Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. Then 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. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, 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. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
As promised before, I want to look at the darkness being "judged" in the creation of the world.
I feel like I've been looking at this a lot lately. Remember from the first 5 verses of Genesis that God separated the light from the darkness. He now puts over the darkness "rulers" called the sun and the moon. God first restrains the darkness to only being allowed to occupy the night, and here He then further contains the darkness by putting rulers over it.
But we know a little bit further into the story, don't we? We know about Genesis chapter 3. We know that Satan tempted Even (which, if Adam is the head, then why didn't he tempt Adam?) and Eve took the fruit and ate. She then gave some to her husband (which, if he was the spiritual authority, why did he trust her judgment beyond his own?) and he ate it too. Their eyes were thus opened.
What happened in that disobedience?
We'll further examine this scene later, but for now I want to bring up the point that in this darkness was brought into the creation. By disobedience (sin), darkness was allowed to rule over the day, night, and have its limits were thus taken away. The fall in the Garden wasn't about the depravity of man. It is a cosmic fall. Since everything is interconnected, Adam's sin brings darkness into the creation. Maybe this is why we see in Isaiah 24 that the moon shall be confounded and the sun will be ashamed.
They were supposed to be rulers over the darkness. Yet when we read the whole of the Bible, we see that there is to be an Antichrist who Paul calls "the man of sin." I am becoming increasingly more convinced that this man of sin is Satan in the flesh. This is a man so possessed by Satan that you cannot see the one without the other any longer. Obviously, it isn't Satan, because we read in Revelation that the Antichrist and his False Prophet are thrown into the fire before Satan is. There is a distinction made. However, I can't help but come to the conclusion that this man of sin is the full form of sin. He is corruption through and through.
The sun and moon were supposed to keep that from happening. They were supposed to be rulers over the darkness. Yet we read that this abomination will happen.
Darkness has infiltrated our world. It has seeped in through the cracks of sin. But this isn't how it will always be.
We can read the end of the Bible. We find in Revelation 21 and 22 that it is mentioned there is neither sun, nor moon. There are no stars. There is no darkness. God is the light. The Lamb is the light. There is no temple. God is the Temple. The Lamb is the Temple.
Isaiah also prophesied of this. He also claimed there would be a day that darkness would exist no more. One of the problems with the way that a lot of people read the Bible is that they think of night time. It is written in an ancient language: Hebrew. Darkness is no more night time than the sun is day time. They are related, yes. But when we talk about darkness we talk about chaos. We talk about sin. We talk about struggle. We talk about wars. We talk about devastation. We talk about destruction. We talk about the work of the devil. Satan's kingdom is even called the kingdom of darkness.
So when we read that there is no more darkness in the age to come, we must understand that it is saying a lot more than it will be day time all the time.
Notice that I mentioned that there is no more temple. Why? When we read the Bible, and we look at history itself, we find that the temple is a symbol of something. The temple symbolizes where God lives. In order to communicate with the gods, you must go to their temples and consult their priests. If you want a good harvest, you offer a sacrifice to the god of prosperity. In order to know what to sacrifice, you need to go to the temple and consult the priests.
After thousands of years, the temple started to bring a negative connotation with it. If you offer to the gods and you end up doing well, you need to offer more to the gods next year. You don't want to offend the gods. And what if you don't end up with a good harvest? You now need to offer more to appease the gods. So whether you are blessed or cursed, you need to continue to offer more and more and more.
Are the gods angry?
Do we know whether they have accepted our sacrifices?
Then this revolutionary book called Leviticus came around.
Leviticus tells us what to offer, how much to offer, and then says, "That is all." Once you have offered what you need to offer, you're done. You don't have to worry about whether God is angry or not. You don't need to worry about whether God accepts your sacrifice. If you follow what He lays out in Leviticus, then you will be recognized as atoned for.
And so there was a Temple in Israel. But even that became to be abused. There was one point in Israel's history that they were bringing unacceptable offerings to the Temple. They continued with business as usual. They treated God as though He is like all the other gods of the nations. They are just blocks of wood or gold that have been crafted with human hands. So what does it care if we offer a lame or blind goat instead of a pure and spotless lamb?
So plagues came upon Israel.
And after thousands of years of human history offering to the gods, there became a deep rooted animosity. Are the gods angry? Am I okay with the gods?
How many people have you heard say, "If I went into a church building, it would catch on fire." Or what about this one: "If (insert religious phrase here), then I would be struck by lightning."
Really?
Where does that come from?
The gods are angry.
And so we see in the end that there is no temple.
Why?
Because God isn't like that. Everywhere in Scripture He points to a different character than that. He never has been like that. He has never demanded more and more and more. He has never required that pastors should have to give up their "secular" lives to be ministers. He has never said that if He loves you then you would be wealthy. He has never said that He wants you to have the best the world has to offer. That is the lie of Satan.
God accepts us where we're at.
He sees us where we are and says, "You don't have to live like that."
You don't have to live like that...
God embraces us where we are. He calls out to us from wherever we are, no matter how dark that place might be. Remember that He hovered over that darkness in the beginning? He isn't afraid to get in the muck and crap with you. He isn't ashamed of you.
And that is what makes this so powerful.
God is with us.
That is the Christmas message, right?
Emmanuel: God with us.
And at the end of everything, we read that the main point of heaven is that God is with us. We don't find darkness to oppress us: God is there. We don't find a temple to burden us: God is there.
And that is the point that has been proclaimed from the start. God doesn't just love you, He actually likes you. He actually wants to spend time with you. He actually created this world so that He could dwell with us on it. This world wasn't made to be far off from Him, and we have to somehow invoke the name of God and call upon Him for Him to hear us. He was supposed to be right here next to us.
But the real kicker isn't that it is still somewhere else for another time.
It is for here and now.
"For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord," Romans 6:5-11.
May the God of Heaven and Earth grant you this kind of resurrection - freedom from sin and darkness.
Grace and peace.
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