Episode Details

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I praise and thank you this day for your tender mercies. Thank you, Lord, that in the greatness of your compassion you make all things in my life work together for good. I praise you for the hard providences that you use to work against sin in my life, and I am sorry for the many times when I have complained in these things. I am sorry for the spirit of resistance I have often exhibited toward your corrections, and I thank you for your continued patience and perseverance with me. Surely God is good to Israel. Lord God, as I open your word this morning, may you meet with me and give me instruction and guidance. Please renew my mind as I seek your face. I commit this day to you, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Reading

Gen 1:14-19.

“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.”

Meditation

The big picture of what’s revealed on day four is that God shines his glory into his creation through his creation. There’s more to see here, however, because when God made the sun, moon, and stars he also had a specific purpose in mind, namely that his glory would be realised in creation progressively. God did not snap his fingers and fill the earth with his glory instantaneously, the end was not fulfilled at the moment of the beginning. No, God had a much bigger plan in mind, a plan that would be unfolded and progressed in the fullness of time. In other words, what I’m saying here is that God made the sun, moon, and stars to regulate time, and that itself shows us that time is a key part of God’s plan for his creation. This is what the text shows us: “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.” The language here makes it very clear that the sun, moon, and stars were established to regulate the passing of time. We see this truth revealed in three ways, which will be the focus of our meditation this morning.

First, the lights give us day and night. This is the most basic sense in which the sun and moon provide a measurement of time – by giving us day and night. In the words of the text, they “separate the day from the night”. And we know this from our own everyday life, day and night provide our basic cycle. We wake and work in the day, and we sleep and rest at night. The rhythm of day and night is part of the warp and woof of scripture and life. It begins with the seven days of creation, it rains for forty days and nights in the time of Noah, Israel marches around Jericho for seven days, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights and after his death is raised on the third day. We could go on, but the truth is very clear: God gave the sun, moon and stars to regulate time by giving us day and night.

The second way in which sun, moon, and stars regulate time is seen in the sense that they give us signs and seasons: “let them be for signs and seasons”. This too is a measurement of time. Just as we have days as a cycle in life, so too we have seasons - summer, autumn, winter and spring time. Now there’s another question here too: What does it mean for the lights to be “signs”? What do the lights signify? In the context of the passage, these