Transcript
Just before I begin the sermon today, I do want to say a couple of things. One, I did put an insert in the bulletin giving you a kind of a half-of-the-year report. I promised it to you. As you know, we went into the month of December from a stewardship standpoint, a little behind our financial plan, and I just am happy to tell you that the giving of this Church, your stewardship was just absolutely
wonderful during the month of December, one of the greatest ever we ever had. So that is all completely brought up to right on track, and we're so grateful for that. And then also, the Christmas Eve offering, that's what thrills me. That offering is the offering that you give on that one evening, Christmas Eve. A lot of Churches don't do this, but we do. Every cent that comes in on Christmas Eve goes to urban and global mission
projects here and around the world, away from our Church, and it's just exciting. They wanted this year boldly, they were hoping that you would contribute $150,000 on Christmas Eve. Well, you contributed $160,000 on Christmas Eve, and that's all one evening in this Church of your decision to support mission projects around the world, and that was thrilling. And then the very next week, we had the terrible tsunami tragedy, and you contributed $65,000 in one
week to that, and it's all been sent off to help in that. I'm proud of this congregation. I'm proud of the fact that you care and that you support with people giving their time, like you heard in the witness today in youth ministries, and last week you heard about Habitat for Humanity, and you know, we raise all the money to build a house, too, for Habitat, and that's all separate. That's all special giving. Next week, you
get to give specially to children and family, to youth ministry and mission. It's just exciting. And it's wonderful that you give your time and your prayer and then that. I have one more announcement to make. A few weeks ago, I read a letter, I was kind of sad to read it, of Kay Broweleit, who is our pastor of children and family ministry, that she felt it was time for her to resign from that post to move
into new things in her own ministry. I'm happy to tell you that the session found out Tuesday night and our staff found out on Wednesday that Kay is not going to resign. And there's going to be a brand new design pastorally of leadership of children and family ministry that is also terribly exciting. Kay will be the, as you know, is called children and family ministry. And as of now, Kay is a minister of family and side
-by-side ministries, because side-by-side is a part of the families ministry side of that great ministry. And Cathy Wagner is our pastoral program chief in children's ministry. So the two who've been working together side-by-side now will be co-leaders of that great department, Cathy Wagner and Kay Broweleit. Isn't that good news? That is so exciting. Well, this is the fifth sermon in a series of messages my colleagues and I have been preaching
on the great covenants and markers of the Old Testament journey. I said that your life in a way could be seen as a journey that you make through life. And as you make that journey through your life, you run into some markers on the way. And some of the markers have been left by God himself and some we leave. I mean, you leave markers too, and people ahead of us have left markers. And I said that
during this series, we're going to look at some of those great markers that go through the Old Testament. The first one we met in the very first chapter of Genesis, and that is where God created the light and he created the earth and he created all animals and he created man and woman and he said, it is good what he created. In fact, after creating man and woman, he said, it is very good. And the first
sermon, we looked at the meaning of this goodness covenant, this goodness pronouncement that God gave upon the creation. Then, secondly, the next week, we looked at also in the 1st chapter and 2nd chapter of Genesis, where God gave dominion, the first of the freedom words of the Bible. He gave dominion to man and woman, to name the animals, to steward the earth. And that dominion is another pronouncement of God. And then the third week, Francis of
Lundy, our marvelous young, this Anglican priest from Africa, who's already gone back to Kenya after having a tremendous two months time with us, Francis preached the third sermon and he made a marvelous point that God said when he saw a man woman, it is not good that man should be alone. God is the one who decided that we needed to be in communion. We need to be in fellowship. We need the fundamental beginning in the family
and then beyond that. And it was God who said it's not good that man should be alone. It's not the sociologist who said it. It's not educators who said it. God said it. He said it first. You are not meant to be a loner. You are meant to be in communion. And Francis did a beautiful job helping us see that wonderful third marker. The fourth marker comes curiously in the Garden of Eden in the fall. And
and Aaron, I was here last week. The week before that, I was at my Princeton board meeting. So I missed Francis, but I got to hear the tape. But this last week, I got to be here and hear Aaron do a marvelous job with the the fall in the garden and in the garden. Adam and Eve hear of two, two truths and a lie. And they chose a lie. And that is a marker then that they
leave. So there becomes a marker on the pathway that's left by our those ahead of us, a marker of having at key moments in life, chosen a lie. And we know that markers there. We've seen it over and over again in the history. And it's there right in the book of Genesis. But there's another marker alongside of it. And that is that God did not forget man woman. He still went to the garden after their lie,
after they chose a lie. He came into the garden to find them and then he closed them. So you get also a marker there of God's care, the beginning of his redeeming care. And we looked at that last week. Let me just say a word about these 11 chapters of Genesis. This is our last day to be in the first 11 chapters. You have to realize that the first 11 chapters of Genesis, of which we've already
spent now four weeks looking at, occupy a special place in the whole of the Bible. Moses, who writes these, and I believe in the mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, I believe God inspired Moses to write this opening, in epic terms, this opening epic portrayal of creation of the fall. And today, in a minute, we're going to look at the, the flood and the ark. And then, of course, following that is the Tower of Babel. All these
great scenes. God inspired Moses to write these narratives. But these narratives are different. They have a different genre. They have a different epic, grand, grand epic saga style with broad strokes that are different from what we're going to find from Chapter 12 on. And next week, we move into Chapter 12. From Chapter 12 on, we can locate Ur of Chaldees, where Abraham comes from. We can locate his journey, actually track it. We can't find Eden. We
can't find the Garden of Eden. We can find where Abraham moved. We know about the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Isaac, Jacob. We can follow them. We can we follow Moses. We know where Mount Sinai is. We know that history. And little later on in the ancient history, we know who Caesar Augustus is. We can track him. We can track that taxation at the time of the birth of Christ. We know who Herod the Great was. We
were able to track all these historically with secular histories that accompany the holy history. But the first 11 chapters are unique. They stand in a different historical setting, a different saga setting. And we I alerted you to that at the very beginning, because Moses, at the very beginning, made that clear when he create when he tells in his narrative of the creation of Adam and Eve, Adam, which the word stands for all of mankind. And when
Adam and Eve are created and then it looks like they have just two sons, Abel and Cain, and then we're told that Cain gets a wife. And begins to marry and then others come. And Moses is no fool. He knows that some kid is going to wave his hand in the campfire and say to Moses, hey, you haven't provided for a wife yet. You haven't provided for a woman yet. Where did she come from? Moses knows
that he's not writing that kind of an account. He's writing in broad saga terms. He's writing a theological account of the meanings. He is and therefore you've got to be careful not to trivialize Moses, not to ask questions that are the wrong questions of Moses. I already alerted you to that with regard to the six days of creation. It would be wrong to say Moses means that the whole of creation occurred in six literal 24 hour
days. That is the trivialization of what Moses is saying. He's using day in a very theological way, just like our Lord will use it later when he says a day with the Lord is like a thousand elsewhere. And when he uses the two words for time, kairos and chronos, kairos is the most sort of amazing mystery time. And chronos is the chronological time you could measure. Be careful, therefore, not to make Moses say what he's not
saying. And we saw this that Moses is aware of this. This is the way he writes his account. He writes in these broad, these broad strokes. For instance, when Adam and Eve are evicted from the garden, we're told that God puts a cherubim there with a flaming sword. We can't find that flaming sword. We have satellites floating over the Middle East. They haven't found that flaming sword. What is Moses doing? It's it is written in broad
saga terms. We can't find the Tower of Babel. The word Babel in ancient Babylonian language means gateway. And we know the Babylonians had gateway towers. It's interesting that in Moses's account, when he talks about the Tower of Babel, he reinterprets it and calls it in Hebrew confusion. It was a tower of confusion. It was probably originally like, who knows? We can't find it. And, and now we're going to look at one of the most famous accounts
in the first 11 chapters that's going to be in the same tradition that Moses is writing in a broad epic strokes that he writes and is inspired by God. I believe in the inspiration of the whole scripture that is inspired by God. And he wants us to have these accounts today. We find a profound marker, a great marker that we're going to run into. And it follows four whole chapters in these first 11 chapters are devoted
to a flood and an Ark that Noah makes. By the way, in our narthex, our second graders have made an Ark for us. In the second grade, kids made an Ark. And you can see it there from their artwork project. But chapter 6, 7, 8 and 9 are devoted to an Ark following the fall of Adam and Eve. Then the fall gets even worse. And we didn't study this passage, but following that Cain, murders his brother.
If there's the choice of a lie with Adam and Eve, then there's a choice of harm's way and murder when Cain murders his brother Abel. And so then at the beginning of 6, we hear God saying, I've had it with mankind, with humankind. They have become altogether evil. I'm going to destroy them and I'm going to destroy the whole earth. And so a man, Noah, is chosen to build an Ark. His family, his extended family goes
to the Ark. And we have this incredible account of this flood, this worldwide flood that's portrayed. Well, we're going to look at that now. So let's pray as we open that account. Lord, help us to understand these accounts. What do they mean? How do you want us to understand them so that we can see the truth and all the meanings in the middle of these grand strokes that are used by Moses to tell these accounts? And
Lord, teach us today so that we'll hear this new marker that we're going to see at the end of this account. And it'll make a big difference in our lives. Help us to understand it. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. Well, the question on many readers minds when they read chapters 1 through 11, and especially this account of the flood is, did it happen? Did a flood happen like this? Did it cover the entire earth so
that only two of every living land species and Noah's extended family would survive? And would survive in an Ark for many, many, many days. We cannot historically test this epic account in the same way that we can later test the narrative accounts that are going to be from Chapter 12 on. There are no evidences. There are evidences of ancient floods, for sure. We've just been through a tsunami and we know the evidences of a tsunami. There
are evidences of ancient floods, but no evidence of a flood that covered the entire world. We have we have people that have been looking for an Ark, actually, on Mount Ararat. Moses knows that these questions will come up. And we can't find the flaming sword in Genesis three twenty three [3:24]. We can't find the Tower of Babel. Then how do we rightly understand these saga accounts that Moses was inspired by God to write for us? Well, I
think this account is mainly here. Just like the temptation of the garden by the snake, by the way, and don't read the fine lines, as Aaron said, in one aside comment. You know, don't get, don't get bogged down with the snake and where the snakes can talk. And what was it a cobra? Was it a type of python or what kind of snake it was? Listen to what the snake said, because that's what the count is
really about. The snake said, has God said, the snake, it's a tempting. That's the big thing that happened in that account. So be sure enough to get bogged down in fine lines and miss the broad lines. This account of the flood, I think, is mainly here so that we can meet up with another grand signpost, and it's a signpost that God gives us. And I think in the midst of those broad strokes, not the details, but the
broad strokes, we need to see this this signpost. And we'll look now at the text in Genesis 9. The Ark flood, the flood occurs, the Ark floats for many, many days. Finally, it comes to rest on Mount Ararat. At first, Moses Noah sends out a bird. The bird comes back right away because it can't find a place to land. Then he sends a bird out, a dove that comes back with an olive branch. So he says,
oh, there's something growing out there. Then he says, there's a third bird out and it doesn't come back. And then he opens the door and lets the people out and the animals out. And then when that happens, this account is narrated for us. Genesis 9, verse 8. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, as for me, I'm establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that
is with you, the birds, the domestic animals and every animal of the earth with you, as many as come out of the Ark. I establish my covenant with you that never, never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood. And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you. Notice and every living creature. Just
like in the 6th chapter of Genesis, we're united with the other animals. We're created the same day, the sixth day as all the rest of the animal kingdom. Now we're once again united with all the animals in a sense. I'm making a covenant with you and all the animals, with all the earth, between me and every living creature and with you for all generations, future generations, I have set my rainbow in the cloud and it shall
be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Notice the earth. And when I bring clouds over the earth, when the rainbow 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 waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. And when the rainbow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember. Now, notice this word the
first time it's used, the everlasting covenant. Now we're getting the beginning of everlasting covenants, the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. And God said to Noah, and this is the sign of the covenant that I've established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. And that's our, our fifth marker, the marker of the covenant of the rainbow. What's the significance of that covenant for Old
Testament history, for New Testament history and for us today? Let me make just a couple of major reflections. First, in this covenant, God has heightened our respect, because he's shown us his respect for the earth and all living creatures that share this planet with us. Because the covenant shows that God values us and our physical existence. God doesn't here just love our souls or our spirits, whatever that would mean. He loves the total of me. That's
why when Paul in Romans 12 talks about committing ourselves to Christ, he says, because of the love of God, present your bodies, a living sacrifice, concrete you. Remember, when we started this whole series on Tell Me the Old Story, we quoted Charles Malik, the great philosopher, who said, remember the gospel of Jesus Christ, the only new thing. It's, it's the old and yet the newest thing. It is the only thing in the world that is universal,
eternal, personal and concrete. It's concrete. And that concreteness now is signaled in the covenant of the rainbow. This is not an ethereal covenant that you always just think of in sort of foggy sense. It is a concrete covenant that God loves you in your physical existence. And he loves the animals as well in your concreteness. By the way, this will get us ready for the incarnation of Jesus Christ, for the fact that Jesus Christ comes concretely
into our lives. And we preached on that just a few weeks ago, the concreteness of the gospel of Christ. It's getting us ready for that. It's one of the reasons I put Richard Verver's Christmas poem on the front of our bulletin and I'll read it to you in just a minute. This whole thing is concrete. And it's you in your in your definiteness that is loved by God. And he shows the high regard for that and
gives us a tremendous stewardship, stewardship over that covenant. By the way, the next chapter, we don't have time to read on. He, he makes it very clear to Noah that Noah is to be a steward of the earth. And oh, by the way, the way, I want to clear up one thing. In the very opening chapter, when God creates man and woman and puts them in the Garden of Eden, gives them all the plants, a lot
of vegans and vegetarians feel that there in Genesis 1, it says that the plants are given for you to eat. It looks like God is a vegetarian in Chapter 1 and wants you to eat the plants. If that's a worrisome thing for you, now it's cleared up in Chapter 9. He God says to Noah, and I've given to the animals, you may eat them too. So you can eat meat. He does say, though, you should not
eat meat with the blood in it. That's the beginning of kosher law, the beginning of the kosher tradition. The blood, the life of the animal should not be in the animal. And there's where the Jews got the idea of draining blood. So it's, it's not, it's kosher. But the beginning of that, so that man is made steward, he's to respect. We are we are to respect the earth, we respect the plant life, we respect the animals,
they care for us, we care for them. And that is what Noah is given as a mandate. But notice the mandate starts with this rainbow covenant. And that's so important. Now, the second reflection is so important to make to God has set another boundary and another boundary for us, and that is upon our judgment, worries, our worries about judgment. Folks, I want you to see the implication of this. This text makes it very clear. The covenant
of the boundary of the covenant of the of the rainbow makes it very clear that when floods happen, they should not be interpreted as the divine judgment of God. That was true, a tsunami, which we just experienced that that tsunami just happened, not because some people in Ceylon were especially sinful or in Sumatra were especially sinful or in India were especially sinful and need to be punished. And that that that treatment of that event is wrong
or to say it's a sign of the final times, times of God's judgment upon the earth. That's not what this rainbow covenant clears the clear the air of that. Just like our Lord did in Chapter 9 of John, when he said, is this boy blind because he sinned or his parents sin? No, it just happened. And when someone gets sick very often, illness, it just happens. Cancer happens to good people, it happens to bad people. Nervous
breakdowns happen for godly people and for people that are that are evil. It just happens. And you're asking the wrong question to say, I wonder who I can blame for this. It's sometimes just that now there are consequences that we have. That's another whole story that because of our behavior, we'll look at that next. But right now, there's one thing that covenant of the rainbow makes clear. If there's an earthquake, is the earthquake because the earth
is twisting and we who are skiers are very glad for those earth twists because that's what creates mountains, except we'd like some snow on them, too. But that is how mountains are formed. It's a part of the shaping of the earth. And sometimes it lets loose a tremendous tsunami or wave that went 500 miles an hour through the Indian Ocean. And that was a tragedy. But it's not the judgment of God. He makes it very clear.
I'm not going to judge the earth that way. He makes it clear. And that means that there are consequences, but the consequences are from us. Our behavior, both good and bad, brings consequences and leaves markers on the path as well. We saw it with Adam and Eve. We see it with Cain and Abel. We have consequences. That's what Paul says in Romans 1. God doesn't have to lift the finger to punish you or me for our
breaking the Ten Commandments, which we read together in just a few minutes ago. And you break a commandment like thou shall not commit adultery and use respect of your children, the respect of your spouse and the respect you have for yourself. God doesn't have to punish you for that. You get the punishment from having done it yourself. Bare false witness in an office and start telling lies in an office and you won't have any friends. Did
you read Dear Abby two days ago? Dear Abby, this lady says, you know, my boyfriend steals. And I noticed that our friends don't invite us over anymore. Should I talk to them and say, you should invite us over more? And Dear Abby said, no, get another boyfriend. Your boyfriend steals. They don't want him around. God didn't have to zap him with judgment. He's being judged because he steals. He's being judged because he bears false witness. When
you do these things, you convey you bear the consequences. But God doesn't have to judge you for that. By the way, there is a final judgment, though. We'll read we'll see those markers later. But right now, notice the coven of the rainbow says that God doesn't have to arrange for earthquakes to punish the people. God doesn't do that. It takes all of that off your back. He doesn't destroy. He gives us a covenant of a rainbow.
Then what are we to remember? We remember this covenant of the rainbow that God wishes well for us. And he invites us to know that. And then he invites Noah to do his job, to be a good steward of the earth. And folks, we have stewardship of the earth, but we can have good effects from good stewardship of the earth. When I came to this city as a youth pastor in 1950 or 1956, Lake Washington was
almost contaminated to the point that they said it was a dead lake. You could put your hand in Lake Washington and see algae in your hands. Kids are getting sick swimming in the lake. And then they discovered that Kirkland and a few other places were dumping treated sewage into Lake Washington. And people got on the bandwagon and said, we've got to clean up this lake. And everybody pitched together, scientists and people who cared. And all of
that treated sewage was moved away from Lake Washington. And Lake Washington water is pure now. You can drink it, put a cup in the water and drink it. We did that. With good stewardship, we can make great changes in the earth. When I went to Berkeley as an undergraduate in 1949, the big joke in Berkeley was the smell of the Oakland estuary that the poor kids that rode crew had to ride in. And now and no
fish were in Berkeley Pier at all. Now San Francisco Bay is clean. Fish come right up to the Berkeley Pier, even seals, and they never come into contaminated water. And we did that. We can do a lot with global warming and a lot of other things, too. Mo's Noah is called to that after this rainbow covenant, he's given the stewardship of the animals, stewardship of the earth and to take it and to do it, do something
with it. I put Richard Verver's Christmas poem in the front of our bulletin for a very special reason, because there were some shepherds doing their job on a hill on the eve of the birth of our Lord, and they saw a rainbow. Or the text doesn't say rainbow, it says they saw a great light. Folks, that's a rainbow on a distant hill in a distant place at a distant time, shepherds were tending sheep, yawning to ward
off sleep, search, stretching to keep alert, telling tales, tall and true to help each other at task. When light and sound and angels fill the sky and struck their earth and made all else before and after come together in an eternal, eternal center. Gloria in Excelsis Deo, glory in the highest to God. God has acted concretely and they're told about a child born that day when God acts concretely because he loves them concretely, concretely. And then
Richard has a second stanza. So may we on present hills in present places at present times be about the work at hand, be about the ordinary, be about the necessary when light and sound and angels fill the sky and strike our earth and make all else before and after come together in an eternal center. Solely, that means only God gets the glory. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for this wonderful covenant of the rainbow that makes all
the difference as we now read the rest of the of the Old Testament and New Testament to know that we can expect something amazing because you love us concretely. Help us to know what that means as we go through our pathway in Christ's name, we pray. Amen.