The Promise

I was around 6 years old. I was with my mom in Milwaukee, WI preparing for her friend's wedding. I was going to be a flower girl, along with the bride's daughter who was the same age as me. I remember being alone in her room. We had just gotten our flower girl dresses and matching purses. I examined mine, and then examined hers. Inside her purse, I found $1. Not thinking a whole lot of it, I took the dollar and stuffed it into my own purse.

When I look back to my childhood years, this is the earliest sin I can recall. In the moment, I was oblivious to the fact that what I had done was wrong. I just wanted the dollar. It wasn't until hours later when my fellow flower girl whispered to me that she had something to show me in her purse. My stomach was in knots, and I knew I needed to get that dollar put back where I found it, and fast!

We hear stories like these, or laugh at our own mischievous childhood memories. (I bet you can think of one or two!) But 'harmless wrongdoings' of a child are a mere glimpse of a bigger problem. The sin problem that ensnares us all, and caused serious damage to the relationship between God and man.

When Adam and Eve fell away from perfection and into the bondage of sin, it was a death sentence for all of mankind. A break from God that no one could mend. And as the years came and went, so did God's people. Until He looked at the Earth that He created, and was filled with sadness and regret that He ever created people in the first place.

Genesis 6:5-6 & 11-12:

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination and intention of all human thinking was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved at heart.

The earth was depraved and putrid in God’s sight, and the land was filled with violence. And God looked upon the world and saw how degenerate, and vicious it was, for all humanity had corrupted their way upon the earth and lost their true direction.

How does God describe the process of sin that consumes each of us, even today?  

James 1:14-15:

Every person is tempted when he is drawn away, enticed and baited by his own evil desire. Then the evil desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully matured, brings forth death.

The story of Noah and the Ark doesn't end well for anyone but Noah and his immediate family. God, in his anger and sadness at the evil that had consumed His once perfect world, couldn't take it any longer. Every man, woman, boy, girl, and beast was washed from the face of the Earth. 

But Genesis 6:9b says "Noah was a just and righteous man, blameless in his [evil] generation; Noah walked in habitual fellowship with God." All was not lost, and hope was not gone forever. God said to Noah in vs. 18, "But I will establish My covenant (promise, pledge) with you." 

What was the covenant? The promise of a Savior who would destroy sin for good. The pledge that next time, sin would be destroyed instead of creation. The promise of the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. The pledge that hell would not win, and death would be defeated. 

The promise...of Jesus.