In the Beginning: God Renews Creation (Genesis 8 & 9)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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The first lesson taken from Genesis 8 and 9.

In the 611 year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth.

And Noah removed the cover of the ark and looked.

And behold, the face of the ground was dry.

In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth died out.

Then God said to Noah, Go out from the you and your wife, and your sons, and your sons' wives with you.

Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, broken animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.

So Noah went out, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him.

Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some every clean animal and some of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma on his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man.

For the man the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my own offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.

It is for every beast of the earth.

I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all fleep flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

And God said, This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you, and every living creature that is with you.

For all future generations, I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of a covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you, and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become flesh.

When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it, and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is earth.

After the flood, Noah lived three hundred and fifty years.

All the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years.

And he died.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

I have set my bow in the mouth, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

Let's pray.

Once again be merciful to us and bless us.

Show us the light of your countenance, your face.

Be merciful unto us.

We trust that you are, Jesus.

And we pray that through your word, through your spirit, through the gifts you in baptism and at your table, we too would partake of the kingdom of God.

It's in your name, Lord Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Some promises are too important to be left unsignified.

One such sign of promise that stands out to me personally that I received almost seven years ago now, the officiating priest prayed over two very thin circles of white gold, saying, Bless the Lord these rings to be a sign of the vows by which this man and this woman have bound themselves to each other.

And I heard myself repeating after him, Rachel, I give you this ring as a symbol of my vow, and with all that I am and with all that I have I honor you.

And, unbelievably, she said the same thing to me.

You wouldn't have been wrong to say that at that point we handed each other little bits of metal.

Not unlike handing each other car keys or handing each other change for the parking meter, but we'd be wrong, or just plain cynical, to say that that was all that was in here.

What made this moment was significant was not so much the metal we exchanged, but the promise that that metal signified.

Some promises are too important to be left unsignified.

Genesis is in many ways a book of promise.

We've been journeying through the first 11 chapters of this first book of the Bible to glimpse something of God's blueprint for our human flourishing.

From the get-go, we've seen that our Creator has made humanity in his image, to share perfect friendship with him and one another, and to partake of his own radiant divine life.

Yet we've seen that our first parents turned away from God's beautiful design and towards their own self-exaltation, only tragically to discover that they believed a false promise.

Humanity cannot flourish on our own terms from God.

And in the world east of Eden, humanity is curved away from God, curved away from its creator, and self-will runs riot.

We now live in a world where brother can turn against brother, and cruel tyrants can oppress and terrorize the weak.

This is not the flourishing world that God intended.

And the Bible is really rather unapologetic about the serious human condition that we call sin.

In today, as well as ours, things are not the way they are supposed to be.

I trust that we all in some way can agree on that today, right?

Grieves are fallen state, and in his infinite justice, he says no more evil that has disintegrated the human condition that he created good in his image.

So the primordial floods of chaos so the earth.

Much as God has already promised to ultimately deliver the human race from the tyranny of evil through a coming promised offspring.

So last Sunday in Genesis 6 and 7, we saw that the serious condition of sin disintegrates humanity and creation.

It falls apart, it can't hold together.

But what we've seen today in Genesis 8 and 9 is that our God of grace works to renew what sin has disintegrated.

And God works his renewal through covenant.

God renews what sin disintegrates, and he works renewal through covenant.

So I hope we can see today, if nothing else, that there's more to Noah's our than furry animals.

This brings us to the very heart of God for you, for me, for a fallen humanity being renewed in his image.

So let's crack open our Bibles or our order of service to Genesis chapter 8.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

After 150 days at sea, the flood is subsiding, the ark has come to rest, and there's evidence of new, vibrant, green life on the earth.

Creation disintegrated by sin before the floor is now reintegrating.

God's judgment has been definite, purposeful.

Like a surgeon who makes a deep incision to remove what's cancerous, God deals with sin and corruption for life to flourish.

Flourishing is exactly what God desires.

Chapter 8, verse 15.

God said to Noah, Go out from the ark, goes on to say, Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, that all these things may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.

Does that ring sound familiar?

God has renewed his creation and now he renews the creation to our first parents.

Be fruitful and multiply.

Go forth and flourish.

Cause the world to teem with new life and new possibilities.

Renewal is always what God has had in mind for creation, and he invites human beings and all his creatures to partner with him towards that goal.

And yet, there still remains an unsettling germ of fallen creation embedded in God's renewed world.

Did you know?

We see it in God's stark honesty in response to Abraham's sacrifice.

Verse 21, we read, the intention of man's heart is evil, is evil.

That's present and ongoing from his youth.

See, the disintegration of sin is not something that's entirely outside of us.

Corruption is still found embedded as deeply as the human heart itself.

In our purposes, in our plans, in our inclinations.

Noah, faithful as he is, is no exception to the fallen condition of the human heart.

Every time I go to the pub, I tell myself I'm gonna have the onion rings.

I don't need them.

My waistline doesn't need them.

And yet, almost what do I order?

Onion rings.

Maybe not every time, but something, something similar.

Fixed last time, right?

There's something that we know what's good for us and what's bad for us, and yet it's not the good that we do.

And even more seriously than something as trivial as ordering fried food we don't need.

If you like me know the feeling of being convinced that you're doing the right thing on someone's behalf, only afterward to realize how selfish or fearful or spiteful you are acting, and all the relational damage that that's caused, then we know something of the tension of the human heart that the author of Genesis is getting at here.

It's been said I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

What then is God to do with the fickleness of the human heart?

Here's where church reformer John Calvin doesn't beat around the bush.

He writes, If humanity was to be dealt with according to what they deserve in this moment, there would be necessity for a daily deluge, a daily flood to deal with the fickleness of the heart.

But God says to Noah, I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

Covenant is the key word here.

But it's not a word we use every day.

The Hebrew word here is beret.

It is a binding word or promise.

One scholar writes that a covenant formally binds two parties together in a relationship on the basis of mutual personal commitment, with consequences for keeping or breaking commitment.

God makes this kind of covenant with a group of people by covenanting with one who represents them.

Everyone else then experiences the covenant by virtue of being included in the representative.

Noah here is God's chosen representative.

God's commitment is that there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.

But notice this: that God's beret with Noah is unconditional.

God does not promise to protect and renew Noah on condition that humanity always treats one another nicely, always the address of the sender on every post they put away, or you know, recycles all conditions.

He freely binds himself to his promise of creation without any terms or conditions.

God's freely given promise.

And because there is no variation or shadow due to change within God's character, it's understood that he will follow through on what he promises.

God's commitment to renew humanity and all of creation may be challenged by sin, but it cannot be thwarted.

He will see all things flourish.

He's committed himself.

If we let it, this promise can be a great assurance for us in the middle of the anxieties of our age, in every age for that matter.

Listen to us, and you'll no doubt hear great warnings of annihilation, of disaster, of catriphy.

And as Christians, we should not be dismissive of such concerns.

We are called to be stewards of the world that God has entrusted to us, and we should labor for the good of our world and for our communities.

But neither should we be consumed by anxiety as though God has abandoned his creation to utter disaster.

It isn't wishful thinking or blind faith that holds God to his promise against the anxiety of our age.

Rather, God's unmatched sovereignty, absolute integrity, and his desire for our flourishing enables us to ground our confidence in him and in his promises, come what may.

God is working renewal.

And he is working renewal through binding himself to his promise, his covenant.

And some promises are too important to be left unsignified.

Chapter 9, verse 12.

God said, This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you, Noah, and every living creature that is with you for all future generations.

I have set my bow in the cloud, and that shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth, when I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the clouds.

I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

I give you this bow, Noah, as a symbol of my vow.

This rainbow.

I don't think this is meant to suggest that rainbows didn't exist up to this point in primeval history.

Rather, I think God is taking a well-known natural phenomena and infusing it with new meaning.

But why a rainbow?

In Hebrew, as in English, this word is used with reference to a rainbow, but it's also used in reference to an archer's bow, which we know is an instrument of warfare used against one's enemies.

God has gone to war, as it were, with the evil and corruption of a fallen and disintegrated nation.

But now the war is settled, and it's time for the archer to hang up his bow.

And as Sally Lloyd Jones concludes the flood story in the Jesus Storybook Bible, which by the way is just highly recommended reading for every age.

Thank you.

Sally Lloyd Jones writes that God's war bow was not pointing down at his people, it was pointing up into the heart of heaven.

God has made a binding promise, a covenant with his creation, and guarantees it with a sign, a bow to remind us that he does not intend our daily deluge, rather our ultimate renewal.

It is as though God says, Noah, when you and your descendants look into the sky after a storm and see the rainbow, you and I will both remember my promise for your sake and for the sake of the world.

The God of grace works to renew sin has disintegrated.

And God works his renewal through covenant, the sign of which, for Noah, is his bow hung up in the heavens.

But what we need to see here is that it's the grace of God's deliverance glimpsed in his covenant with Noah, points us towards the amazing grace of an even greater covenant to come.

Again, Sally Lloyd Jones writes, it was a new beginning in God's.

It wasn't long before everything went wrong again, but God wasn't surprised.

He knew this would happen.

That's why before the beginning of time, he had another plan, a better plan.

A plan not to destroy the world, but to rescue it.

A plan to one day send his son, the rescue.

In our New Testament lesson, the Apostle Peter writes that Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

What sin has disintegrated, our perfect friendship with God, and our partaking in his own radiant divine life, is restored through Jesus' cross, which puts the power of sin and death to death, and through his resurrection, which reverses death itself.

In Christ, death now gives way to life.

See, God in Christ works to renew all things.

And God in Christ worked his renewal through covenant.

The author of Hebrews writes that Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them.

The new covenant is superior to all previous covenants that God has made with his people.

Because we read it's based on better promises.

God promised through Noah that he would never again flood the world.

Now in Christ we receive a better promise.

Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth.

God will dwell with his people.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

God will renew all things, and we will dwell with him forever.

This is his covenant promised to us in Christ.

Some promises are too important to be left unsignified.

On the night that he is betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread, a cup of wine, and declared, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

This is the new covenant in my blood.

When we eat at the Lord's table, we're doing much the same thing as Noah did when he looked into the sky for the We gratefully participate in the definite and divine sign of God's promise, that He is for us, and that He seals His covenant upon our hearts.

But the new we're given doesn't just have one sign of God's promise in Christ, but two.

Peter writes, baptism, which corresponds symbolically to God's delivering Noah through water, now saves you as an appeal for a good conscience, a renewed moral condition through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Whereas the Lord's Supper is a new covenant whenever we come to the table, as often as we come to the table, baptism is a one-time event that signifies God's promise of forgiveness, deliverance, and eternal life through the resurrection power in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Through baptism and by faith, we become like Noah, who is shut into the ark by God and delivered through the flood of judgment by God's grace.

That's why St.

Augustine can write that Christ our God is now building his church as the ark of salvation and is calling all people to enter it.

Some promises are too important to be left signified, and God's promise of ultimate renewal and salvation are signified for us in baptism and at his table.

So if you are baptized today, remember your baptism.

Take heart.

It is God's binding promise to you of his deliverance and grace.

And if you are not baptized, God's invitation is for you to enter into this new covenant in Christ.

His promise is for you.

As we turn to the font, let's prepare us to witness God's promise at work, renewing our sister Melissa, and renewing us.

And let's rejoice.

Oh, his love is sure, and he knows my name, for my God is the ancient ace.

Christ as a bridegroom looks to us, his beloved, and says, I give you this sign as a symbol of my vow.

This is the sign of the covenant I make between me and you.

Baptism now saves you.

Behold, I am making all things new.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

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May God bless you and keep you today and every day.