What did God create on the fourth day of creation?

God said, "Let there be lights", to divide day from night, and for signs and seasons, days and years. So God made two great lights, the Great Light, the Sun, for the day; and the Small Light, the Moon, for night. God made the stars also. And He put the lights in the heaven to shine on the earth, to divide the day from the night, and the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. That was the fourth day. These lights are not God Himself. They are things that God made. If we call them gods, God will not be pleased with us. If you see a table, and you say that is the man who made it, do you think the man would be pleased? No! He would say, 'This is simply wood, a table made by me. It is not I.' So we worship God and not the sun or the moon. Now the earth was beautiful! It had flowers, grass, vegetables, and fruit trees. Then sun, moon and stars were shining. Still there were no living animals. So God said that the waters should bring forth a great many living things. So God created fish, and birds in the air. God saw that all was good and blessed them all on the fifth day. Then God made the wild beasts and the cattle and the creeping things. God saw that it was good. The air, the land, the sea were filled with living things, — birds, animals, fish and creeping things. Everything was beautiful! Yet there was no man on the earth; so God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing" … So God created Man and blessed them. God said that He had given them every vegetable bearing seeds, also the fruit trees, for food. And to every animal, and the birds, and the creeping things He gave grass as food. God saw everything that He had made, and it was "very good". There was evening and morning, the sixth day.

The work of the fourth day has presented difficulties to many; partly because years ago, under mistaken scientific ideas, light (v. 3) without the sun (v. 16) was regarded as an impossibility; partly because men did not carefully note what verses 14 to 18 really do say, and do not say Sun and moon were created as given us in verse 1; they were only made as "two great lights" on the fourth day; and, further, they were so set in relation to the earth, or the earth to them, as the case may be, that they ruled over the day and over the night, dividing the light from the darkness.

A. — 1. The two "great lights" were constituted as they still are (not created then) in relation to the earth prepared for man, like the work of all the six days. The dense darkness that prevailed in the chaotic state which preceded these days easily accounts for the gloom, though the sun, moon and stars were already in existence since God created the heavens and the earth, which took place, it may be, ever so long before the great geologic ages previous to the Adamic race. Not that scripture is occupied with these material processes; but it leaves ample room before the first day in ver. 3.

On the fourth day we have the setting of the sun and the moon in their appointed places in relation to the earth. Besides the sun being the source of heat, the ripener of the harvests, the power for evaporation in order that rain might descend on the earth, we are told it is to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night.

It has been thought by some that light was independent of the sun, that on the first day God created the light, and that on the fourth day He created the sun. But we are not told that on the fourth day He created the sun and the moon, but that He made two great lights. We believe that the sun and moon were created at the first, and were included in the statement that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. What proves this, we believe, is the statement that the evening and the morning were the first day, proving the diurnal motion of the earth, in relation to the sun, resulting in day and night.

We are told these two lights were for signs and seasons and days and years. They are God’s great timekeepers. Every day they are signs to mankind. They declare the Creator’s “eternal power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20). In the wonderfully vivid and beautiful language of Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. Day by day utters speech. Night by night shows knowledge. Its speech is known by all mankind. In the heavens has He set a tabernacle for the sun, which as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoices as a strong man to run a race.

Very blessed, as well as very elevating and divine, are the thoughts suggested by these introductory verses. They tell us, beside what I have observed above, that the Light, the living Light, shined in darkness ere the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; yea, ere His harbinger, the Baptist, was sent forth by God. Just as in the old creation. Light was the first element under the forming power of God. It went before the sun. The sun was the creature of the fourth day, but light was the prime creature of the first. The first three days, therefore, walked in the light of light merely, without the presence of that which afterwards ruled the day. And so has it been, as these verses tell us, in the history of the living Light. Christ was the earliest thought from God that rose upon the moral darkness and chaos of apostate man. In the promise, "It shall bruise thy head," the living Light sprang forth! Days or dispensations succeeded. The first three days again, as it were, took their course. The ages of the patriarchs and of Moses spent themselves. But the light of life had gone abroad, though as yet the Word had not become flesh. The light shined before the sun was set in the heavens. And this is a happy thought. The Christ of God was the earliest revelation that arose upon the ruins and darkness of Adam; and though for a season that divine depository of all Light, that great source of all vivifying beams, remained unmanifested, yet effulgences worth of Him, and which belonged to Him, came forth to cheer and guide preceding ages, the first, the second, and the third day.

Fourth Day — The Heavens. The sun is now seen in its place in relation to the earth; the moon as well. Here again, science adds its assent, which faith had not needed, to the order which suggests that the sun as we know it now had not previously its established and definite place and purpose. Without going too deeply into astronomic theories, it is admitted by scientists that the earth, as the smaller body, might well have taken its form prior to the shrinking of the inconceivably great mass which now forms the sun into that definite body. Be this as it may, there is no question that the narrative, while couched in the language of every-day speech, is strictly accurate. The sun, as we know it now, the great light which rules the day, came into this place on the fourth day.

274 Again, 'Tell the serious student that the book he has been taught by history to revere is not only a good and holy book, containing the word of God to man, but is the infallible word of God, in which there is no error' (I tell him it is the truth itself, or nothing at all; education of a child is another thing) 'and he can appreciate the singular honour that the wise and the great have so often, and so conspicuously given to the Bible: but, alas! you have told him the Holy Book is infallible; and, before he passes from its first page, he is led to believe that the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them were made in six days, whereas the indelible testimonies of matter, sense, and reason combine to assure him that this earth, with all its populations' (where, and what?) 'that have in its younger days dwelt on it and perished in its ruins, is countless millions of years old,' etc. But he is not so led as to Creation. I believe the earth may have existed millions of years, nor does the Bible contradict it, but admit of it, and proves thus its divinity, for Moses knew it not. He says, 'The fourth day's special product was the sun, and moon, and stars.' But that is not said, but avoided. It is said, "God made two great lights." The sun as a 'body having weight' is not a light. As to 'multitudes of men in this state of mind being habituated until they become dead to all practical sense of religion and spirituality,' that is they judge by physical science of which they are ignorant.

110 I believe fully God set at this time the sun and the moon to be for signs and seasons and years, and to make day and night; but they are viewed here solely in this aspect towards the earth, and only as lights. God made the two great lights, eth shenee hameoroth, and God gave them as such. There is no creation of the bodies. There is the establishment of the phenomena, and their purpose. Hence, when he speaks of the stars, he only takes care to remind us, that God had made them too. Instead of men's worshipping them, God had distributed them to all men under heaven; but, as not having any other place with this earth, it is simply left in that way.

It is assuredly not the creation of the sun, etc. This the inspired historian does not say, but only that God now constituted the heavenly luminaries, after the plants and before the animals for the Adamic earth. Light had shone otherwise since the first day of the great week. Now He set the light-bearers of the heavens to do their assigned work, but it is for the earth, and indeed for man. Their creation was implied in ver. 1; for God did not create either empty; and what would heaven be without its host? And we saw that ver. 2 implies that the earth even had not been so, though so it became with other marks of disorder. What then hindered the functions of sun and moon was now rectified. Light independently had been proved to be under God's control. On the fourth day He gave the luminaries of heaven their unhindered relation to divide the day from the night. Now we can readily understand the plants (and these were for the use of man and his congeners) caused to spring forth on the day before without the sunbeam; but assuredly not so of a geological age of grass, corn, and fruit. Yet we see the fitness of the due ordering of light and heat, as we have it, the next day, if the plants were to flourish, as well as for the animal life that begins after that according to His word.

This is entirely confirmed if we inspect the context more closely. For where would be the sense of the light-bearers "for signs and for seasons, and for days and years," if it had been an age (thousands, myriads, millions of years) before Adam? If, on the contrary, God was not creating them, but, after that which had intercepted, only "setting" them to their ordained task in immediate view of man, all is clear and consistent. And to whom could this be of such interest as to Israel, the people of His choice, in whose history we have them acting as "signs" on critical occasions for His sovereign will? Without dwelling on His wonders in Egypt where light was in Israel's dwellings, darkness thick in all the rest of the land, or later at Sinai, we see what a sign it was to Israel when Joshua said in their sight, "Sun, stand still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon"; or in far other days when Jehovah spoke to sick Hezekiah, and gave him a sign in the shadow that went back ten steps on the dial of Ahaz. And what a sign again where all was lost, as far as man is concerned, in the Cross of Messiah when darkness for three hours covered all the land! A mere eclipse was then impossible. Nor will whole clusters of signs be wanting when He comes in power and glory on the clouds of heaven. For "seasons" is needed no comment: man alone on earth understands and appreciates these fit and recurring times. As the same Hebrew word means "the congregation" and "the solemn feast," as well as the season or appointed time at which they kept it, "seasons" may have a sacred aspect; but the more ordinary sense seems confirmed by what follows. Very little astronomy is requisite to know how "days and years" are defined by them, but only for man. In the ages before him this were all irrelevant. In view of man, and Israel especially, it is as affecting as full of interest. The constant design is reiterated in "Let them be for light-bearers in the expanse of the heavens." It was their effect, not their structure, that is intimated. "And it was so."

On the fourth day, the great luminaries which were symbols of established power and order were made for signs, for seasons, and for days and years. Notice that the word "made" (ver. 16) is not the same as "created." (Ver. 1.) It is not said that sun, moon and stars were created at the epoch of verse 16, but that they were constituted lights to the earth at that time. Although the Bible is not a treatise on astronomy (for it treats of moral subjects far higher than the stars), yet its language will be found to be singularly correct, and we shall never find any confusion between the acts of creating things and placing them in their order. The word of God never denies the exact sciences, as they are called (that is, that 2+2=4, etc.), but it gives us what is infinitely higher. What would be the value to us of having a full knowledge of mathematics (the abstract relations of time and space) if our hearts were void of the love of God as known in Christ?