Scripture reading: Palm 25:1-9.
Sermon text: Genesis 9:8-17.
Imagine opening the door of your home and seeing nothing familiar: The trees you’ve seen for decades have vanished, the homes next door have disappeared. It’s as if nothing you knew before ever really existed. All the familiar landmarks you’ve used to guide you are gone. Nothing is the same.
Where do you turn for help? On whom can you call? Does anything remain to anchor your life when all you’ve known fades into a memory?
If you can imagine this, you can imagine the reaction of Noah and his family as they stepped from the ark. A barren, unfamiliar landscape greeted them. Everything they knew before they entered the ark was swept away by the Great Flood. They opened the door of the ark to a new world — and nothing but what they possessed in the ark to help them reclaim it.
However, Noah possessed something priceless: A relationship with Almighty God, the God who had created the world and then had shown him grace when all humanity rebelled against its Creator (Genesis 6:8). God had remembered Noah through the 370-day trial of the ark. God had provided for Noah every day of that time, and God would now provide for Noah and his family. Even better — as He so frequently does in our lives — God went beyond merely providing for this family; He gave them an everlasting covenant, the covenant in the sermon text today.
Does the covenant between God and Noah mean anything to us today? Does the covenant give us any hope? Lent reminds us that, again, God would transcend the mere human interpretation of this covenant to provide for His creation yet again. God would go beyond a simple promise not to destroy the world with water; with the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, God would redeem the world and every person who will confess Jesus as Lord, believing in His resurrection. As God brought life back to an empty planet, Jesus brought spiritual, eternal life to all who believe in Him.
The story of God’s eternal covenant with Noah actually begins in chapter 8 verse 1, where Moses recorded, “God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark.” The verb for “remember” doesn’t mean that God had forgotten Noah and his companions in the ark. Rather, the Hebrew verb for “remember” carries the added implication of acting on the object or idea remembered. The time had come for God’s judgment to end and for the new era to begin. God began preparing the world for a second chance under Noah’s family by causing the waters to recede.
This took time; a world-wide flood doesn’t simply evaporate overnight. At the end of the period, Noah and his family opened the ark’s door and found themselves “on the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4). I should note that the Hebrew text and most English translations emphasize the plural of the mountains, not a single mountain called Ararat. The land of Ararat was well known to the ancients as it lay in the Assyrian Empire, one of the mightiest empires and one of the longest to survive in history.
How far had Noah traveled? We don’t know the location of his starting point. The ark had floated for over a year. Regardless, a year at the bottom of the ocean would have changed everything. Nothing familiar greeted Noah and his family.
This didn’t matter. Noah still knew what he had to do. Genesis 8:20 tells us, “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.” Noah’s first act on the new world was an act of worship and praise to God, His redeemer from the penalty of humanity’s sin.
Noah’s praise led God to remove the curse from the ground caused by Adam’s sin (cf. Genesis 3:17-19); from this point in history, humanity would find fertile ground almost everywhere we settled. God also gave animals a “fear and dread” of humanity (9:2). After spending a year with Noah’s family, the carnivores on the ark would have come to rely on humans for food; now they would return to their true animal natures, making them dangerous to the small group of survivors.
God also blessed Noah’s family, telling them to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (9:1). The entire earth lay before them, ready for human habitation. Within only a few generations, at least 70 nations would descend from Noah’s sons (cf. Genesis 10).
God then gave Noah and his family a “covenant” (9:9) that He would “never again” destroy all life on earth with a flood (9:11). We can see the reason for this promise. Genesis 2:5-6 tells us that it never rained before the Flood; “a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground.” Noah and his family saw rain, for the first time when the Flood began. Without God’s covenant, every rain shower would evoke panic from the Flood’s survivors.
God also knew that Noah and his family would need a reminder of the covenant. The promise that God would never again destroy the earth with a flood did not imply that floods would never again occur. We’ve all seen evidence of mighty floods in our lifetimes. I remember flying into St. Louis in September of 1993, after the Mississippi River had destroyed thousands of square miles of farmland and cities that summer. I remember looking out the plane window and seeing roads disappear into the river, and I’ll never forget the afternoon that week that I worked in a flood recovery project. However, the media often recorded pictures of rainbows during the storms that preceded the 1993 floods. The rainbow stands as proof that God will abide by His covenant with humanity. Floods have wrought misery on humanity for centuries, but never again has a flood threatened to wipe us from the earth.
Does this mean anything for us today? I touched on a major connection with us earlier with another event in which a Survivor emerged from a life-changing encounter.
God’s sparing of Noah and His sons did not bring the end of humanity’s sin. Within only a few generations of the Flood, humanity had again descended into idolatry, rebellion, and depravity. Again, God called one man through whom He would work to redeem the world from sin. God called Abram, one of Shem’s descendants, to leave his home in Ur and travel to a new land he had never seen before. Like Noah, Abram would build an altar and perform a sacrifice when he settled in this new land. Like Noah, Abram would receive a new covenant promising God’s blessing on humanity (cf. Genesis 15).
Abram would later become Abraham, “father of many nations.” His descendants through his grandson Jacob — later renamed “Israel” — would receive another covenant at Mt. Sinai. Unfortunately, like Noah’s descendants, the nation of Israel would also depart from the covenant God so graciously gave them, leading to destruction that nearly resembles that of the Great Flood. In the Flood, humanity was nearly destroyed; in the Babylonian Exile of the 6th century B.C., the nation of Israel was nearly destroyed. In both cases, God would preserve a remnant whom He would use to accomplish His redemptive purposes.
Still, humanity needed saving. Humanity needed redemption from the sin that had caused the Great Flood. The sacrifices of Noah, Abraham, and countless generations could not bring the ultimate redemption. In His time, God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to live as one of Noah’s descendants through the line of Jacob and David the king of Israel. Jesus demonstrated a perfect life as God had intended for Adam and his descendants to follow. Then, at Passover in A.D. 33, Jesus died as the ultimate sacrifice for all humanity. The sacrifice of Noah caused God to promise us He would never destroy us again in a Great Flood. The sacrifice of Jesus brought the promise that humanity would transcend death itself.
We live on the other side of Jesus’ sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection. When we confess Jesus as Lord of our lives, believing that God raised Him from the dead, we begin life in a new covenant with God (cf. Jeremiah 31:31-34). We receive the Holy Spirit of God in our hearts to lead us and guide us in life. We also receive life within the Church, the Body of Christ, to help us with encouragement, strength, and joy when the trials of life threaten to overwhelm us.
As with Noah’s task after he left the ark, Christians also face a tremendous challenge. We must demonstrate the presence of God in our lives on a daily basis. This means we must live to a higher standard. Fortunately, we know we receive forgiveness when we fail to maintain this standard. This forgiveness means that we must forgive others as God has forgiven us. God’s presence means we must also live in unity with God and with other believers who live in covenant relationship with God (cf. John 17). All we do must show others the joy of God and bring honor to His name.
As those who live in the triumph of the resurrection, we know we can trust God to keep His covenants with humanity. As we prepare for Easter during the Lenten season, I encourage you to live joyfully in a covenant relationship with your Creator, seeking daily to renew your covenant with Him and demonstrate His presence in your life.
The covenant of salvation, sealed with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, is open to all of Noah’s descendants. We all live in a covenant with God sealed with a sacrifice in the land of Ararat. All who confess Jesus as Lord can live eternally in God’s ultimate everlasting covenant, sealed with a sacrifice on a mountain in Jerusalem.