GENESIS NINE
GENESIS NINE
The development of God’s ways on the earth has involved a series of “worlds” or dispensations; and each of these, although primarily set up by God, has ended in judgment. But it will be found that while man, as in responsibility, corrupted every system of things that came under his influence, God always secured a remnant for Himself out of each; and this remnant became the nucleus of the dispensation which followed. This is seen in Noah and his family;
[p. 278] Abraham also is an illustration of it; and Christianity began with the remnant that was preserved from Judaism.
Moreover, the introduction of each new order of things sets forth some new phase of the testimony of God, in this way the unfaithfulness of men only served as an occasion for God to unfold in testimony what He had in His mind to display in Christ in the age to come. What comes out in Noah is government.
The flood was a necessity; not only as a judgment on man because of wickedness, but that the earth might be purified. The earth belongs to God; it was created for His pleasure, and inasmuch as it had become filled with wickedness and corruption, it was morally incumbent upon God to bring in the deluge as a cleansing measure. He would use the earth for the display of a new system of things, and hence purification was necessary.
But the waters of the flood were not all that was needed; these served for the judgment of man, and the cleansing of the earth, but they did not afford all that the nature of God required. The burnt offering alone could suffice for this. The old world had become the occasion of grief to God’s heart, and He repented that He had made man on the earth, but now man affords that which is for His pleasure, that in which He can rest, and the new world is established on this basis. In Noah’s burnt offering the Lord smelled a sweet savour. Noah as identified with his burnt offering here, typifies Christ as before God in all the infinite value of that sacrifice in which he glorified Him. On this ground God now deals with man and not according to what he is naturally. As to this latter, he remains unchanged, and it is noticeable that God speaks of this in announcing that He will not curse the ground on man’s account. “I will not again curse the ground for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth”,
[p. 279] Genesis 8:21. The truth is that the sinful nature of the first man is set aside to God’s glory in the death of Christ, and although it continues in us, God ignores it, expects nothing from it, and deals with man now according to what Christ is to Him. When this is clearly seen, immense relief is afforded the heart and conscience of the believer. The non-recurrence of the curse is evidently connected with the burnt offering. The renewed earth, under Christ, is foreshadowed here. Now that Christ is before God as Head, having accomplished redemption, God’s dealings with man and the creation are according to what He is, and not according to what the man after the flesh is. The man whose heart is evil cannot stave off the curse. Man had corrupted the earth, and this made the flood a necessity but that God would not again curse the ground is based on the burnt offering.
Chapter 9 sets before us, typically, the new order of things, but historically it records the introduction of government. In view of the unchanged condition of man, government should be a great mercy. By it violence should he restricted and modified. In the abstract, government cannot be other than good; and even as in the hands of wicked men, Scripture recognises that it is against evil, Romans 13.
But the most interesting feature is the covenant. The covenant made with Adam was conditional, but that with Noah is unconditional. In an unconditional covenant God engages Himself to something which man’s conduct cannot affect, and thus the accomplishment of this necessitates redemption; so the covenant here is evidently based on the burnt offering. This covenant is of a negative character, but it indicates what is in God’s mind as to an order of things set up on the ground of redemption.
And then having made the covenant God says,
“[p. 280] This is the token of the covenant ... I do set my bow in the cloud”, Genesis 9:12,13.
Faith lays hold of the token of God’s covenant. Here it is the rainbow and it should be seen in the cloud. In the experience of Christians the cloud often comes. God ofttimes brings a cloud over our spirits, but He says, “I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth”. Genesis 9:13. I do not know of anything that is more touching, in a way, than that. “When I bring a cloud ... the bow shall be seen in the cloud”. Genesis 9:14. No matter how dark the cloud, you can read in it the token of God’s covenant. The cloud is not against you, it is for you.