Genesis 101
Lesson Nine

“Divided day from night”

Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 
Gen 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 
Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

So, earlier we learned that Jesus Christ is the light of the world and did not need the sun, moon, or stars to create light on Earth. Now we see that He took this light and divided it from darkness. Notice first that darkness was first upon the earth (verse 2), and then God shined His light upon the earth (verse 3), and now He separates the two. The lesson to learn here is that when there is light, there can not be darkness, and that darkness can not survive when light is shinned upon it. This is a physical picture of a lesson we need to learn in the spiritual realm. Darkness, in the Bible, is a picture of sin and separation from God, and light is a picture of righteousness.

Jesus said in Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. And again in James_4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

The Biblical truth is, we can not live in sin and enjoy the pleasures of sin and walk in righteousness at the same time. The two can not exist together no more then darkness and light could be together. No, in fact, they must be separated.

Rom_6:16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

You see, each of us have a choice to make. Either we obey darkness (sin) in our life or we obey light (Jesus Christ). The choice is ours.

John 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 

John 1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Speaking of Jesus Christ, the Bible tells us that He is the light of men and he shined His light in this dark world but we rejected Him and continued to walk in darkness. The World rejected Christ, but you as an individual can make the choice to allow Him into your heart and life and walk in His light (righteousness). If not, you will walk in darkness, there are no other options.

Notice also that God "saw the light, that it was good..." He does not say that the dark was good. We should learn a lesson from this... Only those who are of the "light" will God accept into His Heaven, and since Jesus is the light of the World, only those "in Christ" will God accept.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. Only those that are truly "born again" and a child of God.

Lastly lets look at the phrase "and the evening and the morning". These two words in their original context literally refereed to a 24 hour time span between sun down and sun up the next day. I believe God put this phrase in here to let us know He did his days of creating in literally six days as we know it. It did not take God millions of years to create this heaven and earth, just six days, and He made it very clear.