The covenant that God was establishing with Noah was coming to the big reveal. This devotional reading looks at the promise given to Noah by God.
Nuggets
- God chose to make a covenant with those who are made in His image, even though we had so angered Him.
- God wanted to make sure we knew that He was the author of the covenant.
- God’s promise to never flood the earth again was unconditional.
- Even those who refuse to confess God as Sovereign Lord sometimes benefit from the blessing God gives to His children.
God had already told Noah some of the terms of the covenant. “And the Lord was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood. I will never again destroy all living things. As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night’” (Gen. 8: 21-22 NLT).
- The earth wouldn’t be cursed again because of humans.
- There would not be an event that would lead to total destruction of all living things.
But now, God was going to tell Noah what that really entailed.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Creating Everything theme, click the button below.
Devotions in the Creation’s Do-Over series
Establishing the Covenant
“Then God told Noah and his sons, 'I hereby confirm my covenant with you and your descendants, and with all the animals that were on the boat with you — the birds, the livestock, and all the wild animals — every living creature on earth” (Gen. 9: 8-10 NLT)
God chose to make a covenant with those who are made in His image, even though we had so angered Him.
We can’t order God around It was His, and only His, right to offer a covenant with humans.
God tried again. His covenant with Adam was broken. God’s Word doesn’t tell us He made another one with him, possibly because he was so associated with sin.
After creation’s do-over, God wanted mankind to remain holy and pure. He wanted to make a covenant with the righteous man, Noah.
I don’t think God had any concerns about Noah. It was his children that He knew would fall away.
Still, God transmitted the covenant to include them. “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you” (Gen. 9: 9 NLT).
We can’t gloss over the fact that God was binding Himself to humans. Not just His protection or blessings. He wanted the relationship that was lost in the Garden restored.
No, even though Noah was deemed a righteous person, God was not obligated to make a covenant with him. Noah still had a sinful nature.
Because God had forbearance, He did offer the covenant to Noah. “… People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus” (Rom. 3: 25-26 NLT).
This forbearance is a product of God’s grace. It is unconditional.
One thing we tend to forget – and non-believers refuse to see – is that sin has clouded our perception of spiritual things.
If we think God is hiding things from us, this is partly the reason. Leale told us why. He wrote, “He [Humans] was not able to appreciate Divine truth in its pure and native form. God must speak to him by signs and symbols, and encourage him by promises of temporal blessing.”
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In our vernacular, we would say that God had to dumb it down for us. “‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts’” (Isa. 66: 8-9 NLT).
Hold that thought until the next devotion.
The timing of the covenant is important. It was after the punishment had been meted out. God was now instructing humans – yeah, again – what He expected of them.
Even before God makes the promises of the covenant, Noah – and everyone since then – knows that He has the power and desire to keep those promises.
Never Again by Water
“Yes, I am confirming my covenant with you. Never again will floodwaters kill all living creatures; never again will a flood destroy the earth.” (Gen. 9: 11 NLT)
God wanted to make sure we knew that He was the author of the covenant.
“I establish my covenant with you …” (Gen. 9: 11 NLT). That makes sense.
God is righteous. We aren’t. God should be the One to initiate the covenant.
Remember what righteous means. It is we exhibit a moral uprightness that shows through just behavior, putting us in good standing with God.
Righteousness isn’t something we earn by being a good person and doing the right things. We are actively striving to imitate God’s character. We are endeavoring to reflect God.
This only happens through faith in Jesus. If we don’t have Jesus in our hearts and lives, being a good person who tries to be fair means nothing.
By Water
God’s promise to never flood the earth again was unconditional.
When we think of God’s promise to never flood the earth again, these are the verses we call to mind. But these are just a restatement of His promise.
“And the LORD was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood. I will never again destroy all living things” (Gen. 8: 21 NLT).
Candlish saw two principles wrapped up in this.
- Humans had been punished enough – for now – because they would just rebel more with further threat of flooding because humans are unable to be disciplined.
- Noah’s sacrifice of “… some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird …” (Gen. 8: 20 NLT).
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It goes back to we sin because of our nature. A flood isn’t going to change that – it didn’t for Noah.
That was a great promise, but what if God had kept it to Himself? What if Noah didn’t know anything about it?
It would be human nature for Noah and his family, as they were just closing the book to this terrifying chapter of their lives, would think it may happen again. Yeah, I bet they told their children about the time God unleashed the rain on the earth to show then what happens when they disobey God and are wicked.
That is just parental nature.
But Father God didn’t really want us to feel that. He wanted to assure us that a flood will never again destroy the earth.
Even with the promises and whatever signs God gives us, don’t we sometimes think He isn’t going to keep them? We tie ourselves up thinking the promise isn’t going to be kept.
God isn’t that way. What He promises, He holds Himself to it.
Yes, God still allows flooding to happen – localized. Don’t ignore the “that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Gen. 9: 8-11 NLT emphasis added) parts.
Also, don’t read into this that God promised Noah that He wouldn’t destroy the earth in another way. He will. “… The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide” (Rev. 20: 11 NLT).
But God put so much stock into this promise, He formalized it. put it in His covenant with Noah.
Kingsley made an interesting point. He wrote, “They would have been likely to take to praying to the rain and thunder, the sun and the stars.”
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You know, with the power of the flood, the noise of the thunder, and the scariness of lightening, we can kind of see how they saw the phenomena as “living.” In future years, they would give these phenomena names and call them gods, according to mythology.
God wanted them to know that He alone causes the rain and thunder. They are to look to Him and pray to Him.
With Every Living Creature
Even those who refuse to confess God as Sovereign Lord sometimes benefit from the blessing God gives to His children.
God does love non-believers. At times, the blessing He gives His children benefit them.
- “In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike” (Mt. 5: 45 NLT).
- “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Rom. 5: 8 NLT).
Making the Connections #1
There are seven laws – called the Noachide Law – that come out of the God’s covenant with Noah (Noach in Hebrew). Some consider these the basis of civilized society. Let’s review what the Jewish Virtual Library said these seven laws, found in the Talmud, are.
“The Noachide Laws are seven laws considered by rabbinic tradition as the minimal, moral duties required by the Bible on all men. … he [non-Jews] who accepts these obligations is considered a righteous person who is guaranteed a place in the world to come.
The seven Noachide laws, as traditionally enumerated are:
“1. Do Not Deny God
“2. Do Not Blaspheme God
“3. Do Not Murder
“4. Do Not Engage in Incestuous, Adulterous or Homosexual Relationships.
“5. Do Not Steal
“6. Do Not Eat of a Live Animal
“7. Establish Courts/Legal System to Ensure Law Obedience”
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Hmmm. When I thought, hey, I want to dig into this to see what it was all about, I thought it would come out of Genesis 9: 1-6.
Two things were mentioned in those verses.
When I looked up an article on the Got Questions website, it noted that – according to tradition – all but the last one were given to Adam in the Garden of Eden. (See, I keep saying Moses may not have written everything down.)
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Jeremy wrote on the Noahide Life website that Adam was given these laws on the day he was created. We have nothing in God’s Word that would confirm or deny this. To me, the when wouldn’t be as important as he was given them.
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The first law is talking about idolatry. We know that our idolatry today goes beyond a graven image someone has made.
Whomever wrote the Got Questions article also brought up the fact that Adam didn’t eat meat. So why would #7 have been given to him?
The Noahide Life article expanded each law to show what it was addressing. #2 included that prayer was required.
But that is a pretty decent list of what we need to do to walk with God. Why were these laws needed if the Torah is available?
The Torah was for Jews, the Noachide Laws, Gentiles. Christians would be considered Noachites.
Making the Connections #2
Fairbairn made an interesting observation. The climate was going to change. He wrote,
“We incline, therefore, to the opinion that, in the announcement here made, intimation is given of a change in the physical relations or temperature of at least that portion of the earth where the original inhabitants had their abode; by reason of which the descent of moisture in showers of rain came to take the place of distillation by dew, or other modes of operation different from the present. The supposition is [favored] by the mention only of dew before in connection with the moistening of the ground (Genesis 2:6); and when rain does come to be mentioned, it is rain in such flowing torrents as seems rather to betoken the outpouring of a continuous stream, than the gentle dropping which we are wont to understand by the term, and to associate with the rainbow.
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Think about it. Way back in Genesis 2, we were told why some of the vegetation was not yet growing. “When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land.” (Gen. 2: 4-6 NLT).
Okay, where did the mist come from to which Fairbairn referred? “But there went up a mist from ha’aretz, and watered the whole face of the Adamah” (Gen. 2: 6 OJB).
The point is that God controls the climate. Nothing happens to it that He doesn’t allow.
Any fluctuations in climate is either God’s plan for the earth to spin on or is because of the curse of sin.
And we know, as we grow closer to the Day of the Lord, these fluctuations will occur.
- “And there will be strange signs in the sun, moon, and stars. And here on earth the nations will be in turmoil, perplexed by the roaring seas and strange tides” (Lk. 21: 25 NLT).
- “There will be great earthquakes, and there will be famines and plagues in many lands, and there will be terrifying things and great miraculous signs from heaven” (Lk. 21: 11 NLT).
- “And I will cause wonders in the heavens and on the earth — blood and fire and columns of smoke” (Joel 2: 30 NLT).
- “Immediately after the anguish of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will give no light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken” (Mt. 24: 29 NLT).
- “I watched as the Lamb broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became as dark as black cloth, and the moon became as red as blood” (Rev. 6: 12 NLT).
God is in control.
How Do We Apply This?
- Don’t think we have a right to spiritual things.
- Fulfill responsibilities of covenants that God made with us so that we will be blessed with God’s goodness.
- Watch for God to reveal His love to us.
- Live a life of faith
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Father God. Thank You for Your mercy when You do not give us the punishment that we deserve. Instead of giving us what we deserve, You give us what we don’t deserve – Your grace. Thank You for not flooding the world again to punish us for our sin. Amen.
What do you think?
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