Good morning.
You know, it's just fascinating.
It's just fascinating to read about all that stuff.
And as many of you know, our world seems to be having an increasing number of such disasters.
a building standing in some places, some of the video of the floods where the entire island
was simply underwater, engulfed by the sea.
And seeing the video footage of the survivors afterwards coming out from their refuges and
looking at the wreckage, the complete destruction, the creation that they had lived in and the
forms that had given them life were wiped out.
Many of you are old enough to remember Hurricane Katrina, pictures of people sitting on their
roofs, hoping that someone might rescue them from the floodwaters days after the hurricane
was gone, hoping against hope that they might be rescued.
The aftermath of these storms is devastating.
And of course, in our lives, there are other types of storms as well, aren't there?
The end of a marriage, a tragic diagnosis, losing your job, an untimely death, and many
others.
When we think about these things, it's easy for us to be consumed by fears.
Some of us may struggle with big fears.
I have this chronic fear that when I go away and I come back to my house, I'm going to come
back and the whole thing will be burned down.
And all there is is a concrete slab and ashes.
And this is recurring.
It happens all the time.
When I go away, this is what I think about.
Maybe you have other kinds of fears.
And it's not just the fears when we think about these things.
It's not just the fears about what will happen to us.
But when we think about a God who rules over the universe and sovereignly cares over all
things, it raises questions and fears in our hearts about God as well.
In the aftermath of such things, what will God do?
Who will God be to us?
Is he safe?
Will he do it again?
The fears that arise in the aftermath are what bring us to our passage this morning in the
book of Genesis.
What will happen after the flood?
If you want to turn with me in your pew Bibles, you can turn to page 6.
We're looking at Genesis starting in chapter 8, verse 20.
And as you turn there, let me just remind you where we are in the story.
Anyway, going back a couple of chapters, God looked at the world and he saw the evil that
every intention of the hearts of humankind was only evil always.
And he determined to make an end to that evil by flooding the world and destroying all the living
creatures.
And yet in his mercy, he remembered Noah and he saw Noah in his righteousness and he called
Noah to be the one that he would rescue in the ark.
And Noah and his family were rescued through the flood.
And in chapter 8, verse 19, they literally have just stepped out of the boat.
They are walking into the aftermath of the flood.
And they're asking the questions that we ask often in our own lives.
What will God do now?
What will happen to us?
Where do we go from here?
So that's what we're going to look at this morning.
As we look at this, I'm going to read the passage and then we'll pray together.
And then we'll dive in.
So Genesis chapter 8, verse 20.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every
clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
And when the Lord smelt the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart,
I will never again curse the ground because of man.
For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.
Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night,
shall not cease.
And God blessed Noah and his sons.
And he 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 hands 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.
But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning.
From every beast I will require it and from man.
From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
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.
Team on the earth and multiply in it.
And then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you
and with every living creature that is with you.
The birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you.
As many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth.
I establish my covenant with you 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.
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 water 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.
And 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.
Now the sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Ham was the father of Canaan.
These three were the sons of Noah,
and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.
Noah began to be a man of the soil,
and he planted a vineyard.
He drank the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.
And Ham, the father of Canaan,
saw the nakedness of his father and told his brothers outside.
Then Shem and Japheth took a garment,
laid it on both of their shoulders,
and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father.
Their faces were turned backwards.
They did not see their father's nakedness.
When Noah awoke from his wine,
he knew what his youngest son had done to him.
He said,
Cursed be Canaan,
a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.
He also said,
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem.
Let Canaan be his servant.
May God enlarge Japheth,
and let him dwell in the tents of Shem,
and let Canaan be his servant.
After the flood,
Noah lived for 350 years.
All the days of Noah were 950 years,
and he died.
Let's pray together.
Lord, we thank you for your word this morning.
We thank you that you have not left us to grope in the dark,
or to wonder what kind of God you are,
but that you have made yourself known.
You have revealed yourself to us,
Lord, through your son, Jesus Christ,
and through your written word here that we read this morning.
Lord, we pray now that you would help us by your spirit
to understand your word,
and to apply it to our hearts.
Lord, that we might know you,
and that we as your creatures
might respond to you, our creator,
as we ought.
Be with us this morning, we pray.
I pray, Lord, that you would help me.
Lord, that I might speak clearly,
and that my words would be true,
and that, Lord, you would help me this morning.
We pray these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
What kind of God will God be after the flood?
And what will happen to humankind?
These are the two questions that this text
answer for us this morning,
and we're going to look at those in order.
So first, what kind of God will God be?
As we start in verse 20 of chapter 8,
we will see that in the first section of this,
going all the way through 917,
we will see that God is a God
who will graciously restore his creation,
that he will make a covenant
to preserve life in God's creation
in a post-flood world.
This is his purpose,
and this is his plan,
and this is the God that we see in it.
Let's look at it.
We'll break it down into three sections
as we look at this chunk together.
Three things that God restores.
First, in chapter 8, 20 through 22,
we see that God is restoring the form of creation.
What do I mean by that?
Well, in response to Noah's response,
Noah walks out of the ark.
He puts his feet back on solid ground
after days and weeks and months
and maybe even years.
It's not quite clear how long,
but a long time he was on the boat,
and he's finally on solid ground.
If you've ever been on a boat for a while,
it feels good, doesn't it?
Whew, solid ground.
But he recognizes that he's there
because God has graciously preserved him
and his family,
and so he responds as he knows.
He builds an altar,
and he worships God,
and he offers up a burnt offering,
which is a thanksgiving and praise offering
to God for his deliverance.
It is also, I believe, a recognition
because a burnt offering,
as you see it played out
in the rest of the Old Testament,
is often an atoning sacrifice,
something where something is being offered
and burned up as a recognition
that sin requires death,
that sin causes judgment to fall,
and something must die for sin.
And so he offers up this sacrifice to God,
and God responds.
And interesting, when you look at it
in verses 21 and 22,
he doesn't actually talk about humanity at all.
What he talks about here
is that what God is doing is saying,
I will never again curse the ground
the way that I've just done with the flood.
Right?
He says, I will not destroy the creation again.
I will not strike down every living creature
as I have done.
Now, if you think back
to what we've talked about
and what God was doing in the flood
and the way that he was,
the flood was in some ways an uncreation,
mirroring in a negative way
what had happened in Genesis 1
where God had taken a world
from watery chaos
to form,
and those forms of day and night
and land and sea
and dry land
and created the place
where life would flourish,
where animals and plants
and then human beings would flourish.
And what the flood was
was a deconstructing of all of that,
an uncreating of all of that.
And now that God,
now that the waters have receded
and there is still life there,
God is saying,
I will never again destroy it
the way that I have.
It's fascinating when you look at verse 22,
you think about some of these structures
that would have been very familiar
in an agricultural society,
maybe less so to us today,
seed time and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night shall not cease.
These are the normal rhythms.
And what God is saying is,
I will no longer uproot
and overthrow the normal rhythms
the way that I did
in this judgment and in this flood.
Now we need to recognize
this is not a removal
of the curse on the ground
that we see in Genesis 3, 17.
For Romans,
in Romans 8, 19 and following
will tell us that all of creation
is subject to the curse
as it's waiting for the redemption
of God's people
and a final glory
and a final renewal
that we will see.
So it's not that God is removing
all of the curse,
but God is saying,
I will never again bring this form,
this kind of judgment
onto the world.
And interestingly enough,
he does it in the face of knowing
that humans will sin.
Isn't verse 21 interesting?
I almost stumbled over it
and maybe you stumble over it too.
What is God saying here?
I will never again curse the ground
because of man
for the intention of man's heart
is evil from his youth.
What is going on?
It almost feels against the flow.
He's promising not to destroy it,
but then he's saying,
but this evil continues.
And in fact,
that's exactly what he is saying.
God is saying that despite
the ongoing presence of human sin,
despite the ongoing offense
where humanity will continue
to rebel against me,
and therefore,
because they were given dominion
over the earth
and a representative role
over the earth,
this judgment came upon all of creation
because of man's sin.
Now I'm going to say,
I will never again destroy the creation
in this way,
even though man's sin will persist.
And so God is graciously saying,
I will continue to uphold
and sustain the forms
that I created in Genesis 1
that will create life.
So that's the first thing we see
is that God restores
the form of creation.
And then as he keeps going
in the beginning of chapter 9,
God restores the flourishing of life
in creation.
And the reason why I say this
is because you see in verse 1
and verse 7,
this repetition of the creation mandate.
Be fruitful and multiply.
I've created this world
for you to live in.
Now go and live in it
and be a flourishing,
abundant life
that I've made you to be.
But interestingly,
in contrast to what we see
in Genesis 1,
this flourishing is going to happen
not in a world apart from sin,
but in a world that is now
marred with sin.
And so you see in verses 2 through 6
the ongoing way in which
he's having to qualify
or constrain
how life is going to flourish
in a fallen world
where sin and murder
have already happened.
So he talks about the relationship
between man and human beings
and animals.
And what had been
what was meant to be
a husbanding
or a dominion
that was life-giving,
there is now fear.
that humans
will be fearsome
to the animals.
But even more than that,
you see as you keep going
in verses 1 through 7
of chapter 9,
we see verse 5,
for your life blood
I will require a reckoning
from every beast
I will require it
and from man,
from his fellow man
I will require a reckoning
for the life of man.
In Genesis 1,
God never had to say this
because there had been
no murder,
there had been no death,
there had been no killing.
But now,
after Cain and Abel,
after Lamech,
after chapter 6,
after the evil
of man's heart
spreading and infecting
and corrupting
all the world,
God says,
I want you to flourish
and multiply,
but I know that you're doing
that in a fallen world
and that means
that I have to
teach you
how to value
the life
that I've created
in a new way.
You may not eat meat
with blood in it
because the blood
is the life
of a creature
and I want you
to value
the life
of that creature.
So,
even though I'm giving it
to you to eat,
you should drain it out
so that you do not
take its life lightly.
And then he translates that
and he says,
and if that's true
with animals,
how much more
is it true
for human beings
who are created
in the image
of God?
So,
you see in verse 6
this incredibly
powerful statement,
whoever sheds
the blood of man,
by man shall his blood
be shed
for God made man
his own image.
How will life flourishing
go forward
in a fallen world
where human beings
are going to kill each other?
There will be justice
but that justice
won't come
in this cataclysmic
global form
of a flood anymore.
God is now
delegating that justice
to human society
to say
life is meant
to be preserved
and now you
are entrusted
with responding
to murder
with justice.
When you kill
another unjustly,
your life
will be forfeit.
Now look,
we need to understand
this is a movement
of God
away from what we saw
in chapter 4
at the end.
Do you remember Lamech?
The descendant of Cain.
Do you remember
his vengeful spirit,
his promise to kill
not just one
but seven times?
God is saying,
no, that is vengeance
and that is not right.
That is cruelty
and that is destructive
and that is not
valuing life.
But to value life
in a fallen world,
there is this principle.
If you take life,
your life will be forfeited.
And it is just.
And it creates a principle
that has been
typically true
in many cultures
throughout all of history.
Now,
I am not going to spend
the next 15 minutes
talking about the details
of capital punishment
and what we think about that
in our modern state
and in our modern government.
It's a great conversation.
If you really want to talk about it,
you can come talk to me afterwards.
But what I do want you to see
is that there is a principle here
that God has said,
I will not judge
the whole world.
I am entrusting
to humanity
this role
of enforcing justice
as it comes to life.
And I believe that
there is a principle there
that we need to take seriously.
Affirming the value
of life,
particularly human life,
someone who is made
in God's image
is one of the implications
that we see here.
And we need to think about this,
that this is not just
in capital punishment
and thinking about murder cases,
but there are broader implications
for this as well.
How do we think about
those who are vulnerable
or potentially whose life
is not valued
in our culture today?
What do we think
about the unborn?
What do we think
about the aging?
What do we think
about those
with severe disabilities
or handicaps?
How are we to honor
their life
that God has given them,
made in the image of God?
how do we respond
when human beings
treat other human beings
as if they are less than human
in modern forms of slavery
and sex trafficking?
Or how do we even confront
the very human
and very fallen
pattern that we have
of being xenophobic,
that is afraid of people
who are different than us.
We look at them
and we think sometimes
how easy it is to think
they're not as human as I am.
And we don't see
the image of God in them
and we don't treat them
with the dignity
that we ought to do so.
God values human life highly
because He has made us
in His image
and because He created
the world
to be a place
where life would flourish.
So He returns
in verse 7.
And you,
you, Noah,
and your sons,
the footnote says
it's plural,
you and your sons
and your daughter-in-laws
and their families,
be fruitful
and multiply,
team on the earth,
multiply life.
God is restoring
this mandate
to humanity
while giving it
constraints within
a fallen world.
But this is what
God's plan is.
His plan to fill
the world with life
has not been derailed
even by this
cataclysmic flood.
God does this
knowing that humans
will sin,
knowing that they
will fail.
He sends His relief pitcher
back out
in the next game
even after they've
blown the save.
So not only
does God restore
the form of creation,
not only does God
restore the flourishing
of life and creation,
but God restores
confidence
in His character
and His faithful care
for all of His creation.
this is what we see
in verses 8
and following
because not only
does God then say
I will not do this
and then gives
instruction for humanity
to be fruitful
and multiply,
but then He says
and I will make
a covenant with you.
I will make a pact,
an agreement with you.
And it is not just
with you,
Noah,
and your sons,
but it is for all
of creation.
If you look at verses
10 through 17,
the repetition
over and over again
of every living creature,
of all creatures,
of all things,
God is doing this
with the whole world
and He's making
a covenant
with the whole world
that He will not
destroy them again
in this kind of way,
but that He will put
a bow in the clouds
so that He will remember them
and so that they will know
that He remembers them.
One of the most interesting things
about the hurricane
in the Bahamas
was that two days
after the hurricane,
there was another front
that came through
and there was rain.
And some of you
may have experienced
something like this.
After a really traumatic event,
when you come close
to that again,
it raises all of the fears
that you experience
going through the traumatic event
the first time.
And it is interesting
that when God wants
to give a sign
to His creation
to say,
I will not do that again,
He does it in the context
of when the clouds form
and when the fear
in your heart rises
that this rainstorm
is going to turn
into that flood
that destroyed the world,
there will be a bow
to remind you
that I have made a promise
that I will not do that,
that I will care,
for you.
The substance of the covenant
is in verse 11.
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.
God will remember
His people.
Just as He remembered Noah
in chapter 8, verse 1,
when the floods were up
and God saw Noah
and He remembered him
and He rescued him.
So also,
God will remember
His promise
and He will take this bow
and it's fascinating, right?
The word for bow
in Hebrew,
in the ancient language,
is the same bow
for a weapon of war.
God makes His bow
to point not downward
but upward.
The image of judgment
is no longer pointing down
at His creation
but it is pointing upward
as if God is saying,
where there is judgment,
I will take it.
I will promise
that I will not
make you face this judgment again
in this same way.
So God has said,
I will be faithful
to care for my fallen creation.
So,
we see
what kind of God here.
One of the most remarkable things
is that when you look
through this section,
after verse 20,
God is the only subject
of the verbs
in the entire section.
God said this.
God says this.
God promises this.
God blesses them.
God does all of these things.
God is taking the initiative
to do this.
When God makes this covenant
to not destroy the world again,
He's not saying,
if you keep the law,
if you obey me and follow me,
if you do all of these things,
God is graciously coming
to His world
that He has just inflicted
a horrific judgment on
and He's saying,
I have not abandoned you,
I have not lost you,
and I am unilaterally
coming to you
to make this covenant,
to promise to you
that I am not a God
who simply delights
in destruction,
but I am a God
who delights in giving life.
I am the one
who has come to bless you
so that you may flourish
and have life.
What a great relief it is
to know that this is the God
that Abraham knew
and experienced
after the flood.
And this is the God
who we still know today.
He is active,
not passive,
but initiating
to restore what is broken.
He is working
to accomplish
His good purposes,
and He is gracious
to renew the context
in which human beings
would flourish.
And the question
that this text
points us to
is,
will you trust Him?
Do you believe
this God?
Have you seen
the rainbow?
It stands
in the storms
of the world
and the storms
of your life.
The story
doesn't end there.
The section
continues.
Having looked at God,
it then goes on
to say,
what will humanity
be like
after the flood?
What will happen?
Particularly with Noah
and his family.
And so this is the
second part
of this passage
that we see.
Starting in verse 18,
what we see
is that we see
humanity's
divided destiny.
So in verses
18 and 19
we see a little,
very brief,
little
genealogy.
The sons of
Noah
were Shem,
Ham,
and Japheth.
And by the way,
Ham was the
father of Canaan.
You might wonder,
why did that get
stuck in there?
Well,
imagine that
Moses is writing
this to Israel
as they're
moving through
the promised land
and heading towards,
or moving through
the desert
and heading towards
the promised land.
Who lives in the
promised land?
The Canaanites.
Who are the Canaanites?
The descendants of Canaan.
So,
Moses is giving you
a little marker.
This is where
those people came from.
So he's just kind of
saying,
hey,
this is where
they came from.
And so,
he gives this
and he says,
from this,
right,
these three men
and their wives,
from these families,
then,
the world will be
refilled.
Pastor Greg
dealt some last week
with the question
of how global
or local
the flood was.
It's an ongoing
conversation.
It's not a hill
for us to die on.
But some of these,
some of these passages
make me think,
maybe it was
a global flood.
I'll just leave it there
and keep going.
The story is going
with a restoration
of a new humanity
and the spreading out,
be fruitful and multiply,
of humanity.
And so,
the question is,
and what kind of humanity
will this be?
And starting verse 20,
then,
we turn from this
grand cosmic narrative
to this very little scene,
this very strange
little story
that tells us about
the sons of Noah
and what kind of men
they were.
Noah is a man of the earth,
sort of like a second Adam,
a man of the soil.
And,
you know,
interestingly,
though,
Noah is not the focus
of this story.
He grows vineyards,
he makes wine,
he gets drunk.
It seems like it's
kind of disgraceful.
But it's not a very strong,
there's not a lot
of commentary about Noah.
It's simply the context
for what happens
with his sons.
So,
Noah does this,
and there he is,
asleep in his tent,
in disgrace,
one would imagine.
and Ham
goes in and looks.
And the word to see
has a sense of searching,
like he really wanted to see,
like he was jumping up
to see if he could look
through the windows,
except they don't have windows
because it was tense,
so he's peeking,
see if he could get in.
He really wanted to look
on his father
in his shame.
And once he saw it,
he went to his brothers,
he's like,
you see what dad did?
It sure seems like
whatever he was doing,
he was either tattling
or mocking his father
in how he responded
to this context.
Whatever it is,
it's a violation
of honoring his father.
And you see that so clearly
because you see the contrast
between what he does
and what his brothers do.
when Shem and Japheth
hear this,
look with me at it
because it's so striking.
Verse 23,
they took a garment,
laid it both on their shoulders.
They walked backwards
and covered the nakedness.
Their faces were turned backwards.
This was repeated twice.
They did not look.
But they carefully covered him up
in a way that honored him.
in distinction to what Ham did.
And so,
when Noah awakes,
he figures it out.
It's interesting.
The story doesn't care how.
No one knows.
But he knows what happened.
Right?
And he looks at his sons
and he lays down
cursing and blessing.
Interestingly,
the curse on Ham
is not on Ham,
is it?
See verse 25?
The curse is on his son,
Canaan.
One of his four sons,
as we learn later on.
You can look in chapter 10,
verse 6.
You see that Ham had four sons,
Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.
So this was the youngest son
of the youngest son.
And this curse then
has an explanatory context
that most of us
wouldn't recognize.
Because when you look
at the sons of Ham broadly,
you recognize that from him,
many of the greatest opponents
of God's people
in the Middle East came.
The nation of Egypt,
the nation of Assyria,
the nation of Babylon,
and specifically
the Canaanites
who lived in the promised land.
You can see that
in verses 6 through 10
of chapter 10.
What God says is,
Canaan, you will be a servant.
And what I think
this is specifically telling
is predicting
and speaking into the future
about what will happen
as God is bringing his people
into the promised land.
There is a focused
salvation historical purpose
for what this story
is pointing to.
Because it is pointing to
the people that Moses is leading
and then Joshua will lead
into the promised land
where these Canaanites live.
And he is saying,
from this stock,
from this account,
from these historical curses,
this is then the conflict
that arises
and the basis upon which
we will see this conquest come.
The curse is predictive
and it is elective,
not merely punitive.
Noah isn't just in a tizzy
and getting mad at Ham
because he's ashamed.
There's a larger history
because what we see in this
is that there are two lines
that come out of Noah.
And these are the lines
that we've already seen
in the history of humanity
ever since Adam and Eve.
As Adam and Eve fell into sin
and then they had children,
right,
we had the line of Cain
and we had the line of Seth.
And we've seen this repeated
over and over again.
One is a line
that is under the curse
and is exemplifying
the worst of sinful humanity.
One is a line of promise,
not because they are sinless,
but because God is working
through this line of promise
to work his redemptive purposes.
And so we see the line
from Seth to Shem
to Abraham in just a few weeks.
And we see the line
from Cain to Ham to Canaan.
And we see these two lines of promise,
the line of promise
and the fear of judgment,
both being realities
in the future of humanity.
Now I need to spend two minutes here
because there has been
a line of interpretation
about this passage in particular
that the curse on Ham
has been used by some
in the church
and outside the church
as an excuse for a defense
of a biblical justification
for slavery of Africans.
How they got there
had to do with the fact
that many of Ham's children
ended up living in seemingly North Africa
and becoming the...
And the way that this was played out
in the thoughts of those
who presented this
was that these are the ones
who are the sons of the curse
and therefore because
they're called to be servants,
then we have the right
as the church,
as Westerners,
as the seed of promise.
This is the thinking.
It's not right,
but it's the thinking.
This has been justified.
This has been used
to justify racism
against Africans
and black people,
and it's been used
to justify slavery.
It is reprehensible,
and it is incorrect.
There is no excuse for it
except for human sinfulness,
which is not an excuse.
Because we see a number of things.
One is that not all
of Ham's descendants were cursed.
Only Canaan was cursed.
So to see this as a global curse
on Ham's descendants
is a misreading of the text.
Secondly,
we see that
what this story is doing
is setting up the context
in which Israel is going to enter
into the land of Palestine,
the promised land,
later,
and where the people
came from
whom they will
be displacing.
Now,
that's a whole other question
to yourself.
I'm going to refer you.
Pastor Greg,
about a year ago,
did a great sermon
on Exodus 21 and 22
and dealt with this issue,
so you can go there.
And you work it out
because there are other questions
that this raises,
but what I want to say
very clearly
is that
the curses
do not have
any enduring
racial or social,
political application
for us today.
In fact,
what we see
in the sweep
of the Bible storyline
is that God
is always inviting people
from every tongue
and tribe and nation.
And even in the Old Testament
when he's prefer,
when he's making Israel
the center of it,
he's inviting people in.
And when we see
in Acts 2
the spread of the outpouring
of the Spirit
and the bringing in
of people,
and when we look
at the vision
of what's going to happen
in the throne room
when people from every tongue
and tribe and nation
are gathered around
the throne of Jesus
worshiping him,
we recognize
that there is no place
in the church
for that justification
or that discrimination.
So I just need to say that
because it's out there.
It's out there
in the history
and we need to recognize it
and we need to repudiate it
and we need to be clear
on what the Bible
actually says
about these things.
That brings us back,
however,
to the fact that
there are two lines.
The history of humanity
is divided.
There are those
who will face judgment
and there are those
through whom
God will work redemption.
We need to be clear
on the fact
that this is true
still today.
If the flood
couldn't cleanse the world
or redeem humanity,
what will?
The pattern of God's faithfulness
is in the context
of human fallenness.
And His faithfulness
is a redemptive one,
but it comes
in the context
of recognizing
the greatness
of His judgment
against sin.
So how do we know
who God will be for us
as we face
God's judgment
against sin
in our own lives?
Well, friends,
this is the beauty
of the storyline
of the gospel.
This is why we read
Jeremiah 31 earlier
because this covenant
said,
I will not destroy.
The new covenant
that God promises
through Jeremiah
and Ezekiel
and then establishes
as Jesus comes
is that God
will not abandon
His righteousness
so the judgment
will come on sin,
but God will not
abandon His purposes
for His created beings
to live.
So how will He do this?
Through the line of Shem,
through the line
of Seth,
He will bring
to Jesus.
Look at the genealogy
in Luke 3
and you will see
this line
coming all the way
from Adam
to Jesus Christ,
God become man
in the flesh
who has come
to stand in the gap
between the death
that we deserve
and the life
that God has intended
for us.
He has come
to take on flesh
and to live as a man.
He has come
to take the judgment
on our sin
at the cross.
He has come
to gain victory
over sin and death.
By His resurrection
from the dead,
He has come
to be our rescuer
in whom many
will be saved.
He has made
a better covenant
with His blood
that is sure.
and that if we
take hold of this
by faith,
we can rest
in the refuge
of Christ
and know
that when the storm
of judgment
that will finally come
upon all earth
and upon all flesh,
that we will have
a rescuer
and we will stand
through that storm
that God will not
abandon His plan
or His people
but that He has come
in Jesus
so that we might be His.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank You
for this hope
even as we are sobered
and recognize that,
Lord, we are as much
of the line of Ham
as we are of the line
of Shem.
Lord, that we have
sin in our hearts
that we cannot uproot
and we cannot overcome
simply by good works
or by good will.
Lord, that apart
from Your redeeming work
we are lost.
Lord, we praise You
for Your redeeming work.
in Christ
and ask, Lord,
I ask today
that as we come
to Your table, Lord,
that You would help us
to celebrate, Lord,
the redemption
that we have in Him.
We pray this
in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, friends,
it is fitting for us
to...
raumu relationship
that...