Genesis 1:16
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
God by His spoken word made the two great lights and the stars, setting them in order in the firmament and appointing the sun to govern the day and the moon to govern the night, thus dividing day from night. This making was the work of one literal day of the first week, when in six days heaven and earth were made about six thousand years ago. It stands in the plain, literal Mosaic record of creation, which alone gives the authentic account and is to be accepted with implicit confidence as literally true rather than spiritualized and explained away. How God accomplished the work has never been revealed to mortals and cannot be searched out by human science, for His creative works are as incomprehensible as His existence. When the work was finished and very good, God rested on the seventh day and blessed and sanctified it, originating the week and founding the Sabbath, while sun and moon still mark regular hours for work and sleep and with the starry heavens bear witness of the Creator's goodness and love.
Making Sun Moon Stars
The Father and the Son planned the world together and then worked together in the mighty and wondrous work of creating it. The earth that came forth from the Creator's hand was exceedingly beautiful, like a noble palace, with pure and healthful air. Its surface was not one extensive plain but was diversified with regular and beautiful hills, mountains, and plains, with rivers and other bodies of water regularly dispersed. The bare high rocks were not seen but lay beneath the surface as bones to the earth, while the hills, mountains, and plains were adorned with plants and flowers and tall, majestic trees of every description, many times larger and much more beautiful than trees now are. Angels beheld these wonderful and beautiful works and rejoiced.
Heaven includes the region of the sun, moon, and stars. That starry heaven is not the heaven to be shaken and rolled together as a scroll. The heaven to be shaken is the air around the earth.
By His spoken word God made the two great lights and the stars as part of His works in the natural world. He set the stars in their order in the firmament and appointed the sun to rule and govern the day and the moon to rule and govern the night, thus dividing day and night. That natural creation is a reservoir of means made ready for Him to employ instantly to do His pleasure, in which nothing is useless, though the curse has brought tares sown by the enemy.
The making of the sun, moon, and stars was one part of God's work of generating or producing some new portion of creation on one literal day of the first week. It belonged to God's six-day making of heaven and earth and of the world about six thousand years ago, not to vast indefinite periods. That first week was just like every other week, originating the week and measuring it off as the sample for all successive weeks to the close of time, with six literal days given to labor because God employed the same period in the work of creation and the seventh day blessed and set apart as a day of rest in commemoration of His rest. Though God could have spoken the world into existence in one day, He took six days to make it.
Trusting the Mosaic Record
Genesis 1:16 belongs to the literal, plain, clear Mosaic record of creation, preserved in its purity through the ages by the divine Mind and Hand. That record alone gives the authentic account of the creation of the world, presenting great facts that are a pillar of the Christian faith, handed down at the cost of suffering and blood and within the reach of all. It is to be accepted with implicit confidence as literally true and really received as the guide of life, not caviled at, spiritualized, and explained away. Yet it is but little valued and is practically rejected wholly or in part by a large share of the professedly Christian world, where infidelity prevails not in the world merely but in the church. There thousands who pride themselves on wisdom and independence regard full confidence in the Bible as weakness and count it proof of superior talent to deny, while ministers, professors, and teachers teach people and students to reject its most important truths and hold those who regard its requirements as still valid as deserving only ridicule or contempt. Its truths of divine revelation must be grasped by the understanding and its gospel teaching accepted by the heart, showing the making of sun, moon, and stars to be the work of God and not the result of natural causes.
How God accomplished that work He has never revealed to mortals, and His creative works are as incomprehensible as His existence. Just how He wrought the making of the heavens and the earth cannot be searched out by human science, for God's ways and thoughts are not as man's, the secret things belong to the Lord and the revealed things belong to men and their children. The time of past states of things differing from the present can be learned only from the inspired record, and without Bible history geology can prove nothing. Leaving the word of God to account for His creative works upon natural principles by human reasoning puts men upon a boundless ocean of uncertainty. The plain record is to be believed on God's sufficient evidence and not explained away from natural causes, and it exposes as inconsistent those who refuse to investigate the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation as too obscure while eagerly receiving unrevealed suppositions, since that exchanges what God has revealed for mere suppositions about what He has not revealed. In the last days faith will be almost destitute as men count God's word unreliable on the merest pretense, receive geology's suppositions that dispute the Mosaic record, and turn from plain precepts to infidel fables under Satan's leading to obscure God's law and hate the fourth precept because it defines the Maker.
The days of creation week in which God made the sun, moon, and stars are seven literal days about six thousand years ago, not vast, indefinite periods covering thousands or even millions of years. Stretching them so to accommodate geologists' claims that the earth has existed tens of thousands of years and that millions of years were required for the evolution of the earth from chaos comes from inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature. It comes also from being at a loss to account for wonderful things found in the earth on the view of seven literal days, and from having limited ideas of the size of men, animals, and trees before the flood and of the great changes the flood made in the earth. Such interpretations create a supposed conflict between science and revelation, and undermine and destroy the force of the word of God. They make indefinite and obscure what God made very plain, make senseless the fourth commandment and free men from its claims, and strike directly at the foundation of the Sabbath commanded to be observed in commemoration of those seven days. They charge God with commanding men to observe seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike His dealings with mortals and impeaches His wisdom. With many who profess to believe the record of creation this supposition is infidelity in disguise and the worst kind of infidelity.
Because God as Creator of the heavens and the earth did this work by setting the stars in their order in the firmament and appointing the sun and the moon to do their work, He is the One to choose as teacher and to be taught by. Only divine enlightenment from Him gives correct ideas of His plans and ways. The opinions of worldly-wise men and infidel authors, who are destitute of that enlightenment and either deny Him or circumscribe His power by finite conceptions, are not to be trusted, exalted, or sought for wisdom, and man is not to be exalted or praised or glorified. His Word is to be the chief study in schools, carrying the minds of students higher than now thought possible and training heart and mind to preserve purity by daily supplies from the fountain of eternal truth. There is converse with patriarchs and prophets, and there is learned what redemption cost the One who was equal with the Father from the beginning and sacrificed His life that a people might stand before Him redeemed from every common, earthly thing and renewed in the image of God.
Sabbath Rest and Life
The making of the sun, moon and stars belongs to the six days in which heaven and earth were made, and when everything made was finished and very good God rested on the seventh day from all His work and blessed and sanctified it, thereby proclaiming to all the earth His will that the Sabbath be kept as holy, a sign and perpetual covenant. That first week originated the week and measured it off as the sample for all successive weeks to the close of time, with seven literal days, six given to labor because the same period was employed in the work of creation, and the seventh blessed and set apart as a day of rest for man in commemoration of the Creator's rest. The weekly cycle men are commanded to observe commemorates those first seven days and is the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and that first week was just like every other week, with work of generating new portions of creation done on literal days. To suppose the first week required seven vast indefinite periods makes indefinite and obscure what was made plain and strikes directly at that foundation, charging God with commanding men to observe seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike His dealings with mortals and impeaches His wisdom, and with many who profess to believe the record this supposition is infidelity in disguise and the worst kind of infidelity.
The sun, moon and stars were made holy and beautiful when the earth came from His hand to answer the purpose of their Creator. Even though sin has marred the perfect work and brought the curse, the glad sunshine, the solemn stillness of the night, the glory of the starry heavens and the moon in its beauty still bear witness of the Creator and reveal His goodness, forbearance and love. Parents should use these things in fields and groves on the Sabbath to tell children the reason for the institution of the Sabbath and to fill their minds with thoughts of the love of God.
By appointing the sun to govern the day and the moon to govern the night, dividing day and night, regular hours for work and for sleep were established that must be preserved and not reversed. Turning night into day and day into night is poor policy that spends strength that is never recovered and breaks health. Working through six days to make the world when it could have been spoken into existence in one gives an example of measured labor against rush, hurry, overwork, and working day and night without rest.
The same creative energy of the Word that called the sun, moon and stars into existence remains in the Word to impart power and beget life. Every command is a promise that, accepted by the will and received into the soul, brings with it the life of the Infinite One, transforms the nature and recreates the soul in the image of God. The life thus imparted is sustained in the same way, by every word proceeding from the mouth of God, and mind, soul and character are built up by feeding on the great things written in His law.
The sun is a great light set in the heavens by Christ's own hand, and its light is a truer representation of the glory of His mission than the lamp-stands kindled in the temple court. As those lamps lighted all about them, so Christ as the source of spiritual light illumines the darkness of the world. When He pointed to the morning sun rising over the Mount of Olives and said He is the light of the world, the sun displayed the glory of that work.