Genesis 1:3

Light

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.

2 thoughts on “Genesis 1:3”

  1. Re-reading it, I wonder if my insertion of a tiny bit of geekiness (seriously, who says “cubic lightyears”??) takes away from the rest of what I said?

    I’m glad you still appreciated it, though. Thanks!

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