The permeating power of pristine purity is pungent after a drenching rain deep cleans the
earth. It seems as if we’re granted a new start to live afresh with our slates
wiped clean of every failure, impediment, mediocre contribution and malady of
our human affairs. So, we start over.
Enter Noah, his wife, his 3 men and their wives, and a crème-de-la-creme of the
perfect pairs of other species. They took the stage of God to “be fruitful,
multiply and replenish the earth”. The Fall of Eden was washed away, decadent
sin that needed a flood to cleanse it was in the past somewhere and the toilsome
120 years of preaching and building an ark were over. It was a new world.
With the whole world before them, Noah and his family of people and species landed
to start over. The first thing Noah did was build an altar to the Lord His
God and offer the purest of sacrifices; an aroma so pleasing to God, God made a
promise to never curse the ground again “for man’s sake” nor to destroy every
living thing again as He had done with the flood. [Genesis 8:21] In the same
breath God “seemed” to get a revelation of His human creation. God said, “for the
imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth”.
WOW.
When you know you’re dealing with an infant, you expect an infant. You nurture, love
and care for him or her with everything within your power to nourish his or her
life to the best possible outcome. When you know that the imagination of man’s
heart is evil from his youth, you have a knowledge base with which to deal with
“man”. Did the omniscient God not know this?
Human still had to start over, and so they did with a brand new world and the life
preserved in the ark. God made a covenant with Noah and they were on their way
to live in their new world.
One of Noah’s occupations was a vintner, producing perhaps some of the best wine in
the world. One day, Noah was inebriated enough to need his sons to either cover
him or expose him. Ham, the villain, chose to expose their father while Shem
and Japheth covered him. When Noah found out what Ham did, he cursed his son.
From a pure new world to a curse had happened in Eden; and now, it was happening
again. The repeat button was recycling what God had fixed with a whole new
world. The merciful God granted his creation pure beauty, and once again, from
the innocence of beauty came a curse. And from the innocence of beauty, humanity
came to the place of Babel to try to build a tower up to the heavens with a
unity that had serious implications. Implications that would thwart the plan of
God to replenish the earth. Man, whose heart’s imagination was only evil all
the time from his youth, had to be scattered. Once again, God stepped into the
chaos of our human affairs for his order to continue. From Noah’s progeny, God
had to find a heart bent enough toward His Father’s heart and He did.
Enter Abram.
