The Fourth Day
Genesis 1:14-19
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
The sun (and with it the moon and the stars) is not created until Day Four. But, how can this be, since we’ve already had light and morning and evening since Day One (not to mention plant life since Day Three)? Isn’t the sun required for these things to take place?
Ancient peoples knew more from personal experience about the sun, the moon, and the stars than we do—the movements of the heavenly bodies were part of their intimate, daily experience, whereas we spend very few nights of our lives out of doors—and they certainly understood that you can’t have morning and evening without the sun. The strange detail of God waiting to create the sun until Day Four is yet another indication that Genesis 1 is not trying to give us scientific knowledge as to how things were created, other than to say that God is clearly the cause and Creator of everything. Rather, one of the things Genesis 1 is trying to tell us is that nothing in all of creation is divine, and therefore nothing in all of creation should be worshipped. The sun has been worshipped widely since the earliest days of humanity; Genesis 1 makes it clear that such worship is foolish idolatry: only God is worthy of worship. The sun is powerful, and God gives it the responsibility to rule the day, but nevertheless the sun is created just like everything else there is, seen and unseen.
I doubt very much that any of us literally worships the sun, but I am certain that many of us struggle with idolatry, which is the sin of thinking that the things God made (money, sex, power, possessions) are more important to our lives than God himself.
One way to avoid that mistake today: give God thanks for what you see.
P.S. Know anyone who might benefit from receiving these posts via email? Subscribe here.
P.P.S. I’m preaching on Genesis 2-3 this weekend: 6 PM Thursday (TONIGHT!) and 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 AM.