Covenant With Noah

Genesis 6-9; Hebrews 11

Amen. You can be seated. Turn
in your copy of the scriptures to Hebrews chapter 11. We’ll
read the first seven verses, which include the by faith of
Noah. So as we think about the covenant
God made with Noah, we add to Hebrews 11, our consideration
of Genesis 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. And those portions we read earlier. Before we read God’s word, let’s
look to him once more in prayer. Pray with me. Our Lord, without
eyes, we cannot see. Without ears, we cannot hear.
Without changed hearts, we cannot perceive and understand. And
so we pray by your spirit, you would grant us to understand
these eternal truths that are written for our instruction,
for our encouragement in our faith, and that are written to
point us to salvation through faith in our Savior Jesus Christ,
your dear son and our Lord, we pray in his mighty name. Amen.
This is God’s word from the letter to the Hebrews chapter 11, beginning
at verse one. Now, faith is the assurance of
things hoped for. the conviction of things not
seen. For by it, the people of old received their commendation.
By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the
word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that
are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God
a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended
as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And
through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith,
Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he
was not found because God had taken him. Now before he was
taken, he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith,
it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to
God must believe that he exists, that he rewards those who seek
him. 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. Amen. The word of the living
God for us. that God is gracious and does
not put Adam and Eve to death after they ate the forbidden
fruit is something we should wonder about. It is something
we should think on. It is something that ought to
cause us to say, what is wrong? God said, the day you eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the day you
eat of it, you will surely die. God had promised to put them
to death for the wages of sin is death. And it is the curse
that he pronounced. If you disobey me and eat, you
will surely die. This ought to show us God’s grace,
God’s love, God’s kindness, God’s forbearance. Instead of putting
them to death instantly, and we’ve seen in scripture, he can
open up the ground and swallow a rebellious people. He can strike
you dead with fire as he did with Nadab and Abihu. He can
take the breath from you. He can stop the heart. He can
do whatever it takes as the God of life and the God of death.
He can, he can do what it takes to execute the judgment, the
wages of sin. But instead we find in the scriptures
that he searched for Adam and Eve. He came looking for them.
Where are you? He called, he found them. He
took away their self-made coverings, their self-righteousness, and
he took the life of an animal. Blood was shed for shadowing
the coming of the Lord Jesus, who would give up his life, the
righteous for the sinner. And he put on them the skins
of animals and He did mete out the curses. He brought Satan
and Adam and Eve before him. And to Satan, he said, you’ll
crawl on your belly. You’ll eat the dust of the earth.
To Adam, he said, you will Work really hard, you’ll bust your
fingers and you’ll have very little to show for all your labor.
Thorns and thistles and cursed land will be your lot. He probably had some North Carolina
red clay in his garden, I’m sure, if you’ve tried to put something
in the ground. And to Eve, he said, you’ll have
marital strain. Your desire will be for your
husband, he will rule over you. You’ll have pain and childbearing.
pain in childbirth, but she also was given the gospel. We were
also given the gospel in the third chapter of Genesis. God
made a promise to Eve, your offspring and Satan’s offspring will have
this long cosmic battle. The offspring of Satan will nip
at the heel of your offspring, but your offspring will crush
his head. And of course, we know who the
head crusher is, that’s Jesus. He crushes the serpent’s head
at the cross and one day will come and put an end to death
and sin and darkness and even to the devil himself. But as God meted out these curses,
death was still on the table. They would live. They would live
a futile life, but they would also die. You read throughout
the book of Genesis and all the generations and so-and-so died
and so-and-so breathed his last and so-and-so went and rested
with their fathers. Yes, the wages of sin is death,
but that God in his grace and his mercy does not put Adam and
Eve or even us to death immediately for our sins is such a grace. God promised through Eve and
through her offspring that a child would come, a Messiah would come,
a Savior would come, a Redeemer would come. And so in their hardship,
in their futility, in their their guilt and the weight of God’s
judgment. They had glimmers of hope. In fact, right after the pronouncements
of the curses, Adam calls his wife Eve because she is the mother
of all the living. And so there is a future hope
for her and the children that she will bear in that great battle. In human history, follows right
after the fall. It follows right through the
offspring of Adam and Eve. There’s the godly line of Abel
and Seth. And then there’s the ungodly
line of Cain and all who come after. And of course, we can
read in the scriptures. We can read in the genealogies
of Jesus and Luke and in Matthew. You can trace Jesus, right on
back to Abraham, who was promised a seed, an offspring, who would
be a blessing to all. That’s Jesus. Galatians, the
book of Galatians tells us of that good news. And then you
can also trace Jesus all the way back to Adam. And so we have
in Christ our Savior, our Redeemer. Just a quick reminder of the
little skirmishes or battles along the way of the seed of
the serpent nipping at the heels of God’s godly offspring, but
ultimately the seed of the serpent being crushed by Christ. You
remember when Jesus was born and the wise men came and they
came to Jerusalem and inquired there in the palace with Herod,
where is he who was born King of the Jews? And it tells us
in the scripture, Herod was troubled. all Jerusalem with him. Here,
you know, he says to the wise men, find out where the baby
is and tell me so that I too may worship him. But he’s the
seed of the serpent, isn’t he? He wishes to kill him. And so
when he realizes the wise men have gone back to the east, they’ve
not swung by the palace and told him, where is the baby? They
were warned in a dream and left. He issues the decree where all
the children under a certain age, all the firstborn boys,
There was weeping in Ramah. There was the voices of mothers
bereft of their children. But God in his grace had told
Joseph in a dream, slip away to Egypt and there remain until
it is safe. And then the prophet Hosea’s
good word was fulfilled. Out of Egypt, I have called my
son. God had called his people out
of Egypt previously. Now his own son, his true son,
his obedient son had been called out of Egypt. And we get the
rest of the story of the Lord Jesus Christ. But back to Adam
and Eve. back to their life out of the
garden. Remember, they were banished
from the garden. They were exiled from God’s presence. The cherubim
with the spinning flaming sword was placed there at the entrance.
God said, lest they reenter the garden and take and eat of the
tree of life and live forever in sin. Again, God is merciful.
The wages of sin is death, but death is delayed. The grace of
God says you will not eat of the tree of life and live forever
stuck in sin. You know, when you’re little
and you’re making faces in the car or something, and there’s
the rule, you know, if you get smacked on the back, you’re stuck
that way. Right. Remember that? Yeah. We all believed
it. That’s the grace of God, isn’t
it? If they had gone back in the
garden and eaten, From the tree of life, they would have been
stuck that way. But God’s good grace says, no,
they will have a chance. They’ll have an opportunity through
my son to escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin. And that escape will come through
a redeemer, through God’s own son. Will Adam and Eve continue
to live outside the garden with the curses and the futility?
Romans chapter eight tells us. All creation is groaning under
the curses of the world, under the curses of sin. And the world,
the trees, the creation, the plants and the animals, they
all eagerly await the adoption of the sons of God. We sing at
Christmas, joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth
receiver King, he comes to make his blessings flow as far As
the curse is found, that curse is far reaching. It pervades
our whole mind and soul and body, but it reaches to the far ends
of the world. Maybe you’ve learned in science,
and I’ll probably get it wrong, is that the second law of thermodynamics,
the law of entropy, everything is decaying, everything is breaking
down. And, you know, we know this from
our prayer list, don’t we? We dub it the organ recital.
Not the musical organ, but we have weak hearts. We have broken
bodies. We have eyes that cannot see.
We have ears that cannot hear. We have aches and pains. You
go outside the body, we have sorrows and heartaches, relationally
and politically and all the rest. And we know exactly why. ungodly
line of Cain, the ungodly seed of the serpent versus the godly
line of Abel and Seth and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Seventh from Adam, I believe
it is, is the strange character Enoch. I think we mentioned his
name in our reading of Hebrews 11. Enoch walked with God. And God did not let him taste
death, but he took him. He was not, the scripture says,
because God took him. And so from the line of Adam
and Eve and through Abel and through Seth, you get folks like
Enoch. And then shortly after Enoch
comes Noah. But from Cain comes a long line
of ungodly people. There’s Lamech. There’s Lamech
that sings the song to his wife, his wives. Actually, there’s
polygamy and there’s all kinds of corruption on the face of
the earth by the time a few generations pass. And Lamech sings a little
song to his wives. If revenge on Cain is sevenfold,
if anyone touches me, Lamech, that revenge is 70 and 77 fold. And so we find in the ungodly
line of of Cain and Lamech and others. We find fratricide, brother
killing brother. We find that people are ostracized.
They are always looking over their shoulder, looking for one
who seeks revenge. We find them banished. We find them living in cities,
fortified cities, because they’re afraid. We find them in relationships,
multiple marriages, polygamy. We find intermarriage and then
we ultimately find the Tower of Babel where they say, come,
let us make a city for ourselves. And they’re building a tower
up to the top of the sky, to the top of the heavens. And so
the radical corruption that sin has brought on the world and
on mankind, the total depravity that reaches every part of our
body, we are broken. and thought and word and deed
and heart and speech and behavior. God’s hand is still at the helm
of history and God’s hand at the helm of history takes notice
of the city of man. He takes notice of Cain and Lamech
and Babel and Babylon. He takes notice of Sodom and
Gomorrah. He takes notice of our own nation today. He takes
notice of these things, but also his eyes on the city of God.
and people like Enoch and Noah and Abraham and like the city
of Jerusalem and his church on the face of this earth. Well,
shortly after Adam and Eve began to spread their family across
the face of the earth, spreading them across instead of in joy
and glory, like would have happened if they had remained happy, holy
and obedient in the garden, they’re spreading sin and futility and
hard, difficult things. How bad did things get? Well,
shortly after Cain killed Abel, things got really bad. And you
read that sobering Genesis 6, 4 verse. God looked on the face
of the earth and saw that the inclinations of the heart of
man were only evil continually. You know, we live in a world
where are pretty good for, you know, they’ll still help a little
old lady across the street, you know, the proverbial good deed.
And I’m not talking about Christians here, I’m talking about just
people in general. You know, we say sometimes they’re good
people, they’re salt to the earth. And then, you know, we get the
weirdos, the hardliners, we get the Jeffrey Dahmers, we get the
Adolf Hitlers, we get the Khrushchev’s and Saddam Hussein’s and whoever
else, they come along once in a blue moon. But God restrains
a lot of evil. He restrains and holds back much
more evil than could be. But these are sobering scriptures.
It got so, so, so bad. And God in Genesis, gives an
assessment. He saw the hearts of mankind
on the face of the earth and said, their hearts are full of
wickedness. That was his judgment. He sees,
he makes an assessment. He sees and he declares a judgment.
They are only wicked all the time, you could say. And so the
scripture tells us he was, he was grieved. He was grieved in
his heart. He was sorry that he had made
man. Now, I’m going to stop here just
a moment and make sure you understand something. Our confession of
faith, our scriptures tell us God is without passions. Okay. God does not change his mind.
God is the same. You’ll hear this next Sunday
from our fill-in preacher, Dr. Kira. Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday and forever. God cannot change. If God could
change, guess what? He would not be God. And so when
we read God was grieved, God was sorry, it wasn’t, he said,
you know, whoops, this garden thing didn’t work out. Whoops,
this Cain and Abel thing didn’t work out. I had no idea one was
going to knock the other one off. No, God is at the helm of
history. God is sovereign. God is in complete
control. If he were not, he would cease
to be God. And that would be a whole nother
bag of problems. But God was grieved at the generation
of Cain, the generation of Lamech, the generation of the sons of
men on the earth who were only evil continually. And so he made
a decision, I will blot them out. I will blot them out off
the face of the earth. Every man, every animal, every
creeping thing, every bird that has breath in its body. Now think
about that. Who gave breath? It was God who breathed life,
breathed breath into Adam and he became a living creature.
And so God decides, I’m going to take it away. And, and he
does so through a worldwide flood. But we think of his covenant
of grace. We think of God’s promise to Adam and to Eve back in chapter
three, verse 15. And you, you may say in your
mind, you may be saying in your heart, but, but God, you cannot
wipe off the earth. Every man, you’ve got to leave
a remnant. You’ve got to leave one who is righteous. You’ve
got to leave one so that from him on down the line, Jesus can
come. Jesus can be born. And so in God’s grace, there’s
Noah. And the scripture simply says
Noah found favor in the sight of God. Noah found Grace in the
sight of God. When Noah was born, it was said
in the genealogy of his birth, by his parents, out of the ground
that the Lord has cursed. Perhaps Noah, this son of ours,
will give us rest. This one shall bring us relief. And what does the scripture tell
us of Noah? He was righteous. He was blameless. He walked with
God. What does that mean? He never
disobeyed God? No, that’s not possible. He was
Adam’s offspring born with original sin, with original unrighteousness.
But his heart was to the Lord. His heart was devoted to the
things of God. God took notice just as he took
notice with Enoch. just as he took notice with Abraham. But these had faith. That’s what
Hebrews tell us. They had faith in God. And without faith, it is impossible
to please God. It’s impossible to find favor
with God. And so Noah, the righteous one
in that generation, would be given the grace of God. And for, what, a hundred years?
A hundred years, he would cut wood and gather wood and hammer
and nail and Make pegs and build the multi-decked ark. Maybe some of you have been up
to Kentucky. You’ve seen the Answers in Genesis replica of
the ark. Supposedly it’s 50 cubits and
whatever, 400 cubits, all the right things. You’ve been there,
and it’s overwhelming. And you see it, and the world
mocks it. Remember when that thing was
built several years back? All the headlines in all the
major newspapers. What are these folks thinking?
Well, it’s really no different than a cross, is it? It’s a means
of salvation for one man, his three sons, and for the animals
of all the earth. And so for a hundred years, Carpenter
Noah was also a preacher of righteousness. That’s what Peter tells us. Noah
was a preacher of righteousness. Jesus tells us that this generation
He was speaking of his day, but I think we could hold it to now. This generation is like the generation
of Noah. They’re eating, they’re drinking,
they’re growing, they’re planting, they’re harvesting, they’re building.
They’re doing all the things people do on the face of the
earth. And then all of a sudden the rains come and judgment sweeps
them away. Yet he was gracious and gave
them a preacher. And it’s the same now, isn’t
it? You know, we’re not hammering. Well, actually we are next door,
aren’t we? We’re sort of building an arc. People drive by here.
What is this thing? Well, it’s the place where we
preach Jesus. It’s the place where we proclaim salvation for
those who hide themselves in the cleft of the almighty and
his son. Well, we’re told that the rains
came down and, you know, we sing the little song and the floods
came up. It wasn’t just that it rained. It was that the earth
opened as well. And the earth was flooded over
40 days, 40 nights from top to bottom. And it rose above the
highest peak. Now, I’m a little fuzzy on how
all this works, but I did the math one time and thought, okay,
the tallest mountain in the world is what, 30,000 feet? The rain
went up above that. So that’s how deep this flood
was. But then I’m hanging around with my young earth creationist
folks and they say, well, before the flood, the earth was more
habitable, but because God never would have made an earth that
wasn’t habitable. And so the flood is what caused
all this. upheaval, you might say. Don’t know how all that
works. But it was a lot of water, and
it was a destructive water. This past spring, I made my second
trip through the Grand Canyon, the first trip I went years ago
with my dad, and this year I got to take Patrick, and we went
with a group of Christians who were studying the geology of
the canyon. It exposes seven or eight layers. And if you go on up into Utah,
the Grand Staircase, you can see, I don’t know, close to 20
layers of the earth and you can study its formation and all the
rest. And the idea is that as the floodwaters on the face of
the earth were swirling and in typhoons and hurricanes and God
forced winds, that this water did utter devastation, not only
taking out the life that was in the nostrils of man and beast,
but it really shook up the earth in a mighty and cataclysmic way. And that as the water subsided,
all that rushing water just riveted up the earth. And so we have
things like Green Canyon, and there are the skeptics. Oh, that
couldn’t be. Well, Mount St. Helens erupted. you know, not
too many years ago and the path of its lava did exactly what
the water did after the flood to Grand Canyon. I think a dam
broke, gave way in Oregon not too many years ago. And when
that sudden rush of water went through the land of Oregon and
everywhere else below where that dam had once stood, it did the
exact same thing. And so you cruise through the
Grand Canyon on the Colorado River and you’re looking up at
5,000 feet of devastation. And you begin to realize God
is very merciful. God is very gracious. And we
think of Jesus sweating droplets of blood on the night he was
betrayed, on the night he had Passover with his disciples.
And, you know, we think, oh, he was sweating the nails. He
was sweating the crown of thorns. He was sweating the spear in
his side. He was sweating the scourge, the 40 lashes lest one. He was sweating the beatings
and the spitting and the taunting. No, he was sweating the wrath
of God. And he was in heaven and witnessed
the flood, don’t you know? And he knew what the unmitigated
wrath of God for sin, for the inclinations of hearts. And on
the next day, he who knew no sin, would be made sin and experienced
the wrath of God. That’s why he was sweating blood.
God would forsake him. God would pour out his wrath. But we come to a passage like
this and God remembers Noah. He was preserved in the ark and
the wind blew and the waters on the earth subsided. The rain
ceased. The God of nature You know, our
second song this morning was God, all nature sings thy glory. And one of the reasons I stuck
that in is we need to remember when the wind blows and the trees
topple and the lightning strikes or when our mountains experience
localized flooding, we need to remember that it is God who makes
the wind blow, the rains come and storms cease. We see that
in the life of Jesus and the storm and the boat on the Sea
of Galilee. It is he who can calm the wind.
and the waves for he is the one who spoke and these things came
to be. But the God of grace, the God
of nature, the God of glory comes to Noah and his family and says,
come out of the ark, bring out of the ark all your family. And
he gives them the Adam commands. Creation is starting over, isn’t
it? Go, be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth, you and the
animals. But first, Noah builds an altar.
Noah offers burnt offerings on that altar and the aroma rises
up into the heavens to God. And God makes the covenant promise. We call the covenant with Noah. And he says, I will never again
curse the ground. I will neither strike down every
living creature while the earth remains. Seed time and harvest. cold and heat, summer and winter,
day and night, these things shall not cease. Now you bump over
to chapter nine and verses eight through 17, you read of the sign
of God’s covenant with Noah. It’s the rainbow, which as we
so well know today has been hijacked. I’m a frequent reader of the
Babylon Bee. Their slogan is fake news you
can trust. It’s a satire website, but every summer, Pride Month,
they say, look at American culture. It’s celebrating that God has
hung his bow in the sky and never again will flood the earth. Well,
that’s not what they mean, is it? Oh, it’s about pride and
all the rest. And very ironic, isn’t it? For
that pride is what got the floodwaters to rise. And so God promises,
I will never again curse the ground. I’ll never again strike
down every living creature. Neither will I flood the earth
again with such a great deluge. Now, the covenant that God makes
with Noah here, this is a very broad covenant. It’s one that
we often call a covenant of common grace. Jesus explains it this
way. He says the rain falls on the
just. and the unjust, wouldn’t it be
cool? This is a weird thought. Wouldn’t it be cool if you were
wanting to evangelize your neighbors and you wanted to know who saved
and who didn’t? I mean, you can’t know that, right? But what if
when it rained, you went out and said, well, it’s not raining
on their house. I’ll have to knock on their door at seven
o’clock tonight. You know, I’m sort of making a funny. We live
in this world where God is gracious to all. God sends blessings of
the economy and crops. Innovations in medicine to the
just and the unjust. God is such a great God. He sends
cold and heat. He sends the seasons, winter
and summer. He sends day and night. These
things will not cease. Now, I’ve already said a political
thing or two, haven’t I? Little jokes. Global warming. A nuclear holocaust. Who’s the
little girl? She’s a woman now, Greta Thunberg. I think we’ve run out of a few
of her prophecies. But, you know, you hear these things and this
is how we should interpret this as Christians. The world is not
going to end until Jesus comes. That’s just flat it. That’s what
the Bible says. We believe it. And yes, the earth
is groaning under its curses and even under the hardships
man puts it under. But God is at the helm, remember.
And history will not end with a nuclear holocaust. It will
end with Jesus coming in judgment. It will end with the ushering
in of a new heavens and a new earth and the old earth passing
away. And of course, we should be good
stewards of the earth, Christians first and foremost. are called
in the book of Genesis to dress the earth and keep it, to work
and to protect and be fruitful with land and resources as well. But God has given this common
grace, this covenant with Noah to all people. And it’s such
a great blessing. And you say, well, God can’t
do that. Well, think about this. Who on the ark gets cursed? Is it Shem, Ham or Japheth? Remember
it’s Ham. Cursed be Ham. And so maybe you
say, well, why did he even get in the ark? They should have
been, you know, walking up the gangplank and Noah should have
said, okay, Shem, you get in and Japheth, you get in. But
Ham, you’re going to do something bad later when we get out of
the ark and God’s going to curse you. So you just need to go ahead
and die. No, that’s not how it works. And very often God’s grace,
not his saving grace, but his, Providence, His goodness in the
earth is given to others. And so the natural world we live
in, its natural order, its blessings and its provision are seen by
all, perhaps not acknowledged by many, but they are enjoyed
by all. You know, in recent years, we’ve
had a lot of Supreme Court justices You know, they get grilled. What
do you believe? What’s your view of the constitution? What’s your
view of the law? And I don’t know if you can remember back
to Clarence Thomas, that was a doozy too, wasn’t it? And our current
president, Joe Biden, confronted Clarence Thomas and said, oh,
you believe in natural law. And this passage explains it,
doesn’t it? There’s seed time, there’s harvest, there’s day
and there’s night, there’s seasons. And there are things that God
builds into this universe that are just, it’s just the way things
are. You can’t deny gravity. I’m told one person once tried
to deny gravity. They jumped off the Empire State
Building and they were an atheist. And you know what they said on
the way down? So far, so good, right? But they met gravity at
the end. And that’s a grim reminder, isn’t
it? That natural law is there. Or
what about the moral law written in our hearts? Oh, there’s no
such thing as absolute truth. I loved how R.C. Sproul quipped,
if you want to teach someone there’s absolute truth, who says
there is no absolute truth, steal their wallet. All of a sudden,
they’ll get a moral compass. That’s mine. Right. And so the
blessing of God on the earth through Noah and through his
faith and through his offering that was pleasing is that this
world stage will prevail until Jesus will come in the fullness
of time. And he did come in the fullness of time and on a real
piece of real estate. He suffered and died in our place.
And he’s going to come back again on this grand stage of creation. And the drama of redemption will
culminate. It will end in the fullness of
time yet again in judgment and in the exoneration of the righteous.
And every eye will see Jesus, the offspring of Eve. Every eye
will look upon the Christ, the son of Abraham. Every eye will
look upon the one they pierced. And all of Noah’s sermons, all
of the sermons of every preacher throughout the age will be proven
to be true, that Jesus is a saving God and he is a judging God.
But the question is, are you a child of Cain? Are you a child
of Noah by faith? Think on that this Christmas
season and make sure you know well the answer. Let’s look to
God now in prayer. Our God, we thank you for showing
us the great contrast of wickedness and righteousness, of threats
of death, yet the riches of grace. May these things be a delight
to us as we reflect on the coming of Jesus, the great Serpent Slayer. Come, Lord Jesus, come soon and
crush the serpent’s head and put an end to all these things.
This we ask in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.