The Creation of Light Part 2 2018/10/07

The Creation of Light Part 2 2018/10/07 Pastor Dave Cottrell
We apologize for the missing audio. The first half of the message was lost due to a technical malfunction. Pastor Dave hopes to replace the missing audio as soon as he can.

The Creation of Light                                                                                        Part 2 

Genesis 1:3 – 19

Audio with Closed Captions 
Light has an amazing property. No matter how dark it is, when you add light, it’s always visible. In fact, the darker it is, the more visible any added light is. Total darkness is no longer total darkness even with the tiniest point of light.

On the other hand, if you try to add dark to light, it can’t be done. There is no way to make dark darker by adding more dark. The only way to make a room darker, for example, is to remove more light.

Light requires a source of energy. Whether it’s a flashlight, a candle, a spotlight or the sun, it requires some kind of energy source. If you take away the energy source, you are left in darkness. Darkness, therefore, is the complete lack of energy.

The energy that creates light in our universe comes from the sun, the moon and the stars. Therefore, without those heavenly bodies, there could be no light. That is what secular science tells us, which is why they conclude that the record of creation in the Bible is simply a myth that includes a very primitive mistake – the notion that light was created before the sun, the moon and the stars.

Now imagine you are deep underground in a cave, far beyond the reach of the sun, the moon and the stars. Is it possible for you to have light? Of course! You have the light on your helmet, powered by some long lasting batteries. Light requires and energy source, but not even humans, puny as we are, are capable of producing light with our technology. Why not God?

Genesis 1:3 -19

The theme that runs through the Bible from the very beginning to the very end is the record of a loving God who created human beings in His image to love and to be able to love Him. But the very first humans chose to reject Him in favour of a lie and so fall under the penalty of sin, which is death. But from the beginning, God had a plan, a Deliverer, a Saviour, who was finally revealed in the man Jesus Christ. He is God the Son who laid aside his glory in heaven, the Bible tells us, to become fully human, born as a baby, in a direct line from Adam. He lived a perfect life, then shed his blood on the cross to take away our sin. Then he rose from the dead on the third day, having conquered sin, the devil and death itself on our behalf, our kinsmen redeemer, able to save to the uttermost.

Just as the world God created began in total darkness until he created the light, so we begin in total darkness until we receive Christ, who is the light of light. There is no mistaking the fact that God chose the order of His creation on purpose. Everything He has done shows us our great lack and points us to Christ!

I The Creation of Light

1. When God created primitive Earth (which wasn’t primitive for very long!), the Bible says there was no light at all, anywhere in the universe. But don’t the laws of the universe make that impossible? Not at all, because those laws didn’t exist until God created them. The physical laws were created as God created everything.

   1. After God created the Earth, He spoke into the darkness and said, “Let there be light: and there was light.” God is the cause. The light is the effect. Without a cause, there can be no effect.

   2. The atheist likes to ask, “Where did God come from?” The question, itself, is a logical fallacy. God is the Primary Cause. There must be a primary cause. By definition, there is no need to ask where the primary cause comes from!

   3. God, who is the Primary Cause, who created everything, had no need of anything for light to exist when he said “Let there be light.” God, Himself, is the very source of light. “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. ” Revelation 21:23
2. The question often heard in the quest to marry Christianity to secular humanistic science is, “What difference does it make?” The fact that God created the light by simply commanding it to exist, without any sun, moon, stars or other sources of light, is so important that God used it in the New Testament to show how impossible it is for man to save himself. It was not the sun, moon and stars that created light. It was God who created light AND the sun, moon and stars. Just as it is impossible for light to exist without God, so it is impossible for a human being to save himself apart from God. “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 2 Corinthians 4:6 God created all things with a purpose.

II It Was Good

1. The Bible says that God saw that the light He had created was good. The Hebrew word that is translated saw is speaking of looking at or observing something. It implies that the thing He was observing was external to Himself. In other words, God is not part of His creation. Everything is not God. God created everything. He was able to observe the light, just as I might observe something I have made.

III It Was Separated

1. God separated the light from the darkness.

   1. When we turn on a light in a room, it lights the entire room. You cannot bring a light into a dark room and cause it to be seen only in half the room. When God said, “Let there be light,” the darkness was dispelled by the light. It was everywhere.

      1. Then God separated the light from the darkness. We could imagine this, again, with the room scenario, where we draw a heavy room divider curtain across the middle of the room, thereby cutting the light to half the room.

      2. God separated the light such that the Earth that he had just created and brought light to had both light and dark. God called the light Day and the darkness Night.

2. Once again, God had a purpose in separating the light from the darkness. God could have created the Earth in such a way that it was brightly lit, all the time, but He did not. In separating the light from the darkness, He has given us a twofold picture:

   1. First, when we repent, putting our faith in Jesus Christ to save us from our sins, God separates us from the darkness we were in. “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:” 1 Peter 2:9
   2. God calls us to live separated lives as Christians. We are not to walk in darkness as the world does, but to walk in the light. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7
   3. We are to be separated from the world around us, a world that is always walking in darkness. Christians are not to live like the world. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” 2 Corinthians 6:17,18

IV A 24 Hour Day

1. This separation of day and night began the cycle of days on Earth. The very first day began with darkness, the evening, followed by light, the morning. This is the way the Hebrew division of time is described, just as we would say “day and night,” except that it is reversed. It has always described a 24 hour period.

   1. Again, it’s not by accident that it begins with evening, the beginning of the daily period of darkness. Just as the creation began with darkness, followed by light, we began in darkness, followed by light.

      1. We begin physically in darkness in the womb, followed by light at our birth.

      2. We begin spiritually in the darkness of sin, because of our very nature, followed by the light of salvation when we put our faith in Jesus Christ.

2. The 24 hour days so clearly described during the creation week speak of the infinite power of God in creation. It’s unnecessary to help God with “theistic evolution” and long ages or anything else. Almighty God, the Primary Cause who created all the material the heaven the earth are made out of could have no trouble doing everything recorded in the Genesis account, in exactly the time described. Creation was completed in exactly six 24 hour days.

V The Sun, Moon and Stars

1. The Bible is clear. God created the light before he created the sun, the moon and the stars. There is no ambiguity in the language. God created the earth and light on the first day, the firmament separating the water on the second day, the dry land and plants on the third day, and only then, on the fourth day, the sun, the moon and the stars.

   1. The sun, moon and stars were not necessary for the creation of light. God created the light simply by commanding it to happen on the first day. God, Himself, is the source of light. God always associates Himself with light. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” John 1:4
   2. God does not require physical bodies such as stars, planets and satellites to create light. He is filled with light. When God caused what is described as thick darkness in Exodus 10:22 to cover the land of Egypt, there was no light in any Egyptian dwellings, not even from lamps. Yet Exodus 10:23 records something astonishing: “They (the Egyptians) saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.” God does not need the sun, moon and stars to create light.
   3. The sun, moon and stars were created on the fourth day to distinguish day from night, for signs, for seasons, for years, and to “give light upon the earth.” They were not created to bring light into the world, but to give light upon the earth, like a lamp would bring light to a room lit by candle light.

Conclusion

1. Secular, God-denying scientists cannot explain where even the material the world is made of came from. Yet they try to tell us that God didn’t do it, that there was no intelligent, Primary Cause, that a “very unstable nothing” (their own words) became everything. Our own properly functioning minds tell us that such an idea is not even a good hypothesis. It can only be accepted by a deliberate act of the will, by unregenerate human beings who will not face even the possibility that they will one day have to face their Maker. However, neither does willing something to be so make it so, nor does willing something not to be so make it not so. Truth is absolute, not determined by mankind, but by our Creator. Using terms such as “Intelligent Design” or other attempts to sidestep facts does not take away from the fact that God is God, and He exists by His own, infinite power. He has revealed Himself to us in every detail of His creation, and has personally revealed Himself to us by his Word. There is no excuse for anyone to deny Him, and we will all, indeed, have to one day face Him. “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” Hebrews 4:13 We will either face Him utterly naked before the awful great white throne of judgment, or if we have repented and put our faith in His Son, we will stand safe in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.