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14 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. ~ Genesis 1:14-15
Today, we continue our study of Genesis 1 wherein God created the world in six 24 hour days. In today's passage we return to day 3 when God created the stars of the heavens. Our universe is vast, in fact, it would take us 150 billion light years to cross it. God's creation is incomprehensibly vast, and the main reason God created it to be so vast was to remind us that we are indeed very small.
In v.14 of today's passage we read, "Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years.'"
There is that little phrase again: "Then God said." We totally underestimate God's word which includes His definition of all things but that's not all. And, only knowledge of God's word does not produce the life that we all long for on a day to day basis. Our hearts must be engaged and we must be willing to be defined by God's word. The power of God is best revealed and experienced when His word fills in the gaps of our broken souls.
In Isaiah 55:10-11 we read, "10 Rain and snow fall from the sky and don’t return without watering the ground. They cause the plants to sprout and grow, making seeds for the farmer and bread for the people. 11 The same thing is true of the words I speak. They will not return to me empty. They make the things happen that I want to happen, and they succeed in doing what I send them to do."
Rain and snow are part of a cyclical process of precipitation which falls from the heavens to the earth, and seeps into the land to grow crops and feed the hungry. God compares His Word with rain and snow, it is faithfully sent by Him to be received by those souls that are prepared for it through their trials.The fascinating thing to it all is as He breathes out His Word and we take it in; it is always for specific purposes. The Word of God accomplishes what God desires and what we need.
When God created everything, He did it without process. There was not any length of time involved. Time added nothing to it. Therefore millions of years, billions of years, thousands of years add nothing to His creation. It was not some process that God initiated, this was something that God completed. God simply said it and it came into existence. That's a blow to the evolutionist.
In Psalm 33:6-9 we read, "6 The sky was made at the Lord’s command. By the breath from his mouth, he made all the stars. 7 He gathered the water of the sea into a heap. He made the great ocean stay in its place. 8 All the earth should worship the Lord; the whole world should fear him. 9 He spoke, and it happened. He commanded, and it appeared."
God spoke everything into existence, and, it remained exactly as He spoke it into existence. The moon, the sun, the stars, the galaxies, the billions upon billions of galaxies, everything that is in space, all the material that is there, all the gases that are there, all the atoms, it all remains as it was created. And, as was pointed out back in v.4, the light was given to divide.
God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, the darkness, he called night. Each day was made of one evening and one morning. As a result, our view of the universe was influenced by timekeeping. So at the very outset when God created light, before there was a moon, before there were any stars, before there was a sun, there was light. It wasn’t attached to any of those celestial bodies; there was light and it was attached to the 24 hour day period. By the way, God created light, He is the maker of light. He then decided to attached the light to the luminaries. This can be said of us of whom He said in Matthew 5:14, "You are the light of the world."
On the first Wednesday of the world there existed what looked like diamonds in the sky. As was the case then, on the clearest night, the human eye can only see about 3,000 stars. There are an estimated 100 billion in our galaxy alone and it is estimated there may be 500 billion galaxies. Our milky way galaxy has as its measurement 10,000 light years by 100,000 light years. And where the earth is situated, scientists have discovered, it is perfectly situated for life as we know it. If we were to travel 186,000 miles per second, it would take us 100,000 years to get from one end of our milky way galaxy to the other end of it. Such vastness and yet one of those many stars represents you and one represents me. In Genesis 15, "Then the LORD took Abram outside and said to him, 'Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!'"
In v.15 of today's passage we read, "And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so."
During each of the first three days of creation God prepared a setting, while, as we will see, each of the second three days God will populate the setting. On the first day of creation, God created light. As we are seeing and will see, God created specific sources of daily and nightly light upon the earth. The light existing before God made the stars, the moon and the sun. Light has always been a priority with God for it represents Himself, it represents the truth or the ability to see accurately.
God made the stars in order to shed light upon the earth at night and He made the moon to reflect the light of the sun upon the earth at night. The light represents the truth which is the nature of things as they are defined by God. Truth is seeing through all the illusions of the imperfect, all the facades and the unreal images. The Lord Jesus promises the one who follows Him, "The truth will set you free." The truth permits and enables us to view life from God's vantage point. The truth frees us from the distortions that have long prevented us from the light and reality. The one thing we must do in this scenario is to follow Him as He leads.
