But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. – Genesis 6:18

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 24, 2012): Genesis 6

It amazes me that God would enter into a relationship with us that is based on a promise. It seems to be one of the differences between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the other gods of the Near East. While the other relationships seem to exist on the whim of the gods, the Hebrew God comes to his creation and makes a covenant with them. There really was no need for the promise. God didn’t have to enter into that relationship with us. God is so far above us that it sometimes surprises me that he even notices us – but he does.

So as God prepares to move us into the future, he makes a covenant with us. If you are a “Covenantal Theologian” (someone who studies the various promises that God has made with his creation), this one is known as the Noahic Covenant – literally it was the covenant that God made with Noah. And the Noahic Covenant was a general covenant – it applied to all of the people of the earth. That is one reason that at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) it is the major points of the Noahic Covenant that the church leaders instruct Paul that he should have the Gentiles (the non-Jews) keep. These are the rules that go beyond race, or language or even religion. These rules are universal in nature.

Essentially, the Noahic covenant does seven main things. It instructs Noah and his sons to be fruitful and multiply in order to populate the earth. It places all of the living things on the earth under human authority (and that authority also contains the idea of responsibility – we are responsible for what happens to God’s creation.) It forbids the eating of meat with blood still in it. It forbids murder. It says that violence will be repaid by violence. In the covenant, God promises that he will never again destroy all of the life on the earth with a flood. And God places a rainbow in the sky as a sign of this covenant for all of the ages to come. 

Basically, the Noahic Covenant covered all of the major elements of the Covenant that God made with Adam. In this, Noah becomes the second Adam – except that Paul calls Jesus the second Adam, so maybe it is better to call Noah the Adam 1.5. God hadn’t changed his expectations of man since the days of Adam. His expectations remained consistent. And even after Adam and then Cain and the other descendant of Adam had totally messed up on what it was that God wanted from them, God still desired to bless them. And that is the point of the promise that God makes with Noah.

And it is still the promise that God wants to make with us. Despite of the number of times that we blow it, God’s purpose is still to bless.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis 7