Episode Details

Prayer

Lord God, I give you thanks for a new day of life, for the gifts of your grace. I give you thanks for your preserving grace and patience in my life. O Lord, as I come now to your word, please help me. As I seek to draw near to you, please quicken my dull heart, please enflame my cold affections. Please fill my eyes with the light of your countenance, please give me life – that your glory may glimmer and then shine through me. I confess, Lord, that is my desire, but I do not plead for the sake of my own satisfaction, but for the sake of the glory of your name, and for the sake of Christ who died for me. And in Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

Reading

Psalm 19 & Luke 12.

Genesis 1:2-5.

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

Meditation

Light is not the only feature of the first day, the text also relies on the contrast between light and darkness. In this meditation, we’ll take a moment to consider the significance and place of darkness. First, and most obviously, darkness is the absence of light. The picture in verse two is one of a formless world, an empty void. To begin with, there was an absence of light. Darkness is not a thing in and of itself, it is not a substance but an absence. With this in mind, we may draw a second powerful observation on the topic of darkness, and the observation is this: God is the pattern of creation. Now that might sound a little strange, but stay with me here as I make the case on this.

The creation was dark, formless, void, and empty – and God said let there be light. In other words, God said: let my glory and presence fill and give form to the creation. It follows from this that everything in creation is designed to be a reflection of God, everything is designed to follow the pattern of his being in some way. Creation thus declares the glory of God (Ps 19) because it is an embodiment of his glory. We are called to love, to be righteous, to be wise, and we are made in the image of God – all things are designed to be a reflection of divine perfection. When an author writes a book, every word of the book is reflective of the mind of that author, everything bears the imprint of the author. Well, God is the author of creation.

We can establish this in still another way. In the Lord’s Prayer, we’re all familiar with those well-known words: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This truth has been there from day one. Some people say that the first reference to the gospel in the Bible is Genesis 3:15 where the promise comes that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. I think, however, that you find the full intention of the gospel expressed right here in day one: Let there be light. Christ is the light of the world, and God’s purpose for creation is to see it filled with his glory, his presence, and to exist as a reflection of his own character – “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Be ye doers of the word…

We may draw out an application here, which is: put off darkness. In Romans 13:11 we read: “you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Light by nature reveals things, and one of the things it reveals is our sin. In Luke 12:3 we thus read: “Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in