Genesis #7: The Beginning - Covenant & Rebellion

If you saw any of the presidential debate this week it was like an episode of Jerry Springer. You may not know who Jerry Springer is, but it’s a reality TV talk show where he invites people on who have had affairs, or taken advantage of someone, ridiculous relationships where all they do is argue and eventually someone picks up a chair to hit the other person with it… Dysfunctional relationships are like NASCAR races… we love to watch them because hey always wind up in a crash.

Today’s text from Genesis is a family story right off Jerry Springer.

It’s set up by a great story of salvation and promise. That’s how it works on the show as I remember… it always began with a picture that gave you a little hope...

Last week we saw Noah get off the ark after a year. Nine months of the flood followed by three months of waiting God calls Noah and the animals come out.

Noah’s first move is to worship God. Praising him for his salvation.

When God is faithful to save us, we worship.

I know this is the way it was for me when I came to Christ. When I felt that God had changed me, all I wanted to do was praise him… worship him… spend time with him.

I imagine that’s how Noah felt.

And God noticed.

And that leads us to our text today in Genesis chapter 9.

Here we find a deeper discussion of this covenant as well as a glimpse at life in the family of Noah as they live into this new covenant relationship.

Covenant: Genesis 9:1-17

But first the covenant.

What is a covenant?

A covenant is an agreement between parties think of a contract or a treaty. Each party has things that they are responsible for… obligations as it were.

We think of an agreement like this as something that gets negotiated. But with God, remember God is sovereign, he alone is God, he alone gets to judge.

Several years ago I sold a business and when I did I got to negotiate the terms of the deal. We agreed on the terms then signed the papers. Years later, the buyer came to me and wanted to change the terms of the deal… to renegotiate.

We don’t get to negotiate or renegotiate covenants with God. God offers himself to us in a covenant relationship… we can accept it or reject it.

This is amazing because God recognizes that the heart of man is a problem… remember

Genesis 6:5 NIV

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

That hasn’t changed. Destruction of creation hasn’t changed man, but the flood and Noah’s reaction to it does seem to have brought a change in God's way of dealing with us.

Genesis 8:21 NIV

The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

So God offers himself into a covenant agreement with humanity again.

Let’s look:

Genesis 9:1–2 NIV

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands.

You see that… the first thing God does is bless Noah’s sons to be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. Sounds like words used from back in chapter 2 right. You see, Creation is getting a fresh start.

But things are different this time. Now in this restart, Man still has dominion over the animals, but creations design is broken. So God institutes a division between creation and man.

God gives animals a fear of man. Man, who has authority over them. Without this, we would be at risk of being destroyed by nature again… not a flood but by carnivores. Bears, tigers, lions. Can you imagine the world if we were the hunted rather than the hunter?

God’s plan for us was to have dominion over creation… and now that creation was broken… cursed from Adam… God moved to protect humanity again from the punishment brought about for their rebellion. This time by inspiring fear in them.

But this fear was part of a great blessing. A blessing we find in verse 3

Genesis 9:3–4 NIV

Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.

We get permission to eat meat!

Up till this point they were given fruit and vegies to eat… Now I love a good salad… I love that my wife will load up on it and leave me more steak.

In fact, we should have more vegetarians, more steak for the rest of us is the way I look at it.

That’s just how I see it.

And God here says, not only do you have dominion over all creation, but it is for you to use as food… Except God says we should respect the source of life, blood.

Blood is to be guarded because life is so valuable, so special, even the life of an animal that you have dominion over. Life is precious. Of course we know this because we get attached to those things we call pets. Some of us treat them like a member of the family.

It’s hunting season and any hunter you talk to will tell you that hunting forces you to develop an appreciation for life.

While we have dominion over creation, that dominion is limited by the sanctity of life, which God will model by this covenant.

And if the lifeblood of animals calls us to bring caution… the blood of men and women is even more demanding of our respect if we are to remain in alignment with God in this new relationship

Genesis 9:5–6 NIV

And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

For many, these verses have been understood by many to give permission to practice capital punishment in response to murder. In fact, later in the Law given in Exodus and Deuteronomy, this passage is sited. That if an animal takes th elife of a human, it’s life is demanded. If you take the life of an innocent, someone else is going to take your life. In the context of a covenant, it is a promise. If you read it this way, God has ordained a punishment for murder… but that’s not the only way to read it.

Others see it as completely opposite. They read it as a cycle. “A” kills “B”, you can expect that “C” is going to get revenge for what “A” did to “B”… a cycle of revenge and death ensues… all the while it is God alone who has authority to demand an accounting for each of his image bearers.

Which one is right? Which is it? Is it God alone or Is capital punishment allowable? Is there any justification for taking a life?

A lot of questions for us to work out, faithful Christians come to different understandings here, but one thing is for sure, God values life all life and wants us to do so as well. Choosing life is not a matter of convenience or a matter for debate.

Christians I believe are called to defend all life, especially but not limited to the innocent. I hate to get political here but that applies to infants in the womb as much as it does immigrants at the border. It applies to convicts on death row as much as it does the infirmed at the end of life. We value life period because every life is an image bearer of God.

Here we see the covenant laid out

Genesis 9:8–17 NIV

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

“Never again”

We don’t know if there had been rainbows before. But what we do know is that from this point on, the rainbow is a sign of a promise of a covenant relationship where God promises not to bring destruction by flood.

Now, i’m not sure how the rainbow got co-opted by the LGBTQ community… but for the Christian, it is a reminder of God’s grace… It’s not a celebration of who we are… it’s a reminder to be thankful that God is who God is. That even when we are as sinful as we are. Even when we live in rebellion, the rainbow tells us that God is graceful, that he has promised to never again destroy creation because of our sinfulness.

God says I won’t give them what they deserve because of my promise.

Remember I said at the beginning:

When God is faithful to save us from destruction, we worship him.

But when God is faithful to not destroy us, we ignore him.

That’s how I see the use of the rainbow to say I’m perfect just like I am because I say so.

That’s the condition of the human heart… That heart didn’t change with the flood, the only thing that changed was God’s way of dealing with us.

That’s why God being faithful is so amazing and should lead us to praise every time we see the rainbow in the sky.

Instead we see Noah and his sons get bored with God’s faithfulness.

He slips into Rebellion

Rebellion Genesis 9:18-29

Join me in verse 18 as we begin to look at life under this new covenant, let me remind you what’s happening here.

Noah isn’t writing this down.

It’s being recorded several hundred years later. These stories of life and creation have been passed down from generation to generation… while the people who lived it are still around because they lived so long. Noah was around a long time to tell these stories to his great, great, great, great grand kids… Tell that story again grandpa

But after many many years, a man whose name isn’t even in the book of Genesis, is called to write all this down for the people of Israel. Moses - records this all while he leads the Israelites through the desert so the people of God will know their relationship with the God of creation.

Now as we will see these Israelite's have all kinds of problems with various nations around them. Still do to this day even… One of those nations has been the Canaanites. We will talk about these more later, but Moses is writing down their history and in the history, he records the source of their problem with the Canaanites… it goes back to the family of Noah.

That’s been a common thread so far. all these problems trace their history back to family problems.

This goes to show the importance of leading our families well. Handling conflict well, addressing sin, forgiving one another, treating our family with respect.

Look what happened as they began to live under this covenant.

Now I have to say, when we think of Noah we usually think of how we saw him last week, one who walks with God, right. We think of Noah as a man of great faith, faith to build a huge ship while living 1000 miles from the ocean, faith to work for 50 years building something that no one had built before.

Noah walked with God… but he wasn’t prefect.

God is faithful. We are not.

That may be a word of encouragement for some of us. You can walk with the lord and not live a perfect life… but what it means is that when you walk with the Lord you are better able to recognize God at work in the events of your life.

Genesis 9:18–21 NIV

The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth. Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.

He grew him some grapes, figured out how to make wine and got drunk.

Now we as Methodists have a history with alcohol. In fact it was the Methodists, particularly Methodist women who led the temperance movement. That was the movement in the early 1900’s that actually got alcohol outlawed from 1920-33.

This wasn’t always the position of the church. Early monks were known to be brew masters. It was a way to make sure they had something trustworthy to drink.

Beer and wine have been a part of life in the church for years. But there came a time when alcohol became less a source of reliable fluids to a means for drunkenness, and Methodists have long held that the holiness of God didn’t include alcohol.

In fact, since alcohol and drugs brought nothing good into your life clergy have taught that they were best left out.

It’s hard to argue that from Noah’s life. The Bible doesn’t forbid consumption of alcohol, but it does clearly teach that drunkenness is a sin and foolish. But for those who do or have been known to drink, you know as well as I do that it’s hard to know when to stop.

So here we have Noah, getting drunk, strips naked and passes out in his bed. Noah’s sin… getting drunk. And as we will see sin has consequences. When we sin, things happen. Sometimes our sin put into motion things we would never want to happen… but they do anyway.

I told you this sounds like a Jerry Springer episode… some of you didn’t believe me.

Here’s where it gets weird:

Genesis 9:22 NIV

Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside.

The words “saw his nakedness” is a phrase in Hebrew that holds a lot of innuendo.

There is much debate in what exactly is going on here.

It is agreed upon by Hebrew scholars that this refers to some sort of sexual sin. That’s how the phrase is used in other places in scripture.

Some think Saw his nakedness refers to Ham seeing or having sex with his mother… His mother being his “father’s nakedness”.

Others have said it referred to Ham doing something sexual with his dad while he was passed out.... homosexuality of some sort.

Others have said it was Noah who was doing something and Ham walked in and watched

We don’t know exactly what is going on here. What we do know is how his brothers responded when they found out.

Genesis 9:23 NIV

But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.

Again we don't know what Ham did, but we do know he didn’t show his father this sort of honor that his brothers did - walking in backwards holding his robe up to block their vision.

Eventually Noah woke up and in his hangover, he curses the generations to follow Ham

Genesis 9:25–27 NLT

Then he cursed Canaan, the son of Ham: “May Canaan be cursed! May he be the lowest of servants to his relatives.” Then Noah said, “May the Lord, the God of Shem, be blessed, and may Canaan be his servant! May God expand the territory of Japheth! May Japheth share the prosperity of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant.”

Now from what I studied, this curse of Noah wasn’t a curse like a curse from God. But what Noah was doing was saying that this you did to me would effect everything from now on. It would become a curse for your son Canaan.

In the same way that God’s curse on Cain became a reality in the lives of Lamech as we talked about a few weeks ago.

From this point on Ham’s son would be in conflict with his family. It came as a direct result of Ham’s lack of respect and honor for his father Noah.

Well that may explain why the Israelites, the ancestors of - Shem - had such problems with the Canaanites and all the other tribes of Ham’s ancestors...

This event also explains a few other things.

Like how our lack of honor for our heavenly father has ramifications for generations. it’s not a Generational curse as though God is mandating it, but it is a generational curse because it just comes natural.

God is faithful, even when we aren’t

Like I heard a man in prison tell me, outlawing is our family business.

We all inherited a tendency to dishonor our heavenly father. We learned it right from the beginning.

that’s what we in the church need to understand. While we may have grown up in church, we still have a heart like Noah. Only by the grace of God are we changed.

Not everyone grew up going to church. not everyone grew up knowing Jesus. In fact many grew up in homes in lifestyles that were dishonoring to God… families where drunkenness was the norm. Where sex was not to be reserved for a husband and a wife, but was used for power and control. Where selfishness and pride were the standard, as opposed to humility and sacrifice.

It might be hard for us to understand that life.

But, can I be real with you for a moment. If we are to have a prayer at reaching the next generation, we need to start getting patient with people who did.

The reality is, we may be a little to comfortable with our salvation. we may be strating to walk aroudn like noah… think I’ll learn about this grape thing I remember my dad talking about.

Before youknow it we are squishing them, fermenting them, who knows what comes next for us? Noah didn’t I assure you.

Our salvation is a gift, seeing God at work in the lives of our neighbors is a gift. Lte us not forget jsut how precious this calling we have is.

God is faithful, even when we aren’t… how do you respond to that today?s