Summers in my early teens were often spent sleeping under the stars with my friend. Gazing in awe at the beauty and wonder of the heavens, we observed a sky filled with an innumerable host of scintillating stars. My amazement was amplified when I learned that it took 500 years for light from some of these stars to reach earth. This means the light I was observing had begun its journey to earth about the time Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492. This is overwhelming when you realize light travels at 186,000 mi/sec. In fact, the universe is so vast that distance must be measured in light years to be grasped by our finite minds. A light year is the distance light travels in a year: approximately 5.87 trillion miles. Within this vast immeasurable universe is a tiny speck called Earth.
Despite the immensity of the universe the creation account in Genesis chapter one indicates that the earth, a tiny speck of nothingness, is the focus of God’s creative interest. We are given the day-by-day details of all that God created in six days. In the midst of these details we read as a mere postscript: Oh, by the way, He made the stars also. He did it effortlessly. “God said … and it was so” (Gen 1:7, 9, 11, 15, 24, 30). It cost God nothing to create; He needed nothing to create. The work of creation did not deplete His power, nor did He need the help of an army of cosmic engineers to put it all in place. His spoken Word contained all the power, wisdom, and resources to place everything that exists in the heavens in an instant of time. Surely the God whose power and wisdom created a vast universe with nothing more than His spoken command can speak away a little thing like man’s sin!
But sin cannot be spoken away. The Bible clearly states that the consequence for sin is death. (Gen 2:16, 17; Rom 6:23). In fact, the consequence of sin brought death to all men (Rom 5:12). For man to have any hope he must know the answer to Job’s question: “How should a man be just with God?” (Job 9:2). The Bible provides us with the answer: A man is “justified by His blood” (Rom 5:9). This means that since sinful men are under the condemnation of death then only through the death of a sinless victim can men be made just. There is no other way.
The Lord Jesus, Who created all things without any cost to Himself, paid a tremendous price to deliver us from our sins. Out of love for you and me, He humbled Himself and “was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death … that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Heb 2:9). His love for us was such that He was willing to receive the judgment of our sin on the cross of Calvary (1Peter 2:24, Gal 3:13). He endured the shame, humiliation, and agony of the cross so that we might live eternally with God. The One Who spoke the universe into existence had to suffer and die under the load of our sins, that we might be reconciled to God. Oh, by the way, He made the stars also. “Hallelujah, what a Savior!”