Guest blogger Mark West

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:2
“But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.” Genesis 8:1
As the flood waters were soon to recede, I can’t help but be struck by the similar imagery. I imagine that the earth had returned to a formless and void place and is again covered by water, just as it was at the earliest point of creation. But what happened next is what is so interesting. The Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters in Creation. Now, as God remembers Noah, He makes a wind blow over the earth.
In creation, the waters subsided to reveal the dry land, called in Genesis 1:10 “Earth”. In the flood, the waters subsided to reveal the dry land, essentially a new earth and Noah becomes in essence a new Adam with the same mandate that Adam had.
Noah also gets a covenant, just as Adam did. Adam’s covenant was not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He broke it. Noah is given a new covenant secured by God. Adam’s covenant emphasis was upon man…”You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:16-17. So the covenant with Adam was that Adam wasn’t to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…the sign of the covenant was the tree itself…it was the object upon which both God and man looked to confirm the covenant.
However, Noah gets a new covenant that is based on what God does, not on what man does. Genesis 9:8-17. This covenant is God promising to never again destroy all flesh as He had in Noah’s day. The sign of the covenant is the bow in the cloud…something only God could produce. God and man both look to that sign and confirm the covenant.
This mirrors Jesus’ ministry. The Old Covenant was about what man should and should not do. It was never intended for man to find salvation in, just as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn’t a means for man’s salvation. The sign of the covenant is circumcision of the flesh of the foreskin, something that man does. Jesus Himself passed through the waters of death, as Noah did in the ark (some use the ark as the sign of Christ passing through death), and in His resurrection He inherits a new earth. An earth filled with righteousness…with His Spirit in it dwelling in men. The sign of the covenant is circumcision of the heart, a thing only God can do.
We become the new creation and we are inhabited by God in the new covenant.
As an additional note, God seems to use water a lot when it comes to covenants.