Thursday 29th December
Read Genesis 3:3-5; 14-19
“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he 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.”
“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.’ And it was so. 16 God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning – the fourth day.” (NIVUK)
The poem of creation is patterned in terms of three paired words of form and fullness. On the first day light and dark are separated, given form, and on the fourth day they are ‘filled’ with sun, moon and stars. Part of that ‘fullness’ involves authority and rule, an idea that seems strange to our ears. How do the sun and moon rule? They receive delegated authority from God to provide light to the earth. Delegated because it was God who originally created light on day one.
At this point we run up against the strange idea that light is created before the sun that produces it. Does this mean we are reading something truly poetic and that the author has structured his narrative in such a way to make his main point (form and fullness) as clear as possible and is less concerned with scientific accuracy? Yes and no. The poem is clearly and deliberately structured. The author is interacting with creation myths and deliberately correcting them. Yet science does roughly correspond with the poet’s description if we accept that the universe erupted with a burst of light, a big bang, that only coalesced into stars and suns as the heat and light generated slowly cooled and condensed.
That we are meant to read it as poetry rather than dissect and drill down into science though is seen in the almost throwaway comment ‘He also made the stars’ (v16c). It is dismissive to the point of being rude! For the many nations surrounding Israel, who spent lifetimes studying the stars and constellations and interpreting their movements for guidance, ascribing to them deity and worship – a footnote in the poem, that Yahweh ‘made the stars’, ‘also’, merely to provide light at night puts the foolishness of their worship in perspective. Today there remain many, many people who believe the movements of the stars in the heavens control their lives. The Hebrew author mocks them.
Paul well understands the implications of this poem. That it is God who creates form and fullness and grants authority where He wills. We are no longer even to pay attention to the signs and seasons (v14) (cf Colossians 2:16-17) for Christ came to provide life, and life to the full.
“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.” (Colossians 2:8-10) (NIVUK)
If the powerful Lord of all creation speaks and brings fullness (Genesis 1), and Christ is the living enfleshment of the fullness of deity (Colossians 2:9) then by placing our faith in Him, giving Him our allegiance and acknowledging His authority, we have been brought to that fullness also…and found freedom and life.
