Timing Is Everything. Series

Intro:

1. Maddie cannot tell time, the other day she was wearing a watch. I asked her "Maddie, what time is it?" She looked at me kind of puzzled, just then Missi drove up to take her home. She smiled and confidently said, "It’s time for me to go home!"

2. We cannot imagine how confusing our life would be, if we did not know how to keep track of time. Time is a needful, wonderful, and exciting gift that God has given to us.

3. Day Four - The Exacting and Exciting Gift of Time.

Trans: Gen. 1:14-19

"It is important to see the real reason for the lights in the heavens...Their benefit to humanity will go far beyond the lighting of dark places, they will be guides for direction, resources for navigating the oceans, signs for tracking the seasons, and much more." [Expository Thoughts on Genesis.]

Review: Self-existant God, created all Existence - including a planet just for you; then turned on the light, make the enviornment perfect, provided and inexhaustable supply of food, and then regulated everything enabling to give man a sense of time.

I. FIRST, THE EXACTNESS OF A SOLAR DAY.

Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night - V. 14

"On the first day, He had said: "Let there be light!" (Hebrew or). On the fourth day, He said: "Let there be lights" (or light-givers, Hebrew ma-or). In-trin-sic light first, then generators of light later, is both the logical and the Biblical order.

The chief purpose of both the light of the first three days and the light-givers of all later days was to "divide the light from the darkness" (verses 4, 18), and this can only mean that the two regimes were essentially identical.

The duration of the days and nights was the same in each case, and the directions of light emanation on the earth from space must have been the same in each case.

In other words, light rays were impinging on the earth as it rotated on its axis during the first three days of essentially the same intensities and directions as those which would later emanate from the heavenly bodies to be emplaced on the fourth day. Light was coming during the day as though from the sun and during the night as though from the moon and stars, even though they had not yet been made.

If such a concept sounds strange, let it be remembered that it is as easy for God to create waves of light energy as to create generators to produce such waves. There was no need for such generators except to serve the additional function (after man’s creation) of marking "signs and seasons, days and years...The fact that both sun and moon are called "light-givers" does not suggest that they are of the same substance. One actually generates light, whereas the other only reflects light; but both "give light" as far as their functions relative to the earth are concerned." [The Genesis Record]

Phillips, "God’s eye is ever on the clock. He does things according to set times and never forgets a date or misses an appointment. There are set times, predetermined in heaven, at which God acts. The Scriptures may be studied profitably from that standpoint.

A vast wealth of evidence proves it so. When God created the sun and moon He ordained that they might be "for signs, and for seasons" (Gen. 1:14) and deliberately introduced a time factor into human affairs. Thus the sun governs our days and our years, and the moon divides them into months."

"The light source of the first day was replaced by the sun and moon. Their purposes were to distinguish day and night, to be signs (by which men get their bearings...), to mark off the seasons, and to give light to the earth." Ryrie Study Bible.

"This is a particular function of the sun, for light upon earth comes from the sun. The earth is round, and it revolves on an axis at about 1000 m.p.h.

Each rotation takes 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds—just about 24 hours. Therefore, about one half of the earth faces the sun all the time. When a part of the earth rotates and faces the sun, the light from the sun gives man a time for work. When a part of the earth rotates and faces away from sun, the darkness gives man a time for rest." [Preacher’s Outline and Sermon Bible]

Trans:What would life be like without a day and night! How could you keep track of time or anything else, if one day it was light 18 hours; but the next day only providing light for 4 hours; etc.

We mark our lives by days! We have a way to understand time! And that time was meant to be exciting!