God's First Covenant with Man Genesis 8:20-9:17

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Most of us can relate to what it is like flying in a plane. I'm sure many in this room have done that, probably most.
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It can be uncomfortable and make you a little bit antsy if you're not in first class. Now if you travel in the lower 48 states of America, the flights are only a few hours, so it's pretty easy to put up with it.
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You get on the plane and you're not on it very long and it's no big deal. But if you ever travel overseas, it's a different story.
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Now my experience of flying overseas has only happened once. In March 2013,
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I flew to Macedonia, which is located in southeastern Europe, right next to Greece, for a short -term missions trip.
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The flight was long. We first flew from Minneapolis to Chicago, because that was short, obviously.
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Then came the longest leg. We flew from Chicago to Istanbul, Turkey, and then from Istanbul to Skopje, Macedonia, which is the capital there.
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With all the layovers, it was about a 20 -hour journey. These long flights are uncomfortable, and toward the end it is easy to get very antsy, and I did.
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I remember finally arriving at our destination, and I remember how great the feeling was to finally be able to walk outside and breathe in fresh air.
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It is a great feeling to be able to stretch out your legs, feel free and not feel cramped. Now that journey was less than one day.
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Last week I mentioned how long Noah and his family were on the ark.
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They were on the ark for one year and ten days. That's a long time. And in this cramped, smelly place with all these animals.
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And it was quite a relief for them to finally open the doors of the ark and see dry land.
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Last week we saw the Lord command them to get off the ark, after the waters had subsided.
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And after this long stay on the ark, where they had patiently waited on the Lord, they were finally able to exit.
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Today, we're going to see them on dry land. That's where we are in our journey through Genesis.
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And what we are going to see is the Lord makes promises to them that this will never happen to them again.
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That there will never be a flood that will wipe out the earth in their time or for a very long time.
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The theme we are going to see in our text from Genesis is the sure promises of God in this fresh start for the human race following the flood.
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We are in Genesis chapter 8, starting in verse 20, and we're going to go through chapter 9 verse 17 today, and I always encourage you to follow along with me in the
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Bible as we go through this. And if you don't have a Bible with you, we have those red
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Bibles behind the pews. And it's just a few pages in chapter 8, starting in verse 20.
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And our big idea that we're going to look at today and focus on is the
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Lord makes sure promises to his children to the benefit of all people.
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The Lord makes sure promises to his children to the benefit of all people, and we're going to see three examples from this text.
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The first example is his declarations are certain to those who honor him.
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Last week we saw that after over a year on the ark, Noah and his family were finally able to walk on land again.
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And what we saw is that God remembered Noah and took care of him from the flood waters as the earth was being destroyed.
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Noah and his family were preserved from this catastrophe. And not only did
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God remember his child Noah by keeping him safe, but also Noah remembered
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God. And we see this right from the get -go in verse 20. It says,
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So immediately, as Noah came off the ark, he honors God by building him an altar and offering up clean animals to the
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Lord. Notice that Noah does not move on with his life and forget about God after the
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Lord did this extraordinary thing by preserving him from the flood waters. Noah remembers his
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God and he honors him. I want you to notice that as we look at this text, to see precisely where this is in this passage.
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How easy it is for us to forget to honor God in our lives, not only in every circumstance, but even in extraordinary events when he does something for us.
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I have a good friend who went out on the west coast and they were visiting his wife's family.
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I'm pretty sure it was his wife's aunt. And she had terminal cancer. And they thought this is the last time we're going to get to see her.
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So that's why they were out there in the first place. And as they spent time with her, my friend asked her if he could pray for her.
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Specifically, if he could pray for healing. And so he prayed for healing and she went back to the doctor at a later point and the cancer was gone.
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So she went from being terminal to having this completely new lease on life. She didn't have a timetable of when she was going to die anymore.
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And so you would think, okay, she must have given her life to the Lord and fall after him the rest of her days.
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You know what? She didn't. My friend told me, and this is really significant.
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He said, she's the same as she was when she had this diagnosis and she knew she was going to die.
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She wasn't a follower of the Lord then. She lived a very sinful lifestyle. And to this day, she's not following the
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Lord and she lives a very sinful lifestyle. And so you think about, the Lord did this extraordinary act in her life and she did nothing to honor him.
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Noah and God's people do the opposite. When the Lord does something extraordinary for us, we honor him.
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God does remarkable things all the time to his people and how sad it is if we don't do it. And so this is something that we need to make a regular pattern of this in our life.
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Everyone here today who is a follower of Christ, we need to be people, people who are like Noah, who honor
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God always, especially when we see his extraordinary works in our lives. And notice here in verse 20 how
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Noah offers the clean animals as a sacrifice to the Lord. Remember several weeks back when
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Noah was gathering all these animals, he gathered more clean animals than non -clean animals.
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And the reason that I gave several weeks ago was that these animals were going to be sacrificed. And here we see that taking place.
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Noah is sacrificing these clean animals. The Lord is so pleased by this, by Noah's sacrifice.
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He builds this altar to the Lord. He's so pleased by this that he makes a promise to Noah and to the future human race that he will never again destroy the earth.
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This is what it says in verse 21 and 22. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the
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Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man.
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For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
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While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.
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We see once again why the Lord sent the flood on the earth.
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He sent the flood because of the wickedness of mankind. The humans on the earth at this time became great sinners because they were born this way.
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I want you to notice this in verse 21. This is what it says in verse 21. Verse 21 points to the sin from birth when it says man's heart is evil from his youth.
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This echoes what Moses wrote in Genesis 6 -5 that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
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The Bible makes it crystal clear that the reason we sin is because we came from Adam and Eve who were sinners.
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This is what's known as inherited sin or original sin. People naturally have this disposition to do things for themselves, to do things selfishly.
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It looks innocent early on, of course, but later on it comes out uglier as we get older. We are sinners by nature and by choice.
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The intention of man's heart is evil and it starts right when we're born.
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It starts at our youth. Now what we see at the beginning of verse 21 and the end of this verse is that God is not going to destroy the earth completely again.
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If you read the Bible far enough, and you read the end of the Bible, you see that God does destroy the earth again at the end of the world right around the time of the return of Christ and before the new world starts.
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So yes, he does it then, but this promise, he's saying that in the present age, he's not going to destroy the earth again.
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I get that from verse 22 where it says while the earth remains. And what I take that to mean is the present age, in this present age it will not be destroyed again.
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And what is incredible is that we reap the benefits of this every single day.
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The Lord said, there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.
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And of course, this is the experience of our lives, year after year, this is what we experience. And it's because God said,
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I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to destroy the earth like I did in the time of Noah. And he doesn't.
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And he keeps his promises. So this is the first example of the Lord's sure promises.
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His declarations are solid to those who honor him. The second example of the
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Lord's sure promises is his continued ordering for society to thrive.
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His continued ordering for society to thrive. And we'll see this in verses 1 through 7 of chapter 9.
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What we will see in this section is the Lord's continued care for humanity. God does not change.
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The same things he set up in the beginning of creation, he sets up now. And we will see a few different things that do change because of the presence of sin.
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God responds as the world changes. But there is order even in these changes.
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God, who orders things in the best way possible, is wonderful when you think about it.
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How he orders everything is so wonderful. He sets it up so that society will function properly if his ways are followed.
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The first ordering is the Lord's blessings through the multiplication of the human race. And that's in verse 1.
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And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
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This reflects what God said to the first humans in Genesis 1 .28. God told
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Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. And now, the human race is essentially starting over here.
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There's only eight people at this time. What God tells them is, be fruitful and multiply.
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Because if they do not reproduce, of course, the human race cannot keep on going. So he needs to make this clear to them by telling them, by commanding them to be fruitful and multiply.
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And not only does verse 1 echo chapter 1, but so does verse 2. Verse 2 says,
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This repeats what Moses wrote in Genesis 1 .28. God told Adam and Eve to have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over everything that moves on the earth.
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God makes it clear who's in charge in this world. There's a reason animals don't hunt us.
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They don't have a season every year where they hunt us. We hunt them. We have dominion over them.
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The human race rules over the animal kingdom. I find it remarkable that these animals that have the capability of shredding us into pieces, they're actually afraid of us.
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And that's because God designed it that way. Animals know that humans are the highest creature on the earth.
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And we see that from our experience. It fits reality. What's amazing is that everything the
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Bible says fits reality. And if you're wondering that, read the Bible and look at your experience of the world.
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It fits perfectly. And we should expect that because it's God's word to us.
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Now verses 1 and 2 mirror what God commanded in Genesis 1 .28.
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But in verse 3, the Lord gives new instructions that humans did not have before. And he gives these instructions because this is after the fall.
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This is after sin. And so there's new instructions to give. So before the flood, people were vegetarians.
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Only fruits and vegetables could be eaten by humans. Now that has changed.
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God has given humans permission to eat animals. And we can all rejoice at this because most people like eating meat.
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We like a good steak or hamburger. And of course on Thanksgiving we enjoyed turkey. This was not so before the flood.
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God did not give humans permission to do this until after the flood. And this is the first time we see this.
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And the Lord gives this command in verse 4. But you shall not eat flesh with its life.
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That is, its blood. So they were not able to eat blood, but only the meat of the animal.
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They were prohibited from eating the blood because it represented the life force of the animal. So while God now allowed humans to eat animals for sustenance, he did not want them to take it too far by eating blood as well.
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So why did God not give this command in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were there? Well the answer is he couldn't.
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At that point death was not possible. Because sin leads to death.
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And at that point Adam and Eve had not been sinners yet, so there couldn't be death. And so there couldn't be any animals to eat.
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But now that there is death, animals can be eaten. God permits it. And what we see is that God not only allowed humans to eat plant life, but also animal life at this point because of where we are.
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And later on in Israel the Lord would give this prohibition in the Mosaic Law from eating blood to Israel in Leviticus 17 .11.
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So this is actually before Israel is established. The beginning of Israel doesn't start until Abraham, which we'll see in Genesis 12.
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But this sets the stage for, because the same God who's working right now is the same God who's going to work through Israel, and so he's given a lot of the same instructions.
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And one point we need to stress here is that God still cares for animals. Obviously we know he cares for animals.
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He preserved them on the ark during the flood. And he gives humans permission to eat animals for food, but this does not give humans the right to harm animals for fun.
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God's command for Adam to care for animals in Genesis 2 .15 still holds true after the flood.
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So I think that's an important point to emphasize. I know that when you hunt, you eat the animals.
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Yes, it is a sport, but you're still not doing it just for the sake of harming animals. And so that's why it's okay.
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Now, God instructs Noah as to what will happen if blood is shed on the earth wrongly, namely through murder.
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In verse 5, this is what he says, And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning.
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From every beast I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
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So if one takes the life of another, the result is that their life will be taken.
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The first instruction is if the animal takes the life of a human, then that animal needs to be killed.
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The second half of verse 5 says that if a human takes the life of another human, then his life should be taken.
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The Lord feels so strongly about this that he makes this emphasis in verse 6. He says,
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For God made man in his own image. So when a human murders a human, the life of one of God's image bearers is being taken.
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You see that in this verse? When God's talking about murder, He's saying that you are taking the life of one of His image bearers, which is significant.
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Humans are all reflections of God as His image bearers. So when you think about it, taking the life of a human is a great assault on God.
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It is an attack on Him. We don't often think of it that way, but it is. And the Bible points it out.
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That's one of the reasons this is so serious. And as you might expect, God takes this very seriously.
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If you ask the question, does the Bible support capital punishment? And the answer is yes.
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For the person who takes a life, there are consequences. The Bible says in verse 6 that a murderer should lose his life.
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Now my goal is not to make this into a political conversation, but the Bible does permit at the very least that it's okay to take the life of another if they have committed premeditated murder.
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In our country, different states have different laws on the death penalty. Some would argue that life in prison is equivalent to the death penalty because the freedom of the murderer has been taken away for life.
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So they would say that's the equivalent. Now in the Old Testament, a murderer is not put to death in every instance.
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If you read through the Old Testament, you'll see that in some circumstances they're not, but there's always a severe punishment.
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But one thing is clear, the punishment for murder is always very severe.
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Then God repeats once again what they must do to the human race after we wrapped up talking about this murder here.
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Verse 7, this is what he says to them, And you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.
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So he's bringing that back again to the beginning of this chapter where he's saying you need to populate.
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And of course murder would hinder that, and so that's why those two verses are right next to each other.
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Now this is the second example of the Lord's sure promises. His continued ordering for society to thrive.
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And we should be grateful for that, that God is consistent. He's not this way one day and then this day the next day.
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He's very consistent because he doesn't change. And we can trust his promises as a result. Now the third example of the
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Lord's sure promises is the establishment of his unbreakable covenant. The establishment of his unbreakable covenant.
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And this is the peak, the apex of our sermon today. We already saw in verse 21 that God will never again curse the ground like he did in the flood.
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And that statement was setting the table for a covenant that he would make between him and Noah.
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Now before we jump into this section let me say a word on covenants in the Old Testament. And this is a big topic in the
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Old Testament. You'll see lots of different covenants as you read the Old Testament. These covenants are the
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Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, the
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Davidic Covenant, and then the New Covenant. And I was telling Barb today that these seem to fall about 500 years from each other in history.
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And they go in that order, the order I just gave you. Now this is the first covenant that God makes with man in the
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Bible. What is a covenant? We should address that first. This is an agreement between two parties.
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There were two different types of covenants in the Old Testament. There was a unilateral covenant and then there was a bilateral covenant.
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Let me explain the difference between these two. A unilateral covenant is when God makes an agreement with a faithful man, in this case
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Noah, and he alone accomplishes what is laid out in the covenant.
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There's this agreement between the two parties and God says okay, this is what I'm going to do now as a result of this.
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Now a bilateral covenant is where the other party actually has a responsibility.
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An agreement is made God's covenant with Moses was a bilateral covenant because Israel was expected to keep their end of the bargain.
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If you break a Mosaic Law there's consequences to this.
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And in some cases they were cut off from the people. That's because they were expected to keep their end of the bargain.
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This was an agreement between two parties, between God and the people of Israel. God's going to keep his and if they don't keep theirs there's consequences.
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Now in this passage we see a unilateral covenant because God makes this promise with Noah and he says you know what?
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I'm going to do everything here. This agreement is between us but you don't have to worry about it.
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I'm going to take care of this. We'll see this in verses 8 and 9. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, behold
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I will establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you.
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So we see that God establishes his covenant with Noah and not only Noah but all the humans that would come after him.
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And not just humans but also animals. Verse 10, and with every living creature that is with you the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you as many as came out of the ark it is for every beast of the earth.
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So we know who this covenant is with. It's between God and humans and all the animals.
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We know who it's with but what is the covenant that the Lord is making? That's verse 11.
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He says I will establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.
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And what we saw in verse 21 in our first point is that the Lord made a general statement that he will never again curse the ground and wipe out all the creatures on the earth but now he tells us how he is not going to destroy the earth.
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He is not going to destroy the earth by water. The Lord has kept his promise.
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The earth has never been wiped out and it's never been wiped out by water.
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The reason we know this that's why we're here today. The Lord has kept his promise.
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And it was a Hebrew tradition for the Lord to give a sign when he made a covenant with his people and this is what he does here.
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The sign was meant to recall the covenant that was made. Verses 12 and 13.
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And God said this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations.
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I will set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
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So the sign of the Noahic covenant is a rainbow. A rainbow.
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Now the other two covenants where a sign is specifically given in the Old Testament is the Abrahamic covenant where all males were to be circumcised and the, actually, yeah that's the
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Abrahamic covenant and then the Mosaic which was keeping the Sabbath. So every time they would keep the Sabbath they would be reminded, okay, we have a covenant with God, we need to keep his commandments.
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Now the purpose of the sign was to confirm what had been stated by mouth. The Lord stated this and he is going to keep his promise and the sign is the reminder of his promise.
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He made it so that every time you see a rainbow it would be a reminder that God would never again flood the earth.
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And this is remarkable when you think about it. We see rainbows several times a year.
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Amber took a beautiful picture of a rainbow in the sky over there and it was on the back of our newsletter for several months.
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A beautiful picture of a rainbow. And actually if you Google our church on the internet I did that in my spare time a couple weeks ago.
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If you Google us there's pictures that come up and that's one of the pictures that comes up, the picture with the rainbow behind it.
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How often do we see a rainbow in the sky and remember the Noahic covenant? I mean, be honest.
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Probably not enough. I'm guilty of this. Every time we see a rainbow we should thank the
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Lord for his goodness toward us in promising never to destroy the earth by water.
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I mentioned earlier that the Bible describes the world we live in to a T. This is why rainbows exist.
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God designed it so that we would see a rainbow after a storm or showers to remind us that that's all there's going to be.
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He's not going to keep sending rain to cause a flood that's going to flood the entire earth. This is
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God's covenant with mankind. And in my proposition and my big idea,
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I said that the whole world benefits from God's sure promises. And in this case that's true because the whole world benefits from the fact that God's not going to flood this place again.
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And this text makes it clear who this covenant is between. And this is why this is so relevant to us.
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The covenant is not just between God and Noah and his family for a short period of time. As God says in verse 12 this is a sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations.
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That includes us and every generation after us. And God reiterates this promise in the following verses of this section in verses 14 through 17.
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He says when I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh and the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh when the bow is in the clouds
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I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
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God said to Noah this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.
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So you'll see here that the Lord says in verse 16 that this is an everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
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So everybody who is born into this world is a part of this covenant because God made it with us. And he started with Noah but it's for us as well.
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And so you can see how this directly affects your life. You live on an earth that will never again be destroyed by water and it won't be destroyed in any way until this present age comes to an end.
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And this is a covenant that God has made as long as the present earth is here.
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This covenant is between the Lord and everyone else on the planet. And so whenever the
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Lord sets a rainbow in the sky he is reminded of this covenant.
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He's like okay obviously the Lord isn't reminded of anything because he already knows everything but he's using language here so that we can understand this.
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But every time there's a rainbow in the sky the Lord says okay
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I'm not going to flood the earth because of this covenant that I made with Noah thousands of years ago.
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And that's how it is. He always keeps his promises. We know from our sermon series this past summer that God is perfect in all of his attributes.
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He always keeps his promises. He says he won't flood the earth and that's what he does. The flood happened over 4 ,000 years ago and God has kept his word to this point and we can be sure that he always will.
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This is the third example of the Lord's sure promises the establishment of his unbreakable covenant.
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And what we have seen today is the Lord's promises are sure and we've seen three examples from this passage from Genesis 8 and 9.
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His declarations are certain to those who honor him. His continued ordering for society to thrive and the establishment of his unbreakable covenant.
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Now at this point in the sermon I've yet to mention Jesus. And one thing my old pastor counseled me, he says a sermon is not a
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Christian sermon unless you mention Jesus, which is true. All roads in the Bible lead to Jesus including this passage today.
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We can point to Jesus through this text by saying that we worship a God who keeps his promises.
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This is something we don't have to think about. We worship a God who keeps his promises.
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We sing that song today, standing on the promises of God. I mean every day we stand on the promises of God.
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I mean when you're on your deathbed, you're standing on the promises of God realizing that this God who made this promise to me, that if I believe in Jesus Christ I will have eternal life, we can trust that he is going to keep that promise.
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And God is a covenant keeping God. He makes covenants and he keeps covenants with his people.
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I mentioned the covenants of the Old Testament, including the one we saw today. And God has promised a covenant known as the new covenant to anyone who believes in Jesus.
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In Hebrews 9 .15, this is what the author of Hebrews wrote, he said, he,
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Jesus, is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
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The author of Hebrews in chapter 13 verse 20 refers to this as the eternal covenant.
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So this is a covenant that God has made between him and his people.
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And what he does in this covenant is that he gives us the Holy Spirit so that one day we will not be able to sin because we'll have the
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Holy Spirit, we'll be completely righteous, and we will keep this covenant. The God of the
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Bible is a covenant keeping God, and as he did in Noah's time, so he does today. Every promise that he makes, he will keep.
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And so, as you think about this in your life, think about how wonderful this is, that the
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God of the Bible, the one true God of the universe, is a covenant keeping God. He's a
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God who keeps his promises. And that's what we need to see in this text today, and that's what we saw.
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And I hope that you can take that home with you today. Now next week, we're going to look at a sad moment in Noah's life.
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We've only seen good things about Noah at this point, but just like anyone else, Noah was not perfect.
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And we're going to see something bad that he did, and also something horrible that his son did as well. And so we'll look at that next week, and so I look forward to looking at that with you.
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Let's pray. Father in Heaven, this is something that we need to hold so tightly to, the fact that you make certain promises to your people that you will always keep.
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Thank you, Lord, that you are unlike humans in this way.
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Lord, we make promises that we don't keep. You are incapable of making a promise that you can't keep.
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You keep everything, and we rejoice over that. And you've shown us this through this story with Noah, that you are a covenant -keeping
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God. You made this covenant with Noah, and we experience it to this day, the fact that you haven't flooded the earth.
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And you keep covenants with us as well. Everlasting covenants through Jesus Christ, and we praise you for that.