Light In The Darkness Series

During the summer between my first and second year at Moody Bible Institute, I had the privilege of teaching at a Bible College in Zimbabwe, Africa. This experience marked my life and ministry in countless ways. One of the memories I have is how dark it was at night. Because we were in a rural area, there were no streetlights or neon signs. When the sun went down it was pitch dark.

During the first week we had an activity at the Bible School at night and when it was over, I headed to the dormitory which was located about ¼ mile away. I somehow got separated from others and found myself walking in deep darkness across a soccer field. I felt disoriented, distressed, alone, and afraid. I knew the dorm was at the end of the field, but I couldn’t see anything. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I kept walking very slowly, squinting in the hopes of finding some sort of light to guide my way. I finally saw the faint beam from a classmate’s flashlight and made my way back.

Over 20 years ago, National Geographic ran an article called, “The Power of Light.” The introduction caught my attention:

“Light reveals the world to us. Body and soul crave it. Light sets our biological clocks. It triggers in our brains the sensations of color. Light feeds us, supplying the energy of plants to grow. It inspires us with special effects like rainbows and sunsets. Light gives us life-changing tools, from incandescent bulbs to lasers and fiber optics. Scientists don’t fully understand what light is or what it can do. They just know that it will illuminate our future.”

A recent article with the same title incorporated some new discoveries. Here’s an excerpt.

“There has been light from the beginning…in all its forms—visible and invisible—it saturates the universe…no one is exactly sure how to describe it…it is a measure of light’s importance in our daily lives that we hardly pay any attention to it. Light is almost like air. It’s a given. A human would no more linger over the concept of light than a fish would ponder the notion of water. There are exceptions, certain moments of sudden appreciation when a particular manifestation of light, a transitory glory, appears—a rainbow, a sunset, a pulse of heat lightning in a dark sky, the shimmering surface of the sea at twilight…usually, though, we don’t see light, we merely see with it.”

We’re continuing in our series from the first chapter of Genesis called, “Back to the Beginning.” Last week we camped in the very first verse: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” and discovered this truth: Genesis has a big beginning because God is a big God.

Our topic today is “Light in the Darkness,” and our text is found in Genesis 1:2-5. Let’s stand and read it reverently together: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” After pondering this passage, I wrote down a summary sentence: When God says it, that settles it. Let’s walk through it phrase by phrase and worship while we do so.

I like how one pastor captured the creation account: “The creation story is cast in the form of a prose poem. It is written in terse, controlled phrases with rhythmic repetitions, the slow ascent of the cosmic drama culminating in the creation of humankind.” Let’s look at some of these phrases now.

1. God’s setting. In verse 1 we see that God created the universe. In verse 2, we begin with a vivid description of the situation on earth: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” The phrase “without form” refers to a wasteland and means, “empty, barren, and formless” while “void” refers to “a lack of boundary, order, or definition.”

I don’t make it a practice of quoting the original Hebrew because my Wisconsin accent messes up the proper pronunciation. However, the Hebrew words for “without form and void” are fun to say because they reverberate with mystery and a sense of foreboding: “to-hu” and “bo-hu.”

On top of the empty formlessness, deep “darkness” was upon the “face of the deep.” Darkness often symbolizes disorder and uncertainty. The “deep” refers to the heaving abyss of the primeval ocean as it roared and raged. One commentator describes earth at that time “as shapeless as liquid water.” Jeremiah 4:23 pictures a coming catastrophe like the undoing of creation: “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.”