Sun-Worship and Creation
We think we’re too well educated to bow to the rising sun these days. But sometimes we elevate the material world—possessions, career, things—to a level above God, just like the ancients who bowed to the sun, and allowing them to distract us from worship of the Creator-King.
God created Adam on the sixth day of the Creation week, according to the book of Genesis. Without doubt, one of the first objects to catch Adam’s attention was that bright yellow disc passing across the sky, which produced light and warmth. As the orb moved across the heavens, he must have wondered about it.
But since the Creator had set him to work naming the animals, he probably had little time to figure out the mysteries of the sun. When he recognised the need of a mate, such as the other creatures had, his Maker provided a companion.
As the sun reddened and disappeared below the western horizon, the pair most probably voiced their thoughts about it. What was it? and Would it return? they must have wondered as they lay down to sleep.
Since the Creator had produced thinking, intelligent beings, I picture Him meeting them on the eve of the seventh day, which He called the Sabbath. The greater light disappeared in the west and the lesser light—the silvery moon—appeared. The stars, those bright points of light, covered the sky with their splendour. The young couple looked up with amazement. What does all this mean? they must have thought.
This seems to me the logical moment for the Creator-God and His angel helpers to have explained the mysteries of light and sound, of day and night, and of the orderly revolution of the innumerable worlds of space. Just a couple of days before, God had commissioned the “greater light” (the sun) to rule the day, and the “lesser light” (the moon) to rule the night. The two heavenly bodies were to “serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years” (Genesis 1:14).
This implies that He explained the rotation of the earth on its axis, the revolution of the moon around the earth, and the motion of the earth around the sun. In time their descendants would develop calendars. God would add to their knowledge of the universe.
Adam and Eve very likely fell asleep that night with similar thoughts to those of the psalmist David, who, centuries later, wrote: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1).
The enraptured couple no doubt arose early the next morning in order to witness their first sunrise as the golden ball scattered the darkness and covered the landscape with its soft, warm glow. That first Sabbath must have been filled with nature walks with angel teachers as the sun arched its way over their heads. Although they saw it as a source of light and heat, they also recognised it as the created work of their Creator-God, not as an object of worship.
But a change came—a tragic change. Our first mother wandered from the side of her husband, and fell to the temptation. Unfortunately, Adam joined her rebellion, he so loved her. Later, their sons followed their poor example. In mercy God offered them the plan of salvation. Abel, their son, accepted the promise of a Saviour with his parents. Their first-born son, Cain, refused, and, with his wife, “went out from the Lord’s presence” (Genesis 4:16) to a place to the east of Eden.
Humankind, it appears, is “programmed” to worship either something or someone. It’s possible that, having forsaken God the Creator, that Cain began to worship the sun. It’s clear that he wanted no part of the God of his parents; the alternative was to worship that which appeared to provide life—the sun—the source of light and heat.
And since no written records existed in the early centuries of our world, we can’t know when sun-worship supplanted the worship of the Creator. But the word sun, which appears 135 times in Bible, is used 14 times in the five earliest books of the Bible and four times in the book of Job. Two of those 18 warn of the dangers of sun-worship, so it’s safe to say the practice has ancient origins.
Note the words of the patriarch Job, as recorded by Moses: “If I have regarded the sun in its radiance . . . so that my heart was secretly enticed . . . then these also would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high” (Job 31:26-28).
In one of the last passages written by Moses, he solemnly warned Israel: “When you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars . . . do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshipping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven” (Deuteronomy 4:19).
Unfortunately, Israel was surrounded by sun-worshippers: to the Egyptians, he was Ra; to the Phoenicians, Baal; to the Syrians, Hadad; to the Ammonites, Moloch and Milcom; and, years later, to the Persians, Mithra. Worldwide, we find an attachment to the sun in the primitive religions of Japan, Europe and North and South America. As an island of Creator worship in this vast sea, Israel frequently drifted into sun-worship. When reform-minded King Josiah came to the throne, he threw out all symbols of sun-worship in Jerusalem (see 2 Kings 23).
The prophet Ezekiel tells of 25 men standing in the temple of the Lord with their backs toward the glory of God, and their faces turned toward the east to worship the rising sun. He called it a “detestable” act (Ezekiel 8).
Although Satan used the sun to lure people from God, many Bible writers employed it as a symbol, to point human beings to their Creator. For example, after their victory over the Canaanites, Deborah and Barak praised God in song. In the climax they shout: “May they who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength” (Judges 5:31).
Many Bible scholars see God’s people in the poetic words of Solomon, who wrote: “Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession?” (Song of Songs 6:10).
Jesus picked up the metaphor in His interpretation of the parable of the tares, saying that following the destruction of evildoers, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). In His Sermon on the Mount, He says that God gives the blessing of sunshine and rain to the just and to the unjust (Matthew 5:45).
This a parallel to the psalmist, who uses the sun as symbolic of the great Creator-God: “For the Lord God is a sun and shield” (Psalm 84:11); Malachi calls the Messiah—God’s son—the “sun of righteousness” (Malachi 4:2); and, according to John, Jesus’ face appeared as “the sun shining in all its brilliance” (Revelation 1:16). Instead of being a mere object of worship, our sun is to be a symbol of its Maker.
The world continues to worship the created and ignores the Creator. Collectors will squander tens of millions of dollars on a painting—a created work of the human hand—but give neither a cent nor a thought to the Creator of our earth and universe.
We mustn’t let any material object or temporal distraction come between us and our worship of the Creator-God. As we experience the warmth and light and life that comes from this masterpiece of His creation, let it remain a reminder of Him, His glory and His rising.
Hot sun facts
- The sun is an incandescent ball of gas so big that our earth would fit into it more than a million times.
- It consists principally of hydrogen and helium, with smaller amounts of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and other elements.
- The distance from the centre of the earth to the centre of the sun averages 149,600,000 km (92,960,000 miles).
- Early in January, earth’s orbit carries it to its closest point to the sun (perihelion); early in July, it’s at its furthest (aphelion).
- The sun moves around the central point of the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of about 215 km/sec (134 miles/sec), taking some 250 million years to complete one orbit.
- The sun is responsible for the growth of plants, the water cycle and global and local winds.
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Articles of interest:
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This is an extract from May 2003
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