The first command in God's Word is Let there be light. After introducing God as Creator of heaven and earth, the Book begins by describing earth, that is, our world, and the Bible describes it as tohu and bohu, as we have said in the past, in the Hebrew. That it was formless and empty. It existed in a chaotic state. There was futility there, it was covered in darkness. It describes a place, a state without God.
The church has taught that the language that Moses uses here in verses 1 and 2, as describing what happened to the earth, what happened to the whole galaxy, if you will, the solar system at least after, Satan's rebellion. This is the way it was once rebellious angels tried to take over God's throne and were spat back to earth by His might. That is called the gap theory. That is what creationists call it. That there was a gap of some time between the first verse and the second.
And if we are correct in believing that, it is a description then of the result of sin and rebellion. And so the earth that was without form and void, and darkened, where there was no light, that is the way that is opposed to God, that is the result of sin.
But the end of verse 2 informs us that God was poised to act. He was not willing to leave His creation in such a displeasing ruined state. His Spirit, that is, the power by which He works, was hovering in the darkness over the waters. It is almost like it was a bird just kind of hovering in the breeze, kind of like you see the gulls do on the beach, where they just seem to stay hovering as the wind holds them up. And of course, many people have drawn a parallel to the Spirit coming like a dove upon Jesus at His baptism, as kind of a throwback to this. That the One who was going to cleanse the world was here.
But that Spirit, His Spirit, was above the waters. And the image of hovering, the idea of hovering, gives you the idea of kind of a tenseness that is there. Like there is a readiness to go. It is almost like when you are on the starting line in a race. Everybody is just waiting for the gunshot to go off or the whistle to blow or the flag to wave. The Spirit was waiting for a command. Then God said, Let there be light. That was the command - and there was light. It happened. Light bloomed around the earth. So God banished the darkness for a time so He could work.
Notice it tells us there that once He saw the light and said it was good, that He divided the light from the darkness, and there was a day portion and a night portion, a light portion and a dark portion. And they became part of our day. Have you ever tried, let us say it is pitch black outside, but you have to do something and you do not have any light source. And so you try to fumble around and try to figure out how to do this thing and you never do it quite right. Even if you can do what it is that you need to do, you do not feel real secure about it because it is dark. You cannot see what you have just done, but you assume maybe that you got it okay.
But if you need to be able to see and light is not available or your abilities are not there, then you are going to have trouble. It is a struggle. But as soon as the ability to see is there and as soon as light is there, it becomes almost easy. You do not have to put quite so much work into it. So it is almost impossible to do anything well in darkness.
Jesus Himself says in John 9:3, that the night is coming when no one can work. It is a generality, but it is a truism. Work is far more difficult in darkness. We work best in the daylight, in the daytime when we can see because there is plenty of light to illuminate what we are doing.
God, then, brought light into the world to do His work of creation. That was the first thing He called for. I need a lamp. I can't see what's in here in the engine. You ever worked on a car at night? How much light do you need to do some of that work? And of course, there are shadows everywhere and you have to get the light in … . . .
That may seem a strange place to begin a sermon on sin, but you will see what I mean in just a little bit. The material creation of earth to make it habitable for mankind began with light, and so does the spiritual creation. The spiritual creation - to make us habitable for the Kingdom of God - also begins with light.
Light is used as a symbol of being given the power to perceive. Because we can perceive, we are then given direction as to how to proceed. As long as we are in darkness, we do not know which way to turn. It is very likely that no matter which way we turn, we are going to run into something, get hurt, fall in the ditch, go off the cliff, kill ourselves, or whatever. But once a person has light, then the obstacles begin to become more distinct, and we can dodge them. We can avoid them. We can begin to pick a clear path. I think you understand the drift, because those obstacles are sin which comes in many forms and shapes.
So even as God miraculously began removing the darkness of the destroyed created world, He has begun removing the darkness of the spiritual world from our destroyed, headed-for-death lives - by means of both a revelation of Himself and a revelation of what constitutes sin. Even though we have our eyes open, we may not be aware of what these obstacles we are looking at are.
I know that you know that is true, because as you have progressed in God's way, sin should become clearer. It comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes. Sometimes, there are little things that trip us up, and sometimes there are big things that seem about ready to crush us. Without God shining in our hearts, we would have no idea what these things are. But God does not stop with revealing. He begins to give us also a great deal of detail about these things so that we can begin to see sin in a clearer and clearer light.
What this does is it gives Him a double-barreled approach in that He reveals both what we should do and be, as well as what we should not do and be. In other words, the double-barreled approach is: one positive, one negative; what we should do, and what we should not do. Both of these approaches are necessary to clearly define sin.
False doctrines are formulated by those who do not understand these two extremes. False doctrines are followed by those who also do not understand, because if they did understand - if they had a clear vision, if the light of God was really shining on these obstacles - they would avoid them, would they not? We would think they would, anyway.
Verse 5 is the one that I want to concentrate on here, just very briefly. God called the light Day.This is the Hebrew word yom. (You are familiar with it, probably, from reading in the newspaper about Yom Kippur. Yom, meaning day. The Day of Atonement.) Then the darkness He called Night. This is lailah. And the evening and the morning. Evening there is ba erev, and morning is boqer. What we are seeing here is that the Day (yom) consists of two parts: one is dark, and one is light. The dark is called lailah; and the light is called boqer.
I go to this verse because I want you to see, very clearly, that darkness and light are not the same thing. Lailah and boqer are NOT the same thing! They are shown here in opposition to one another (in contrast to one another). Yom consists of night and day (lailah and boqer). That is established in the fifth verse of the Book. That is very clear.
Here is an allusion to creation. In Genesis 1:3 God said, Let there be light. The same God who commanded light to shine out of darkness in the physical world, the physical realm, when He began creation, commanded that light be given to us. And how is that light given to us? Through the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now see, he is referring back to Moses. Remember Moses had the veil over his face, but Jesus does not have the veil on His face. The whole reality of God, the great glory, everything that God is, we can see in the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ. That is what he is saying here. You look on Jesus, you will live - eternally. Everything that is godly and eternal and righteous and holy shines from Jesus' face, from His life, from His example, from His teaching.
Element 6: What does night mean? What does morning mean? Did the Hebrews reckon time as we do? The Hebrew word lailah: I think that I am telling you the truth when I say that in every instance in the Old Testament, it is translated night - every time. And it means that period of time beginning at the end of ben ha arbayim and ending at dawn (or, at the break of day).
The word day is translated from the Hebrew yom. (You probably know it from Yom Kippur.) The word night (capitalized in my Bible, in verse 5) is lailah. Evening is ba erev, and morning is boqer. So, we have in that three verse span, yom (day), lailah (night), (evening) ba erev, and (morning) boqer.
Atheists and evolutionists try to mock this passage, asking How can there possibly be light before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, which appear on the fourth day? (referring to Genesis 1:14-19). Several Jewish commentaries explain the light described in verse 3 as a primordial light, different in nature from (and far brighter than) that associated with the sun. What these commentators refer to as primordial light points to the self-contained luminescence of Almighty God, described in Revelation.
God's Holy Spirit can be described simply as the mind and creative power of the Almighty God. Now note here in these scriptures, it was not God Himself that was hovering over the face of the waters. No. It tells us God created everything through His powerful Spirit. It was through the thought processes that emerged from God's mind that He thought and His Spirit made it.
This sets the pattern for the revelation of His governance. Now here we begin to see His sovereignty over the inanimate aspects of the creation. He speaks, and light appears.
