First of all, how cool is it that God made “light” before He made the sun?

Genesis 1 says that God first said “let there be light.” That was on day one; it wasn’t until day four that He made the sun, moon and stars. That means God made the light and then made the generator.

That’s consistent with the rest of the Creation account, which describes God making everything fully formed and mature. He didn’t make saplings; He made trees. He didn’t make babies; He made a man and a woman. He didn’t make an egg; He made a chicken. God made things to produce after their kind, thus God made the light of the sun and then made the sun itself later to produce more light after its kind.

God is the creator and master of light, therefore. God is light, John tells us (1 John 1:5). He is the Father of lights, James says (James 1:17). He flipped the switch and turned the sun on.

And when Jesus died, God flipped the switch and–for a moment–turned the sun off.

And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

Mark 15:33

We recently saw a solar eclipse pass across America; it was a beautiful spectacle that reminded us of God’s majesty and power. He spoke and all the universe came into existence. He called for light and there was light. But when He saw His Son dying, He spoke again (metaphorically-speaking) and the light went out. That wasn’t a solar eclipse. That wasn’t rain-filled cloud coverage. It was a three-hour miracle, wherein the light of the sky–which God made in the beginning–simply turned off, in an expression of the broken heart of God at the sight of His son dying for humanity’s sin.