Genesis 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, 15and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so. 16And God made the two great lights--the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night--and the stars. 17And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
Matthew Henry: “Of the creation of the lights of heaven we have an account. I. In general, v. 14, 15, where we have 1. The command given concerning them: Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven. God had said, Let there be light (v. 3), and there was light; but this was, as it were, a chaos of light, scattered and confused: now it was collected and modelled, and made into several luminaries, and so rendered both more glorious and more serviceable.”
Clay Miller: It is not necessary that we know what that light was before God created the light-bearing sun, moon and stars. It may have been a disembodied light of some kind. It may have been the physical representation of divine glory…like the light God will shine in the New Jerusalem… “The city had no need of the sun of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it” (Revelation 21:23). Whatever the light was, it was situated in such a way that it facilitated the day night pattern for the first three days. Then the illuminaries we know today were created and they serve us now by ruling the patterns of our lives. We all, without fail, pattern our lives according to those bodies of light. They do not rule us as if they were animate, or a deity. They rule us only in the sense that they are God’s tool to rule our life’s patterns.
Matthew Henry: “God is the God of order, and not of confusion; and, as he is light, so he is the Father and former of lights. Those lights were to be in the firmament of heaven, that vast expanse which encloses the earth, and is conspicuous to all; for “no man, when he has lighted a candle, puts it under a bushel, but on a candlestick” (Luke. 8:16), and a stately golden candlestick the firmament of heaven is, from which these candles give light to all that are in the house. The firmament itself is spoken of as having a brightness of its own…
Daniel 12:3
And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever
…but this was not sufficient to give light to the earth; and perhaps for this reason it is not expressly said of the second day’s work, in which the firmament was made, that it was good, because, till it was adorned with these lights on the fourth day, it had not become serviceable to man.
Clay Miller: God created order and He created light to illuminate that order. These lights are in our sky and are very evident, used by you today even. God lit a pretty big candle up there in our sky and it indeed lights up our lives. That same sun gives light all over the globe.
When God created the sky, our atmosphere, on day two…the pre-light was lighting the sky. Whether or not it was sufficient to light the earth as Henry says, I don’t know. What I would conclude and agree with Henry is this: The sky was not complete until God, on day four put those permanent bodies in place to govern the days and nights and seasons of planet earth. Then it could be said by God that it was good.
Some people who believe it took billions and billions of years for the universe to miraculously form from billions and billions of uncaused miracles, tell us the earth and planets of our solar system were once part of the sun. They were somehow spun off into an orderly orbit by some kind of explosion on the sun that created order, rather than disorder (as every single observed explosion produces…disorder that is). But planets like Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury are not even near to being similar to the sun in their elemental make-up. They are each unique in their composition. How sad when we look at these planets and see their peculiar and singular designs, our teachers won’t give praise to the obvious Maker behind them. Instead they would credit chance. Their God…which is actually nothing. Not me and not my family. We will praise God for what we see in our universe. And the God we will praise is the God it all points to…the God of the Bible, Who explains the universe’s meaning and purpose and ours as well. Our chief end will be to glorify God by enjoying Him forever!
