The Covenant of Preservation: God’s Promise to Noah

The scripture is from Genesis the sixth chapter and verses eight to twenty two.

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

These are the generations of Noah.

Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japus.

The earth was also corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Make thee an ark of gopher wood, rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it.

The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above, and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof, with lower, second and third stories shalt thou make it.

And behold I, even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die.

But with thee will I establish my covenant, and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons wives with thee, and of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark.

To keep them alive with thee, they shall be male and female, of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind.

Two of every sort shall come unto thee to keep them alive, and take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee, and it shall be for food for thee and for them.

Thus did Noah, according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The opening of one of the most famous stories, I suspect, in Sportrin, anyway, of uh in the Bible.

Now in the Old Testament.

And it's funny listening to me read it.

Reading, um, this is before I even start, but reading the front of it, you know, the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

And you could be reading about the world today.

The earth is corrupt and it's certainly filled with violence, but that is not tonight's purpose, that's for another day.

I want to talk about the Noamic covenant.

This is the agreement made by uh between God and what's left Noah and his family.

I'll put it that way.

You've got to consider how bad the world must have been for God to decide to wipe out everybody, everything.

He's just a regretted creation, and yet, you know, it's only in Genesis 1 that he goes, everything's good, everything's very good.

And all of a sudden he's well, not all of a sudden, but within a few generations, he's changed his mind.

But he finds one man.

One man.

We don't know why Noah found grace in the sight of God, except that he walked with God and he uh he found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

We don't really know many more than that, but he does.

Last week we began our journey through the great covenant of Scripture.

We stood with Adam and Eve in the garden, a world of beauty, dignity, calling, and catastrophe.

We saw humanity's first steps and humanity's first fall, and we saw a God who, even in judgment, whispered hope.

And now we're at that next step on this long road.

We moved from Eden to a world spiraling into violence, from the first family to a very fractured humanity, and from despair to a covenant of preservation that still shapes our world today.

This is a story of Noah.

But more importantly than that, it's a story of God who remembers.

By the time we reach Genesis 6, the world has changed.

It's a very different place than it was in Genesis 1.

The beauty of creation is still there, but it is overshadowed by something much darker.

Scripture tells us that the earth was filled with violence, and that word violence, Hamas of all names in Hebrew, means more than physical harm.

Hamas means corruption.

Hamas means injustice.

Hamas means exploitation.

The strong crushing the weak, the powerful taking what they want.

Hamas, people celebrating corruption, injustice, exploitation, the strong crushing the weak and the powerful taking what they want.

The Adamic covenant gave humanity a calling to steward creation, to reflect God's character, to live in harmony.

But instead of stewarding, stewarding humanity, humanity is destroying.

Instead of reflecting God's image, humanity is distorting it.

And instead of harmony, humanity is creating chaos.

And God sees it.

Don't think you can hide it from God.

God sees it all.

Not as a distant observer, but as a grieving creator.

Genesis says, it grieved him to the heart.

This is not anger of a tyrant, it's a sorrow of a parent watching a child self-destruct.

The flood is not God losing his temper.

It's God confronting a world that's become unrecognizable to him.

He regrets making it.

It's not what he made.

It's a world where violence has drowned out any ounce of goodness.

And into this world, into this world that has descended from perfect goodness to imperfect violence.

Into this world steps Noah.

Scripture calls him a righteous man, blameless in his generation.

Now that does not mean Noah was perfect.

Do not have this view that Noah was a perfect man.

It means he walked with God when few others do.

If you walk with God when few others do, you are a righteous man.

Doesn't matter what other people say or think.

You dare to stand for God in this world, this world controlled by Hamas.

You are a righteous man.

Because standing against Hamas is what righteous men do.

It means he listened when others ignored.

If you listen to God, you read his word.

You're doing more than 90% of the world.

Most of the world, 90% of it, would ignore God.

He trusted God when others mocked.

And we see that again in this world.

We see the church of state mocking with its installation of women bishops, women ministers.

We see the lords of this country being mocked by people who have no regard for them.

And we see a parliament, a government that mocks a people by totally ignoring us.

Noah.

You may think this is not true, but Noah is not the hero of this story.

God is.

But Noah is the one who responds.

And God gives him a very strange command.

He says, Build an ark.

A huge vessel far from the sea.

Could you imagine that?

We could say to Barry, build an ark, a huge vessel.

He lives by Southport, so he's far from the sea.

Imagine what people must have thought when they saw that.

In a world that had never seen anything like that ark that Noah built.

What does Noah do?

He doesn't challenge God, he goes to God, I'm not by the sea.

What would I need an ark for?

I'm nowhere near water.

Noah obeys.

God speaks Noah obeys.

Day after day, after year after year, hammering, shaping, preparing.

We're not told how long the arc actually takes to build.

But given its size, it must have been a good few years, I would think.

And he does this not because he understands everything, he doesn't understand why God's telling him to do this.

But he trusts in the one who sees everything.

That's all we're called, is it?

Trust in the one who sees.

And sometimes, you know, obedience looks like that.

Long, slow, unglamorous, faithfulness, doing the r the the next right thing, even when the world thinks you're foolish, insane, mad.

I've been caught all of those in my time.

The flood story is one of probably the most misunderstood stories in scripture.

Many imagine it as a children's tale, animals two by two, a cheerful boat, a rainbow at the end.

But the real story is something else entirely.

It's far more serious, far more sobering, far more hopeful.

The flood is judgment.

It is it's judgment, but it's also mercy.

Judgment because God takes evil seriously.

He does not shrug at violence, he does not ignore injustice, he does not allow corruption to go on forever.

Mercy because God preserves a remnant.

There will always be a remnant.

He makes a way for life to continue.

He refuses to let evil have the final word, and the ark is a symbol of both.

It is a vessel of salvation in the midst of judgment, a place of refuge in the midst of chaos, a sign that God is not giving up on his creation.

And when the water is finally received, Noah steps out into a cleansed world.

Not a perfect world, not the world that God created to start with, but a world that is being washed clean.

A world given a fresh start.

It is here, on this new ground, that God makes his covenant with Noah, and this covenant is unlike any other previous one that we spoke of last week, strangely enough.

Firstly, it's universal.

God made it not only with Noah, but with his descendants, and with every living creature.

This is the only covenant in Scripture that includes animals.

The whole creation is drawn into God's promise.

Secondly, it is unconditional.

God does not say if you obey, I will preserve the world.

He simply says never again.

Never again will he destroy the earth by flood.

Get that qualification in your head.

Never again will he destroy the world by flood.

That matters.

It may seem a simple flow away line throwaway line, but it means he'll just never flood the world again.

Never again will the waters cover the whole earth.

And this is a promise grounded not in human faithfulness, but in God's.

Third, it is a covenant of restraint.

God hangs up his bow, the ancient symbol of warfare in the cloud.

The rainbow is not just pretty, it's a sign of divine self limitation.

God chooses mercy over destruction, patience over wrath, and preservation over annihilation.

This is the heart of the Noahic covenant.

God commits himself to sustaining a world even when humanity fails.

Get that into your head.

God commits himself to sustaining the world even when humanity fails.

And then when we go through the rest of these covenants, you will see the story of humanity failing multiple times.

This is a God who remembers.

I love this line.

This is in Abe One.

One of the most beautiful lines in the flood story, this is Genesis 8, verse 1.

Genesis 8:1

And God remembered Noah.

Now in Scripture, remembering does not mean recalling something forgotten.

It means acting on a promise.

It means turning towards someone with mercy.

It means faithfulness in motion.

God remembered Noah in his little wooden hut on that big wooden boat.

God in remembering Noah remembers his creation.

God in remembering Noah remembers his promise.

And because God remembered Noah, his creation and his promise, God remembers us.

The Noah covenant is the reason the world continues.

It is the reason seasons follow season.

It is the reason life persists despite of and not in spite of, but despite human folly.

It is the reason God does not wipe the slate clean every time humanity spirals into violence.

We live every single day of our lives for every generation since the Noah's story under the shelter of the covenant with Noah.

The warts and all the story of Noah's failure.

But the story does not end with a rainbow.

You see, scripture is honest.

This is why the Bible is a book to believe.

Scripture doesn't paint a rosy picture of it.

It doesn't paint a rosy picture of anything.

It's honest.

Painfully honest.

And it's painfully honest about what happened next.

Noah plants a vineyard.

Noah drinks too much.

Noah becomes drunk and lies, and it says uncovered in his tent.

It means he was naked in his tent.

And his sons respond in different ways.

One dishonourably, two honorably.

And Noah, the righteous man, becomes Noah, the flawed man.

Noah the man that God saw was righteous and worth preserving, suddenly becomes Noah the drunk.

He's no longer righteous.

Why does Scripture include this?

Because the Bible, you see, isn't a book of heroes.

It's not a feel-good book in any way, straight or form, shape or form.

It's a book of humans.

And because the Noah confident uh covenant is not based on Noah's perfection.

It is based on God's faithfulness.

We are the failure of faith that God is perfect, is faithful.

Noah's failure reminds us of some important facts.

The flood did not wash sin out of the world.

The problem was not just out there in the world, it was in here, in the human heart.

Sin had already got such a hold on humanity that even Noah, as perfect as he was in the sight of God, even his sons who he took with him and his daughters and his wife, in the heart was sin, the seeds of it at least.

The flood cleansed the earth, but it can't cleanse a soul.

Water cannot cleanse a soul.

And this is why the story must continue.

This is why more covenants are needed, and this is why the road leads eventually back to Christ.

The Noah is Covenant speaks directly into our world and into our lives.

First, it tells us God is committed to his creation.

Environmental care is not a political issue.

It's not a it is a covenantial one.

God loves his world.

He preserves it.

And he calls us to steward it.

It tells us God is patient.

Humanity continues to make a mess of things.

Just look around.

Violence, injustice, greed, exploitation, all of that covered in that wonderful word Hamas.

Yet God restrains his judgment.

He gives time for repentance.

He holds back destruction.

His patience is not weakness, it is a mercy.

It tells us that God keeps his promises.

Every rainbow we see is a reminder that God does not forget.

He does not abandon.

He does not change his mind.

His faithfulness is the foundation of our hope.

Remember what I said earlier on when we saw talked about Saul Sang standing on the promises?

That is God being faithful.

We can stand on God's promises because He is faithful.

And His faithfulness is the foundation of our hope.

Because He promised a Savior.

It tells us salvation is God's work and God's work alone.

Noah may well have built the ark, but God shut the door.

God guided the waters.

God remembered.

God restored.

And salvation is always God's initiative.

Now, if you're new to faith, and I speak to many who probably aren't in this room, the Noah covenant helps you to understand something vital.

God is not waiting for you to be perfect before he commits to you.

I want to repeat that.

God is not waiting for you to be perfect before he commits to you.

He has already committed himself to sustaining the world you live in.

He has already shown patience.

He has already made a way to salvation.

And your story begins with a God who remembers you.

But there's another side to this tale.

And that this word for those of us who've been believers for a long time.

For those of us who have walked with Christ for many years, this covenant is a reminder of how far God has carried you and me.

We have seen floods, not of water, but we have seen floods of grief, floods of loss, floods of fear, floods of failure, and yet we're still here.

Preserved, remembered, hell.

The God who remembered Noah when he's floating on the water that destroyed the world is the God that remembers you daily.

The Noah covenant is a covenant of preservation.

It keeps the world going.

It gives humanity space to breathe, to grow, to seek God.

But it does not solve the problem of the human heart.

The rainbow we see is a sign of God's restraint.

But the cross is a sign of God's redemption.

The rainbow says I will not destroy.

But the cross says I will restore.

The rainbow hangs in the sky, but the cross stands in history.

And both point to a God who remembers his creation and refuses to give up on his people.

And as we continue through our story of the covenants, may we carry this truth with us.

The God who preserved the world through Noah is the same God who will preserve his stealth until that day of judgment.

Amen.