Light and Darkness

 Light and Darkness

July 11, 2025

Genesis 1:1-5

GENESIS - The Creation

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 Godsaw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

Isaiah 45:5-7

5 “I am the LORD, and there is no other;

Besides Me there is no God.

I will gird you, though you have not known Me;

6 That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun

That there is no one besides Me.

I am the LORD, and there is no other,

7 The One forming light and creating darkness,

Causing well-being and creating calamity;

I am the LORD who does all these.

Yesterday, we talked about light, but what about darkness? Did the Lord create darkness? Did He created evil? That is one of the perpetual questions that men ask when they encounter trouble. We have certainly seen lots of trouble this week with the flash floods in Texas that cause great death and destruction. So where does evil come from?

The answer to the first question, “Did God create darkness ?” Is found in Genesis 1. There we find that God said “Let there be light”; and there was light. So by His word He created light, but in the next verse, He “separated” light from darkness. He didn’t create the darkness, He simply created a separation. In modern astronomy, we know that earth’s light comes from the Sun, and we see that light in daytime. But at night, the Sun does not cease shining. Night is simply the shadow of the Sun. It is still sunlight on the other side of the world. Thus it is when we encounter times of darkness. It is not that God ceases to be God, but that His goodness is somehow blocked from us for a time. The work of the evil one is not to create evil, but to simply block the good for a time. All darkness is just the absence of light, and so evil is just the absence of good. There is always the reality of the Sun shining on the other side of the world so that the dawn will come in it’s proper time, and also the reality that God is good all the time, and that his goodness and mercy will be revealed  to us in due season. 

So why is there evil in the world? Why does death and destruction come to the innocent as well as the guilty? These are timeless questions, and no answer is going to comfort those who mourn for their lost little ones, but when we comfort them and reassure them that God is love, the light will eventually shine again in their hearts. “When will we see the goodness of the Lord?” They may ask. Again, there is not good answer to that questions, we can only assure them that the goodness of God is still shining, and in due season, the shadows will move away and we sill see His light. The psalmist puts it this way:

Psalms 30:5

5 For His anger is but for a moment,

His favor is for a lifetime;

Weeping may last for the night,

But a shout of joy comes in the morning.

So the bottom lines is this, don’t give the darkness too much credit. Hollywood has a whole genre of cinema, “Film Noir”, which glorifies darkness and evil that men do to one another. But we in the kingdom of God only glorify the light. When we encounter darkness, we need to shine the light. When we see people struggling in the shadows, we need to seek to remove the things obscuring the light so that they can see the glory of God. This involves spiritual warfare, but the final outcome is assured. As the Apostle John assures us, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

John 1:1-5

1 Inthe beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.