"The Covenant"
Genesis 9:1-17
Sept. 15, 1996
Text Comments
v.4 "Blood" is identified with life, just as it
for us today: a strong pulse, a beating heart are the signs of life. A respect for
life, an acknowledgment that it does not belong to us but to God, that it is sacred to him
and thus must be to us, is all conveyed in this law regarding the eating of blood. It, of
course, paves the way for so much more to come in the laws of sacrifice that revealed
ahead of time the nature of the atonement, how God's justice would satisfy for our sins by
requiring a life for our lives, Jesus Christ who shed his blood - i.e. gave up his life
for our sins!
v.6b Homicide is a species of deicide! The argument of justice that lies beneath the
death-penalty is, as always, that the punishment fit the crime, that there be a balance
between desert and reward, crime and punishment. To murder one who bears the image of God
cannot be balanced by anything less than a supreme penalty.
v.7 These opening verses recall Genesis 1 and the charge that man received there and
the provision that was made for his life, but sin has made the scene much darker: man is
still the bearer of God's image and is still God's vice-regent in the world, but his rule
is now going to be one of fear and dread (v.2), and violence will be abroad in the land.
v.9 God had said in 6:18 that he would confirm covenant with Noah and now he does so.
In the Bible, from beginning to end, God deals with his world according to a plan, a
design that he has formed, by which he intends to bring to pass his purpose for the world
and for all human beings. The fall, the flood, the deliverance of Noah are all but parts
of this great and universal plan for the history of the world and, in particular, the
history of all and every human being.
Within that all-comprehensive plan for the world is contained a plan for the salvation
of the people of God. This plan is not the whole of God's plan for the world, but it is
the centerpiece of that plan.
We have already seen how the barest outlines of this plan of salvation were revealed
very early, already in Genesis 3:15, in the promise -- definite enough but also so
vague--of a seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. Now, knowing the
rest of the Bible as we do, it is easy for us to read the full development of that promise
from the few words of Genesis 3:15. We know it refers to Jesus Christ and to his suffering
and death for our sins, his eventual triumph over Satan and over sin by his resurrection
from the dead. All of that, of course, becomes clear much later, but, and this is my
point, it was God's plan from the beginning. He never intended anything else, even
before he made the world, but the salvation of his people through the redemption of Jesus
Christ. this is why Christ is said to be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
It was the plan for the history of the world before there was a world.
God did not create this world at a venture. He knew precisely what would become of it
because he had planned ahead of time the history of the world, down even to its minutest
details. Those who are not saved, the nations of the world that lived and perished away
from and in ignorance of the gospel of Christ, the political, economic, intellectual, and
scientific history of the world, all develops according to this plan. No one knows what
God intends to happen in this world tomorrow or next year or next century, but He
does and those times too will fall out exactly as he planned before the world was made. As
with the life of each individual human being, so with the life of the world, every one of
its days was numbered before there was a one of them.
And, at the exact center of this great, all-comprehensive plan for the world is what
the Bible calls "a covenant." Now a covenant is simply a relationship between
two parties ordered in some way. The term appears frequently in the Bible in reference to
relationship between human beings: e.g. Abraham made a covenant with Abimilech and David
and Jonathan made a covenant together. We are used to hearing of the covenant between God
and his people because the idea occurs so often in the Bible. Indeed, it is an organizing
principle of biblical revelation. The entire history of salvation is, in the Bible, an
unfolding succession of covenants in which the one great covenant of grace takes clearer
and clearer form and is worked out step by step in history. The covenant with Abraham,
with Israel at Sinai, with the royal house of David, and so on. All the great features of
the gospel: election, atonement, calling, faith, a holy life, and the promise of life
everlasting are all revealed in terms of this covenant.
Indeed, it is by the history of these covenants that biblical revelation is seen to be
at one and the same time a unity and a progression. There is, from the beginning, an
unfolding in steps and stages of the eternal purpose and plan of God and in many diverse
modes of revelation: sacrifices, miracles, prophets, tabernacle and temple, laws of clean
and unclean food, the ten commandments, and so on. But, amidst all of this diversity there
is an inner coherence -- each of the covenants that succeed one another in time is an
expression of the one perfect and eternal plan of God's salvation, the gospel, by reason
of which the Scripture teaches us and we understand that Noah, Abraham, Moses, David,
Paul, and ourselves occupy the same spiritual world, relate to God fundamentally in the
same way, are saved by the same means, love the same Savior, and have set before us the
same hope of life in heaven.
The covenants are the way in which the diversity and the unity are brought together in
a harmonious whole in the Bible and show us how God's great salvation: one faith, one
Lord, one baptism, unfolds step by step in history.
All of these theological covenants, the covenants between God and man, betray the
characteristic features of all covenants. There are parties: there are promises made --
there are conditions to be met; there are blessings to be enjoyed by those faithful to the
covenant, curses to be visited upon those who prove unfaithful to the stipulations or
conditions of the covenant; and, finally, there are signs, oaths, or seals attached to the
covenant to confirm it.
In a previous sermon, I argued that all of those features can be found in Genesis 2, in
the relationship that God establishes between himself and Adam in the Garden before the
Fall, even though the word "covenant" does not appear there.
Which is to say, that from the very beginning, God has seen fit to order his
relationship to human beings in the form of a covenant.
Now, we should not take this for granted, as simply part of the furniture of the house
of faith. It is not at all obvious that God should have done any such thing. Think
what it means! God is under no obligation to enter into such a relationship with us. He is
under no obligation to make promises to us. Would we not normally expect that our Creator
and our Master, whom God certainly is, would simply tell us what he required of us.
Perhaps he would as well warn us what would become of us if we disobeyed him.
But God did not do this. He entered into a covenant, fellowship with us; he came all
the way down to us and took us into friendship with himself. And who is that
"us" that he took into his friendship -- not men and women with the full glory
of his image still upon them, but fallen men and women, corrupted, defiled, and rebellious
men and women. These he made his friends! In this covenant He did warn us of the
consequences of betrayal, as he must, for he is a just and holy God, but he also
made all manner of the most extraordinary promises to us, of his love, of his
faithfulness, of his provision, even of his willingness to forgive us when we betray
him if only we would come to him for that forgiveness, and, then, if that were not
enough, promised us over and again that he would remain faithful to this covenant that he
had made through thick and thin -- as if we had any reason or right to doubt that he
would keep his word -- and then added signs and seals to confirm his promise and
his covenant to us.
It is one thing to be God's creature; it is one thing to be God's servant. It is
another thing altogether to be his friend and his son. And that is what this covenant, and
the covenants by which that one covenant is revealed in history, have made of us who
belong to that covenant. Or, to put it more wonderfully, as the Bible often does, by the
covenant that God has entered into with his people, he has made his relationship to us --
his little, and rebellious creatures -- something like the relationship that exists
between the three persons of the Godhead. Father, Son, and Spirit are in covenant together
-- they have a relationship ordered in some way -- a way most mysterious to us, of course,
but in some way. They are bound together in unity by these special relationships that
exist between them. And now God has taken that reality and extended it as a gift to us!
These are the deepest and most wonderful things that we know -- that any human being can
know!
Now, there is a debate in the history of theology as to exactly how the covenant God
made with Noah fits into the unfolding history of the covenant of grace, that relationship
that God has established and ordered with his chosen people. It has all the marks of a
covenant: we have parties here -- God and Noah and his descendants; we have a promise
(that God will not again destroy the world until the end of time); we have obligations
laid down, such as we read in vv. 4-7; we have blessings and cursings; and we have a sign,
the rainbow.
What is more, while all of this is very terse and only a little is said, we are well
used to the fact that, after the fall, Adam and Eve weren't told nearly as much as
Abraham, that Abraham wasn't told nearly as much as Moses and Moses not nearly as much as
the apostles even though it was one and the same covenant that was made with them all.
Might it not be that this covenant is simply so early in the history of the revelation of
the covenant that there are fewer features of the covenant of grace to recognize. Some
have thought so.
But, the problem is that this covenant is not made with God's people, with those whom
he chose to enter into friendship and family with himself. The point is emphatically made.
This covenant is with the entire human race, as God says in vv. 9-10 and again in v. 12.
The promise concerns not the special relationship of love and salvation that God creates
with his elect, but the continuation of the world and of all mankind until the day of
Judgment. Its promise is not the promise of salvation or eternal life, it does not deal
with the forgiveness of sins or of friendship with God, and it is not fulfilled in the
coming of Jesus Christ and the full revelation of the good news of salvation for sinners
in his name. The NT never says that the gospel was preached to Noah as it says it was
preached to Abraham and to Israel and to David. For this reason, in most studies of the
covenant of grace, the covenant that God made here with Noah and in Noah with all his
descendants, is not regarded as another historical revelation of the covenant of grace
(such as are the covenants with Abraham and Israel at Sinai, and with David). It is a
covenant apart.
With that we can agree, so long as we go quickly on to say that the covenant here made
with Noah was made in service of the covenant of grace. As we have seen, Peter says
as much in 1 Pet. 3:20-22 and 2 Pet. 3:3-9. The flood was judgment on the world of that
time, it was also warning for generations yet unborn of the divine judgment to come. And
remember what is said there -- God waits and waits to bring that judgment, of which the
flood was a prototype, only because he does not desire that any should perish, which is
another way of saying that he will not judge the world until everyone who will enter his
covenant family has entered it, everyone who will be embraced by his covenant has been
embraced by it. In other words, this covenant made with Noah provides for the rest of the
history of the covenant of grace and makes possible its unfolding through Abraham, Moses,
David, and the prophets, until finally Jesus Christ came, and still we await the
consummation of that covenant and still God waits until all his chosen ones have come into
the family and have been made his friends.
Further, the covenant with Noah supports and serves the covenant of grace because
clearly, the sign of this covenant is a sign of encouragement, of assurance, of
confidence in God only for those who see it to be God's promised sign, only for
those who see it as the sign of this covenant that God made through Noah with the world,
only for those who know it to be the demonstration of God's faithfulness to his Word. In
short, the sign of this covenant is of real meaning and help only to those who belong to
the covenant of grace that God made with his people. The unbeliever doesn't look at the
rainbow and think of the faithfulness and the grace and the condescension of a holy God to
sinful and unworthy creatures. He doesn't think, when he sees a rainbow, as an ancient
Jewish writer thought, that God's mercy is as great as his majesty (Ecclesiasticus 2:18).
But God's covenant family sees all that and more in the rainbow. The rainbow is an
extraordinarily beautiful and powerful reminder to Christians that we do not and will not
receive what we deserve.
We deserve another flood -- all men do -- instead the unbeliever gets time to repent
and we get heaven and the friendship of God. If the covenant with Noah is not itself the
covenant of grace, those who belong to the covenant of grace, can see grace enough in the
covenant with Noah.
In a sermon preached several years ago at Covenant Seminary, Prof. David Calhoun drew
attention to the wonderful lesson of the rainbow, its message of God's mercy and
faithfulness in and through and after the storm of life. Remember, the promise of the
covenant God made to Noah, is not that there will be no more storms but that God will not
destroy the world. Indeed, storms will continue to occur; must continue, even in a
Christian's life. No rainbows form unless there has been rain!
And, for the believer, who sees in the rainbow the pledge of God's faithfulness and
mercy and longsuffering, this is a wonderful sign. For remember the rainbow always comes
after not before the storm, not as warning that the storm is coming, but as a reminder of
God's faithfulness when the storm is over.
That sermon at the Seminary, was made much more poignant and full of pathos by the fact
that Prof. Calhoun himself has been weathering a great storm these past several years --
throat cancer that has continued to reappear. He knows of what he speaks, both concerning
the storm and the rainbow. Now in that sermon, he referred to the hymn by George Matheson,
"O Love that will not let me go."
Matheson was a Scot whose poor eyesight failed him during his university days leaving
him totally blind. He graduated from university despite this handicap and, with the aid of
a devoted sister, prepared for the ministry and was eventually ordained to a pastorate in
the Free Church of Scotland. In 1868 he was called to the pastorate of the small parish of
Innelan on the Firth of Clyde. Later he became the pastor of a huge church in Edinburgh.
But it was on a summer evening in 1882, in the manse at Innelan, that he wrote "O
Love that will not let me go." He later wrote:
That the hymn was composed with extreme rapidity: it seemed to me that its construction
occupied only a few minutes, and I felt myself rather in the position of one who was being
dictated to than of an original artist. I was suffering from extreme mental distress, and
the hymn was the fruit of pain.
Matheson himself never said what the distress was that was so troubling him at that
time. Some have thought that it was a crushing disappointment in love -- a woman to whom
he was deeply attached, refusing to marry him because of his blindness. So, then, the
opening line "O love that will not let me go..."
In our Trinity Hymnal the third verse of this well known hymn reads:
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.
But that is not what Matheson wrote. The third line of that third verse, as originally
written, runs, "I climb the rainbow through the rain..." Matheson changed the
line to "I trace the rainbow through the rain..." at the request of the Scottish
Hymnal Committee when the hymn was under consideration for inclusion in that hymnal. The
committee must have thought "climbing rainbows" too indecorous a thought for a
Presbyterian hymnal. But, and this was Prof. Calhoun's point, there is a great deal of
difference between those two images. It is one thing, in the comfort and security of one's
living room, to trace the rainbow through the rain as one looks out the picture window.
But, when the Christian is out in the storm and fears sinking under the flood, the
rainbow is seen not merely as an image in the sky but as something real, as the promise of
real mercy, real divine faithfulness. Well, one can climb something as real as
that, hold on to it, and climb up out of the flood upon it. That is where Matheson saw
himself that night, in that dark night of despair, groping for something to hold on to and
finding at last the edge of the rainbow, grabbing on and climbing up to safety.
The promises of God can, for all of us too much of the time be largely words on a page.
But God's rainbow is to remind us that they are much more than that -- much more than mere
words --, they are real, essential, living, things. Things to grasp, to hold on to,
to stand upon, and, in the darkness and the storms of life, to climb up on for safety.
On his death bed Isaac Watts was asked by a friend in that rhetorical way questions can
be asked at such a time: Do you believe the promises of God? He replied, "I believe
them enough to venture an eternity on them!" He was climbing not tracing the
rainbow!
You must live through your storms, brethren. Our Savior taught us that. Through many
tribulations it is necessary to inherit the kingdom of God. But God is merciful and has
made himself your friend and in the covenant, he has so mercifully made with you has made
promises to you that cover every possible situation of your life. Whatever you really
need: peace, joy, provision of the necessities of life, strength in the face of
temptation, wisdom, assurance of God's love, whatever you need, he has made a promise to
you. He will not treat you as you deserve, and, having given his Son for you will surely
also, with him, freely give you all things. He has even given you a reminder of his
faithfulness and the certainty of his care -- the rainbow.
No tracing of rainbows for us -- no mere inspecting of the promises of God, from a
distance and with a mere hope that they might prove true. No, grasp the rainbow -- in
Calvin's ponderous but powerful phrase, "presume upon the veracity of God," and
climb up to where the sun is shining and all the brilliant colors can be seen.
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