Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #9 of Genesis chapter 1 and I will read Genesis 1:3-5:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

I will stop reading there. In our last study, we looked at the Hebrew word, Strong’s #914, translated as “divided” and we saw that it was also translated as “put difference” between or “separated.” We looked at several verses where this word is used and we saw that when God gives a commandment, it tends to “divide” and it causes a distinction to be evident. For example, God chose Israel and He did not choose the rest of the nations and that “separated” Israel. It sanctified or “set apart” Israel, making them different from all the other nations of the world.

God also did that with animals and He set apart certain animals as “clean” and certain other animals as “unclean.” Why would He do that? Why would He call some animals “clean” and others “unclean” Then later He would “cleanse” the unclean animals when He showed a vision to Peter in the early days of the New Testament era; He let down a sheet of “unclean” animals and God said, “Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.” Then Peter said, “Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.” God replied that what He had cleansed, Peter was not to call common or unclean. All of a sudden, it was fine for Peter or anyone to eat unclean animals, whether it had been previously called “clean” or “unclean.” You could now eat a lobster, as well as foods that had previously been acceptable. Why did God do this? He was teaching spiritual truths, but it was also true that the Word of God separated and it was God’s purpose in the Old Testament to make a people very different from the rest of the people of the world and these people would be known for keeping God’s commandments: the Sabbath Day, circumcision, the types of food they could eat, their sacrificial system or their ceremonial laws. All these things served to “put difference” between the people of God and the rest of the people of the world. God also used these things to teach spiritual truths.

This is what the Word of God does – it separates. The word of God is called “light” and it separates from the “darkness.” God divided the light from the darkness. God gives commandments and all people are to follow His commandments, but only His elect are able through His Spirit to keep His commandments and walk in the “light,” while the rest of the world lies in darkness. This serves to illustrate and highlight that certain people are the people of God – they are the “set aside” or “chosen” ones from the foundation of the world. These are God’s people and His Word is light and His people walk in that light and they are separate from the people of the world.

By the way, this is why God said in 2Corinthians 6:14:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

God established several Laws regarding the marriage union to protect it and to distinguish between “light” and “dark.” The people of the world do not have a problem with two people of any kind coming together in marriage, whether they be divorced or whether they be of two different religions or no religion. Today it can even be two men or two women that marry. The world just does not care because they do not understand the commandments of God. The “light” and the “darkness” means nothing to them. It is all a matter of “feelings” and a general acceptance of everything and that is what governs them. That is why their ways are “moveable” and you cannot know them; what is accepted today may change shortly and they will revamp it. But that is not how it is with God and His Law. God remains the same, steadfast and immoveable. He is the same today, yesterday, and for ever and God has established Laws that the child of God desires to follow, beginning with the Law that we are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. God says, “What communion hath light with darkness?” You do not bring light and darkness together. The darkness flees from the light. They do not come together, once God separated them and, yet, that is what people try to do spiritually when a saved and unsaved person come together in marriage. It is trying to join “light” with “darkness.” From the beginning on the first day of creation, God divided the light from the darkness and that is what happens when people follow the Word of God. There will be a separation from the people of the world and, again, that is another reason why Jesus said His Word would cause separation within a home between a man and his parents or between a child and a parent, and so forth. The Word of God separates “light” from “dark.”

It goes on to say in Genesis 1:5:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night…

Of course, we know that God made a “day” to be what we still call a “day” in our time. It is a 24-hour period and during that 24-hour period known as a “day” there are periods of light and of darkness. Jesus said in John 11:9-10:

Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.

This refers to the daylight portion of a day, which is 12 hours. The day of the Israelites started at 6AM and went to 6PM. Spiritually, God speaks of a “day” of salvation and then He describes in a parable the work day which was 12 hours long and the “last hour,” which related to the Great Tribulation, and then the “day” ended and it was night. This pointed to God’s salvation program in which the work of salvation was done during the “day” and then the works would come to a close when “night” came. Jesus made reference to this in John, chapter 9 in the context of healing a man who had been born blind. The healing of this man was a picture of salvation, the work that the Lord Jesus performs. It says in John 9:1-3:

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

Notice that Christ is speaking of “works” in relationship to the blind man. He said the man was born blind so that Jesus could manifest the work of giving him sight. That establishes what comes next, in John 9:4:

I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

Jesus is saying that the “work” of God that sent Him is done in the day. What is the work of God? It is defined in John 6:29:

Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

The work of God is that “ye believe” and the work of God made the “blind” to see and this a picture of salvation. The work of God which Christ was sent to do was to save sinners and He worked while it was “day” because that is the time God has given to “work,” is it not? In our day, of course, we have people that work all hours of the day or even the night, but, typically, throughout history mankind worked during the day. For thousands of years in order to make a living, man worked the entire day while it was light. That was when they could see and then the night came, signaling the end of the work day. God is using that picture to describe His salvation program. The Lord Jesus works the work of the Father while it is “day.” Again, God spoke of the day being 12 hours, ending with that special “eleventh hour,” the last hour, that typified the Great Tribulation. The Bible teaches that the last hour of the Great Tribulation ends the work day. That is very clear and well established, as we have compared Scripture with Scripture. The language of the Bible regarding the time immediately after the Tribulation also confirms this because the light of the Gospel (the sun, moon and stars) goes out and there is no longer the “day of salvation.” There is now night. There is now darkness. We could go over many, many verses where God speaks of Judgment Day as a time of darkness and a time of the absence of light. This fits in with what Jesus said: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.” Then Christ said, “The night cometh, when no man can work.” We could go to several verses in Jeremiah and other places where Jesus is spoken of as a “man,” but let us just go to one verse to give an example of how God speaks of Jesus as a “man,” without being specific. It says in Jeremiah 5:1:

Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.

God is saying to search Jerusalem of old or to search the individual churches and congregations of our day and if you find the Spirit of Christ there, then He will not bring judgment upon the churches. He would pardon them and He would not end the church age and begin judgment on the house of God. But, the Holy Spirit did come out of the midst and Christ abandoned the churches, so when God searched the congregations of the world, He did not find a “man” (Christ) and He began to bring judgment on the house of God.

This is just one example, but there are several other places where Jesus is referred to as a man. This is who God is referring to when He says, “the night cometh, when no man can work.” What is the Word of God, according to John 6, verse 29? It is that “ye believe,” and, therefore, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ cannot be performed once the night comes. When the spiritual night time comes, there will be no salvation and that is what is being said here, which fits in with a lot of other Biblical information.

Then it goes on to say in John 9:5:

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

We have seen this in other verses like John, chapter 1 and in Isaiah 9:2, where it says, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.” This is the light that is in view in Genesis – it is the light of Christ and the light of salvation. When God separated the light from the darkness He called the light “Day.” It was the “day of salvation,” but it is also the “Day” that is Christ Himself. Just as Jesus is the Light of the world, He is also the Day. Let us take a look at Hebrews 1:5:

For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?

We have talked about this before. Christ was declared to be the Son of God through the resurrection from the dead when He became the first begotten from the dead. He was the first born Son of God, the first begotten from the dead. That is how Jesus got the name of Son. He has always existed. He is the Word and He is eternal, but at a point in eternity past, God developed the plan of salvation for this world and Jesus bore the sins of His elect people that God had chosen to save from the world He was yet to create. Knowing all things, God knew what would happen and He knew the people He had determined to save and the sins they would commit and He laid all those sins upon the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He died for them and rose from the dead to be the first born Son of God. When Christ rose from the dead, that was the Light of salvation and at that point He became the “Day” of salvation, as the Light is what the day is made of and Jesus became that “day.” This is why God says in 1Thessalonians 5:4-5:

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

We are children of the “light” and who is the Light? Christ is the Light. We are children of the “day” and who is the Day? Christ is the Day. We are children of God. We are children of Christ. We are God’s elect children. He has begotten us through His Word, so we are also children of the Word of God. First, God made the light by providing salvation through His finished work from the foundation of the world and then He attached the light to His Word, the Bible, and He conveyed that light throughout time, delivering it to the elect that would be born into the world. So we are also children of the Scriptures, begotten again by the Word of God, but, in the first instance, we are children of the Lord Jesus and children of the “Day.” It says in Psalm 118:24:

This is the day which JEHOVAH hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

This “day” was made at the point of the world’s foundation, before the world was even created and before the sun, moon and stars were created and before there was a 24-hour period called the “day.” God made the “day” through the death and victorious rising of Christ from the dead – He became the “Day” and He became the “Light” of the world. And we became children of the day at that point because He had obtained salvation for everyone for whom He had died and this is why we “rejoice and be glad in it,” or we could say, ,em>“We will rejoice and be glad in Him,” because He is the Day.

It says in Psalm 2:7:

I will declare the decree…

Consider how similar this is to Romans 1:4:

And declared to be the Son of God with power…by the resurrection from the dead:

Again it says in Psalm 2:7:

I will declare the decree: JEHOVAH hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

God has begotten the Day Himself: “This day have I begotten thee.” Yes, it refers back to the Son, but also to the day. The rising up of Christ to be declared the Son is as though the “sun” has risen in the sky, bringing about the day. It is the light of the world, so when we read in Genesis 1, verse 5, “And God called the light day,” it is a spiritual reference to the Lord Jesus. Again, there was “Day” before the world even came into existence.

Sometimes with certain words, we just tend to think naturally, but the “Day” that God made in which we should rejoice and be glad is Christ and the salvation that He wrought for all those He saved.