Yesterday on Things Unseen we were reflecting on the original promise of what we often call

the Covenant of Grace. It's a promise that holds the whole Bible together, almost from

the beginning, right to the end. And in turn it unfolds in a series of further covenants

that sustain it and clarify it and develop it. That's actually the case with the Covenant

that God made with Noah. God introduces it with these words in Genesis 6, verse 18. I will

establish my covenant with you. The word established there might actually carry the

sense of Confirm. I will make sure my covenant remains standing. In other words, the function

of the covenant that God makes with Noah is to make sure that the covenant of grace

that he had already announced wouldn't collapse, even although the world was virtually

going to collapse in the flood. It's very striking actually that when Noah emerges

from the ark, the words that God speaks to him echo what God had said in the Garden

of Eden and then to Adam. The promise that God gives that he will never repeat the flood,

safe guards, the promise he had earlier given that the serpent would be defeated. But

it doesn't take many more chapters before we discover that the seed of the serpent kept

fighting. Remember the story of the Tower of Babel when there was a concerted effort

to achieve a kind of world unity that would establish its own authority over against the

authority of God, the seed of the serpent against the seed of the woman. And you'll remember

the way God dealt with that opposition by confusing their languages and dispersing them

over the face of the earth. The flood isn't going to be repeated, God promised that. But

once again, it looks as though the seed of the serpent has almost annihilated any faithful

seed of the woman. But no, the second half of Genesis 11 traces the seed of shame through

many years until we come to a man called Terra. And the genealogy in Genesis 11 verses 10-26

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