If God created the sun and the moon on the fourth day what had been lighting the earth for three days?

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From an old Earth creationist perspective, the key lies in Genesis 1:1-2, which reads in part (NASB) "1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void..." Did God create the earth formless and void? 1 Corinthians 14:33 tells us that "God is not the author of confusion", so one would assume that God did not create the earth formless and void. The Hebrew word translated as "was" in verse 2 can also be translated as "became". So it appears that at some point after "God created the heavens and the earth" the "earth became formless and void". This can be accounted for by Satan's rebellion, which had to happen sometime before he tempted Eve in the garden.

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As the OP did not specify a tradition, let us look at the matter from three different viewpoints.

From a pre-modern literalist viewpoint, author Scott Elledge comments on the view of the universe that informed the seventeenth century poet John Milton when writing his famous Paradise Lost:

From man's point of view the most compelling of all the parts of his universe was the sun, in which on the fourth day of Creation God concentrated the light that he created on the first day . . .(1)

From a standpoint attempting to harmonize Genesis with modern science, another writer has speculated that there may have been an obstruction preventing the sun's light from reaching the earth prior to the fourth day:

We are not to understand that the earth was created long before the sun was. The sun is the center of our solar system, and the earth was probably revolving around it all this time; but the clouds about the earth were so dense that the direct light from the sun could not penetrate them. (2)

Yet another thought is that of divine accommodation, that God communicates to humans on the level of their current understanding. This is presented by historian Rodney Stark:

This premise holds that God's revelations are always limited to the current capacity of humans to comprehend - that in order to communicate with humans God is forced to accommodate their incomprehension by resorting to "baby talk." . . .

Consider that the ancient Jews would have been utterly mystified had God revealed creation in terms of Newtonian mechanics and an extensive discussion of genetics and mutation. (3)

So here are three views. There are probably more.

(1) Elledge, Scott. Paradise Lost: John Milton. W.W. Norton & Company: London. 1993, 1975. Page 463.

(2) Van Amburgh, W.E. The Way to Paradise. People's Pulpit Association: Brooklyn, NY. 1925. Page 38.

(3) Stark, Rodney. The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion. HarperCollins Publishers: New York, NY. 2011. Pages 292-94.

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