Covenant Blessing in the New World

This past week I flew out to Phoenix for a sales meeting. When I go to a big city, I’ve gotten accustomed to using Uber. Even though it seemed strange at first, I’ve come to appreciate it and enjoy it. The primary reason I enjoy it is because of all the drivers I meet. I’ve met people from Somalia, Haiti, and Cuba. On this past trip, I met a young man from Mosul, Iraq, who had moved here during the last gulf war. He is a Christian, and he said there was no place for him there with the rise of ISIS. The very next trip I met a young lady from New York who had served in the Army and had two tours to Iraq. When I told her that I had just met an Iraqi Uber driver and why he had fled Iraq, she responded by saying, “Yeah, I just can’t understand why anyone would kill over religion. I mean, why would you kill someone over what they choose to believe?”

            Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time with this woman to dive into just what she meant by this, but if I had, I would have asked her what principles she believed were worth defending, and if she would be willing to kill someone who chose to believe something differently? We all do, after all. This young lady, whether she knew it or not, has been influenced by a philosophy that goes all the way back to Rene Descartes. It’s a philosophy that says that religious truth is not the same as other truths, say the truths of science. Religious truth is really just an opinion. This philosophy has evolved over the years to the point that people today believe that religion can be useful, if it makes you feel better about your life, but it is not necessary, and belief in God is certainly not necessary. People, in turn, live as though the world just happened by chance and that mathematical formulas and laws of nature are all that keep this world moving forward.

            Really, we are no different than the ancient pagans who surrounded the people of Israel. Sure, they believed in gods, but they believed that these gods were material just like everything else. They were subject to the laws of nature, to the march of time, to the whims of other powers. The Bible, however, tells a very different story. It shows us a world that had a beginning, and that beginning wasn’t the result of random colliding atoms or angry, warring gods, but a benevolent, loving God who spoke everything into being. We’ve seen it in the blessings that he gave to Adam and Eve to have dominion and be fruitful. We’ve seen it, even in his protection of Cain and the fact that life went on, even after the fall. And yes, we also find it in the flood, as God judged the world and cleansed the face of the earth of the wicked seed of fallen angels and men.

            So, Noah has come out of the ark and offered a sacrifice that pleased God and caused him to rest from his wrath against mankind. Now, we see in Chapter 9 that God extends blessings to Noah, his offspring, and to all of creation. There are four blessings that God gives to mankind that I want you to see here.

            First, God gives the blessing of fruitfulness. In verse 1 he recapitulates the same blessing that he gave in the Garden of Eden: “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Understand that the continued lineage of mankind is a blessing from God. You know this if you’ve ever held a little baby in your arms. You cannot help but feel the blessing of God in that little life. Life does not have to be. In fact, scientists to this day cannot explain how life came to be. They can explain the chemistry of life. They’ve done experiments to show that the chemicals needed to make Amino Acids can form naturally. Yet, they cannot seem to jump start those inanimate proteins into living things. For life to continue, God must bless it, and so he does with Noah and his children.

            Second, God gives the blessing of food in verses 2-4. He tells Noah and his family that just as he had given every plant to Adam and Eve in the garden, now he gives every animal for food. This blessing has a real practical element to it, as over a year worth of flooding would have undoubtedly destroyed most of the vegetation. But, it also establishes an important distinction between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom. God has already told us in Genesis 1:26 that he has made us unique among all of his creation by giving us his image, but here we see that this distinction comes with an authority over life. This needs to be understood in our day. Our society, particularly, has become obsessed with our pets. We have elevated animal life to the same plane as human life. We talk of our pets in the same terms as our children. Organizations like PETA openly campaign for the reduction of human life for the sake of animal life. In fact, one of their slogans is, “Animals are People, too”. But, God has set a boundary between animal life and human life. God gives a priority to human life, which includes the use of animal life for our own sustenance.

            Third, God gives the blessing of fiat in verses 5-6. In these verses, God establishes human government by declaring that a murderer should be executed by human society. Up to this point, the judgment of man had been reserved to God alone, but now God establishes human law which will enforce morality.

            Finally, God gives the blessing of faithfulness in verses 11-17. This is a famous promise of God, one that we are reminded of when we see a rainbow in the sky. God promises that he will never again judge the world with a flood. We often miss that God gives this promise in the form of a covenant. The word “Covenant” literally means “a cutting”. It was an ancient practice in which a contract was made by two people, and that contract could only end in death. A modern example of a covenant is marriage, in which a man and a woman promise themselves to each other “till death do we part”. So, God makes an unconditional promise that he will never flood the earth, and the sign of that covenant is a bow in the sky. Now, I’ve always read that to be a bow knot. But the word for “bow” here is the word for the weapon, not the knot. And, if you notice, all rainbows point in which direction? They point up. God promises to never flood the earth at the risk of his own life.

            God’s blessings here are beautiful, but it would not take the people of this new world long to forget the blessings of God. They would rebel against his blessing of fruitfulness at the tower of Babel, refusing to fill the earth as God had commanded. They would rebel against his blessing of food, choosing to do grotesque things like eating living flesh. They would rebel against his blessing of fiat by continuing the murderous regime established by Cain, even going so far as to offer their own children as sacrifices to false gods. They would rebel against the blessing of faithfulness by flouting God’s grace. The Israelites, worst of all, would take the special blessing of God’s grace and use it as an excuse to chase after other gods, thinking that God would never forsake them because they had some special kind of blood.

            But then, Jesus comes as the true blessing of God. Through Jesus, the blessing of fruitfulness is fulfilled, as we see in Rev. 7:9 a great multitude from every tribe, tongue and nation singing praises to the Lamb of God. Through Jesus, we are not just given the blessing of food in our daily bread that he provides, but we are given the bread of life, which is Jesus himself. Through Jesus, we have the blessing of fiat, as Christ has called us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to do good to those who persecute you, to lay down our lives for our friends. And, through Jesus we have the blessing of faithfulness, as Phil. 1:6 says, “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus”. We have been brought through the flood of judgment, we are protected from the wrath of God that is to come on all the world through the blessings of Jesus.

            Friend, faith in Christ is not optional, it is necessary. You will not be able to withstand the final judgment that is coming unless you are in the covenant that God has provided through the death and resurrection of his Son. Won’t you turn in faith to Christ today and rest in the promises that God has made in him.

            Brothers and sisters, we have been blessed through a new covenant that God has made with us through Jesus Christ. We are called to be fruitful by going forth and proclaiming the Gospel and bringing new children of God into the covenant. And, God has promised that he will bless our efforts in this. We are also called to value life, to fight for those who are vulnerable and oppressed. May we do these with confidence knowing that we are blessed by God and he has proven his faithfulness through his Son.