Genesis 8:20-9:28

Genesis 8:20-9:28

After the waters had completely subsided, God reestablished His creation on the earth. Much like He had originally done for Adam, God placed Noah in charge of everything around him. It was Noah and his family’s responsibility to watch over the creative order. It was also this very thing that would provide Noah and his family with all that they needed. Just as God had not abandoned them as the flood came, He did not abandon them after the storm either. Sometimes the hardest part about life’s storms is figuring out how to start over. There are so many pieces to pick up afterwards that the aftermath can almost be more overwhelming than the storm itself. But once again we see how God always provides for us and will never leave us stranded. Yet at the same time, He also expects us to stay obedient to Him. God did provide everything that they would need, but He also told them not to commit murder.

After all of this God established His covenant with Noah, a covenant that is still in effect today. Very early on in Scripture we learn that God is one who will always keep His promises. This is one of those moments. He promises that He will never again kill off all of mankind through a flood. He then used the rainbow as a symbol of this covenant. I think we tend to overlook the significance of this promise because we hear this story so many times. The promise of the rainbow may have lost its effect in many ways. But considering that this covenant was established thousands of years ago and that the rainbow is still a sign of that promise so many years later, it should also be a reminder that God’s promises will never be broken.

We all break promises, and I daresay that it is a rare exception for someone to keep a promise for an entire lifetime. Yet God, over the span of thousands of years, has kept the promise that He made with Noah. Think about our culture and how far away from God we have drifted. Our culture is probably close to what Noah’s was like. It would make sense for God to wipe us out just like He did in Noah’s day. But even if He wanted to, He would not, all because of this promise. There are no loopholes with God.

The end of Noah’s story is a reminder that we are all sinful and can all fall into the trap of sin. Just like Adam and Eve, Cain, and David, even Noah fell to the ways of sin. We must never think that we are too good to get trapped in sin. When we least expect it, it could happen to us, and we can find ourselves in places that we had never imagined. But not only do we find Noah in the wrong here, but also his son Ham. Why is it when we see someone in the wrong that we tend to want to go and expose their mistakes to others? Today, we would call this gossip. Instead of either helping the person through their problems or just keeping it to ourselves, many times we decide to expose them. We must not follow in the ways of Ham, but we should be more like Shem and Japheth, who when they found out about their father, helped him through his troubles and kept themselves away from the sin. They walked backwards so that they would not see their father’s sin, and they helped him out by covering his body. Instead of exploiting him like Ham, they stood by his side and helped him through it. As a result, they were blessed, and Ham was cursed. In fact it says that Ham became the father of Canaan, and if you think to the future a little ways, Canaan is the land that God eventually hands over to His chosen people, Israel. Once more we see that our sins will not only affect our lives but the lives of others, even years down the road.

Matt