As Adam's and Eve's first-born son Cain stood in aplace of privileged blessing, but his attitude in his worship revealed a sinful heart. God called Cain to discern and counter sin's attack upon him. Cain rejected the blessings of his birthright and God's word and it resulted not only in his murdering his brother, but also is banishment from God's blessings. Only God's sovereign merciful power can rescue us from our sin. While God is the source of all outward blessings, such blessings by themselves cannot free us from the power and presence of sin. Through His word given to his covenant people, God calls us to discern and counter sins attack on us by attending to the attitude of our hearts in our worship of Him.

Since God's command to the first man and woman was for them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue, their worship of God and obedience to him addressed everything they were to do in their family and work. Disobedience to God, therefore, addresses all that we do as humans and is false worship. God's promise to rescue his creation and covenant people from sin takes place within a creation corrupted by sin and among people in rebellion against God. God calls his people to cultivate obedience to him in the presence of sin and its consequences knowing that God's promise cannot fail. This means we are to have a realistic optimism about life that recognizes that God's gracious purpose is fulfilled even through the acts of people in rebellion against God, and that still rejects this rebellion against God.

Since humans are sinners that are corrupted by their sin and under God's just condemnation, they are not the solution to themselves. We are our own problem. The solution to us must be applied to us by God. God does apply his solution to us through a particular means--His Word. A necessary part of our experiencing God's solution to us is knowing and trusting in his verdict regarding us as sinners and relying upon his vanquishing of our sin. The union between God's verdict about and vanquishing of sin is revealed in Genesis 6:1-8. In other words, part of the "good news" of the Gospel is the "bad news" about us, but when we understand this we recognize how good it is to know this supposed bad news.

The fight for and of Christian faith, is the fight to think and act in harmony with God's word in the presence of alternative ways of thinking and living. Every culture has its own stories about reality and human life that both harmonize and conflict in various ways with God's word. Both Noah's life and the account of it given in Scripture encapsulate this fight of faith that calls us to think and and live in obedience to God's word.

God is faithful to his covenant promise. This is seen in God's remembering Noah and all the creatures with Noah in the ark. God remembers Noah, or demonstrates his covenant faithfulness by his providential control of creation, purging creation of sin, and provision of a personal mediator. Though God's purging creation of sin through the flood is not a total purging, it is partial and a true picture of God's ultimate judgment against sin that will come and usher in through his personal mediator the Lord Jesus Christ a new creation free from sin. The post-flood world that Noah and his family and the animals occupy represents that new creation.

To love God is to love life, because God is life. As Noah and his wife and their sons and their wives departed the ark God renewed his covenant purpose with them. This meant that like Adam and Eve they were to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth, and by implication subdue it on God's behalf. This propagation of life was not merely physical but spiritual, because God is worshiped or served through our physical bodies in a physical creation. This also meant they were to protect life. In this propagation and protection of life they were loving God. We also demonstrate love for God through the propagation and protection of life. While the shedding of human blood predominately reveals our hatred for life and God, God sent his own son, the Lord Jesus, who shed his blood that we might have life and thereby love for God.

After God commanded Noah and his sons to do the very thing he had commanded Adam and Eve to do, he declares that he is establishing his covenant with Noah and his sons and their descendants. God's covenant is not only with Noah, his family and their descendants, but with all creation. It is God's covenant that describes and determines God's relationship to everyone and everything. Like Noah and his family, Israel, God's old covenant people, were prone to think and feel alone and overwhelmed by the task in which God enlisted them. The antidote to the despondency and despair to which God's people are prone is a clear understanding that God makes and keeps his covenant. God and God alone institutes and fulfills his covenant.

Every persons view of life, including the Christian life, reveals their view of God's relationship to them and the entire universe. We have only three basic choices regarding God's relationship to creation. God is either dissolved into, disconnected from, or distinguished from the physical world. The Bible reveals that God is distinguished from his creation, able to act in it and yet it is always dependent upon him. Thus, the biblical gospel is fundamentally about what God does for, in and through his people. The biblical gospel does not cast us back upon ourselves, but upon God, and thus Christian living is not motivated by guilt over what we are not doing for God, but motivated by love and gratitude for what God has done, is doing and will do for, in and through us, who are the objects of his mercy.

God spoke his word to Abram and commanded him to go from his country, his relatives and his father's house to the land that God would show him. In doing this, God was requiring Abram to do something that was very scary--to leave everything that in the ancient world was the source of security, status, success and satisfaction. Stephen in Acts 7 and the writer of Hebrews in his 11th chapter tell us that Abram did not receive in his lifetime the things promised, that he left not knowing where he was going, and that he, and all his descendants who believed in God for salvation were strangers and exiles on the earth. Faith in God means a way of life that is scary, but it is truly a life of faith in God; it casts us back on God, not ourselves. Abram is able to answer this call and obey this command because he received God's word.

While salvation from sin is accomplished by God, it does not result in the objects of God's mercy being passive but active. In salvation God resurrects deadened sinners by illuminating their minds, enlivening their will and stirring their affections so they actively particpate with God in God fufilling his promise to bring his kingdom. We see this active participation in Abram's by his submitting his reasoning to God's word and to the historical process of learning from God's word.