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GENESIS 1:3 “AND GOD SAID, ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT,’ AND THERE WAS LIGHT.” (NKJV, KJV, NIV, NASB)
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And light appeared.” (TLB)
Please watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7JsK50NGaA
I am not a big fan of concert/entertainment worship. I'm not talking about going to a concert and enjoying a worshipful song with thousands of other fellow Christians. I have done that several times in my adult life. There is a place for that. I'm talking about trying to bring the entertainment environment into the local church, a place that should be reserved for corporate worship and praise to the Lord in everyone's heart among the body.
Having said that, if you viewed the video above I asked you to, you will no doubt have been awed by the special effect presented by Hillsong Worship in their rendition of “Let There Be Light.” I was especially “wowed” by that moment they took a nearly totally dark auditorium and exposed it to as bright a light as they could present. The message of the song, “Let There Be Light” was as closely demonstrated as was possible by the sudden flash of extremely high intensity light as they could generate. It moved me.
One of my very favorite verses describing the creation of everything by our God is this text verse in Genesis 1:3. I wish I could have been there to see it. No man was there to witness it. God was alone. He spoke, “Let there be light” and there was light. Wow! One moment, light did not exist. The next, in response to His words, there was light.
Some have tried to explain this very first miracle of God's creation. I'm not sure I can. God's magnificence is beyond our understanding. I find it totally awesome though, that He has given us the ability to try to understand it. I would dare to try to understand Him, even though it is so far beyond my ability to grasp. That magnificence only serves to help me worship Him even more. I love it.
To the best of my poor ability to describe it, this is the only time I can point to when it appears that, apart from Him alone, the light is without source. When He said, “Let there be light,” it was not coming from the sun, moon or stars. All of the lights in the universe were created on Day 4. No, He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light!
Our only understanding and experience in this life of light is one which comes from a source. If we had been there, I'm not sure we could have identified a source from which the light came. He said “Let there be light,” and the light that did not exist the previous moment, now existed. This is certainly God taking that which only He can comprehend and placing it into terms we can understand in our limited flesh.
Light was created at that moment. Some might say that He was that source of light. But, remember, He created light...by His word. He did not create Himself. He created light!
If you study further into the creation, you will see in the following verses that He created the division between light and darkness. He called the light day and the darkness He called night. That was Day 1. He used the division of light and “less light” or darkness to describe what we have forever since known as a day, giving us a reference for us to understand TIME. Perhaps our best understanding of what had happened was, He indeed created time itself.
God is, was and always will be “outside of time.” When we return to our heavenly home, we also will, only then, be able to comprehend what we cannot understand here, what it means to be outside of time. In that reference, we are told we shall forever be in the light.
This concept of time, He created at the beginning. It was our intended plane of reference in which we would be able to understand our concept of flesh and life on this planet. Before the fall of Adam and Eve, it was not intended to have an end. When the Lord told them that on the day they would disobey and eat of the forbidden fruit they would die, He surely was describing the event under which not only would we experience the days and nights He had created, but we would also have a limit to those days. After the number of days that only God knows, we each now come to the end of our time and return to the timelessness of eternity.
Less than a century ago, scientists believed that the movement they observed in the universe indicated that that universe was expanding. In their logic of understanding, they also believed that if the evidence seems to show that all of the universe is expanding, it surely must have been expanding FROM a smaller universe in the past. If, then, this is taken to its logical conclusion, given enough time for this expansion, everything must have originally come from what they now call, “The Big Bang.”
I'm not so sure that we are so well capable of understanding something so magnificent as the creation of the universe that we can rightly claim we know what happened at the beginning. Science wants us to think they know. But I am skeptical...not of the fact that there was a beginning, but of their expressed understanding of how it all happened.
Astronomers were absolutely sure that when we sent the James Webb telescope into space and looked back farther than we have ever been able to look, they would surely find evidence of stars and galaxies not yet formed in the early universe...close to the time of the Big Bang. Surprisingly, what they have found defies their explanations. We are actually seeing, in what they believe to be those early days of the universe, to be fully formed, very large, fully developed galaxies already in existence. I'm sure science will give us a fully plausible explanation for what seems to be a mystery that doesn't fit their theories of the formation of the universe soon.
The real problem here is that science does not have the framework to explain the possibility of God creating something fully developed when He said, “let it exist.” Let us give them a little bit of slack though. Remember, we cannot explain how God said, “Let there be light” and there just was light either. But that's OK. He is God! We are not.
Isn't it wonderful that we serve a God who goes so far beyond our understanding? In our “human-ness” we want to put God into a box that lets us perfectly describe Him so He makes perfect sense to us. He is by nature beyond our understanding. But, isn't it even greater that He so wanted us to understand and worship Him that He took the time to tell us He created it all and presented it in terms He knew we might have a possibility of understanding?
God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light! Let the magnificence of that creation try to sink in. Let the mystery and majesty of that event drive you to your knees to worship so great a God! Sing with me, “How great is our God!”
Questions to consider: Is it possible for one to believe the claims of science when it seems to contradict what the Bible says? How do we harmonize the Genesis account of creation with the apparent age of the universe? When God created Adam and Eve, what did they see in the night sky? How long did it take God to create the stars in the universe? Watch the series, “The Heavens Declare” by Kyle Justice on YouTube to see the Biblical answers to many of the questions of science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7iQzm4n07U
Other Scriptures to study: Isaiah 40:22 “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth...who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” Psalm 147:4 “He counts the number of the stars; He calls them by name.” Job 9:9; Job 22; Job 25 Psalm 8:3 “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained.” Jeremiah 31:35, Isaiah 40:26, Amos 5:8
Another song to remember: “How Great is Our God” by Chris Tomlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBD18rsVJHk
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