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Sea of Galilee. The Scriptures furnish many instances when He had to do with fish. Using two fish supplied from a young boy's lunch-box, He fed 5000 men, and women and children besides. No problem for Him, who in the beginning created the 'flesh of fish'.
On another occasion, in order to pay the tax, He said to Peter, "Go to the sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth you will find a stater (a coin). Take that and give it to them for you and Me" - Matthew 17:27 NASV.
After a fruitless night of fishing, Peter and Andrew were told by the Lord to "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch" - Luke 5:4 NASV. "They enclosed a great quantity of fish; and their nets began to break." He, who in the beginning, filled the seas with fish, now filled their nets and two fishing boats to the point of sinking!
Following His resurrection, He appeared several times to His disciples. Once, by the shore of Galilee, He invited them to "Come and dine" and coming on land they saw "a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon and bread" - John 21:9. We might ask, "Where did He get the fish from? From the sea, fished out by His Own hand?" Well that's possible, but could not He the Creator have created these fish for this special occasion? As for the bread, well perhaps as Son of God, He turned some of the stones lying on the shore, into loaves! This was the very challenge issued to the Lord by Satan himself during the forty days of testing in the wildernesss. "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread" - Matthew 4:3.
What about 'fowl'? He had control over them too! Peter boasted to the Lord, "I will lay down my life for Thy sake." The Lord replied to this bold assertion, by saying, "A cock shall not crow until you deny me three times" - John 13:38 NASV. Later, following the Lord's arrest in Gethsemane, Peter was challenged several times by a variety of individuals, as to his association with this Jesus of Nazareth. His boldness and confidence deserted him and after several denials, "Peter then denied again: and immediately the cock crew" - John 18:27.
6. Day Six saw the climax of His creative work when He formed the first man, Adam, from 'the dust of the ground'. "And God said let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness .... and God created man in His own image" - Genesis 1:26-27. Interestingly, this must have been moist dust for we are told in Genesis 2:6, just before the forming of Adam, "there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground."
In John's Gospel the Lord met a man who had been 'blind from birth.' He healed many blind men during His public ministry. Some He touched; some He just spoke to and sight was granted! However, this blind man was healed in a unique way, for the Lord "spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" - John 9:6-7. After washing, the blind man could see!
When we consider the complexity of the human eye (e.g. the retina packed with 137,000,000 light sensitive receptor cells, each one performing 10,000,000,000 calculations per second) and the miracle of sight, things that fill us with awe and wonder, we are left to ask, 'How could Jesus the Carpenter, possibly give sight to a man born blind?' The answer lies in the fact that this blind man had met the Creator, who used a creative act so similar to the one He'd used millennia earlier in the forming of Adam. (continued on Creation 5)
Mirror on Creation
At Bethany the Saviour stood weeping at the grave of a man who was His friend, Lazarus (John ch. 11). He had been dead for four days and when the Lord told them to remove the stone from the grave, He was greeted by loud protests. "Lord, by this time he stinketh." They were fully aware that the flesh and vital organs by this time, had been attacked well and truly, by the decaying processes. The flesh of Lazarus was rotting, corrupting, stinking flesh! But, was it not the Creator of all flesh; the flesh of fish, the flesh of birds, the flesh of beasts and the flesh of men (1 Corinthians 15:39) who now stood outside this grave. He who spoke way back 'in the beginning', spoke again and commanded with authority, "Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot
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