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God Keeps His Covenant
In this week’s message, based on Genesis 9: 1-17 (please read), we will begin to look at the practices, people, and events that God put in place to move forward His promise, to move His people forward until the time of the Atonement.

  •     Practices, to include covenants, sacrifices
  •     People, to include priests and deliverers
  •     Events, such as special days

Some see these ancient stories as just history trivia and anecdotal tales which add nothing to today’s Christianity, save some sense of preserving history. That is a complete misunderstanding of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the lock which the New Testament key opens.  It is the silhouette of Christ, later filled in with New Testament detail.

Any understanding of Christ’s atoning work on the Cross is, at best, incomplete, and at worst, complete misunderstanding. We will begin looking at the idea of covenant, starting with God’s covenant with Noah, and with the whole Earth.

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

  “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
    by man shall his blood be shed,
  for God made man in his own image.

And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 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. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

— Genesis 9: 1-17