And God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’ Genesis 6:13

God did destroy the world with a massive Flood. When the Flood waters finally subsided and Noah’s Ark rested ‘on the mountains of Ararat’ (Genesis 8:4). The human race that started with Adam and Eve failed the test. They did not learn how to ‘reign’ with God. All of their efforts ended in violence, wickedness, and the destruction of all living things – except for one family and the animals that God had saved with them in an Ark.

Starting Over

God started again, even though He knew that ‘the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth’ (Genesis 8:21). God made a special covenant with Noah and his family and their future descendants –

Then the Lord said in His heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.

God repeated some of the same words to Noah and his sons that He had said to Adam and Eve –

So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.’ Genesis 9:1

However, this time God added something else that pertained to humanity’s training to reign with Him on the earth –

And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move ont he earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. ‘Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man. And as for you, be fruitful and multiply; Bring forth abundantly in the earth And multiply in it. Genesis 8:2-7

You’ll find the complete new ‘covenant’ (agreement) God made with humans in Genesis chapters 8 and 9. One of the best-known parts of the covenant are these words –

And God said: ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth. Genesis 9:12-17

Train to Reign Begins Again

God’s purpose for humanity would not be thwarted, so He began training people how to subdue and rule again. However, this time was a bit different because Noah and his family knew what the pre-Flood world was like. They knew about corruption, violence, wickedness, and death. Those things were foreign to Adam and Eve before they disobeyed God. Noah and his family had some insight into how badly the human race had responded to God in the past. That knowledge would become part of their training to reign with God, but how much would it help them succeed? Not much.

It was not long before Noah’s sons led their families from the mountains of Ararat to a plain in the land of Shinar. We know the area as ancient Babylon (currently Iraq). One problem with all of humanity moving together was that they were not obeying God’s command for them to be ‘fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth’ Another problem was that they wanted to establish themselves as their own gods – a type of ‘self religion’ –

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. Genesis 11:1-4

Notice the last words here – “let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” They wanted to make ‘a name’ for themselves. Why? ‘… lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’ They did not like God’s plan for humanity and were determined to do everything they could to keep His plan from succeeding. Did it? No, it did not –

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:5-9

God put a stop to humanity’s disobedience by confusing the languages among families, then ‘scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth.’ They would not accept God’s training, so He handled it another way. You can read Genesis 10 to learn more about the families that were scattered.

The Lineage of the ‘Seed’

It’s important as we study the Bible and think about how God is training us to reign with Him to remember that He made a promise to Eve that the ‘Seed’ of the woman would destroy the ‘seed’ of the serpent. We know that Jesus Christ is the ‘Seed’ of the woman, and that He ‘was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil’ (1 John 3:8). So, how would God keep His promise to do that after confusing the languages and scattering families abroad over the face of all the earth?

God chose one of Noah’s sons to be the physical conduit for the Son of God to come into the world to destroy the works of the devil. That son was Shem. Genesis 11:10-32 introduces us to Shem and several generations of his descendants. The last people mentioned in the list are Terah, his son Abram, his grandson Lot, and his daughter-in-law Sarai.

And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there. So the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran. Genesis 11:31-32

Next Time

Abram and Sarai are key to God’s promise concerning the ‘Seed’ of the woman, and to ‘training to reign’ with God. We’ll go more in-depth on that in the next part of our series – Train to Reign.

“Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.”

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