His promise

DEVOTION

GENESIS

HIS PROMISE

Gen 8:20-22

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

NIV

Having visited this same passage before and spent all our time with the sacrifice, but mentioned what God has promised, we now explore his promise. First we see that God promised never again to curse the ground because of man. We could return to the place where he did just that in the garden with Adam. Making the ground difficult for Adam and that he would have to toil, tilling it in order to provide food for himself. If this is the curse which God lifted, or promised never again to curse then all of us need not toil for our sustenance but instead simply live in the garden of God. But that is not the case. This curse of having to toil has never been lifted. The curse God speaks of here in the context of the whole narrative is the flood. He promised that he would never again destroy the earth and every living thing upon it by the flood of waters, the very waters that he gathered together to create the earth. We are reassured this is his promise by his words through the Apostle Peter.

2 Peter 3:5-7

5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

NIV

Although we have the promise the world will never again be flooded, we also have the promise the next time God will use fire. Yet in the meantime there is another portion of this promise we should see. He has told us as long as the earth endures we will have the seasons and day and night. It is best that we see the Hebrew here, as it says: while remains the earth, or while the earth remains seedtime harvest cold heat summer winter day night not will cease. While the earth remains. As long as it is in existence, until the day he has set to destroy it with fire, all will continue just as he created. This has great significance for us. This assures us that God will ensure the earth will continue to be as he created it to be. All the seasons will be as they have been and will be. The earth will not be changed from how he designed it to be. That would mean man cannot have any effect upon the earth. we cannot destroy it, change it, making it better or worse than God promised it would continue to be until he destroys it. But there is a time when he will. He did not promise the earth would continue all of time, but that he would never destroy it with a flood. He would never again wipe mankind off the face of the earth with water. However once again he does know that the inclination of man will be toward evil all the time. He already knew this would be and in fact the plan of salvation was already in place even before he began creation. We can be sure that another day is coming when this present age of grace will conclude and this heaven and earth will be consumed by fire and all the ungodly will be cast into the lake of burning sulfur to perish. They will not only experience the death of their body but the second death as well, the death of their spirit. Whether or not the actual earth as we know it will burn up and a new earth will be created, as it appears to say both here and in the Revelation to John, is not as absolute as we may have thought. Although it surely seems this is the way the earth we know will end, it could possibly be seen in a spiritual sense. With the destruction of all the ungodly this earth would only contain the godly and thus be a new earth, a paradise of sorts, with God once again coming down and living with his creation, walking in the cool of the day with them. But that is an abstract view with no real scriptural bases. What we know is what we are told and we are told as plan as possible that God will destroy this earth with fire. It will be consumed with fire, gone from existence. He will create a whole new heaven and earth that has an entirely different environment. As he promised while this one is still here, all the environment will stay the same. The Solar system will stay the same, the universe will stay the same. But when he ends it, a whole different universe will exist. Our earth, if we can call it that will not need the sun, or the moon as there will not be day and night, there will not be heat and cold, there will not be summer and winter or seedtime and harvest. It will be a paradise where the trees bear fruit all the time, forever. God will be the light of the world. All this is explained as we saw in the Revelation to John when we went through it with our devotions. What we see is the complete hand of God at work from the beginning to the end. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the beginning of all things, and he is the end of all things. He is God and we are but man. We exist because of him, we continue to exist because of his promise.