3 "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light," (Gen. 1).
In our last session we began laying a foundation for this series of revelations on the light. "In the beginning" is a phrase used both in Genesis 1:1 and St. John 1:1. As we began comparing the account of creation, we saw from John 1 that the word God spoke in the very beginning was Christ; the same word that became flesh and dwelt among us.
God's word is spirit and life (John 6:63). Because God is Light, when His word enters your spirit, it brings light also:
"The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple," (Psalm 119:130).
Jesus told us that he came to give us life more abundantly (John 10:10). He said to the Father, "I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world," (John 17:14). By giving us His word, He has given us his spirit, his life, and his light. In other words, He has given us Himself. Truly we are heirs of God, meaning, we inherit God! Those who are joined to the Lord become one spirit. His Light within us [Christ in us the hope of glory, Col. 1:27] dispels our darkness.
"For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light," (Eph. 5:8).
Do not be fooled by the darkness. There is a power to see in the dark and to believe that the darkness is light simply because you can see.
"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Matthew 6:22-23).
As we stated in our last session, in the beginning when God directed His light into the dark, murky abyss of putrid water over which His Spirit had been brooding, He did not destroy the darkness, but rather, He separated the darkness from the light.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day," (Genesis 1)
Notice that God saw goodness in the light, but the scripture does NOT say that "he saw the darkness, that it was good." Remember a key to unlocking certain revelations to come? I shared it with you last week: What God doesn't say is significant and powerful for a purpose. We'll discover that in the weeks to come.
The darkness was not destroyed by the light, but it was divided from the light. How? I used to conceptualize the separation by distance, but it is not. Think about it. How did God divide the light and dark? He did it by giving each its own time. In other words, there is a time for light to shine that's call Day. And a time for darkness to prevail that's called Night. Notice that the "evening and the morning were the first day". Our "day" is backwards from God's. We start in the morning and end our day in the evening. However, God counts a day as starting in the evening and ending in the light.
A few concepts are introduced in these verses:
1. SEPARATION. This is going to be a key concept. The initial work of creation was to bring about a separation of darkness from light. What is the first work God does in the life of a newborn believer in Jesus?
SEPARATION. He immediately translates you out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of His dear Son (Col. 1:13). To "translate" you means He picks you up and carries you out of the darkness and sets you in a place prepared for you in His kingdom! Glory to God!
2. TIME. God dwells in eternity, but He set time in motion upon the earth.
3. A DAY. It is greatly debated as to whether or not the "week" of creation was a literal seven day week. We will give evidence from scripture that will help you draw your own conclusion.
4. NAMES. God names things. He give the light a name, "Day" and the darkness a name, "Night". Man who is made in the image of God is the only part of His creation that has also been given the ability to name things.
"And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof," (Gen. 2:19).
Let's take a closer look at what God does on day two of creation:
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."
Notice the same concepts are repeated?
1. SEPARATION. God separated waters. How? The Word of God (Christ) was instructed to go into the waters ("let THERE be light"). Now that he's in the midst of the waters, the Father directs the Word (His Son) to create a "firmament in the midst [or middle] of the waters". Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible defines a "firmament" as "an expanse; the visible arch of sky". Can you picture it? Christ was in the midst of the waters causing an expanse of space, air, sky to push half of the waters above the expanse while the other half remained beneath.
2. TIME as marked off again as a "day".
3. NAME. The expanse or firmament was given a name. It had not been there before. It was brought up out of the midst of the waters. What was the firmament called? Heaven. This is obviously not the heaven where God's throne is or from which He dwells, but rather the atmospheric circumference of what will be named "Earth" (vs. 10.).
Go back to Genesis 1:1 for a moment: "In the beginning God created the heaven...". Yes, He did. And verses 6-8 show us how He created it. Remember we said that the first verse was like an introduction to what God was going to do and that the rest of the chapter shows us how He did it?
He created the heaven by bringing it forth from the midst of the waters. I have another profound series of teachings entitled, Something About the Waters. In that series we share a stream of revelations about waters from Genesis to Revelation. Suffice it to say here that every creative work of God was done through waters. He moved upon the face of the deep in the very beginning and then sent His Spirit into the waters because He needed to do something to the waters before He could do something through the waters.
So, we see that heaven (or sky) is a created thing. It was created on day two. One more thing to tuck into your spirit before we move on: the four-word phase at the end of verse seven, "...and it was so." Those words tell us that the work was completed, done, finished. Afterward God names the work that He just ended: Heaven.
Let's look at day three of creation:
9 "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day."
1. SEPARATION. God called for the gathering of waters into one place so that dry land could appear. In other words, He separated the waters from the land enough so that for the first time, that which had been beneath the waters and concealed by the waters was now made visible: land. That land was saturated with waters. God called forth vegetation upon the land that had been saturated in water.
2. TIME is again marked as a day.
3. NAME. God called the dry land "Earth". The gathering of waters, "Seas".
Are you seeing the pattern? Next week we will look at day four of creation week and we'll explode some revelations into your spirit. This week's blog is laying a foundation and giving you some ground work for what's to come.
Please review last week's blog. Listen to the playback of our conversation regarding it. The playback number is 530-881.1299. Access Code is 448699#. The reference number for last week's call is 4 followed by the # sign.
I hope you'll be in the weekly Monday night live call. The dial in number is 530.881.1200 and the access code is 448699#. We start at 9PM EST.
NEXT WEEK
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so."
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
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