Great Light

Genesis 1,
1In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth … 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

II Corinthians 4:6
6For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

For all the questions it engenders in our minds, and there are many questions it engenders in our minds, Genesis 1 says this very clearly – whatever exists, exists because God made it.

And He made man to “have dominion” over it. “Have dominion” cannot mean to rape it and make whole species extinct … . It means that we are in charge of the planet as stewards of God. And the entrance of sin into the world has caused us to mar the original call upon us, in horrible ways. Sin does much more than just hurt the planet. It mocks God, destroys the souls of men, and prevents us from being able to commune with God as worshippers in the way we were created to do.

One can hardly read Genesis 1 without a sense of how far from the original intention the planet currently is. And that is the conclusion we should reach so that we can read the rest of the Bible with the view to finding out how God is going to make things right.

That takes us to the Gospel. Right from the opening phrases of Scripture we are brought to see the need for God to do something to get us out of the mess we have created through our disobedience. And the Bible takes us nowhere but to Jesus Christ. And it takes us to Him because there is nowhere else to go to fix up this horrible mess we are in and have created because of our sinfulness. Read the creation account and rejoice in the grace that rescues us. Read Genesis 1 and then read II Corinthians 4:1-6. What a glory the Gospel is. And what a power it is.

Today, rejoice that the horror that mankind has created in his sin, has not caused God to lose the original purpose for which He made the world in the first place. Go through the day with hope and joy because of the glory and the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.