Prayer
Heavenly Father, Please instruct me from your word. I am yours, save me. Cast me not away, take not your Holy Spirit from me, restore and renew unto me the joy of your salvation, and renew in me an upright and clean heart. Lord, I am in desperate need of the daily cleansing of your word and, unworthy though I am, I plead for mercy. Save me, Lord, or I die. And the dead shall not give praise to you, so for the sake of your name – feed and nourish my soul, make me to walk in the light of life. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.
Reading
Gen 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, 15. and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, (18) to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.”
Meditation
Perhaps you’ve heard the saying before: “shoot for the stars.” What it means is to “aim high” in an effort to achieve great things. In other words, when you try to do something, try and do something challenging, or even seemingly impossible, seek to achieve great things. My then six year old son had to write a sentence using the word “centre” one day as part of his schooling, and this is the sentence that he chose to write: “When I’m six, I want to go to the centre of the earth”. Now that is what you call shooting for the stars!
We don’t often give much attention to the stars and the planets above, but they have a far more profound role to play in our lives than we sometimes realise. In verse 14 we read: “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…” What’s going on in this verse? What’s God doing here? Very simply, he’s creating the sun, moon, and stars, and telling us why he created them. That’s day four in a nutshell. There’s much more, however, to be said than just that – much more here for us to unpack and understand.
Perhaps the very first thing we can say about day four, and this will be the particular focus of our devotion here, is that day four represents a reflection of the glory revealed on day one. It’s hard to miss that there is a parallel between day four and day one, which itself is part of a bigger parallel between the first three days and the second three days. On day one God said “let there be light” and on day four he created the lights. On day two he made the expanse of the heavens and separated the waters, on day five he fills the heavens and the waters. On day three he made the land and the plants, and on day six he populates the land with creatures and gives them the plants for food. In broad terms we could say that the first three days are about forming the environment, and that the second three days are about filling that environment. So then, day four gives us a clear counter-part to day one, and as we build upon that insight, day four offers us a very clear principle, which is that: God shines into creation through creation. Re-read that statement and ponder it for a moment longer.
God shines into his creation through his creation. In other words, as we learned in our studies of day one, on that first day God announced and initiated his grand intention of shining his glory into all the creation. Day four shows us that God uses the creation itself to unfold that very same purpose. As God sets lights in the expanse, he’s declaring to all that it will be the creation that reflects the beauty, perfection, and excellence of his character. This truth is revealed explicitly later in scripture as well. In Psalm 19:1 we read: “the heavens declare the glory of God”, and again in Romans 1:20 we read that “his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” In summary, then, we may say that God’s intention to let creation shine with his glory was expressed on day one. Day four begins to show us how this is going to happen: the creation itself will reflectively shine his glory. The created order would become a light-bearer, so to speak.
We see the same principle again in Genesis 1:26, for example, as God makes man in his own image. As God uses men and women to be little reflected images of his own character and nature it’s the same principle at work: God shines into his creation through his creation as men and women become creaturely reflections of his glory. So there is our first principle, as revealed on day four: God shines His glory into his creation through His creation.
Be ye doers of the word…
A very clear and obvious principle of application then follows on from this, which is that God calls us to live life to his glory. God made the sun, moon, and stars to shine light into his creation, and thus the heavenly bodies give us an initial picture of God’s intention to make all things display his glory. The rolling spheres play a very important and direct enabling role in God’s plans for creation, but they also present a picture of what God calls us to be. This is why many times in scripture the saints are described using the imagery of sun, moon, and stars. Here are a couple of examples. In Matthew 13:41-43 we read:
“The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”
In 1 Corinthians 15:40-42 the Apostle Paul uses the analogy of heavenly bodies to explain our bodily resurrection:
“There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.”
When God gave Jospeh a dream in Genesis 37, he used the imagery of sun, moon, and stars to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Consider the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 as God says that his descendants would be as the stars in number. It is not unusual for God to use the imagery of the heavenly bodies as a parallel to help us understand our own role and destiny as the people of God. And so your purpose, like that of the stars, is to shine with God’s glory. So then, God calls us to live our lives to his glory. In other words, in everything we do in our lives, whether it be eating breakfast, mowing our lawns, singing psalms and hymns, or loving our families, we must do it with the aim of pleasing God and displaying the excellencies of his character. Take time to reflect on the things you are doing in your life each week and consider if they are things that glorify God or not. That is why we were made, to shine with God’s glory as a reflection of his beauty and perfection. SDG.
Prayer of Confession & Consecration
Lord God Almighty, If this thing is to be realised in me, it will be a far greater deed than igniting a star in the dark depths of space. The dark depths of my soul cannot reflect your glory. My heart is a black hole of selfish corruption. I cannot ignite this star, and I cannot cause myself to blaze with your glory. I have two grounds on which I make my plea, firstly – on the grounds of your compassionate promises to us. In your goodwill to sinners, and your desire to see to it that the wicked do not perish, you sent your Son. And yet I must be born – not of flesh – but of the Holy Spirit. So work in me I pray, for the sake of your Son. My second plea is that you might get glory to yourself through the conquering of my utter inability. It would be glorious indeed if a sinner such as I should blaze with the glory of your reflection, and there would be no doubt whatsoever as to the glories of your majesty and might in saving such a wretch. O Lord, please, do this work in me, renew my heart, make my life to shine with your glory. Deliver me from sin, please protect me from Satan, and lead me in the way everlasting. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.
Day 20: The Reflection of Glory (Gen 1:14-19).