A Covenant that Saves

Genesis 9:1-17

We are in desperate need of an act of God to save us. 

The musical Hamilton has a hidden character throughout the show… the bullet. 

“At first, it's difficult to distinguish this excellent embodiment of foreshadowing from the other ensemble cast members. Here's a trick: DeBose's hair is styled in a tumble of curls. Constantly changing costumes and appearances, the Bullet follows Hamilton—and other characters—throughout the three-hour-long musical. Essentially, where the Bullet goes, death follows.” 

She is in a scene with King George as a spy… first with Hamilton in the opening song she takes a book from her real target, the Title character himself. During the Song “Ten Duel Commandments” she is next to Hamilton when he refrains “pick a place to die where it's high and dry.” 

These and other interactions cement the bullets' role… Death is coming for everyone—even Hamilton, despite his many attempts to outrun (or out-write) fate.

Clever. Something threaded through the whole story, always present. In Hamilton, tremendously dark. But in our story, we see a thread all the way through that is tremendously light. 

Always present. Redemptive promise. A line, God orchestrating every story to lead to the greatest news, of what was broken being set right, curse removed, garden reopened and expanded. 

We find the line in a call once again to be fruitful and multiply. To live under a covenant of protection for all creation. 

How did we get here?

We left off with Cain murdering his brother Abel, and choosing to walk away from Yahweh. But then Seth came and the promise carried on. 

Genesis 5:28–29 “When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son [29] and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” (ESV)

Genesis 6:5–14 “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. [6] And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. [7] So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” [8] But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

[9] These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. [10] And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

[11] Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. [12] And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. [13] And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. [14] Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.” (ESV)

Genesis 6:17–22 “For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. [18] But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. [19] And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. [20] Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. [21] Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” [22] Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.” (ESV)

Genesis 7:1 “Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.” (ESV)

Genesis 7:20–24 “The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. [21] And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. [22] Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. [23] He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. [24] And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.” (ESV)

Genesis 8:8–12 “Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. [9] But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. [10] He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. [11] And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. [12] Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.” (ESV)

Genesis 8:15–17 “Then God said to Noah, [16] “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. [17] Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” (ESV)

Genesis 8:20–22 “Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. [21] And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for 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. [22] While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (ESV)

There is so much to mine in these chapters, lots for further study. In essence we have before us de-creation and re-creation. The establishment of a covenant of keeping. 

There are three movements I want to highlight for our purposes this morning to show us our need and God’s commitment to His promise. Reckoning, Righteousness, and Revelation. 

Reckoning 

Generations now have come since Adam and the expulsion from the garden. Children of Cain multiplying alongside Children of Seth. 

This did not produce utopia. Instead “wickedness was great on the earth, the intention of thoughts of humanity was only evil continually.” 

Tax preparer conversation about current events; “surely humanity has to be better, we are good right?” Um, no!

Inborn inclination otherwise. 

Think of it this way, Humanity and the pursuit of sin, of violence, of that which crouches at the door desiring you, like a lion desires a gazelle, is like a dog that keeps returning to the source of its sickness! 

Trailer in the yard, local cats like to bring their catch and eat. Finnick running around with a rat’s tail hanging from his mouth. June, named after a woman equal among the apostles, gathered her away from the spot and immediately she returned to it… 

This is us. This is me. The things I keep going back to. The persistent sin I have convinced myself is part of my personality. It is me running with a rat’s tail out of my mouth. And I am sinsick. 

The whole earth in utter disarray, wicked, evil. 

6:6 “And Yahweh regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” 

I tried to work with the Hebrew to make it say something else. Some render it “sorry.” Both words work. Can a sovereign God regret something he has done? 

Does this challenge his foreknowledge? 

“God’s heart is capable of complex combinations of emotions infinitely more remarkable than ours. He may well be capable of lamenting over something he chose to bring about. And God may be capable of looking back on the very act of bringing something about and lamenting that act in one regard, while affirming it as best in another regard.” John Piper

Dr. Strange in Avengers, End Game, having lived all the potential outcomes, and this, though painful, was the only one that arrived at the result, keenly enough, it required the self-sacrifice of a hero…

For God to say “I regret making man on earth” is not saying “I would not make humanity if I had to do it over again.” 

“God is able to feel sorrow for an act in view of foreknown evil — foreknown pain and sorrow and misery — and yet go ahead and do it for wise reasons. And so, later when he looks back on the act, he can feel that very sorrow for the act that he knew was leading to the sad conditions,” like the decline into evil in Genesis 6. 

There are no stronger words to convey the significance of evil and how God is heartbroken that humanity has turned from him. He has never abandoned them. They had been removed from the garden because of their own choice. The ground was doubly cursed because Cain didn’t heed the warning. Violence persisted because man rejected God. 

He set out to blot them out from the face of the earth. 

There must be a reckoning with the wickedness of humanity. This is not maniacal. This is deserved judgment. De-creation of the world by choice. The serpent's influence over generations, selfishness, anger. 

6:11 “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.”

Separating from God is death. This was humanity’s choice. (Glenn Packiam) 

Though the reboot of humanity comes, reckoning is still needed, we all will face it. 

The rain came. Forty days, forty nights. All the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. The water increased, made the ark to float, and covered the whole earth. And all flesh died that moved on the earth. 

It’s grimm. The slate wiped clean. A new start. 

But God did not give up completely on humanity, or his promise to send a seed. 

Righteousness

While all of humanity was corrupt, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Might he be the thread? 

His father certainly thought so. 

When Lamech named his newborn son Noah—which means “rest”—he said, “This one shall give us comfort from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed” (Genesis 5:29).

Hope of righteousness, relief from the curse of the ground. Could he be the seed, the offspring? 

God says that Noah lived blameless in his generation. And he was faithful. 

Hebrews 11:6–7 “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. [7] By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” (ESV)

His faith is counted as righteousness. By it, God saves him from destruction.

But notice, a salvation only for self, and family. Not the world. 

Ezekiel 14:20 “even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, declares the Lord GOD, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness.” (ESV)

And he is obedient to Yahweh. He builds the Ark. Labors for the year, and like any prophet of the Lord, surely there is social pressure - “did you really hear from the Lord?” “Better be room for me in that thing!” 

Genesis 7:5 “And Noah did all that the LORD had commanded him.” (ESV)

Noah is the bridge that repopulates earth, bringing with him animals, birds, humanity. Connects us to the promise of the seed, but not sufficient righteousness to save everyone.

Like another Adam. 

“First, an explanation of Noah’s name is given. He is God’s comforter (i.e., relief), in a world that is groaning for redemption (Gen. 5:29), for all generations after the flood. As such, he is a “second Adam” and thus prefigures Christ, giving humanity a second start with a clean slate after the contagion of sin (6:5). Important parallels of Noah and Adam occur in the narrative. Their “worlds” are created out of a watery chaos. Both Adam and Noah are said to be in the “image of God,” the only occurrences of the phrase in Genesis (1:27; 5:1; 9:6). Both “walked with God” (3:8; 6:9). Both exercise dominion over animals (Adam by naming; Noah by preserving). God’s commands to be fruitful, to multiply, and to rule are given to both Adam and Noah (1:28–30; 9:1–7). Both work the ground (3:17–19; 9:20). Both sin in connection with food: Adam by eating (3:6); Noah by drinking (9:21). The sins of both result in shame and the need for clothing (3:7, 21; 9:21, 23). Both have three sons (4:1–2, 25; 6:10). Their sons represent contrasting paths for humanity, with Seth and Shem being the path of hope, and Cain and Ham the path of judgment—showing that the promised Seed of the woman is the path of life and the seed of the serpent that of death. Both of these “starts” of humanity also indicate the need of God’s grace to finish humanity’s purpose with his blessing.” Kent Hughes 

A little too much like Adam. His sin, ending up drunk and naked. 

So the line goes through Noah, but he doesn’t save… he is not the redeemer. But it is righteousness which an evil and violent humanity needs to solve the problem of our sin. 

It is the covenant established by God that meets our need and reveals something of the hope of salvation for us. 

Revelation 

God is faithful to his promise, the thread continues through the story. He is orchestrating it all to eventually lead to the seed, to the One who will be our salvation, who would reckon with our sin for us, who will be our judge at the final judgement that this flood acts as a precursor for. But we only get there with his covenant with all flesh on earth. 

The Noahic covenant is God’s gracious commitment to preserve creation till the final judgment. And it is all God…

“This grand covenant was/is universal , unilateral , and unconditional . Its universality is evident because it encompasses not only every human being (good or evil) but every living creature on the planet. It is unilateral in that God alone is the sole initiator. He twice calls it “my covenant” (vv. 8, 11). It does not require any assent, action, or ratification from mankind — not even acknowledgment. It is unconditional because there will never be another cosmic destruction by water no matter what we earthlings do. The covenant is the self-motivated promise of an unconditional mercy throughout human history.”

9:13 “I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” 

The sign of the covenant with Noah is the rainbow. Every rainbow is a reminder of God’s ongoing common-grace mercy, down through the generations since Noah, indicating that he will never flood the earth again (9:13–15).

9:16 “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.”

Brevard Childs said, “God’s remembering always implies his movement toward the object. . . .The essence of God’s remembering lies in his acting toward someone because of a previous commitment.”

The rainbow should also remind us that God was providing special grace through Noah, preserving through him the promised Seed of eternal deliverance for sinful people. There is no greater movement toward us than coming to live among us, to take on flesh, to carry this burden, to shed blood. 

The covenant established with Noah foreshadows the ultimate work of Christ, who also brings renewal and hope to humanity. Just as the rainbow serves as a sign of God’s mercy, Christ's sacrifice is the ultimate sign of God’s mercy and a promise of salvation for all who believe, demonstrating a continuity of God’s redemptive plan throughout Scripture.

“Noah may not have lived up to his father’s expectations, but this man of rest, who built an ark for the salvation of his household (Hebrews 11:7), certainly foreshadowed a Son who would live up to His Father’s expectations, the true man of rest, the new and better Noah, who built an ark for the salvation of His household, a household of which you are a member.

It was the new and better Noah, wet with Jordan’s water, upon whom the Spirit’s dove landed, marking Him the true man of rest. He is the one who finally fulfills Lamech’s messianic hopes, for He comes to fulfill all righteousness for Lamech, for Noah, for you. But His way is not a mere re-run of the old, for if Noah condemned the world (Hebrews 11:7), then Christ was condemned for the world. In the Jordan, Christ stepped into the place of—what children’s books call—“bad” people, people like us. The water that trickled off His back in the Jordan foreshadowed a greater baptism with which He was to be baptized, the baptism in which the world’s sins were poured out upon Him, in which He was flooded with divine wrath. The bad person you are, Christ became. Your pettiness, your selfishness, your the-world-be-damned-as-long-as-I’m-okay attitude—all your badness engulfed the good Son of God. The apple of the Father’s eye was so filled with your rottenness that the Father turned away from Him as if it were you.” Chad Bird 

This covenant, leaning forward to one to come, one better still. 

Jeremiah 32:39–41 “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. [40] I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. [41] I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” (ESV)

[And so it was that the new and better Noah became, on the cross, the old and unbelieving world, precisely in order that you might be pulled from the waters of death and planted within the ark of His resurrected body. For as the one just man, Noah, exited the ark after the flood, so the one just man, Christ, exited the ark of His tomb after the baptismal flood of crucifixion. And just as eight people lived through the ancient flood, so on the eighth day, Christ lived again, the new Adam who had come to undo the doing of the old Adam, and to re-genesis the world in the new creation of His Church.]

[Outside the ark there is only death, but within the ark of Christ’s body the Church, there is life, salvation, and hope for you. Like Noah, you have found grace in the eyes of the LORD for you have been found within that One who gives you true rest.]

By faith we believe that not only does he exist and reward those that seek him, but keeps all flesh, that humanity may meet Jesus, the true and better Noah, the way of salvation, the rescuer, the Ark of our redemption, protection from judgment, and anchor of eternal hope. 

We are in desperate need of an act of God to save us, and that’s exactly what we have in Christ. 

Wickedness is reckoned with by the atoning blood of Jesus. Righteousness is imputed to us from Christ. By his Spirit we go on living with eternal hope as we wait for his return to judge, to call due the wages of sin, all to be found either trusting in their own ability to be perfect OR in the covenant with the only One who is good, perfect as your Father is perfect. 

From this grace, this redemptive life, this story also shows us that the Lord uses flawed but obedient believers to build. To build the church as an ark to make known the rescue of Jesus. 

Even as the intentions of humanity only seem to be evil, we know One who sets his bow in the clouds and gives himself for us. 

Hebrews 13:20–21 “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, [21] equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (ESV)

“Indeed, glory to him forever and ever because he works in us what is pleasing in his sight. He doesn’t just watch, wait, and see if we’re going to mess up and annoy him or disappoint him; he works in us to do his will.” JP

We are in desperate need of an act of God to save us.

Covenant with Christ - Be honest about the reckoning for wickedness and how no matter how hard we try, our righteousness is not enough. Self-salvation projects can stop. Jesus has given himself for you. Look to him and believe. 

“In Jesus, the Seed descendant of Noah over whom the floods of divine judgment passed, this mercy was secured at the climax of all of human history (Eph. 1:10). It is available to all, then or today, who by faith call on the name of Lord and look to Christ.”

Build with Christ - Luke 24:46–48 “and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, [47] and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. [48] You are witnesses of these things.” (ESV)

Still stands. Proclaim forgiveness in his name. There is room at the table. 

The line anchors every scene, every story, encounter, generation pointing to the righteous One. 

The promise carries on, now a covenant that saves serves as the foundation for more to come, that this house may be filled. Oh that it would be so!