10th Sunday after Pentecost “Mine!”
July 28, 2024 Genesis 9: 8-17
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Dear brothers & sisters in Christ,
Our Scripture readings for Sundays run on a 3-yr rotation. I know I’ve mentioned that before. Our Gospel readings steer that 3 yr cycle, yr.A- B- C, to use the first 3 Gospels = Matthew, Mark, & Luke. We are in yr.B, so our gospel readings have mostly come from Mark. And since the gospel of Mark is shorter than Matthew & Luke, so in this year, we also have some readings from the gospel of John = which we will see in the next few Sundays.
I say those things, because I wanted to remind you that the OT readings for any given Sunday is chosen to relate to the gospel reading for that day. Sometimes it’s an OT prophecy that Jesus fulfills in the gospel reading; & sometimes the OT reading just has the same teaching or theme. But this OT & gospel relationship is intentional; you should look for it, & continue to learn about this continuity of Old & New Testament == it is there to firm-up your faith.
Therefore, you may have noticed a connection of lessons today. If anything is as awesome than walking on water, seen in Mark 6, it might be deluging the whole world with water. God is the Creator of water & Lord over water; it obeys His Word & Will. How thankful, then, the disciples must have been to hear, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’ And likewise, for Noah & his family, after surviving the flood, to hear of God’s covenant;
a promise that never again would God destroy the world by water.
And the ‘sign’ for that? The Bow in the clouds. That Bow does not belong to anyone who wants to claim it for their own ‘sign’ or purpose. Lying Satan himself has twisted it’s meaning so that people want to say that the ‘rainbow’ is their symbol for perverted & shameful lifestyles, & immoral LGBTQ+ pride. But even 100 yrs ago, Satan lied thru man’s ideas of science to claim that the rainbow is merely a natural thing: with light reflected & refracted in water droplets by the sun, with different wavelengths -making colors- & mirrored on the curvature of the earth.
We only need to ask: who made the sun, the water, & the earth to be able to shine such colors? The Creator. And before the terrible flood, there was no Bow; but afterward, God made the Bow His sign of love & care to all flesh = man and beast. Altho animals cannot appreciate it, man must appreciate it, or else he or she denies their Creator.
What a wonderful book, the book of Genesis; it reveals for us the beginning of all things, and the ‘Beginner’ of all things. With all of God’s first book, Satan lies again & again, using so-called sciences, with man’s physical & social ideas, to say that Genesis is full of ‘myth’: the myth of a 6-day creation; the myth of Adam & Eve & marriage; the myth of the origin of sin; the myth of a world-wide flood with an ark preserving each ‘kind’ of creature. Well, the rest of Scripture, including Jesus himself, confirms that Genesis is the actual eye-witness-account of the who, how, & why the earth & universe, man & animals exists.
Some study-Bibles like to point out 4 ‘creational’ events in Genesis. The creation of ‘all things’ in chpts.1-2; the ‘creation’ of sin in chpt.3 =(altho not by God); the creation of ‘covenent’ in chpt.9; and the creation of ‘nations’ in chpt.11, the people dispersed by different languages at the Tower of Babel.
Today, our reading is from chpt.9, with a pivotal event when God moved His new creation thru destruction, and into a re-creation or new beginning. And he does it with a covenant; a promise, a pledge, a pact. And 3-times in our lesson, God says that the covenant He is establishing is His, vs.9, 11, &15: ‘I establish my covenant; I establish my covenant; I will remember my covenant.’ The covenant is His.
I’m the 5th of six children; I have a brother 3 yrs younger than me. He learned early-on that if something was his, he needed to defend it. So, his favorite pillow he call his ‘mine.’ If I took it, he would take it back & say, ‘that’s mine! ‘that’s my mine.’ I think we all learned that word pretty quickly in our lives, since it’s one of the favorite words of our sinful nature. ‘Mine, mine, mine.’
Like in the room full of toddlers, all having fun. In the corner is little Billy with a fire truck; he’s having lots of fun. Sam notices & takes it. ‘My truck.’ Mine, mine, mine; … a treasured possession. The Black Friday sales are going on. The line to get into the store is long. Finally, the doors open. That poor employee says, ‘No running!’ (yah, right.) The crowd pushes & shoves to get the greatest deal of the season. That TV, that new phone, that gaming system is . . . mine, mine, mine . . . a treasured possession.
A couple goes to a bar for drinks & dancing. He goes to the restroom; when he returns, another guy is talking to his date. Mine, mine, mine. He’s jealous. Two people are up for promotion. They started with the company at the same time.
Both have been successful, leading various projects. One gets the promotion, and the other cries, ‘Mine, mine, mine.’ My treasured possession; I’m jealousy because I love it. We don’t do possession & jealousy very well because of our sinful nature. But God does it very well.
Our Creator knows a treasured possession when He sees it; & you are it. He becomes jealous when you go off & about, ignoring Him, or cheating on Him. Be thankful when you hear that message in His Holy Word: Mine. God calls you His treasured possession!
Here are just 4 examples in the OT where He uses those words. In Exodus, God says, ‘Out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.’(19:5) In Deut.: The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.’ And again: ‘the Lord has declared this day that you are his people, his treasured possession as he promised.’(4;5) In the Psalms: For the Lord has chosen [you] to be his own, to be his treasured possession. (135:4) And again in the NT, He says thru Peter: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” (2:9)
God not only calls you His treasured possession, He also says that He is jealous for you. In Exodus: “I the Lord your God am a jealous God.” “You shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” (Ex.20;34) In Deut (4;5) “The Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” And, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.” God calls you his treasured possession, and He is jealous for you. Mine! It is His covenant concerning you.
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When we are ignorant of His Word about us, we think our life, our ‘self’, is ours. Mine.
That part of us likes to think of ourselves in charge. My body, my choice, my life, my decision, my abilities, my self-determination, ….my control. Mine. During the summer of 2013, travelers boarded a Las Vegas to Phoenix flight. The plane left the gate, but wasn’t cleared for take-off due to mechanical problems. So it sat on the hot tarmac for hours; without air conditioning, without food, & limited water. Two of those passengers even passed out.
Then one person tried something. It may have been a joke; but knowing people, it may have been a serious effort to get the ‘vibes’ going in the right direction. You know, to use the ‘power of positive thinking’ to take control of the universe & change things. This man cranked up his portable music player so that everyone could hear the song by R.Kelly: …
‘I Believe I Can Fly” …I believe I can touch the sky!’ Many passengers joined in singing the song; ‘spread my wings & fly away; I believe I can soar.’ Who knows how many actually thought they could change their bad circumstances by ‘speaking it into reality.’ They didn’t. The plane didn’t move again until a mechanic fixed the problem.
As sinful human beings, we so deeply desire to be in control of things. Mine.
Now, it’s true that our Creator has made us capable of making decisions, and making changes to many things in our lives, for both better or worse. But He also teaches us that for the bigger things, the ‘universe’ things, the spiritual things, we are quite helpless. Many people want to believe that there is a better place to go to when this life is done; but their belief cannot make it so. Many want to believe that they will be welcomed into that better place because they have been a good person ….mostly. And they hope that whoever’s at the door will look at their good intentions, & not at their failures. But our hoping in ‘hope’; our great or deep efforts to think things into existence, cannot affect God’s things = those big things.
Here, we are well-guided to consider Martin Luther’s explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts.. ”
If we were not able to determine for ourselves when we were born into this life, & to which parents, & in what part of the world, & with what physical traits & abilities, what makes us think that we ultimately control the number of our days, and what comes next for us? Mine? It doesn’t seem so. And our Creator tells us that it is not so.
Genesis 6 thru 9 is a reminder. The flood was unlike anything mankind has seen before or since. The flood was a catastrophe of enormous and exceptional proportions. One day everything was normal, and then = the deluge! The Creator broke the dam; the water from above & the water from below joined together, rising for 40 whole days, and the whole earth remained flooded for 150 days. The Holy Creator is in charge of all creation & creatures.
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So as God created the world, He then washed & re-formed it. He then set the rainbow in the clouds. He established His covenant of life with ‘you,’ He tells Noah. But that ‘you’ is in the plural form; not just for Noah’s sons, but all of their offspring ==& that means YOU. He established His rainbow-covenant with every living creature, and for all the generations after Noah.
Mine; my covenant, He says. And He pledges to remember; the covenant is ‘everlasting’, which pairs with the words: ‘never again.’ Mine-covenant will be for all flesh of the earth. That foundational-covenant was kept when God cut another -related- covenant with Abraham. That Noah-promise was in place when He spoke His covenant at Sinai, and spoke His covenant with David, & with Israel, & even with you. He has created you, and He has redeemed you. By His cross-covenant, you are His.
There is no doubt about it: you are God’s treasured possession. Even when science & reason try to water it down, or even when Satan lies about it, God said, “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember…”
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What was the covenant? To Noah & to all Noah’s descendants He promised never to destroy the wicked, the world & all its sin, by flood waters. Instead, He returns to that original covenant-promise to Adam & Eve, that He would pour out His wrath on The One, the Seed of the woman, who would carry the world’s sin & wickedness in His flesh to the cross. And then He would sanctify all waters to be used in a gracious way: to wash away the sin from all who would trust His covenant-promise, and to cleanse every soul that is baptized in His name.
That is His new & final covenant, made good in the flesh & blood of God-the-Son. Baptized into Jesus Christ, God’s Word thru Isaiah is fulfilled: ‘when you pass thru the waters, I will be with you; and thru the rivers, they shall not deluge you; …fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.’ When God speaks, it comes true, because He is in control. Mine.
The promised Messiah, Jesus, did the will of the Father. Jesus came & revealed himself with the signs: the blind received their sight; He made the deaf hear & the lame walk; lepers were cleansed, the dead were raised, & the poor-in-spirit had the good news preached to them. He rebuffed Satan, & stood before His lying accusers; tempted, but remaining sinless; so as to be the holy Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
Jesus did the will of the Father, and endured the weight of the cross for us so that God’s everlasting covenant to every living creature of all flesh would be kept. Jesus laid down His life on Good Friday, and then took it up again on Easter Sunday to bring you back to God.
He did that, because you are His. He created you; sin takes you away, but you are God’s treasured possession, and He is jealous for you. That’s what Paul was talking about in Ephesians 3 = about the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God in Christ; it surpasses knowledge, but you can trust the Creator who speaks things into being, & is in control.
When He speaks, He doesn’t want you to miss it. So in Genesis 9, God speaks it three times: “my covenant”; “my covenant”; “I will remember my covenant.”
You are mine, mine, mine.
Amen