Genesis 5-9:

Hello and Welcome to Two Hearts True Healing and our first ever livestream event! We will leave a portion of the show for questions or comments towards the end. You are making history with me! It’s good to be back with you and to journey through scripture with you. Let’s take tea together and sit back and soak in the Word of God. We are going to pick up from where we left off. We started with Father Wounds and journeyed to how a father’s love is supposed to engulf and sustain us. But how do we respond? Hopefully with love but love is a learned behavior and a decision as well as is hate. Who in God’s plan receives love and from that fullness is able to love back? A mother. She literally embodies life giving love and care from the tango to the womb. She receives life and shelters, nurtures, protects, and safeguards the little one from day one even though sometimes it is unknown for a time just like a little seedling.

But intimacy is always lifegiving even if an embryo is not formed. But let me define what this means since in many circles there is a general blurring of the lines. God created man first as leader but he is nothing if he does not have to provide for and lead someone. So out of man, God formed woman. Our first fruit if you will. God blessed the union with this blessing; Be fruitful and multiply. Hmm. Two things 1) Fruit 2)Multiplication. That could be very general but it is not. This is a bond between one man and one woman. Their love is to bear fruit and to multiply. There are many ways a holy union of matrimony blesses the world with loving fruit and this multiplies and is spread beyond the scope we usually think of. Fulton Sheen said (and I paraphrase) you want to cause conversion in a man’s heart, show him a holy man and his wife. There is something to this bond which God blesses. It is an artform that grows over time with patient watering. Love is a gift that is offered by the man, and received by the woman. Out of the fullness of this gift comes the response in love and something happens; an exchange of love.

It needs to be practiced and lived. Both physically and spiritually. Indeed the sexuality piece is important. Both male and female he created them. They fit together (literally) and complement each other in many ways. This journey of working together is beautiful and then another remarkable miracle happens. A child. Our first community. This man and woman co-operates with God and a new little body and soul is created. But it does not end there. This life is brought up to a crescendo of birth and then…hmm what might seem to be dull and ordinary monotonous and sleepless comes next. The mother cares, feeds, nurtures, and safeguards some more. Interestingly, though, without her husband it falls flat. Community is more than just one. Without the threesome nothing can happen (please no offense to single mothers who have to go it alone. You are very brave and only succeed with the help of God the Father. You have my esteem and respect.) God intends this exchange of love to keep deepening between the pair; a continued offering given first by the initiative of the husband, received by the wife and given back to her husband first and then her child out of this fullness. As the child grows, he learns from his mother how to respond to the advances of the beloved. He learns love, respect, and nurturing. Remember, though, that because of the fall, sin enters the picture and we have woundings because our parents are two imperfect people. Thankfully God uses both the successes and the failures to grow and sanctify us.

I am going to journey with you through scripture to see the intent that God has for family and community and a mother’s love in her role. Let’s pick up the story where we left off in Genesis with a little acknowledged figure, Noah’s wife, who did reshape history as we know it. Turn to Genesis five. This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. It is interesting that we pick up here. There are obviously other children and races that have sprung from Adam’s loins in these 130 years. We have the downfall of Cain who was jealous of the righteous Abel. But that is not where this story picks up. The blessing of the father was given to a different son and passed on. Seth is named at the beginning because it is through him that God’s blessing was passed. Then we go on in a line from him with names like E’nosh, Ke’nan, Ma-hal’alel, Jar’ed…the blessing keeps getting passed on. It even mentions that each of these people have other sons and daughters. It is significant though that these names are mentioned because they are the firstborn who receive that special blessing of God to be set apart and pass on the legacy of the Love of God the Father. The storyteller is highlighting this fact. But something unfortunate happens.

We kind of have to jump ahead a little bit to get to the significance before we loop back. Gen 6:2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” I found the footnote to be very enlightening…sons of God…so the writer is referring to this genealogy of “divine beings.” The writer, however, may be using an old story or myth to point out the progressive degradation of mankind before the Flood and to warn against the evil effects of intermarriage either of the descendants of Seth with the Kenites or, more probably, of the Israelites with the native populations of Canaan. When we go back to the list we get this same line X lived how ever many years and had Y. X had other sons and daughters and died and then Y lived however many years and had Z. Y had other sons and daughters and then died. Z had… ect. We kinda get the dull ache between God and Man. Let’s pick up with E’noch. When E’noch had lived sixty-five years, he became the Father of Methusala. E’noch walked with God… and he was not, for God took him. Then we have La’mech the drone has kinda continued and we can see the ache by these lines, after he had Noah, “Out of the ground which the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands.” 

The Lord saw that the wickedness of men was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air…” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Ja’phath. How could Noah have three sons? His wife of course. He led his family according to God’s will. Then God commands that an ark be built and that man will die. And says, “But I will establish my covenant with you and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you…” The Lord commands for provisions to be made and animals to be gathered. Noah obeys. We know because scripture says Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. So what is the role of the rest of his family? Certainly, this would have been a surmounting task. He couldn’t have done all this alone. We don’t hear anything about his wife complaining and taking another path. I propose that the silence of this matter points to the fact that she was a support of her husband’s mission. It was a big task and one that took years to comply with. It says Noah was six hundred something before getting on the ark. (Though that number could have been symbolic.) That means lots of quiet years preparing. Day in and day out. Noah’s wife did a lot better than Eve. She was the glue that kept everything going. She was following the role of a woman which is submission. I don’t say this in a negative way at all. Submission. Let’s break down this word sub under missio mission, sending forth. Remember multiplication? So under the mission of her husband. A sharer in the plan of God under the shelter of her husband. As the years passed, she tried to impart this to the wider family. Now we have her sons and her sons’ wives. Does this feel like a large kinda out there theory? It shouldn’t. We don’t have a subset story of the rebellion of Noah’s family and this is precisely what shows that his family was a help in fulfilling the Lord’s plan.

Scripture then says, Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation…” He takes in his family and the animals. There is a curious order that is mentioned several times in the following chapters of scripture. And Noah, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’s wives with him went into the ark. Interesting don’t you think? The men first. Noah’s wife set apart and then his sons’ wives. And again a few verses later, On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Ja’pheth and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark…That shows a hierarchy of blessing don’t you think? The patriarchs and a matriarch followed by learning women. Him and all his household plus the creatures and all the creepy crawlies and birds entered the ark and then there is a verse that shows another significant thing after the Lord shuts them in the ark. Verse 17. The flood continued forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased…the ark floated on the face of the waters. That phrase brings us back to the beginning. 

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. God is recreating. He is renewing the face of the earth and reestablishing his covenant. But this is where scripture scholars have a couple of different theories about the flood. One theory is that the flood only covered the known world and other theories say the whole world as there are some interesting findings of land animals next to water animals on land in several continents. We don’t know and frankly that piece doesn’t matter and isn’t really highlighted. What is highlighted, though, is Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark…But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. We know the Holy Spirit is participating because wind is indicative of the Holy Spirit And God made a wind blow over the earth, and it looks like creation is repeating itself. There could be a whole nother subset about the ark and creation and how they are related. We could spend a whole episode on this and I already kinda did a little bit of this in season one Episode five. My Dove. But here we are reflecting on the community aspect with God’s family and the sanctifying work of the covenant and how we move through history from family to nation.

We have another repeating verse, which highlights again what I have been saying. Then God said to Noah, “Go forth from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives…So Noah went forth, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. We have a repeat blessing, And God Blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…We have the former blessing echoed that says work is good because it brings us to God and every ordinary day is a blessing that brings us close to Him if we choose it. Animals are added to this blessing. The sign of this covenant is a rainbow. This is a holy thing which the culture is trying to twist. It always seems to be at odds with the family of God which leads me to one further thing I would like to highlight before we close. Sin. and the curse of sin between the offspring of the woman her seed and the offspring of the evil one and his seed. Noah’s family is no different than other families who have drama and a division occurs again. Man hasn’t changed much. There always seems to be an area in our hearts that has that lack of trust. God talks about this in his covenant being accountable for blood.

Let’s finish in Genesis nine. Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Ja’pheth took a garment laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” He also said, “Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem and let Canaan be his slave. God enlarge Ja’pheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave. Wow! Let’s break this down. We see a disrupter that the matriarch should have stood up to and didn’t. Her silence and cooperation is not good in this instance. So we have the two flip sides in this story. She went along with the abandon of her husband and remained under Noah’s mission but here she allowed sin instead of good work. They got a little too comfortable and careless in the everyday grind. Noah gets drunk. And his careless abandon causes another rift in the family and in nations. Ham. He “sees his father’s nakedness.” What’s the big deal here? He just had a little look and peek right? No harm done. No. That is not what happened. What this passage means is that Ham committed the sin of Sodomy. He lay with his father sexually. And unabashedly told his brothers so they could share in it just for laughs so they could take advantage of it. Have you heard the phrase “You are such a ham!!”  someone who enjoys performing and who tends to behave in an exaggerated or playful way when people are watching. I digress…But yay! His brothers learned their lessons well and “covered their father’s nakedness” without seeing it. They picked up the leadership where their mother failed. 

The covenant is passed onto Shem when Noah awakens from his sin and lapse of judgment. The language makes this clear. “Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem…” That is set apart language because Ja’pheth only gets “God enlarge Ja’pheth…” They keep the family unity dwelling together and who gets thrown out? Ham’s line and Canaan. From them stems all the division later in the story. All his peoples (like Nineveh and Babel and Egypt) get thrown to the wayside and they do not really take God seriously but their own pleasures. Sodomy never ends well. But we are going to pick up with this in the next episode. I already did a little bit of this in Season one episode eight. Tower of Babel if you want a sneak peek. Thanks so much for joining me and know I’m holding you in prayer! I’m looking forward to continuing this journey with you…Would love your feedback and comments. How is God leading you?

Music in the LiveStream event taken from Hallow Summer Pray List. Not a sponsor.