Grace, Blessing, Covenant

Introduction

Put your hand up if you think life is easy? Now put your hand up if you think life is hard?

Although there is fun and joy in life, the reality is life can be really messy, challenging, and difficult! And if you haven’t experienced the messinness of life yet, just wait until you get older. There are challenges in our lives with work, school, relationships, with our parents, health, church, and so many other things.

And if you think your life is messy and hard, think about how Noah felt! What we saw last week is Noah getting out of the ark, and he entered a world that had been entirely destroyed. God had flooded the earth, and all life, except Noah, his family, and the animals he had on board, had been destroyed. If that’s not messy, I don’t know what is.

But what is the original design of creation? What was the original design for mankind when God created Adam and Eve in the garden? God created Adam and Eve in His image to be in a personal, loving, committed relationship with Him, and as part of that relationship, God desired to richly bless His creation and enjoy one another for the rest of eternity - that’s what the tree of life in the garden represented!

But when Adam and Eve ate from the tree, that original design for mankind was broken, and rather than entering into God’s blessing, they entered into His curse.

But today’s passage shows us that God’s intention for creation has not been broken. In today’s passage, we see God restoring creation, starting fresh again in Noah, giving him the same blessings and commands as He did to Adam and Eve. Even in the face of sin, He does not abandon creation, but is fully committed to renewing and restoring His original design and intention of creating us - of being in an eternal loving personal relationship with us, and richly bless us as His creation. So let’s look at today’s passage to see how God restores us.

Let’s read Genesis 8:20–9:17.

Grace (8:20-22)

So we first see that God restores his Creation, renews us, with grace.

Read Genesis 8:21–22 “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.””

What is God’s reaction to humanity here? It is one of grace. If we read verse 21, it says ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’ The wording of that is quite strange isn’t it? It almost sounds like God is saying He won’t destroy mankind again because mankind is so evil. But that’s not what the verse is saying. This verse is showing us that sin contaminates and controls us. Even though we may look at young babies and children and look at how innocent they are, the Bible tells us that we are sinful even as children. Sin is an enslaving and oppressive power that affects all humans, and it makes us evil. Not even a great act of judgement of a great flood will get rid of that.

But God is saying despite this, He will continue to pursue and save us, even though we are evil, right from our youth. Humanity will continue as he promises he won’t bring about another great flood to destroy all things. All things will continue, even though we do evil things, until God brings about a new heavens and a new earth.

Blessing (9:1-7)

We also see another way of how he restores creation, and that’s with blessing.

We see God blessing Noah with the very same blessing that He gave to Adam and Eve. He is restoring Noah, Noah is like the second Adam, God is starting a new beginning in Noah for a new humanity, so that mankind can once again be in a state of perfect bliss and perfect relationship with Him. Read Genesis 9:1 “1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

Doesn’t this sound familiar? This is the exact command that God first gave Adam and Eve, to multiply and fill the earth, and rule the earth as God’s direct representatives in earth. God is blessing Noah, to multiply, and rule over the earth. This was the original picture of creation seen in Adam and Eve, that God is restoring Noah to.

But then we get a change - read Genesis 9:2–3 “2 The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.”

In Genesis 1-2, God gave us all the plants as food, and animals and humans were at peace with one another. Essentially, creation was originally meant to be vegetarian. But we see a change here, where animals now fear mankind, and God now allows us to eat not only plants, but also animals.

In one sense, this is representative of the violence and sin that had now entered into humanity.

But in another sense, God allowing mankind to eat animals is another blessing. It shows God’s committment to preserve us, to keep us alive, as part of his plan restore us into that original design of creation. Even though we are murderous, violent, and sinful, God still provides for us, giving us the food we need to preserve and protect us.

But probably the greatest blessing is life itself. We see the preciousness of life, and the life that God blesses us with in the next few verses - read Genesis 9:4–6 “4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. 6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

God says to Noah that He must not eat any animal with its blood still in it. And the reason is because in the OT, blood was representative of life itself, and only God is the giver of life. So God prohibits the OT believers from eating the blood of animals, as the blood was considered sacred and precious, symbolic of the gift of life that only God can give.

In this passage, God also says whoever kills a man, must be executed - capital punishment. And the reason for that is ‘for God made man in his own image.’ Just like how the blood of animals is to be respected as God-given life, human blood and life must be respected even more. According to this verse, animal blood can be shed but not eaten; however, human blood must not be shed at all. Human blood is considered so precious that anyone who murders another person, must receive death as punishment.

And the reason for greater preciousness of human life over animal life, is because unlike animals, humans are made in the image of God. Killing another human, spilling the God-given life of another human being, is not only a sin against the other person, but to God himself. Only God has the power over life and death over humans - murder is destroying the most prized and most valued part of God’s creation as we are created in His image. It is taking the place of God himself.

So this precious God-given life that we have been blessed with is why this verse commands that someone who takes the life of another must also be killed. This is how precious your life is - it is a gift from God, that no one else is allowed to take.

This preciousness and the God-given nature of life is precisely why Christianity condemns not only murder, but things like suicide, abortion, and euthanasia.

So always remember, you are the peak, the most prized part of God’s creation - the very life you have has value and worth, not because of your achievements or who you are, but because you are made in God’s image. You are valuable, because God made you valuable.

Covenant (9:8-17)

Lastly, we see God restoring his creation through covenant. Read Genesis 9:8–9 “8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you,”

What is a covenant? A covenant is not like a business contract where each party must meet certain terms and conditions. A covenant is the very way God has chosen to relate to His creation. The best example of a covenant is marriage: when a husband and wife get married, they enter into a covenant with one another - there is love and committment towards one another, and with that are certain conditions in that relationship. Within that loving and committed relationship, the husband and wife swear to be faithful to one another, they swear to stay with to each other even if one of them is sick. So a loving committed relationship, inherently comes with certain criteria and requirements from both parties.

Here we see God is also entering into covenant with Noah - remember, covenant is the very way that God relates to His creation. But this covenant is slightly different, because there is no requirement from Noah - God doesn’t demand or command anything from Noah, and rather He makes a promise that He alone will fulfill. This covenant is unconditional. And as a sign of this promise, God sets a rainbow to be a reminder to all, of this covenant that God has made to us - Read Genesis 9:13 “13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”

What’s interesting about the rainbow is that the original Hebrew word for rainbow is the same word used for a bow and arrow, a weapon.

And when you think of a rainbow, notice the direction of the bow is facing upwards - with a bow in the orientation of a rainbow, if you shot an arrow, it would shoot upwards. This is God saying that if he was to break His promise, it would be the same as a bow shooting upwards and killing God. God is essenetially saying He will put his life on the line to make sure His promise of saving us and restoring us will come true. But God cannot put His life on the line because He cannot die, and also God cannot lie. So in effect, this is God making a 100% guarantee that He will restore us, with no requirement from us at all.

And what does the covenant of the rainbow ultimately point to? It points to the new covenant of the New Testament, which is the covenant that Jesus brought about by His own blood. Even though we are sinful, God gave us the free gift of His Son dying on the cross, so that although we were once enemies of God, by the blood of Christ we are now brought back to Him and made His children. So the restoration of Noah points forward to the ultimate restoration that God has already achieved in us through the blood of Christ. We have already been restored into perfect relationship with our Father in Heaven.

Conclusion

So what does this mean for our lives? It means that even though our lives may look messy and difficult, we can always find hope and comfort in the fact that God has already restoring us back to himself. Even though we are undeserving of it, God is completely committed, and deeply desires, to bless us and love us; rescuing us from the effects of sin, suffering in this world. That’s his original design for us. That’s our final goal. This is what we can look forward to and never lose hope.

The restoration that God offers is not only something that we wait for at the end of time when God brings around the new heavens and the new earth, but we can already begin to enjoy it today because of what Jesus has achieved for us on the cross. Our relationship with God has already been restored and renewed. God has already begun to bless us, love us, transform us, into that original design that He had when He first created us. So whenever our lives look messy, difficult, full of challenges and imperfections, find hope in the fact that God has already begun to restore you into perfection, and we also find hope that one day, we will be completely perfect when Christ returns and brings about the new creation.

Opening song: How Great Is Our God

Closing song: Still (Hillsong)

Study questions:

How is God’s grace shown in the passage today?

God desires to bless His creation. What blessings do you have in your life?

God shows that He is completely committed to His creation, shown by His rainbow. Does this bring comfort to your life?