God had created the heavens and earth. This devotional reading looks at how He gets to work on the first day.
Nuggets
- God is so powerful that His words are obeyed.
- God enlightened the world with the presence and knowledge of Jesus.
- We aren’t told when God created the physical light.
In creating the heavens and earth, God built the foundation for all that was to come. There was something very important to begin with – Light.
We aren’t told the time frame between in the beginning and when God got to work on Day 1. It is just another thing for the UNR book — understanding not relevant.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Celebrating Creation’s Story series
Let There Be
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen. 1: 3 NLT)
God is so powerful that His words are obeyed.
Sovereign God just spoke the words, and light appeared. That is powerful He is.
Jeremiah had one addition, though, to what Moses wrote. “Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you” (Jer. 32: 17 ESV).
The world was created by God’s powerful words and outstretched arm.
Is that contradictory to Genesis 1? We have to realize that many books in God’s Word — especially Moses’ — are written with as few words as possible. Explanations are non-existent. Dots are not connected. We’re just supposed to believe.
We can’t blame the writers. I am sure they were writing with a specific audience in mind. It is doubtful they thought their words — especially Moses — would still be read 3,000 years later.
So, no, it isn’t contradictory. It is just clarification and elaboration.
Isn’t that how we learn? We take what we know, process new information, and use it to build on what we know?
That is just another reason to read God’s Word from cover to cover.
Either way, creation was accomplished through God’s power.
The perceived discrepancy doesn’t contradict or diminish God’s power. Yes, God’s arm was raised, but He wasn’t doing anything else with it. He wasn’t using His hands to make something.
God used His voice to order it into being. To me, God used His outstretched arm to show authority.
Vaughan had an interesting take. He thought Jesus was the “Arm of the Lord.”
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That is logical, especially in view of John 1: 3. It is even more understandable when we read Isaiah 52: 10.
- “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (Jn. 1: 3 ESV).
- “The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (Isa. 52: 10 ESV).
Everything came to be because of Jesus. Everything was created because of the work of the Holy Spirit.
It is as Owen says. He wrote, “The Spirit Himself is the foundation of all spirituality.”
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God put Himself in the creation before anything else. That way when mankind was created, they could be good.
I think we’ll have to believe the “let there be …” in this verse is different than the other verses. Later in this verse and in the other verses are a “let Me create” where this one is a “let what already is be acknowledged and added to this world.”
Light
God enlightened the world with the presence and knowledge of Jesus.
The first thing God created after He created the heavens and earth was light.
Henry thought it was a chaotic light. I don’t think so. God does not create chaos.
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I don’t believe it was a physical light. It was spiritual light.
No, that isn’t the way we think. We think – especially since the Jewishness has been removed from our Bibles – that all the light words are talking about physical light.
They aren’t. Genesis 1: 14 uses the Hebrew word maorot for light.
We just said the Hebrew word used here for darkness is chosek, which leads to death and destruction. The word used for light (owr) means enlightenment. If Satan is darkness (chosek), then Jesus is Light (owr).
- “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ (Jn. 8: 12 ESV).
- “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn. 1: 5 ESV).
- “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps 119: 105 ESV).
- “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (Jn. 9: 5 ESV).
- “Of David. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps. 27: 1 ESV).
- “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone” (Isa. 9: 2 ESV).
I think this is also backed up by a verse in Revelation. “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22: 5 ESV).
I, personally, think that this was why the universe was created. God wanted to showcase His Son, Jesus.
No, I don’t think Jesus was created. He was there before the foundation of the world, too.
When I bake a cake from scratch, I do not go to the chickens and ask for a fresh egg. I don’t go out to the cane field and get a stalk to make no sugar. I don’t go to milk the cow for fresh milk.
I go to the refrigerator and cabinets to get the product – which may have been there for a while. Yes, still, I have made the cake from scratch.
What I’m trying to say, is we use existing things to make new creations. Jesus was an existing Thing used in a new creation.
At this point, it was not the physical presence of Jesus that is seen here. He would take the form of man in the fullness of time.
This is Jesus in spiritual form.
Before God created anything, He had the Plan of Salvation ready to go. “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes” (Eph. 1: 4 NLT).
It is in character that God is more concerned about the physical than spiritual. Even before He created us, His focus was ensuring there was a way to return to Him when we disobeyed Him.
Oh, God knew we would disobey Him. He still didn’t become a dictator and take away our free will. He, instead, designed a grand Plan to rectify our sin.
This Light had to contend with the darkness. Darkness had to be pushed back before God could begin the physical work of creation.
It is through grace that the Light of Jesus is offered. “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it” (Eph. 2: 8-9 NLT).
This is the only way in which we can be saved.
- “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (Ac. 4: 12 NLT).
- “You must not have any other god but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea” (Ex. 20: 3-4 NLT).
- “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me’” (Jn. 14: 6 NLT).
Let’s apply this. God was creating a pattern that He would apply to mankind.
- Where are we before we have God in our lives? In darkness of chaos.
- Where are we after we ask Jesus to be our Savior and Redeemer? In the Light.
- How do we get there? The Holy Spirit hovering over us, guiding us to Jesus.
We would not be saved if the Spirit did not do His work. We wouldn’t be regenerated into a new creation.
In a real sense, we would not have grown. Oh, yes. Physically, we would have gone from baby to youth to adult to senior citizen.
Spiritually, we would have remained milk babies. We would never have grown into steak adults.
We can grow because Jesus (as the Giver of salvation) and the Holy Spirit (through Whom sanctification is completed) are the foundation of creation.
But God took an active part in establishing the Light in the new creation. He is the One Who called Light to enter creation.
We receive the light by the Word of God. He calls us to salvation.
Remember what John said. “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it” (Jn. 1: 1-5 NLT).
- The Gospel was present before creation.
- The Word – Jesus – was and is God.
- Jesus existed at the beginning – whenever that was (because God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit existed before creation).
- The Gospel is the account of what Jesus did to defeat sin for us.
- The Word gives life to everyone because it is the Gospel.
- Jesus defeated the darkness, so His light can shine to show us the way to salvation.
Don’t misunderstand. God did not need the Light to tell Him who were His creatures and who were not. We needed it to become His children again.
Additionally, don’t miss the fact that darkness could not make itself light. Sin is sin. It cannot be changed into righteousness.
One sermon I read, The First Day of Creation, which was uncredited, talked about God being the only One who could see the Light. The world couldn’t even identify its entrance when He invited it into this world.
The sermon talked about our need to silence our minds. In other words, we have to focus on God so that we can see Him.
We can’t focus on the chaos of the darkness.
Creation of Physical Light
We aren’t told when God created the physical light.
Our first clue that God created physical light is in verse 5. “And Elohim called the light Yom (Day), and the darkness He called Lailah (Night …” (Gen. 1: 5 OJB).
Law and Exell noted some of the characteristics of light that show it is from God. It is
- Pure
- Bright
- Lovely
- Free
- All-revealing
- The parent of fruitfulness
- Conveys heat
- The harbinger of joy
- Protects life
- Instruct life
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That tells me that Moses didn’t think it necessary to talk about since we can obviously see it was created. But that is why we confuse the creation of the Light and the creation of the light.
It also shows us where our focus should be. The Light is much more important to us than the light.
Making the Connections
Burgess reminded us of something very important. He said that we should possess a mental and moral light that provides “… the illumination of the understanding and of the heart …”
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It does no good for us to possess what we think of as moral light if it is not, in fact, the true moral Light. Random acts of kindness — or even deliberate, sustained acts of good will — mean nothing if they are not completed in Jesus’ name.
Jesus must be the center and focus of our lives. He must be our Savior and Redeemer.
If Jesus is not our Savior, we are destined for a lake of fire for eternity.
How Do We Apply This?
- Long to see things as God sees them.
- Remember we are children of the Light.
- Be pure as light is.
- Live worthily because we are children of light.
- Separate ourselves from the darkness of the world.
- Be lights in the world of darkness.
- Show we love the light by walking in it.
- Fill the world with the light of the gospel by taking it to our families, friends, and the world.
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Father God. You always give our spiritual condition the utmost priority. You proved that by beginning the work on Day 1 with bringing Jesus as Light into Your creation. Thank You for loving us so much. Amen.
What do you think?
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