, you have to have preexisting stuff to start with. God uses this word made over and over again after the first verse in Genesis.

THE CONDITION ON EARTH

 1.  Void, empty

2.   Without form, a shapeless mass

3.  Dark, devoid of sunlight

 This is not the description of a creative work. So, for a moment, consider those two verses:

1.    “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” 

2.    “And the earth was void, without form, and darkness was on the face of the deep.”  (There was water left over from verse one.)

Obviously, something happened between those two verses; a span of time occurred that we are not told about.   I wish God had told us about it, but He didn’t.  He did, however, leave us evidence trapped in the earth’s sediment that tells us about the kind of world that previously existed over sixty-six million years ago.  The book of Genesis is not about that world and what was in it.  The book of Genesis is about restoration.  It is about the world we live in now.  It is the story of man--man created in the image of God. 

As we continue to read, the word I’ve been talking about, the word create,doesn’t occur but two other times in the Genesis story.  

Genesis 1:4-5, “And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And the evening and the morning were the first day.”  The atmosphere was now clear.  God divided it.  Wiped away the atmospheric smog, ash, soot, burning sulfur—whatever it was--that blotted out the sun.

And then…

In order to have night and day, you have to have rotation.  Was rotation there before, or was this “without form” mass we call earth just wobbling around in space?  When you have an impact with an asteroid like the one that hit the Gulf of Mexico it will surely have some sort of effect on the earth’s balance and rotation.

Whatever it was doing, God called it the first day--rotation.  The Bible says there was an evening and a morning: “…the evening and the morning were the first day.”  The sun came up; the sun went down. How long was a day?  I don’t know.  Every time there is a volcanic eruption, a tsunami, asteroid impact, or a major earthquake on earth, the rotational speed of the earth is affected. All we know from the Biblical account is that there was one rotation of the earth and God called it a day.