Day 1

Genesis 1:3-5, John 12:46

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Hello, everybody, my name is Tony Pittenger. I’m a pastor out in Washington State, and I want to say hi to all of you, especially to you kids. Out in Washington State, I get to be outside a lot in God’s creation. And so I’m going to bring you a few devotions about God’s creation. We first hear about God’s creation in our Bible, the very beginning, the first page, Genesis, Chapter 1.

And God said, let there be light. And there was light. God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness. He called night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day. (Genesis 1:3-5)

So that’s Genesis 1:3-5. And the Bible tells us here that the very first thing that God created was light. Now modern scientists will tell us that light is everything from the power that cooks your food in the microwave to the way that the radio in your mom and dad’s car works. We usually think of light as what comes from light bulbs or as what comes from the sun. But remember, God hadn’t created the sun yet, and a man named Thomas Edison wouldn’t invent light bulbs for thousands and thousands of years. So on the first day, there was just light.

I want you to imagine yourself in your bedroom closet, you go in there and you close the door and you turn off the lights. Why is it dark? Well, it’s dark because there is no light. But now if you open the door, what happens? Light from your bedroom comes into your closet. But now I want you to look. Look out into your bedroom. Is there any darkness spilling out from the closet into your bedroom? No, there is not. You know why? Because while light is actually something, darkness is nothing.

Darkness is a complete absence or void of anything. Scientists tell us that lights actually made up of tiny little bits, tiny particles called photons. Darkness is nothing. Well, the Bible describes unbelief and sin as darkness, as having nothing, nothing to do with God, a total absence of God. But Jesus says in the Bible that he is the light of the world. Here, listen to this. Jesus says,

I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. (John 12:46)

Now, what do those words mean? Well, they mean that just as Jesus is God and he is the one where life comes from. He is also the one who shines light into this world. And not just light from the sun or even from a light bulb, but the light of faith. Light was the very first thing that God gave to his creation and light is what is needed for life to exist. In darkness, we have only death. Jesus is what is needed for our lives to exist with God, Jesus is the one who brought us back to the Father when we were sinners, who didn’t even know anything about him.

If we were plants living here on this earth, we might say give us more light so that we can live. Because we are God’s children, we can say give us more of Jesus, our Savior, so that we can live with him here and forever in heaven.

One of my favorite songs, one of my favorite songs as a kid even, was a song Jesus Loves Me because it tells me how I can know this. This I know for the Bible tells me so, amen.