"Are We Blessed?"

written by Rob Bailes

Yes, But Why?

As I was studying the life of Abraham, I found myself going backwards in Genesis rather than forwards. My curiosity had the best of me and I wanted to know what happened prior to each generation leading up to the time of Abraham. I wondered how he got to where he was and why. Have you ever felt like there was more to our existence than the immediate life that we live?

Well, there is more and I want to just touch on one of the most important moments in the history of our ancestors and the world. Most everyone is familiar with the great flood and Noah's building of the ark, but how much do we know about what followed this great event? Tracing Abraham's ancestry led me all the way back to Noah's son, Shem. Abraham came from the family tree of Shem and Noah is at the top of the family tree for all of mankind that is alive today. Noah had three sons and the other two were Ham and Japheth. I want to share a couple more details that are recorded about Noah and his sons before getting back to Abraham. It is recorded in Genesis 9:25-27 that Noah declared that Canaan, the son of Ham, would be cursed to serve his other relatives because of something that Ham had done that was wrong. Do you know what he did?

Ham looked at his father when he was asleep and naked, evidently laughing at him and then went and told his brothers to go look at their father. Noah must have seen what Ham did and thus passed this judgement to the Ham's son, Canaan.

How does this tie into the original subject of Abraham's life? Let's read verse twenty-six and see,

Genesis 9:26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

It was as though Noah had the foresight to know that one day Abraham would descend from the family tree of Shem who believed in the true God of all creation and that God would promise Abraham the land of Canaan. That's right, hundreds of years later, maybe even a thousand years had passed before God directed Abraham to leave his homeland and go to a place called Canaan. You see, Noah had been given the authority by God to say what he said that day and God honored his spoken word. Let's look back just a little further to see what God has declared concerning all of mankind following the flood. This includes you and I today my friend, so you'll want to pay very close attention to what I am about to reveal to you!

Gen 9:1-6 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. 2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moves upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. 5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. 6 Whoso sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

First we see that mankind was blessed by God! How great is that? Our life blood was given a blessing by the true God of all creation beginning with the day that God spoke to Noah and his sons. Why do you think God would do this? Do you think that Noah and his sons were possibly wondering, just as we would have, what is going to happen next? The next thing we can see in this passage is that the other creatures were made to fear man even though the animals may have been much stronger and ferocious. God instilled a fear and dread of man upon every beast of the earth and fowl of the air and fishes of the sea. God said that they are delivered into our hands. I don't know about you, but that answered allot of my questions about nature and why animals react the way that they do to people as well. It also clears up some of the compromising positions held by some modern day churches concerning the theory of evolution. If we were created in God's image then there was no need to evolve! Right? The final thing that I saw in verse six was the requirement made by God of anything that takes the life of a man because man is made in the image of God!

If that doesn't make you feel special my friend, I don't know what will! Altogether, in six verses we find out that we are blessed by God, all other living creatures have been given a natural respect and fear for man as long as we don't abuse them and we find that we are made in the image of God and that God won't allow anyone to get away with doing us wrong or taking our life!

I realized as I read this, that just as Abraham lived to go to Canaan as Noah had prophesied hundreds of years earlier, God also has kept His covenant to us as He spoke to Noah and his sons that day. God has blessed mankind; animals do fear man normally and no man can take life without losing his own life for taking the life of one who is created in the image of God! The murderer always gets caught eventually!

Let's take these truths with us today and realize just how much our Heavenly Father loves and wants to bless everyone of us throughout our lives!