Genesis

(Read Part 1: My Three Sons, Part 2: Canaan and the Curse, Part 3: Shem and the Savior.)

“May God enlarge Japhet, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant” (ESV, Gen. 9:27).

The last of Noah’s prophecies concerns Japheth and his descendants. According to Genesis 10:2-5 Japheth’s sons included Gomer, Magog, Javan and Meshech—names familiar to Biblical readers as describing those tribes which settled in areas that would later be called Eastern Europe and Russia. “From these the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations” (Gen. 10:5, NKJV). An anthropologist would refer to Japheth’s descendants as the Indo-European peoples. What was the prophetic blessing? According to Genesis 9:27, they would be “enlarged.” This must refer to territorial and temporal enlargement—exactly what took place in the later history of the Indo-European peoples and their culture. Who can doubt that much of the world’s exploration as well as creative culture appeared among Japheth’s descendants?

The deluge had passed, and the ark had been parked. It was now time for Noah and his family to enter into the postdiluvian “brave new world” that awaited them. Noah’s first act after debarkation was to build an altar and offer sacrifices to the Lord. This act elicited God’s promise that He would not smite every living thing again as He had done (Gen. 8:20-22).

The Lord then established a “covenant” with Noah and his descendants (9:9). Since we all are his descendants, the regulations of this covenant apply to all of mankind. The Jewish tradition states that the Noahic Covenant illustrates what God expects of all people, not just the Jews. The provisions of the Noahic Covenant regarding the spread of life, the source of life and the sanctity of life are given in Genesis 9:1-7. God pledged His faithfulness to these promises by the token of a “bow in the cloud” (Gen. 9:12-17). As a warrior or hunter hangs up his bow after using it, the LORD placed His bow in the sky after He shot it at the earth with the flood. By this sign, He promised that He would not perform that same act again!

Noah’s three sons—Shem, Ham and Japheth—became the progenitors of new life on an earth that had been wrecked by the flood but also purified from its ungodly inhabitants (Gen. 6:7). As the sons are mentioned in the text, Genesis 9:18 records a tiny piece of information that is important in understanding the rest of the account: “Ham was the father of Canaan.”

The following verses (9:20-27) record a sad event in the life of Noah, the man of whom it had been said, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God” (Gen 6:9). These verses describe the fall of a good man. “Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent” (Gen. 9:20-21). Scripture records both the victories and the defeats of God’s people. That fact is an often overlooked evidence of the Bible’s truthfulness, since authors tend to play down the faults of their “heroes.”

The Genesis Flood is 50 years old today! The following article is reprinted with permission from the Baptist Bulletin July, 2010.

It is so important that we focus on God’s perspective concerning ultimate origins. Human theories, hypotheses, speculations and opinions come and go. But the God “who cannot lie” (NKJV,^* Tit. 1:2), who was there when the world began, has written a perfect book—the Bible—which He requires that we read and believe (Rom. 10:17).

The Message of Creation by David Wilkinson is a light commentary with ample contemporary application on the biblical theme of creation. Wilkinson is a competent theologian with a scientific background, making him well qualified to speak on the theme of creation. His pastoral experience shows through as he provides lengthy applications from the many biblical passages he discusses throughout the book. In his defense of the idea of a Creator, he also interacts with well known atheists (past and present) such as Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins.

The book considers five aspects of the doctrine of creation through 20 passages of Scripture. Wilkinson is quick to point out in the preface that the book is not a systematic theology on the doctrine of creation, though the theologian in him might prefer to write such a book.

It is a kind of journey. Some will want to get to the destination quickly, but that is not what we shall do. We have twenty “villages” to visit on the way in pursuing the doctrine of creation and opening up its biblical themes. Their large number of passages and their diversity is testimony to how important this doctrine is within the biblical literature. (p. 11)

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Read Part 1

Because the tradition of Christian orthodoxy has a legacy of interpreting Genesis as a historic narrative, the prevailing interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:3 has been that it is a record of God’s creative activity in six, consecutive, literal days followed by a literal seventh day of rest.