Genesis 9 (The Rainbow & God's Covenant Promise)

Genesis 9: Covenant, Creation Mandate, and Post-Flood Life

All right, so tonight we're gonna be looking at Genesis chapter nine. Genesis nine focuses on several key themes following the flood. So here are the main points. We'll go over them, listen to the chapter, and then go through verse by verse.

So number one, the covenant with Noah. God establishes a covenant with Noah and his descendants to never destroy the earth again with a flood. And of course, the rainbow is given as a sign of this covenant.

Number two, instructions for humanity. So God provides guidelines for human behavior, emphasizing the sanctity of life and establishing consequences for murder. Humans are instructed also to be fruitful and multiply.

So that's number two. Number one, covenant with Noah. Number two, instructions for humanity. Number three, the prohibition of blood consumption. So there's a command against eating or consuming blood because as you know, blood is seen as sacred.

So we'll talk about that. Number four, Noah's family. The chapter discusses the repopulation of the earth through his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And then number five, the incident with Ham. This is probably the most challenging part of the chapter.

Trying to figure out what's going on where we see Ham. He sees Noah. Noah gets drunk and he is uncovered in his tent. So Ham sees Noah's nakedness and it's questionable what exactly is going on there, but that leads to a curse upon Ham's son, Canaan.

And then Noah gives blessings. So a curse on him, Canaan, and then blessings on Shem and Japheth. So these points together highlight themes of covenant, morality, and the importance of human dignity in the post-flood world.

So let's listen along to the chapter.

The Creation Mandate Repeated to Noah

So God blessed Noah and his sons.

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea.

They are given into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

Surely for your lifeblood, I will demand a reckoning. From the hand of every beast, I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed.

For in the image of God, he made man. And as for you, be fruitful and multiply. Bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it. And as for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you.

The birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you. Of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. Thus, I establish my covenant with you. Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood.

Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations. I set my rainbow in the cloud and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

It shall be when I bring a cloud over the earth that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud. And I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. The waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

The rainbow shall be in the cloud and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.

Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah. And from these, the whole earth was populated. And Noah began to be a farmer and he planted a vineyard.

Then he drank of the wine and was drunk and became uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father.

Their faces were turned away and they did not see their father's nakedness. So Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him. Then he said,.

Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants he shall be. To his brethren. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. And may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth. And may he dwell in the tents of Shem.

And may Canaan be his servant.

Noah lived after the flood 350 years. So all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died.

Vegetarianism, Blood, and the Death Penalty

Okay, so Noah is probably one of the greatest men in all of the Bible. One of the most, or he was the most righteous man on the earth. That's the way it was back in chapter six. And then we see he starts drinking and then everything kind of goes downhill from there.

So kind of a sad ending to the life of Noah. Sad ending to the chapter. But let's go back to verse one, Genesis nine, verse one. It says, so God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

So if you remember the creation mandate that was given to Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply. Well, everything's starting over here. So the creation mandate now gets repeated. This time to Noah and his three sons.

So now we don't have to trace everything back to Adam and Eve. We can trace all human beings back to these three children. Verse two, he says in the fear of you, that's really the fear of man. And the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth and all on all the fish of the sea and they are given into your hands.

So what does this tell us? That before the flood, animals and mankind dwelt together and animals were not afraid. Of course, that's how Noah was able to bring all the animals on the ark two by two because it just wasn't a problem.

But from here on out, now God put the fear of man into the animals. So that's a radical change. A lot of changes in the post flood world, but that's a big one. Another thing, mankind is now going to hunt and eat animals.

We see that in verse three. Now this is a good thing, okay? At least from our perspective, right? We like the idea of eating animals, but verse three, most of us, I think. Verse three, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.

I have given you all things even as the green herbs. So this gives the impression that before the flood, what? They didn't eat meat. Yeah, it looks like people were vegetarians before the flood. So does the Bible teach vegetarianism?

No. No, because God is saying, now I'm giving these animals for this purpose for you to eat them. Now there is a tiny minority of Christians. I don't know if any of you have ever come across people. There is a tiny minority of believers who will say that it's not just that they're vegetarians, but they say that all people and all Christians should be vegetarians.

Who's ever met a Christian who says that or teaches that? They're a tiny minority. You've met one? Yeah. Yeah.

I've read. You've read about them? They call it the Daniel diet. Yeah. Daniel refused the king's rich meats and ate grains and so forth. And the Hananiah, Asariah, and Mishael also, and they were healthier because of it.

So some claim the Daniel diet, they call it.

So if someone wants to be a vegetarian, that's not a problem. But to teach this as though this is what God expects is just not biblical. It's common to find this, more common to find this among Seventh-day Adventists.

They, at the very least, will teach that Christians should obey Old Testament dietary laws. But some of them do teach that Christians should be vegetarians. Let's turn to 1 Timothy chapter four. We wanna look at this.

It's unlikely you'll come across this, at least very often. But again, if you want to be, if someone wants to be a vegetarian, that's not a problem. That's your right to do that. The problem is teaching this as some sort of law and binding the conscience of other people, saying that, no, you need to do this.

Everyone needs to be a vegetarian. Because clearly that goes against Genesis chapter nine. Now, things do change in the old, under the old covenant, God does put limits on the food for the children of Israel, but clearly the Jews were not vegetarians.

They had to eat the Passover, which included lamb. So this doctrine of vegetarianism as a law, the apostle Paul actually calls this doctrines of devils. Someone might think that that's a little extreme, right?

Well, look at 1 Timothy four, one through five. Paul says, now the spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits. And what? Doctrines of demons, or the King James says doctrines of devils.

Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. Here's one doctrine of demons, forbidding people to get married and commanding to abstain from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

And then he says, for every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. So anyone who teaches vegetarianism as a commandment, as a law, saying you cannot eat meat, remind that person, hey, the apostle Paul calls this doctrines of demons.

Okay, let's go back to Genesis chapter nine. Any comments on that? Okay, and again, I want to reinforce this idea. If someone is a vegetarian, that's totally fine. If you want to live that way, that's totally up to you.

You just cannot demand that of other people. But again, under the old covenant later on, I guess we're probably not going to go through Exodus and Leviticus, we've already done that. But yes, God did set restrictions upon the children of Israel.

I think most people know that the Jews couldn't eat what? Shellfish, pork, right? Most people know that. We believe that was for them. It's not a command for New Testament believers. But God does set some parameters here in verse four.

God tells Noah, but you shall not eat flesh with its life. That is its blood. So blood is very important to God. The life is in the blood, especially in the book of Leviticus, we see that. So there's the ceremonial aspect because blood points ahead to what?

The cross, right? The blood of Christ. There probably are health reasons not to eat meat with the blood. One commentator suggests that it's also perhaps to prevent cruelty so that they didn't cook or try to eat animals while they were still alive.

I don't know if that is a reason for it or not, but going back to what I said at the beginning, this is one of the main points of the chapter, prohibition of blood consumption. So according to the Bible, blood is sacred because life is in the blood.

I don't know why anyone would want to consume blood anyways, but this is a thing that Satanists do. Satanists are known for consuming blood. And why did they do that? It's probably because the Bible says don't do it.

So they say, hey, we want to do it. And that really is a, speaking of doctrines of demons, when somebody has a practice or a teaching that's blatantly contradictory to the Bible, okay, the Bible says this, and I'm just gonna do the opposite.

You could consider that a doctrine of demons. All right, so this, now we're getting into one of the bigger points here where the death penalty is now established to help protect the sanctity of human life.

So this is a big change. Look at verse five. The Lord says, surely for your lifeblood, I will demand a reckoning. From the hand of every beast, I will require it. And from the hand of man, from the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man.

Whoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God, he made man. So this is not only God instituting the death penalty, this has also been seen as God instituting an early form of human government.

Because if somebody murders another human being, remember when Cain murdered Abel, there's just nobody there to punish him. And he, I don't wanna say he got away with it, but sort of, there wasn't any human government.

So that's the way it was. But now there are to be people in charge, upholding justice. So if somebody commits murder, other people are to hold them responsible and put them to death. So that is a, at least a primitive form of human government.

And notice God isn't suggesting that you do this. He's really demanding that this be carried out. So does the Bible teach the death penalty? Yes. Yeah, there's no question about that. Some people will say that Jesus changed this with a woman caught in adultery, let he without sin among you cast the first stone.

Well, first of all, most modern Bible translators and commentators will say that that event never actually happened. And it was an addition to the scripture. I'm not saying that. That's all the modern Bible translations say that.

I tend to think it actually happened, but Jesus, that was not the point of Jesus's comments. Because Moses commanded the death penalty. If you look in Exodus, in the book of Exodus, if you commit murder, what happens to you under the law of Moses?

You get put to death. Jesus would not have contradicted Moses. Jesus never contradicted Moses. So yes, the Bible does teach the death penalty. I can understand someone living in a country where there's an unjust government and they're putting people to death for not valid reasons.

I could understand someone opposing the death penalty for reasons like that. But yes, if there is justice being upheld, then that's not in the Bible. It was God's idea. The capital punishment was God's idea, Marcus.

So is that the King James and the New King James, are those the only two under the textus receptus where that part is omitted or not included, I should say?

Well, it's the woman caught in adultery. It's in every Bible. But all the modern Bible translations will have a note in the margin saying this was not in the original manuscripts or this is not in the best manuscripts, which is implying that this never really happened.

What are the best manuscripts?

I mean, this is kind of getting into a whole other subject. That's a different line of manuscripts, the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus. So all modern Bible translations come from these other manuscripts.

The King James and the New King James come from the textus receptus. So depending on which side you're on, I believe the King James and the New King James are the better translation. So I think the woman caught in adultery was real, that actually took place.

But if you side with the other manuscripts, you would say, no, that never happened. It was inserted somewhere and it really shouldn't even be in the Bible. So I don't hold that position. But like I said, that's kind of a rabbit trail.

But getting back to capital punishment, yes, God is instituting capital punishment. In the New Testament, I believe Jesus upheld this. Jesus, remember he told Peter, those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

He's saying, Peter, if you kill these soldiers who are trying to arrest me, you're gonna get put to death. So Jesus never objected to that. It's just the reality. In the book of Acts, Acts 25, the Apostle Paul said, if I have done anything worthy of death, I do not object to dying.

And then the real thing that seals the argument, Romans 13, the Apostle Paul says, we are to obey the governing authorities because they do not bear the sword in vain. And obviously the sword is meant to take life.

And Paul says, they are God's minister. The governing authorities, they are God's servant ordained by God to execute wrath on evildoers. So yes, the Bible does teach the death penalty. But continuing with this theme of doctrines of demons, there's always people who want to contradict that.

So let me ask you why, I said it at the beginning, but why is God instituting the death penalty? Is it because God doesn't care about human life? So let's just kill the murderers. No, it's because God cares about human life.

That murderers are put to death. So it's about the sanctity of life. But people today, they want to twist this around so that you're sympathetic to the murderer. And they say, well, the murderer, his life is sacred too.

He's made in the image of God too. You can't kill him. Well, the main argument, the Pope, Pope Francis said this several years ago. The Catholic church changed hundreds and hundreds of years of history where they were executing people all the time.

And he changed the rule and said, no, we believe the death penalty is unbiblical. You know what his argument was? He said, because the Bible says thou shall not kill. So you can't put the murderer to death because the Bible says thou shall not kill.

What's the problem with that? Well, if you keep reading, again, the penalty for killing someone was death. And by the way, thou shall not kill. It should be, you know, it's better translated, thou shall not murder.

That's really what it's saying because God did instruct the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. So, all right. Any questions or comments on that?

Yes. Well, a quick comment. And just in human history, the most merciful ways of taking someone else's life were the more primitive ones than the modern ones. The modern ones often fail. Right. But the old fashioned ones,.

Hanging, you know, rifle shot through the heart,.

Those did it really effectively.

I mean, we think we're more civilized today, but if you look at what we do in this country and most Western countries, they let a lot of murderers back out on the street to re-offend. So if you really care about the sanctity of human life, you're not gonna have a problem getting rid of the person who clearly committed first degree murder and maybe second degree, but all right, let's continue.

The Noahic Covenant and the Rainbow as a Sign

This is probably the most memorable part of Genesis 9, God establishing what we call the Noahic covenant. This is verse eight. Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him saying, and as for me, behold, I established my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you.

So even though it's called the Noahic covenant, God isn't just making the covenant with Noah, he's making the covenant with really all mankind and all flesh, all creatures. He says, verse 10, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth.

Thus, I established my covenant with you. Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. So if a year later, there were torrential downpours, Noah didn't have to worry, oh no, is it happening all over again?

Because that would be a thought. If God didn't tell him this, you see is, because there have been flood, and this is another reason why the Bible does not teach a local flood. I know I've repeated this a lot, but this promise, if it was just a localized flood, this covenant promise wouldn't make any sense because there have been local floods since this, but the sign of the, so that's the promise.

That's the covenant. What's the sign of the covenant? Look at verse 12. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant, which I make between me and you, and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations.

I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Now, why the rainbow?

Yes. Because of the flood, and the change in the atmosphere was now, had more moisture in it, I guess. Right. And so, therefore, when the sun shone through, the prism of the moisture, we saw the prism of the colors.

So remember, we talked about this, when the flood happened, something changed above, like the windows of heaven were open, the atmosphere radically changed. When do you see a rainbow? It's after it rains.

So if it rains, and then the sun comes out right after it rains, that's when you see a rainbow. Well, before the flood, it never rained. So no one had ever seen a rainbow until now. So that's one reason why.

And really, the rainbow is, it's one of the most beautiful things that you see in nature. And again, doctrines of demons, what does the devil do? He always wants to do the opposite. So this sign of something good, God's promise, well, they want to kind of twist that around to make it a sign of the opposite.

So now the rainbow has been co-opted to where, I put it on the screen here, and I admit, before I put it on the screen, I had second thoughts, like, well, I don't want to put it on because someone, I shouldn't have that thought because this is, it belongs to God, and it belongs to not just God's people, it belongs to everyone.

But people see it, and then because of our current situation people think of something else. Well, we shouldn't give in and let them have it. No, it belongs, it belongs to all mankind. So it does make me think of Isaiah 520, though, where the prophet says, "'Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, "'who put darkness for light and light for darkness, "'who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.'".

So again, the devil always wants to flip everything around and make it the opposite. Yes. What's that reference again? Isaiah 520. So we can't let the devil do that. So whenever someone tries to teach the opposite of what the Bible says, we need to be the ones to speak up because no one else is gonna do it.

Noah, Ham, and the Curse on Canaan

Okay, so with the time we have remaining, we have two more points that we need to cover, starting in verse 18. This section is titled Noah and his sons, and there's a very unfortunate incident here that occurred.

Look at verse 18. "'Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark "'were Shem, Ham, and Japheth, "'and Ham was the father of,' who? "'Canaan.'". Canaan. Now, when you hear the name Canaan, do you think of anyone else?

Canaanites, Jebusites, Anharites, Malachites.

So the ites were named after the... So Canaan is the guy, and the Canaanites were his descendants. So obviously the Canaanites in the land of Canaan plays a significant role later on. So Canaan was the descendant of Ham.

Okay, so that detail's gonna matter. In verse 20, Noah plants a vineyard. Apparently he has, Noah has time on his hands. Remember, he was busy for years. I don't know what, how many years did we say? Let's just say it took 120 years to build the ark.

So he's just busy day and night, or at least six days a week maybe, you know, just working, working. He's on the ark for over a year, working, making sure everything's all set. Now he gets off the ark and he has time.

So he plants a vineyard, and of course. Went from carpentry to gardening. Yeah, he becomes a farmer. And unfortunately though, the wine, you know, it ferments and it says here in verse 21, Noah drank of the wine and was drunk.

Now we don't know if this was a one-time thing. I'd like to think it was a one-time thing, but it's possible that Noah was indulging in the wine ongoing, but it at least happened once. So one time, let's hope it was once, but when he became drunk, it says he became uncovered in his tent.

So you figure maybe it's hot out, he's drunk. His clothes end up off. In verse 22, and Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it on both of their shoulders and went backwards and covered the nakedness of their father.

Their faces were turned away so that they did not see their father's nakedness. So at the very least, Shem and Japheth are treating their father respectfully. Ham, on the other hand, we don't know exactly what he did or what he's doing, but his actions were not acceptable, whatever it is he did.

At the very least, he looked upon his father's nakedness and the other children would not do that. You have to figure they revered their father and this was embarrassing and they wanted to try to help their father and maybe Ham took some delight and his father looking like a fool.

I don't know. We kind of have to read between the lines a little bit, but look at verse 24, you see the statement. So Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him. Now you ask, well, what did he do?

Well, it doesn't say. Verse 25, then he said, Noah, cursed be Canaan, whatever he did, it's serious enough to where Ham or at least his son is now cursed. Canaan will be a servant of servants and he shall, or a servant of servants, he shall be to his brethren.

So there's all sorts of different theories about Ham or Canaan or what did they do? Who's heard some of these theories? Does anyone want to share maybe what you've heard? Okay. Again, at the very least, we know he looked upon his father's nakedness.

There's some theories that I think are maybe, you're reading into it a little too much. I don't want to repeat. There's one theory I'll choose not to repeat, but something happened that was not acceptable and he is now cursed.

Now, the other real question is why, why is Canaan cursed instead of Ham? How about that? Does anyone know? I mean, you would think he'd say cursed be Ham, but instead he says cursed be Canaan. Any thoughts?

Does it say, does anyone have a study Bible with a note? I'd be interested to hear it. Yeah, I couldn't really find much when I looked into this. Either way, this will later become part of the basis for the descendants of Shem, that is the Israelites, overtaking the Canaanites.

So the Canaanites are going to be the servants of who? The descendants of Shem. So Shem, and from him, you get Eber, the Hebrews, the Jews, right? The Jews are going to get this mandate, this instruction to annihilate the Canaanites, take their land.

And really it does go back to this, this cursing. So Noah's actions really have long lasting effects, even on his son, grandchildren. And that's something that we need to consider. When we do something wrong, let's say somebody goes out and they get drunk, even if it's just once, that can totally change the rest of their life.

Especially today, you get behind the wheel of the car, going out and getting drunk just once can change your life forever, can change other people's lives forever. And that is what happened here. But in either way, the real tragedy, I think, that often gets overlooked in Genesis chapter nine is how Noah ends up, what it looks like is he ends up in this backslidden state.

Something goes wrong, his family's a mess, and that's really the last thing you hear about Noah. So he's one of the greatest, again, one of the greatest men in the Bible, one of the greatest men who ever lived, righteous on the earth, that's chapter six.

But by the time you get to chapter nine, he's getting drunk and then his family is in this state of turmoil. So at least on the surface, it gives the impression that Noah didn't finish well, or he may not have finished well.

And that's the application that I wanna leave you with. There's plenty of great figures in the Bible that started out good. They started out on fire for God, serving God, but then somewhere along the lines, something happens, they go off course.

And the more extreme example would be someone like King Saul where he ended his life, just a complete disaster, so much so that we question whether or not Saul is even in heaven. Most people probably think he isn't.

I've never heard anyone question whether Noah's in heaven. I think everyone believes that he is. I believe that he is. But he may have ended in this backslidden condition. Either way, he did get backslidden, at least for a time.

So I would say this is an example of what not to do. And this type of thing, if you're not vigilant, each and every day, this type of thing can sneak up on you. And I don't wanna get into the whole, because we talked about alcohol in Sunday school, and we said this is kind of a debated issue among Christians and I'm not trying to make a big thing about that, but people who do, let me just put it this way.

If you don't drink, let's say you just don't drink. Okay, don't start then. If you don't drink, don't start, because I mean, nothing good comes of it. And we see that it was alcohol that helped to tarnish the reputation of one of the greatest men who ever lived.

So this is a cautionary tale. So the chapter ends, unfortunately with these words, I think it is rather sad. Verses 28 and 29 says, and Noah lived after the flood 350 years. So all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died.