Readings for today: Genesis 8-9, Psalms 12
God is faithful. Human beings are unfaithful. God is good. Human beings are evil. Evil being defined as “self-centeredness” instead of God-centeredness. God is holy. Human beings are corrupt. Over and over again, we will see this dynamic played out throughout the Bible. It’s critical to keep this fundamental understanding clear in our minds. Human beings are not innocent. Human beings are not sinless. Human beings are not good people who make occasional bad decisions. We are cosmic criminals who deserve the death penalty for our many, many crimes against our Maker. God, on the other hand, is not like us. He is not arbitrary or capricious. He does not act on a whim or lash out in a rage. He is always consistent. Unchanging. Eternal. As such, He does not answer to us. He does not hold Himself accountable to our standards. His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts higher than our thoughts. He is the Creator of the universe and is beyond any flawed human conceptions of justice, righteousness, or fairness.
How else can we understand the Great Flood? The deluge that caused the death of every living thing outside the ark? An act of “uncreation” as God hits the reset button. Imagine Noah walking off the ark for the first time. What did he see? An earth that had become “formless and void” again. An earth that was desolate and ruined. Nothing alive. Nothing but rot and ruin. Nothing like the Garden where Adam and Eve first dwelt. But God isn’t finished. Creation will be renewed. The creation mandate is restored. God will re-create but it will be in and through His image-bearers. His priests and priestesses. The people made in His image who are once again commanded to be “fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth” with the glory of the Creator. He once again gives them dominion over all He has made. He once again sends them out to cultivate and care for creation. He once again promises to establish His covenant with them and their offspring forever.
“And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. 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. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it." "Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth." (Genesis 9:1-3, 6-7, 9, 12-17)
This is an astonishing decision by God. To entrust His creation to a creature He knows is untrustworthy. To hand the world He loves so much into the hands of a creature who is self-centered and self-serving. To give this creature a second chance to fulfill the calling for which they were created, all the while knowing they will fail. Most of all, God binds Himself to this creature in relationship. Establishes His covenant with this creature for all eternity. He commits Himself to this creature and in so doing, freely and willingly opens Himself up to a world of pain and disappointment and heartbreak. Such grace! Such love! Such compassion! Our God is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness. His mercies are new every single morning. His loyalty never ends. His zeal for us never changes. His pursuit of us is relentless. He will never let us go.
You and I are just like Noah. If I had been on that ark and watched the world be destroyed, I can pretty much guarantee the first thing I’d do is plant a vineyard and drink myself into oblivion! If my son “uncovered my nakedness” (an ancient near east euphemism for rape and one of the many horrific ways men demonstrated their power over one another in ancient cultures), I’d wake up cursing as well! We simply cannot escape ourselves. Man’s inhumanity towards man knows no bounds. We all know this is true. We see it on display ever single day. From the hatred and rage on Twitter to the racism of white supremacy to our fascination with guns and violence to the terrible, inhumane treatment of immigrants and refugees to the rapacious greed that causes us to exploit not only the earth but one another. Humanity is a brutal species. Her divine calling gone horribly wrong. The exercise of her dominion becoming tyrannical as sin has its way. The only hope we have is God. The only antidote to our condition is Christ. The only way to break free from our bondage to sin is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God for His salvation! Thanks be to God for Christ who is the “ark of our salvation!”
Readings for tomorrow: Genesis 10-11