The waters have gone down. Noah stands on the deck of the ark, feels the sunshine on his face, smells the breeze off dry land, and he knows that God is handing him a whole new world. A brave new world, to borrow a phrase from Aldous Huxley. And with that world comes a promise — to Noah and to all his offspring after him, a blessing for all people everywhere, meant to last forever. Most of us have read the flood story before, but only at one level. Turn over the topsoil of these stories and you find buried treasure. So let's dig, because the covenant God makes here in Genesis 9 is one we are still living under this morning.
We're Still Under the Covenant with Noah
Before we get to chapter 9, remember where we have been. Back in chapter 6, the Lord looks at the earth and sees that the wickedness of man is great, that every intention of his heart is only evil continually. And it says God was grieved. Notice that — God has feelings. God has emotions. Every emotion you have finds its source in the heart of God Himself; we just learn to express ours in all the wrong ways. So the Lord grieves over His planet, and He sends a flood. And some of you think that's a nice little children's story. It isn't. Every major ancient religion carries an account of a great flood, because it happened. And when the waters recede, God gives Noah a word, and it is the word we unpack today.
A World Characterized by Blessing
Here is the first thing to see: the world God hands us is characterized by blessing. "And God blessed Noah." That is simply a restatement of what He said to Adam and Eve in a world brand, brand new — be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth with other little image-bearers of Me. God reissues that blessing to Noah as the world starts over. And it is a loaded promise, so let me make an application some of you will not expect. God wants His covenant people to have covenant children and raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Do not let anyone tell you this world is too far gone to bring children into it — that is a lie, and anyone who says it is basically speaking for the devil. This world will not end one minute before or one minute after God plans for it to end. And for those of you waiting until you can afford children — forget it. You never will. You ask God to bless you, and then you figure it out as you go. Children are a blessing. We have only questioned that in the last fifty or sixty years, and look at us: the whole Western world no longer has a replacement birth rate. God does not need America; America needs God.
A World Characterized by Order
The second mark of this world is order. God tells Noah that as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter will never cease. The seasons will keep their turn. And that orderliness is no accident — it is the fingerprint of a Lawgiver. This is the great problem for the atheist and the agnostic: how do you get a universe this relentlessly mathematical out of nothing but time plus matter plus chance? Galileo said the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, by the finger of God. Kepler looked through his telescope and said, "O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee." Even Einstein, who was no Christian, insisted God does not play dice with the universe. And Stephen Hawking, brilliant and unbelieving, wrote that if we ever found the answer, we would know the mind of God. Every one of them stood before the order of creation and had to reckon with its Author.
A World Characterized by Justice
The third mark is justice. Have you ever wondered where we got the idea that life is supposed to be fair? This is the only world we have ever known, and it runs on injustice — the strong prey on the weak, the rich get richer. So where did the instinct to say "that's wrong" even come from? We get it from God. We are His image-bearers, and the ache for justice is His likeness in us. Look at verse 6: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image." In the Hebrew that is a chiasm — an X-pattern — and when the Scriptures hand you a chiasm, God is saying, pay attention, this is important. Human life is sacred not because it is useful or strong, but because every person carries the image of God, so that to assault a human being without cause is to assault God Himself. That truth reshaped my own convictions over the years, and it still presses on how we treat the person right in front of us.
This One's Shaped Like a Cross
And finally, this is a world characterized by hope. That is where the rainbow comes in. The word God uses is the word for a warrior's bow — the state-of-the-art weapon of the day. When a soldier came home from battle and was finally at peace, he would unstring his bow and hang it over his doorway so everyone passing could see the fighting was done. That is exactly what God does. He takes His bow and hangs it in the clouds and says, I am no longer at war with My creation. I will never again flood the earth. I am making peace with My fallen world, and I am redeeming it, and I am restoring it. But that bow in the clouds is only a sign that points to another sign — one only God could give. This one is not shaped like a bow. This one is shaped like a cross. There the Son of God took upon Himself the curses of every covenant, and in His own blood He stood before the wrath and judgment of God so that we never would. For God so loved this world — the one He flooded, the one He cleansed, the one He started over with Noah — that He gave His only Son. And just as the covenant with Noah endures forever, so does the new covenant sealed in the blood of Christ. My prayer is that you are part of God's covenant people, brought in by that blood, kept faithful until the day we live with Him forever.
