The Abrahamic Covenant and Antithesis

The covenant with Abraham can be contrasted with the Noahic Covenant because it is rather specific. It does not concern all men, rather it specifically concerns Abraham and his descendants. Unlike the Noahic Covenant it is religious in nature and calls for Abraham’s descendants to be distinct from the people around them. This establishes a principle that we have seen already drawn upon prior to Abraham, that God’s people are in antithesis or opposition to the people of the world. They are to be a distinct people and to serve their God. This distinction was to be in both worship and ordinary practice.

Babel and the Abrahamic Promises

The Great Flood had cleansed the world of all creatures except for Noah, his household and two of every kind of creature. The aftermath of the deluge was God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants to preserve the world and natural order until its final destruction. Humanity however, had not learnt its lesson. Rather than accept the curse, their fate, cease from their sins and await God’s redemption, they would now seek to engage in a project to build their own Eden, a temple by which they could make a name for themselves. This carnal impulse to establish utopian religious and civilizational projects in this age is typified by the Tower of Babel. In it we see both the continuation of the disinheritance of Adam’s race and the beginnings of God’s plan of redemption for Adam’s race.

The End of the First World and New Beginnings

The Great Flood was a cleansing of sorts. Peter compares what is experienced in Baptism to the preservation of Noah and his household in the flood (1 Pet 3:20). The future judgement will not be a cleansing with water but a purging with fire. It won’t be a reboot of this present material order, either in its fallen state or in its Edenic form. Rather the form of the new order that God will create from the ashes of the old will be grander and even better than anything Adam could even hope to comprehend in the Edenic state.

Eden and the Fall of the Material Order

A high level overview of the creation of the material and celestial order provides a foundation to understand the garden of Eden, man’s role in it, the covenant God established with him, his failure to keep that covenant, his fall, the curse that entered the material order as a consequence of that fall and ultimately God’s promised redemption of His people from that fall. Understanding the themes drawn out in the garden of Eden is critical to understand the narrative of redemption and the Kingdom of God. It also establishes a foundation of God’s dealings with mankind, through covenants. These covenants are a framework through which God reveals and accomplishes the redemption of His people.

The Material Order: It’s Original Purpose

Every good book has an introduction that draws the reader into the narrative presented in the book. Genesis provides this introduction in the Word of God. While the Bible is a collection of sixty-six different Books, written by a variety of different authors over millennia. However, it presents to us one single narrative of the work of God in history, from creation to the ultimate end of the created order in the fires of the Lord’s coming. Therefore, to understand the Bible we need to understand where the narrative begins and how it progresses from Genesis to our place in the New Testament.