Signs of God’s Promise
Reading: Genesis 9.8-17
Some people never promise anything. That way they won’t disappoint anyone. But is that really the way to live?
There have been many instances in history where people have made bold promises which they had every intention of keeping – even though the situation has seemed very adverse.
March 11, 1942, was a dark, desperate day at Corregidor, the strategic island at the entrance to Manila Bay. The Pacific theatre of war was threatening and bleak. One island after another had been buffeted into submission. The enemy was now marching into the Philippines confidently and methodically. Surrender was inevitable. The brilliant and bold soldier, Douglas MacArthur, had only three words for his comrades as he stepped into the escape boat destined for Australia: I shall return.
Upon arriving nine days later in the port of Adelaide, the sixty-two-year-old military statesman closed his remarks with this sentence: I came through and I shall return.
A little over two-and-a-half years later, on October 20, 1944, he stood once again on Philippine soil after landing safely at Leyte Island. This is what he said: This is the voice of freedom, General MacArthur speaking. People of the Philippines: I have returned!
MacArthur kept his word. His word was as good as his bond. Regardless of the odds against him, including the pressures and power of enemy strategy, he was bound and determined to make his promise good.
God’s Judgment
What God says he will do. He is always true to his promises.
Today we have heard the promise God made to Noah and his sons, following the Flood that destroyed all other human beings on the planet. It was God’s promise to the whole human race – and to us.
We turn back to Genesis 6 where we read, “I will not allow people to live for ever; they are mortal.” We are more familiar with this in the Authorised Version –“My spirit shall not always strive with (literally, rule over or contend with) man, for that he also is flesh.” Back in Gen.2.7 we read that God breathed his spirit into man and he became a living being. The removal of God’s spirit makes man mortal. “From now on they will live no longer than a hundred and twenty years” (v.3). A very few people do, of course, live longer than that, but Noah’s generation, unaffected by the heavier solar radiation which has shortened all life since the Flood, only had another 120 years before the Flood would bear them away. “When the Lord saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time, he was sorry that he had ever made them and put them on the earth. He was so filled with regret that he said, ‘I will wipe out these people I have created, and also the animals and the birds, because I am sorry that I made any of them.’ But the Lord was pleased with Noah” (vv.5-7).
It is not difficult for us to recall situations in which we have been so disheartened by the outcome of a project that we have decided to scrap it altogether, or where we have at least gone back to the drawing-board and started all over again. Yet we become alarmed to think of a time when God himself was so regretful about how his creation had turned out that he decided to scrap it.
God, of course, doesn’t make the mistakes of planning and creating that you or I might make. The problem in the world was with people. They weren’t made like robots, but capable of thinking, feeling, responding and choosing. The very first people, Adam and Eve, had succumbed to the temptation to eat the forbidden fruit – disobeying an explicit command of the loving Creator and setting off on a path of rebellion and independence. To us their eating of the fruit seems a trivial thing, but it expressed a change in the human relationship to God and his laws that is the basis of all sins – whether we call them outrageous or insignificant.
But now it is clear that the situation is very serious. Not only are people wicked – sinners – but their thoughts are continually evil.
We think about what Jesus said, “I assure you that people can be forgiven all their sins and all the evil things they may say. But whoever says evil things against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, because he has committed an eternal sin” (Mk.3.28-29). God is merciful and forgiving. His Spirit stirs our conscience, prompts us to feel our guilt, persuades us towards that repentance in which God’s forgiveness can be received. It is a dangerous position to persist in rejecting the stirrings, promptings and persuadings of the Spirit. A point is reached where human repentance and divine forgiveness are no longer possible.
I believe that was the position of the people of Noah’s time. It is not simply that their actions were wicked – forgiveness is always available for repentant sinners – but “how evil their thoughts were all the time”.
God’s Promise
Running through that community was a thin line of believing people. The bit of genealogy in Genesis 5 gives us that believing line. There were many other children, and there may have been others who believed in God, but this “line of belief” came to a focus in only one person – Noah, with whom “the Lord was pleased”.
Noah responded to God, heard and obeyed his call to build a boat to rescue his family and representative animals and birds. The translators of the Old Testament into Greek (and the New Testament references) use the same Greek word (kibotos) simply meaning a “box or chest” for this boat and the “covenant box” made to be part of the furnishings of the tabernacle and temple – the Hebrew uses two distinct words.
When the Flood had subsided, Noah and his family built an altar and made a sacrifice to the Lord. We hear the Lord making a special promise to Noah and his family – and to all living things. “I promise that never again will all living things be destroyed by a flood; never again will a flood destroy the earth” (v.12). The sign of this covenant is the rainbow. This does not mean that there have been no major floods in which human and animal lives are lost, but no universal floods destroying the whole human race.
God has made a number of major covenants with human beings, always as part of his desire to enter into relationship with us. As well as this covenant with Noah, we recall the covenant with Abraham – the promise of a land, of descendants who would become a nation, and of God’s continuing presence and protection (Gen. 12.3; 15.8,18; 17.6-8). In fulfilment of this covenant with Abraham, God made a covenant with the people of Israel in the time of Moses. Then, with the establishment of the kingdom, we read of a covenant with David and his descendants. In the Old Testament we hear the prophets looking forward to a new covenant (as in Jer.31.31-34). In the New we see it fulfilled in the coming, person, work, death and resurrection of Jesus the Son of God.
God desires to enter into relationship with us – it is what he always intended to be. But his covenants always take account of human sin. They are always made with sinners – sinners who repent and believe in him.
In the coming weeks we are thinking about being People of the Covenant. In the logo we see the rainbow – a sign of God’s promise never again to destroy the earth in response to human sin. The stone tablets represent the Ten Commandments of the Sinai Covenant made between God and the Hebrew people in the wilderness. The seed broken open to allow the wheat plant to flourish reminds us of how Jesus spoke of his own death opening up the possibility of life for many. The broken loaf and chalice are the Lord’s Supper in which we celebrate the body and blood of Jesus Christ given for us. Around it all is a heart created by hands because God’s covenant has to be written in our hearts and expressed in all our relationships and actions.
I read recently a story about a man who had to cross a wide river on the ice. (That is hard for us to imagine in the hot weather we have been having!) He was afraid it might be too thin, so he began to crawl on his hand and knees in great terror. He thought he might fall through at any moment. Just as he neared the opposite shore, all exhausted, another man glided past him unconcernedly sitting on a sled loaded with pig iron.
Some Christians are like that! Headed for Heaven, they tremble at every step lest the divine promises break under their feet.
But what God says he will do. He is always true to his promises. We can rest completely on him and take his promises at face value. We needn’t live in the paralysing fear that hinders our effectiveness in living the Christian life and in serving Christ.
The Christian life begins with repentance and faith – trusting God to do what he has promised to do in forgiveness, salvation, new life – coming home to him. The Christian life continues as we learn to live depending on God day by day, seeking his will and empowered by his Spirit to do it.
© Peter J. Blackburn, Buderim Uniting Church, 16 February 1997
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Good News Bible, © American Bible Society, 1992.
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