So how, according to the realisation in the first post of this little trilogy, does creation declare/sing/shout to us about the death, resurrection and lordship of Jesus Christ?
The Bible tells me that, it does it in too many ways to count, but I am blind to most of them. The following I have seen, but only because God in his mercy has opened my eyes to see it in the pages of the Bible, not because I was astute enough, or even inclined enough to figure it out for myself from scratch.
Dear blog-junkie. before I continue, you must tell me if I push the analogy too far. There's seeing the fullness of something and there's looking for something that is not there. No comments, assumes that you totally agree, and are impressed ;o) with everything I have said. Otherwise, please question or challenge.
Genesis 1:14 tells me that the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, created the sun to be a sign. A signpost of what? The Gospel of Jesus Christ.
If the second post in this series is right then when Psalm 19:1-6 talks about the heavens declaring the Glory of God, they aren't declaring some abstract philosophical notion of perfection, but the nature and work of the Son of God - Jesus Christ.
The sun gives everything in this world light to see by and heat to live by. The sun is the source of all biological life and physical processes on the earth. Jesus is the source of all life in the universe.
The sun holds the earth in orbit around itself, not bringing the earth so close that it should burn up, nor letting it spin off into space becoming a frozen wasteland. Jesus holds the universe together,
The earth turns away from the sun and is plunged into the darkness of night. Jesus never turns his face away from us, but we in our rebellion against him, turned to the darkness.
(N.B. I was going to say that technological advance with the invention of mass electrical lighting, whilst not wrong in itself, has obscured the vividness of some of these parallels. But actually it continues the metaphor well. Humans in the darkness of their own rebellion create their own little lights to live by, but these little physical lights are nothing, they have no real light in them - nothing of God's life-giving, life-sustaining light.)
From the vantage point of the human eye, the sun is "buried," in that goes into the ground at dusk - a metaphor of the crucifuxion, death and burial of Jesus. At dawn, the sun is "resurrected" from the ground. Jesus was raised to life and now offers life to the world. I do not believe that Jesus' resurrection happening at dawn was any coincidence at all.
In the daylight of the sun we are active, - alive. At night we are asleep - a metaphor of disorder and death. With the dawning of morning, the world rises with the sun from its death-like sleep to life. So too, all those who are united to Christ through the Spirit of God will rise with Jesus to eternal life.
What an awesome saviour!
A dare to me and you. Next time you are out walking with someone, pause, look up into the sky and tell them that God created the sun to be a symbol of his own dear Son, Jesus, through whom we all can have true light and life in this world and the next.
Finally, two videos to illustrate:
1. A picture of the consequence of human rebellion against Jesus, his subsequent crucifixion and and rebellious human beings finally being cast away from God's presence for ever.
2. A picture of Jesus' birth, resurrection from the dead and second coming:
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