What is the Creation Covenant and what does it have to do with the Flood? Is God cruel or kind? Sometimes it is hard to understand why we should trust God when we see scary stories about the flood so we’re going to talk about what all of this teaches us about God’s character.
If you can’t see the podcast player, click here.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all Scripture comes from the CSB this week, the Christian Standard Bible)
Alrighty then! Today we are going to talk a little bit about covenants and what they are and are not but I wrote a whole curriculum book about them so you know there is way too much to cover in just 25 minutes! But that’s okay because we can have some fun with it and get a very general idea about something that is very important to the story of Noah. I call it the Covenant of Rulership, Food and Kids but other people call it the Creation Covenant. Same difference. If you have seen my books you know I like to use ridiculously long titles. When God created the world, if you remember when we did those lessons on Genesis 1 and 2, He created it in such a way that it would perfectly meet our needs and the needs of all life on the planet. In a way, we can say that by creating the world to care for our needs instead of His own needs, He was making an agreement with us to care for us. He gave us instructions about what to eat, every green plant and herb and fruit, and what not to eat, that pesky irresistible fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and told us to be fruitful and multiply. He really wasn’t asking much, right? But Adam and Eve, they disobeyed and God kicked them out of His garden sanctuary. And so, that “kicking out”, what the Bible calls exile (meaning, when you are forced out of your home) was the punishment decided on by God in order to protect His Garden.
But of course, that wasn’t the end of the story. God didn’t abandon them. Yes, He booted them from the Garden, but He made them clothing for protection. And they were still able to be fruitful and multiply by growing crops and having children. And when one of those kids killed the other (probably as an adult), he was forced to leave where he had been living too. But still, God didn’t abandon Cain either. God put a mark on him somehow so that people knew he was off limits for revenge—God continued to protect Cain and Cain was still able to eat and have a family. God is our God, and as our God, He has made certain promises to us but He also expects certain things in return from us. We can’t just all go nuts and expect Him to put up with it. Remember the parable of the peeing and biting puppies? A good God has to take care of everyone and not just us—so we can’t just do whatever we want and expect Him to put up with it forever. He is patient but at some point, when He really needs to step in, He does. And that looks different in different situations. We never really understand why but it is okay to ask. Almost always, He is waiting for us to step up and do something—like when we finally started to get rid of terrible things like slavery and prejudice. As believers, He expects us to be very unhappy when some people are being hurt by others and to not just care about ourselves. He expects us to do something when we can. He wrote the Bible in such a way that we would see that we are all human beings and just because we are different colors and male and female and older and younger and all of that, that we would know it is wrong to treat anyone as though they are less than we are. God didn’t create some humans to make like easier for other humans! Remember that we are His image-bearers and you just can’t disrespect or oppress or enslave God’s image without doing to Him too. Like in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.
As you get older, you will come across things you can’t do anything about except pray, and other situations where you can take action—because we are made in God’s image so that we can rule righteously, the way He would if He was here. Have you ever prayed the Lord’s Prayer? I bet you have:
Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
When Jesus’s disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray, He didn’t come up with anything long or fancy. They already knew the shema prayer from Deuteronomy, which we will be talking about some other time because here in Genesis 6, it hasn’t been invented yet. But this is my favorite prayer because Jesus was teaching His disciples to put their trust in God based upon His original intentions. Remember we talked about original intent aka God’s perfect will for humans? Sometimes we make things more complicated than they are because we sin against each other and then rules get created to try and stop us from sinning but here, Jesus reminds His disciples to simply pray to God—asking Him to remember how things were and what we need in order to live that way. What do we need to remember? We need to remember who is boss and it is not us. It’s God and so we need to make sure that no one is speaking badly about God because they see us doing bad things. That’s what it means when we say, “May your name be honored as holy” or maybe you pray, “Hallowed be your name.” It’s the same thing, just easier words to understand in the first version. We remind Him and ourselves that we need His Kingdom here and now and not just in the future. In Jewish thinking, the Kingdom of Heaven is going on whenever God gets actively involved on earth, in our lives. It’s like an overlap between here, where we are, and there, where God is. I want you to always be looking for the Kingdom of Heaven—it isn’t a place, that isn’t what Jesus is talking about. If you see a miracle, that’s the Kingdom of Heaven invading earth. When someone gets saved by Jesus and changes, that’s the Kingdom of Heaven invading earth.
I am going to tell you a secret, if you are a believer in Jesus and He is your King, then wherever you are is an overlap between heaven and earth too. And that’s a huge responsibility. Are we going to act like it or are we going to act like an overlap between earth and hell instead? YIKES! I guess that is what people in Noah’s time decided to be, overlaps between earth and hell. I guess we can say that when Noah found favor with God, God made it possible for Noah to be an overlap between Heaven and Earth instead. Boy howdy, that must have been weird.
But when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we also remind God of what He has promised us in Creation—food for our tables, just probably not as much of it as we end up eating and definitely not Twinkies. So much of the Bible talks about God giving us food—did you know that? Once I read through the entire Bible in six weeks and wrote down every mention of food and I filled up multiple notebooks. Food and water are what we need to survive, and God knows it. When He created us, He created us knowing that only He could satisfy our needs for food. Farmers can grow it, but they can’t do it without His seeds, His soil, His sunlight, and His rain. So, we honor God by not just assuming He owes us food but by asking for it even when we are pretty sure that we will have food to eat whether we ask for it or not.
We also ask God to forgive us when we do what is wrong—but we can’t just do that without also acting toward others how we want God to act toward us. How messed up is it to ask God to forgive us when we hurt other people but refuse to forgive the people who hurt us? I know it is hard because we get super angry but the Bible tells us that we were created to be like God—and can we really believe that He forgives us when we act like other people can’t be forgiven? Believe me, I know right now that is probably hard to understand and it’s okay. It takes a long time to learn how to forgive. God has to change our hearts. We can cooperate with Him but there is no use in pretending that we can just forgive when we are super angry inside. Be patient with yourself and be honest, and if you are, you will be able to do what He asks you to do someday. Don’t give up.
And we also ask Him to please let us not be tempted—like Adam and Eve were—or if we are tempted, to offer us a way out of being at the mercy of the evil one. You know, everyone gets tempted and absolutely everyone except Jesus has given in to temptation. That’s why He is the Savior and that’s why we are the ones who need to be saved. And we are tempted in little things and big things and as you get older, some things won’t really tempt you as much anymore—like stealing and hitting and lying—but there will be new things to tempt you that you don’t even think about now. That’s why you never stop needing to cling to God and you never stop needing to pray to Him. And I am going to be honest here—usually when I am tempted and I give in to it, it’s because I have convinced myself that I should give in or deserve whatever it is, even though I know I am wrong. Of course, as I get to know God better and better, I do that less and less, but it still happens. So, just because you make wrong or bad choices, don’t give up. I don’t want you thinking that you are the only one who gets frustrated at yourself. We all do.
So, what does this have to do with the story of the Flood and with Noah? Great question, I am so glad you asked. When God makes a covenant, it is with certain people or with everyone or with everyone plus the animals or with a certain place. And a covenant is a promise that God keeps forever. It isn’t like when humans make promises, boy howdy. We like to break promises or weasel our way out of them. Human beings are supposed to be as reliable as God because we were created in His image, to show the world what God is like but we tend to not live up to that. Humans make promises and break them. Humans make contracts that say, “I will do such and such” and then don’t do them. Humans make treaties with other humans that say, “That’s your land and this is my land and I will stay here and you will stay there” and then they break the treaty and try to take the other person’s land. Humans also get married, which is also a contract—in the Bible, it was a contract between two fathers that their son and daughter would get married and they were both promised certain things—but I bet you know about divorce, so that doesn’t always work out either. But, are God’s covenants like the agreements that humans make with each other? No way, no how. God is serious about His covenants and His promises.
But God’s creation covenant was with everyone and every animal and also the planet. That means that He has to consider all those things all at the same time. God isn’t just loyal to people but also to the animals and to the earth. It is true that we are the most important part of His Creation and why He made it but it doesn’t mean that we are the whole ball of wax or, as I like to say, “all that and a bag of chips.” We are the only part of Creation made in God’s image, but the Bible tells us that all of Creation reflects the glory of God in the Psalms. Paul also says the same thing when he is speaking to the believers in Rome, that God made His existence obvious through His creation.
Psalm 19:1-4 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge. There is no speech; there are no words; their voice is not heard. Their message has gone out to the whole earth, and their words to the ends of the world.
If you remember from a few weeks ago, God calls His creation totally corrupted, which means ruined. When something is ruined, it can’t be patched or simply washed or glued back together. If your jeans get a hole, then you can get a patch of fabric and sew it over the hole and keep wearing them. They aren’t ruined. But, when your jeans accidentally go through a chipper-shredder, they wind up as a million useless little pieces that are even too small and ragged to be used to patch anything else. They are ruined. For some reason, God is saying this about the people, animals and planet and it is really hard for me to imagine a situation that bad. Good gravy, what could have been going on? God talked about violence. Maybe humans and animals were all killing each other because the animals weren’t scared of the humans and the humans were just killing all the animals for fun. And, I have to imagine that the humans were killing one another as well. One thing for sure, Genesis 6 is describing something worse than most of us can imagine now. In some countries, things are very bad because of war and violence and oppression and mindless killing. Genesis 6 is telling us a story of everything being like that and so what is God to do? He has a covenant with all of Creation and Creation isn’t listening to Him anymore. Creation is destroying Creation. Creation is being totally un-creation like.
When we ask what God is going to do, we are looking at God as a judge. God has many roles that He fills. Of course, He is the Creator. He is also a Father and sometimes He is also described as a Mother because remember, God isn’t male or female, the Bible says God is spirit. He has no need of being a man or a woman. He isn’t having any babies! He is a Provider. He is a Protector. He is a Healer. He is a King. He is a Savior. He is a Teacher. And He is also a Judge. He is the one who decides who is right and who is wrong, and what is right and what is wrong. He decides that this is going to happen, and it happens, or that this other thing won’t happen, and it doesn’t. Although God mostly leaves the decisions to us, that doesn’t mean that He isn’t very involved in our lives. It just means that He isn’t super controlling. A lot of stuff just happens because of the decisions we make or like with normal weather patterns. Like, your mom and dad are very involved in your life but plenty of stuff happens to you and you do plenty of stuff without them actually being involved with it, right? And sometimes you just get a virus or trip over something, just because. Same difference.
But when God can no longer fulfill or honor the Creation Covenant of Rulership, Food and Family because everything is totally messed up, it means that He has to take drastic action. The Judge needs to make a decision about this important court case. Let’s call it, “God vs everything and everybody.” What would that kind of court case look like if we could sit in the courtroom? Not in the jury because He doesn’t need us to be the ones making the decision. But, we can pretend like we are the angels of the Divine Council that we see in places like Job where God is talking to His Heavenly Court about what He wants to do. God seems to like discussing things with His angels, and even with humans before going through with it. We will also see that with Abraham, actually, and with Moses. Isn’t it odd that God doesn’t need to explain things to us but sometimes does anyway? I think He does that to see how we will react—if we will be wise or foolish or mean or merciful. When we talk about the Gilgamesh and Atrahasis epics from the countries surrounding Israel, we are going to see a very different picture. When they do things, they just do them. No warning. No explanation given to the humans. And really, they do things for some pretty ridiculous reasons. But our God does everything He does in order to save and to make things new again—for our sake.
So, let’s have a pretend courtroom. God is the judge and jury and the lawyers. The whole world is on trial. The angels are all in the seats, and fortunately angels don’t have any wings otherwise that would probably get awkward. Only Cherubim and Seraphim have wings—they aren’t angels. In fact, I am not entirely sure what they are. They act like guardians, not messengers like angels. Anyway, remember I have told you in the past that it is absolutely okay to make up “What if” stories as long as they are respectful to God. The Jewish people have been doing that for over two thousand years now with books like Jubilees and Enoch and the Testaments of the Patriarchs in order to talk about what they think might have happened when the Scriptures don’t give us a lot of details and as long as we read them as fictional stories, they can be a lot of fun and even get us thinking deep thoughts. Sometimes, we read them and go, “Um, no, I don’t think so” and sometimes we read them and think, “Hmmm…maybe…” So, on to our story:
“Hear ye, hear ye, the Court of Heaven is now in session. The most honorable Yahweh Elohim, the Lord God, is in session. He will try the case of Himself verses the earth.”
As God bangs down the gavel, He begins His opening statement—“It has been reported to me that my good Creation is not good anymore. My angels have been roaming to and fro over the earth observing humans and the animals and the whole earth and they tell me that it is filled with nothing except violence and evil thinking. I have also seen that they are correct. Humans are no longer acting like image-bearers. Instead, they are acting more like the worst of the animals—killing one another, slaughtering everything in sight. Even families are hurting each other. No one can trust anyone. And they don’t care how they treat the earth—it is looking more and more like a wasteland wherever they settle down. At this point, I cannot keep my promise to feed everyone and I definitely can’t have them ruling over the earth the way they are. If there get to be too many more of them, there will be nothing left and everyone and everything will be dead. My Creation is good; it worked exactly the way it was supposed to work but with all these evil thoughts and actions, my Creation is dying. Does anyone have any suggestions?”
Now, it may seem odd to us but there are several places in the Bible where God asks for suggestions. In I Kings 22 starting in verse 19, we have a famous example of God asking His heavenly armies how they should handle King Ahab. Check it out sometime, it is a very interesting story.
An angel bowed deeply and came forward and God asked him to speak up. “My Lord and my God, perhaps You ought to start over again. After all, it is a small thing for You to destroy everything and start over again. Perhaps this time they will obey You.”
Another angel bowed and came forward, waiting for permission to speak and when it was granted, suggested, “My King and my Creator, if you destroy it all, will not the evil one who rebelled scoff at you and brag that you could not maintain Your Creation? Perhaps, as you say, everything cannot be salvaged but could You find one man to pour out Your great favor upon, to change his heart, so that he and his family could be the start of a renewed creation?”
A third angel came forward once the second was dismissed and he got down onto one knee and lowered his head, “If I may be so bold, oh great God and Master, there is a man named Noah. Although he is a very sinful man himself, I have noticed that he hates the violence around him. Sometimes, he tries to get people to stop fighting and he doesn’t really harm anyone except to defend himself. He has a vineyard and drinks a lot of wine, but when he does he is not out of control like the others. I think he does it because what he sees around him bothers him so much. Lord, I know he is very angry and he is giving up hope but so far he hasn’t given in to the violence even though his heart is so full of anger and hatred. If I might present a suggestion that combines what my honored colleagues have suggested? Perhaps there is too much damage and violence and hatred to avoid destroying everything, but I do agree that You are not defeated and should not give up so easily. Extend Your favor to Noah, he is childless but if you change his heart and give him children, then he can raise them in a way that is more blameless and righteous than the world around him. You could start again with them.”
The Lord God considered the words of His faithful and wise servants and nodded. “Yes, that is indeed good counsel. There is seed in the ground and fish in the seas and, as for the rest, we can reset Creation and begin again. I know it won’t fix everything, but it will be the beginning of my grand plan to save the earth and the people forever. In the case of the lawsuit I have filed against the earth and its people, I find them to be ruined and I am forced to eliminate them from the face of the earth and the world made new again.”
Was that what happened? Maybe, but that’s the sort of story the Bible is telling us and pretty close to how the original audience would have understood it.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I pray you have a wonderful time this week studying the Bible with the people who love you.