Being the self-appointed source of all true biblical knowledge in my marriage, I proudly challenged my wife the other day to recite for me the first commandment ever issued by God and offered her $10.00 if she could do so on the first try. After some stuttering, she blurts out, LET THERE BE LIGHT, and in doing so lightened my wallet (no pun intended) by $10.00. Now, I never thought she would come up with it on the first try, but I doubt most of us would if quizzed. It only recently came to my attention upon listening to a sermon on Genesis 1:3.
Light, in response to God’s initial command came into being on the first day of creation. It was not the natural light of the sun, moon and stars, which would be created by divine command four days later (Genesis 1:14-18), but a divine and supernatural light, which was the opening act of God’s revelation of His eternal glory, of the infinite perfections of His Being which He would first display in and through His creation of the universe and the natural world (Psalm 19:1-6). His glory, however, was to be most clearly and expansively revealed in His creation of and relationship with mankind, male and female, whom He created in His image and likeness, to whom was given dominion over that world, to freely enjoy all of the beauty, pleasures and delights inherent in it under God’s kind and loving rule (Genesis 1:26-28) (Isaiah 43:7).
The earth was to ultimately be filled with innumerable image bearers, clothed in the light of the glory of God, imaging in our mind, will, emotions and body the beauty of His holiness – the very excellencies of His being (Genesis 1:28) (Genesis 2:25) (Isaiah 6:3). We would see Him as He is, sharing in the eternal love relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, not as divine equals, but as beloved children, with the thoughts and intents of our heart centered on pleasing, honoring, enjoying and being enjoyed by Him as the object of our deepest love and source of our greatest joy.
God, in His holiness, would test mankind’s willing allegiance to this relationship and faith in His love by giving to Adam, the representative of the human race, one prohibition to his and Eve’s enjoyment of all that God had made, with the stipulation that if he violated that prohibition he (and his posterity – us) would lose everything, being cut off from this glorious life with God for which we were created (Genesis 2:15-17).
The test would be conducted (unwittingly) by one referred to in Genesis 3:1 as the serpent, who is subsequently identified as the devil or Satan, a rebellious angel who has already failed his test of allegiance to God (Isaiah 14:12) (Revelation 12:9). The serpent entices them to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, with the promise that in doing so they would “be like God”, essentially having the freedom to determine for themselves good and evil – right and wrong, and the right and ability to act on those determinations – accountable to no one, just like God.
For no other reason than pride (which comes before every fall into sin (Proverbs 16:18), they put their faith in the promise of the serpent rather than the promise of God (you will surely die) and sin, eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree in opposition to God’s one command. Immediately the light of the glory of God that clothed them was extinguished. Their bodies became so abhorrent in appearance that they try to cover them with fig leaves. Created to image the immortality and vitality of God, their bodies will now exist in weakness, susceptible to pain and ultimately physical death. The painful, dark and damaging emotions of guilt and shame, fear and anxiety enter the human race, joined in Genesis 4:1-24 by envy, discontent, anger, and revenge. Their relationship with God and one another is now marked not by love and devotion but blame and distrust (Genesis 3:11-13).
They (and their progeny) are banished into a world of spiritual darkness (Isaiah 8:21-22), ruled over spiritually by the one referred to historically as the prince of darkness, the one the Apostle Paul identified in 2 Corinthians 4:4 as the god of this world/age, who blinds men to the light of the glory of God, and in Ephesians 2:2, as the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. Jesus would refer to this one in John 12:31 and John 16:11 as the prince or ruler of this world. He is the one who is noted above as the devil or Satan.
This world Jesus is referring to is our world or age, a world now populated by spiritually dead men and women who are willingly darkened in their hearts and in their understanding of God, actively working to suppress the knowledge of His glory, and thus objects of His wrath and judgement, judgment that will have its consummation in what the Bible refers to in Revelation 20:14-15 as the second death, a place of utter and excruciating darkness. (Ephesians 2:1-3) (Ephesians 4:17-18) (Romans 1:18-22) (Job 10:20-22) (Matthew 25:30).
It is a world corrupted in every aspect of creation by man’s sin, cursed by God because of that sin so that nature itself opposes man, as man opposes God, a world filled with frustration and futility where hatred and violence abound (Genesis 3:17-19) (Ecclesiastes 11:8) (Genesis 6:11-12) (Hosea 4:1-3).
It is a world that will, despite God’s continued revelation of the glory of His mercy and grace in the midst of the darkness (Lamentations 3:22-23) (Exodus 34:5-6), grow darker and darker and mankind increasingly evil (2 Timothy 3:1-5), culminating in the Day of the Lord, what is referred to in Jeremiah 46:10, as His day of vengeance, in which His final judgement on this sin darkened world and all who continue in that darkness will take place. Multiple scriptures in the Old Testament point to this darkest of dark times. Two of the most graphic (and frightening) are Amos 5:16-20 and Joel 2:1-11.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Peter noting in 2 Peter 3:7-13 the certainty and suddenness of that Day, graphically reveals that it will be a day in which “the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up”… “the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat!” However, he joyfully concludes in verse 13 with confirmation of the Old Testament promise of a new heavens (universe) and new earth in which righteousness dwells, where everything and everyone there will once again display, proclaim and rejoice forever in the light of the beauty and excellence of the glory of God (Isaiah 65:17-19) (Isaiah 66:22-23).
Revelation 23 and 24 gloriously reveal the future fulfillment, the consummation of that promise, and in Revelation 21:23 we read, “The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.”
The Lamb is the one introduced by John the Baptist in John 1:29 as The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and subsequently revealed by John the Apostle in Revelation 13:8 as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, Jesus, who is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:15-17).
It will thus only be those who while in this present world, who have by faith, seen, trusted and rejoiced in the light of the knowledge and glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ – revealed to them by a divine and supernatural light – who will image, enjoy and delight in that glory in the wondrous world to come (2 Corinthians 4:6).
More in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×
The second commandment given by Common Sense : Thou shall not wager with thy wife. LOL