Genesis 1:3

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Gen­e­sis 1:3

And God said

In the Bible stud­ies I have been con­duct­ing in our home on Tues­day (now Wednes­day) evenings, we have seen through­out the Book of Mark a con­sis­tent theme: Every time Jesus declared some­thing — how­ev­er far fetched it may have been ((Demons being expelled, crip­ples being healed, sins being for­giv­en…)) — that thing was done. In the lat­est study, we saw that Jesus & the dis­ci­ples (some of whom were pro­fes­sion­al fish­er­men and would have been quite famil­iar with the storms of Galilee) were cross­ing the Sea of Galilee on a ship. A great storm rose up — a huge wind­storm which seems to have been a small-scale hur­ri­cane — caus­ing the dis­ci­ples to fear for their lives… That is, until Jesus spoke. The sea calmed, the winds ceased. Nature bowed to His will.

And what else would we expect? The same Jesus who calmed Galilee is the same Jesus who brought its waters into exis­tence so long ago. Recall John 1:1, where we are told in no uncer­tain terms that “In the begin­ning ((Gen­e­sis 1:1, any­one?)) was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

“And God said,” Moses records in Gen­e­sis 1:3. John Gill in his Expo­si­tion describes the words of God as, “expres­sive of the will, pow­er, author­i­ty, and effi­ca­cy of the divine Being; whose word is clothed with pow­er, and who can do, and does what­ev­er he will, and as soon as he pleases.”

What was it, in this instance, that God desired?

Let there be light

Up until this point, there was only dark­ness. We would expect that God would first cre­ate the sun and stars which would fill the uni­verse with light and var­i­ous oth­er radiations.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from learn­ing about Jesus, it’s that He sel­dom does what is expect­ed. While a vari­ety of pagan reli­gions idol­ized the sun, God reveals through Moses that it isn’t the sun which is ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for the light, warmth, and life expe­ri­enced on Earth; rather, the sun is but the penul­ti­mate source, ((It could be anthro­po­mor­phized as the mid­dle­man for Earth­’s light.)) owing it’s exis­tence to He who brought light into the uni­verse by the force of His will alone.

And there was light

Real­i­ty bows in obe­di­ence to the dec­la­ra­tion of the Cre­ator, and light flows through­out the uni­verse, cast­ing its glow across the murky, form­less mass which is the earth.

This is light in all its forms — vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble — and though we nowa­days receive light through the mid­dle­man sun, the cos­mic back­ground radi­a­tion could be left-over from this ini­tial cre­ation of light. That may be a stretch, but when we look to the Scrip­tures, we see that God has cre­at­ed light sep­a­rate­ly from the tra­di­tion­al sources of light (the sun and stars); tak­ing that knowl­edge and look­ing to the world around us, we have the cos­mic back­ground radi­a­tion, which is (and even sec­u­lar sci­en­tists get this right) a rem­nant from the ear­ly days of the universe!

The apos­tle Paul in his Sec­ond Epis­tle to the Corinthi­ans (4:6) says that, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of dark­ness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowl­edge of the glo­ry of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We’re just get­ting through the third verse of the Bible, and we are con­front­ed with an illus­tra­tion of salvation.

Just as God was able to — of His own will, mind you — bring light into the dark­ness and chaos of the ear­ly cre­ation, so too must He shine the light of Jesus Christ into the hearts of sin­ners, lest they remain per­pet­u­al­ly in unil­lu­mined, sin-lov­ing dark­ness. Have you ever doubt­ed whether God is capa­ble of sav­ing even a sin­ner like you? Have you despaired over the mag­ni­tude of your wicked­ness? Do not for­get that God was capa­ble of cast­ing His light through­out the entire­ty of the uni­verse — all of its bil­lions of cubic lightyears. ((Triv­ia: There are 8.46732407 × 10⁴⁷ meters³ in a sin­gle cubic lightyear — that’s huge!)) He is exceed­ing­ly capa­ble of shin­ing His light into the dark­ness of your heart.

Unless oth­er­wise not­ed, all Scrip­tures quot­ed with­in this post come from the Eng­lish Stan­dard Ver­sion of the Holy Bible.