A Matter of Authority
and there was evening and there was morning, one day. Genesis 1:5
Day – Now you know that the Hebrew view of days gives all the importance to the God who created them. Days have no spiritual importance unless God designates them to have importance. The Sabbath is significant. So is the Day of Atonement. God is the ruler of all days and all days are equally subject to Him. But there is more.
When God created everything, He created a pattern called “day”. In fact, the very first thing God created was the alternation of light and dark – the day itself. Before God created anything else, before a single spatial thing was ever made, God established the order called day and night. Why is this so important? Because in the beginning, God proclaimed that He and He alone is the Ruler of our time. As creative agents, we are able to make all kinds of things. We can take the materials that God brought into being and use them to create everything from washing machines to new life. That makes us exceptional, but it does not make us divine for behind it all is one thing that only God can create – the alternation of day and night – the pattern that we call time. Only God rules the days.
When Genesis announces the order of creation, it does a lot more than simply tell us what God did first. The Hebrew account forever demolishes any other creation account that gives divine power to any celestial bodies. Because God creates the pattern of light and dark, no other planet, moon or star has any ultimate power over creation. God rules. Not the alignment of stars, not the phases of the moon and not the arc of the planets. Astrology is bunk! Horoscopes are false! God rules. Period!
You might not run your life by the stars. Hopefully, if you did, you will now see how helplessly foolish that is. But more importantly, even if you don’t worry about horoscopes, you will also learn something much deeper. God is in charge, right down to the micro-second of your life. Nothing that operates in the fabric of time is outside His control. And whenever we start thinking that we are in charge of our calendars, whenever we start living by our own subservience to the clocks of this world, we are moving away from God’s point of view. “My times are in your hand” says the psalmist. He is absolutely right!
Are your times, all your times, in God’s hand? Or are you letting the lesser lights take God’s place?
