| COVENANT WITH NOAH |

The week isn’t even over yet and we’ve already covered the first few thousand years of the history of the world! Nice work!

God Remembered

We will see this sort of language throughout our reading of the Bible. God is constantly building our confidence that he never forgets his promises. Again, we are reminded that God’s word is both true and good. It is trustworthy. It is truly worthy of our trust.

The problem that we will see is not that God forgets, but that over and over again his people forget. While God reminds us that he never forgets, he is also faithful to call us to remember.

I hope that your time reading the bible these next few months is a wonderful time of remembering (or even seeing for the first time) the faithfulness of God to his word.

God’s Covenant

Remember Genesis 3? All was lost. It should have been the end of the story. Then God does something. He makes a promise. Promises such as these are called covenants. Here, we see God making another promise to save. When the clouds come, and the sky darkens, we have a reason for fear. But when the rain subsides, and the sun shines, we are reminded of God’s promise again.

As we saw yesterday, a promise to forebear is at the heart of God’s promise. Though the world will again quickly fill with sin, rebellion and violence, God will not destroy the earth until he has saved those who call out to him in faith.

Shem, Ham and Japheth

Noah had three sons who were saved through God’s provision of the ark. All the families of the earth today descend from one of these three sons.

Two people groups descending from Ham will be important as we continue with our story. Genesis 10:6 explains that Egypt and Canaan both come from Ham.

Tomorrow, we will meet a man named Abram (who later would be called Abraham). Genesis 11:10–26 shows how Abraham, and ultimately all the Jewish people, will descend from Shem.