My fellowship in these messages concerning the matter of life will be in the way of a study. I will try my best to present the principles of life from the holy Word in outline form. There must first be an opening in a mine before the riches within the mine can be recovered. In the same principle, the outlines that I prepare will serve only as openers to the "mine" of life in the holy Word. You must then use the openers to dig into the depths of the holy Word in order to obtain the riches concerning life. When you dig into the holy Word concerning the matter of life, you will see that the main thing it unveils to us is that God desires to be life to man.
In the New Testament the Triune God became incarnated for the purpose of imparting Himself as life into His believers. The Old Testament begins with the tree of life (Gen. 2:9), and the New Testament ends with the tree of life (Rev. 22:2). Thus, the thought of God being man's life runs through the entire divine revelation. In this message we will consider the thought of God being man's life in the Old Testament.
In Genesis 1, in His creating of the earth God created many different kinds of life. These different kinds of life are in three main categories: the plant life (vv. 11-12), the aquatic life (vv. 20-21), and the animal life (vv. 24-25). The category of the animal life includes the cattle, the creeping things, and the beasts. Ultimately, man was created (vv. 26-27) as the highest of the created lives. The plant life is on the lowest plane because it has no consciousness of life. Man is on the highest plane because man has the highest consciousness of life.