Diets and Death Penalties

Genesis 9 as a New Cultural Mandate After the Flood

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 9 and hold your place at verse 1. We're going to be looking at verses 1 through 7 today and the title of today's message is diets and death penalties.

And I want to assure you that the title of the message is not a response to my wife putting me on Weight Watchers. I promise. That is not the truth. However, the two things do sort of perhaps have some overlap.

Two of the most outspoken campaigns in recent years and recent decades has been the movement to the end or rather to end the eating of animals and to abolish the death penalty. Most of us are familiar with groups like PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who have been on the front lines of animal activism, often using graphic images to make their points that food should only come from the plants and should not come from any sources that would use animals.

One of their quotes is that here at PETA we believe that animals are not ours to use. And they also go on to say there's no such thing as humane meat. So everything that is done in the use of animals or eating animals is inhumane and wrong.

A video made rounds recently on the internet of people going into grocery stores and there were butcher cases with meat in it and they were putting roses on the meat as if to mourn the cows and the pigs that had given their lives for the food.

Bill Gates in a recent statement said he believes that rich nations around the world should cease eating real meat and should turn to synthetic meat. Sounds a little dangerous but that was the idea. And so we have an entire subculture in our world that says eating meat and the using of animals and having animals serve us and being used for food and for service is wrong.

That that's wrong and ungodly. And on the other side there are those who are trying to abolish the death penalty. There are those who argue that in every case the death penalty is cruel and inhumane, that it should be eliminated.

Groups like Amnesty International say the death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, it is not the solution to it. Now you may say, Pastor, this is an odd pairing of conversations. Why are we talking about diets and death penalties?

Well the reason why is because these two subjects are actually directly addressed in our text today. Because when Noah comes off the ark he is given three commands from God. One has to do with the family, which that's another conversation we could have, right?

The family is certainly under attack but the first command has to do with the family. The second command has to do with food. And because I'm trying to be a good Baptist, the third is fratricide, just to keep the three F's.

We'll just say murder of your brother, but that's what fratricide means. So really the three things, the three commands is one about family, one about food, and one about justice or murder. And so if you wonder why I'm talking about diets and death penalties, it's because that's what God talked about.

This is what the subject of the commands are. And so this is going to be the subject of our message today. Let us now stand and read the word of God and we're going to read Genesis chapter 9 verses 1 to 7 and see these standards that God gives for life and death when it comes to both man and beast.

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the death of you, excuse me, the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand, they are delivered.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything, but you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning from every beast.

I will require it. And from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image and you be fruitful and multiply, team on the earth and multiply in it.

Our Father and our God, as we open your word today, I pray first and foremost, Lord, that you would fill me with your spirit, that you would keep me from error and cowardice. And Lord, that I would preach freely the truths contained in your word, for your word is truth.

And Father, I pray that those under the hearing of the word who are believers would be edified, rebuked if necessary, corrected if needed, but Lord, also for those who are here who may not know you, from the young to the old, Lord, if there are those who have not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, that they would see that you are the sovereign of the world and you have commanded all men everywhere to repent.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We've been in Genesis now for a long time, several years, looking through verse by verse in the book and we arrive this week at chapter 9 and we find ourselves with Noah coming off of the ark.

The world is now dry, it has begun to sprout new life, and it is an opportunity to begin afresh. All the people who lived before the flood, with the exception of these eight, are now gone. There are no more Nephilim, there are no more mighty men of renown.

The generations created by the sons of God and the daughters of men have been washed away and in a sense, Noah stands like a new Adam in a new world. Now, we can't push that analogy too far because the Bible says Christ is the second Adam, Christ is the last Adam, but in a sense, Noah stands like Adam.

He comes in as the new man in a new world, as Adam was a new man in his new world. So Noah builds an altar and worships God, and I thought about this week as I was thinking, what did he build the altar out of?

The trees probably had not gotten big enough yet to actually be used for building and timber, so perhaps he pulled timber off the ark and used it to build the altar. So somewhere in Ararat, somewhere in the mountains, the first altar was built in the new world and Noah worships God.

And just like God gave Adam a blessing and a command or a mandate in the garden, he will now give Noah a blessing and a mandate as he prepares to reestablish both civilization and culture. Remember, there's none of that anymore.

The cities that were built by the sons of Cain are gone. All of the technological advances that were made in music and all of those things have been washed away. So now it's a tabula rasa, it's a blank slate, an opportunity to build a new civilization and a new culture.

And so God speaks to Noah and he gives him demands and mandates for this new culture. He gives him, as it were, a new cultural mandate, a new civilizational mandate. Here are the standards which you are to keep.

Chapter 9 can be broken down into three parts. Civilization, verses 1 -7. Covenant, verses 8 -17. And Curse, verses 18 -29. And that will be the way we do the next three sermons. This week we'll look at civilization, next week and possibly the week after because Covenant is going to take some time as I want to express not only Noah's covenant but how covenant is understood throughout the scriptures.

So Covenant is verses 8 -17 and then we'll get to the Curse of Ham in verses 18 -29. I could have done that as one sermon but I said, nope, better break it up because you guys want to get to lunch eventually.

So we're going to do today just looking at verses 1 -7 and the civilization which is commanded by God. So in reestablishing civilization we see in verse 1 the Adamic blessing is repeated. Read with me again verse 1.

Now, is that language familiar to us? It should be. Because that very same statement was made to Adam in Genesis chapter 1 verse 28. If you look at Genesis chapter 1 verse 28, and God blessed them, that is Adam and Eve, the man and the woman, and God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

That is the exact same language, the exact same three statements, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, that what we might call the multiplication mandate which was given to Adam is also given to Noah.

And here's the thing about it. The text says that that mandate is a blessing. There is a blessing in being fruitful and multiplying. And this makes sense because the Bible will later tell us that having children is a blessing.

Psalm 127 verse 3. You knew it was coming, didn't you Mike? Amen before I said it. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. This is the blessing of the man who has children. This is the blessing of the man who has offspring.

This is the blessing of the man who has a heritage from the Lord, which are through his children. One of the worst things in the world today is how we have devalued the family and devalued the having of children.

We have turned children from blessing to burden. We have told people that having children is the curse. And we want to have them avoid that with any methods possible. Even to the point of murdering children in the womb so as to not have to go forward with raising them.

The vast majority of abortion in the world is not done because of rape and incest and those things which are often used as the excuse or as the exception, but the vast majority of abortions in the world are for convenience.

Because children are not a blessing, they are a burden in our world. But God blessed them in multiplying. He blessed them in having children. And I know this, when children are two and three years old and they have destroyed your house and everything is a mess and things are hard and it's tired and you don't feel like cooking and you don't feel like cleaning and you come home from work and your house is a mess, I know it may not feel like a blessing.

I get it. I got five of them. And Mike has more than me and Tim and Amy have more than me. It doesn't always feel like a blessing sometimes. Sometimes it feels very hard. But the Bible says those children are a blessing from the Lord.

Even the ones that you have difficulty with are a blessing from the Lord. God has given them to you maybe for your sanctification. And so they are a blessing from the Lord. And so we must understand this blessed...

When I call it a command, understand I'm not saying it's a burdensome command. It's a blessed command. It's like if I told my kids, I command you today to go outside and have fun. It's still a command but it's a blessing.

And God has commanded man in this text to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. But what's interesting about this though is it really isn't Noah that God is speaking to. Even though Noah is in view, it's Noah's three sons.

Because Noah's not going to have any more children. Noah's not going to be fruitful anymore. He's not going to multiply anymore. But he will fill the earth through his grandchildren and through their grandchildren.

And so the command and the blessing here is actually through Noah the earth will be filled. Through Noah there will be this blessing occur. And through Noah there will be massive multiplication. Again, God has not created any more people.

He only had created Adam and Eve. And from Adam and Eve came all of us. And we came through the conduit of Noah's line. None of us are descended from anyone else save Shem, Ham, and Japheth. You are either a Shemite, a Hamite, or a Japhethite.

Nothing else because those are the three men through whom the world came. So, this is on the heels of destruction. On the heels of destroying everyone. And you might think if God destroys the whole earth and kills everyone on the earth, maybe He doesn't want to deal with man anymore.

Maybe He doesn't want man to grow and multiply anymore. But no, the same command given to Adam is given to Noah. And honestly in the same condition. Because it said of man before the ark that he was evil.

And it says of man after the ark that he is evil. Genesis 8 says he's evil from his youth. Even after the flood. So, God is re-commanding what He commanded to Adam. And you say, well why would He do that then if we're just going to have more evil?

If we're just going to have more people and the people are going to be more evil? Because God has through the flood demonstrated His willingness to judge sin. And He has pictured the final judgment. Because there will come a day where God will judge the world again.

Not through water but through fire. And He has proven His willingness to judge once. And so too will He judge again. And those who were in the ark were saved. Those who are in Christ will be saved in the second judgment.

So there's a picture here of what is happening. And God has given us a picture of His judgment. So, God's desire is to see man multiply again. However, this time there are some changes. God is going to set down a new administration for civilization and for justice.

Yes, you are going to multiply and fill the earth. But there are going to be some changes. In the garden, Adam was given dominion over everything as part of his blessing. He was told as an image bearer of God, he was going to not only be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, but he was going to subdue it.

He was going to have dominion over it. And he was only going to eat plants. That was part of it. If you want to look it up, it's in chapter 1, verse 29. It says, and God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food.

So, Adam was given the command essentially to be a vegetarian. Not to eat the meat of the animals. But a new mandate is given in Noah's day. A new mandate is given. And somebody might say, what does this mean God changes?

No, and we must understand God's immutability is not affected by His moving through covenantal relationships with His people. In the same way that our covenant that we are in, we are in the new covenant, is not the same as the covenant of Moses.

People get that confused. This does not change God and His immutability. But in the administration of the covenant and relationship, we no longer have to perform sacrifices. We no longer have to eat kosher.

Hey, we can have a pork sandwich. To the glory of God. So, these are things that we would say are different now than were different under the old covenant administration. But this doesn't mean God changes.

This is how God administers His covenant among His people. And so, God has not changed from Genesis 8 to Genesis 9. But He has given a new cultural mandate to man. And the changes we will see are quite interesting.

The first change we see is in verse 2. He says, The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea.

Into your hand they are delivered. Now, right away, just think about that. In the garden there was what I call delightful dominion. The animals came to Noah and he named them. There was delightful dominion.

Now, there is dreadful dominance. There's a different relationship. There's a pastor named David Collier. I don't know if he's related, but I was listening to him this week because he preached on this text and it was great.

He said the relationship in the animal kingdom went from managerial to adversarial. Where we were managers in the garden and there was no fear or dread, now it's adversarial. And you say, why is it adversarial?

I have an idea of why that could be. It could be that now man is able to eat animals. As we'll see in a moment, man becomes predator and now there's a relationship there of change. But the point is, animals will now be afraid of man.

And we know that's true because when we go into the forest, the animals don't come and, like, who was it? Snow White in the Disney film where they come and dance on your fingers and everything. No, the birds fly the other way.

The squirrels run the other way. The animals go the other way. And everybody always tells me because everybody knows how much I'm afraid of snakes. People say, Keith, the snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them.

Not possible. But I understand the sentiment. Typically, they go the other direction. Lesser moccasins because somehow moccasins became the tough guy of the snake kingdom and they want to fight. But otherwise, most snakes, when you go out in the woods, if they see you coming, they're going to go the other direction.

Even big animals that would have no trouble devouring you, bears and lions, if they see you coming, they're going to go the other direction. There's a natural instinctual dread of man. Even though they could tear us apart, they typically go the other way.

People usually only get injured by animals when they frighten them to the point that they feel like they have to protect themselves when they're young. That's typically how that happens. Animals, it's not like Jaws where they're coming after you and your family.

You know, that's movie myth, right? So the dread of the animals, rather the dread of man will be on the animals. And animals that we use have to be trained for use. Think about this, we have to break horses.

You know what it's called? When you get a horse that you want to ride, you have to break their spirit. That's what they call it, right? Because that's what has to happen. That horse has a natural inclination to go away from you and not be used as a transportation device.

But you break the horse, right? What do you do to dogs? House break, right? You get them used to being under your dominion. But their natural instinct is not that. Right? If you ever tried to pet a wild dog, it's a bad idea.

And so animals will fear us, that's verse 2. And then we move on to verse 3. It says, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, God is referencing his own word here.

He says, as I gave you the green plants. That's Genesis 1, 28. As I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. You see, instead of only vegetables, man is now going to get to eat meat. Now, I want to say this.

It is possible that man ate meat before this. But it would have been rebellion, I believe. It wouldn't have been in accord with God's command. Because God's command was to eat vegetables. It's possible that the men before the flood were eating meat.

I'm not saying this is the first time anybody ever ate meat. But now it is sanctioned. God is sanctioning something that wasn't sanctioned before. He says, now you will have this ability to eat meat. And according to the mandate given to Adam, that would have been a sin prior to this.

So he's sanctioned by God to slaughter and eat. Martin Luther has an 8-volume commentary on Genesis. And it's massive and it's amazing. But one of the things he says about this text is this. He says, these words, specifically referring to this text.

Establish the butcher shop. Attach hares, chickens, and geese to the spit. And fill our tables with all sorts of foods. He goes on to say, necessity also keeps men busy. Not only do they hunt forest for animals, but at home they give particular care to tending and fattening animals for food.

So not only is God giving man a new diet, but He's also giving man opportunity for new occupation. The occupation of the hunter. The occupation of the herder, the shepherd. He's giving these new occupations which would not have been necessary before, but now are.

So with new food comes new jobs and new occupation among men. Man is given the animals of every kind. If you notice that in the text, it says they are given every kind. Not only the clean animals. This is important because if we read the text, we know that Noah knows the clean and the unclean animals.

We know that he brought, of the clean animals, seven pairs of kinds into the ark. And of the unclean animals, he only brought one pair of each kind. But in this, it doesn't make a distinction in what kind of food he's allowed to eat.

Now Luther says he would have still known not to eat the unclean animals. I don't think that. I disagree with Martin Luther here. Of course, he's dead. He doesn't know. But I do disagree with Brother Luther that I don't think that there's a distinction here.

I don't think Abraham was kosher, y 'all, just to be clear. There's nothing prior to the giving of the Levitical Law that would have made it wrong to eat unclean animals. And I gotta tell you, there's nothing wrong with it now.

Because we're no longer under the Mosaic Covenant. You can have that pork sandwich, you can have that shrimp stew or shrimp sandwich or whatever, because it's no longer a part of our covenant. We don't have to worry about that.

And so, I think that this, when it says all food, I do think it included all food. I do think that Noah could have eaten anything he wanted to eat. In fact, there's a funny picture, PETA put it up, mentioning PETA again.

It's got all kinds of different animals. Starts with like a lion and a tiger and a zebra and a horse. And then it gets down to a dog and then it gets to a pig and a cow. And it says, where do you draw the line on what you eat?

And I was like, well, if I was hungry enough, wherever. You know, if it got to the point where we needed to eat, I'd go on down the line. For right now, we only cultivate certain animals for food. Beef and pigs and things like that.

That's what we cultivate at this point. But at the end of the day, I'd eat squirrel if it meant not going hungry. Because there wouldn't be a sin in doing that. And so, Noah is given every animal for food.

But, even in this great liberty, there is still a boundary set. And we see this boundary in verse 4. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Now, this is the first dietary restriction given in Scripture.

This is the first dietary law given in the Bible. Except for, of course, the eating of only vegetables. But as far as eating how we are to eat meat, this is the first one. And it says this, it says that we are to not eat meat with its life.

Now, later, under the Mosaic Covenant, there would be a very specific way that this was to be carried out. And even now, we understand that there are certain foods that are prepared in what's called the kosher way.

And that includes the draining of blood and the certain preparation of the food with taking the blood out of the animal. And it's interesting that this came up at the Jerusalem Council. If you remember the first time that the apostles gathered to deal with an issue in the church was in Acts 15.

They were trying to debate and discuss the question of Gentiles coming into the assembly. What was the big issue with Gentiles? They weren't circumcised and they didn't eat the food that we eat, right?

They eat food we don't eat and they're not circumcised. And so they had this big debate over whether or not they should allow Gentiles into the church and how they're going to accept them. Are we going to force them to be circumcised?

Are we going to force them to eat this way? At the end of the conversation in Acts 15 .19, James, the pastor of the church of Jerusalem, says this. He said, So there is a reference in the New Testament about not eating blood.

Specifically in this New Covenant situation where we're dealing with the Gentiles. But going back to the passage in Genesis, what does it mean to not eat blood? This is actually a highly debated passage among commentators and theologians.

What does it mean when it says that we should not eat blood? Well, the simple answer for many people is, well, you just don't eat blood at all. But the idea of the text is that the animal has its life in it.

Consider this for a moment. When the Bible talks about the blood of something, it's talking about its life. When it talks about the blood of Jesus, Jesus gave his blood. What's it talking about? Giving his life, right?

Blood in that sense is life. And this text tells us, it says, don't eat the animal with its life in it or its blood. So the way that I understand it, and I think this is correct, is that animals are not to be eaten alive.

Like a predator would eat an animal. You know, lions jump on an animal while it's still alive and eat it while it's dying. And so we are to have a basic respect in how we treat animals, even in the butchering process, that we are to kill them properly to use them for food.

That you are not to simply be as a beast in the eating of other beasts, but that you are to eat as a man, not as a predatory beast. And so man is to properly slaughter and prepare the animal, which, in fact, most of you probably know this, but just in case you don't, when we slaughter animals, that includes the removing of the blood.

People often have a steak on their plate and there's this red stuff around it. They say, oh, it's bloody. No, it's not. That's not blood. That's myoglobin. That is a protein that comes out of the muscle.

That's not blood. The blood has been drained from that meat. What you're seeing is not blood. Just so you know. So eat your rare steak. It's fine. Just saying, that's not blood. And the big question I would have, and don't come and ask me afterwards, because I haven't fallen on my answer yet, is what about something like blood sausage?

First of all, it's a sin because it's gross. But I don't know the actual answer. I will say this, though. Throughout the history of the world, it is only among pagan societies where the drinking of blood has been common and typically it is used in things like ceremonies of magic and witchcraft and things like that.

So there is a tie of drinking blood to a spiritual exercise. And I think that that's an actual, I think the reason for that is the rebellion against this command. God says don't do it. So what does the pagan do?

He does just what God says not to do. So ultimately, though, I think the heart of the text is that when we consider how we are to handle animals that we are to eat, that we are to do so in a proper way.

That we are to butcher them properly. And you might say, somebody from Peter would say there's no proper way to butcher. No, there's a right way. And there's a wrong way. And we should do it the right way.

And we should ultimately have respect for the animals that we are eating and we should care for them in the process of preparing them for their food. My wife and I are talking about getting animals for our yard and maybe chickens and maybe fattening a pig, you know, and these are things we're talking about.

How can we do it well? You know, even though we're probably going to eat these animals eventually, we want to have them a comfortable place while they're alive. We don't want them to be miserable and, you know, do our best to treat the animals well while they're alive.

And so there is a right way to do it. And so we have this command about how we are to treat animals and not eat while the blood is in or while their life is in them. And this rule and this lifeblood principle actually moves into the next command.

Because what happens is, in the command about the lifeblood of the animal, God now switches to talk about man in verse 5. And He uses the same principle. Look at verse 5. And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning.

So the context is still blood, but now He's gone from the lifeblood of the animals, which is important, but to the kind of the biblical model of going from the lesser to the greater, He goes from the lifeblood of the animals, which is important, to the lifeblood of man, which is way more important.

So now He says, and for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. So here's the reckoning. I will, excuse me, from every beast, I will require it, and from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

This text, verses 5 and 6 specifically, mark a major shift in human relations with other humans, because from now on, from this text forward, not only would there be an eternal consequence for the taking of life, men's life, not only would there be an eternal consequence for taking the life of a man, now there will be a temporal consequence for taking the life of man.

From now on, taking the life of man would carry a worldly, earthly penalty. Now, were there penalties before this? Were there social penalties before this? Possibly, because Cain, when he killed Abel, he was afraid that he might suffer a penalty, that's why he cried out to God, he says, people are going to kill me, right?

And later Lamech, who's the descendant of Cain, he bragged about the people he had killed and how he was ready for all comers, you know, if anybody wanted to come and attack him, he was ready to fight back, right?

Because of the idea of there being some sort of retributive justice. Somebody might come looking for me. But now, we have the establishment, essentially, of a rule of law, that if someone, even an animal, takes the life of a man, that there must be reckoning for that life.

And he tells us why in verse 6, because in verse 6 it says, because he's made in the image of God. Why is it that man is so valuable? Because man's made in the image of God. Therefore, if an animal takes the life of the man, the animal is to be punished.

His life is to be taken. Again, by the way, I shouldn't have to say this, but I will. And if this offends you, I hope that you would understand that's not my intention. But understand this, animal life is not as valuable as human life.

Because everybody misses this, we mix it up, we get so upset about Harambe and all that stuff. But listen, if it's a choice between a little boy and a gorilla, you kill the gorilla. And the fact that we even have to debate that is like we don't even understand the image of God, we don't understand human beings.

I didn't want to see the gorilla get shot, but honestly, if it's between a kid and a gorilla, you kill the gorilla. Animals are not human. And I know people that, well, my dog, I love my dog. You can love your dog, but it's not a human being.

You know, it's not human. It's just not. And so we have to understand here, it says, if an animal hurts a human, if it kills a human, that animal's life is going to have to have a reckoning. But he also says it about people.

It's not just animals that attack human beings that the animal will be punished, but people who attack human beings. A man who kills another man by man shall his blood be shed. Verse 6 is the foundation for capital punishment.

I was recently in a, I was at a question and answer night. I was one of three pastors who was receiving questions. Mike, you were there. And one of the questions that came up directed at me, because everybody knows I teach shooting classes and I teach self-defense classes.

What about the death penalty? What do you think about the death penalty? And I just went back to Genesis 9 .6. I said, Genesis 9 .6 tells us that there is a consequence for shedding man's blood. Now, the Bible will later describe exceptions.

For instance, the exception of self-defense. Genesis or Exodus 22 .2 talks about a man being in your house at night and being struck that he dies and there's no punishment for that because that guy was in your house and he got struck so that he dies.

There's an act of self-defense that happens there. And there's other passages that talk about unintentional killing. You understand under the Mosaic law, they had things called cities of refuge, which was if you killed a man unintentionally, you could run to safety so that his family wouldn't exercise retributive justice against you.

You had a place where you could go and be safe. So, the Bible does understand that there are things like unintentional killing, what we would call manslaughter. And there are things like self-defense.

But when it comes to the intentional, and I would even go as far as to say premeditated, murder of another human being, there is one consequence that is the highest consequence of all, and that is life for life.

That the life is to be forfeited. And people say, well, the Ten Commandments say thou shalt not kill. No, they don't. The Ten Commandments say thou shalt not commit murder. And that lines up with this text.

And if you commit murder, what do you deserve? Death. That is the command. And this is, by the way, we're going to talk about this next week when we get into the covenant. This is universal. Because later, we're going to see when God makes His covenant with Noah, it's with Him and His descendants, and the animals, and the earth.

Like, everybody's a part of this. So, it's not as if there are some exempted people. This is universal. And the command is simple. If a man sheds the blood of another man, so too shall his blood be shed.