There is a subtle mystery on the first page of the Bible that most of us read right past. On the very first day, God speaks and something happens. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Light floods the empty darkness and completes Day 1.
Notice that the sun does not show up until Day 4, “And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night” (Genesis 1:16). The sun, the moon, the stars, the entire machinery we depend on for light, God does not hang in the sky until three days after light already existed. If you have ever wondered how there could be light before there was a sun to give it, you are asking a very old and very good question. People have wrestled with it for centuries.
The sun is a lamp. A magnificent one, ninety-three million miles away and burning at temperatures I cannot fathom, but a lamp all the same. God made it to carry a light that was already His. That is why Scripture can say God “is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). And it is why the Bible ends the way it does, with a city that needs no sun and no moon, “for the glory of God gives it light” (Revelation 21:23). The first day and the last day agree. Light begins in God, and light ends in God. The sun is just the delivery system in between.
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