FRIDAY May 16th
Genesis 9:20
‘Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.’
The verses that follow the one I have chosen today continues to make it abundantly clear that despite what had been Noah’s good standing before God and the incredible deliverance that he and his family had known from the devastating flood that sin had not been erased. The inclination of the heart was still leaning the wrong way, and although Noah had built an altar and made a pleasing sacrifice before God, he allowed himself to fall into sin.
And we need to keep reminding ourselves that we need to guard our hearts and our minds from those things that would also cause us to fall into sin. We will never reach sinless perfection until we arrive in our eternal home, but it doesn’t mean that we can live as if nothing matters. It does, for as I mentioned a few devotions ago God sees everything, he sees the sin that is obvious, and he also sees the sin that we think we have managed to hide from anyone else. And one day we will have to give an account, especially if we have continued to deliberately sin.
But we also have the promise of 1 John that if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. We need to continually and consistently desire to remain walking in the light. The same chapter also continues, ‘If we confess our sins, (and I believe that this also means that after confessing we turn away from it) he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’
Now, back to the verse at the beginning ‘Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.’ Noah the boat builder became a gardener / horticulturist, he planted a vineyard. Other than what I assume was necessary to feed the livestock on the ark during the flood and food for Noah’s family, all the rest of the earths vegetation would have been destroyed, but we know that once the flood waters abated, the dove on being sent out from the ark eventually returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf, a sign that the vegetation was springing back into life. So, the vine would also have sprung back into life and is this not a wonderful picture (you can see that I allow my imagination to run riot when I do the devotion) of the One who is the true vine, he was taken, he was made sin for us, he bore the punishment for that sin and he died, he was buried but three days later he sprung into life again. And God as the husbandman has planted a vineyard, and from the true vine has sprung many branches which are you and I as we have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Noah’s efforts produced bad fruit, I don’t mean the grapes, but the fruit from his behaviour, and as we are connected to the true vine, we are encouraged to make sure that we produce fruit that is good, our lives showing to others that we are joined to the true vine. Just a sentence from Colossians 1:10 ‘. . . so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. . .’