AUGUST 4, 2023 – LIGHTS

READ: Gen. 1:14-19: Then God said … And God saw that it was good, … the fourth day.”

What God’s Word writes about God’s creative work provides us with great certainty and firmness. We see His omnipotence, as well as His wisdom, faithfulness, and goodness. What He has created, He sustains until the day of His second coming, when God will make all things new.

On the fourth day of creation, God creates lights or light bearers. He places them in the sky, the expanse. God does not speak in scientific or astrological language here, but in observational language. We see the sun and the moon in the sky. For example, the sun hidden behind the clouds with the moon in between. What is described in Genesis has nothing to do with an old, ancient worldview, but it describes what we, as humans, observe.

The light from the first day is connected by God to these light bearers, which are given an important function for life on earth. The sun and moon are meant to distinguish between day and night and to mark days and years. God also creates the stars. Again, we read that God speaks, makes, places, and sees that it is good. Nothing develops spontaneously or by chance; everything happens with divine purpose, through divine action, with divine power and effectiveness.

It is precisely with the fourth day that Christians who accept science as the ultimate source of truth encounter difficulties. How can stars, which take millions of years for their light to reach the earth, have been created less than 10,000 years ago? To reconcile this, they adopt the framework theory: Genesis 1 conveys narratives instead of factual actions of God. But by doing so, they do not confess the omnipotence of God through which He created everything.

They also abandon the authority of Scripture to make room for the theory of evolution. Consequently, the reliability of the rest of the Bible is also called into question. Let us honor God as the almighty Creator of heaven and earth according to His Word!

Should everything in the Bible be taken “literally”?

Singing: Ps. 136:4