Genesis 1:1-19 [Under the Sun Series #1]
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ June 14, 2020
Dear Friends in Christ, As I considered our summer worship series and did a little research on the sun, I ran across some impressive scientific information (much of which I can’t comprehend), some incredible theories (some of which I cannot accept), and some not-so-serious things as well (which I had no idea about before). For instance, the sun contains 99.86% of the solar system’s mass, you could fit 1.3 million earths inside the sun, and the core temperature of the sun is said to be 27 million degrees (so like Arizona in June!). The size of the sun and the intense heat of it—I truly cannot fathom these things. Some scientists suggest that the sun was born 4.6 billion years ago from a giant, rotating cloud of gas and dust known as the solar nebula. They suggest that this nebula collapsed because of its gravity and spun faster and faster, flattening into a disk. Then most of the material was pulled toward the center, forming the sun. As a Christian, I simply cannot accept this. Did you know that there are no fewer than 15 songs titled “Under the Sun?” Several movies and books also share that name. You may or may not have run into any of those (I don’t think I had). You might be well aware of the saying, “there’s nothing new under the sun” though. That is from the Bible—the book of Ecclesiastes (1:9)—which we will save for another day. But there once was a time when everything was new under the sun! Today we look back through the very words of God to the way he created all things in this world and in the universe. It seems the appropriate place to begin a worship series titled “Under the Sun!” God’s Wisdom in Creation We are fascinated by the things we see on this earth and as we gaze into the sky. Maybe your thing is flowers or the makeup and function of the human body or animals or weather or star-gazing or…well there are so many possibilities! Some of history’s greatest and most inquisitive minds have undertaken the intense study of God’s creation—the things in this world, the planets and stars, the moon, the sun. They have done this from the beginning and are still doing it today. They have devised amazing methods of study. They have built ingenious tools for viewing and measuring the most minute things on earth and enormous things light years away. This has given people the ability to study the sun, even though it is 94 million miles away and it is impossible to send anything anywhere near it because of that distance and its temperature. Even with those limitations, the things we have learned about this great light that governs the day are stunning. In addition to that, we have the very words of God, which describe the creation of light and the sun. In that description, we find some other fascinating things.
Genesis gives us a glimpse into the divine wisdom of the Creator. We can figure out a lot of things—God blesses people with curiosity and ingenuity—but there are plenty of things we can’t know or understand. One of those is God’s creation of light and how that coordinated with the creation of the sun. As an example of what happens when limited, sin-tainted human minds try to understand the wisdom of God’s creation, look no further than our issues with the creation of light and the sun. People do not want to accept the creation account because sinful minds want no accountability to God, and they reject it because they can’t completely comprehend it and explain it. Therefore, it must be something different from what the Bible says. So we look at what we can look at and study what we can study and declare that it must be this way or that way—but not the Genesis way! “How can God have created light on day one but he didn’t create the sun until day four?! That’s impossible! How could there be evening and morning for three days without the sun? How could plants—who need the sun to survive—be created on day three, before the sun showed up the next day?” These are actually good questions. There is no problem with faithless people simply asking the questions. Unfortunately, they often do so to discount the notion of God and creation. They often prefer their explanation to the recorded thoughts of God in the Bible. This rejection, of course, is eternally damnable because it directly opposes God. Christians also ask these questions. God created us to be curious. We are trying to understand what he has written. We are trying to see how science and Scripture are intricately interwoven and completely compatible. But that doesn’t mean that we will get it and be able to explain it. Some of us are frustrated by that and our sinful nature might tempt us to reject this part of God’s Word, thinking that we can pick and choose what is true in the Bible. We may think that the creation account isn’t that important, as if God didn’t have good reasons for explaining it to us. I have known people who walked away from faith in God over this very thing. Perhaps this is your struggle. Let me tell you, if that’s the case, you are not alone! Other theories about the world’s beginning and function are pushed at us constantly and treated as if they are fact, as if those spouting them as absolute truth were there to see it themselves. Christians have always struggled to explain the sun and its creation and relation to the other things created during those first days. They have struggled to find the compatibility with the science of the day, even though it exists. There were theologians whose names you wouldn’t know, trying to figure this all out back in the early days of the New Testament church. A group of rabbis later tried to explain. Modern Christians have struggled. Was the original light created on day one a manifestation of Christ’s glory (Tertullian)? Was the light actually the angels
(Augustine)? Was it the Glory of the Lord that was later seen in the Tabernacle and Temple (500 AD Babylonian Rabbis)? A bright cloud? A proto-sun? At least these people of faith were trying to understand. But finally, we are left with no better answer than God provided a source of light that lit up everything, functioned for a few days in a way similar to the sun as far as providing a period of light in the 24-hour days, and then placed that light into stars, including the sun, which governs the day on earth. God will always leave you wanting to know more because he is all-knowing and you are not and cannot be! We can learn a lot as we observe and record and test, but we don’t know it all. God does. The one who created it knows every detail! We live Under the Sun and we study it, but we often miss the mark with our theories about it, especially if we deny that God, in his divine wisdom, created it. God’s Power in Creation Besides God’s wisdom, Genesis also gives us a glimpse into the divine power of the Creator. Human beings have come up with ingenious ways to harness and direct power in order to propel rockets and satellites and people into outer space so that we can have the ability to do important things like sit at a restaurant and post pictures of our dinner to Facebook from our phones and text our friends from a mountain top. We got to witness that focused power as a rocket propelled astronauts Bob and Doug to the International Space Station a couple weeks ago. If you watched that, like we did in our home, maybe you felt like Debbie and I did, hoping and praying that nothing went wrong because we remember previous launches that failed and astronauts who died. Human beings are imperfect at handling the power we have developed. But God has ultimate power over all things and handles it with divine perfection. He used that perfect power to create everything we see in this world and in the sky—and he did it by simply speaking them into existence! On day four, the power of God’s word alone spoke into existence lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night, and… serve as markers to indicate seasons, days, and years. He said, Let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth,” and it was so. God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in place in the expanse of the sky to provide light for the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.
God’s wisdom and power created the sun that provides daylight, warmth, and growth, and provides a cycle to days and months and years. It happened just as Genesis says—an account we need to hear regularly because the world in its arrogance says that could not have happened…and there is no God…and relies solely on what imperfect human can see and guess at based on their limited ability to view what God has made. Even Christians get pulled into thinking something different about how all things came to be. They give up their belief that the Bible is accurate and true. They believe only what they can see and what can be extrapolated from that.
God forgive us for our wayward thoughts. God forgive us for our doubts as we watch the Discovery Channel and think that just maybe the Bible isn’t right. God forgive us for our silence as others spout their theories that reject and mock God and his Word. God forgive us for not appreciating something as extraordinary as the sun, which we see every day, yet rarely thank the Creator for. God forgive us for not searching out the answers to our curious questions to see that what is observed and tested in this world does in fact mesh with the words of Genesis. So much sin in so many ways as we go on living Under the Sun. God’s Love in Creation Fortunately, Genesis gives us a glimpse into the divine love of the Creator. As you heard the account of Creation for the second week in a row, did you marvel at what an awesome and beautiful place God created for people—the crown of his creation? How perfect, how pristine it was! Plants and trees, animals and fish and birds, the moon, the stars…and that glorious sun working as the Creator designed to keep it all going. God lovingly provided so many good things for his people to enjoy! But we know what happened. We know what the first human beings did in their paradise. Their disobedience to God brought sin and its influence on all that God had made. Imperfection took root. Decay and death were introduced. And separation from God for all eternity loomed on the horizon for Adam and Eve and all who populate the family tree of humanity. Divine wisdom, power, and love cannot coexist with beings that oppose him. But God’s love—the same love with which he created all things and put them into motion—that love moved God to action again. He spoke a word. God used the voice that spoke all things into existence and he made a promise. Though sin would have a devastating effect on Adam and Eve and all created things, God would send someone to undo the damage. He promised a Savior to crush the power of Satan and reverse what happened there in the Garden of Eden. That promise is in Genesis also and it looks ahead to Jesus. Christ is connected to the creation because in love for sinners, he would come to reverse the damage sin brought to the created world and to God’s greatest creation, his people. Jesus would give his life to pay for their sins and the sins of all who descended from them. With sin no longer the separator that it was, people who looked to Jesus would be free to live in harmony with God here—Under the Sun—and ultimately in heaven with God himself. Whatever our sins are, including those we must consider today regarding God’s creation and his Word which tells us about it, they are forgiven by Jesus. You and I are freed from them and freed to live in harmony with God as we live out our days Under the Sun. And we look forward to the blessed day that brings us to heaven and the glorious light of our Lord for all eternity. Amen. Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.