WHY IS THE WORLD THE WAY IT IS?
BECAUSE GOD MAKES PROMISES
GENESIS 9:1-17

INTRODUCTION

Read "Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day". There are days, weeks and months like that in Janesville too. Life can be terribly disappointing. From the trivial and the mundane to the tragic, all of us regularly are disappointed by people and circumstances.

• The hard drive on your computer has to be reformatted and so you lose everything
• A couple of years ago we lost our checkbook on Wed., discovered it was gone on Thur. night, canceled the account on Friday, and then Jane found the checkbook on the next Monday afternoon. I was more disappointed when she found it than when we lost it.
• Ask one of my children to do a simple job while I’m gone and when I come home it remains undone
• Live in a house with everybody sick for 2 weeks
• Work hard but never get noticed, in fact the slacker gets the promotion
• Study hard for a test, expect an A and get a C

In big ways and in small ways life disappoints us, almost daily. Disappointment will destroy you if you do not learn to deal with it. How do we respond to disappointment?

• Anger
• Despair leading to self-pity
• Resentment leading to bitterness
• Cynicism & apathy

Disappointment is in many ways the loss of hope. Disappointment occurs when we are hoping for something good to happen and instead something bad happens. That’s why lots of small disappointments or just one or two very major disappointments can lead to such despair in our lives. Disappointment can lead to the belief that life will never turn out, things will never get better.

So how do we overcome disappointment and the hopelessness it breeds? We must find something or someone to hope in that will not disappointment. We must fix our hope on only what is certain. As we come to the ninth chapter of Genesis we find Noah in a very hopeless situation. While he did not arrive there through disappointment we can see here how God deals with humans when all hope is gone. The earth is devastated. It has been washed clean of all life. While green plants are beginning to appear across the landscape, all is barren. The only animals are those Noah had with him on the ark. The only seed to plant is that which Noah has with him. The only humans left are the 8 from the ark. How will they make it? What hope is there that this small band of people can re-establish human society on this barren landscape? In addition to the fragility of human existence in this hostile environment there is this uncertain God with whom humanity must still deal. Sin is obviously still present, how will humanity escape another deluge? How does God deal with human beings in such hopeless conditions? What we find out is that God makes promises. We find out that…

MAIN POINT

God’s promise is the only sure foundation to build life upon because…

I. Only God’s promise gives purpose(vv. 1 & 7)

At the end of chapter 8, God in response to Noah’s sacrifice has determined not to destroy humanity again by deluge. But notice, while we the reader know what God is thinking, Noah does not. So chapter 9 opens with God explaining to Noah what his plan is for Noah and his family. He speaks tenderly to Noah to encourage him in his hopeless condition and so tells him the purpose for which he saved him. Noah has got to be looking around and wondering, how are we going to make it? How can we, this small band of 8 people, re-establish human society on the earth?

So God gives a command that is also a promise. In vv. 1 & 7 he tells Noah and his sons that the purpose for which he saved them was so they would "be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth". This promise of God would only overcome Noah’s despair if Noah wanted what God wanted. If Noah and his son’s idea of happiness were to be a successful farmer or to build a great city, then this promise of God would not overcome their despair and inspire hope. If Noah’s idea of success was to become wealthy and retire by the age of 610, then God telling him "to be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth" would not help him much. But if Noah was convinced that whatever God wanted is what was best then to be told that God had a plan for his future that would succeed would create hope. God overcomes Noah’s despair by promising Noah that God would raise up mankind from life to death through Noah’s family. God had a purpose in saving Noah and that purpose could not be thwarted.

So much of our disappointment and resulting hopelessness comes from our hoping for the wrong thing. We have the wrong expectations. What God promises to give us in Christ is not what we really want and so God’s promises to us don’t mean anything, they don’t affect us. It’s one of the chief reasons the Bible is so boring to so many. What God so clearly wants to give us is not what we want and so we’re unhappy. We’re looking for a promise that our spouse will never be mean or inconsiderate again. Or we’re looking for a promise that will guarantee that we’ll never have another financial worry. Or we’re wanting a promise from God that we won’t have to face cancer in us or our families. Or we want a promise that the same bad habit will never come back again. We want a promise from God that whatever career choice we make will result in having a job we love that pays well. Or we just want something simple like God please don’t let that car break down again this month.

Now God is a gracious Father and he delights to show his compassion by often providing for many of these desires of ours. But God’s promise to us, as to Noah, is not what we naturally are looking for. God’s promise to us is not what we naturally love. If God’s promise in Christ Jesus is to overcome our disappointment and inspire hope, then we must want what he promises to us.

The reason God’s promise is such good news to Noah is that Noah knows that whatever God wants to do is the best thing, not only for God but for Noah as well. He realizes that the way to finding hope is to fit into God’s plans not to require God to fit into his plans. This is God’s world, not Noah’s world and so what God wants is best, not what Noah wants. What God promises to give must be the best thing for me because He alone is wise and loving. Noah does not trust his own heart’s desire but trusts God’s promise and looks forward to what God has in store for him and the world.

I wish I had the time to trace the connection between this promise to Noah and God’s promise to us in Christ. Let me give you a summary statement that I want you to use as you read your Bible and see if it doesn’t help you to see God’s working out of his plan. "God’s plan is to fill his world with white hot worshippers. It is his intention to create a holy place where his holy people will live in the joy of His fellowship thus filling the earth with his glory." Steve read earlier II Cor 1:20, "No matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ." All the promises of God are confirmed and will be fulfilled in Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of all God’s promises and the one who fulfills his promises.

I want you to look with me at three ways the promise is stated in the NT and then I want to show how these promises overcome disappointment and inspire hope by giving us purpose.

• Romans 8: 28-29 (p. 801) If you don’t crave being like Jesus then the promise of 8:28 is meaningless
• Titus 2: 14 (p. 844) If you don’t yearn to escape wickedness and belong to Christ then, "who cares?"
• Phil. 1:14 with 1:10 (p. 832) If knowing Christ isn’t your ambition then why bother pursuing it?

I have a dear friend, who has, in the midst of crushing disappointments in his life, exclaimed to me, "Where’s God? What good is it to be told my sins are forgiven and I get to go to heaven? I need help right now. I need God to fix…."whatever the problem might be. There isn’t a person in here who can’t relate to that cry of anguish. And there isn’t a person in here who doesn’t need, like my friend, to repent of that cry of anguish. What my friend and all of us reveal when we say things like this is that we don’t really want what God wants to give us. The reason we are so crushed is not because we’re not getting what God has promised but because we’re not getting what we believe we must have to be happy.

Listen to me my dear friends. If you have to spend your whole life in a marriage that never is what you want it to be but you have been saved by Christ and are going to heaven, you have a foundation for hope. You are infinitely rich and have a hope that is better than the most loving spouse. If you have to work in a pointless job and have never a word of gratitude expressed to you and yet have Christ you are more blessed than any professional athlete who makes millions of dollars to play a game and has millions of fans. There is a life of joy and peace and hope available to everyone who will believe the promise, but it is not because God promises to give you heaven on this earth but because God promises to give you the best thing he can possibly give you, himself.

God’s promise is the only sure foundation to build life upon because…

• Only God’s promise gives purpose
• And because…

II. Only God’s promise gives provision(vv. 2-4)

Read vv. 2-3. Notice the second thing God promises to Noah is the re-instatement of human authority over the created world and the provision of food to sustain human life. God tells Noah that he saved him and his family for a purpose, to be fruitful and to fill the earth, then he promises that Noah will have all the resources necessary to fulfill that purpose.

This is how it is with all of God’s promises. God has promised that all those who belong to Christ will be saved. He guarantees heaven to all who will repent of their love of this world and cast themselves upon Christ and call upon him to save them from their sin. He promises that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Jesus has gone to prepare a place for all his people and he is coming back to take us home one day. But we have a journey to go through before we get there. How will we make it? What provisions have been made for us? What help has God promised to give us to make sure we get there?

Describe the provisions we made for backpacking in the Smokey Mountains and how wonderful the food tasted on the trail that we detested when we were back at school. God has outfitted us for this journey to heaven far more abundantly and wonderfully than any of the provisions we made for ourselves. However, if we are not on a journey to heaven, then the provisions he has given to us are pointless. No one would ever choose to eat freeze dried food on a regular basis if you were not backpacking. It just sits in a box in the basement. However, if you are out on the trail, it becomes better than a gourmet meal. If your goal is an easy and comfortable life here on this earth, then the provisions God has given are going to sit in a box on a shelf and you will refuse to make use of them. But if you are on the trail of heaven, then you will joyfully make use of all of them. What are the provisions God has given for our journey?

• Prayer: Luke 18:1

• The word: Psalm 1:1-2 & Acts 20:32

• Fellow travelers: Heb. 3: 12-13 "See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is still called ‘Today’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness." Describe what happened to the guy who went into hyper-thermia and how we helped each other to make it through the night on Clingman’s dome.
• The Holy Spirit: John 14: 15 & 16, John 16: 12-14 God is present with us to give us strength for the journey, to help keep our attention focused on the goal, to give us discernment and encouragement along the way. He makes all the means effective.

Is it any wonder that our lives are full of disappointment and despair when we spend 7 hours watching TV and not one minute in prayer and meditation on God’s promises? You wonder why you have no joy, when the thought of going to heaven does not fill you with glad anticipation when you refuse to make use of all the provisions that God has given for the journey? We wonder why we are always frustrated when we refuse to pick up the phone and call a Christian friend and say something like this: "I am filled with despair and misery and I know it’s because my hope is fixed on this world and I’m refusing to make use of the provisions God has given for this journey. Would you pray with me and help me fix my attention on Christ? Could we meet once a week to pray together and read God’s word together?" How can you complain that you are all alone on the journey when you refuse to take the risk to share your need?

The first thing we all need is to have our hearts fixed on the purpose for which God saved us, to bring us to himself. Then we need to make use of the provisions he given us for the journey.

God’s promise is the only sure foundation to build life upon because…

• Only God’s promise gives purpose
• Only God’s promise gives provision
• And because…

III. Only God’s promise gives protection

• From created beings (animals and men)(vv. 5-6)

Look at vv. 5 &6. The first thing you need to see is that God values human life. He is committed to protecting it and to punishing all who treat human life with contempt, whether man or animal or demon. God is radically committed to human beings. He will call to account anything and anyone who mistreats human beings. How does he do this? First, he invests human society with the right of governing authority. These two verses are the foundation of all just government. It is because of these two verses that civil government exists. Turn to Romans 13: 1-4 (p. 804).

Second, not only does God protect human life through human government, but we are given here a promise of God’s own commitment to justice. Nobody is going to get away with anything. God is keeping track and he knows how to repay the wicked for their crimes. All who live in opposition to God and express it in treating others unjustly are going to be repaid for their evil. The bible uses this knowledge of God’s justice to call God’s people to a life of forgiveness and non-retribution. It is because we know that God will bring vengeance on the head of all who do evil that we refrain from personally paying people back for the evil they do to us. How do you live as a person who doesn’t carry grudges and who does not retaliate? You think much about God’s commitment to punish all evil, to defend the life of his people. Listen to how Paul says it at the end of Romans 12: "Do not repay evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.’

Why does God value human life? Notice in v. 6 that God values human life because God values himself above all else. God is opposed to those who harm humans because every attack against a human being is an attack against God himself because humans are made in God’s image. We need to feel the weight of this. Every time you curse a human, you are cursing God. Every time you treat another person with contempt you are treating God with contempt. Would this not restrain the evil we do to one another if we thought much about how angry it makes God when we injure another person and how when we injure another person we are actually injuring God?

• From God(vv. 8-17)

The bulk of this passage concerns God’s promise to Noah and all living creatures that he will never destroy the earth with a flood again. Think about Noah’s situation again for a second. How would he feel the next time a thunderstorm came rolling out of the western sky? The dark, ominous clouds blot out the sunshine. The wind picks up and the rain comes pouring down in torrents and he begins to see the little bubbling brook in the valley below begin to fill up and overflow it’s banks. Would he not be terrified? Noah knows that the sin that provoked God’s wrath in the first place is still present. That is why he offered up a sacrifice the moment he got off the ark back in chapter 8. See how much ink is given to God’s promise to not destroy the world by flood. Look at all the repetition of the promise. Why? God knows that Noah’s greatest fear for the future is his uncertainty about how God will deal with human sin. Noah knows that his biggest problem, the most hope destroying reality in his world is not the barrenness of the landscape, not that there are only 8 humans and only 2 of every kind of animal but rather his own sin and God’s absolute opposition to and hatred of sin. In very tender and emphatic terms God promises Noah and all living creatures that they do not need to fear a deluge again. They can live in confidence that God is not going to alter the earth’s climate again to deal with human sin.

Think about the power of the sign of God’s promise. When do you see a rainbow? After the storm usually. Usually it is brightly lit up against the backdrop of the dark storm clouds. A reminder of wrath and promise, just like the cross. The cross ought to remind you of God’s wrath against sin and his promise to forgive the sin of all who trust in Christ.

If you are going to be hopeless about something be hopeless about sin and God’s hatred of sin. You want to be in despair, despair over your wickedness and God’s determination to destroy all the wicked. Not only do we fix our hope on the wrong things we also dread the wrong thing. Right now, if you were really honest, what fills you with greater fear, the thought of the economy collapsing because of Y2K or the thought of going to hell forever? When have you in your whole life ever feared that God would not accept you into heaven? Our lives are full of anxiety over all sorts of things but rarely have any of us ever actually felt the grip of fear that God would send us to hell. It is because we have never been gripped by this fear that all the other fears we have in life are so overwhelming. Acts 9:31 says, "Then the church …was encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord." One of the descriptions of a healthy church is that it lives in the fear of the Lord. Why? Because if you don’t fear him then you will fear everything else. But if you do fear him then nothing else will frighten you.

Have you ever been talking with someone, complaining about how hard your week has been and then you discover later in the conversation that they had a major tragedy, like a child die last year? Don’t you feel petty? Have you ever known someone who has almost died in a car wreck or had open heart surgery, especially right after the experience and notice how uncaring they are about who won the Super Bowl? There’s a serenity that those who have just escaped death have. There are a lot of things that bother the rest of us that just doesn’t bother them. When we are like Noah and fear the wrath of God more than anything else in life and then when we come to a place where we find that we are protected from that wrath by the death of Christ in our place, we are filled with hope for the future. Nothing can cause us to despair because we have escaped the most hopeless of all possible futures.

God’s promise is the only sure foundation to build life upon because…

• Only God’s promise gives purpose
• Only God’s promise gives provision
• Only God’s promise gives protection from created beings and from God himself.

© Copyright 2000 John Swanson.
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