SERMON: A Noahic Nativity

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged Strengthened in your faith and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you on March 11th 2011 the earth convulsed beneath the northeastern panhandle of Japan at 246 p .m.

A magnitude 9 .1 level earthquake tore open the seabed and sent shockwaves through concrete steel and bone power lines cracked like bull whips and storefronts shuddered and the entire coastline shook with terror as If the coastline of Japan was having a grand mall seizure

And if that were not scary enough then a truly terrifying thing actually occurred almost like the in like the ocean

Inhaled itself or if you've ever been with a child who is racing another child and how quickly they can drink their their milk

It just goes away so quickly in a moment The the ocean was like it was running away from this from the from the sand

The coastline began vanishing water began sprinting like an Olympic athlete towards the depths

Fishing boats and harbor in the harbor were drifting backwards almost like they were being pulled by a very powerful winch and the sea

That day drew away from the shore in a long unnatural escape That should terrify anyone

And on the horizon of that a Nightmare appeared for those people in Japan.

It wasn't just a wave. It was a wall of water 3040 feet high that crashed against the shore and leveled everything within its path

What eyewitnesses would have seen that day was a black rolling 40 -foot wall of water churning rooftops splintering houses uprooting forest and That rainbow colored hue of oil and gasoline shimmering on the water just before it started to burn

By all accounts. This was not just water. It was the relocation of a city

Now moving downstream and destruction Sirens were wailing across town people were bolting from buildings and sprinting frantically

Cars were jammed in intersections mothers were crying out to their children's name The sounds of the tsunami were growing louder and so loud

In fact that it drowned out the sirens so that all that you could hear was the rushing of the water

But here's where the story gets really interesting as The waters were pulling back into the sea that moment just before the tidal wave crest and comes to the shore

There was a Japanese woman Who was truly brave and heroic in this moment

When everyone else was running trying to escape and at this point all of them still thought it was just an earthquake

All of them still all of them still thought they were just trying to get out of the building She saw what was happening and she ran into a building in Order not to save herself, but to save the town.

Her name was Miki Indo I hope that's pronounced that correctly and she ran to the town's crisis management center

She was just a 20 -something year old woman The building was already shaking so hard that it felt like an old wooden deck

That was in a storm in the old North Sea. It was creaky and cracking at this point

Miki pushed through falling ceiling tiles and desks that were had spilled and vomited their contents out onto the floor and She ascended the staircase that now had very little integrity and looked like it was going to collapse and She arrived on the second floor where she needed to be and she slid into her broadcasting chair

This is where she worked. So she knew the area well, and she steadied herself with a single hand

She grabbed the microphone and with the tiny little red light blinking. She spoke

With confidence to her town a message a six meter tsunami is approaching

Please evacuate immediately Outside her window the ocean was already stalking the coastline

Like an invasion was happening cars were soon gonna be bubbling like toys houses. We're gonna be scraped against road signs

But she stayed in her chair She stayed in her chair She said please run to higher ground.

She said please evacuate immediately. She said do not wait she screamed

Her co -workers Screamed at her from the top of the roof down through the stairwell and said you have to get up on the roof

You have to get up here or you're going to die and she sat there all the way until the point when the flood washed her away and Because of her

There were many people who were actually saved on the rooftop that day the folks who were calling for her to come up There were 40 people 11 of them survived

So she counted the cost and she realized that in that chair. She was gonna die that in that chair many were gonna live so she stayed and she broadcast the message and When the waters receded there were people who even said

I heard her voice I don't know who she is, but I heard her voice and and I went to safety

There are people who said I was able to get to higher ground because of her. My children are alive because of her

Even to this day the country of Japan remembers her as a heroine for her actions Because she remained knowing she was going to die so that others might live

Now this is actually Where Advent begins? Not just with this particular story and not just with shepherds in a

Middle Eastern sky and not just with the heavenly host Announcing a special birth, but us people living in the valley of sin

Expecting the torrent of God's wrath to consume us and yet a message has gone out for us to be saved

Advent begins in a world like Mickey's and better yet maybe in a world like Noah's a

World that was facing the coming of a global flood a world that was numbed by its sin a world that was blind to the

Storm that was forming upon the horizon a world that Noah Flooded with the message of repent turn run to safety get out come into the ark before you're swept away

Scripture even tells us of this awful period of time in the history of earth Genesis 6 5 every intent of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually

So the whole earth stood underneath the swollen judgment of God a judgment that they deserved a

Judgment that they had earned a Judgment that God raised up a herald a preacher of righteousness to warn them of civilization civilizations collapse to flee from the wrath to come

Noah preached but unlike Mickey People laughed at him.

He preached and built the ark and They just jested and mocked him

Noah warned them while they did their best to ignore him And just before the judgment fell unlike Mickey God spared

Noah and his family locking them into a floating floating wooden life raft for a very specific

Reason a reason that we were going to talk about today. Why did God spare Noah? Why did

God spare this single family? Were they worthy? Were they good and What was

God's good plan? so if you will join me as we turn to our passage this morning and that passage is in Genesis 8 20 all the way through Genesis 9 17

This could be the longest passage we've ever preached a sermon on It could be

I don't I'm I think it might be Genesis 8 and we'll go all the way through Genesis 9 17 and the reason

I'm reading all of this is not because we're gonna exegete or exposit exegete means pull the meaning out exposit means tell the meaning to So a pastor who's worth his salt should pull the meaning out of the text and tell it to the people of God Not bring meaning to the text and then act like you're the authority

We're gonna read it not because we can do everything we're gonna read it to show you the development of the

Noahic Covenant and we're gonna do it so that we can see how Advent and the coming of Christ is the fulfillment of the

Noahic Covenant. So I will read to you Genesis 8 20 And we'll go to Genesis 9 17

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar and the

Lord smelled the soothing aroma and the Lord said to himself I will never again curse the ground on the counts of man

For the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth and I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done

While the earth remains seed time and harvest cold and heat summer and winter. Ah and day and night shall not cease and God blessed

Noah and his sons and said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth

The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky with Everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand.

They are given Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you. I will give all that is its blood

No, I will give all to you and I gave the green plants only you shall not eat with flesh with its life

That is its blood Surely I will require your lifeblood from every beast

I will require it and from every man from every man's brother. I will require the life of man

Whoever sheds man's blood by man his blood shall be shed for in the image of God. He made man as For you be fruitful and multiply populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it and then

God spoke to Noah And to his sons with him saying now behold

I myself will establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you the birds the cattle and every beast of the earth with you of all that comes out of the ark even every beast of the

Earth I Establish my covenant with you and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood

Neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth God said This is the sign of the covenant which

I'm making between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all successive generations

I set my bow in the clouds and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between me and the earth and It shall come about when

I bring a cloud over the earth That the bow will be seen in the clouds and I will remember my covenant

Which is between me and you in every living creature of all flesh and never again

Shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh? When the bow is in the cloud, then

I will look upon it to 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 which

I have established between me and all flesh that is on earth This is the word of the Lord Let's pray

Lord. We thank you that the entire story of scripture advances on the chapter headings of covenants

Lord we thank you that these covenants are organizing principles that we can use to interpret different eras of The Old Testament and even the era that we now live in under the new covenant blessings of Christ Lord help us

To see the reality that's happening in this passage and to see it Well and to see it through the lens of Jesus is coming and it's in Christ's name.

We pray. Amen Now the first thing

I'd like to talk about today is that Advent and Christmas need the Noahic Covenant and I said that the way that I meant it

Advent and Christmas need the Noahic Covenant Because before we can arrive in Bethlehem stable and before we can see the sweet little child

Not with a face showing Second Commandment violators. You remember we tongue with but wrapped in swaddling clothes and We must reckon before we see that that the world and the state that the world was in when he came one of the most important points about the world is

That and we so routinely fail to recognize it is that the world in which we live should not have existed a

World that if strict justice ran its course you and I would not be here a world that would have ended in the

Garden of Eden a world that if God were Especially generous overly generous more generous than we could ever deserve

He would have allowed to be buried in the depths of the sea of the flood never to be resurrected again

Because as it says man's heart is evil only continually so if justice ruled the day we would not be here and Whether we like that or not it is justice

Justice is getting what we deserve Justice is getting what we are owed Everyone always likes to say that's not fair Do you know what you're saying dear friend?

If what was fair happened to you you would not be here and neither would

I It's not fair that God doesn't save everybody. Well, let me ask you this How is it that God saves anyone that's a better question

Justice is receiving the paycheck for the labors with which you worked. And what does the

Bible say? For all have sinned and what are the wages for those who sin?

Death That's justice That all of us would inherit death that all of us would would die for our sins

So it's really actually mercy and grace that we are standing here today. It's mercy and grace

That actually stayed the Lord's hand so that the wall of water didn't come back again and again and again

You see over the long centuries from Adam to Noah Sin did not just accumulate sparingly like someone who put a little too much salt on their dish

Sin actually began to putrefy the planet What was one act of rebellion in the

Garden of Eden spread through the human race like a wound that never closes a gash?

That is so infected that it no longer bleeds But it swells up and closes up and starts to puff up and it is ready to burst.

That's what our sin nature looks like our wickedness Warmed in our hearts like crumbs hidden in the basement in the wet dank basement so that now they are filled full of maggots

Our sin nature if we were to be able to see it on a spiritual level Looks like rancid curdling milk in the middle of an

Alabama summer our souls

Are not merely misbehaving They are in advanced late stages of decomposition

Every thought every desire every intention of our heart Is evil not just we made a mistake

We are a pocket of festering putridity the world that Adam fractured became a collection of corpses

So far gone that its skin Slumped on the bones and its marrow soured and the stench rose heavenward like a blasphemous incense

I'm straining with language to describe what even is worse than what I'm saying There is a true horror and sin.

I think actually the most horrible aspect of sin is that Persnickety penchant that we all have to downplay it.

Oh It's just a lie. I Just looked I didn't touch

When we downplay sin we do the same thing that a

Doctor would do in an ER when he's looking at a man with a gunshot wound in the chest and saying it's no big deal

It's just a flesh wound. I want you to think about it this way, especially in relationship to the flood

It was just for God to punish the world it was just for God to punish the wicked he had been exceedingly gracious moderating his indignation for hundreds thousands of years at this point from Adam to Noah and I want you to imagine

What would have happened? If our God were only a God of justice

That's the opposite of what I just said if our God were only a God of justice No one would have escaped those chaotic waters if God were only a

God of justice then there would have been no Mary and There would have been no

Bethlehem and there would have been no wise men and there would have been no manger and there would have been No incarnation and there would have been no cross and there would have been no empty tomb if God were only a

God of justice and he had no mechanism by which he could moderate the fury of his anger, then we would have no hope.

In other words, unless we see what God has described to us in the

Noahic Covenant and really understand it, we don't understand salvation and we don't understand his mercy and we don't understand what

Christ has done. So in order to understand those things, we go back to the covenant

God made with Noah. Now with that, last week

I told you seven features of a covenant, seven aspects of every single covenant, and we're gonna go through those seven aspects again.

We're gonna go through it like a tour guide in the Serengeti. We're gonna point to some things and say, look at that, and we're gonna point to some other things and say stay away from that, and we're gonna point to those things as we travel and we're gonna tie it all together in Christ at the end.

So the Noahic Covenant, it has seven features. Number one, every covenant has a covenant head.

We talked about that last week. When it comes to headship, Noah is the head of the Noahic Covenant. He is the male representative of the covenant with Noah and everyone who comes after him in generation with him.

In the same way that Adam was the covenant head of the Adamic Covenant, Noah is the head of the

Noahic Covenant, and Genesis signals this kind of same headship with the exact same formula that it talks about Adam in Genesis 4, and it says these are the generations of Noah.

It says these are the generations of Noah because Noah is the head by which the generations are connected, and in Adam, or sorry, in Noah, those generations receive those same promises, conditions, blessings, and curses that Noah received.

For Adam, generations meant the entire history of the world. For Noah, generations meant his lineage will launch the world after the world was destroyed.

Noah is not just a survivor. He's the federal father of everyone who comes after him, and there's not a single person in this room who does not descend from Noah.

There are many people who are not alive today on the earth, many family lines that were severed in the flood, but there's not a single family line from Noah that has been severed.

Every one of us has our generation back to Noah. What I mean is, at the time of the flood, all the families on earth were cut off except his, so therefore, by necessity, we all belong to Noah.

We're all downstream of Noah, and the similarities between these two men don't just stop at their headship.

They're both heads over a kind of creation. Adam was formed out of the dust of the ground.

What does it say about Noah? It says that he was a man of the soil. Do you see the connection? Adam made out of the ground,

Noah, a man of the soil. Adam names the creation, and then

Noah reorganizes it after judgment. Adam's obedience or disobedience shaped the destiny of every child that he would ever have, and Noah's will do the same, and it is here that what

I'm getting at, that the Bible is not very subtle about, that I want you to feel the weight of. Humanity is led by a federal head.

The first one fell, and all who were in him fell, as we talked about last week, and now in Noah, God is showing us that he has rebooted the redemption project, but this time he's launching it through an

Adam 2 .0. He got an upgrade. You have a second federal head who looks an awful, awful, awful lot like Adam, and we'll see that in more as we go.

Number two, every covenant has stipulations, as we talked about last week. These are commands from God that if you want to be in relationship with me, if you want to have fellowship with me, if you want to be my people, then you have to obey these commands.

There are commands in the Noahic Covenant, just as Adam received commands in his covenant. Now, as soon as Adam stepped, as soon as Noah, I'm getting back and forth, as soon as Noah stepped off the boat and into a brand -new

Eden, he received the stipulations, and what do I mean that he stepped into a brand -new Eden?

What do I mean by that? Well, I want you to notice something. In the original creation, the chaotic waters abounded in the beginning.

It says that the chaos of the waters were there, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, organizing a boundary between water and sky.

That's day one. God separated the water from the sky and the water from the earth. Day two, God separated the water from the dry land and the water bodies.

Day three, God caused the vegetation to sprout up from the earth. What do we see in Noah?

We see that God erased all those divisions that brought the chaotic waters back upon the earth.

He's de -creating the world. He's sending it back to before day one in Genesis 1, where the chaotic waters are there hovering.

Noah sends out a dove or a raven at first, and it's hovering over the waters.

It's an image of God, even in Genesis 1, hovering over the chaotic waters, because Noah is in Adam 2 .0.

He sends a dove over the waters as well, then calls the rain to stop. God calls the rain to stop.

What is that? He separated the water from the earth. That's day one.

What did he do next? He caused the dry land to appear. That's day two of creation, where the waters receded and dry land appeared.

So here you have a second day of a new creation. Then he caused the vegetation to sprout. What was the hope?

Why didn't Noah get out of the boat? Because the dove returned with an olive branch, because the vegetation now was sprouting up out of the earth.

It's a new day three, a new day one, a new day two, a new day three. Noah is exiting the boat like Adam 2 .0

in a new creation in a brand new Eden. But we're getting ahead of ourselves a little here.

In regards to the commands that God gave him as soon as he stepped off the boat, God immediately lays down very similar stipulations that he gave to Noah.

Just as Adam heard the mandate, be fruitful and multiply, did you recognize as we were reading that God told

Noah be fruitful and multiply? Same exact command he gave to Adam. He told him to fill the earth and roll over and subdue it.

Not a hard question. Who did God say that to first? As soon as Noah steps off the boat,

God gave him the same words, same commands, and God told him to govern the world, just like God told

Adam to govern the garden. We said last week that the two words that were given to Adam were to keep and to work.

What is Noah other than one who is commanded to exercise dominion and justice over the world?

He's a new Adam. Adam was told not to eat from one of the trees, which would cause him death.

Noah is told not to take the life of man, which will cause death. So they're both prohibited from bringing death onto this formerly washed world.

Adam ate the fruit and it caused him to be naked and ashamed. Well, what happened to Noah?

Noah gets off the ark, Noah plants a vineyard, and Noah drinks the wine, which by the way is just eating the fruit in a mature form.

If you eat the fruit, it's in its simplest form. If you drink the wine, it's in its most mature form. So he's eating the fruit, he's becoming naked, and he's becoming ashamed.

He's Adam 2 .0. Adam's son Cain received a double curse.

Noah's son Canaan receives a double curse. It's his grandson. Even the fact that God slayed an animal to cover

Adam's nakedness, and Noah was commanded to slay an animal in order to cover him in a kind of sacramental way is showing that there's a connection between Noah and Adam.

Both are commanded to do the exact same things, both are commanded to say the same things, eat the same things, believe the same things, and both of them fall.

But we'll get to that in a moment. The next aspect of a covenant is the blessings for obedience. Every covenant has a blessing.

If you obey my word, you will be blessed. Here's what it looks like. Because no covenant stands on mere commands.

God is gracious. God is not an authoritarian. God is not your slave master.

You are his slave, yes, but he gives you blessings because he's kind and generous and benevolent and loving. So if you obey his commands, you get his blessings, and the blessings of Noah imitate and mirror and resemble the blessings that we find in the

Garden of Eden with breathtaking additions. For instance, Adam received the world as a potential space.

Remember, God made a little garden out of the earth, and Adam was supposed to fill it, subdue it, and spread it.

Adam inherited a world that had potential, but not yet actual. Noah receives the world not as potential, but as promise.

God promises it to him. God promises that he will not take it away from him. God gives it to him unreservedly.

If Adam obeyed, he and his family would eventually own the entire world. Noah, right off the bat, is given the deed.

It's a seed time and harvest will remain. Day and night will remain. Cold and and heat will remain, but what will not be taken away again is this world from you.

Why is that promise so monumental? Because Noah and his family had just seen the ugly, ghastly, visceral, macabre, or macabre, sorry

I mispronounced that, I'm Southern, of what sin does. They had just watched the ugliness of it.

Do we think that when Noah got off the boat that there weren't bones laying on the ground?

There weren't puffed up corpses? I'm not trying to be gross, but when you're in water for a while, you swell and you stink.

You can imagine Noah getting off the boat and getting a very visceral example of the nasty, ugly, awfulness of sin.

This is what happened to the world because we sinned against God. This is what happened when you have covenantal treachery.

But yet, God promises Noah that he will never take the world back from him.

Seed time and harvest, hot and cold, rain and snow, the earth will remain. The earth will not be flooded again.

The earth will be yours. Can you, like, I want you to get a, imagine this, this is like a blank check.

Like if you told your children, hey it doesn't matter how you act all year, it's fine, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get you this thousand dollar toy, or for the older ones you're gonna get more because they have more expensive toys,

I'm gonna get you this $30 ,000 car so that you can have a car. I don't care how you act, I don't care what you do, I don't care if you spit in my face,

I don't care if you mock me and talk bad about me, I don't care what you do, if you throw a knife in my back, I'm gonna give you this gift.

That's kind of what this is. I am going to do this. I am going to be faithful, and I know you're not.

That's the promise that Noah's given. That's the blessing that Noah's given. And we see how quickly

Noah falls into depravity, don't we? Just a few chapters after, or a few paragraphs after, he sees this grand display of the glory of God, he ends up sloppy drunk in his tent, passed out naked, which sounds like it was from the scene of a

Southern event, doesn't it? It sounds Southern. He got drunk and passed out in his trailer, that's what it sounds like to me.

Then he was ashamed by one of his sons, then his grandson is cursed. And that's just what we have on record.

So God is saying, Noah, even though I know you're not perfect, even though I know you will not follow my word, even though I know in like five minutes from now, you're gonna be drunk and naked, but even though I know all of that,

I'm gonna promise you that I will not take this world away, I will not wash it again with the flood. Why? Not because of you.

Because you are awful, just like all of us. God was promising on the basis of his goodness that all of these things would happen, not on the basis of Noah.

The post -flood blessings of God, life in your lungs, fresh wine at your table, a juicy, delicious steak.

Thank God for Noah and us being able to eat steak. But all those gifts,

I mean, just even, like, you know the eye is so complex that we can't even understand it.

Like I can look at each of you and see your smiling faces. And there's a memory that occurs in my mind that I know them.

I've sat with them. I've been at this restaurant with them. I've sat in their living room. They've been in my living room. All of these memories flood my mind.

If you close your eyes and I tell you to imagine my face, you can do it. Isn't it astounding?

You're creating immaterial reality in your mind. You can't weigh it. You can't smell it. You can't touch it.

But yet you see my face if you close your eyes. And I don't, I wouldn't ask you to do that. My wife is the only one who can do that.

But I'm just an example. All of these good blessings, all of these good gifts, all of them have been given by a

God who knows how wicked and awful we are. Adam got his blessing because the world was created good.

Noah got his blessing even though the world was wicked. Do you see the difference? Every sunrise after the flood was an act of God's extreme mercy.

Every harvest, every cob of corn was a blessing of God's sheer grace.

And that is astounding. And that's something we often forget. This is not the application part of the sermon, but it is,

I think, something that's really important. Walk through your life mindful of the blessings of God because you certainly and I certainly don't deserve them.

Everything we have is pure, unadulterated grace, even the things we complain about.

There's also curses in every covenant. There's curses for disobedience and they're enlisted in the scriptures.

Both the Adamic covenant and the Noahic covenant had curses for disobedience. Adam and Noah and the parallels are incredible here as well.

For instance, Adam's fall was framed by fruit in its simplest form. Noah's fall was framed by wine fruit in its most complex form.

Adam ended up naked. Noah ended up naked. Adam's sin brought cursing to Cain. Noah's sin brought cursing to Canaan.

Adam's household fractured immediately. Two sons were broken apart. Same thing with Noah. His three sons are broken apart.

Ham mocks the father. Canaan is called out for his cursing.

This is not a coincidence if you remember that God is moving redemption forward through covenants and that this covenant is a rebooting of the

Adamic covenant 1 .0 with a new covenant 2 .0. And we should not be surprised when the aspects of these covenants look similar because both of them are covenant heads.

Both are given identical commands. Both are giving access to similar blessings and both are given access to the same kinds of cursings.

And just like Adam, we realize that the covenant with Noah is revealing the same problem.

You cannot wash the world clean and expect that the soul of man will be purified from its sin.

You can destroy the entire world and wash it clean, but you cannot wash clean with water the heart of man.

That's what both the Adamic covenant and the Noahic covenant is trying to get us to realize.

And in both cases, both of them fall. And because both of them fall, we all fall. If you live in Massachusetts, we talked about this last week.

Your senator is crazy. We have two of them. They're both crazy.

One is more crazy than the other. And with her high cheekbones, she represents you. Remember, she said she's

Pocahontas. She is a great example of Adam and Noah because in her representation of us, which we do not like, we receive the decisions that she makes.

We receive the representation that she gives in the same way we are downstream of Adam, and we are downstream of Noah, and we receive the curses that they wrought out of their disobedience.

And it's true of all the covenants. Adam falls, Noah falls, Abraham falters, Moses stumbles,

David collapses. And it's at this point that we wonder, how can anyone be saved?

Because of all of these Adam reboots, everything that we see doing in the scripture is just another man trying to take the mantle of a covenant he can't bear.

But these covenants are actually telling us something really important, that God is not giving up on the race of man either.

We can look at it through the lens of fatalism or futility. Adam couldn't do it,

Noah couldn't do it, Abraham couldn't do it, Moses couldn't do it. What's the point? The point is God gave these covenants skipping across the landscape of history through men because he was saving covenant realities for the man, the one who could fulfill these covenants.

But again, we get ahead of ourselves. All covenants also have signs, which this is so cool.

All covenants have signs. Why? Because we're forgetful. And we need to remember that God loves us.

The signs are not for us to pledge our love to God. The signs are for God to remind us of his love for us.

That's why signs exist in the covenant and Adam and Noah had very similar signs. Adam's sign was a tree of life that would bring blessings to the world.

Noah's blessing or sign is a war bow that was hung in the sky that will promise blessings on the earth.

But what's interesting about that is that the blessings on earth would come at God's expense, which we'll talk about in a moment.

Adam's sign was in a single garden in a single zip code. It had potential for the whole world, but Adam fell.

Noah's sign hangs over the entire world so that both the good and the evil see the rainbow in the sky.

And even those who are especially evil have stolen the rainbow from God, and they will be held accountable for that in eternity.

The rainbow is God's war bow. That rainbow is

God's compound bow that you and I can't pull that will send an arrow flying through any heart he chooses.

It has deadly accuracy. It could get a fine hair on the back of a frog. And the strangest part about this bow is the direction that it's pointed.

After a rainstorm, you go outside and you look at the rainbow. You see that the curvature of the rainbow is pointed up towards the sky.

You don't have to be a great huntsman to know that the curvature of the bow is pointing at the one you're shooting.

So who is the bow pointed at? Not man, but God.

God is saying, in the most unbelievably gracious moment

I think yet in the Bible, and maybe one of the most gracious moments ever written in the Bible, save Calvary, is that if this covenant does not come to pass, may

I be shot. That's what God is saying. If I fail to deliver on my promises, may

I be pierced through with my own bow, which in the ancient world, as it's being described to Noah, was a very great dishonor to be killed with your own weapon.

Look at the scandal that God is promising here. If he doesn't fulfill his covenant, which by obvious account means he will.

There's nothing that will stop God from fulfilling his covenant. He will fulfill what he has said. He will not flood the earth again with flood, but that means something even more than just water.

It means that he will stay his justice, and he will not let loose the punishment that we are deserved in our sin.

He will hold it back. He will be the damn of his own wrath, or he will be shot, and he will die.

That's what God is saying. It's an unbelievable sign of God's mercy. It's an unbelievable statement from God of the seriousness of sin, but it's also an unbelievable sign that God is pledging,

I will not abandon you, and I will not forsaken you, and I will not leave you, because if I do, may

I be killed. Adam's tree was offered if he obeyed.

The rainbow was offered only on the basis of God and his righteousness. So it's a stronger promise.

It's a promise that can never be broken. Every covenant also has a covenant meal. Every covenant has a time when after the commands have been given, and after the terms have been discussed, and the blessings have been accounted, and the curses have been warned, there's a time, a sacred time, that's cut out where God and man eat together and seal the covenant together through a meal.

And both of these covenants have a similar meal. In Eden, after their sin,

God sacrificed an animal and clothed the nakedness of God, and that sort of sacrifice was a pleasing aroma to the

Lord. Here, God commissions Noah to sacrifice all of the clean animals. If you've ever wondered, why did

Noah have two by two by two by two of all the crazy animals and all of the little creeping things, but of the of the clean animals, of the sacrificial animals, why did he have seven?

Because God was promising Noah, when you get on this boat, you are gonna come out of this boat, and when you come out of this boat, you're gonna sacrifice these to me.

So I'm giving you extra provision. So I'm giving you beforehand what

I want you to use later, which is an awesome application for you. If you're walking through something hard, God has given you what he wants you to have before you actually see it.

He's already given it to you, he's already provided for you, because that's the character of God. Now, on top of that, when

Adam or when Noah sacrifices these animals and makes a burnt offering, it is astounding to me the word that is used for burnt offering there is an aroma of rest.

It says pleasing aroma in English, but in Hebrew it says an aroma of rest, which is fascinating. Why? Because the ark, it says, just came to rest, the sacrifice itself just came to rest on the altar,

God himself had just rested from his judgment, and now Noah is offering a pleasing aroma of rest, and by the way,

Noah's name means man of rest. Seems like God's up to something.

Seems like, just like in the covenant with Adam, where Adam was told after everything had finished, I want you to rest, that God is preparing

Noah and his generation for Sabbath rest. Adam was put into the world so that he could serve

God and rest in God every seventh day. Noah is literally the one who's called Sabbath rest, but the symmetry is not finished.

The same Noah who offers up this good meal on a mountain will later consume the wrong meal in his tent.

The covenant head who gave God an aroma of rest is the one who's gonna fall into a stupor of shame.

He's just like Adam, in his blessings and in his curses, in his good things and in his ill, which shows us something about covenant meals, doesn't it?

A covenant meal does not exist to magnify your ability. It doesn't exist to magnify your righteousness.

It exists to magnify the righteousness of God. When we when we feast with God, we are feasting with the

God who's perfect, knowing we are not. It's always grace. Now every covenant also has a clause in it that transmits those blessings and those stipulations and all of that to the next generation, because the covenant head is just one person.

He represents a great number of people. For instance, in the continuation of Adam's covenant, his descendants divided immediately into the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

It shows that this small little pocket called the seed of the woman would be the remnant by which God rescues the entire world.

Well, in the same way, Noah's descendants do the same. As soon as they get off the boat, as soon as Adam or as soon as Noah is found out and his shame, his offspring now are divided into three different parts.

One of them only is going to be the line of promise, which shows that God in the

Old Testament is continually narrowing his focus on the smaller and smaller and smaller groups of people.

In Adam, it was everybody. In Noah, it's less. In Noah's son, in Noah's son's son, in Abraham, in Isaac, in Jacob, in Moses, in David, and finally, until there's only one.

The point of the Old Testament, I think, if you had to put a very short description on what the

Old Testament is, here's what it is. You cannot do it. In order to be in relationship with God, you have to be in covenant with God, and you can't be in covenant with God because you break covenant with God.

Over and over and over we see it. And just in case we get a bit arrogant, we say, well,

I probably wouldn't have done that. Yes, you would have. You think you're better than Adam?

You think you're better than Noah, who was called a righteous man in his era? Do we presume that we're better than Abraham, who waited 20 years before he saw

God's promise, and he didn't belly ache about it? I wait two minutes, and I'm frustrated. Do we think we're better than Moses?

He went 40 days and 40 nights on top of a mountain, not eating because he was with God, and not drinking because he was with God.

We get mad if we miss on leavensies. J .R

.R. Tolkien reference. Can't help myself. I'm a very flawed man. When you gaze at the seven aspects of the

Noahic covenant, or any covenant, but we're in the Noahic covenant today, if you look at them long enough, you look at them hard enough, you stare at them closely enough, you discover something truly dreadful.

Noah, while in every way was a righteous man in his era, and was a reboot of Adam, even talked about in the exact same ways, he did not repair the world.

He simply held on to it in a prolonged sentence, like a man on death row who's waiting his execution.

Like the original waters that covered the creation, this blood washed the earth clean, but it did not wash the heart of man clean.

And the moment that Noah steps onto the dry ground, the place where his ancestor Adam was made, the old serpent,

I imagine, was slithered right out of the ark with him, grinning at a new beginning.

Noah was supposed to be the world's second chance, instead he became the second failure, sinning, stumbling, collapsing, and cursing his own descendants.

And what does the world learn? What do we learn? You think about the fact, this hit me really hard this week, you think about the fact that all this sin caused

God to flood the earth, and that was just, and that was righteous. Okay, well my sin, my sin deserves the wrath of God as well.

Why wasn't the world flooded over and over and over and over again?

And why did even Noah get a chance? He says he was a righteous man, he didn't say he was a perfect man.

Why didn't Noah drown in the water with the rest of humanity? In fact, why did God let Adam and Eve out of the garden when they rebelled against him?

We talked about this last week. Adam had the greatest life that anybody has ever been promised, and five seconds later he rebelled against God.

What a great smack into the face of the Almighty that Adam gave. Why did God let him out?

Why did God let him continue? This is the point that we get to with the nativity.

The nativity is God's promise that he will not abandon his people, and that Adam is not enough,

Noah is not enough, Abraham is not enough, and that if God gave us what we deserved, we would be drowned in the waters of his wrath, every one of us.

But here's what's so amazing and so beautiful. God, from Noah all the way to Bethlehem, was holding back the waters of his wrath.

He could have destroyed the world at any time. He could have destroyed the world at any second. He could have let loose his fury and he would have been just to do so.

So for thousands of years, God is holding back his fury. Why?

So that he could pour it out on the only one who could actually take it. So that he could give it to the only one who could actually save us from our sins.

You remember the rainbow? God actually meant what he said. He would be pierced for our transgressions by the own bow of his wrath.

Jesus Christ would come down and Peter tells us that his cross is like the ark by which we're rescued.

Jesus is the only one who can handle the judgment of God so that we could be the ones who inherit the blessings of God.

That's the beauty and that's the the grandeur and that's the glory of this Advent season is that one is coming who can take the covenant and own the covenant and obey the covenant and because he's won the blessings of the covenant, he can share them with you and I who don't deserve it.

I think it's so interesting to me that one family was saved and the whole world dies and in the cross one man dies so that the whole world may be saved.

Jesus Christ is the true and faithful Noah. Jesus Christ is the one who came to take away our sin.

Jesus Christ is the one who like Miki in Japan stood there and waited there and took death so that he could save the many.

That is what Nativity and Advent and Christmas are all about and brothers and sisters, if you don't have a reason to be grateful,

I would tell you yes you do. I love Oh Holy Night. It's one of my favorite hymns.

I'll end with this. This is what it says. Long lay the world in sin and error pining till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees. Oh hear the angel voices.

Oh night divine. Oh night when Christ was born. He is the only reason we have hope.

He is the only reason we don't drown under the wrath of God. He is the only good thing that we have and he is worth celebrating this season and beyond in every forever.

Amen. Let's pray. Lord we thank you that in the Noahic covenant we see the great wall of water stalking even us.

The same sins that caused the world to be flooded are the same sins we perpetrate every week.

And yet Lord in the same way that you saved your people then in a wooden ark you saved your people now on a wooden cross.

You became the ark by which we are saved. You became the conduit by which we will endure the storm.

You became the boat that will take us safely to the shores of Celestial City.

You Lord like Noah who opened the door and stepped into a new creation. You are the door.

When you say I am the door you meant it. And you are that door that opens up and awakens us into new creation.

God help us this season in the midst of the darkness. In the midst of the bitter cold and death that we see all around us where no plant life lives in this frigid soil that we live in.

Lord I pray that we will wait expectantly for the coming of that great light for the coming of that that child who will save us from our sins and who will bring us bring to us every blessing and who the government will be put upon his shoulders and of the increase of that government there will no no end

Lord help us this season as people who've tasted and seen that the Lord is good to not be